In Too Deep: A Romantic Suspense Novel

by Landish, Lauren

  Finally, I could take no more. Pushing back as hard as I could, I impaled myself on him, burying my face in his shoulder and screaming as a deep, hard orgasm gripped me. Mark held me tight, letting my body tense and quiver, until I started to relax. He suddenly held my hips tightly and bucked up, his legs propped up on the bed as he sought his own orgasm. In only four more strokes, he groaned and found his own release. I sagged against him, utterly spent.

  * * *

  I woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, in which the gunmen had shot first through the door, hitting Mark, before they came after me. I woke up with a short, startled scream before I felt Mark's presence behind me, holding me in his arms and soothing the fears away. "Shhh, you're safe," he whispered in my ear. Even in my half asleep state I could feel that he had changed back into his clothes, and was awake and aware. "Go back to sleep, I'll protect you all night. I love you."

  Before I could protest, sleep hammered me back into the blackness, and I felt myself go. At least that time there weren't any more dreams.

  * * *

  Mark

  The next morning, we had breakfast at a nearby Burger King, since I much prefer their breakfast burrito over anything on the McDonald's menu. As I munched, I lamented. "You know, it's been almost a decade since I left the South, but I miss Hardee's," I said as I squirted a bit of ketchup onto the eggs inside the tortilla. "They may say they merged with Carl's Jr, but it's not quite the same, I don't think."

  "Never had either," Sophie replied, munching on her sausage biscuit. "In fact, this is the first fast food I've had in months."

  "You've got a better diet than I do," I admitted, swallowing another bite. "They say you can't out train a bad diet, but I've been giving it my best shot for quite a while."

  "I've noticed your training," Sophie said, half smiling. "Trust me, I enjoy it." We ate in comfortable silence for a bit before she swallowed the last of her breakfast and set her hands down on the table top, waiting for me. "So, what's next?"

  "Well," I said, taking a sip of my orange juice, "it kind of depends on what you want to do. If you want to just disappear, I can arrange that. I have a few alternate IDs already, and know who I can talk to that can get one for you. Financially we are set, and I can get access to all of my accounts without them knowing what to look for. If you want to go back, things will be a bit more hands on, but we can start plans for that too."

  "How will you get access? Can't they track you somehow?" Sophie asked, curious.

  I grinned and reached into the thigh pocket on my pants. "Only if they know what to look for. I left my desktop at my apartment, to throw them off the trail. Even if they did trace my IP, they'd never see a single visit to any financial website where I have real money stashed, just a small account and some poker websites I throw some cash away on as a distraction. Instead, I did all my work on this." I pulled out what I called my smartbox, something Sophie had never seen before. "I know, it's not what you've seen, and there's been a reason for that. This little thing has in it a processor and about a two hundred gigabytes of memory, all able to be powered by a simple universal AC adapter. I can plug it into anything with an HDMI port, and connect through USB a keyboard and mouse. I'm running an encrypted Linux on it, and can jack into just about any WiFi I can find with its onboard cracking systems."

  Sophie took the black plastic box from my hand, turning it over, looking at it. "It looks like a deck of cards. I mean, it's smaller than most tablets I've seen."

  "More secure, too," I added. "The tradeoff is that I need to physically connect it to a keyboard and monitor."

  "But can you get Netflix on it?" Sophie joked, smirking. "Seriously, though, that's pretty cool. What about physically, where are you wanting to go?"

  "We can go just about anywhere," I replied, "although staying away from the big cities or places with a strong organization presence would be safer. While I've done most of my work in this half of the USA, I've pulled a few contracts overseas. The networks are more intertwined than you would imagine, and the farther I can get away from that the better."

  "Hmmmm, well, I have always wanted to go to Fiji," Sophie said, before cocking her eyebrow. When I gave her no reaction one way or another, her face gaped in wonder. "You're serious, aren't you?"

  "As long as I can get a satellite Internet connection I am," I said, tucking my smartbox back in my pocket. "And before you ask, yes I have a backup to the smartbox. Without one of those, however, nobody can get into my accounts. We're set for life if you want, Sophie."

