by Hazel Parker
It was leaving an awful lot up to chance. But right now, I didn’t see any other way in. I had to gamble that my odds would be better on the inside than they were right now.
But on the other hand, if I made it too obvious that I was trying to get kidnapped, Snake would see right through my ploy. So, I had to get caught, but do it in a way that made it seem like I had overlooked something critical.
I decided against going straight across the airstrip and made the long walk around. All the way around, my mind kept drifting to Kaylie back at the bunker. Poor girl was probably losing her damn mind and was bored to tears in there.
And, yeah, she was probably worried about me.
I wasn’t worried about her as long as she was smart enough to stay there. At the risk of sounding crass, she’d just survived two weeks on a boat with far less food and books; staying in my bunker would feel like the Ritz Carlton in comparison.
But I couldn’t think about her. Or at least, I couldn’t dwell on her. I had to make my move.
When I got on the main road, I sneaked past the gate with the single bar that opened, more of security theater than actual security. I sneaked through the parking lot, got to the side of the building, and went through one of the many back doors. That far back, a lone man—with, unsurprisingly, a gun on his hip—was smoking a cigarette, looking mighty bored. I reached up, put him in a chokehold, and dropped him to the ground.
Under normal circumstances, I would have hidden him somewhere, perhaps stuffed him in a locker or a cabinet. But this, I decided, would be my “mistake.” I would leave him out in the open. Someone else would come across him. And then my cover would be blown, and—
I stepped into the hallway and saw guns pointing at me from both sides.
I had succeeded, I supposed. Just not quite to the degree that I had hoped for.
And then the applause came. I felt my body tighten. And laughter came.
“Well done, Scott,” Snake said. “I suppose you wanted in-person negotiations to take place. That can be the only explanation I could have for why you would be so foolish as to come here in the middle of the day.”
“Save it, Snake,” I said. “Let’s talk.”
Snake smirked.
“In due time,” he said. “For now, I have someone you should say hello to. But I need to make sure that you don’t know how.”
It occurred to me what was going to happen about half a second before the barrel of the gun hit me in the back of the head.
~~~
When I woke up, I was in an empty white room that looked it had once been an office. A compound for Snake and his militia, this was not; they’d had to have assumed control of it in the last couple of weeks or so, because I could still see indents on the carpet where desks had once stood.
“You’re a deep sleeper, you know that, right?”
Oh, shit. Liam!
“And you’re a man of mystery, being able to survive shit like that.”
Liam chuckled, but it was more of a laugh of disbelief.
“My life was never in danger, at least not when the plane blew up,” he said. “But I was worried about you and the girl.”
He nodded to the door.
“Those assholes rigged the plane with explosives. They got me shortly after I brought the plane in. They tried to get me to watch as you two got on. But I managed to escape their clutches and blew up the plane right before you got on board.”
“Jesus. So you—”
“I had no choice but to surrender, Scott,” he said.
I didn’t begrudge him that. I was more just stunned that this mission had gotten to the spot where we needed to blow up our escape vehicles to save our asses. What sort of fucking luck we had had, huh?
“And I will tell you right now, don’t even bother negotiating with the asshole.”
“I wasn’t planning on selling my soul.”
“No, I mean, this isn’t the Snake we know,” Liam said. “It’s no secret he’s never been a nice guy, but he seems more on edge. More prone. More…easily tripped up, let’s say.”
“Any idea why?”
Liam shrugged.
“You want to try and decipher madness, be my guest. He keeps talking about how he’s going to take the girl for himself, and no one’s going to stop him.”
My stomach tensed at that. I fucking hated the idea of anyone else touching Kaylie, most especially fucking Snake. The very thought of his hand laying on her…
“We gotta fucking kill him.”
“We gotta fucking escape first,” Liam said. “I don’t think they know where she is, but my guess is they won’t need long.”
I begrudgingly nodded.
“Fight another day,” I said. “And how are you proposing we escape?”
Liam shrugged.
“Good news is there’s not a lot of cameras here,” he said. “They took over this place, so not like they built it with heavy security in mind. Bad news is there’s a bunch of them, two of us, and they have weapons and we don’t.”
“So we take them out two at a time?” I said with a shrug.
“Like we always do?”
“Like we always do.”
Liam and I, at this point, had an unspoken communication for how we’d work this out. We had trained for moments like these so often, we didn’t need to discuss.
Liam fell to the ground first and started writhing like he’d just suffered a seizure and a heart attack at the same time. I called for help. I could hear the guards on the other side.
And at first, they just laughed.
But I knew that we didn’t need to convince them the first time. We just needed to convince them at some point. God bless Liam for being such a fucking great actor. He continued his writhing and I continued my cries for help until, finally, the guards seemed to think something serious was actually happening. One of them came in.
One was all we needed. The guard stood over Liam. I tackled him below the knees, Liam took his gun, and then he stood up, stepped outside, and knocked the guard out with the butt of his gun. It wasn’t the prettiest move in the game, but I knew that Snake had ordered us to live. He wouldn’t get any money out of us if we were dead, and he wasn’t going to get paid by Mother Charleston anytime soon.
