by Loki Renard
“She’s a little mouthy,” Rex said. “But she settles down if you treat her right. We can lend her to you for a couple of days if you need.”
The lead agent nodded impassively “We’ll be in touch if we need her to corroborate anything.”
Rex shut the door, leaving her fuming. Now she knew why they’d tied her up, even though she hated it. They didn’t want her loose when she realized how bad she’d been screwed over.
Fuck this. Fuck them. Every single one of them. Lacey could not believe this shit.
She started to swear, loud and aggressively, and to kick at the sides of the van as hard as she could. The action made the rope scrape across her pussy too hard to be pleasurable, but she didn’t care, she was angry as hell and they were going to pay. Oh, fucking hell yes, were they going to pay.
“Settle down!” Chase jumped into the van next to her and stilled her legs.
“Absolutely not,” she hissed.
“You’ll be gagged again.”
“Like I give a fuck.”
Chase sighed and closed the van door behind him so he was trapped in there with Lacey and her rage. The others were still outside, conferring like the traitors they were.
“I’m sorry,” he said grimly. He didn’t look happy about the situation, but she didn’t care what he was feeling.
“How could you do this to me? I trusted you.”
“I know,” he said, the corners of his mouth downturned. “But this is for the best, Lacey. For all of us.”
“How? How is this the best? How is taking everything I intended to go to the public and handing it to the people who bury this shit in the shadows best for anyone?”
“It will hopefully get the others off your back. No more assassination attempts in shitty motels. You might be able to get your life back.”
“Or I might not, because they might sit on that information for years. That’s the fucking CIA. They don’t care whether I live or die. They’ll use that information for their own ends. Senator Fishland will probably get blackmailed by them now, so he’ll only come after me harder.” Her eyes were foggy with tears of betrayal and frustration. “How could you, Chase?”
“There’s five of us in this unit, but Rex makes the ultimate decisions.”
“So you’re just his bitch, is that it? Rex sells me out and you don’t even warn me? You just let it happen?”
“First, Rex didn’t sell you out. He passed your data on to the people best placed to do something about it. Second, call me that again and you will be a very sore little girl.”
He looked serious, his blue eyes a darker hue than usual. Chase had never spanked her. Chase had never touched her except in a tender way. She almost didn’t believe he had it in him.
“Whatever,” she said, turning her head away. “You could have warned me.”
“And what would that have done? You would have argued, you would have gotten into trouble, probably ended up beaten with someone’s belt, or maybe more, and the outcome would have been the same. Rex knows what he’s doing. We trust him because he doesn’t lead us wrong. And he won’t lead you wrong either.”
She gritted her teeth. Lacey didn’t have a slavish devotion to Rex. He was hot, but that wasn’t enough to make her give her natural independence up and just hand every decision over to him. He’d lied to her. They’d all outright lied to her. That wasn’t forgivable.
Staying utterly silent, she said nothing at all as Rex and the others got into the van. The ride back to the cabin was undertaken in a heavier silence than the ride out to the wrecker’s yard. Maybe they felt guilty for fucking her over. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they could go fuck themselves.
“Untie me, please,” she asked Chase grimly when they arrived back at the cabin.
Chase took a knife and cut the ropes off her. They fell to the floor of the van, loose and limp and pathetic, just like the feelings she’d had for these men. She’d slept with them. She’d given herself to them. She’d trusted them. And each and every one of them had lied to her face and stolen from her.
Maybe she deserved it after going back on her word in Venezuela. Maybe this was their idea of poetic justice. She didn’t know and she didn’t care.
She got out of the van without another word, keeping her eyes to herself. She couldn’t so much as look at these men now, but she heard them mumbling to one another when they thought she was out of earshot.
“She already knows? How?” Rex was asking the most stupid question in the world. For a second she was stunned at how dim he was being, then she realized it wasn’t that he was stupid. It was that he didn’t give her credit for having two brain cells to rub together.
“She worked it out. She’s a journalist,” Chase said. “You took a journalist to a drop. Should have left her back at the house with me and one of the others like I suggested.”
So he had been in on it too all along. Dear, sweet, lying asshole Chase.
“We needed all of you,” Rex growled. “You couldn’t have just blindfolded her?”
“She panics badly enough when we tie her up without blindfolding her too,” Chase said. “Besides, you brought them right up to the van and told them they could have her. That wasn’t part of the deal.”
Lacey kept walking. She didn’t want to hear the rest of the conversation. She didn’t want to hear a damn thing out of a single damn one of their damn mouths ever again. She wanted to be by herself. She wanted to think. There was only one spare room in the house—the room that wasn’t a room.
She went to the closet and put herself away in the holding cell, shutting the door behind her.
“So she’s pissed,” Max noted from outside the door.
Their voices still carried, unfortunately. She lay down on the uncomfortable cot bed and stared into the darkness, tears forming in her eyes. Betrayal sat like a weight in her stomach. She could never trust them again after this. Everything that had been building up between them was over.
