by Hazel Parker
But only temporarily, and only in the moment. The second that I finished fucking her, everything would come rushing back. I could postpone having to deal with all of these issues, but I couldn’t eradicate them. No, I had to choose my job over my lust.
I walked past her quietly, heading for the war room. When I stepped inside, there was just something slightly off about the place, like something had been moved. I couldn’t pinpoint what, and I figured for how I’d been last night, I’d tried to act like I could take care of some shit but just had not.
I tried to remember the events of last night. I remember having some whiskey to remember Liam. And then I remembered how the more time that went by, the angrier I got at myself for violating all my standards. At one point, I believe, I’d gotten so upset and so angry that I threw a glass against the wall and then taken shots to try and chase away all of the pain.
Small fucking miracle that I was only moderately hungover and not so hungover that I couldn’t function.
Remember, you can’t do shit about last night. Focus on what you can do.
I thought about the situation at hand. My plane had been blown up, and if Snake had gotten to Liam and that rescue plane, there was a good chance that, at least for the moment, any other agents coming in for assistance would meet a similar fate. I could try and get Kaylie off on a boat, but that presented its own challenges of being slow. I could even get her to the airport and ask her to get off on her own if I took care of some things, but I vetoed that. I was going to deliver her to New York City myself.
I ran through various options, but there was only one that I kept coming back to, only one that made sense. I fucking hated it. I didn’t want to do it.
But the only other “option” was to continue this cat and mouse game until the cat had this mouse pinned, and I was fucking dead.
I picked up a burner phone. I called one of the numbers that I had committed to memory. And on the second ring, it picked up.
“I’m going to take the fair assumption that this is you, Scott of DOM.”
I sighed.
“Yes, Snake, it is.”
Snake laughed on the other end of the line. He knew when he had the upper hand, and he always gloated in that fact. There was nothing subtle when dealing with Snake, at least not when it came to his words; he always let you know how he felt and where he stood with you.
“How are you feeling this morning, Scott?”
“I am calling to negotiate with you, Snake,” I said. “You know how we work. This has gone too far. I didn’t kill any of your men on the boat, but now I’ve got a dead agent, a destroyed plane, and gunfire coming down on me.”
“Is that so?” he said.
There was something about his tone that suggested I had missed something, but Snake liked to play mind games. I ignored it and pressed on.
“Yes, that is so,’ I said. “You don’t care about the girl beyond the money. I don’t want this job to get anyone else killed. So let’s figure something out.”
“Hmm,” Snake said. “Strange that you say that you don’t care about the girl beyond the money, either. You have gone to an awful long extent to protect her.”
“It is my duty as an agent of DOM to protect my clients, Snake. You know that.”
Snake snickered.
“Indeed, merely an observation.”
I did not say anything more.
“What is your offer, Scott?”
I bit my lip. I hadn’t even anticipated that Snake would be willing to make a deal.
“I’ll split the ten million with you,” I said. “I get something for rescuing the girl. You get some money out of your efforts. We go home, we move on, and we do this all again.”
Snake hummed. In the split second before I’d made that offer, I’d thought about low-balling him, but in Snake’s position, my offer to split it was probably a low-ball offer. He had all of the cards in this scenario, and I did not have much room to argue.
“So five million for me, after all the resources I’ve expended to make this happen,” he said with a snicker. “I—”
“Scott!”
That voice.
Liam?
It had to be a trick.
“The fuck?” Snake shouted away from the phone.
If this was a ploy, it was an extremely well done one. Snake could be tricky, but he wasn’t so tricky as to do this. The only thing I could assume was that Liam…
He had to be alive.
“I think we need to do a little more than five million, Scott,” Snake said. “Most especially since you now know that your partner is alive.”
OK. He’s alive. But he’s captive.
“In fact, for everything that has happened, I’m going to need more than ten million.”
Shit.
“I want twenty million from you, Scott, and I want it in my hands within twenty-four hours. In return, I will return Liam to you no more harmed than he is now, and I will grant you and the girl safe passage to the States.”
Say as much as you wanted about Snake, he was a man of his word. Unfortunately, his word usually led to a lot of suffering and violence, but he was a bit of an odd one like that. A criminal with honor, if such a thing fucking existed.
“If you do not have twenty million by this time tomorrow morning, then I will have no choice but to kill Liam and hunt you two down,” he said. “And don’t even think about trying to rescue Liam. He’s under lock and key here at the airport.”
Snake would not have revealed his location to me without reason. This was what he sometimes did—made it more difficult for himself on purpose to make things more fun. To some extent, that was fine, but when people started getting killed…
“The clock is ticking, Scott.”
The phone hung up.
“Shit,” I grumbled as I wearily stood up, looking for my hammer so I could destroy the phone before it could be cracked and traced any further.