“All right,” I said. Left unsaid was, “You know what to do now. Sneak around, get to the first floor, and use our stealth to get out of the building.”
The good news about it being an old office building was that it wasn’t like this was a military complex or intelligence building, with multiple floors and holding cells and all sorts of madness. This was a two-story building, and we had probably wound up in a corner office furthest from the entrance. So, yes, a bit of a hike, but not one so arduous as to demand extreme luck.
We choked out about a half-dozen guards along the way and got to the lobby when we ran into our first trouble.
And by first trouble, as it turned out, I meant our biggest trouble.
Two guards, seemingly positioned solely to be aware if anyone strange entered the lobby, stood looking inward. The instant they saw a flicker, we heard guns being cocked. We pulled back before they shot, but the time for stealth had ended. Even if we waited until they went at ease, other guards would wake up soon.
And it only took one, even one who had already lost us, to raise the alarm.
“Fuck subtlety?” I whispered.
Liam nodded. I looked back, took a breath, and turned out.
The guards had just started to lower their weapons, which was all the time I needed to get my shot off. I landed true, hitting the first guard in the head. Liam hit the second. Our fire, as it always was, was unerringly accurate.
But now we had to run. No, we had to fucking sprint. Only the entire complex now knew what was going on.
“Let’s go!” I shouted, no longer feeling the need to keep my mouth shut in this spot.
We hurried outside. I knew we couldn’t run all the way to the bunker, not without first running out of
breath and second bringing the enemy right to Kaylie. I found a motorcycle, hotwired the damn thing, and had Liam hop on the back.
I rolled out of the lot just in time to turn around and see Snake watching us escape. He didn’t look flustered at all, actually; on the contrary, he almost looked like he was happy we had escaped. Snake was not such a genius as to have deliberately let us escape—the two guards at the front had said as much—but he did relish a good chase. He was a sick fuck in that way.
Escape today. Makes it all the more rewarding when I win tomorrow.
I ignored the thoughts, gunning the bike. Because we’d surprised the compound, I never saw other bikes or vehicles following us. But that didn’t mean that I ever slowed down.
In fact, when I realized how little gas this particular bike had, I panicked. I needed this damn thing to get us to the compound. I could not leave Kaylie by herself, only to eventually be discovered by Snake and his goons. That was non-negotiable, something that I could not allow to happen under any circumstances.
We got about a quarter mile away from the compound when the thing finally died. I rode it as far as I could into the vegetation before abandoning it. Liam and I hopped off and broke into a full fucking sprint as fast as we could.
You better not have left, Kaylie.
I am coming back.
And I am going to make you mine when this is all over and done.
We made it to the garage door just as the sound of distant vehicles filled my ears. I got the door open with a secret outdoor panel, and we slid under, not waiting for it to open all the way.
I shut the garage door behind me to the bunker. Gasping, out of breath, I collapsed against the wall.
We had done it.
“You all right?” Liam said, offering me a hand up.
I looked up, remembered I needed to remain calm, and nodded. I took his hand and rose.
“We can’t stay here long,” I said. “Maybe we can lay low for the evening, but we need to go before sunrise. Only a matter of time before they comb the island and find everything.”
“Agreed,” Liam said. “Thanks for saving me.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
I opened the door and walked inside. Kaylie was sitting on the bed, but the instant that she saw me, she nearly ran to me. Only the sight of Liam—and, I noticed, his perplexed expression—stopped her in her tracks.
“Liam, this is Kaylie,” I said. “This is what this whole mission is about.”
“Pretty lady,” Liam said.
I found myself a little annoyed at that comment. Liam’s words did not indicate he was going to hit on her—unlike me, he probably could still adhere to the rules of DOM—but they still provoked some deep-seated instinct to protect Kaylie.
“Hi, Liam,” Kaylie said. “Guess you rescued this wuss, huh?”
Liam laughed.
“She’s got a little bit of spunk,” he said. “I can see why she’d be a handful.”
“Yeah, I am,” she said.
I shot her a look that told her to shut the hell up and not say anything more. I had no faith that that look would be paid attention to.
“Let’s get some rest,” I said. “Two hours. I’m setting the timer to go off in two hours, and then we leave. Kaylie, I hope you got some rest.”
She looked disappointed. I had a feeling it wasn’t because of how little sleep she’d be getting.
“Well, I can sleep on the floor,” Liam said. “Seeing as how there are two whole beds here, and both of you—”
“Scott can share a bed with me.”
An awkward silence filled the room. I didn’t even hide my scorn or contempt for Kaylie. Liam looked confused, but it almost looked like he wanted to be confused, like the alternative of confronting an uncomfortable truth would have been a bit too much.
Technically, Kaylie’s words hadn’t implied anything too awful. It was sort of a simple problem of who slept where. If I slept in the same bed with her and kept clothes on, in theory, I could have deflected any concerns.
