“Idle speculation entertains them,” he said. “Go to bed, Devon.”
When he slunk back into the darkness, she leaped forward. “Wait,” she said. “Why won’t you talk to me?”
He paused. “We each have our roles. Mine is to purchase. Conversation isn’t in my repertoire.”
Yet, he was clearly intelligent and not intimidated by her, so that wasn’t entirely true. “You’ve purchased other women before?”
His response didn’t come right away, but she waited. It wasn’t like she had anywhere else to be. This conversation could take all night if that was what it took, but she would make progress with the man she believed had to be in charge. “Yes,” he said.
At least he wasn’t going to embarrass them both with denials. “But you have never spoken to one of them?”
“No.”
Knowing that this was a first for him made her a little more comfortable about being so out of her element. “Then why are you talking to me now?”
“Everyone else is asleep.”
Implying that this was a hardship didn’t wash, he had to be curious about her or he wouldn’t be here. Waking one of his houseguests if he wanted company wasn’t beyond him, not if he was happy to mislead her about who bought her, proving that he had no shame.
Now it was time to test if he’d defend that lie or admit it. “Why did you buy me? Why were you at the auction?”
“Women purchased at those auctions don’t last long, as most buyers are rich and depraved men who torture, rape, and kill. I saved you from that fate.”
He had a way of answering her questions without actually answering them, which infuriated her. “And now I’m supposed to be grateful? So grateful that what? I should drop to my knees for you?”
Nothing shocked this man or invoked much of a reaction at all. “If you hadn’t thrown your fit, you and I would never have met. I’m not interested in your gratitude, your knees, or any other part of you.”
Then this whole mess made even less sense to her than it had before. “So what do you want from me? What’s your motive for doing this? Do you think you’re some kind of hero?”
“No. My motive is complicated and personal.”
There would be no other reason for him to be involved except if it was personal. Devon still wanted to know more. “I don’t understand any of this… How can I be sure you will let me go? I could go to the cops, get you into trouble—”
“We know who you are. We know we can trust you. We’re careful, Von, if we set the wrong woman loose, our mission could implode.”
Von. Why would he call her that? “Only my brother calls me that.”
The satisfaction in his response was dry. “I know.”
Oh, her stupid, ignorant, always-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-law brother knew these people. “You know him?”
“Raven does.”
“Did he send you after me?”
“We’re done.”
He thought he’d reassured her enough that he could go, but she wasn’t willing to let him turn his back on her yet. “What is your mission?”
“To take these people down.”
Admirable, but she still didn’t understand. “Why do you keep your identity secret?”
“You ask a lot of questions for a woman who won’t answer any.”
Devon didn’t understand the setup, but she was more confident that the situation wasn’t sinister. She might not be able to see this man, but he came across as sincere and that raised more questions for her, especially since she knew now that he knew her brother.
“By going to those auctions, you’re endangering yourself,” she said. “Do you understand how dangerous those men are?”
“I understand,” he said.
Choosing to walk into that scenario proved he had courage. “Why take the risk?”
“Someone has to.”
As simple as that? It couldn’t be. “So you do want to be a hero?”
“They trade in human flesh. What their victims go through is sickening.”
And from the way he spat out the words, she was convinced of his disgust. But again, he hadn’t answered her question, which forced her to speculate further. “You lost someone to them, didn’t you?” He didn’t respond. “It’s the only explanation for your conviction and why you take the risk to do what you do.”
“She wasn’t mine to lose,” he said.
Maybe it was because of the dark, or because she’d spent so long in an endless night that her other senses were keen, but she could read raw emotion in his tone even though his intonation didn’t change.
Intrigued, she stepped toward him, but that caused him to descend deeper into the darkness. “What are you hiding?”
“What does it matter?”
A hint of anger in his voice could have signaled his discomfort, but she chose not to be discouraged. “Just trying to figure you out.”
“Why?
It shouldn’t matter who he was or why he did this, but people fascinated her, and she wanted to understand what drove such an enigmatic figure so intent on secluding himself. “Bess is personable, she seems to like being social. Wren is a doctor, he spends his life helping people. But you…”
“What?”
Though he’d tried to back away before, he was staying put now, and his prompting questions made her wonder if he wanted her to figure him out. He could tell her to shut up, mind her own business, and then lock her up in the bedroom. But he didn’t, he encouraged her to keep talking by asking these open questions.
“You’re obviously the money, you carry some sense of personal guilt or responsibility, which is why you do this. But you take no glory, you admitted to never having had a conversation with the women you help, so I think you’re right. I don’t think you do want their gratitude.”
“What does that say about me?” he asked.
“Not as much as you coming to me in the dead of night while everyone else is asleep does.”
“I’m a night owl.”
