She tried to lick her cracked lips. Fear coated her tongue, drenched her skin in icy sweat. “Why am I here?”
Footsteps on the metal flooring echoed eerily through the dark. A figure entered her peripheral vision, skirted across the circle of light, and she sucked in her breath as all broad six feet and four towering inches stepped into view.
Her stomach pitched, and when that wasn’t enough to convey the depths of her stark terror, sizzled. Agony locked her teeth together until her eyes watered.
His dark eyebrows rose, powerfully shaped arms folding over his chest. The fabric of his dark blue, long-sleeved shirt went taut across muscles she didn’t need to see flex to know how strong he was. “Tears already, Doctor?” His mouth quirked. Victory.
That ass.
“Screw you,” she managed. “I get migraines and I’ve got a freaking ulcer.”
Whatever ghost of a smile existed hardened. “You want a medal?”
“I want an answer. What do you want, Shawn?”
“What anybody wants. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The old words surprised her.
When his lips curved higher, a smile with a sardonic, angry edge, she realized she’d let it show. “Yeah, there are people living in the low streets who know history. Try not to die of shock.”
She winced guiltily. “I didn’t—”
“Yeah, you did.” He didn’t move, didn’t so much as lean toward her, but no amount of distance soothed the painful gurgling in her belly. The corona hazing the light had faded, thank God—she wasn’t in any position to lose ground to another migraine—but the harsh light did nothing to make him seem less . . . present.
Wherever they were, their voices echoed hollowly in chilled silence, she didn’t hear the everyday sound of the city around them. They were alone.
“I’m sorry for the perceived offense,” she managed, at least a facsimile of calm. “I don’t mean to imply anything. I just want to know why I’m here. And where is here?”
The scornful hike to his mouth twitched. “You’re here because your father has something I want.”
She blinked. “Something you want?”
“Oh, yeah.”
For a long moment, she could only stare at his face, into his eyes.
Was he serious?
He was.
A roar began in her ears. Her vision tunneled; not the migraine-induced pressure she remembered, but something darker. Furious. “My . . . father?” The words barely made it past her lips, tight with strain. “You kidnapped me . . . You did all those things . . . because . . .” Because of money? Because of some kind of . . . “Are you kidding me right now?”
This time, he leaned forward, his arms unfolding, hands settling at his knees as if she were a child to be talked down to. “Your father is going to give me what I want, and in exchange, you go free. Unharmed.”
Oh, she knew how to pick them, didn’t she?
Anger swamped self-preservation. The restraints rattled as she thrust her face out to meet his, fury to his obstinate calm. “I trusted you!”
“Says the spoiled little girl tied to a chair.” He straightened, glancing overhead for a moment. When his gaze returned to her, there was nothing kind, nothing remotely compassionate in it. Nothing even close to the raw, expressive way he’d watched her as he touched her. As she came from his fingers.
She’d been so stupid.
“He has two days to respond to the demand. After that, we’ll revisit the ‘unharmed’ topic and add ‘mostly.’ ” He straightened. “After three? I start sending fingers. Am I clear?”
Fear filled her spine. Her thoughts. With the shadows encroaching on him, saturating his eyes to black pools of malice, she believed every word. He’d hurt her. And for what? Money? She bit back a crack of laughter, certain it’d feel and sound more like a sob, and firmed her jaw. “You’re crazy. My father will rescue me. He has agents at his disposal you’ve never even dreamed existed.”
His eyes crinkled, but the venom in them did more to terrify her than anything he’d said to date. “Oh, I don’t know.” He didn’t come close to her, didn’t try to crowd her. He hadn’t even touched her since carrying her out of the shaking building. He didn’t have to.
Kayleigh had a good idea what he could do—what he would have no problems doing—just from the rigid tension in his body. The way he planted his feet. The line of his hard mouth, and his callused hands.
And to think, she’d all but thrown herself at him. Such a fool.
