by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin
His heart raced, his mind spinning. “Has she looked for your mom and daughter?” With her connections, she should’ve been able to trace Liv’s mom at the very least.
“She’s tried. I don’t know my daughter’s real name and there are no Jill Reeds that match Mom’s description.”
He drummed his fingers on his knee, gathering his thoughts. “Did you plan to kill Camila’s buyer?”
She nodded. “Camila didn’t know. I think she thought I was going to kill her, too.”
No doubt. Liv was the fiercest woman he’d ever met. “How does Mr. E not know about this? With every buyer disappearing after his purchase, someone would notice.”
She stretched her legs and reclined behind the wheel, eyes flicking to the side mirror. “The buyers are supposed to disappear. They crawl out of whatever hole they come from, make the transaction, and return to their holes. Which happen to be in shady places south of the border. They’re all from Mexico.”
That part made sense. Traquero had the accent. He shuddered, knowing the fat freak was walking the streets then going home to torture his wife. “What about the referral system? They’re all connected.”
“Wrong. Camila is the connection. When she drove away with the body of her buyer, she also had his phone. And the contact number for his referral. She used it to create a network, initially on her own and now with the help of the guys. They sell referrals to potential buyers.” She took a breath, bit her lip, and glanced at him.
Yeah, he was listening, shocked speechless, his head pounding.
“They lure would-be slave owners, often acting as previous buyers, collect the contact number, and sell it to the next client in line. The buyers aren’t connected to each other. They’re connected to Camila.” She barked out a laugh, rubbed her eyes, and sighed. “Camila actually charges each fucker for the referral number of the next fucker. Then he sits back and waits for Van’s call. A year later, she’s emptying his pockets and disposing his body.”
Jesus. He scrubbed a hand over his mouth. Fields of black whipped by the window, passing him by, leaving him reeling in another dimension. “What is Mr. E’s role in this?”
Her gaze ping-ponged between the side mirror and the road. “He started this horrific operation. I think he owned slaves before he brought in Van and me. I mean, he taught Van how to train slaves. Why would he know that?” She tugged at her ear, her expression pensive in the passing headlights. “Now he just sits on his greedy ass and collects money while Van and I scramble beneath his blackmailing thumb.”
Nausea rolled through his gut. What would’ve happened if he’d been the obedient slave she’d intended him to be? His delivery would’ve played out. Traquero would’ve been gutted. Then what? “I’m not like the others. My parents are searching for me. I would’ve wanted to go back.”
She flinched. “I know. I chose you anyway, without a clue on how to deal with the aftermath.”
The whole operation was risky. So damned risky. One misstep, one slipped word from the buyer to Mr. E, and the whole thing would fall apart with Liv at the center. Yet they’d pulled it off six times. “Where does Mr. E think these referrals come from?”
“Why would he care as long as he has his next paycheck lined up? Van makes the initial call, gathers the buyer’s requirements, and establishes Mr. E’s rules on anonymity. Mr. E never deals with any of them.”
“It takes months to hunt and capture a new slave? Ten weeks to train him? And you’re doing this, knowing the slave will never see the inside of a buyer’s prison?”
“Hoping.” Her voice wavered. “Never knowing. Van was banned to tag along after Camila’s intro meeting. That ban could’ve been lifted. Or I could’ve been overpowered during a delivery. Or my freedom fighters could’ve been delayed…like tonight.” She peeked at him from the corner of her eye.
“Freedom fighters.” His lips twitched. “I like that.”
“I’ve been thinking.” She glanced at him and back to the road. “Van knows who Mr. E is. What if he also knows where my family is? Maybe we could tie him up and torture him until he tells us everything he knows? We’d keep him alive so the contract isn’t triggered.”
Wow, that was the thinnest idea he’d ever heard. “You’re serious?”
She shrugged. “I’ve got muscle now.” She gave his arm a pointed once-over. “What would Jesus do if he was built like you?”
