Before I can stop myself, I reach out and run my fingers through her long, blond curls. The silky strands slide along my palms and soothe the beast roaring to life. Next, I trace the delicate lines of her jaw, brush my finger along her plump bottom lip, and graze down her long, slender neck. I stop just short of her cleavage. I’m as asshole, but even I wouldn’t touch a woman like that while she’s passed out—no matter how tempting she is.
I sound like a fucking pussy. Really, Slade? You think “pussy” is the right word to be using at the moment? I sigh, adjust the bulge in my pants, and get back to the conversation.
“I’m going to give you a phone number. You have two hours to locate an untraceable laptop and install your original Ivory Trace program onto it. I’ll text you an address to leave it at. Make sure that you also leave a disk with the locator component for another computer.” I stop for a second and then lower my voice into a deep growl. “Don’t fuck with me, Parker. If you try to place a trace that can be found any other way than the program that is on that disk, your daughter will be on her own, out in the cold to survive alone. Got it?” Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know this is a complete lie. But now isn’t the time to analyze the bullshit clouding my judgment.
“Where are planning to take her?”
“I know you’re aware of what a stupid question that is. Not only am I not giving up my own location to you, but if they come for her, you can’t be breakable.” I think for a second that maybe his stupid question is borne of fear, but if that’s true, then it’s all the more reason to keep him as in the dark as possible. He’ll be a liability. “Set up four completely secure dummy e-mail accounts, route them through as many servers as possible—you know the drill. Send Joss an email explaining that you’ve left her in the care of a ‘friend.’ If you tell her I’m Gideon, she’ll just keep trying to run and put herself in danger. Do I make myself clear?”
I wait for his affirmative response then go on to explain the particulars of his contact with me and with Joss. Once we settle all the details, the conversation comes to a stilted halt.
“I’ll text you the address in two hours and you’ll be able to contact me on this number for another thirty minutes after that. Then I’ll dump this burner phone.”
He’s silent for a while, and I try not to get pissed that he’s wasting my time.
Finally, he asks, “Why are you doing this for her?”
I don’t really have an answer for him, so I almost give him nothing. But then I glance again at the angel on my right and something softens enough to give him a breadcrumb.
“I honestly don’t know. From the moment I saw her, I needed to protect her. I can keep her safe from Bruce because I know him. I know how his twisted mind works. I know how to teach Joss to live a dual life. I’m what she needs right now.” That’s all I’m willing to give. It’s more than I would have given anyone else.
“How do I know you’ll keep to this plan? How do I truly know you’ll keep her safe? Why should I trust you?”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“Gideon.” William’s voice is full of fear as it brings me back to the present. He knows the phone I’ve called wouldn’t ring unless the shit had truly hit the fan.
I open my mouth to answer, but Derek is refusing to be shut away, and my heart is suddenly a lump in my throat. I square my shoulders and swallow hard, mentally giving Derek a right hook and knocking his ass out.
I don’t beat around the bush. “She’s gone.” I state, my eyes still glued to the GPS program.
His quick intake of breath sounds as though he is sucking it through a twisted straw. I know an explosion is coming and the only thing I can do it let him get it out.
“What the fuck?!” he roars so loudly that I pull the Bluetooth away from my ear. “You were supposed to fucking protect her!” He’s screaming now.
I don’t give a shit though. He can yell and rail at me all he wants, but in a few minutes, he’s going to recognize that he’s wasting valuable time. So I let him lose it while I work a program on my computer and start hacking into files I couldn’t before. I didn’t want to set off alarms, so I laid off hacking into secure files while I had Joss hiding out. But everything has changed now.
One night, I asked Delia to double-check Jack’s ID. When she brought it to the bar to verify, I made a copy. I knew something wasn’t right about that douchebag. Now, on a hunch, I’m ripping through his cover files. As I’m looking for a real name, I realize it has gone quiet on the other line.
