by India Kells
“Since you attacked Lance, something shifted. When I left you in my office, I thought we had some sort of connection.”
“We had sex.” A matter of fact answer.
“Is that what you call what we had?”
Dylan mimicked his pose. “I know that if you dare call it therapy, I’ll make sure you regret it.”
“I would never say that. I’m talking about a connection. Not only did you turn into ice when I tried to touch you, but you closed off. And now, not only do you continue the ice queen routine, you add small talk to the insult. So unless you have developed a sudden interest for my family, start talking, Dylan.”
And again, he was right. Sighing, she looked down at her mug. “I’m not shutting you out, Owen, I just think we should concentrate our efforts on finishing what we started, on catching the copycat. I think it should be our priority and it would be wise to put everything else aside.”
When she forced herself to look at him, she wasn’t sure how to interpret his lack of reaction. Instead of answering, he picked up his mug and went to wash it in the sink. “I don’t agree, but let’s skip that topic for now. Pray continue.”
Unsure of what to say next, Dylan decided to continue. “I think that out next step should be Maison Amaryllis, and there are a couple of options. I could try to hack into it, but another possibility is for me to go to Dallas. If I could have a direct access to the mainframe, I could find our Intel without alerting the freak. And you told me that you have worked there. Let’s wait for Lance to come back and come up with a plan."
“No!”
Dylan blinked. “No to what? To going there and hacking it? Owen, I’ve done it before and—”
“No, this is our mission. We do it the two of us. Lance doesn’t participate.”
“What do you mean? You have the contact—”
“I do, and that’s exactly the reason why I don’t want Lance in.”
Owen, as calmly as before, rinsed his mug, dried it, and put it away. His movements were slow and precise, but something was off. Controlled, he came to sit back down in front of her.
“Is there a good reason for not including your brother?”
“If you want to talk about delicate subjects, why don’t we start with your sudden switch with me? From warm lover to detached tactician? When I talked about connection, I talked about that, too.”
“Owen, I’m grateful for what happened. For a very long time, I didn’t have the chance to be intimate. Hell, I never thought I would ever have sex again.”
He shook his head, clearly astonished. “What are you talking about?”
“Owen Sorenson, are you blind? You have seen the extent of the damage done to me. Only my face and hands don’t show his marks. It could have been worse, but it’s not that pretty either. If I didn’t do what I do right now, I’d enroll myself in a freak show.”
“Stop it!” His voice turned to a snarl.
The menacing tone didn’t faze her. “Stop what? Telling the truth? And you know what? There is even more.”
Owen got to his feet so quickly, his chair tumbled to the floor. “That’s enough!”
Dylan got to her feet, hands on the table. “No, it’s not. You may have that white knight streak ingrained deeply in you like Margot said, but don’t try that with me. If only my body was damaged … but you haven’t seen the extent of the scars inside of me. In my brain, in my soul.”
Owen roared. “You’re still alive! You’re still fighting. For me that’s enough.”
“For me it isn’t. I’m not going to impose it on anybody else. Not my trauma, not my PTSD, not my anxiety, and certainly not the treat of me going to prison, bringing everybody around me as accomplices. You don’t know everything about me, Owen. And that may be your downfall."
“Then, tell me. Lay it all out, for God’s sake!”
“How gracious of you to ask me to open up. What about you? You’re so transparent, aren’t you? If that’s so, tell me why you keep Lance at arm’s length when we need all the resources we can get?”
Owen’s jaw clenched. “My family doesn’t know about what happened back then. At Maison Amaryllis.”
At that instant, Dylan wanted to kick herself. Of course, he wouldn’t have told them about it.
She winced. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said such a thing. I thought that because it happened so long ago it was common knowledge.”
Owen didn’t answer, except for a curt nod. “Not that common. Except for Margot and you, nobody knows about what I had done.”
Dylan tried to smile. “I promise I won’t tell anybody about it. But what you did, in my eyes, it required great courage, and selflessness.”
Owen lowered his head. “There is nothing courageous about sleeping with strange women and men for money.”
“You did it to protect your mother, your family.”
“You can put a lace ribbon on shit, but it remains shit, Dylan.”
“I beg to disagree, but as you’re obviously in a grumpy mood …”
“I’d prefer that you keep the psycho babble for yourself. You obviously need it more than I do.”
An ice block formed in the pit of her stomach. “What does that mean?”
“That means that I’d prefer you keep your empty advice for yourself as you have no right to do so, not after your mood switch this morning. Not after revealing so much and clearly pushing away any possible help you can get. It’s insulting.”
