Secret

by Skye Warren

  I liked him better after that.

  I watched the guys come closer, drawing crazy red circles in the dark, like some sort of screen saver reenactment. My heart pounded; my throat was dry. My breathing sounded like a racehorse, and I thought they must have heard it. They must have seen the whites of my eyes, because Lord knew I was staring, frozen, unable to blink or look away. The two men in front of me were crouched over me, shielding my body with theirs, but I felt protective of them.

  “Shhh.” A breath of a sound. Luke’s hands ran down my arms, softly, lightly.

  I didn’t need his comfort. I needed him to stay alive. I should tell him to stop, but I was petrified, about to break down bawling, so I just stood there and shivered as Luke pressed a kiss to my temple.

  “Almost,” he said, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him. Just the sound, like a hiss but soothing. Almost what? Almost over, I guessed, but it wasn’t. This was only the beginning. We weren’t even inside yet.

  “Hey,” the smoker said, waving his cig. “When the fuck do we have to get back?”

  “A few minutes.”

  “I’m so tired of that shit. At least out here, I can breathe.”

  More waving of the red light. I was like a cat with a laser pointer, watching with bated breath.

  The other guy coughed pointedly. “Maybe you can, but I can’t breathe for shit with all this smoke in the air. Jesus Christ, put that thing out.”

  “Fuck you. Maybe if you had a drag, you’d stop being so uptight.”

  “Excuse me if I don’t want to get my ass chewed out today.”

  “Yeah, yeah, or maybe you’re looking to get a piece of ass. The amount of fucking time you spend with that girl. You probably spend half your paycheck.”

  “Do I complain about where you stick your dick?”

  One red circle, another. “I’m just saying this for your own good.”

  “Yeah, well, for your own good, put that fucking light out. If someone sees us, we’ll get docked for being unsafe. And you’ll be paying me back for it.”

  A snort. “So you can spend it on, what’s her name, Candace?”

  The red light lifted. The guy took a long drag, then blew out just as slow, taking a final hit.

  He flicked the cigarette. It flew in a long red arc. It only took a second for my fevered, oxygen-deprived brain to figure out where it would land. On us. Almost anyway, but it was enough—I tensed. Luke felt it, and through him, Major did too. They turned, ready to strike, to defend us against an attack that wasn’t coming. And in doing so, their defense would expose us. With one hand, I grabbed Major’s wrist, the one pressing against the wall by my head. Trust me. With the barest breath, I said, “Wait,” and I knew Luke heard me because his body stilled.

  The little red cigarette landed at our feet, creating a small glare on Luke’s shoe. Luckily, the men were already heading the other direction. When their footsteps had faded and fifty-two beats had passed, Major blew out a breath. “Jesus,” he muttered. “That was too fucking close. Next time we run into someone, we don’t sit around like ducks. We disarm them.”

  “We’re too wired,” Luke countermanded. “We almost blew our positions because of a fucking cigarette.”

  “I would have got them.”

  For the first time, I approved of the arrogance in Major’s voice. I needed some of that surety.

  “We stick to the plan,” Luke said, and that appeared to be that.

  The word airport was really overselling the Barracks. It was actually a set of five hangars, each with a small circuit of offices in the back. The hangars were organized into a pentagon, facing a circular pavement that led out to a singular runway.

  The design of the place was simplistic, which would work in our favor. The downside was that we didn’t know which hangar Henri would be in. If we went busting into the wrong ones, we would set off alarms, and Henri would have time to bolt. So it was important that we find the right hangar before going in.

  Which is why they’d brought gadgets. Specifically, heat-sensing goggles.

  The building next to us was completely empty. One down, four to go.

  We crept around the side, where Major checked out the next one. “Four below, two upstairs doing the horizontal tango.”

  “Having fun there?” Luke asked.

  “Nothing like infrared voyeurism to make my night brighter.”

  “Let’s go in,” Luke said.

  “We don’t know he’s in there.”

  “Six people total? Those are good odds. And we’re here. Let’s go.”