I didn’t have twenty million dollars just lying around. I didn’t even have ten million. Five million, I could figure out, but twenty fucking million dollars…
There was no way. I needed to figure out a way to save Liam. It was that or get all of us killed.
I’d probably get killed trying to rescue him anyway, but death in action was far better than death by sitting on my hands.
I leaned back in my chair. I didn’t have time to waste. The longer that I waited to make a move, the more likely Snake was to move the clock up. I couldn’t even wait for the fall of night, for I certainly hadn’t slept in so much as to put me on the other side of noon.
I checked the clock, and sure enough, it was just barely past eight.
I stood up, headed to the bathroom, and found some Tylenol and other drugs. I didn’t need to be cured of this hangover; I just needed enough headspace to think clearly. I popped the pills and headed back to my bedroom, gearing myself up.
When I was all set, I headed back over to Kaylie, still asleep on the floor. She looked so damn beautiful.
And she was also all that I had left on this mission.
Or, really, if I was being honest, at all.
I was no social creature. I did what I wanted, when I wanted, and how I wanted. Such behavior was great for getting laid, but it didn’t leave a lot of room for normal friendships. When this all ended, if all worked out, Liam and I would go back to being friendly agents, I’d go back to sleeping with women from around the world, and…that would be it.
Maybe Kaylie and I could figure something out, but it wasn’t like she was in Manhattan and I was in Queens. We were states apart, and even then, the question of distance was not an issue of physical proximity, but of lives taking us in separate directions.
And then she stirred. I tried to get up and leave.
“Scott?”
Fuck.
I paused. Remember, you’re a professional now. Don’t let things fall.
“Glad to see the fall didn’t knock you out for good.”
“The f
all?”
“You know, when you got really drunk and hit your head on the ground.”
Jesus. I was even more of a mess than I thought.
“And now you’re dressed up like you’re about to go on a mission? After you were a hot mess?”
I took a slow breath in. She was trying to be chipper and somewhat flirtatious. But I didn’t have time. I didn’t have fucking time for anything but Liam.
“Yes,” I said. “You will stay here. I will lock everything down. Do not leave until I return.”
Her face, at first a little concerned but still mostly relaxed, shifted suddenly.
“What’s going on?”
She rose. At least she had clothes on, but seeing her just woken up, her hair still a frazzled mess, her body as curvy and seductive as ever…and with my headache fading…
Fuck. Just because I’d set out to keep my focus on the mission didn’t mean I wasn’t aroused. Somehow, someway, fucking Kaylie Charleston could make me forget so much with just her body.
“I need to go,” I said, speaking slowly so I said everything exactly as I wanted to say it. “I have a mission.”
“Without me?” she said. “Don’t you have to take me home?”
“What I’m doing will allow me to do that, yes. But you must remain here.”
“Scott, the least you can do is tell me what you’re going to do!” she said, sounding genuinely concerned. “I can’t have you just walking out of here like this. What happens if you get killed?”
“Then Snake will find you again and raise his price to your mother,” I said.
It wasn’t meant to scare her. It was just the reality of the situation.
“How risky is this?”
“It’s always risky,” I said.
But Kaylie was picking up on what it was that I was going to do.
“You’re going to go see Snake, aren’t you,” she said, less of a question than a realization. “You’re going to go…kill him? Talk to him? Scott, what the hell? You can’t leave me like this.”
I bit my lip. I turned around. I needed to do my fucking job.
“Take me with you. I can help somehow.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
“If you really think I’m going to go see the man that kidnapped you, why the hell would you want to go with me?”
“Because I can help you kill him.”
“You say that like it’s carrying an extra box of food. It’s not. You’ll just be in the way.”
“Scott!”
I shook my head. I had to go.
“I can’t lose two people I care about in one day.”
Kaylie went quiet. Even I was surprised at what I had said. But I gathered my thoughts quickly and got the hell out of there, locking the door with my handprint moments later.
I went out to the garage, grabbed an electric bike, and sped out toward the airstrip once more.
And in doing so, I really had to hope I hadn’t just condemned three people to die. Myself, obviously.
But Liam, for real this time.
And Kaylie.
You had better not fail, Scott.
No.
You have no choice. You must succeed. There is no other option.
Chapter 18: Kaylie
“I can’t lose two people I care about in one day.”
If those words were meant to reassure me that I would be safer here in the bunker, that it was best that I not go on the mission with him, that wasn’t helping at all. It made me think that Scott may not be coming back at all. It made me think that this guy who had gone from cold rescuer to mysterious character to…to whatever he was now had spoken his final words to me.
At first, this left me distraught. I didn’t cry, but I curled up on the bed, a ball of stress, fearful of what he was doing. Shouldn’t have gotten involved. Shouldn’t have teased him. He’s unattainable, even if not in the short-term.
But there was only so long that I could feel pity for myself before I had to accept that I would have to fight my feelings. Just like Scott couldn’t lose two people he cared about, I couldn’t lose Scott and any small chance I had of escaping.
