by J. S. Scott
Marcus spoke hoarsely in the dark interior of the vehicle. “You’re still the same, Dani. Inside, you haven’t changed. You’re just seeing the world around you differently.”
I leaned my head back against the headrest, wondering if what Marcus said was true. Maybe I hadn’t changed. Maybe he was right. Maybe I just couldn’t look at the world with the same innocence that I used to. “I hope so,” I answered wistfully.
“You aren’t going to find whatever you need with Gregory Becker,” he warned.
“I don’t know that yet,” I told him firmly. “I don’t even know him that well.”
“You don’t need to know him any better,” Marcus answered stiffly.
“You don’t understand,” I told him in a shaky voice.
“Then please enlighten me,” he suggested drily. “Because I can’t see the appeal of someone like him.” He hesitated before asking, “Did you fuck him?”
“What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly.
“Did. You. Fuck. Him?” His voice was husky and grim.
“No!” The word shot out of my mouth without censoring my response. “Not that it’s any of your business who I sleep with,” I added.
“I’m making it my business.”
“Because of Jett,” I guessed.
“No. Because I risked lives to save your ass. I didn’t do it so you could throw that life away on a loser like Gregory Becker.”
“It’s my life,” I snapped at him. Marcus was making everything difficult.
“Break it off,” he commanded. “Do you really want to marry a man like him? Jesus, Dani, he’s a criminal. He just hasn’t gotten caught yet. But he will. And you’ll be caught in the middle of the entire mess, or dead because of his enemies. He doesn’t give a damn about you. If he did, he wouldn’t want you to wait in a bar filled with drunks and prostitutes.”
“I’m not marrying him,” I said angrily. “I’m just dating him. That’s all.”
“No more dates. No more meeting him at his bar. No more anything. Tell him you’ve lost interest and move on,” Marcus drawled.
“Stop!” I suddenly hollered at the driver. Surprisingly, he brought the limo to a halt.
“What are you doing, Danica?” Marcus reached over and grabbed my wrist.
I shook off his hold. “I’m home. My condo is in the building right behind us.”
“I didn’t know you had a place here.”
“I didn’t know you did, either,” I told him as I opened the car door. “But apparently you do.”
My neighborhood was well lit, but I still couldn’t see Marcus’s expression as he leaned over the backseat. “My place is close, so I’ll be around. This is a decent area. Just stay out of Becker’s turf.”
I closed the door without answering, and then scrambled to the stairs of my condo building as fast as my high stilettos would take me there.
Marcus didn’t get out of the car, but he didn’t leave until I’d made it past security and ducked into the building.
By the time I got to my condo and looked out the window, Marcus was gone.
Marcus
“Since when does Danica have a condo here in Miami?” I asked Jett, using the speakerphone on my cell so my hands were free and I could yank off my tie.
The luxury penthouse I owned had walls of windows with spectacular beachside views when it was daylight. But since it was dark, there was every possibility that some neighbor could see me stripping down to my underwear, but I didn’t give a shit.
It was summer, and it was pretty damn hot and humid in Southern Florida. I wanted to get my dirty clothes off. I grudgingly admitted that I also needed to give my poor dick a break. I’d been rock-hard since the moment I’d seen Danica in that skimpy blouse and tight leather skirt. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to get that image out of my mind since she’d jumped out of my limo with her ass barely covered.
“Actually, she and Harper own the condo,” Jett informed me. “They both love the beach.”
I yanked my tie loose and dropped it on a chair. “She’s at her condo for now,” I said, starting on the buttons of my shirt. “But I’m not sure she’ll stay there. I just can’t figure out what’s so damn appealing about Becker.”
“I’m not sure,” Jett mused. “All I know is that Dani has been different since she came back from her kidnapping.”
“Different how?”
“This might sound weird, but she seems…sad. She used to be able to have more fun than any of us. Now I never even see her smile anymore.”
Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen her smile, either. Granted, we’d both been working when we’d met up in the past, but that hadn’t stopped her from smiling and laughing before. She’d always been feisty, but she seemed more like a shadow of that woman now. Not that she wasn’t still sassy, but she had a harder edge. “She was going to be changed, Jett. You can’t go through an experience like Danica did without coming away from the experience a changed person.”
I didn’t tell him that Dani had already explained that she felt different, that she wasn’t sure who she was anymore.
For some reason, that bothered me. Danica was the same person inside, but she seemed incredibly…wary. She looked at the world as a different, much scarier place. Although I understood why she felt that way, I detested the fact that she was no longer able to look at places and people with the same curiosity she used to have.
Even though she had a wickedly sharp mouth, the innocence she’d once had was gone, and I mourned the loss. It made me feel even more protective and determined to make sure she regained the sense of wonder that had been so much a part of her before.
“Maybe everything we’ve heard about Becker is just rumor,” Jett contemplated aloud. “What if he’s actually a decent guy? I’d feel like a jerk if I tried to take somebody away from Dani who she cared about if the only thing he’s guilty of is being the subject of rumors.”
With the buttons free, I yanked off my shirt and tossed it onto the same chair where my tie had landed.