  Sophie thought it over for a bit, then looked at me. "Can I get in touch with my friends? I'm not saying permanently, but Tabby in particular has been my friend for years. I should at least tell her goodbye or something."

  I thought about the safety risk. If the Confederation knew about Tabby, and if they had put a trace on her e-mail accounts, there was a chance that the mail could be traced back. This was especially true if Sophie's laptop had been hacked by Owen Lynch or the Confederation, and a tracer placed on it. Honestly, it was just one too many ifs to worry about. After all, they could already safely assume she was alive, and most likely with me, after the two men didn't report back successfully. I'd dumped their bodies in a river the night before, so they couldn't even be technically traced back to her place. "Not from just anywhere," I said, thinking quickly. "It'll need to be from a public place, few security cameras, public terminal, stuff like that. Is your e-mail accessible from a web browser?"

  "Sure. Where then?"

  About an hour later, we pulled up to a Best Buy, where Sophie gave me a suspicious look. "Keep your ball cap on, and we'll be fine," I said. "They sell prepaid phones here, I put it on my Mark Snow ID, and even if they trace it, they'll just know it was me. That's all."

  We were in and out in a half-hour, and the clerk, a somewhat pimply faced high school kid, didn't even ask to see my ID. I filled out the form with total lies, and we walked out with a little web capable phone. As soon as we got to my truck, we plugged in the charger to my USB port I had replaced the cigarette lighter with, and turned it on. Two minutes later, Sophie was on the web, loading her mail. "The service here really sucks," she said as we drove down the road. "I mean, this thing is loading slowly.”

  "Well, what can you expect for a hundred dollars. The phone's probably cheap as hell too. Glad you're good with a stylus."

  Sophie nodded, her head stilling as she loaded her message. "Mark, pull over."

  "What is it?" I asked, pulling into a dry cleaners and putting the truck in park. "What's wrong?"

  Sophie handed me her phone, which had an e-mail message up. "They took Tabby."

  Miss White,

  If you're reading this, then you've decided not to disappear as completely as I'm sure Mr. Snow advised you to. Our benefit, your mistake. We have Miss Williams with us, staying as a guest of our organization. She would like to have you come visit her. Even though we keep telling her that it can't rain all the time, she insists that you are the best person to help her. We tend to agree. Just remember Sophie, this is the really real world, there ain't no coming back. If you wish to visit, give Tabby's cell phone a call, she'll be happy to pick it up. We know you must feel like a little worm on a big fuckin' hook right now, but hey, are we having fun or what?

  Friends of Mark Snow

  "What's with all the cheesy lines?" I asked as I handed the phone back. "Nobody I worked with talked like that."

  Sophie nodded and sighed. "A sign that they actually have or know Tabby. Back when we were in college Tabby went through a bit of a Goth-lite phase. She watched that old Brandon Lee movie The Crow at least twenty or thirty times on her computer, to the point that we could both quote lines to each other constantly. Last time I was over at her place, she still had a Brandon Lee poster and a copy of the DVD."

  I didn't want to tell Sophie what I knew, which was that for any of the senders of the e-mail to get that information, they most likely tortured Tabby for it. I reached acros
s the table and took her hand in mine. "What do you want to do?"

  Sophie squeezed my hand and looked me in the eye. "Can you save Tabby?"

  I thought it over, then nodded. "Maybe. I'd need some help and some luck, though."

  "If you can't save her, what can you do?" she asked quietly, her eyes intense and her mouth tight. I squeezed her hand and looked her straight in the eye.

  "If I answer, and you ask me to, you'll never be the same," I replied. "I'm not joking at all. I told you, I've got my own little corner of Hell on reservation. I'm willing to deal with that. Are you?"

  Chapter 18

  Sophie

  I looked Mark in the eyes, and spoke from my heart. "You've done a lot of wrong things, Mark. They may not have been innocent, but you still helped men even more evil than the ones you handled to get stronger. You built up a huge debt, my love. And I will love you, no matter what. But in my opinion, you need to start paying off that debt. I don't know if you can ever fully repay it. We can start by saving Tabby, and making those bastards pay. If that damns me alongside you in the process, so be it."

