She’d been curling up around the stuffed elephant he’d bought for her to mark Valentine’s Day. Whether he’d brought out her inner little or she had thoroughly acclimated to the role she was playing, she didn’t know. The line between what she wanted in her heart and what she pretended to want had blurred, as was the danger in deep cover operations.
Plus, she’d completely fallen for Lukas. She was head-over-heels in love, and she had thought up several ways to save him from himself.
“Do you know where he went?” Needa’s nonchalant tone didn’t fool Brandy.
“No. He never tells me where he goes, only when he expects to be back. He said two or three days this time, so he’ll be home tonight, maybe.” Brandy stared into the distance, frowning. “I’ll bake chicken. That’s easy to heat up if he gets home really late.”
“You really are devoted to him.” Needa smiled, her eyes lighting with joy. “Don’t you wonder where he goes?”
Brandy shrugged. “He comes back to me every time. I know he misses me, and his home is where I am. It doesn’t really matter where he goes.”
“Does he tell you what he does on his trips?”
“No, but I imagine it has something to do with his doctor skills.” He’d told her, in general terms, what he did when he was in the field. She had every reason to believe he’d abbreviated the truth and that he’d left out anything he didn’t want her to know. Her team had filled in some of the blanks, and her experience and expertise had filled in others.
“What if it doesn’t?” Needa pushed.
With a sigh, Brandy stopped sorting through papers. “Needa, I know he’s carrying out a mission. I know he’s furthering a cause he believes in with his whole heart and soul. That’s what I’m doing here while I wait for him to return—I’m serving a cause he believes in with his whole heart and soul.”
Needa’s blue eyes bored into Brandy. “But you don’t believe in our cause?”
It was a question she asked frequently, and Brandy wasn’t sure which answer she was looking for, but she knew capitulation would look even worse to Needa.
“I believe in Lukas,” Brandy said quietly. “And he believes in your cause. Other than making money, I’m not sure what your cause is.”
“You think we’re here just to make money?”
Brandy had processed receipts showing millions in profits. “I think you can afford to ration seafood to us. Lukas would love scallops and lobster. And steak. And he would like to take me shopping for clothes. He said it’s hard to buy the right sizes when I’m not there to try on the outfits. He does okay, but the last time he bought a dress, it was too tight in the chest. Of course, he probably planned it that way. He’s definitely a man who appreciates a set of breasts.”
Needa burst into laughter. “You make me laugh, Brittany. I love having you around. I’ll see what I can do about arranging a shopping trip.”
Chapter 16
That evening, Brandy baked chicken she’d marinated in spices, and she cubed potatoes, which she baked in butter and rosemary. She played music and danced around the apartment as she dusted and mopped. The thing about living in the desert was that sand seemed to get everywhere no matter what precautions were taken.
A knock sounded at the door, which was not unusual. Anyone needing medical care stopped by the apartment if the clinic was closed. Lukas was on call at all hours of the day and night, and almost nobody knew he’d been sent on a trip, leaving the compound with no medical staff on call.
People mistakenly assumed she knew anything about medicine. In the past two days, Brandy had wrapped bandages around wounds and doled out allergy medication without quite knowing what she was doing. She advised people to come back when Lukas returned because she was the equivalent of a clueless aunt who was never left alone with children. She purposely didn’t use the field skills she’d picked up in the military, the CIA, and the FBI.
She pirouetted her way to the door, bowing elegantly as she opened it. “Welcome to my humble abode. I have no idea how to fix your boo-boo, but I have bandages and vodka.”
Vodka had come with the last grocery delivery. Neither of them had touched it.
“I’m not hurt, and I prefer wine to hard liquor.” Needa’s laugh tinkled through the room.
Brandy straightened up, smoothing her shirt where it had caught on the waistband of her sweats. “Needa, I wasn’t expecting you. What a nice surprise.” She opened the door wider. “Won’t you come in?”
Needa swept inside, owning the space with her presence. She motioned to the shoes lined neatly along the wall behind the door. “Put on your shoes and grab a sweater. I’m taking you somewhere special.”