But I knew full well Liam’s mind was already turning. He was not stupid. He hadn’t become an agent in DOM because he was an idiot.
“I will sleep on the floor,” I said. “I have suffered the least during this mission and am in the best health. Kaylie, you will sleep in the main room for protection in case this bunker gets attacked. Liam, you will take her bed. Understood?”
I spoke sharply enough that no one questioned me.
“Good,” I said. “Get some rest. It may be the last bit we get before we get back to the States.”
Chapter 20: Kaylie
When Scott asked if I understood, my silence wasn’t agreement.
It was confusion.
Why wouldn’t Scott want to share a bed with me? After all he’d been through, after the way he entered like he’d just run away from Snake, after his fear of losing me…wouldn’t he want to hold me tight?
Liam went to the main bedroom. I looked at Scott as soon as I thought he was out of earshot.
“Why wouldn’t you want to share a bed?”
Scott looked at me. The fury in his eyes only seemed to be growing. Even though I was happy to see him alive, I was a little terrified of that look.
It was handsome, sure. It was also the kind of controlling and dominant that said that he wasn’t fucking around at all.
“Do not ask me that question again, Kaylie,” he snarled. “You know why.”
I didn’t say or show anything more, but over his shoulder, I could see Liam’s head poking out. Maybe he hadn’t heard our exact words, but the disappointment on his face told me he had a pretty good idea of what was going on.
And I was so upset with myself.
If Scott had told me that we couldn’t be anything at the end of this mission, I would have understood with a minimal amount of heartache. We were two people living very separate lifestyles, and even if not, he did not live in New York City. But if I had ruined his career…
If I’d ruined something that I wasn’t even sure existed…
I turned my back to Scott and pulled the covers over my body, as if I could fall into a world where none of this happened. If I had ruined our relationship, I’d never see him again. If I had ruined his career, I’d forever see him in my dreams, but not in the good way—I’d forever feel guilty for what I had done.
I tried to make peace with it. I tried to tell myself Scott and Liam would find a way to explain everything to each other and move forward. But knowing how Scott had been with me at first and what standards he and Liam probably held each other to, it wasn’t happening.
~~~
After a quick nap, the day passed with nothing more than awkward silence.
Even Scott and Liam did not say much to each other. At one point, they went into the room I’d torn apart trying to look for information, but Scott didn’t say anything to me when he left. It was unbearable not being able to express how I really felt to Scott, not being able to have a real, honest conversation about everything that had happened.
I needed a chance to talk to him about this. If I couldn’t give myself peace in my head, I needed to get it through dialogue.
When Liam said he was going to take a shower, I knew that was my opportunity. Scott was in his bedroom. I waited until I heard the shower turn on, and I practically ran to Scott’s room, knocked, opened the door, and sat on the edge of the bed.
“The hell, Kaylie?”
“Don’t ‘the hell’ me, Scott,” I said. “I know I fucked up by inviting you to sleep in the same bed with me. I know that wasn’t a great look. But do you have to be a dick about it? Do you have to act like there’s nothing to it?”
Scott sat up on the bed, folded his hands on his lap, and looked at me. It was so hard to stay mad at him with a face like that—stoic, composed, and with complete certainty.
“There is something to it, of course,” he said. “I’m not going to lie to you about that. I have feelings for you.”
But right after he said that, he shook his head.
“But that’s not what’s important right now,” he said. “I need to get you home to your mother.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Kaylie, let me explain this to you,” he said. “That I rescued Liam is great. We have an additional trained member of DOM here, and that can only increase our chances of getting you home. But the problem is that even if our chances are doubled, they’re still not great.”
He stood up and started walking as he talked, perhaps half-brainstorming as he explained things to me.
“Our DOM plane is shot. We can’t bring a boat in right now, not after the plane exploded. It’s too risky. If we have to, we will. But right now, we’re only considering some of the less crazy options. Which are still fucking crazy.”
“And they are?”
“You’ll know them when you need to.”
I snorted. But it wasn’t like I had much room to argue otherwise.
“When we are off the Cayman Islands and out of Snake’s reach, we can talk as much as you want, Kaylie,” he said. “And if there’s something there, we’ll figure it out.”
If? You already said there was.
Or you’re that focused on getting us off this damn island…
“But for now, that is not on my mind in the slightest.”
He was lying. He wouldn’t have admitted there were feelings there if it was not on his mind “in the slightest.”
But what was I going to do, tell him to reconsider in the middle of this mission?
“Scott…”
“Kaylie,” he said sternly. “I need to get you home first. That’s all that matters.”
He stood over me, folding his arms. All he had to do was unfold those arms…push me on the bed…take me while Liam was still in the shower…
“You still have time to give me something before Liam comes out,” I said, a smile forming on my face.
“No, Kaylie,” he said. “I—”
Just as Scott could act with dominance, it was high time for me to give him a dose of his own medicine. I rose from the bed, threw my arms around him, and pulled him in for a kiss.