This was the end of everything as far as she was concerned. Their protection was meaningless, just a front to extract data from her and funnel it to the CIA. She wouldn’t be surprised if they cut her loose in a day or two when they were sure they’d gotten everything they needed from her.
“You blame her?” Chase replied. “She feels betrayed and lied to.”
“She’ll get over it.” Rex’s rumble galled her the most.
Wrong.
She would not get over this. In fact, she now had every intention of doing what she should have done in the beginning, before she got scared and called these men for help.
*
Her quiet, searing anger seemed to keep the men at bay throughout the rest of the day and into the evening. She was hungry and thirsty, but she didn’t emerge from the cell until very early the next morning. Hours of darkness had focused her anger and helped her formulate a plan.
It was about four in the morning when Lacey got up out of her cage, found her leggings and her shoes, got dressed, and fixed herself breakfast. She went and sat on the porch by herself, eating and drinking before the rest of them got up—most of them anyway. About ten minutes after she sat down, Col emerged from the forest at a jog. He was shirtless, his torso rippling in the early morning light.
He stopped in front of the porch and stretched against a tree, his body moving in a perfect symphony of muscular hotness. They didn’t say anything to one another. Lacey put her head down and chewed her cereal while he stretched as if he was all alone, then walked up past her and went into the cabin.
It was the final straw.
She was less than nothing to that man, but maybe he was the most honest of them all. Col didn’t pretend to be one thing and then betray her by being another. He had never, for a second, made her think that he liked her. Not like Rex, and Chase, and Max, and Brian. Brian was the worst offender. He’d lied right to her face without any kind of compunction at all. Chase was the only one who seemed to feel a bit guilty about it, but guilt was too little, too late.<
br />
Lacey got up and walked to the van. She knew that it was a waste of time. It wasn’t as if they’d just leave the keys in the… ignition.
They were there. Hanging down next to the steering wheel. It was as if the universe itself was saying, hey, ditch these assholes, let’s go for a ride.
Lacey got into the van, turned the key, and started it. To her shock, the engine actually kicked into life. The next few seconds seemed to play out like hours as everything happened all at once.
A moment after the engine started, Col came bursting out of the cabin. She already had the van in reverse. He ran up at an impressive sprint and wrenched at the door. He even managed to get it open before she could lock it, but he was too late. She slammed the van into first gear and put her foot down. The engine screamed to the red line almost instantly, forcing another hard shift as it rocketed away, leaving Col tumbling behind her in the dirt.
For a brief moment she was afraid that she’d hit him, but she saw in the rearview mirror that he’d rolled up to his feet and looked to be unharmed. Good. She didn’t need another death on her conscience.
Chapter Seventeen
Rex
“Who left the keys in the van?” Rex demanded. A full scale mission of closing the stable door after the horse had bolted was underway as they stood around with their dicks in their hands, doing sweet fuck all. Lacey had taken their only means of transportation. Usually they’d have more cars available but this whole mission had been undertaken on the fly, and having their van stolen wasn’t on the agenda.
“That would be Max,” Col said. “He was driving it last.”
“Where is Max?”
“He’s trying to start the ATV we have in the shed.”
“I don’t think we’re going to run her down on that,” Rex sighed. What a shit show. They were now in the very unenviable position of having to wait for someone to bring them another car, an associate who did some delivery work for them sometimes.
“At least we can trace the van, which means we can trace her,” Brian said. While the rest of them had run around looking for ways to chase her in vain, Brian had done what he always did, gone for his laptop and opened the tracking program on the van. “She’s headed into the city, I think.”
“Why would she go back there?”
“She’s a city girl,” Chase said. “And she’s smart enough to know that high pop areas are good places to hide.”
“Not when you’re wanted by a cabal,” Col replied. “I think she’s just pissed off and looking to make a statement. That’s what she always does.”
“Oh, because you know her so well,” Chase replied. “You were the last one to see her, weren’t you, Col. You didn’t know she was about to bolt?”
“I didn’t know the van had the fucking keys in it,” Col shot back. “I always said she should be locked up, not left to wander around.”
“She’s not our prisoner,” Chase said. “She hasn’t done anything wrong. There was no reason to treat her like a captive. And there wouldn’t have been a problem if we hadn’t damn well lied to her about what we were going to do with the information she had.”
“That wasn’t her decision to make,” Rex said. “She put her life and her data in our hands. We make the decisions, not her. And when we get her back, we’re going to damn well teach her that.”
It had been a very long time since anyone had defied Rex on this level. He wasn’t actually sure he’d ever experienced insubordination like this. Lacey might not have liked his decision to keep her information and pass it on, but that was tough shit as far as he was concerned.
Years of military experience had given him a serious blind spot. Civilians didn’t have obedience built into them. He hadn’t seen Lacey’s rebellion coming because he’d mistaken her sexual submission for real discipline—and the fact that she hadn’t thrown a tantrum yesterday had only lulled him further into the false belief that she would do as he said even if she didn’t like it.