“Are you done?” I growl.
His voice is hoarse but strong when he answers. “Tell me what the fuck happened.”
Again, I’d rather not tell William that I am fucking his daughter, but he needs to know what set her off.
“She has nightmares. But since she started sleeping with me—” I hear him start to interrupt and cut him off. “You can bust my balls about that later, Parker. Focus!” I bark. “Last night, some Asian men in suits showed up at the bar. I suspected they were DRP Corp. So I made her hide the rest of the night. Later, I overheard them speaking in Korean and I just knew they were here for her. So we packed up and were going to head out this morning.”
When I overheard them speaking in Korean, I wanted to grab Joss and run straight out of here as fast as I could. But I couldn’t draw that kind of attention.
“It must have triggered a nightmare and I said something to calm her. Something stupid. Something I’d said to her as we left the warehouse, before I contacted you.” My hand squeezes the medal once again. “She slipped out while I was sleeping.” I can hear the disgust at myself in my voice, but there’s no time to dwell on the mistakes. “You know her better. What would she do?”
I hate that I need to ask him. I want to tell him that I’m the one who knows her best. However, the truth is that the woman I love is a mixture of two people. Just like me. I have no doubt that, the moment she fled, she reverted to the Joss of her past—someone I didn’t really know.
“Joss is strong, but I sheltered her too much. She’s alone and she’d need help.” He is silent for a moment. “A friend. She’d call a friend and she’d head home.”
This is what I feared. She doesn’t know how to survive completely alone; she isn’t like me. Would she call Delia? Simon? No, she wouldn’t put them in a position that could compromise their jobs. I know who she would have called—I just keep trying to convince myself I’m wrong.
I grunt my acknowledgment of his advice and glance at the GPS program. It’s still searching. Damn!
“I’ve got some ideas and leads to follow. I’ll keep you updated.”
“I’m coming out there.” His voice is determined, and I know he’s expecting an argument. But I don’t care what the hell he does—as long as he stays out of my way.
“Fine, but I’m not waiting around for you.”
“Derek.”
I stop short at his use of my real name. I hadn’t shared it with him. Damn, he’s better than I thought.
“Do you love her?”
I don’t want to answer. But being honest with him is the least I can do for the mess I’ve made of things—not to mention that I had to admit to him to being with his baby girl. After looking down at the medallion one more time, I hurl it across the room.
“Yeah. I love her. More than my own life.” It’s then that I realize, Gideon shouldn’t be the one saving her. It should be Derek, the man she’s helped me to become.
“Good.”
I’m taken aback by his response.
“Then find her,” he tells me.
“I plan to. And when I do . . .” I pause to make sure he’s really listening. “When I do, I won’t let her go.” Then I hang up because there is nothing left to say right now.
I go back to searching Jack’s files. Bingo. There it is. Stuart Green. I move through his files and find connection after connection with Bruce.
Fuck!
He’s been right here. If I’d listened to my i
nstincts instead of being consumed by jealousy, I could have broken him—or, better yet, used him. To be fair, though, I hadn’t experienced that feeling before, and clearly, I didn’t handle it well.
I can’t find any leads to where he might be. But then an idea pops into my head. Knowing her temper . . .
I rush out to the back parking lot. Then I scan it, looking for something, anything. Nothing catches my interest, so I turn to head back in and see a phone lying on the ground next to the steps. When I lean down and pick it up, I find that it’s the burner phone I gave her the first time we left the bar in case we separated and she needed me. Flipping it open, I see that one number has been called. Fuck! Now I know for sure she is with him and I want to launch the phone at the wall, but I keep a hold on it and hurry back to the office.
The program is still fucking searching. She’s out there. Find her, damn it! I’m trying not to think about what will happen if her computer is shut down and the program comes up empty. She’s only been gone a couple of hours, so I know it wouldn’t have died, but she’s not going to be rational right now and if she shut it down before taking it with her . . .
