by Eden Summers
For long moments, there’s nothing but silence until I’m forced to open my eyes and look down at him. My regret is immediate. Overwhelming. The subdued lust staring back at me makes me want to beg for him to continue.
“After what I’ve previously done to your body, I never would’ve imagined you’d hate my touch.” His hands fall away. “What changed in our weeks apart?”
I lick the dryness from my lips. “You know what changed.”
“I explained myself.”
I step back. “You made excuses.”
“Bullshit.” He lashes out, grasping the back of my legs to keep me in place. “I told you why my father’s death had to happen the way it did.”
“After promising me there would be no more games. But that’s all there is with you. You’re still playing me.”
His lip curls, his eyes hardening. The punishing grip on my legs vanishes and he pushes to his feet to tower before me. “Give me your cell, then take a seat at the dinner table.”
What?
He’s not going to deny it?
“Don’t make me wait, Anissa.” He holds out a hand.
There he goes again with my name. No sentiment. No tease. I’ve hit a nerve.
“I guess I was right.” I pull out my cell and slap it into his hand.
He stalks away, taking my device to the kitchen counter, the power down sound trilling through the room as he yanks open a drawer and pulls out a tiny metal object.
“What are you doing?” I follow after him.
“Taking out the chip.” He places the tiny point of metal into the top of my phone, slides out the chip holder and taps it onto the counter. “There. Now I’m satisfied.”
At least that makes one of us.
“Take a seat.” He indicates the table to his left with an arrogant wave of his arm. “Let’s get this over and done with.”
“Yes, let’s.” I lead the way, taking the middle seat while he takes the head. “I’m waiting with bated breath to find out what shit storm you’ve gotten yourself into this time. Don’t keep me in suspense.”
He smirks, settling into the old Cole, the one with oozing superiority. “After that pat-down I would’ve described it as panted breath, but it’s your story to tell.”
I don’t bite. Nope. Not this time.
I’m above this. I have to be.
He sighs into the growing silence. “Fine, Anissa. Let’s talk.” He leans back in the wooden chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Robert is dead.”
“Please tell me I didn’t endure being frisked for a crumb of information you’ve already given me.”
“What I didn’t tell you,” he grates, “is that before he was taken care of, he’d made plans to have Stella and Tobias abducted.”
My world shifts.
It’s an unfathomable flip from uncontrolled emotion and anticipation to pure dread. “He planned?”
Now Cole’s appearance makes sense. His deathly complexion. The hair-trigger anger.
I sit forward, resting my elbows on the table. “Am I correct in assuming he made an attempt last night?”
His brow furrows, the expression a mix of cringe and devastation.
“Cole?” My heart thunders.
“He didn’t merely attempt. He succeeded.”
I’m lost for words, caught in a waking nightmare.
“They’re gone.” He holds my gaze, his brittle voice betraying his pain.
“Where? Has there been a ransom demand?”
“I haven’t heard a word. I don’t know where they are. Decker is currently attempting to hack one of my neighbor’s security tapes for clues, but…” He shrugs. “He’s been at it for hours.”
“Where were they? Where did this happen?” I fire the questions at him. “What are the authorities doing?”
“It happened here.” He glances over his shoulder toward the far hall. “They were abducted from under my roof.”
“Please tell me that bleach didn’t dispose of critical evidence.” I push to my feet. “And where are the cops? They should still be here. They should be setting up phone tracking and scouring the property. They can’t—”
“The police won’t be involved.”
My stomach free falls. My heart follows.
I shake my head, not believing what I’m hearing. “Cole, you need to call the police. You can’t seriously think—”
“Don’t start,” he warns. “The authorities don’t mean shit in my world. You already know that.”
“But—”
“Don’t.” He shoves from his chair, the wood clattering on the tile behind him as he jams his hands into his hair. “Even if I wanted to, I fucking couldn’t. Robert was killed next door, along with an accomplice Penny slaughtered. And the kids’ goddamn nanny was murdered in my own damn house.”
I ache for him. For all of them.
He seethes out a long breath, his hand lowering to his side, his stature strengthening before my eyes. “The nanny had a used needle in her arm. The last thing I can handle right now is a drug investigation that will distract my attention from where it needs to be.”
I keep shaking my head, struggling to understand how he’s coping. How his sister must be handling this. “Tell me what else you’re doing to get them back. What plans do you have in place? What resources?”
He gives me nothing aside from that fixed stare.
“Cole?” I grab the back of my chair and shove it under the table. “Answer me.”
“I thought you could resist.” His tone is thick with derision. “Isn’t that what you said?”
“Do you want me to admit you were right? Is that what you’re waiting for?” I clench my fingers around the top of the chair. “Okay. You were right. I can’t walk away. Not from this. Not when those kids are gone and you’re refusing help from the authorities.”
“Not refusing.” He bends over, splaying his hands on the table, attempting to stare me down. “It’s not an option.”
“Either way, you’ve limited your resources. So tell me how I can help.”
He keeps glaring, his jaw ticking, his knuckles white against the wood. I can’t tell if he wants me involved or not. My read on him is hindered by his exhaustion.