What in the hell could I tell Jett? Nobody except my family knew that I worked as a special operative for the CIA. I couldn’t explain that the agency had been trying to gather intel on Becker for years, and that one day they’d get what they needed to put him away. He was the worst of the worst, a guy who got rich on making people into addicts and prostitutes, and it wasn’t always by their choice. I was fairly certain the suspicion of Becker funding the terrorists was true. We just hadn’t been able to find the intel that linked him, without doubt, to the rebels.
“No chance of that,” I finally answered. “He’s an asshole.”
“I hate being fucking lame,” Jett said in a frustrated tone. “I’d like to be there with you right now. But I have another minor surgery tomorrow. All this work to try to make me look presentable again. Hell, I know some of these marks will never heal, and I’ll always probably limp when I’m tired.”
I could almost hear his irritation through the phone connection, and as usual, I felt guilty as hell. “I wish I’d never brought you into PRO.”
“I don’t regret it, Marcus. We did a lot of good things, saved a lot of lives. And in the end, I didn’t end up married to a woman who only wanted my money. But even she couldn’t tolerate my injuries, even if it would make her wealthy as hell.”
I flinched as I stepped out of my pants, tossed them on the chair, and then flopped onto a white leather couch, dressed only in a pair of boxer briefs. “You made a lucky escape from that one,” I agreed. “But I feel like shit because I brought you into PRO. It was my operation.”
Jett had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. When our helicopter had gone down, anybody who was on the side that bit the dust had some crush injuries from heavy equipment and other supplies falling on top of them. Jett had gotten the worst of it. He’d been on the wrong side and in the wrong area. I’d only suffered minor injuries, something I’d felt guilty as hell about seeing as a few on my team had bee
n injured way worse. The others had recovered, but Jett would never be quite the same, and that ate at me.
For some time, his internal injuries had been so bad that nobody knew if he would make it. When we realized he was going to live, we discovered it wasn’t happening without challenges. They’d put my buddy and team member back together, but his leg would never be the same, and he had a lot of scarring.
“I wouldn’t do it any differently, even if I could,” Jett answered thoughtfully. “Besides, you needed me. I’m the best damn tech intel guy you could get.”
I let out a bark of laughter—which was unusual for me—but I knew what he was saying was true. I owed many of PRO’s successful missions to Jett. He was a damn genius when it came to Internet technology and programming.
I stood up and went to the fridge for a beer, screwing the top off as I answered, “You got me there. There’s nobody better in the field.”
“Damn right,” Jett quipped.
“What are you working on now?” I asked curiously.
“Not much,” he answered glumly. “Haven’t had a lot of time. But the current projects for the company are progressing well.”
Jett owned an enormous computer technology and cyber security company, and was doing a number of projects at any given time. Luckily, his profession was something he could manage at home in Seattle.
“Just worry about recovering,” I told him. “I think you’re rich enough.”
“Not as loaded as you are,” he protested. “But it’s never been about the money for me anyway.”
Jett’s father and mother had died in a car accident, leaving all of their children with billions of dollars, much like what had happened to my father. “But you’re doing what you love,” I answered.
“Aren’t you doing what you love, Marcus?”
I took a slug of my beer before I dropped back onto the sofa. I didn’t mind running my father’s multinational conglomerate, but I couldn’t say it was really my passion. “I didn’t have a lot of choice. Once my father died, I had to step up to the plate as soon as possible. I was the oldest.”
Once we’d lost our dad, I’d felt compelled to take care of my father’s legacy. Unfortunately, once I was old enough, dealing with my dad’s conglomerate couldn’t be accomplished without a hell of a lot of travel. We’d had management in place until I finished school, but the company hadn’t been as solid as it had been when my father had been alive. So I’d traveled, making sure things were done the right way, handling all of the problems myself.
Except, sometimes I felt like by doing right with the company, I’d somehow lost track of my family. Having been gone so much, there were so many things I’d missed. Chloe had been in an abusive relationship, and I hadn’t discovered it until after she was out of it. I’d slowly drifted away from my identical twin, Blake, who was now a US Senator. Tate and Zane had been through their own hardships, too, and once again, I hadn’t been there for them very much.
Truth was, I missed them like hell, but because I’d been absent for so long, I wasn’t sure how to be back in their lives again. Considering my work with the CIA, maybe it was for the best.
“Well, it’s not like you don’t have time to pursue anything you want to,” Jett finally answered.
Right now, the only thing I wanted to pursue was his gorgeous, stubborn, redheaded sister. But I couldn’t tell him that.
“Yeah,” I agreed noncommittally. “I’ll hang out here for at least a few more days and keep an eye on Dani. I want to make sure she doesn’t cozy up to Becker again.”
Jett was quiet for a moment before he said, “You know, if she does, there isn’t much we can do, short of kidnapping her. I want to protect her, but she deserves her space. If she wants him, I can’t exactly stop her.”
“I will stop her,” I grumbled, purposely not mentioning I’d already technically kidnapped Danica. “She’d fuck up her entire life if she ends up with Becker. He’ll go down eventually.”
“You okay, Marcus?” Jett asked carefully.
“Yeah. Why?”