She looked away. Then thought better of it and met his eyes direct. “You’re just a bully.” An eyebrow twitched. “I deal with your kind every day. You don’t scare me.”
“Is that a challenge?” He didn’t move, didn’t raise his voice, but Kayleigh wasn’t as stupid as she felt. She said nothing, simply matching his stare with the same steely glare she’d used on every Holy Order official who’d ever thought he had something on her. Bulk, brains, social authority.
Except this man had something most of them didn’t.
The upper freaking hand.
She looked away, after all.
“Good girl,” he said softly.
Fierce heat flooded her cheeks. It almost matched the intensity of the ulcer in her stomach.
“While I’ve got you at my mercy—”
She inhaled sharply, winced when the echoes of the strangled sound she made darted into the dark.
His chuckle grated. “Relax, Doctor. I’m not interested.”
Liar, she thought in mute rebellion, her lips tightening. She remembered vividly the feel of his hardness under her lap, remembered how he’d kissed her.
Was all that a lie, too? Was she just an easy lay?
She didn’t want him touching her. Not ever again.
“Why don’t you tell me about these agents dear old Dad has?”
She bit her tongue, said nothing, and stared at a dark spot of grime away from his looming silhouette. Her limbs trembled, her body and mind very much aware that she couldn’t move even if she wanted to; it was taking everything she had not to flex against the restraints, scream until her oxygen-starved brain went black on her.
She couldn’t, wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“No?” This time, when he closed the distance, her heart stuttered. A hand reached across her thousand-yard-stare, caught her chin, and forced her head to turn. She struggled; it didn’t matter. Her gaze collided with his. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk to me? I’m the nice one, Dr. Lauderdale. I think I’ve proven how nice I am.”
Fear, shame, swelled in her throat. She fought the sensation of choking, swallowed hard as it threatened to overwhelm her. “Let go of me,” she spat, wrenching at his grip. “I’ve got nothing to tell you.”
His fingers bit into her cheeks. “I don’t think so. Like you, I’m well aware of what your precious father is capable of.” His voice, softer, scored as painfully as his grip. “Like him, I also know the value of my collateral.”
She scoffed.
Then choked on it as the rough pad of his thumb scraped across her lower lip. Her eyes widened. “You really are pretty,” he murmured, his gaze pinned on her mouth. “It’s a shame.”
The threat inherent in his observation, in the leashed aggression in his grip, spiked raw and ragged into her chest. Her lips firmed under his heavy thumb, knuckles popping audibly as her fists tightened. “I wouldn’t expect anything else from the likes of you.”
A muscle leaped in his cheek. “The likes of me?” he repeated, but she ignored the quiet warning. Fought through the visual vapor that seemed to settle over his skin like a soft nimbus.
Scared, sure. Alone, fine. But now she added anger, brutal anger, to the list, and she didn’t have it in her to play the frightened little damsel as it coursed through her veins.
The feel of his fingers at her jaw, the looming threat of his silhouette blocking the light, none of it could stop her. Scorn, bitter and venomous, welled up. Fl
ooded out of her.
“Obviously, you’re a product of your miserable life,” she found herself saying. “What happened, Shawn Lowe? Were you poor? Did your parents kick you into the streets?” The cruel words fell from her lips, each one a poisonous dart. She couldn’t stop, even as his eyes darkened. As the hard planes of his face tightened until he could have been carved from granite. “My dad loves me. Don’t blame me if your mother never— Oh!”
Too late, she realized her error. The fingers at her cheek bit cruelly, each one a sharp point of pain.
She stared up at her captor, every ounce of furious courage draining out from the tingling soles of her feet as she stared into the face of raw hatred given form. His eyes glittered, dangerous shards of ice and obsidian. His mouth, generally softer than she’d have expected on any man, thinned to almost nothing.
The corona hovering strangely over his skin faded.
“Don’t.” The word was a violent warning, punctuated by terrible pressure at her chin. “Don’t ever talk about my parents. You of all people never get that right.”