He was disappointed, in himself and in Lacey. They were going to get her back, and when they did, he was going to teach her one hell of a lesson she’d never forget. Obedience, discipline, submission. He’d instill every single one of them into her at the end of his belt, and whatever else came to hand. Hell, she’d ask him for permission to fart by the time he was done with that little brat.
Chapter Eighteen
Col
Tension was in the air and Col didn’t care for it. This whole thing with Lacey Christie had been a mistake from the beginning. They should never have offered to help her, and they definitely never should have gotten mixed up in the senatorial shit show that she was involved with.
When he’d seen her that morning, he’d been tempted to say something, but what was there to say? Sorry we fucked you over, sucks, right? That wouldn’t have helped. And it probably wouldn’t have changed the outcome any either.
They managed to get a new van out about an hour later. As soon as the contractor drove it up, they all piled into it and headed to Washington. Most of the journey was undertaken in silence. Max was quiet because he knew he’d fucked up, Brian was never a loud guy, Rex was seething, and Chase was so worried about Lacey that he looked sick.
“Alright,” Rex said when they dropped their contractor off. “We’re going to head after the van…”
“It stopped moving half an hour ago,” Brian said. “I think she’s out of it.”
“Well, we’ll start at the van.”
“She’ll be at a TV studio, or a radio station,” Col said.
Nobody listened to him. They were all talking over one another. Max thought she’d have gone back to her apartment. Chase thought she was headed to a CIA office. Rex just wanted the van back as far as Col could tell.
“Brian and I will go get the van,” Rex said. “You three drive around to her apartment.”
When Rex and Brian had headed off in an Uber, Col got out of the van.
“What are you doing?” Chase asked him, frowning.
“I’ve got an idea where she is,” Col said. “I’ll call you if it pans out.”
“But Rex said…”
Col shut the van door and headed off in his own direction. Sometimes he really hated the team aspect of their job. It was great when Rex was right, but when Rex was wrong it could lead to hours, days, or even weeks of chasing their own asses. He knew where Lacey was. There was only one place pissed-off journalists ever went: public.
He followed his intuition all the way to Washington DC’s most prominent news studio. It wasn’t easy to gain access without being detected. There were cameras everywhere of all kinds, but he made it through to the news room and there he found Lacey. She’d been given a white blouse and a cute pink pencil skirt and she’d been put through hair and makeup. She looked gorgeous. And she was about to make the biggest, most unredeemable mistake of her life if he didn’t intervene in…
Four… three… two… The producer started counting down.
Col pulled his balaclava down and went in.
*
Earlier today, journalist Lacey Christie was abducted from inside the studio. Watch the shocking moment a man entered the studio and carried her away.
The image on the television in the cabin showed Lacey perched on a stool wearing a pretty silk blouse. She was still wearing it now, though it didn’t look as good on a couch in a cabin as it did under studio lights. The interview hadn’t actually begun, but a camera was running and it captured the moment when Col came running in, scooped her up over his shoulder, and headed off screen. It all happened in a matter of seconds, so quickly that the syndicating station had slowed it down in order to draw the moment out for the viewers at home.
Col smirked to himself. It had been a clean snatch. He was happy with it. His face was covered and away from the camera at all times so his identity was safe. There was a pretty sweet shot of Lacey’s ass caught just as it went past the camera too. Nice.
“Great,” Rex thundered. “One of you goes t
o the media. And the other goes blundering into a place with cameras everywhere and plays fucking Rambo!”
Lacey and Col were sitting side by side on the couch while Rex stalked back and forth in front of them, his hands behind his back, his body occasionally blocking the view as he growled like an animal with every word the announcer said.
“Are you trying to get yourselves killed? Is that it? Have you two decided to join forces to make the worst possible decisions possible?”
Col knew better than to answer him, but Lacey was mouthy.
“I didn’t do anything stupid,” she said. “I did what I had to do. I made the choice you left me to make.”
“So we pass your information on, and you try to go and burn it on television. Do you know what would have happened if you had done that? We were paid for that information on the basis nobody else has it. If you’d have spilled your guts nationwide, we’d owe the agency more than any of us are worth.”
“Exactly. I had to get her out of there before she talked,” Col explained, as footage of him carrying Lacey out of the studio played for about the hundredth time in five minutes. “I didn’t have a choice except to go in there and take her. She forced my hand.”
“Oh, she forced you to create this scene?” Rex jabbed the remote at the TV.
Police are searching for the independent journalist, who broke the Venezuela conspiracy just three years ago. There are serious concerns for her safety.
The television blared until Rex hit the mute button to shut it up.
“I’m not sorry,” Lacey insisted, taking the heat off Col by opening her mouth again. “You lied to me. You told me you’d deleted everything. But you sold it and now you’re worried you might not get to keep your blood money.”
“We passed it on to the parties who should have had it in the first place,” Rex growled. “There are checks and balances for corrupt and criminal senators. There’s real recourse. But you wanted your moment in the spotlight, so instead of funneling it to the right channels in the first place, you sat on it and turned yourself into a sitting duck.”