“Are you mad at me?”
“Fuck no.”
“Then why do you look so pissed?”
“Because I’m trying to remind myself that the motherfucker who hit you is dead while at the same time I’m wondering if it’s possible for my buddy Tex to track down every person who’s ever done you wrong so I can put them to ground, too.”
Tingles started racing up my back. He was pissed-off on my behalf. I wasn’t sure anyone ever had been. Sure, I’d seen the FBI agents that rescued me look at me with detached pity. I’d seen social workers look at me with kindness. But they were overworked with huge caseloads, so I was merely a blip on their radar.
But no one had ever been angry for me.
I wordlessly reached for his empty bottle, and when he handed it to me, I stood. After tossing the empties in the trash I went back into the living room and found Kyle had moved to the basement door.
“You okay with what I said?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You look scared, sweetheart.”
“I am,” I admitted, and Kyle flinched. “I’m scared because I promised myself when I was chained in that boat, I wouldn’t waste another chance. I’m scared because I’m going to open myself up to you and there’s a possibility you’re not gonna want me. But mostly I’m scared because what if you do, and I can’t give you what you need?”
Standing there in the living room, Kyle changed. It was something profound, something I didn’t ever want to forget. His mouth lowered to mine, but this time instead of a brush, he kissed me. I opened for him, and ever so gently, he glided his tongue against mine. It was slow and gentle. Exploratory. Way before I was ready, Kyle pulled back and kissed my forehead.
“What you just gave me was more than enough.”
“A kiss?” I whispered.
“No, not the kiss, though it was fuckin’ sweet. I was talking about your honesty. You opening up to me. All I need is a crack, Anaya, and I’ll crumble the rest.”
“It might be hard,” I admitted.
“Not afraid of a little hard work, sweetheart.”
“Might be more than a little hard.”
“Then let me amend. I’m not afraid of busting my ass to make sure you feel safe enough to keep giving me what you just did. I’m not afraid to put in the time and work if it means you’ll get what you need to heal and move on with your life. I’m not afraid to admit there’s something about you that makes me want things I never dreamed I’d want.”
It was crazy. Totally and completely insane that I felt the same way. I had never dreamed in a million years I’d desperately want someone to know me. The real me. The fear. The demons. All the shit I pushed down and was scared to deal with.
I wanted to tell him everything so I could finally shed the weight of my past and find the strength I needed to put it all behind me.
Chapter 20
It was by miracle Anaya’s ribs weren’t broken.
This morning she’d woken up with a groan and could barely sit up right to get out of bed. I knew she was in pain when I insisted we go to the ER and she hadn’t argued.
Four hours later, we were leaving with a prescription for a pain reliever and instructions to rest for forty-eight hours.
So that was the plan: I was taking Anaya back to the house, then propping her up on the couch where she’d stay.
“Do you want to go up and see the babies while we’re here?” she asked.
“Nope. I wanna get you home so you can rest,” I answered.
“I feel better now that I’m up and walking. You heard the doctor, he said they’re just bruised.”
“I did hear him; he said no activity for two days and it would take three weeks for them to heal.”
Anaya stopped and faced me. “You’re one of those people who follows doctor’s orders?”
She looked surprised.
“With you? Yes.”
“What does that mean?”
I grabbed her hand and walked us around the throngs of people in the ER waiting room, not wanting to have this discussion around strangers, and I certainly didn’t want to be in a room full of coughing people.
We cleared the sliding exit doors, made our way across the parking lot, and stopped next to the company SUV.
“It means, if the doctor ordered me off my feet for two days, I wouldn’t listen. If one of the guys had bruised ribs, I’d tell him to suck it up and do his job.”
“Then why are you rushing us home? Everyone’s upstairs visiting little Eric and Mason. All your friends are there. Why don’t we go up—”
“If they’re all at the hospital, that means the house is empty.” Her head cocked to the side in question so I continued. “Meaning, we can be alone.”
“Oh,” she whispered but then she frowned. “But you’re gonna make me sit on the couch and not move, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then what does it matter if we’re alone or not?”
“It just does.”
“Kyle,” she whined.
Anaya looked absolutely adorable pouting.
I had no idea how she felt about PDA and I didn’t stop to ask. I lowered my head with the intention of a chaste peck but Anaya had other plans. Her tongue came out and licked my bottom lip. I groaned and tried to stay strong but lost the battle when she pressed her body to mine and slanted her head. My hands moved to her face, then slid into her hair, keeping her where I wanted, and deepened the kiss.
Good God, the woman was a good kisser. She followed my lead but was not timid or shy. She tasted like the cinnamon gum she’d been chewing—spicy and hot. Her low groan made my already hard cock twitch, and unfortunately it was time to stop.
“Wow,” she breathed and I smiled at her endorsement.
Wow didn’t begin to cover it. The first kiss we’d shared had been hands-down the best kiss of my life. The one we just shared? A close second. Very close. The only reason it wasn’t as good as the first was because it hadn’t been accompanied with her sweetest admission she was going to open herself to me.
“Let’s get you home.”