Her mouth dried with raw terror. The restraints rattled, even as she struggled to keep it from showing, keep her body from shaking with it.
Her of all people?
He let her face go, but she didn’t count it as a victory. The memory of it throbbed painfully. He backed up, every step thudding in defiance of the brutal control shaping his rigid shoulders, ripped the lantern from its hook, and strode away.
For a long moment, she held her breath. Watched him until he turned a corner. Until she was sure he wasn’t coming back.
Her exhale shook violently.
What was wrong with her? How close to “mostly unharmed” was she willing to get?
The darkness filled in the deafening silence behind him.
Her heartbeat scudded into overdrive as she stared into a yawning void and heard no signs of life. No cars. No snap of electrical power.
Alone.
He’d left her in the dark, tied down and unable to defend herself. Unable to run.
She closed her eyes, but it wasn’t any better. Then again, she thought with a bitter crack of muffled laughter, she figured it really couldn’t get any worse.
Her nails bit into her palms. She sucked in a breath through her nose, let it out hard through her mouth.
As her brain spiraled into a sea of tangled sensory memory, she told herself that the air didn’t reek of smoke. There was no fire or bullets or screaming. She wasn’t ignorant. She knew post-trauma when she saw it, even if what she saw it in was her own eyes. Her own reflection.
This is where the screaming starts, whispered the terrified voice that had taken up residence in the back of her head. Just answer their questions.
Her ulcer burned.
“Think,” she whispered, jaw aching with the effort it took not to scream. Just think for two seconds. . .
There was opportunity here. There always was.
Shawn stalked away from the fragile target she’d made of herself, fist clenched so tight around the lantern handle that a joint snapped against his palm.
Fuck. Just . . . fuck.
Shawn had never in his life come that close to hitting a woman. It tangled with everything, with the lust still simmering in the base of his skull, the memory of her body arching into his.
The fear he’d felt when the building threatened to collapse on her.
Undone by the raw, brutal rage riding him now, he struggled to find his mental equilibrium. Maybe it said something that he’d have put his fist to her face if she’d been a man. Something ugly.
Almost everyone who knew him knew better than to talk about his parents. His past.
She taunted him. Stuck her sharp-nailed fingers into the wound, provoked him into behaving like a thug; an animal.
He hated the Lauderdale name, but he was better than that.
He ducked out of the two-room structure, every step away from the temptation of her feeling like a rubber band snapping taut behind him. Stretching, tightening.
Doing its level best to yank him back into that room, snarling his rage, his accusations, into her wide, haunted eyes.
Temptation. What a perfect word for the devil’s own daughter.
It didn’t start out that way. It wasn’t temptation that rode him as he’d planned this. It wasn’t temptation that he saw when he watched Laurence Lauderdale’s precious daughter fight her restraints, no matter how soft her hair looked, or how wide those eyes were as they met his stare with flat challenge that did nothing to hide her fear.
Fear. That was the word. That was better than anything else.
It would keep her alive. Keep him focused.
Her sainted father knew a thing or two about fear.
Shawn stepped over the broken rubble of what had once been a porch stoop. The icy chill settled into the very heart of Old Seattle rose up like a fist, wrapped around his chest as he took a deep, cleansing breath of musty air and forgotten spaces. Damp and cold and idle, even delicate rot.
The light in his hand bounced off jagged angles and broken corners, remnants of what had once been a bustling district filled with people. Fifty-some-odd years wasn’t a long time. Not in the scheme of things. Shawn was born thirty-three of those years ago, more than half the time since the cataclysmic events that shaped the city.
This city. Old Seattle.
Named because the rest of the world moved on, rebuilt, locked the ruins of the destruction beneath a couple thousand square miles of concrete and supports and built New Seattle right on top. Bigger, better, higher than the clouds.
Like that always ended well.
The insistent cold plucked at his skin, tunneled beneath his long-sleeved shirt as if the fabric didn’t exist. He looked up at the darkness enfolding the small bubble of light that was all the lantern could manage, considered going back to retrieve his jacket.
