She’d done this sort of deep cover work, but never for so long. Never with the risks so high. For the most part, she was on her own. She’d been treading water, though, and unable to get close enough to him to find more information. So she “lost” her job as a courier, damn all the downsizing companies do these days, although the boss had been quite nice about it and explained that they’d decided to let her go first since she’d be leaving the company shortly—she was getting married, right?
Naturally, Patrick was there to take her life over.
She wondered how he’d ever react if she told him that he was the real job.
“Ella . . . you’re distracted.”
Forcing herself to smile, she said, “I’m sorry, Patrick. I was thinking of how wonderful you’ve been, finding me this place to stay, taking care of me.”
He brushed a kiss across her cheek. “You still look tired. You should get more rest, Ella.”
Ella . . . yes. The part she played. Along with the lovely rooms, the lovely clothes. The elegant demeanor and the doormat exterior she presented him with. With him, she was Ella and she settled seamlessly into that part, smiling at him. “Of course.” Of course I look tired. You have me followed everywhere I go, and although I can bloody damn well lose them, if I do that too often, you’ll wonder how I’m able to do it.
Tired. Tired didn’t even touch how she felt. Living a lie all this time, hoping against hope . . . losing herself. It had been two years since she had first waded into this job, twelve months since it had completely sucked her in, and every day she felt like she’d died a little more inside. Bloody hell, yes, she was tired.
Stop it. Not now, she told herself. Keeping her smile plastered firmly on her face, she moved to sit on the sofa, waiting for him to join her, but he didn’t.
He chose to remain standing, looming over her, silent. Watchful. Controlling, egotistical bastard.
She didn’t react as he continued his probing stare. After nearly a minute, a faint smile curved his lips and he looked away, moving to the bar to fix himself a drink.
She let herself take a slow breath, wishing her racing heart would slow down. What in the hell was that about? No telling, really. She was terrified of the son of a bitch, but she couldn’t let him see that. It would only make him worse. Looking down, she stared at the sophisticated, elegant ring she wore.
It should be getting easier. She was getting closer. She knew she was—and her contact had even managed to show her proof. It was sealed up, tight and safe for now. But they needed more. More solid info . . . and an exact location would be nice. Something more than the few incriminating photos. That would be even better.
Could they find it soon enough, though?
Find it, she thought tiredly. She’d thought she’d find something soon two years ago, when she’d first stumbled onto this. It had been tangled threads that had led her here, and the more she’d unraveled those threads, the deeper she’d fallen into this mess.
And she was so deep now, she started to worry if she’d ever get out. If she’d survive.
Sometimes, like now, those fears got to be too much, and the weight of what she was doing crashed down so heavily. When that happened, she made herself remember why she was doing this. She thought of a girl. A poor, lost girl . . . So much time had passed that sometimes the girl’s face would start to fade. Then something would bring it back. Something . . . like Patrick’s cruelty. A touch from him . . .
She let herself think about the girl, gave herself a minute to shore up her strength, all the while projecting an outer image of calm. It was worth it, no matter what. In the end, Patrick would go down and he’d never hurt another young woman. She had to remind herself of that, even at times like this when she felt so completely stuck.
“I’ve been thinking about taking a day away at a spa,” she said abruptly, turning around and smiling at him. “I heard about a lovely one that I’d like to try.”
“I’ll have my assistant set a day up for you here. We’ve got wonderful facilities, as I’m sure you already know.”
Yes . . . someplace just under your nose. What she wanted was to be someplace completely away from his influence. Where he’d have no way of watching over her, spying . . .
Except she had to be close to him for her to get her job done.
He lifted a hand, laid it on her shoulder. The touch was light. “You’re not getting . . . nervous . . . are you, Ella?”
Nervous. Bugger all. Just his touch made a rush of cold snake through her—water, black and icy, closing over her . . . sucking her under. Brutal hands. Hard laughter.
Did you really think I’d let you leave . . .
Shaken, she forced those dark, odd terrifying thoughts aside. Have to get a grip. Suppressing the urge to shudder, she eased away from him and went to the bar under the pretense of pouring herself a glass of wine. “A bit, perhaps. A wedding is a rather important event for any bride.”
Even an unwilling one . . .
“Just think of it more as a business arrangement,” he advised, following her. Once more, he cupped his hands over her shoulders. Squeezed. A little too tight, a little cruel, until his fingers ground into her bones, but it lasted only a second. She swallowed the gasp before it could escape, knowing that any reaction would only make it worse the next time he tried to do it.
She’d learned her lesson well over the past few months.
Through her lashes, she watched as he moved deeper into the room, like he owned the place. Just as he thought he owned her. “A business arrangement,” he said again, turning to smile at her. “Thinking about it that way makes it so much easier to ignore any nervous inclinations, don’t you think?”
“Of course.” She inclined her head, smiling at him as her shoulders throbbed. One of these days, you icy piece of work, I’ll bloody you. It was a promise she’d made herself months ago.
After the first time he’d hit her.
It was a promise she intended to keep. She’d do it for herself, and for every woman he’d hurt. And there had been so many . . .