I beeped the locks and helped her in. I took my time rounding the SUV thinking of anything I could to deflate my hard-on. Nothing worked. I climbed into the driver’s seat, cock still rock hard, and drove us home.
Anaya was situated on the couch, TV remote in hand, channel surfing, while I was in the kitchen making us some lunch.
“Hey.” I heard, and I turned from the sink to see Declan.
“Yo,” I returned. “Didn’t know you were home.”
“Just got home and was trying to sleep, but you’re making a fuckin’ racket.”
I smiled and shook my head.
“We’re sorry, Declan. We thought we were alone,” Anaya apologized.
“Sweetheart, he’s full of shit. We didn’t wake him.”
I knew Declan; he was up in his room going over case files. No way he’d sleep until he went over all the intel we got yesterday.
“I hope you made enough food because now that I’m awake, I’m starving.”
“Right,” I mumbled and grabbed all the fixings for a sandwich back out of the fridge.
“How’s your nephew?” Anaya asked.
“Fuckin’ perfect. He looks just like Violet.”
The sadness in his tone belied his words and I wondered if Anaya could hear it, too. I definitely needed to carve out some time to check on my friend. Now that I understood a little of what he’d lost, two babies being born had to be a kick in the gut for the man.
I quickly slapped together another sandwich and joined them in the living room.
“Find anything?” I asked Dec as I sat next to Anaya.
“No. I ran some searches on the tattoo. But without a clear image or the QR code I can’t match it up to any of the others I found. Though, I have to say, tatting bar codes on the girls is a whole new level of fucked.”
I had to agree.
“In all the years I’ve worked hu
man trafficking, I’ve never seen one.”
“Probably because your role was stopping the girls from being delivered,” Anaya said. “And the pimps got smart and no longer tattoo the wrists. They now tat places that can’t be seen, like on the girl’s back. Some even have them on their butt cheek.”
“Jesus fuck,” Dec muttered.
“At least in those places, after a girl is rescued, she doesn’t have to see the scar that laser removal leaves. If she’s lucky enough to have the resources to have it removed.”
What kind of sick world did we live in that we were having a conversation about girls being bar coded like they were products on a shelf?
“I texted the man who’s sitting on Monica and asked him if he could send us a clear picture of the QR code.” Before I could ask Dec what the man said, his face contorted and he sneered, “He said Monica won’t allow him close enough and he refuses to restrain her to get the picture.”
“He can’t touch her,” Anaya snapped.
Dec studied Anaya for a moment and masked his disgust about the situation.
“He won’t,” he said softly. “That’s one of the reasons Monica hasn’t been brought to Maryland. Jeremy’s well-versed in victim recovery and assistance.”
“May I read the file on Monica?” Anaya asked.
“When you’re feeling better.”
“Yes,” Declan said at the same time.
I cut my eyes to Dec and shook my head.
“Kyle,” Anaya murmured. “You’re making me sit like a bump on a log for two days. Reading the file will give me something to do.”
“You need to relax, not read the gory details of this girl’s life.”
“You’re babying me, again,” she huffed.
“The hell I am. I want you rested and healed so you and Emerson can interview Monica. If she’s a victim, and the two of you can get her to flip, we can finally take out Harry Landry.”
“I thought you knew where Harry was.”
“We do,” I sighed. “But we’ve been ordered to stand down. Landry either has something or knows something of value. If we can figure that out, we can smoke his ass and move on. I want this shit done.”
I was tired of waiting. I understood Tom Anderson’s desire to collect as much intel as we could on Landry and Emilio Ruiz, especially now that we’d found Landry’s connection to Corella Industries. How many other corporations did Landry own stock in?
“Did Garrett get you a list of contracts and projects Corella’s been working on?” I asked Dec.
“He did. I’ll forward it to you. One in particular stood out. Corella’s technology was used in the remote control guidance system for the M824 missile. The M824 is a go-onto-target system with an onboard engine. It can be launched; it doesn’t need to be dropped.”
The M824 was a beast and the latest and greatest in military weapons. Some missiles needed to be dropped relying on speed and height to hit their targets. And some weapons could only hit stationary targets. The M824 didn’t need height due to the onboard engine and it could hit moving targets thanks to the advanced guidance chip Corella had manufactured.
“That’s a fucking problem,” I muttered.
“Why?” Anaya inquired.
“Theoretically, or more to the point, if a programmer at Corella wanted to, they could launch a missile,” Dec explained.
“Or if they wanted to, they could render the missile inop,” I added. “Say Corella didn’t want the weapon to hit a certain target, they could scramble the guidance system or simply turn it off.”
“That easy? But how would someone at Corella know the target?”
“If they bugged the chips? Yes, that easy,” I confirmed. “As to the how, the coordinates.”
“Fuck, brother, Corella could disable the launch and detonate the weapon in the silo,” Declan added.
“A missile silo? Where? In the US?” Anaya gasped.
I looked at my uneaten food and contemplated how much I wanted Anaya to know. Sometimes the saying, ignorance is bliss, was a real thing. The majority of the population went about their daily lives not knowing what was really going on around them, and in some respects that was a good thing. If every person walked around with the knowledge of what was truly lurking in the shadows no one would leave their homes and chaos would ensue.