Whether that was true or not, it wasn’t why he was here. “Is that it? Or are you using the night to keep hiding from me? Why would you do that? Will I recognize you? Or are you just that insecure that you can’t let me look you in the eye?”
“Being anonymous is in the nature of what I do.”
“And what is that?” He didn’t say anything, but she could sense him deliberating over his possible response. “Rescuing women from sick pigs like the cartels has to be a hobby, there’s no money in it and you need money to make the purchases, don’t you? So, it has to come from somewhere, you have to have a day job and a lucrative one too. Those guys don’t just let any john walk in off the street.”
“Auctions are by invitation only.”
Folding her arms, she tried to figure out how someone like Zave, who kept himself locked up all the time, would find himself invited to such a place. “So what do you do?”
“I build hardware innovations.”
Good. That was a direct answer and one she interpreted to mean that he was an inventor, which could be a solitary profession after all. “Alone at night in a small, dark room?” she asked. “You don’t like people?”
“I don’t understand them. Tech is easy, it’s clean and has rhythm that makes sense to me. People are a host of contradictions. I like sense and order, one and one should always equal two.”
This was the most he’d said since their conversation began. He loved what he did, even if he didn’t let it trickle into his tone or demeanor. He enjoyed thinking about it, speaking about it, creating was his passion.
“My great passion is art,” she said, giving him some space but moving across to lean on the solid stone banister at the edge of the view below. “Pencil, pastel, paint, I love them all. I don’t need order. Often when I sit down at my easel, I don’t know exactly where the colors will end up on the canvas. There’s nothing I enjoy more than spending time alone with my pencils and sketch books.”
“Then you can identify.�
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To a degree, she could understand why he was so happy to live his life alone. Loving what he did meant he was always occupied and happy even when there was no one else around. “Unlike you, I like light. I’m captivated by how the angles and brilliance can alter the mood of a piece, just as it can alter the mood of a moment.”
“Like this one?”
“You came to me in the night to try and hide who you are.”
“I like the night. It’s quiet and calm.”
“But you ran during the day, when the sea was wild.” And anything but calm. “The view is inspiring.”
“Sometimes I run at night.”
His movements had put him back into the blackness that filled the enclosed hallway that this covered mezzanine led to. She could be hallucinating and talking to herself, anyone watching might think that she was, but she knew it was no delusion, this man was real, she could feel his presence, actually feel it, even though there was a wide space between them.
“If that’s true then please, don’t go near the edge like you did today. My heart was in my throat when you went so close to the rocks.”
“If I fell, maybe you’d have had your freedom.”
“Maybe,” she said, moving forward to lean on one of the arch’s vertical posts. “Or maybe there would’ve been nobody around to authorize my release.”
“We make decisions by committee around here. If you think that manipulating me—”
“If I wanted to manipulate any man, I’d choose Wren. He’d be easier to get close to, wouldn’t he?” she asked.
Raven would be off-limits because for one thing, he seemed a bit unhinged, and the second reason was Swallow. She wouldn’t like another woman cozying up to her man. Bess and Wren had referenced Swallow’s involvement in Kindred missions, too, so it probably wouldn’t be smart to mess with her.
“All Kindred men have women issues,” he said.
Although it wasn’t guaranteed, that might have been a joke or at least as close to light-hearted as he got. “Is that a pre-requisite?” A laugh was too much to expect. “I think there’s hope for you. Granted, I don’t know much about your normal behavior, but already you’ve broken your mold for me, haven’t you?”
“You’ve put up more of a fight than the other girls. Most are just grateful to be free of where they were, so they don’t question our motives or question our trust.”
“How many times have you done this?”
“Enough.”
The war would continue. Ending human trafficking hadn’t been achieved by even the furthest-reaching law enforcement agencies in the world. One small band of men couldn’t hope to make much of a dent, but that didn’t seem to matter, they just kept on plugging away. “You’re a dedicated bunch. How did your group get involved in crime fighting?”
“How about you tell me how you ended up in Mexico.”
“Mexico, is that where I was?” She’d suspected as much. South America was her assumed location, but she hadn’t had it confirmed until now.
“The Mexican mafia is becoming the largest, most widespread organized crime disease in the country, and they’re not as ethical as the Italian mafia were back in the day.”
Her assumption that he was intelligent was right; he was clear and articulate when he wanted to be. “You know a lot about it.”
“Information’s easy to gather.”
They had to be practiced if they could be so nonchalant about wandering into danger, and she’d been told that the Kindred had various skills, including their computer whiz, who must be able to access whatever files they needed to put knowledge together. Except she doubted the Mexican cartels kept up-to-date employee records and informative calendars for the Kindred to hack, which might be why Zave’s cryptic comment felt frustrated.
Devon heard what he didn’t say. “But there’s more that you want to know?”
“I want to know what made you so suspicious of people.”