“Of course, I shouldn’t worry,” she murmured as he crossed the floor and settled on the couch, smiling at her, satisfaction glinting in his eyes. He’d hurt her . . . frightened her, even if she refused to show it. He still knew.
Hell, she suspected he liked that she didn’t show her fear. Made her that much more useful as a showpiece. That’s why he wanted to get married anyway.
It was a business arrangement, and that had never been in any doubt.
It’s time I found a wife. I believe we suit each other. Neither of us are looking for emotional entanglements, after all.
No. She wasn’t looking for an emotional entanglement. She was looking for a way to ruin his life, but that wasn’t emotional. Or it hadn’t started out that way, at least.
“So, enough with the nerves, right, Ella?” he said, eyeing her narrowly.
“Of course.” She smiled at him over the rim of her glass. “It’s a business arrangement, naturally. But a wedding is an important thing for a woman. Easier said than done, trying to not be nervous. I’ll do better about it, I promise.”
“Glad to hear.” He studied her critically. “Worrying does you no good. It will give you wrinkles.”
Wrinkles—
It was almost laughable. If only that were the worst of her problems.
She had much bigger things to worry about . . . staying alive. Staying two steps ahead of him. Actually, ten would be ideal.
FOUR
"WE’RE closing in on what I think may be the core group for a large human trafficking operation.” Special Agent in Charge Taylor Jones sat across from Joss, still wearing a perfectly pressed three-piece suit.
Joss knew enough about clothes to realize it probably cost more than Joss usually spent on clothes in six months. He also knew that the guy had probably been wearing the damn thing all day, but Jones looked like he’d just stepped off the front of a magazine—polished and smooth. That suit m
ight fool a lot of people, just like the impassive face.
Taylor Jones projected the image of a cool, uncaring son of a bitch.
And very often, he was a cool son of a bitch.
Some of the others in the unit thought he had auspicious, lofty desires—maybe political aspirations.
They were wrong, Joss knew.
Taylor’s aspirations were simple and not particularly lofty at all. He wanted to put away the monsters. As many of them as he could. The men and women in his unit were the weapons he used to fight the monsters.
It was something he and Joss had in common; it was one of the reasons they got along well enough. They understood each other.
Normally. Right now, Joss was still pissed off. He’d been looking forward to that downtime. More important, he really hated it when Taylor had him get mind-fucked. It was a brutal, awful experience he’d had to do more than once, and each time, he hoped it was done, even though he knew better.
“Just how large an op?” he asked, snagging a French fry from Dez and popping it into his mouth. He’d polished off his Big Mac and fries on the drive over. He was still hungry.
Dez scowled at him. “Leave my fries alone.”
He winked at her.
“Children, please,” Jones said. He reached down and grabbed a bag, placed it on the table, and pushed it over to Joss. “You’ll end up dead of a coronary, the way you eat, Crawford.”
“Yeah, well, if it happens, just don’t let anybody send flowers . . . I don’t want flowers at my funeral.” He opened the bag and glanced inside. It was another order of fries. “Man, it’s like you read my mind . . . oh, wait, that’s my thing.”
“You’re so juvenile.” Dez glanced at him. “Who did you sync him to for the mind reading? Will it hold?”
“No.”
Joss and Jones spoke at once.
Dez arched a brow.
Jones gestured and remained silent.
“I’ll get overridden. Whoever you want to put in my head, it has to be at the same time. The previous gift will get wiped out—think of me as a computer, sort of. Each time I sync with somebody, whatever gift I had before gets erased. I get rebooted.”
For a second, Dez stared at him, her dark eyes unreadable, and then finally, she shook her head. “Man, that’s gotta really suck. How do you control it, taking it in like that?”
“Well, that’s the cool part.” He grinned at her. “As long as our brave and fearless leader syncs me to somebody with some modicum of control, I take in what they have—again, it’s like my brain is a computer and I just copy the data. If you give me bad data? I’m screwed and I’ve gotta go through the bad data and clean things up before I’m any good, but if you give me solid, good data to work with? Then I’m fine.”
“You mean, as long as you’re hooking up to somebody who’s trained, you’re picking up on their training, too?” She glared at him.
“That’s it in a nutshell.” He shrugged and dragged a French fry through the remaining ketchup, popping it in his mouth. “Before you glare at me, remember . . . if he sticks me with somebody who’s screwed up, I’m screwed up until I get a handle on it.”
Dark memories rolled through him—he’d dealt with that more often than he cared to remember, but rarely had it been at Jones’s hands. It had happened before he realized just what was going on in his head. Jones had been the one to help him get a handle on things.
But he’d been a mess for a while there. A nightmare that he’d rather not have to go through again.
* * *
IT was nearly eleven before Patrick finally left.
Dru locked the door and stood there, her head pressed against the cool, smooth surface, and took a deep breath in, blew it out. Her mouth hurt from the kiss he’d just given her. Although it hadn’t really been a kiss.
The son of a bitch had bitten her.
One more mental mark. One more thing he would eventually pay for, Dru told herself.
And if she didn’t need to finish this job . . . well, she might have put a bullet in his brain before he even made it to the elevator.
But there was the job.