  “Five,” I whispered.

  “What?”

  “Five that could be Henri. Those are the odds. I’m assuming Major saw an old-fashioned boy-girl party upstairs, which means one of them is female.”

  “Shit, that could be him,” Major said. “Having a good time while his hired helpers do all the work.”

  “How was he taking her?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “The position,” I muttered impatiently. “What position was she in?”

  “Uh…missionary.”

  “Not Henri,” I said decisively. Neither man questioned my conclusion.

  “He could still be on the first floor,” Luke said.

  “Here. Let me see.” I reached for the goggles. “Come on.”

  With clear reluctance, Major handed them over. I peered inside. It took me a couple of minutes to line up my eyesight correctly and then to make sense of the blue-red blobs on the screen. I checked the two upstairs first. Yup, still going at it. And nope, no way would Henri resort to something as intimate or leveling as missionary. Besides, he was an ass man.

  I lowered the goggles to the second floor. First I only saw a single mass, like some sort of a shapeless amoeba. Then one separated and shrank a little—sitting down, I guessed. Another moved away—and sat. I pictured guys gathered around a break-room table, talking shit and grabbing a beer.

  Henri wasn’t here. Even if their specific activities were slightly different, no man was singled out from the crowd, held away as Henri preferred to be. This was the disorganized chaos of jacks and marbles. Henri ruled the space around him with the rigidity of a chessboard.

  “Not here,” I said.

  “How do you know?” Major asked impatiently.

  I really didn’t want to have to explain the marbles-and-chessboard thing to him. He’d just give me that frowny look and tell me I was stupid again.

  “He just isn’t.”

  Major looked ready to argue, but Luke cut him off with a glance. “Next.”

  Two down, three to go.

  Chapter Six

  The middle hangar was the trickiest, because people were milling around. My heart began to race. Most likely this was it, if only because of the activity outside. I counted four men carrying machine guns. There didn’t seem to be any urgency to their movements—which meant our entry wasn’t detected—but energy crackled in the air. As if they were waiting.

  This time Luke and I hung back while Major checked out the building with the goggles. “Too many to get an accurate count,” he said when he got back. “But I’m estimating twenty total.”

  Twenty of them, three of us. And I probably shouldn’t even have counted myself, compared to these guys. Two and a half. Could the situation get any worse?

  “There’s another problem,” Luke said. “Rico isn’t responding.”

  “Shit,” Major said.

  “Yeah, shit. You heard him when he got inside the fence, right? Then nothing. We’ve made it past two buildings now, and he hasn’t reported in about a single one.”

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  “We follow the plan,” Luke said grimly. “We’ve found the right hangar. Now we go in.”

  “Redundancy.” I felt light-headed.

  “Keep breathing,” he told me. Then to Major, “You stay with her. I’ll go in.”

  “That wasn’t the plan.”

  “Well, in the plan we had two
teams, one to keep watch outside, one to go in. Since there’s only two of us, that means one person per team.”

  “Bullshit,” Major said. “She can wait outside by herself. If anyone comes close, shoot them in the fucking face. We’ll hear the shot and come get you.”

  “No,” I said. “I want to confront Henri. You said I would be able to.”

  “It’s not a good idea,” Major said, his voice oddly gentle, as if I might break.

  Maybe I was shaking a little. “That’s why I’m here. I know I’m slowing you guys down, but it will all be for nothing if I don’t at least try. If he dies before he calls off the hit on me and Ella, we’re screwed. You know that.”

  Luke looked away, the moonlight drawing long shadows over his eyes. “Okay. We all go in.”

  We waited until the side of the building was clear and then crept to the back. The night air felt suddenly as thick as fog, as rich as butter. The light beaming down on us from the stars seemed blinding, even though I couldn’t quite make out anything.

  I felt invincible.