So that was how she’d gotten his attention, by question everything that was done to her here, and everything that was said, though that didn’t explain why he’d been so gentle with her after the auction.
“I am proud of that suspicion and would advise everyone to have it,” she said. “Shouldn’t you feel the same given your hobby?”
“Yes,” he said. “But my experience has made me this way. What made you this way?”
He emerged from the darkness, just enough for her to make out his outline again, and she tried not to overreact. Like he was an animal she could spook if she reacted to strongly, she tried to maintain the same posture and tone.
“I lost my parents young,” she said. “My brother looked out for me. But I was always independent, we butted heads all the time. I thought I knew best, so I jumped in without looking because I was sure I could handle anything.”
“And you couldn’t?”
“As it turned out, I couldn’t,” she said. Their trust might be building, but she wasn’t going to reveal all of her humiliations at once. “Tell me about the woman that got you involved with this.”
He shook his head, proving that he was coming out of his shell, and the triumph over the challenge he posed made her more determined to extract more from him, to get closer, maybe close enough to touch.
“That’s not my story to tell,” he said after a pause. “She is why we do this. But she wasn’t mine.”
Something profound and almost romantic about that statement drew her closer to him, and this time he didn’t back away. “Did you want her to be?”
“Women,” he said with a light-hearted dismissiveness. “Why do you have to make everything about love?”
Was that another different experience that had brought him to that conclusion? “Love is the most effective motivator.”
The philosophy of relationships wasn’t something she shied away from discussing. “Some would say that love is merely an extension of sex.”
As soon as the words came out of his mouth, strong but said without thought, she wished he could take it back. He made no physical indication that the word had impacted him, but for some reason, hearing the word aloud in the company of this man, standing alone in the dark, made her nipples peak. Her chin fell to allow her hair to hide her face, and the thumping of her heart fell to her gut.
Backtracking the topic that she hadn’t even opened up, she tried to quell her inappropriate awareness. “Not all love is linked to sex,” she mumbled. “There’s parental love, sibling love, friendship love.”
“You’re embarrassed.”
The volume of his word made her gasp and look up, and sure enough, there he was, right in front of her. Intent black eyes fixated on her with an intense curiosity that made her even more self-conscious. “I’m not,” she said, and when she tried to withdraw, he caught her shoulder. Although she gasped, she didn’t resist.
His head tilted. “Sex,” he murmured and her insides quaked. If she looked at him now, she might combust, but he got even closer, so close that she couldn’t breathe. “Did they touch you, shy?”
“Wren already asked me that,” she whispered.
One finger curled under her chin and when he urged her head back, Devon was forced to make the eye contact she’d avoided. “Now I’m asking you.”
“Why would I lie to Wren, but tell you the truth?”
“Because you are special,” he said even though she could tell from the way his eyes tapered he’d rather not have to confess that truth.
“Why?”
“I don’t have a fucking clue,” he said, and then he lowered his mouth onto hers.
This kiss wasn’t like any other she’d ever had. Sensing his patience, she guessed it was for her benefit because he didn’t strike her as the restrained type, not if he was stalking her bedroom and kissing her in hallways.
But from the moment she’d watched him run along that shore, she’d known he wasn’t like any other man on Earth. Something about the way he moved, his confidence, his enduring pace, it display
ed a resolve that was proven in what he did by rescuing women like her.
Opening her lips, she tried to tease his tongue, but he withdrew, dropping his hand from her face and taking a step back. “They didn’t touch me,” she said and tried to narrow the space, but he retreated, maintaining the distance between them. “I can’t tell if you’re afraid of me or afraid of what will happen if you let someone in.”
Moving away again, he didn’t give her the courtesy of a response. “Take care of yourself, Devon,” he said.
But she couldn’t let him walk away from her. In an estate this large, she may never see him again. “I’ll work with you, not with them.”
He stopped. “What? Why?”
“I think you’ve isolated yourself for too long,” she said. “I think your aunt and cousin want you to do more than just exist. You do what’s expected of you and not an iota more. All the money in the world can’t save you, Zave, you need to live your life.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’ve spoken more to me tonight than you have to any other girl you’ve pulled out of that hell. From the way Bess and Wren speak, you’ve said more to me than you have to them for a long time. I don’t know what it is, but you do feel connected to me whether you like it or not.”
“If that’s true, then we stay the hell away from each other.”
“I disagree,” she said and went toward him, slowly again, so as not to scare him away. “What I went through… I can’t share that experience with just anyone. I have to trust you.”
The humiliation, the pain, the sorrow, it all came together sometimes to leave her devastated and she’d never tried to just talk about it, to tell the story. Somehow she knew that she wouldn’t be able to tell Bess. She’d worry that the woman would be overwhelmed with pity and her own distress at the tale.
Falcon (Kindred #5) Page 7