“I don’t know.” He straightens. “I’ve got no fucking idea.”
He turns away and paces to the far end of the table. “We spent the early hours going door to door, waking every neighbor to obtain any security footage they had. Every car that passed along this street was identified and their details forwarded to a contact for investigation.”
“A contact?”
“Yes, a fucking contact.” He pauses. “It may not be legal, but it ensures I get the information instead of the cops withholding it from me.”
“What else?” I start toward him. “What’s in motion right now?”
“Apart from me wasting time explaining myself to you, nothing. I have no leads. The man responsible is dead. And there’s been no ransom call. I’ve contacted every one of my father’s associates. Hunt’s been to all the usual haunts, throwing his weight around, but nobody has heard a damn thing about those kids. There’s not one fucking trace.”
“And the others? What are they doing?” He has an entire team of people working for him—not just Hunter and Decker.
“The others are slightly unreliable at the moment.” He grits the admission through a tensed jaw. “I can only count on myself.”
“Why?”
“Sarah and Luca are injured. Decker was shot in the leg, but he’s doing his best. And Benji is…” He huffs an unforgiving snicker. “He’s—”
“I get it. You don’t have to explain. He must be beside himself.”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
I swallow over the dryness in my throat. “Your sister—”
“I don’t want to speak about my sister right now. I have to stay focused.”
I get that, too. An abduction has to be one of the most traumatic circumstances a parent could endu
re, let alone knowing the perpetrator was a sex trafficker. “Let me help.” I eat up the remaining space between us, stopping in front of him, my fingers itching to soothe the furrow of his brow.
“How?”
The word washes over me.
How.
Yes, exactly how can I help him without committing a crime? How can the benefits of my badge work toward securing those children without making this an official case?
“See?” He raises demeaning brows. “You should’ve walked away when I told you to.”
“No. I can help. I could use the Bureau’s resources… I could—”
Fuck.
The burden of loyalty drowns me. The loyalty toward Cole, not the FBI.
He scrutinizes me. “Last I heard you weren’t back at work.”
“I’m not, but…” I pause, attempting to figure out a plan. I could ask Easton. He’d obtain information for me. I’m just not sure if he’d do it without the full story.
“But you’d rely on your boyfriend to get whatever you need. Is that it?” He reads me, plucking my thoughts like painful feathers.
“He’s not my boyfriend. But yes, Easton is reliable.”
Cole creeps closer, his upper lip twitching as he invades my personal space. “I’ll pass.”
“You’ll pass?” Is he serious? “Two children have been abducted after their nanny was murdered, but you’ll pass?”
“I’ll pass,” he repeats in a sneer, then walks by me, heading toward the kitchen.
“Hold up a minute.” I grab his sleeve. “Are you joking?”
He stops. “Do I look like I’m bursting with humor right now?”
No, he looks like a man filled with uncontrollable fear, rage, and jealousy, all of them clouding his judgment.
“I know you can be heartless, Cole. But I assumed that was toward other criminals. Not innocent children.”
He yanks his arm away. “I guess you don’t know me as well as you thought.”
It’s true. If he can turn down my offer without a second thought, then yes.
“You’re right,” I admit. “You’ve just established I don’t know the first damn thing about you.”
“You’ve also earned yourself a one-way ticket out of here.” He yanks open the fridge. “Don’t let the front door hit you when you leave.”
“You’re kicking me out?”
“You bet I am. I don’t need your narrow-minded ignorance. I’ve got enough shit to deal with.”
9
Cole
She waits a second, my misplaced anger seeming to render her speechless.
This isn’t her fault.
None of this has anything to do with her. It’s all me. All my failure.
“Fine.” She stalks to the counter, snatches up her cell and the discarded SIM, then walks out.
I don’t move. Apart from the grinding ache of my tensed jaw, I don’t fucking budge until she slams the front door in farewell.
“Fuck.”
That woman destroys me. Slays me. Without pause.
And now she’s gone.
“It doesn’t sound like things ended well.” Sarah walks in from the far hall, Hunt following her.
I close my eyes, my hands finding their way back to my hair, my fingers ripping at the strands.
“It’s good she’s gone,” he grunts out. “The stupid bitch shouldn’t have come here in the first place.”
“Don’t start,” Sarah warns. “The last thing we need is you running your mouth.”
No, the last thing I needed was to push Anissa away. Why couldn’t I stop myself?
“What do we do now?” Hunt asks. “I’ve called everyone I know.”
I don’t have to look at him to understand what he isn’t saying. He made those calls and came up empty-handed. Every stone has been turned.
“Someone is lying.” I drop my hands to the kitchen counter. “It’s not possible that a plan this big has gone unnoticed.”
“I’ll pay everyone a personal visit.” Hunt pulls his car keys from his pocket. “I’ll throw my weight around and see what I can uncover.”
“No.” Sarah shakes her head. “All you’re doing is wasting time. We need Anissa’s help.”
“Like hell we do.” Hunter starts for the front of the house. “She’s a fucking viper.”