“Cast the first stone.” Honestly, he didn’t know. “What if Van doesn’t know anything?”
“Then we’re fucked either way.”
For the next two hours, she answered his questions about Camila’s operation, and he still wasn’t sure he understood all the intricacies of the process. When she turned into the Two Trails Crossing subdivision, she stopped the van a block from the house. “Meet me on the front porch. He’s not due back for a few days, but we’re running out of luck. If he’s there, I’ll find a way to sneak you in.” She left him on the curb with a heart-pounding kiss and trust in her eyes.
The walk was quick, but the wait on the porch dragged ten minutes too long. Drapes blacked out the windows. There was no light peeking through the creases. No sounds coming from within. What if Van was in there? Hurting her? His nerves stretched by the second until he finally snapped.
Down the driveway, past the garage, he stopped at the back door, found the keypad, and punched in 0054. She’d said all the doors but hers opened with multiple codes. Van and Mr. E had their own.
The door opened into the kitchen, lit by the lamp over the sink. Soft sobs crept from behind the bar and tore through his chest.
He sprinted around the counter and found her curled up on the floor, clutching a photo and a newspaper clipping. “Liv? Liv, what happened?” His pulse roared in his ears. “Are we alone?”
She nodded, expression pallid, voice empty. “Mr. E was here.” When he jerked back, she grabbed his t-shirt, her face twisted in horror. “Oh God, Josh. It’s…it’s…” Her gaze was lost to the papers shaking violently in her hand.
Stomach plummeting, he pulled her into his lap and wrenched the pages free. The photo showed a small smiling girl, her dark brown hair the color and length of Liv’s. Same milky complexion. Same delicate chin. The date and time printed on the bottom indicated it was six hours old. On the back, neat cursive scrawled, Do not fail again.
Liv coiled her arms around his ribs, her body trembling. “Mom got married.” Her voice was hoarse, desolate. “That’s why I couldn’t find her.”
He kissed her head, his lips numb with dread, and dragged his eyes to the news article printed by the Key West Examiner, dated that day.
Local woman killed in plane crash
The pilot killed in a plane crash near Key West is being described as a skydiving adventurer and a generous volunteer in the community.
“It’s devastating,” said Wyatt Keleen, husband and co-owner of her skydiving school. “Jill was a warm-hearted woman and well-known in the Keys for her charitable efforts with families of homicide victims and missing persons.”
Keleen said Jill’s only child was kidnapped and murdered seven years earlier.
Jill’s body was discovered off the coast of Lois Key in a swampy area. The wide cavity surrounding the wreckage indicates her life came to an end after a high-speed impact.
The Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash. Officials have yet to confirm the cause. Memorial services were held today at 2:00 PM at Summerland Key Cove Airport.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Liv lay on her side on the mattress, showered, fed, and…depleted. Josh had kept her talking through the night, prompting her to share memories of Mom and preventing her from crawling inside herself. Eyes itchy and sore, she’d cried more than she had in seven years. If she didn’t stop, she would find herself ass-up in the prison of her own self-pity.
Mom had survived her death. She could survive Mom’s. And she would. With Josh’s hand in hers.
He’d run their dirty soup bowls d
ownstairs two minutes earlier. Her fingers were clenched so tightly in the sheets, one would’ve thought he’d been gone for hours. Her lungs didn’t seem to suck enough air, her focus blurring on the door, awaiting his return. When had she become so fucking needy?
The angel in the photo she’d tacked to the wall smiled down at her with eyes and hair as dark as hers. So much better than a video. She had a snapshot of her daughter’s face, forever looking back at her. Perhaps Mr. E gave it to her to cushion the murder of Mom. Or to lessen his own regret. But she knew that was bullshit.
She’d failed to nail the deal with Traquero, which earned her Mom’s death. But he’d still given the referral, which earned her Mattie’s photo. His motivation for not sending a video had to do with the fact he didn’t trust her with a tablet and access to e-mail without Van present.