“I guess I’ve never really seen you take a personal matter this seriously.”
“Just trying to help,” I told him awkwardly.
He was right. Very rarely did I give much thought to personal stuff that didn’t involve my businesses or CIA intel.
She was my downfall when it came to being emotionally distant. Danica had been through so much, not to mention the fact that I had some kind of odd, animalistic possessiveness toward her that I couldn’t explain or understand. For a very long time, all I’d wanted was to get her naked, and then pin her against the wall while we both got our fill of each other. And I was pretty certain it would take me one hell of a long time to get rid of the primitive drive I harbored to make Danica mine. I wanted to fucking hear her scream that she belonged to me while I pounded into her tight, warm heat.
However, after she’d shared some of the pain she’d had to bear during her confinement with the rebels, I was driven to make sure she never suffered again.
“Let me know how it goes,” Jett requested. “And thanks, man. I owe you one.”
We ended our call, and I stood up, restless from being at loose ends for the first time I could remember. I’d asked one of my top executives to fill in on my travel for me, and I’d headed for Florida specifically to let Dani know that she couldn’t keep seeing Becker.
Something isn’t right. I can feel it.
My logical brain was telling me that there was no way she wanted Gregory Becker. Dani was too damn smart to end up with a man like him. Not only that, but she was a reporter, a woman who could read people extremely well.
Meanwhile, my irrational, primal, carnal response wanted to move Dani completely out of harm’s way immediately and completely.
I wish I could say that my logical mind was going to seek out answers, but I was afraid that for the first time in my life, I might very well be unable to completely ignore emotion.
Dani
The following day, I’d had to make up an excuse for Greg as to why I wasn’t at the bar to meet him.
I really wanted him to trust me, so letting him down like that wasn’t exactly a step forward for our relationship.
Fortunately, he’d accepted the fact that I hadn’t been feeling well and had fallen asleep. The really bad part was that he wanted to come over and see me here at my condo to make sure I was feeling better.
He thinks I’m sick. He probably won’t stay long.
I’d dressed in a pretty, casual, yellow sundress, and then put on some makeup. I left my hair down in a sleek bob that barely touched my shoulders. Somehow, the style seemed to fit my natural redheaded color.
My phone rang, and I hurried to unplug the cell phone on the living room coffee table so I could answer before the caller got my voice mail. “Hello,” I answered. I hadn’t looked at the caller ID, so I was half expecting the call to be from Greg, saying he was going to be late or that he had to cancel his visit.
“Dani?” a panicked female voice asked in a nervous tone.
“Ruby? What’s the matter? What happened?” I asked breathlessly.
I stressed out over my young friend on a daily basis. After a childhood and adolescence of abuse, she’d ended up running away and had landed in Miami at the age of eighteen. She’d been here and homeless for almost four years, a fact I hadn’t learned about until after she was picked up off the street right after we’d met a month or two ago. She had a home in a crappy hotel room now, but everything about the arrangement that had taken her off the streets worried me.
“The guy who rescued me says I owe him. This isn’t what I thought it would be, Dani. They promised me I’d have a job, and that hasn’t happened. Now they’re telling me I owe money for the roof over my head and food. Since I don’t have money to pay them back, they want to do some kind of auction thing for my services.”
My stomach rolled as I thought about just what kind of auction Ruby was going to participate in. �
�Did they say what kind of auction?”
“T-They didn’t s-say,” she stammered. “But the woman who comes to bring me food asked if I was a virgin, and I admitted that I was. At first, I was thinking some kind of live-in housekeeper or something. But I’m starting to think they want me to sell my body since it’s really all I have to give.”
I breathed in deeply and then blew the air out. I had been pretty certain that whoever had picked her up had expected to somehow profit from helping Ruby. It was a situation ripe for human trafficking. “Did they say when?” I asked, trying not to sound as concerned as I felt.
“N-No. I think they want to put some weight on me first. Dani, I’m so scared. I know I have a place to stay and food to eat now, but I almost wish I was homeless again. I racked up debt with these people, and I have to pay them back.”
God, I desperately wanted to move Ruby to my condo and make sure nobody harmed her ever again. But I had a few reasons why that wasn’t possible at the moment. “Hang in there. I promise I’ll get you out of there before anything happens.”
“I got myself into a bad situation, didn’t I?” she asked.
“Yes. But it’s not your fault. These people aren’t taking women and kids off the streets to help them. I think they’re human traffickers.” I shuddered at the thought of how many other women had been subject to their “kindness.”
“I don’t know what to do. They said if I try to leave without paying my debt, they’ll find me,” she whimpered.
“We’ll take care of it. Stay strong, Ruby. Ask them how much you owe.”
“Whatever it is, I can’t pay it without a job,” she answered flatly.
“I know you don’t know me that well, but can you trust me?” I questioned desperately.
Ruby hesitated for a moment before replying, “It’s hard for me to trust anybody,” she said honestly. “But I’ll try. You’ve already helped me a lot just by being a friend. I’m not as afraid now that I know that somebody knows and cares about me.”
“I’ll get you out,” I promised. “Just keep me updated on what’s happening when you safely can.”