“That’s what we want.” She grabbed a towel and a bucket of water and knelt beside Cole’s head.
“We want it in the right hands. You know how valuable it is.” He raked his fingers through his hair, yanking at the roots. “Jesus, Lydia. You can’t trust him. You don’t know anything about him.”
She bent down and wiped the wet rag along the gash near Cole’s temple. A trickle of blood fell from the cut, but it would heal cleanly without stitches. Mike knew how to strike with minimal damage.
“I don’t trust him.” She applied pressure to the wound and let her fingers trail down his sculpted face.
Mike’s expression clouded as he watched her. “You trusted him with your ass.”
She sucked in a sharp breath, hurt by the disgust in his tone. “Don’t you dare shame me for that.”
“Lydia.” Sighing, he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not…” He dropped his hand and stared at her with bloodshot eyes. “Look, I get why you did it. Why you let him…” His stance widened, shifting with the weight of his frustration. “Just tell me you’re not falling for him.”
“What?” She blinked. Then choked out a laugh. “No. God. This is bigger than me, Mike. It’s bigger than us.”
“I know.” His eyes narrowed on her hands in Cole’s hair.
“Good grief.” She tossed the towel in the bucket and stood, staring down at Cole’s limp body. “He beat me at my own game. I seduced him. He seduced me. He won. That’s all this is. I don’t know the extent of his skill set, but I can tell you this. He’s a master at reading people. He knew how to strip me down and make me talk before I had a clue what was happening. But he doesn’t know everything. We can let him go. Let him live.”
“Lydia.”
“We’re a lot of things, but we’re not murderers. If we leave him here, he’s dead.” Her chest squeezed. “He’s never going to talk. He’ll let them kill him first.”
“This is so fucked.” He paced away with his hands clasped behind his neck. “We’re not giving up.”
“Never.” Her pulse quickened, her voice breathless.
“All right. Go back to the room.” He squatted beside Cole and reached for the jeans. “I’ll dress him and return him to the cell.”
“What if he tries to talk to the guards? If he tells them what he knows…?”
He flashed a menacing smile. “I’ll gladly knock his ass out again.”
Lydia dozed off. She hadn’t meant to close her eyes, but when she opened them, a rude buzzing crashed through her grogginess.
“Fuck!” She scrambled off the mattress and stumbled through the room, hunting the vibrating sounds of her phone.
Where the hell was Mike? He should’ve returned by now.
She spotted the buzzing device on the table amid the clutter of cosmetics. Snatching it up, she gasped at the time. Jesus, she’d slept for two hours?
Because…Cole. He’d put her body through the wringer and mangled her emotions. But she couldn’t think about that now. The unknown caller wasn’t going to be happy about waiting through five rings. Six.
“Yes?” She hacked the greeting from the back of her throat, overly conscious about her fake accent. “You need something?”
“Change of plans.” Vincent’s high-pitched drawl set her teeth on edge. “I’m moving up the deadline.”
“You can’t do that.” She tightened her hand around the phone, making it creak. “We had a deal.”
“It’s already done. The team is extracting the information now, and once they have it, they’ll pass it along to you. Then you will retrieve the package. Maybe your cunt will be more effective on the next target.”
Her blood pressure hit the roof, and she reached out a hand, catching herself on the table, attempting to steady her legs and quash the panic in her voice.
“Whatever,” she said with as much boredom as she could summon. “The payment doesn’t change.”
“You’ll get your money. Just don’t fuck this up.”
“I’m very good at my job.”
“You keep saying that. Yet you’ve produced nothing.”
“I delivered him here.”
“Yeah, all right, I’ll give you that.” He hardened his tone, which succeeded only in making him sound whiny. “You will stay out of the way until the others get the information you need. Then you will finish this. Understood?”
He expected her to sit here while they butchered and killed Cole.
Yeah, whatever you say, boss.
She swallowed down her rising fury. “Yes.”
He disconnected.
She’d never met him in person, and maybe she never would. But as she tossed the phone and dragged on a pair of black jeans, she vowed that, before she surrendered her last breath, she would witness the glorious annihilation of Vincent Barrington.
Quickly, she pulled on a white t-shirt, combat boots, and checked her appearance in the mirror. The false eyelashes barely hung on. Black eyeliner melted down her cheeks and smeared into her blush. Bright red lipstick slanted over her chin as if streaked by a river of drool.
She looked like a redheaded Harley Quinn, freshly fucked, one-hundred-percent psychotic, and ready to party.
Yeah, her makeup was utterly ruined—thank you, Cole—but it still did its job. It hid her true face.
On her way out, she grabbed a handgun, slid in a full magazine, and clipped a spare mag on her hip. Then she took off down the hall.
Passing the break room, she counted four guys gathered around the table eating and drinking beer. She slipped by unnoticed and turned the corner, pausing at the bathroom. Two men inside. She intersected two more farther down the corridor.
One of them stopped her. “Where are you going?”
“I need a shower.” She gave him a look. “That’s not an invite.”
He held up his hands and backed away, smirking as his eyes drifted down her body.
“The warehouse is all yours, honey.” He turned and paced off in the opposite direction.
Had he just come from there? God, she hoped Cole was still in his cell, and Mike was keeping guard.
As she measured her steps, trying to appear calm, Vincent’s words coiled in her belly.
The team is extracting the information now.
That could mean anything, but her mind conjured knives cutting through flesh, extracting bones, organs, and any part of Cole that would bring out the answer.
By the time she burst into the warehouse, she was sweating and out of breath.
Silence surrounded her, thrashing in her ears. No one was here. She spun toward Cole’s cell.
The door stood open. He was gone.
Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. Where the hell was he?
Where was Mike? Was he in trouble? If Vincent’s men overheard her conversation with him, if they were hurting him…
Horror glued her boots to the floor. Terror pulled through her gut. A helpless void resonated in her chest.
The loading dock.
It was the only place they could be. Unless Cole and Mike were taken somewhere. Somewhere she would never find them.
She raced out of the warehouse, down the eerily quiet corridor, toward the dock.