  “That’s the adrenaline talking,” Luke muttered, and I realized I had spoken aloud. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

  Right, adrenaline. Except it already was in my head, in my body, rushing through my veins like a sweet hit of coke. I had done drugs a few times. There were men who wanted to get high and wanted the girl to ride it with them. The crash at the end had never been enough to make me want to repeat the experience without a paycheck to help me bounce back.

  This racy, jittery feeling was just like shooting up. I wondered if adrenaline had a crash at the end too. But who cared when it felt this good? It felt surreal, and that kept me safe.

  We crept through the quiet hallways. Where was everyone?

  Major motioned with his hand. Up the stairs.

  We started to climb when Luke paused. He put a hand to his ear. “Shit,” he muttered.

  “I love it when you say that during sex.”

  Major gave me a strange look.

  “Not you,” I assured him.

  He rolled his eyes. “You are flying high.”

  “Almost,” I whispered.

  Luke pressed a hand to his ear, listening. “They need backup,” he whispered. “Major, you go.”

  Major firmed his lips, as if he wanted to protest. But he didn’t have a choice. With a salute and a faint look of regret in his eyes, he was gone.

  “Come on.” Luke waved me to follow him.

  We crept down the hallway, hearing men and women moan and groan and cry out in questionable pleasure.

  He looked back at me.

  I shook my head. Henri didn’t moan. He shouted. And anyway, I didn’t really expect to find him in these upper rooms. He rarely took his prostitutes to bed. This wasn’t a party to him, unlike Major had thought. This was business. This whole setup was too dirty, too common for him. Despite that, I couldn’t shake the eerie feeling, as if he would be here, exactly where he would never be. It didn’t make sense, but I wanted the feeling to go away. I wanted to see Rico and Major and Jeff again.

  “Downstairs,” I mouthed.

  Luke nodded his agreement, and we slid along the wall the way we’d come.

  From the stairwell came the raucous sound of male laughter and female giggling. I looked back and saw nothing but rows of doors. Trapped. Their footsteps climbed the staircase, banging along the sides, as they tumbled about in wild sexual abandon. At least he did. Her laughs were obviously fake, way too high-pitched and evenly spaced. They reached the top landing. I held my breath. Then it was pushed out of me in a whoosh as Luke slammed me inside the closest room.

  He was on me, pulling off my clothes. My hand was caught, but it didn’t matter—he yanked it free, the whole shirt whipping over my head along with my bra, tumbling my hair from its ponytail. I gasped into his mouth, trying to catch up, but I couldn’t. He was moving too fast, climbing onto the bed, dragging my body beneath his as if I were prey and he a tiger gone in for the kill. His mouth glued itself to mine, taking away any sound as he settled between my legs, the hard ridge of his erection a blatant message that his lips hadn’t had time to speak. He rocked against me, and it hurt. I wasn’t ready, wasn’t aroused, but already my body prepared itself to receive him, well practiced in this, growing wet and swollen, supple flesh to be speared repeatedly. His hands were all over me, my waist, my arms, my sides—but not my breasts.

  The door slammed open, and two very drunk, possibly high people stumbled into the room. Luke finally released me, looking up. I panted audibly.

  “Ocupado,” Luke said in a guttural tone.

  “Sorry, man,” the guy said. They both backed out of the room, closing the door behind them.

  We collapsed on the bed for long minutes after they left.

  “Okay,” I said, still panting. “I see what you did there.”

  He let out a breath. “He’s not in this building, is he?”

  “Don’t think so.” I felt a little woozy. The ceiling made lazy swirls above us, like a big upside-down bowl of batter. Allie was a baker. She loved to bake all sorts of things. I wasn’t as good as her, but under her direction, I could whip up a batch of cookies. That’s what this looked like, chocolate caramel cookies with streaks of beige and dots of black. Or was that the exposed pipes in the ceiling? It was hard to say. And all these thoughts about food were making me want to throw up.

  “Damn.” Luke’s voice sounded far away. “I just assumed because there were so many. We’ve got to try the next one.”

  “Okay. Have fun.”

  There was a long pause. “What?”