Not one to argue with the boss, or the boss’s wife, Brandy grabbed a hoodie and stuffed her feet into her shoes. “Give me a minute to turn off the oven.” Dinner was done, but she was keeping it warm in case Lukas came home. “Should I bring my bag?”
“Do you have money in it?” Needa scoffed. She already knew the answer. Nobody in Willowlands was permitted to have cash. If they needed anything, they had to submit a request. Brandy had processed quite a few requests for sundry items Willowlands didn’t provide in their regular deliveries. She had plans to requisition a few lace bras and a set of pretty underwear via special request.
Something in Needa’s tone smacked of extra nastiness. The woman was haughty on a good day, but she usually toned it down around Brandy because she viewed Brandy like a pet or small child. For her part, Brandy worked to cultivate the image of someone who was innocent and docile, and yet was organized and strangely good at math.
Brandy blinked at the unexpected vitriol, hiding the way it set off warning signs in her brain. “It just has lip balm, and I usually put a bottle of water in it.”
Needa laughed, a dry noise that scraped over Brandy’s taut nerves. “Get your bag. I’ll wait.”
Nothing about the night was normal, and as Brandy retrieved her bag from the closet, she counseled herself to go along with Needa. She had no idea what the woman had planned, though based on their earlier conversation, she might want to take Brandy shopping. This was an important bonding opportunity with the woman Brandy suspected was more responsible for the success of The Eye than Ben was.
And if Needa was upset about anything, as long as Brandy didn’t sass back, the elder woman would eventually confide in her. It was how she’d found out so much concerning the financial side of The Eye, and it was what would lead to their most convictable evidence.
Normally Needa used a golf cart to travel around Willowlands. Tonight the cart was outside Brandy’s apartment. She climbed into the passenger seat. “Am I allowed to know where we’re going?”
“Yes.” Needa flashed a grin. “We’ll start in the barn. The mare isn’t feeling well, and I wanted to stop by to check on her.”
Brandy frowned. She’d swung by the barn to visit the horses earlier. Lukas loved animals, and she knew he’d want her to keep an eye on them. The mare had seemed fine. “Poor lady. I hope it’s nothing. But Lukas can check her when he gets back.”
That secret smile didn’t diminish. Brandy’s suspicions grew. She knew Needa was fascinated with Lukas and Brandy’s relationship. After that first time, she’d entered their apartment sporadically without knocking or announcing herself, and she was especially happy when she caught them in the middle of having sex. A couple times, she’d come in while Brandy was on her knees awaiting Lukas’s next order.
When they jogged, Needa peppered her with questions about their kinky arrangement. She was especially obsessed with the fact that Lukas didn’t have to tie her up to make her stay still for a spanking, and she delighted in Brandy’s tales of how serving Lukas completed her.
Brandy had learned early on not to mention the punishments Lukas occasionally doled out and to play up the fun parts. Needa already treated her poorly. She didn’t need to add fuel to the fire. She’d already shared too much about her relationship with Lukas. He meant a great deal to her, and sh
e wanted to keep some parts private and untainted by the investigation.
The lights around the barn chased away some of the darkness outside around the entrances, but deep shadows still obscured most of the interior. Brandy followed Needa into the long, wide hallway lined with stalls on either side.
Brandy squinted into the darkness, peering into the mare’s stall. “It’s empty.”
“Hmmm.” Needa tapped her lips. “That’s odd.”
“She’s outside, Mrs. Ross.” Nathan Armstrong approached the pair. He was part of the security force, so it was odd to see him inside the barn. None of the security force went out of their way to talk to her. Except for Needa, most of them treated her as Lukas’s possession, and she suspected Lukas nursed that preconception to keep her separate from them—and therefore safe.
She would have been upset, but it was easier to investigate when she was invisible and overlooked.
Alarm bells went off inside Brandy’s head. “Is she okay? Needa said she was ill.”
“She’s okay.” Nathan lifted his chin, motioning to someone behind Brandy.