I perform a reverse search on the number on the phone. Frat boy was an amateur. Yes! The dumbass used a number registered to his real name. His stupidity is going to cost him, because when I find the fucker, I’m going to make sure he’s breathing through a tube for the rest of his pathetic existence.
Next, I easily break into his account—thank you for being a fucking idiot—and run the GPS on his phone. It doesn’t take long for it to come up with the last cell tower the locator pinged off of. It’s the only one in town, and it pinged just over an hour ago, at three thirty a.m. Then the locator went dead. He shut the phone off or disabled the GPS.
I start running through traffic camera feeds, wishing I had cameras installed in the parking lot. I don’t want anyone to be able to hack into any kind of video feed here, so I forwent any video surveillance in and around the bar.
I find the feeds from three to four in the morning and watch the few cars that pass by. Finally, at three fifty-two, a familiar dark sedan pulls up to the light. The streetlamp provides just enough coverage to see that there is a woman in the passenger’s seat and a man driving the car. The woman leans forward to reach onto the floor, and when she leans back up, she glances at something above and I get a clear shot of her face.
Joss.
My suspicions are confirmed. She’s with that son of a bitch. There is only one more traffic camera before they hit open road out of town and I never see them cross it. That could mean that they are downtown. I’m not holding my breath for that though. I’d have to be one lucky bastard for him to be that stupid. More likely, they turned off on a side road and are heading to somewhere in the surrounding farm country. It at least narrows the options down a bit.
I’m about to go batshit crazy waiting for the GPS program to finish when it finally pings at completion.
No signal found.
That’s not an option. That’s not a fucking option!
Now that it’s run an initial scan, it will run new scans within minutes, so I refresh and start it again. After another fail, I hit start for one final time. If this doesn’t work, I’m out of here anyway. I can’t just sit around waiting. So I stand up, put my coat on, and prepare to shut the computer down. But as I reach for the escape button, it pings one last time. This time, a bright-blue message pops up on the screen.
Success. Coordinates Found.
Got you, asshole.
I send the location to my phone, kill the program, and wipe it in case someone gets into my office while I’m gone. Then I’m out the door.
I’ve got you, Joss.
“DID HE HURT you?” Jack asks softly from the driver’s seat. Anger laces his voice, and I suppress a shiver.
Yes. “No.”
We drive a few more minutes in silence. My chin keeps quivering, and I once again have to bite my lip to get it to quit.
Slade is Gideon. God, how could I have been so stupid? His voice. His scent. I knew it all along. I just chose on a deep, psychological level to push that fact away. My eyes had landed on that beautiful man and accepted him as my protector. As my lover.
“I’ve been staying at a hotel downtown. Paid cash. He won’t find us there,” he promises with an edge to his voice that raises every internal flag in my body.
“Are you just visiting?” I ask in a whisper as I watch the buildings pass by in a blur.
He puts on his blinker, which is very Kent-like, and pulls into a mid-grade, empty hotel parking lot. “You could say that.”
His demeanor is freaking me out, but I know it’s just because my nerves are on edge. The Korean men who came into the bar last night were the ones coming after me. They were the bad guys.
And Gideon.
Derek fucking Slade.
Tears sting my eyes as he whips into a parking spot. After he turns off the car, we both climb out and walk around to the trunk, where he stowed my bags. As he lifts the heavy suitcase, I grab the straps of the large bag that my laptop and purse are stuffed into.
“What kind of business?” I probe. My eyes find his as he slams the trunk a little too forcefully, which makes me jump.
“The important kind,” he smirks.
Asshole.
Jill threatens to give him what for, but Joss calms her down.
We need him to get out of here.
The entire walk through the empty hotel lobby is a quiet one. Too quiet. As we enter the elevator and begin our ascent, I feel another shiver.
“Room 407. It’s right this way,” he calls to me as he exits onto the fourth floor.