“You’re wrong about her.” Sarah focuses on me, the bruising under her eyes almost black. “Your sisters continue to blow up my cell, asking for updates. They’re petrified, and we’re stuck here doing nothing. And things will only get worse once Penny finds out, which you’re going to have to deal with any minute now.”
“I told Decker to leave her in the dark.” I push from the counter. “We’ve got time.”
“Wrong again.” She flashes her phone screen at me, showing a string of text messages I can’t read from this distance. “Luca has walked out of the hospital. They’re all on their way here. And as soon as Penny takes one look at us she’s going to know something has happened. If our expressions don’t trigger her suspicion, the smell of bleach will.”
Fuck.
Fuck.
“We need Anissa,” she repeats. “And believe me, I don’t like admitting it either, but what other option do we have apart from sitting on our asses waiting for a ransom call? Or worse.”
“Don’t go there,” I warn.
Nobody can fucking go there.
It’s bad enough that I lose focus on finding those kids every few minutes and fall into a sinkhole of possible scenarios where their battered bodies turn up in a ditch.
“Cole, we’ve spoken to everyone we know.” Her eyes plead with me. “Benji has been to every transport hub. And your contacts haven’t come back to us with even the slightest update.”
“They will. We just need to wait.”
And wait and fucking wait.
God, I hate this.
I’ve never hated anything more.
I wish I could throw money at the problem. I’d bleed through my finances to get Tobias and Stella back. If only there was a fucking ransom.
“Anissa has to be able to help.” Sarah sighs. “She’d have to have experience in this type of thing. And you’ve worked with her before, right? She plays both sides.”
“Nobody plays both sides.” Hunter stalks for the sofa and flops into the far seat. “She’s either a turncoat or waiting for an opportunity to take us down.”
“She’s no threat.” I’m not defending her. It’s merely the truth.
If Anissa wanted to put me behind bars, she would’ve attempted it by now. The only risk with her is if she opens her mouth to her piece-of-shit boyfriend.
“Then you have to go after her,” Sarah begs. “Think of your niece.”
“I can’t stop thinking of my goddamn niece,” I snap.
“Babe, you don’t understand how this works.” Hunter pats the sofa cushion beside him, wordlessly instructing Sarah to sit. “If Cole’s seen aligning with a Fed—”
“Don’t even attempt to feed me that bullshit.” She cuts him off with a vicious wave of her hand. “Cole has cops in his pocket. He’s got other Feds, too. What’s the difference?”
“The difference is that she isn’t dirty.” I scrub a hand over the back of my neck, trying to ease the building tension. “She still believes the legal way is the right way.”
“What about Greece?”
“Greece was different.” Greece feels like a lifetime ago with the contrast of how things now are between Anissa and I. “She had very few choices while in the islands. And no communication with the outside world. I know her well enough to understand she won’t break the law willingly.”
Sarah crosses her arms over her chest and straightens to her full height. “Then make her do it unwillingly.”
Hunt scoffs.
I don’t bother reacting.
Sarah is the most pro-choice woman there is. She wouldn’t force an innocent to carry her groceries, let alone be involved in this.
“You kno
w what I mean.” She glowers. “Let me convince her.”
“It’s not about convincing her.” I walk around the kitchen counter toward them. “She wants to help—”
“Then why the hell did you let her leave? Go after her.”
I didn’t let her. I pushed her. I forced her out of this goddamn house because I can’t look at her and not see Easton’s hands all over her body. But it’s more than that, too. So much fucking more.
I send a warning look to Hunter, wordlessly telling him to pull his woman into line.
He ignores me, sitting forward to rest his elbows on his knees before hanging his head. “We may have limited options, but she’s not one of them.”
No, we never had any to begin with.
None.
“Please, Cole.” Sarah gentles her voice as she pads toward me. “Help me understand why Anissa isn’t an option.”
“Because she’s on leave from the Bureau. There’s no way she could gain information for us without causing suspicion.”
“But her knowledge alone… Her experience…”
She’s right. So goddamn right.
“It all means nothing when she’s not one of us,” Hunt mutters. “We could never trust her.”
Sarah continues to stare at me, her gaze digging under my skin. “You trust her. And you know she can help. So what’s really holding you back from running after her?”
Frustration.
Pride.
A whole fucking heap of jealousy.
“She doesn’t want to be one of us.”
“None of us did,” she counters. “Not to begin with. But whatever reason brought us all here also convinced us to stay. So convince her, Cole. Do whatever it takes to bring her to our side.”
“No. It’s a bad idea.” Hunt pushes to his feet. “At any given moment she could turn on a dime and make this case official. Then we’d have cops breathing down our necks, digging into shit that will cause a whole lot of complications. I disposed of three fucking bodies this morning, Sarah. Do you want me to go to prison?”
She shakes her head, still staring, still visually decimating me. “If something goes wrong, Torian will buy off the necessary people. He always does.”
“That takes time.” He reaches her side, pleading his case with a punishing glower in my direction. “Don’t listen to her. You’ve already got men on your lower levels wondering what the hell you’re doing being seen with the Fed. Their trust is slipping. Especially when you’ve made no effort to hide the association. You’ve got dealers looking over their shoulders—”