The pirate glared at her, but said nothing as the two men were carried out along with their clothing and gear. Then he left with the rest of his men, sealing the door once again behind them.
Without a hint of facial expression, Tori smiled inside to herself. Although the holding cell was cold; it wasn’t that cold, not to her. Her empathy was still very effective. For days now, deliberately, she’d visually teased and empathically enticed every sentry that showed up to guard her door. It was her lure. It had taken a while, but she’d finally drawn a couple of them into her icy liar. They kissed her, groped her breasts and grabbed her ass, but only for a few moments of pleasure; her empathic touch was more than enough to get them to obey her will. She didn’t want to kill them; just the opposite, in fact.
21
T he XO let himself into the captain’s quarters after a subtle knock. The small fuel tanker vessel converted to luxury yacht was nice, but these quarters rang with opulence. Few of the men had actually been invited into them.
Roberts downed a brandy while looking out at the New York city skyline passing slowly by them as they moved up the Hudson.
“Our cargo is causing problems,” the Executive Officer informed.
“I’ve already heard.”
“No one wants to be guarding the goddess.”
“Double their duty pay.”
“That will probably help.” Mac poured himself a bourbon from a small fine crystal decanter. “Any word from Sinclair?”
“Just a text. He’s apparently making progress. Whatever that means.”
“You still haven’t told me how you’re going to get twenty ton of bullion onto The Neptune without anyone noticing—or following?”
“It’s already in the works. Once he makes the drops, we’ll be ready.”
“If he makes the drops. You’re putting an awful lot eggs in his basket, Roy.”
“I am, Mac. You don’t need to remind me.”
The XO nodded.
“You’ve been spending a bit of your time below decks.”
“I have. I’ve taken one of the guard shifts.”
Roberts met eyes with his second in command and his friend; his raised his brow harbored some concern. “She’s casting her spell on you.”
Mac chuckled. “Don’t you think I know that?” He downed his whiskey.
“Then don’t go down there.”
The XO sighed, setting down the empty glass. “Can’t help it.” He grinned, looking out the window and not at his captain.
“So you can feel what she’s doing—”
“I’m not stupid, Roy. I can see what’s happening.”
“Well, it won’t work,” Roberts declared.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
“What have you been seeing?”
“She’s got the men talking; rumors are flying around now after Jackson and Jiménez were nearly killed. She’s stirring up a lot of hate and discontent with the crew.”
“She thinks she’s stirring up discontent. She doesn’t know who she’s dealing with.”
“Well I’d say she’s doing a damn good job of it. The men are nervous. Half want to rape the sensuous wench and the other half want to toss her over the side.”
“It’s only for a few more days until Sinclair has the gold.”
“The crew won’t last much longer than that.”
“Make it work, Mac. Let them know that what they are feeling isn’t real.”
“Easier said than done.”
* * * * *
Liam casually watched the traffic moving in and around the Federal Reserve building; he’d been here for days. There were the typical armored cars, limousines carrying corporate types, and tour busses. He’d even taken the Federal Reserve’s public tour, wandering the museum with other tourists and learning about the gold the bank stored for the U.S., other governments, foreign banks, and individuals.
Interestingly enough during the tour, their guide pointed out that a number of the Reserve bank’s gold storage lockers were now empty. Their guide had said that at the high point of the bank’s storage, over twelve thousand tons of monetary gold had been stored at the facility. But due to political unrest and the gradually declining global markets, waning gold deposits along with higher withdrawal activity, the bank had experienced a gradual decline in its overall holdings in the past decade.
Liam pondered the guide’s words. He’d not been everywhere as a god in the past several years, but he had traveled to some of the world’s newest and more wealthy cities. From his perspective, there was more money, wealth, and prosperity than ever. Entire fantastic cities had sprung from the deserts in Dubai and other places around the globe. He wasn’t buying her patter. It only reinforced his theory—or at least that of the old man’s. Someone was moving the bars somewhere, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t that far from the Reserve bank itself.
Still, after a few days of watching and pondering the activity in and around the bank, he was no closer to figuring out where an offsite vault might exist, or even if there was such a thing. It didn’t help that it seemed like the whole of South Manhattan seemed like a non-stop construction zone; half the time he couldn’t hear himself think. Maybe he just needed to stop thinking so hard and get away from the place for a while for some peace and quiet.
* * * * *
Mac’s lips moved aggressively over her succulent pout. Her breath entered his mouth while his hands gripped and pulled at her rounded ass. She was calling out now. He needed to keep her mouth covered with his own. He drove her wildly, his military build wrapped over the top of the goddess while he delivered hot, throbbing cock between her legs; she was already coming—again. She needed to be coming again. One of her breasts now filled his grip as he pinched her nipple hard, causing her to scream into his mouth just as his own jewels exploded with ecstasy. He buried himself into her with a tight thrust that now pulsed his shooting passion deep within her. He needed her not just fucked, but pregnant with his seed.