Without a choice, I follow him down a hallway that has a faint scent of stale smoke. My stomach roils, and I pray to God I don’t get sick. Finally, he stops in front of the door and inserts his keycard, it makes a ding and he pushes it open.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he says politely as I follow him in.
My eyes quickly roam the room, and I cringe when I see a queen-sized bed. I’d hoped for two. I’m so damn tired, but I am not sleeping with Jack.
When I peel my gaze from the bed, I find him staring at me, no longer holding the suitcase. His gaze isn’t friendly like it usually is. It’s satisfied. And it scares the hell out of me. I flinch when he stalks over to me and almost sigh audibly out of relief when he reaches down for my bag. With shaking hands, I reluctantly hand it over to him.
“I can just make a place on the floor, but I really need to get some sleep if I plan on being at the bus station in a few hours. Thank you for your hospitality, Jack. You’re a true friend,” I murmur and attempt a smile.
He walks over to the bed and sets my bag down before turning back to look at me. This time, I don’t miss it. There’s a wickedness behind those friendly, blue eyes. Not very Kent-like at all.
“You never told me why you left him. He didn’t hurt you, so why else would you steal away in the middle of the night?” he questions. It’s almost as if he already knows what my answer will be.
“I . . . uh . . . Well,” I stammer out and drop my eyes to the desk in an effort to escape his gaze while I formulate a lie.
And then I see it.
My picture.
Hundreds of them—all scattered about the desk. Some with my blond hair. Some at my concerts as I pound away on the piano. Many of me in the bar.
Fuck.
“Oh, Joss, I guess you figured out what sort of business I’m into. I’m sorry we never got a chance to fuck, but you’re just a job. And you’re worth a whole fucking lot,” he chuckles darkly behind me.
I start to whirl around to face him head on, but I’m not quick enough to avoid the butt of his gun against the back of my skull.
As blackness sets in, one thing is certain.
Slade was right.
“Wake up, Jossy girl.”
The familiar voice sends warmth surging into my heart—that is until I crack my eyes open. Unt
il I realize I’m not seven years old and Uncle Bruce is not waking me up to tell me that he is taking me to Disney World.
Terror seizes me when I come to and see my beloved godfather smiling at me with a shit-eating grin. Awareness hits me quickly, and I scramble away from him. That idiot Jack must have left me on the floor, because I am halted on my journey to escape him when the leg of the desk jabs me in the back.
“Where do you think you’re going, Jossy girl?” he laughs as if I’m once again seven years old and amusing him with my silly, childish ways.
Are all the men in my life hell-bent on betraying me?
“Let me go, Bruce. I don’t have what you want. I can’t get you what you want. You saw how Dad reacted last time. He won’t give you what you want. Not even for me,” I admit bitterly.
His gaze loses its humor as he glares at me. “He’s a stupid man. I’d have done it for you, Joss.”
I know he would, but it doesn’t change the fact that he isn’t in the position of my dad right now. Bruce is the bad guy.
“Please, Uncle Bruce,” I beg tearfully.
There was once a time when I could get him to buy me an expensive pair of jeans or let me have ice cream before dinner by just filling my eyes with tears. Unfortunately, he seems immune now.
He looks away and snarls at Jack, “Get William on the line. Use this phone.”
Jack catches the disposable phone he tossed at him and begins dialing my father.
“Please,” I try again. “Don’t make me watch him deny me again.”
I hear his telltale sniffle and I burst into tears. Where is the uncle who was every bit of a father to me as my own?
Through my sobs, I beg some more. “Please, Uncle Bruce. I can’t lose my fingers.”
When he snaps his head back over to me, my heart sinks. There’s no trace of my sweet uncle in his venomous gaze.
“You won’t lose your fingers,” he snarls, “but you’ll lose your blood. All of it.”
My eyes widen in horror as he unsheathes a huge fucking knife from the inside of his jacket.
I wish Slade were here.
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