“Anaya, there are more silos in the US than you’d believe. Hell, Zane owns one,” Dec told her.
“Zane owns a missile silo?” The shock in her voice made me smile.
It wasn’t every day someone owned a silo.
“Yep,” I answered. “It’s an old decommissioned one, left over from the Cold War.”
“Can I see it?”
“It’s in upstate New York. In a town called Lewis. It’s actually pretty badass,” I told her. “The Launch Control Center has been turned into a one bedroom, one bath house. But Zane kept the space authentic. All the controls the military left after the decommissioning are still in place. The main silo is eighteen stories into the ground. It’s fuckin’ wild. It looks like a steel door, dead set in the middle of the eight acres he owns.”
“Okay, but can I see it?” she pushed.
“If you want to, we’ll go up.”
“I want to,” she confirmed.
Declan chuckled at her excitement.
“You’re a nut. No damn way are you trapping me forty feet underground.”
Anaya’s smile dissolved at Dec’s off-the-cuff comment and I wanted to kick my friend’s ass.
“Hey.” I put my hand on her thigh. “Don’t listen to him. He’s also afraid of a little amphibian, called the Penis Snake.”
“What?” she choked back a laugh.
“It’s not fuckin’ little,” Dec argued. “The son of bitch can get thirty-two inches long. That ain’t little, friend.”
“Told you.” I squeezed Anaya’s thigh. “He gets a little worked up when someone mentions a two-foot-long penis. Not sure if it’s size envy or if he really has herpetophobia. Either way, he freaks the fuck out if he sees a snake.”
“Listen, fucker, when you live in Brazil for as long as I did, it’s not fear, it’s survival.”
“You lived in Brazil?” Anaya asked. “I was in Uruguay once and got to travel up to Brazil. Rio Grande. I was only there one day but it was beautiful. Did you like living in the country?”
Declan’s face turned to stone. All traces of humor gone.
“Didn’t get to see much. I was working all the time.” Dec stood and said, “I’m headin’ up to catch some sleep.”
“What’d I say?” Anaya whispered when Declan disappeared around the corner.
I waited until I heard the bedroom door upstairs close before I answered.
“There are a lot of bad memories for him in Brazil.”
“Work stuff?” she pressed.
“Work and personal. He lost something there that he shouldn’t have. And to top that off, Violet was kidnapped and taken to Brazil, then Eric died. All things he wishes he could forget but can’t.”
The front door opened and in walked the rest of my team, along with Emerson and Tatiana.
There goes our alone time.
I can’t catch a goddamn break.
Chapter 21
“Do you want another glass of wine?” Emerson whispered.
I nodded and pushed my empty glass across the island as quietly as I could.
With a wink she filled it halfway and went back to stirring the from-scratch spaghetti sauce she’d made.
“You think you should drink a second glass?” Thad asked with one brow raised.
Dammit. Busted.
“How do you do that?” I asked in an effort to divert attention from my wine.
“Do what?” he chuckled. “Sense when my wife is participating in a covert operation?”
“Covert operation,” Emerson sorted. “Hardly. And be quiet.”
“You asking me to be quiet proves my point, Emmy.”
“Who’s planning an operation?�
� Kyle asked, coming into the kitchen, his eyes zeroing in on my glass before they came to mine and narrowed. “You won’t be able to take a pain pill tonight if you drink that.”
“I’ve been fine with Motrin all day,” I reminded him.
“You have. But if you need something stronger you won’t be able to take it.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“All right.” Then he turned to Emerson. “Smells great in here.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“What do you mean, ‘that’s it’?”
“You’re not gonna push?”
“Sweetheart, you’re a big girl. You know your body. If you want another glass, drink it.”
Huh. That was interesting and I wasn’t sure how I felt about him giving up so easily. All day he’d been militant about me not moving from the couch. I hadn’t even been allowed to get up and get myself a drink, and twenty minutes ago when I told him my butt was numb and I needed to move, he’d grumbled about me walking to the kitchen to sit, again, but this time on a stool.
But suddenly he wasn’t going to fight me about a pain pill.
Kyle moved to my side of the island, and leaned down to whisper in my ear. “Anaya. All I care about is you’re resting, healing, and comfortable. There’s a difference between me not budging and not letting you off the couch and you drinking a glass of wine. I’m not a dick. I won’t ever try to control you. But I will always make sure you’re taken care of.”
He straightened, kissed the top of my head, and strolled out of the kitchen with a fresh beer in hand. Thad followed with a smirk, chuckling as he went.
They’d heard.
Emerson was staring at me with wide eyes when Tatiana came into the kitchen.
“What’d I miss? Damn, that smells divine. Thank God, it’s not one of the guys turn to cook. I’m over grilled cheese.”
“You just missed Kyle giving her the speech,” Emerson answered, ignoring the second part of Tatiana’s statement.
“Damn. I missed it. Was it good?” Tatiana leaned against the counter.
“Oh, yeah. He told her he’d always make sure she was taken care of.”
“He was talking about my bruised ribs,” I cut in.
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