That thought awoke an unwelcome feeling about Van’s departure. It wasn’t odd for him to hunt immediately upon receipt of a buyer’s specifications. But given his enraged reaction to the meeting with Traquero, why hadn’t he waited for her return and the opportunity to punish her?
What if Van had left to kill Mom himself? Was he cruel enough to not only let it happen but make it happen? Despite his violent nature, she struggled to believe he was the hand that brought down Mom’s plane, but how well did she really know him?
She and Josh had discussed going to the FBI to request an investigation into the plane crash. Hell, they wanted to divulge everything. How closely was Mr. E monitoring them? How easy was his access to Mattie? Could the authorities hunt down a masked man before that man hurt her daughter? It was too much risk.
The door clicked open, and Josh’s broad frame brimmed her horizon. Relief whooshed from her lungs. He tilted his head to the side, and his alert eyes narrowed on her fists. She uncurled her fingers.
A muscle jumped in his bare chest. “You still think I’m going to leave you?”
She shook her head swiftly. No, the stubborn bastard wasn’t going anywhere. “I think I’m just feeling a little raw.” And exposed. Definitely not a feeling she was used to.
The sharp lines in his face softened. He closed the door and strode toward her, the towel around his waist hung low beneath crowded bricks of abdominal muscles.
He bent over her and planted his fists beside her hip, the mattress depressing beneath the weight of his vascular arms and upper body. Jesus, his proximity was distracting to a fault. It wasn’t just the cuts of his body, crystalline green eyes, and strong lips that demanded attention. His pursuit to please her was a perceptible aura that charged the space around him.
Looking up into the face of a man who would damn himself to protect her, she knew she’d found her sanctuary, her deliverance, her future.
He swooped in to kiss her, and she got a lungful of his nourishing scent. Clean, pure, Josh. She kissed him back, licking his mouth, tasting the familiar intimacy, and clinging to his love.
His tongue trailed fire around hers, leaving no part of her mouth untouched. It was impossible to be afraid when he was so close, so intense, that the barriers between them burned away. He moaned against her lips and kissed her with a pressing necessity, stoking a flame in her belly and coaxing a curl of something she hadn’t felt in years. Joy.
Guilt breathed through her, a foul-smelling intruder, whispering her failings. Seven years of slavery, chained by a threat, and she still lost Mom.
Her lips stretched back. Their teeth tapped. She turned her chin away, but he caught it. Then he caught her eyes.
Fingers pinching her jaw, his expression swam in contemplation. He stared at her, panting from the kiss. “What would your mom say to you right now?”
A quiver interrupted the rigid set of her chin, her lungs pumping to hold in a thousand clogged tears. She closed her eyes and saw Mom laughing, jumping into the wind, her hair whipping around her smiling face. “She’d say, use a condom.”
He huffed. “I think your mom was much more profound than that. Try again.”
She opened her eyes, diving straight into his. “She used to say, what defines us is not how we fall but how we land.”
He leaned in and stroked his nose along her scar. “You’ve survived the hardest landings. You’ll survive this one.”
Was that what she’d been doing all these years? Landing? “Feels more like plummeting out of control.” Every harrowing moment was chained to the next one. What if the cycle was finally broken? If she could find Mattie, then what? She’d never considered a future outside of the attic walls. Until Josh.
He stood and adjusted the towel at his hip, watching her. “You’re hurting, Liv. I want you to give it to me. All of your hurt.”
Her eyebrows snapped together, her chest pinching. “What?”
He studied her, rubbing his jaw, gears spinning behind his eyes. Then he turned and paced to the cabinet. The round brawn of his ass flexed beneath the towel. The muscles in his back compressed and expanded as he worked the combo lock. Clearly, he’d figured out all her lock codes were the same. He opened the door. What the hell was he doing?
With a length of chain and a flogger in hand, he returned to the mattress. “You feel like you’re plummeting? Like you don’t have any control? Then control me.” He grabbed her wrist and put the implements in her hand. “Do this on our terms. Not Traquero’s or Mr. E’s or anyone else’s.”