  Right. We were going now. I was sitting up…pretty sure. I stood and took a step forward and ended up slumping over in a graceless heap.

  Luke caught me and hauled me back onto the bed. “Jesus, Shelly.”

  “That’s not my name.” My words were slurred.

  “It wasn’t just the adrenaline, was it? Oh fuck. What did you do? What did you take?”

  “Don’t know.”

  He was still talking to me, but all the sounds were like mush in my ears.

  I opened my mouth to speak; I didn’t know if anything came out. Until I threw up, and then stuff came out all over the floor—that came out of my mouth.

  Luke was there, behind me, supporting me, talking to me, saying urgent words that washed over me. I wanted to go to sleep. Didn’t he see that? I was tired. But then, bless him, he did understand. He tucked me into his arms and told me to close my eyes, don’t make a sound. Hah! As if I could. Nope, I would be right here. He carried me for what felt like hours, days, or maybe just seconds, and tucked me into the backseat of the SUV we had parked a mile outside the compound. But what about the other guys?

  “Just wait here,” he said, and yes, I could do that. I closed my eyes and slept.

  Chapter Seven

  The first thing that registered was the shaking. I was going to vomit, rattling about like a loose bit of change. My eyelids felt heavy. I would have given up, just drifted off on the turbulent waves and crashed onto the waiting rocks, but for his voice. Not Luke.

  Henri. Now I was really going to throw up.

  My mouth felt like cotton as I tried to speak, to warn someone. Even though I knew it was too late. Even though I knew I was alone in the dragon’s lair. Luke wouldn’t be here. Not any of the men. They would have died first. Or they had let me go. Sometimes you had to give up a pawn to win the game.

  I blinked, and everything came into a dreary focus, like looking out a rain-drenched window. Those weren’t raindrops; they were tears. Not the healing kind, not cleansing—they fell on barren land.

  Henri stared straight ahead, though I had no doubt he’d registered my waking. He was all black-suited cloth and shadows except for the glint of a ruby-colored vest. He was a smart man, but not the smartest. Strong, but not the strongest. Instead, he had an animal instinct about things of a dark and violent nature. It gave him an unnatural advantage, sustaining his
position in the face of richer competitors. It must have been that, because he had been at the top since I had entered the scene.

  “Where have you been, sweetheart?” he asked.

  I shuddered, an involuntary response, inescapable remembrance.

  There was a book in Philip’s stargazing room. It said that every planet, every moon was constantly leaving orbit—and constantly pulled back by the gravitational force. I couldn’t seem to escape Henri’s pull; I couldn’t seem to stop trying.

  “With you.” My tongue felt thick. “Where else would I be?”

  He laughed. “That’s a good answer, but it doesn’t quite distract me. I thought we had an agreement.”

  “Luke didn’t leave me. You lied.”

  “Of course,” he said simply. “What else would I do?”

  My eyes drooped shut, and my head lolled against the leather seats as the SUV started to move. He spoke to me distantly, his thick voice washing over me in waves of nausea. I tried to focus, but whatever drug was affecting me was still in my system, clouding everything, even my thoughts.

  Henri was talking, telling me about an angry man and a woman caught, but all I could see in my mind was my mother’s face speaking to me. She was telling me a bedtime story, I realized. Or a cautionary tale. Had she really done that? I couldn’t remember, but the picture seemed so clear, more refined now that I was drugged than it had ever been in my waking hours.

  There was a king, and a queen so beautiful that none could equal her. On her deathbed, she made the king promise that he should only marry one as beautiful as she, one who had the same golden hair.

  He grieved for her upon her passing but eventually scoured the land for a new wife who fulfilled his promise. Although many beautiful women were found, none could compare. The king’s daughter, on the other hand, had grown into a woman. She was beautiful like her mother, with the same golden hair.

  So the king decided to marry her, despite the protests of his counselors. Determined to escape her fate, the princess ran away from the castle with only her gold and dresses. She traveled far, and when night came, she hid in the hollow of a tree.