Their bodies wet with perspiration, he lifted his lips from hers, his trimmed and manicured hairy-built chest rising from her breasts; she was still writhing beneath him, her hips rocking gently, wanting more of him. He gave her another hard thrust against her clit just to watch her body convulse with a sudden ecstatic spasm as she drew an unexpected breath.
“God, Mac,” she whispered. “I can’t believe—AHHHH—what you do to me!”
He dove into her lips again as both rolled over the sheets and onto the floor. Suddenly she wasn’t there anymore. The seasoned Navy Seal shook his head, lifting himself to his knees. His rod still throbbing, wet with his seed, but also ripe with the scent of her. The same scent he’d smelled from his gloved hand the day they’d brought her aboard and stripped her down to nothing. He squeezed his hand around his slick shaft, gripping himself a few times, trying to calm his raging spire. He then brought his damp fingers to his nose, her scent mixed with his own.
They’d had several of these nights together now. She was still down in the brig; he didn’t know how she did what she did, showing up in his quarters night after night. Illusion maybe? Whatever it was, it was clear she needed him. And damn; he sure as hell needed her.
22
A nother week and another set of useless clues and dead ends. Liam stood deep within an alley. Roberts was patient, but he wasn’t Job.
“You’re jerking me around, Sinclair. You need a little more motivation?”
The pirate felt unsettled to Liam. He wasn’t his typical stone-cold demeanor that Liam had felt last week. His feelings were, well, oddly amorous, like an unfulfilled lust. Liam was pretty sure his close proximity to Tori had something to do with it, but, Jeeze, the guy was really coming off of some momentous desire.
“I need more time.”
“Time is a luxury you don’t have, Sinclair.” Roberts thumped his finger into the god’s chest.
“Do you have any idea how much you’re asking me to do? You don’t just waltz into Fort
Knox and then walk out with a couple of tons.”
“I don’t care about your excuses. So here’s the deal: you have three more days to come up with the goods, or we disappear with your girlfriend.”
“I need more time!”
Roberts scoffed and then looked at Liam with steel-serious eyes. “I’m done with the excuses. Three days, buddy.”
Liam watched him walk out of the alley. He leaned against the brick of the short, eight-story. Now what was he going to do? Part of him felt nervous and the other part was suddenly angry. He just needed more ti—”
Someone’s hand gripped his shoulder from behind and he felt the barrel of a gun being pushed against his lower spine. “Make a move, asshole, and you’ll never walk again. Give me your wallet. Real slow.”
What!? Where the hell was his danger sense!? He must really be upset not to notice someone coming up from behind him. Liam turned like a flash, gripping the small .38 revolver and disarming the big thug. A backhand sent the two-eighty pound man off his feet, somersaulting him through the air, landing him inelegantly against the side of an open dumpster and toppling him face-first onto the alley’s pot-holed pavement some thirty feet away. Liam bent and pressed the weapon between his palms into a harmless ball of steel junk and tossed it into the dumpster.
“Jerk.”
* * * * *
“Still no luck?” The president’s chief of staff seldom frequented this particular Washington bar, but it was out of the way and off the beaten path of the typical prying eyes D.C. was well know for. Even if someone did see him, well, the beautiful woman he was with was a plausible excuse. He was known for having drinks with a lot of beautiful women. It wasn’t something that would end up as front page news.
Monica sipped her martini while Harlan’s hand smoothed along her leg. He kept it closer to her knee than her waist.
“They’ve just vanished, Mr. Harlan. I’m sorry. I have every resource working on finding them.”
“It’s not your fault, Monica. We took a gamble. Roberts is shrewd. He probably smelled the trap. I tried to keep Treasury from hiring him.”
“Roberts is good at what he does, Mr. Harlan. But he can’t hide forever. We’ll find him. Eventually.”
“I’m just worried about losing two newbloods. I’m sure he’s using them against each other.”
“No doubt,” she sipped from the glass.
“Alright. Close out the sting. Send everyone home.”
“What do you want us to do with the money?”
“I don’t care about it.” He grumped. “Leave it where it is—if the Reserve board won’t listen to the Administration then they can fucking find it themselves.”
* * * * *
Broadway at three o’clock was already slammed with traffic and looked more like a parking lot. No one was getting anywhere. Liam wondered where the accident was? He found there was no accident, just more construction. He walked the bustling sidewalks, past City Hall and headed apparently nowhere, just like the traffic, which he now felt like getting away from. Taking the sidewalk onto Worth there were a lot fewer people and quite a few less cars. He ambled onto Church Street moving with the lighter crowds when he was jarred out of his thoughts as an AT&T maintenance minivan was turning onto the sidewalk, obviously trying to get past the crowds and down a ramp to an underground parking garage. Someone next to him flipped off the van driver while another yelled a vulgarity, “Hey! It’s a fucking sidewalk here!”
Liam looked at the van and the driver. It was a sidewalk they were on, but there was a small sidewalk ramp from the street that led down into the building’s parking garage. A rollup door kept the parking garage at the bottom of the narrow ramp rather private.