“We had sex, Owen! This doesn’t come with any sort of obligation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for it, I never thought I would find anybody willing to see me naked, let alone have sex. Not after what happened to me. But understand that I can’t offer you more than that. I have too much to deal with already.”
“Why do you think I want more than that?”
His question stopped her in her tracks. “You just accused me of pushing you away. I thought—”
“You thought wrong. What I meant was that after what happened in my office, you were past the stranger phase. I’m not offering a ring, Dylan. Only a friendly relationship. And to be honest, you wouldn’t get a great deal out of me either. I like you, but I won’t offer more than my help and my friendship. Ever. I might have a white knight streak, but I can’t deny how strong you are, as you can’t deny I want to see this through either.”
Dylan felt as if she was treading on shaky ground. She had been ready to push him away based on all her failings and trauma, and it was Owen who now kept her at arm’s length, telling her the same thing. She should feel relieved for not having to explain herself while keeping their budding friendship alive. So why did it feel all kinds of wrong?
Dylan nodded, slightly disoriented. From the start, this is what she wanted, so why fight against it? Overanalyzing wouldn’t do any good.
“Okay. We’re on the same level. Good.”
“Good.” Owen returned his attention to his laptop. “I’m ahead of you for infiltrating the server of Maison Amaryllis. I’ve contacted Amy. I was quite vague, talking about rekindling old acquaintances. It’s a good thing that I didn’t leave in bad terms.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I had received my letter accepting me into the Naval Academy. And after thinking about it, I think it was the only excuse Amy would have accepted without keeping a grudge.”
“Amy?”
Owen nodded. “Yeah, her true name by the way. She could be a real ball breaker. A mean business woman, if she wasn’t also a sadistic bitch.”
Dylan frowned. “Do you mean that if you decided to leave without a good reason, she would have forced you to stay?”
She realized too late that it was impossible to hide incredulity and anger from leaking into her question. And it was obviously the change of tone that made him look up.
“Dylan, I stayed there because I needed to. Amy took a huge risk with me. I was underage, even if I didn’t look like it. What she did to Margot is criminal, inexcusable. But until that point, I didn�
�t care what she did or didn’t do to others. I was too deep into protecting my mother. My brothers.”
“What did you tell her? I mean, to convince her to give you the job.”
Owen’s mouth lifted a little. “I came to her part begging, part threatening. I couldn’t tell her why I needed the money that badly. I think it’s the fear I was trying too hard to hide that convinced her to try me out.”
Dylan had to swallow. “Try you out?”
“This conversation is making you uncomfortable, let’s change topic.”
“No, let’s not. You slept with her?”
He sighed. “I had to, it was part of the interview process.”
“And you didn’t mind?”
He seemed to ponder on her question for a moment. “I was young, desperate and full of hormones. She was beautiful. The most beautiful women I had ever seen. For a first time, I guess it could have been far worse.”
His voice was devoid of emotion when he said it, but it was like he had rammed his fist into her gut. She couldn’t breathe. Oblivious, he just kept explaining.
“Then, she trained me, before I could be offered to her clientele. During all the time I worked for her, I learned skills that remained useful in my line of work.”
Dare she ask? “And what is the most useful skill you have acquired?”
There was no teasing in his eyes. “Learning to detach your emotions from your actions. When you can successfully do it, nothing can reach you. And you can do anything with purpose and accuracy, even when you don’t want to do it.”
The very thing she was trying desperately to do when her monsters grabbed her by the throat, he had mastered. Fucking men and women for money. To protect his mother. Christ. And he had probably used that very skill when he made love to her earlier.
It took every ounce of strength not to react. She wanted to scream, weep, and punch something, all wrapped up in one hell of a ticking bomb. She fisted her hands to prevent them from trembling.
“Glad you got something positive out of that.” His voice was glacial, but still he ignored it.
“Not everything was bad. Not everyone was bad either. But it was difficult work. I couldn’t be myself. I was a persona, hiding behind a mask, behind another name. If the client came out satisfied, it guaranteed my work for the next night.”
“You speak with such detachment …”
“If I let what I did affect me constantly, I would go mad, Dylan.”
“You use your skills, to retreat within yourself?”
Owen thought about for a moment. “Yes. When I received my letter of acceptance from the Academy, it was more than a liberation, it was a life saver.”
“Why do you say that?”
He hesitated before answering, an obvious sign it was still a tender subject. “I had changed too much, I had lost myself in that world. Lines blurred between me and that other me, at Maison Amaryllis. I was close to forgetting who I was. The Navy helped me realign who I was, who I really am.”