  We were on the road back within fifteen minutes, Mark letting me drive while he napped in the passenger seat. He hadn't slept at all the night before, even after the exhausting sex, staying awake to keep watch over me. I kept my eyes glued to the road, letting Phil Collins keep me company for the next three and a half hours back to the city. I pulled off across the river from the Tunnel, filling up on gas and waking Mark up. "Okay, we're close to the city now. Where do you want me to take us?"

  "I'll drive," Mark said, yawning and stretching. He did a few jumping jacks, squats and other exercises while the gas filled up, and chugged a huge black iced coffee after we paid. "I'd go for a Monster or a Rockstar, but they tend to leave my hands jittery. That is not what I need right now," he explained as he grimaced and shotgunned the rest of the cup. He pulled into the driver's seat and started up the engine, pulling back into traffic. As he drove, he talked.

  "I set up around the city five different bases of operation in addition to my condo. Three of them I used on a regular basis, the fourth I used rarely, and the fifth I set up, but never went to after initial setup. It was my emergency base, the one that I prepared for one reason only, and that was betrayal from inside the Confederation. We'll be going there, it's the safest place I know in the city."

  "Where is it?" I asked, watching as the Tunnel gave way to Central Avenue. "And how do you know it is safe?"

  "There's no place really safe," Mark replied, "But this place I only went to twice before. The building is totally owned by me, under one of my shell corporations. The building has motion detectors and alarms that never tripped. Also, this inside is very hard to access. Even if the Confederation knew about it, they'd probably not know what the hell it was for."

  "So where is it?" I asked again, and Mark grinned and looked at me.

  "You talked about redemption and paying my debts before, right? Well, I can't think of a better place to start than from Mount Zion."

  "No way. Mount Zion?" Mount Zion was one of those sites that every city of sufficient age has. Built in the mid-1800's, it was originally a Methodist seminary before becoming an insane asylum (excuse me, hospital for the mentally disturbed) around World War I. After the war, the Methodist church wanted to unload the property, and it went into that limbo old properties tended to do. It was too old to get fixed up, but not quite old enough to become a historical monument. Besides, mental hospitals didn't exactly make good historical landmarks. There were dozens of stories about Mount Zion, your standard ghost story fare, but nobody really knew what was up with the property. "You're the owner of Mount Zion?"

  "Well, the main church at least, with the minister's quarters upstairs," Mark replied. "The rest of the property I placed into a trust in order to take care of the taxes. The hospital is under an option to buy from three different developers who want to tear it down in order to put up things ranging from a strip mall to an apartment building. My shell corporation that controls the trust is playing them against each other, and the game could have gone on for a few more years."

  We drove over to the Heights section of town, the rolling hills that the city had first been founded on, and Mark drove us to Mount Zion. As we approached I could see how perfect it was as a location. Relatively centrally located in the city, it was still isolated in the hills, with acres of unoccupied land around it. The driveway was nearly a half mile long, giving us plenty of isolation and warning if anyone wanted to drive up to the site. In addition, the ghost stories and other superstitions limited the number of teenage lovers or homeless who'd be willing to try and use the old buildings for unauthorized purposes. Mark pulled in, and shut off the engine.

  "After I purchased the building, I used my corporation to hire a very discreet handyman, who came up here and did some renovations to the bell tower of the church. The old door was replaced with a steel core security door, and the stairs were reinforced along with the room at the top being cleaned and sparsely furnished. I apologize there is only a single thin mattress, but it was created as an emergency base, not a permanent residence."

  "It'll be fine," I said, looking up at the old church. It still looked abandoned, but solid, in a Neo-Gothic style that intimidated. I thought about Tabby's fixation with The Crow, and thought it was an appropriate place to start from. "When we get Tabby back, we should bring her here. She'd like this place."