Adrenaline rushed through Brandy’s system, and she froze, assessing the situation. From the quiet click, she deduced someone behind her had a gun. However, Brittany Sorrel wouldn’t know the sound an automatic rifle made when the safety was turned off.
She looked from Nathan to the person behind her. Zarah Braithwaite had been to Lukas a few times for Botox and once for a rash. Every time she came in, Brandy found an excuse to slip away. Though Zarah had been exposed mostly to Jed and Liam, Brandy had been on site a few times while her team worked to sever a major funding and money laundering connection for The Eye. If anyone was going to blow her cover, it would be the woman who wanted so badly to climb the ranks of The Eye that she’d murdered her own husband.
Brandy appealed to the big boss. “Needa? What’s going on?”
Needa nodded to Nathan, and in short order, Brandy found tape over her mouth, and her wrists and ankles were bound with more duct tape. Since she could get out of duct tape, she didn’t panic. But she did keep her wide, innocent, questioning stare aimed toward the woman in charge. The tracker in her shoe didn’t have a microphone, and the pen with the directional microphone was in Needa’s office where it would do the most good, so her team wouldn’t know she was in trouble, not unless something happened to disrupt her signal.
Nathan threw her over his broad shoulder and carried her into the arena. He set her down gently on her feet. The first thing she noticed was Lukas. They’d tied him up as well, and thick rope wound around his forearms and wrists. He hung from the rafters, which were decorated with brightly colored holiday lights. Someone had turned them on, and multi-colored light reflected from jagged cuts near his eyes and mouth. Blood dripped down his face, and his color noticeably grayed when he saw her next to him.
“No.” His low protest rumbled from his chest and was barely discernible as a word. “Leave her out of this.” He tried to move, but his toes barely grazed the cement floor, and he couldn’t get traction.
“Leave her out?” Mr. Ross laughed as he reached out to sling his arm around his wife. “But she’s the problem, Doctor Luke. She’s a disease you brought into my home.”
He motioned to his goons, and Brandy found herself bound to the same rafter as Lukas. They’d exchanged the duct tape for a thick-gauged rope. Lukas was less than a foot away, but she couldn’t reach him, and he was in no position to offer safe harbor.
Mr. Ross ripped the duct tape from her mouth. “Let’s have introductions, shall we?”
Brandy stared as if he’d lost his mind.
“How about you tell your dear lover your real name?”
She glanced at Lukas, but her attention was on Ben Ross. What did he think he’d discovered? Was it something that jeopardized her cover, or was it something completely unrelated? Brittany Sorrel was a complicated cover story, and if he dug deep enough, he’d find another identity, one that was wanted for identity theft and fraud.
Fuck. She only needed another few days to finalize her investigation. She was so close to figuring out if Willowlands and the Rosses were the final pieces they needed.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Ben laughed, though he looked anything but amused. “Okay, I’ll do it. Lukas Xuereb, loyal soldier of The Eye, I’d like you to meet Supervisory Special Agent Brandy Lockmeyer, loyal soldier of the F. B. I.” He drew out the name of her organization, stating each letter as a separate nail in her coffin.
“No.” Lukas’s eyes narrowed into a hateful glare. He spat blood at Ben’s feet. “No. You’re wrong. You’re making it up. You’ve never liked her.”
“Brittany Sorrel is a cover identity. It’s a good one. I didn’t find much the first time I dug into it. Since she was just your piece of ass, I didn’t think anything of it, but when she started working with Needa, I conducted a thorough background check. She’s the one responsible for the end of our liaison with the FBI.” He lifted a brow in Needa’s direction. “She put Miguel Lawrence in prison, and set in motion events that systematically cleaned out the ranks of the FBI and CIA, though we still have lieutenants in strategic places. They’ve kept her from doing as much damage as she wanted. Still, she’s put a serious crimp in our operations here and abroad.”
Needa approached Brandy, stopping inches from her face. “She’s the reason we had to get in bed with the Russians.”
“She is.” Ben folded his arms and leaned back on his heels. “She’s single-handedly responsible for our recent problems.”