Dylan observed the worry lines around his eyes, the blue stormy and unfocused. “You don’t want to go back there.” She stated it as a fact.
When he whipped his head to her in surprise, Dylan had her answer.
“Let’s change our plan. Let’s skip Texas and devise a new way of tracking our creep.”
Owen clearly disagreed. “You know it’s our best option, and I already accepted to meet her next Monday. Canceling on her would look suspicious, maybe closing that door definitely. It gives us a couple of days to come up with a plan for you to tell me how to open a crack in her computer system so you can go to it.”
Shaking her head, Dylan got to her feet. “No, we will find another opening. Cancel the appointment.”
“Don’t be silly.” He sounded so sure of himself, but she knew better. Understood how it affected him.
Was she being silly? Was it the fear of seeing him with an old lover that made her shiver, or the possibility that revisiting old memories would make him suffer, even perhaps relapse into a state of mind he had fought hard to get away from?
As she was about to reply, Lance came back, a white bag in each hand. “Food time. Hey, mean boxing machine, you’re awake! Glad to see you’re on your feet again. Had a good sleep after using me as a punching bag?”
Her stomach growled at the smell of food. “And here I was, so sorry to have hit you, when in fact I didn’t hit you hard enough.”
Lance laughed. “Ouch, Doggy darling. And here I was about to seduce you with my charm and food.”
Dylan smiled, the feeling of relaxing so foreign to her. No wonder Lance Sorenson was a favorite among all the consultants hired by Purgatory. “It depends on the food.”
Lance’s grin widened. “Ah! Well, as I don’t know your preferences and as my little brother here can eat cardboard without complaining, I thought I would—”
An insisting beeping came from her back pocket. At the sound she hoped never to hear, her heart stopped. Dylan grabbed her phone, and ignored the two men who immediately went into alert mode.
“What’s that ringtone? Why aren’t you answering?” Owen was beside her before she could even blink. Lance flanked her other side, trying to peek at her phone screen.
“It’s not a ringtone, it’s an alarm signal.”
“For whom, for what?”
“Purgatory is shutting down.”
Chapter 21
“Shutting down?” Lance looked as if she had sprouted blue hair. “Purgatory cannot close, that’s ridiculous.”
Dylan pushed Lance aside and rushed through the door. She had to find out what was going on and Owen’s laptop wouldn’t do the trick. The two men were hot on her heels, and obviously impatient to ask her questions.
When she tried to open the back door, it was locked. Owen fished out a key and unlocked it for her, opening it, as well as the office door.
Dylan jogged around the desk and started her search.
“Care to tell us what’s going on?”
“There is a security protocol Beatrice had put in place with me years ago. In case Purgatory became compromised, either the data or the agents. It was a way to globally protect sensitive information and tell all agents to go underground.”
“All agents?” Frowning, Lance grabbed his phone in his pocket.
Owen came by her side. “And what would convince Beatrice to do such a thing?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. As soon as the protocol is launched, there is a five-minute window before all network systems, phones, and computers become inaccessible.”
“What about the agents?”
Dylan sighed. “The agents are instructed that when they hear the signal, they have five minutes to leave where they are and go underground, disappear.”
Lance came back. “I can’t reach Mac or Gabrielle.”
Dylan didn’t lift her eyes from the screen. She was trying to copy the data she had earlier unearthed from the attack. If the server was going down, she may never have a chance to access it again for a long time. Also, she was checking to see the reason why Beatrice had given the order. At first glance, the data seemed undisturbed. She couldn’t think of another reason Beatrice would do it. On the other hand, Beatrice had interests in other hot projects, and therefore it may not be related. Maybe.
“One minute before shut down.” Dylan said it more for herself than for the men. For that last minute, she launched an encryption program, putting another protective layer over Purgatory before it went to sleep. And her final command was to insert a virtual tracker. If the system booted again, she would know.
Everything shut down and her hands stilled on the keyboard.
Lance was pacing, but Owen remained eerily still beside her. “So, what’s the next step?”
“Normally, I would have to go underground myself.”
“Underground where?”
Dylan swivel her chair to face him, considering his question. “I have a few bolt holes ready for me, if needed. As
a precaution, if I were you, I would leave the club. Close it for a week or two. I may be overthinking this, but Bea would never shut her organization down without a good reason. Even if it has nothing to do with me, you and your brothers are working for her. You may be impacted.”
For a long moment, Owen looked at her, and then nodded. “I’ll tell Margot. She will take care of everything. She won’t like it, but she’ll do it.”
Lance dialed his phone another time, and once again there was no answer.