She glanced at the flogger and chain then searched his hopeful eyes for a long moment. He wasn’t just new to sexual submission. He was new to sex. He might not have consciously known what he was asking, but it was a request voiced from a sequestered part of his identity, one she’d seen rise to the surface with the first cut of her cane. Of course, he wanted her to fuck him. But he also wanted her to hurt him. His hard powerful body seemed to crave the rough handling, being pushed to its limits.
Letting the chain spill into her lap, she slapped the leather tips of the flogger against her palm.
He didn’t flinch, his eyes hooded and penetrating as he crouched before her. The towel separated at his thigh, the downward angle of his legs hiding what was beneath.
“You want to explore your naughty side, Josh?”
His chin tilting slightly, his cheeks sucking in with a steady inhale, he traced a knuckle over her nipple where it tightened against her t-shirt. His eyes didn’t waver from hers, a luminescent glow beneath the determined mantle of his dark eyebrows. “I want to explore everything with you.”
The idea sent a tremor through her, fanning a needy blaze between her legs.
It was around three in the morning, but they were both too restless to sleep. They had nothing but time on their hands until Van returned. She could either spend the days wallowing in misery or…
She let her gaze take a leisurely stroll over the messy spikes of black hair raking away from his forehead, the stubble roughing his jaw, the vein pulsing in his thick neck, and the taut skin stretching over bulges of shoulders and biceps. His cock jerked beneath the towel as he watched her devour every gorgeous detail.
Fuck, he was a lot of man. Chiseled, powerful, perceptive, and his attention remained resolutely fixed on her. She gathered the chain and rose to stand beside him. He’d said she needed control, but he’d initiated this, and he held the power to end it. The moment he said No she would stop.
There were a few things she could regulate, however, and she would use her mastery of dominance to help him find his boundaries. Her ratty, thigh-length t-shirt didn’t exactly exude an authoritative air, but she didn’t need a costume or mask. Not with him. “You want me to have control? I’m taking it. Now.” A stillness swept over her, measuring her breaths, loosening her shoulders. “I decide the how, the intensity, the purpose, all for my pleasure.”
The depressions outlining his shoulder blades twitched. His hands flattened on the mattress. “Yes, Mistress.”
The appellation was shockingly arousing, fluttering through her belly with nipping tingles. The title had never stirred a response in her. But now, it was g
iven willingly, on his terms. For her and no one else.
At the center of the room, she connected the chain to the latch in the ceiling. “Stand here with your back to me.”
She didn’t wait for him to obey. She returned the flogger to the cabinet and gathered a pair of cuffs and three things he would’ve never chosen.
He stood where she’d directed, arms crossed above his head. The vertical indentation down the length of his back led erotically to the rise of his firm ass peeking above the towel. His torso, wide on top, narrowed to a slim waist, its appeal punctuated with two dimples where his back met his hips. The sight alone rolled the heat between her legs into a pulsating clench.
She wanted to just stand there, relish the burgeoning rise of desire, and stare at him. So she did, taking in the carved angles of his body. The backs of his ears twitched, probably from a flexing jaw. Oh, she knew he was squirming with impatience, but he remained where she’d told him with his back to her. Still and silent, awaiting her next order.
After another long, taunting moment, she crossed the distance and stood behind him. Not touching but close enough to let him feel the heat of her body. “Are you hard?”
“Yes, Mistress.” A rasp.
Her heart thumped. It didn’t matter how rare his innocence was, how fast he ran a football, or how respectable he behaved among his parishioners. It was the sexy, honest pain slut under it all that enthralled her now.
She placed the toys on the floor and strapped the cuffs on his wrists. Once his arms were restrained to the dangling chains, she grabbed the blindfold from the pile. “I’m going to open your eyes.” She tied it around his head and smiled, certain his imagination was running rampant. What kind of dirty thoughts were spinning through his mind?