Brandy didn’t correct them, though she did mentally give credit to her team. Each one of them had worked tirelessly and put their lives on the line many times in their relentless pursuit of The Eye. Even now, her team was somewhere nearby, sifting through the bits and pieces of evidence she’d been feeding them via her hidden cell phone.
Needa tapped her lips as she thought. “Why didn’t they tell us she’d infiltrated Willowlands? We should have known about the plan from the beginning.”
Parking his hands on his hips, Ben shook his head. “I don’t know, but don’t think I won’t find out every person at fault and punish them for this. Of course, I’m starting with the most obvious culprit.”
“You lied to me,” Needa hissed, her spittle splattering on Brandy’s face. “You pretended to be my friend. Worse than that, you made me have to work with the Russians. They’ve been hard at work undermining American democracy long before we got involved. We could have thwarted them. We could have taken back control from them. Now they’ve got Kentucky and most of the Federal government, and the whole world knows it. That was not my plan. I wanted to remain in the shadows, controlling the world without anyone the wiser. That’s real power—when people roll over for you without even knowing your foot is on their throat.”
Stunned, Brandy stared, her mouth open as she absorbed the information Needa threw at her. First, she was happy to have the missing piece in place. Now she knew why The Eye had changed their focus from a covert infiltration of government and industry to a more thuggish approach.
Protesting wouldn’t get her anywhere, so Brandy waited. She was on the lookout for a chance to turn the tide, escape, or contact her team. Or all three.
Nathan ran a hand-scanner over her. The thing squealed when it got to her left sneaker. He removed her shoe and ripped it apart to find the minute tracker Liam had hidden in the lining. “No wonder we couldn’t find anything when she was out running with you. She has a bug in her shoe.” He ground it under his heel, crushing it against the concrete floor.
Relief flowed through her, though Brandy didn’t show a reaction. Crushing the tracker would trigger an alert. If her team couldn’t reach her within ten minutes, they’d run an extraction.
She just hoped they’d get there in time, which meant she needed to stall.
“Needa, please,” she begged. “I’m not that person. I don’t know those people. I have no idea what’s
going on. I thought we were going bra shopping.”
“You’ve lost the right to call me anything but Mrs. Ross.” Needa reached for Lukas. She unbuckled his belt and slid it from the loops on his jeans. “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. However, I guarantee you won’t like it when I take a belt to you.”
“Don’t,” Lukas warned, a strength in his voice that had been missing before. “Don’t fucking touch her. If you need to hit someone, hit me, not her.”
Brandy’s gaze roved over evidence of the beating he’d already taken. In addition to the cuts on his face, his clothes had tears and blood smears that indicated they’d gone after his chest and stomach already. His breathing was pained, which could be from being bound in a stretched-out position or from damage to his ribs or lungs.
She exhaled hard, capturing Needa’s attention. “I don’t understand. If you think I’m this FBI person, why are you going after Lukas? You said he was loyal to you. Why would you do this to someone who was loyal to you?”
Ben Ross fielded that one. “He brought you here. He must be punished for this transgression. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t know. He should have known.”
With that pronouncement, he punched Lukas in the face. Brass knuckles gleamed in the scant light. Lukas’s head snapped back, but he didn’t make a sound.
The lack of reaction made fury blaze from Ben’s eyes. He sputtered and shouted, and his next blow landed across Brandy’s cheek. Pain exploded under her left eye, and she didn’t cry out because she was too stunned to react.
As her wits slowly returned, she found Needa circling her bound and hanging form, a sinister predator playing with her prey. When she had the angle she wanted, she swung the belt. It whistled through the air and landed on Brandy’s lower back with a thud.
Lukas routinely spanked her harder than that on bare skin. Having a softer blow land on the other side of her thick hoodie was anti-climactic, especially when the main source of pain came from her face. Brandy focused on regaining her senses. Her head rang, her cheek throbbed, and blood dripped down her cheek.
Re/Deemed (Doms of the FBI Book 8) Page 22