Of course, she’d gotten a good, solid reminder of that right when he’d sunk his teeth into her lip, hard enough to draw blood, hard enough to hurt. She’d felt his pleasure in it—not sexual, precisely. Just a pleasure for causing pain, and then . . . flash, flash, flash . . . she was there. It was like a brilliant whirl of light as the memory transfer took place, all happening in the blink of an eye—too fast for her to process, as the memories burned from his mind into hers.
It lasted microseconds for him—he never even seemed to notice. But for her, it was slow, insidious torture, being trapped in the filth of his mind as her awful gift connected them.
Trapped inside his mind was even worse than suffering his touch; it was an ugly place. Filled with memories and thoughts she’d rather never know.
The chunk of memory had lodged inside her head, rather like a bit of food she hadn’t properly chewed. It sat there, trapped in her mind, choking her and waiting for her to either get it down or die.
She’d deal with it. He wouldn’t do her in as easily as that, the wanker.
First things first, though . . . she dumped the dry red wine she’d poured herself earlier. She hated that fucking shite. Give her a mixed drink, give her a beer, or give her a decent wine that didn’t leave her feeling like her mouth was full of sand and she was fine, but those dry reds that Patrick loved . . . she hated them.
After she’d dumped it down the drain, she rinsed out the sink and the glass then mixed herself a rum and diet, heavy on the rum. As she took a sip, she headed over to the wall, dimmed the light.
Once she’d done that, she made her way back to the door. It wasn’t the most comfortable spot, but if he came back, she’d rather have a warning and all it took was a physical nudge to pull her back. Having the door open at her back would do it.
Stretching out her legs, she grabbed the book she kept on the table nearby. She’d done this more than once. Being prepared just might save her life.
After she’d downed a third of her drink in one swallow, she closed her eyes. And then she opened her mind . . . fell into his, into that little chunk of memory she’d lifted from him. Fell into a nightmare.
* * *
“. . . THAT one should suit him.”
“Awful fucking skinny,” somebody muttered. “Be like boning a damn chicken.”
The girl hovered on the floor, clutching her knees to her chest, as though she could just disappear into the hard slab of concrete under her naked butt. But she couldn’t disappear, and try as she might, she couldn’t shake their notice, either.
Patrick hauled her up, eyeing her critically. “She’s his type. Clean her up. A red dress. It should suit her coloring. We want classy, not one of those whore’s dresses you like.” He tossed the words over his shoulder before looking back at the woman. “You need a shower. You’ll bathe. You’ll wash your hair. You’ll wear the dress.”
And she just nodded.
He smiled at her. Two weeks ago, one of his girls had tried to argue, tried to fight. And all of them had been witness to what happened after. He’d turned her over to his men. By the time they were done, she’d been bleeding. They’d hauled her bleeding, argumentative ass out into the swamps.
She’d made a nice meal for one of the alligators once his men had broken her legs, her hands. She’d been left just outside the fencing, gagged and crippled. He’d watched her struggle for a while, watched as she tried to crawl. She had even managed to drag herself a few dozen yards.
He’d sat in his security room and watched, recording it. It wasn’t that he’d enjoyed watching the woman die, her screams muffled by the gag as the gator tore into her flesh. But they all had to understand how things were done. They were done his way. And only his way.
He’d recorded it, and the women had watched it the next day. A useful training tool for those who’d try to fight.
Rule with an iron fist. It might cost the lives of a few in the end, but most of them got the point early on.
This had been a lesson none here would forget.
Certainly not this lovely piece. He could still see the fear, the lurking horror in her eyes.
Her dark, dazed eyes just stared into his.
“Am I understood?” he asked softly, touching her cheek.
Again, she nodded.
“You’ll have to speak tonight. My buyer likes a woman who can talk. Speak up.”
“Yes.” Tears rolled down her face. “I understand, sir.”
His buyer . . .
The flash of memory ended there.
But it was something. A compound. That was a new thing—Dru hadn’t ever picked up that much from him before. He didn’t own anything in his name that could be considered a compound. At least not that she’d been able to unearth. She’d unearthed plenty, too, but that had been a while back, before she went so deep into this lie she lived.
Who knows what he’d obtained in the months since then?
Her contact was always watching, always digging up more, but they had to keep their discussions brief. Until one of them had solid proof, he didn’t tell her anything she didn’t need to know.
A compound. Would have to be big, she knew. Gators. Her belly rebelled as that memory rolled through her. She’d watched . . . aw, hell. Tears stung her eyes. Nausea churned in her belly and horror left her numb. Lifting her hands to her face, she gave herself a minute. Just a minute to mourn, to shudder and cringe. The need to vomit churned through her and she breathed shallowly, waiting for the urge to pass.
This was why she was here.
Why she had to do this.
Even if that was a memory she’d rather never, ever have in her mind, it served to remind her.
Somebody, damn it, somebody had to stop him.
And so far, it seemed that somebody was her.
With trembling hands, she reached for her drink, drained the glass. It didn’t do a damn thing to numb the horror, so she shoved herself upright and lurched her way back over to the bar. More alcohol. That was what she needed, just to think through this.
The Reunited Page 3