I had to plot my own escape.
So…
Where did I even begin to start?
I started in the same room that Scott had caught me in drunk, something he seemed to have no memory of this morning. I went through everything that I could, ignoring any fears that Scott would come back and figure out I had snooped around. Either I’d be gone, or he’d be alive and I’d accept whatever happened next.
There were a bunch of journals and a bunch of notes scattered about, but unfortunately, because it was all written in short-hand note format, there was nothing I could make sense of. I figured out that there were probably three main agents in DOM, but they didn’t have phone numbers attached to them. I might as well have been reading Japanese; contextually, I could figure out a few things, but not enough to act on anything.
I gave up on trying to get information from there and headed to the garage. There were motorcycles, Jeeps, 4x4s, even some scooters. I wanted to open the garage and escape.
But when I found the button that I thought was for the garage door, I froze.
Was I really going to do this?
Was I really going to try and steal a vehicle to escape? What was I going to do, beg the local authorities to take me in? Scott had made it quite clear they couldn’t protect me. I couldn’t get on a plane without running into trouble. No, I had to depend on him.
My little game of making myself think I could do it all myself was foolish. I would have to stay here. That, and in this garage, I was afraid flicking the wrong switch or pressing the wrong button would introduce some sort of unexpected chaos.
I trudged back into the bunker, shoulders slumped, head down. There was one last place I had not really explored yet, perhaps the most taboo place of all—Scott’s bedroom.
I wasn’t thinking sexually right now, though Scott was quite the thrill to think about. No, I was just thinking of simple privacy. But maybe there would be something in there; maybe Scott would have written a note about who to get in touch with at the end.
Probably not. But what did I have to lose?
I walked inside his room. I didn’t see anything. Just a drawer, a bed, and…well, that was pretty much it. No desk to put notes on. No bathroom. No apparent closet or second room.
I sat on the edge of the bed and sighed. I guessed I was waiting for the long haul.
I looked to the top of the drawer when something caught my eye. It was a photo frame, unlikely to help me, but something still worth looking at, if only to satiate my curiosity.
I walked up, grabbed the photo with care, and looked at it. It showed Scott sitting in a beach chair, his back to the camera, overlooking the beaches, with some beautiful rock formations just beyond.
I actually recognized the beaches from my travels. He’d taken this photo in Portugal.
Why did he have a photo of just himself in Portugal?
He had mentioned retiring last night when he was hammered. I had thought that he was just an emotional hot mess with Liam’s situation, but maybe he was serious. Maybe…
What would it be like to be a part of it?
I snickered at the thought. But I played it out anyway.
I didn’t care about Cameron anymore. I cared for my friends. I cared for having a normal life, even with the craziness of my mom. Maybe hooking up with a guy who went on secret missions like this wasn’t exactly the way to do it, most especially since he wasn’t in New York City all the time.
But you know what else I didn’t care for? Being the daughter of a reality TV star and constantly feeling like all eyes—almost literally—were on me. Spending my life on private beaches of Portugal, with only a few unknowing, equally private tourists around me, would have felt like paradise in comparison.
Maybe I owed it to us to see if we could try and build upon this. Regardless of what happened, maybe there was somethi
ng more to us than just sex. Maybe our spit balling and tormenting and daring of each other wasn’t just sexual; maybe it spoke to something deeper, something more passionate.
Or maybe I was just acting with some Stockholm Syndrome right now and needed to get home, and life would return to normal.
Maybe.
Or, hey, maybe Scott needed someone spunky in his life to give him shit.
Time would tell. And at this point, I begged it to tell me as fast as it could.
Chapter 19: Scott
When I pulled up to the spot where I had cut a hole in the chain-link fence, I could see that not only had Snake and his men not repaired it, they had actually made it bigger as if trying to scramble multiple men through it to try and find me.
I squatted down at the edge of the hole and looked out on the empty airstrip. I could see a building on the far side, a sort of small airport office that probably functioned as a traffic control center on normal days. But even from here, I could see men outside.
Granted, the men looked like casual employees, walking around in civilian clothes. But I knew better. Snake wouldn’t have put the most dangerous or the most armed men out. He would have told them to look the part and given them body armor and guns just in case shit got hairy. A tourist would not know the difference, but I sure as hell did.
And if that was on the outside, it all but guaranteed there was shit going on inside that I, alone, could not reasonably handle without getting killed. One man against an army was not heroic; it was suicidal.
I took stock of my options. I could circle around and try and sneak in, but that wasn’t so much “sneaking in” as it was “draw attention from a different angle.” The place would almost certainly have more guards from the public side.
So I decided to do something almost stupid, something that I had a feeling could come back to bite me in the ass, but something that also would get me face-to-face with Snake and closer to Liam.
I would be obvious.
I would let myself get kidnapped on purpose, get taken in, and then figure out the rest from there.