Liam looked up to see the building the van driver was trying to get into. This particular building didn’t have any windows. None, in fact. Huh? How do you have a building in the middle of New York City without any windows? How was that even kosher with the building codes? He’d never really seen nor paid any attention to the thing before. Then again, he wasn’t exactly a New Yorker, he’d probably walked past hundreds of buildings and never especially paid attention to any of them.
The crowds moved and the small van slowly made its way down the ramp and into the private garage. Liam wandered kitty-corner across the street from the odd building and into a small bakery. He stood inside the shop munching a pastry, reaching out with his feelings. There were only a couple dozen people in the whole building. It felt like the van driver he’d previously seen was talking with someone in the garage. Their feelings were nothing to write home about; both were just talking about the street construction and the weather.
He followed the van driver with his feelings to maybe the third or fourth floor of the building. It was just him now. There was no one else on the entire floor. His empathy was only able to feel what the man was feeling. He couldn’t see him or see what he was doing. But he knew exactly where he was. That was all the newblood god needed. Liam finished his pastry and entered the café’s small restroom to wash. He felt the man still working on the floor in the building across the street. Drying his hands, Liam felt another patron entering the small restroom.
A male patron had been feasting his eyes on the most handsome guy he’d ever seen in his life after he’d entered the bakery. He couldn’t take his eyes off of him as the guy just munched while staring out the window. When the handsome guy left for the restroom, he’d followed. Damn! He really needed to meet him. He watched the handsome guy enter the restroom. Now he hoped to have a conversation with the guy—maybe a rendezvous? He could only hope! He opened the door and entered, but, looking around the small room he’d found it completely—empty?
23
T he floor of the building was sparsely lit with overhead lights. It looked like someone had disabled most of them. Liam kept his distance from the man who was doing something a few hundred feet away in the large dim room. The tall walls and ceilings were bare concrete. Older electrical conduits and thick pipes ran everywhere along the walls and ceiling. It didn’t take Liam but a moment to also see the security cameras, he was standing right under one of them. A quick telekinetic thought against the camera’s coax signal wire disrupted its video feed. It took only moments for him to find and disable a few other cameras in his area as well. The cameras were still on, but anyone monitoring them would see—not much.
Most interesting were the rows and rows of aging, dusty, heavy steel shelving close to six feet high. On each of the shelves were boxes and boxes of industrial parts; some labeled with old pictures of mechanical relays, transformers and heavy breaker switches. Liam picked up one of the boxes and quietly blew the dust off of it. These relays were heavy in their thick cardstock boxes with a brand he’d never heard of and artwork reminiscent of the 1970’s. He lifted off the sliding lid. A sudden smile grew across his lips as his eyes widened. There was a reason these relays were heavy—they were gold. All gold. In fact, they weren’t even relays. Liam just stared at the gold bar placed neatly into the dusty electrical parts box. So this was their gig. The Reserve was storing these here, several blocks away from the bank itself. But why? Something about it made no sense. The Nazis were after the wealth of England; they’d already looted much of Europe. Who was the Reserve or the government they trying to hide these from?
He didn’t know.
He watched the hefty-sized older man stack the remaining boxes from his wheel cart onto more of the dusty shelves. With each of the antique-looking boxes weighing close to thirty pounds, it would likely take the guy several trips to move his cargo. Whoever was doing it was patient. It was just this guy and a whole floor filled with these old boxes. That was also a lot of weight. This was no ordinary building. Liam removed the weighty bar from the old box and then closed it back up, leaving it just as he’d found it. He now had a gift for Roberts; he was pretty sure it would buy him some time. But now Liam found himself with a mystery—who was moving the wealth of nations to a clandestine location—an
d why?
* * * * *
“I brought you a book this time.” Mac handed her the new paperback.
“A romance?” Tori smiled looking at the red cover with the shirtless, well-built buccaneer and a long flowing-haired busty woman in a dress of yesteryear being held wantonly aboard an old sailing vessel.
“I thought maybe you could, you know, pretend, like you do?”
She knew what he meant. The visions she was giving him often had the two of them in far away places. “You’re sweet, Mac. Thank you.” She sighed. “It’s so boring, day in and day out here. I really appreciate these.” She held it tight in both hands.
“I know. It will be over soon.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, actually. Sinclair delivered a gift this morning—a gold bar. The captain’s giving him another week to come up with more.”
“A few bars a week?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“I’ll be stuck here for months.” She frowned.
“Don’t look like that. It kills me when you look like that.”
“I’m sorry, Mac. It’s just—”
“You want him instead of me.”
“What I want is to go home. Have a normal life again.”
“I could give you that.”
“I know you could, Mac.”
“I like how you say my name.”
She smiled.
“It’s been a while since you and I—” he didn’t finish his sentence. The door of the cell opened. The captain entered along with a few guards.
“Still pining over the goddess, Mac?” Roberts chuckled, slapping his back.
The XO said nothing.
“Your boyfriend’s finally delivering the goods, Miss Evenson—if Mac hasn’t told you already. Your days here are numbered. I thought you’d like to know.”
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