  We went inside with our bags, and I was surprised. While the main sanctuary was still an abandoned mess, the stairwell to the belfry was concealed well, looking like the door frame had been bricked over. Mark used a remote control that looked just like one for a car door to unlock the entrance. It even beeped like a car door system would. "Yeah, I copied it. A lot of supposedly high-tech gadgets are nothing more than applying old solutions in new ways."

  The belfry itself was spartan, mostly scrubbed down hardwood that was stained almost black. "The handyman sent the lawyer for my shell corporation a few pics of what it was before, and I liked the old color, so I just had him seal all the wood after making sure none of it was rotted out. They built the platforms of cedar, actually, so it's still solid as a rock. I don't know if the color is a result of the original stain they used, age, bat guano, or a combination of all of them, but I liked it."

  A little bit of natural light filtered in from the slat sides on the north side of the tower, which had years ago allowed the sound of the bells to come out. I could see the massive beams above us where they had once hung, but had been removed decades before. Along the other three walls the slats had been sealed up. There was a thin mattress on the floor along the west side of the floor, a small table, and a series of metal footlockers. "What's in these?" I asked, tapping them with my foot. "Your supplies?"

  "And my tools," Mark replied, unlocking two of the lockers. The tops lifted open, revealing an arsenal. "We should contact the people who have Tabby, and learn more."

  I took out my old cell phone, and looked at him. "Here?"

  "No, we'll go back on the road," Mark said, taking out two pistols. "You ever fire a gun before?"

  "Just on video games, and one time I did some paintball," I replied.

  Mark nodded, put one of the pistols back, and pulled out another. He took a clip of ammunition from the trunk, slapped it in, and pulled back on the top, making a metallic, intimidating *snick*. He turned the gun around and held it out to me. "It's loaded, with one in the chamber. There's a safety on the left side, right now it's on. Push it in, and the red line disappears. See?"

  I looked, and saw the button. I pushed it in, and heard a small click. I looked on the other side of the grip, and saw the button had popped out on the other side, this time with a red line visible. I pushed it, and the safety reengaged. "Okay, got it. Now, how do I cock this thing?"

  "You don't need to," Mark said. "Once the safety is off, just point and shoot. Listen, this thing is not very big, but it packs a punch. You more or les
s point and shoot, and can do it over and over again."

  Mark took two more pistols from the footlocker, slid in clips, and tucked them under his shirt against his lower back. With his shirt hanging loosely over the top, I couldn't see anything. "Do you have a jacket or a sweatshirt?"

  "I have a hoodie," I said, "but it's kind of tight. I couldn't wear that pistol in my jeans like you are."

  "Then keep it in the pocket itself. If you stuff some other things in there, you should be fine. We're going to walk, so it should look like you have a cell phone or something like that in there. Don't pull it out unless you have to. You'll know when."

  We left the belfry, and walked cross country until we were along a side street, near a preschool. "This was a lot easier when I started," Mark said as I pulled out my phone. "Back then, there were pay phones all over the place. Nowadays, neighborhoods like this don't have many at all. In some ways it makes it more flexible, since we can go anywhere. The bad part is you need to hang onto a phone. There's some VOIP and different masking programs out there, but in a lot of ways they are just as traceable as a normal cell phone. So, we do things like this, and travel. I'd prefer to get on a city bus or something and head downtown, but I don't want Tabby to be in any more danger."

  I nodded and pulled out my phone, dialing Tabby's number. My hands shook as I waited for the call to be picked up. I didn't have to wait long. A rough-voiced man picked up the call after only three rings. "Miss White."

  "Where is Tabby?" I asked immediately, before he could say anything else. "Is she safe?"

  "She's fine," the man replied. "Although that may not last forever. Is the Snowman with you?"

  "Yes," I said, looking up at Mark. "Why?"

  "Put him on the phone," the voice commanded.

  I handed the phone to Mark, who held the phone up to his ear. "I'm here...... okay...... okay..... not going to happen. Not there, I'm not a fool. That's fine. Just me and her. Fine. Three hours. Now put her on the line, let her verify her identity."