She’d be there. Watching him. Judging.
Talking, because he didn’t think she’d shut the hell up long enough to let him get in and get out without graphically considering letting loose his temper.
Or giving in to the demon riding his back and kissing her into silence.
He grunted as he eased his weight down to a ruined half of broken step. The cement held, crumbling bits of the edges clattering to the ground. When he was sure the stair wouldn’t dump him on his ass, he allowed his shoulders to slump; his forearms draped over his upraised knees as he stared blankly into the black.
Old Seattle. A death trap on a good day, and today wasn’t a good day.
Farther out, toward the final edges of the new city border, he knew cracks had developed in the paved tomb. He’d seen the rays of daylight, feeble and determined, poking through. He’d been to the edge of the Old Sea-Trench, heard its rushing current, and had no trouble imagining the wholesale destruction the fault line could cause if it chose.
He hadn’t expected to feel it up in New Seattle’s lower industrial district.
He sure as hell hadn’t expected to dodge falling debris and rescue the girl he’d managed to steal out from under the nose of his own allies.
His first impression stood: he wasn’t surprised by her at all. Not her. Exactly.
What surprised him was the fact that his body seemed drawn to hers. That even after he’d touched her, sampled her, she’d felt warm and right in his arms, the way a woman should feel when a man touched her.
That even though she looked at him with fear and fury, the light burning behind her blue-gray eyes only made him want to challenge her, tease her until it shifted to something else. Something human.
He knew what it looked like when she laughed. Everything about her softened; her face, her voice. Her eyes sparkled when she smiled. Did she know that?
Why did he?
He liked women. He liked women fine, but maybe he ought to have spent more time liking them and less time shelving them with the other distractions he’d told himself he didn’t need.
Whe
n Lauderdale’s perfect daughter started to look like easy pickings, he knew there was a problem.
Shawn’s muffled snort of laughter, edged with self-deprecation, gave way to a whisper of sound; a hum thrummed against his hip.
That was one of the reasons he’d chosen this abandoned whatever-it-was. Just close enough to a comm buoy overhead to get reception. His smile tightened as he plucked the comm unit from his hip and cracked it open. He didn’t bother to check the number. It’d only lie.
He didn’t get the first word. “What the hell are you doing?” came a demand both raspy and edged.
“May.”
“Don’t ‘May’ me,” she snapped, anger infiltrating every sharp word.
He eased back against one elbow, grit grinding against the dirty stoop. Closing his eyes, he said nothing.
She wasn’t the type to let silence stand. Not for something like this. “Why aren’t you at the rendezvous point, Shawn?”
“Change of plans.”
“Don’t get cute,” she said tightly. “What scheme have you concocted now?”
“Heh.” She knew him well enough. After sixteen years, she of all people knew what it was that drove him. Every minute of every day. “I know you’re tracking this frequency,” he said instead. “So you have thirty more seconds.”
“Shawn.” May’s voice didn’t soften. But it didn’t harden, either, and he recognized that for what it was. Years or not, she knew him. Like no one else. “Whatever you’ve got planned, you need to bring Kayleigh Lauderdale to the rendezvous. This is too important to let go to waste.”
His grip tightened on the comm frame. “If I do that,” he said, so quietly that even he couldn’t hear the venom in his own voice, “it will go to waste.”
She blew out a breath on a word that didn’t make it through the static, but he didn’t need to hear it to know he frustrated her. He always had. “She’s not responsible for—”
The frame cracked. “Don’t.”
“Shawn!”
As fury welled in his throat, filled his chest with ashes, he swallowed hard. Forced his voice to icy calm. “The Mission has held on to our people for thirty-seven days. Thirty fucking seven. In three hours, May, it’ll be thirty-eight. What do you suppose they’re going through? How many do you think are still alive? Three? Five? Who cracked first? Amanda? Digs?”
Karina Cooper - [Dark Mission 05] Page 7