“Think on it,” Eli suggested. “In the meantime, let’s focus on this meet. Sam and Jae can handle her for a week.”
A whole week. What state would she be in when we got back?
I’d made the decision to leave Jae with Sam, because he’d keep him from killing Danny while my back was turned. Sam wanted her blood, badly, but I’d given them strict orders on what was okay and not okay in my absence. Hopefully they obeyed. Both of them.
I grunted a non-response at Eli and turned my attention back to my newest obsession, watching Danny through a crappy black and white camera that Eli had installed before she woke up. I felt like I was watching that feed more than I was participating in real life, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
We touched down some time later, arriving at our neutral meeting location in Vienna, Austria. Mo and Cyryl supervised the ground crew unloading our cargo while Eli and I went on ahead to the hotel. Our meeting with the customer wasn’t until the next day, but we always arrived a day or two earlier to minimize the risk of having law enforcement waiting when they expected us to touch down.
Also, it gave us time to ensure the meet site was safe from bugs, cameras, booby traps and bombs. You never could be too careful when selling such large quantities of weaponry.
My team and I had been working together a long time; we had our systems and procedures in place. But this time, I felt like I was a million miles away. Or at least a thousand miles. I begged out of dinner early, claiming to want an early night. Then I spent half the night staring at Danny while she lay on the floor of her cell and stared up at the camera.
It was like she could see me.
When I eventually slept, my dreams were plagued by a white-haired siren with huge eyes and smudged mascara. Of a sensual goddess who fell to pieces when I fucked her with a loaded gun. Of a terrified woman, whose eyes held nothing but hatred and disgust as she told me never to touch her again.
Come morning, my mind was more exhausted than if I’d never slept at all.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered to myself. “Stop thinking about her. Just stop . She’s a viper, not a rabbit.”
Shoving her out of my mind as best I could, I got up and went to shower. Inevitably, though, my thoughts returned to her about two minutes later, and I found my hand wrapped around my own hard cock, pumping it the way her lips had worked me over. With my eyes shut tight and the water beating down on my back to drown out any noise, I could imagine it was her.
For what felt like the hundredth time in the week since Halloween, I found my release under the hot spray of the shower and imagined it was down her throat. Or on her face. Or deep inside that tight, sweet cunt that had gripped my gun barrel so damn nice.
I needed my goddamn head examined.
My team was all getting ready in the living room of our suite, relaxed and joking just like any other trip we’d taken together. I was the only one who seemed to be walking around with a shock collar around my neck.
“Shake it off, boss,” Eli murmured as we exited our hotel. “We’ll be back to normal in no time.”
He was my best friend, my brother by choice rather than blood. But fuck if he was sometimes too perceptive for his own good. I shot him a hard glance, but Eli was smart enough to know when to keep his mouth shut. Which was more often than most people realized.
We made our way to the meet site, a container yard near one of the industrial train stations, and found our customer already waiting for us with three heavily armed guards watching his back. Mo and Cyryl had already swept the area during the night and installed one of our own hidden cameras. We were as confident as we could be that no one was setting us up or rigging an ambush.
The four of us got out of our vehicle, and Eli went to the trunk to get out our sample box. I glanced over at my sister, a heavy feeling of dread weighing down my usually high spirits during a sale.
“Stay alert,” I murmured to her. “Something feels off.”
She gave me a concerned glance but nodded and scanned the containers around us as we approached our buyer. He didn’t step forward to meet us, his own gaze shifty.
I’d survived a long time trusting my gut, and fully intended to continue surviving.
“Get down!” I shouted at my team, just a fraction of a second before a bullet would have hit Mo in the face.
Chaos broke out in an instant, bullets flying as I shoved my sister toward our car. Eli crouched behind an open door, laying down cover fire while we dove into the back seat, then I popped my head out to aim a few choice bullets at our so-called fucking customer . He’d set us up. That motherfucker had set us up.
“Get us out of here!” I roared at Cyryl behind the wheel. We had no way of knowing how many assailants were approaching, and I had no plans to die in a firefight today.
The vehicle tires squealed as we peeled out of the container yard, and a bullet shattered our back window. I immediately aimed through the opening, popping off rounds in the vague direction the shot had come from, while Moana did the same from beside me.
Our customer was gone, as was his team, but someone was still shooting. As we sped out of the yard, a dark hooded figure stepped out from between the containers with a gun raised.
No, not a gun. A grenade launcher.
“Turn! ” I bellowed at Cyryl.
He didn’t question the order, taking a sharp, high speed corner between containers and smacking our back end into one of the steel boxes. Moana and I both jolted on impact, but it was a hell of a lot better than being blown to pieces by a grenade launcher.
The deafening boom that followed a moment later said we’d only narrowly escaped that fate.
“Holy shit,” my sister breathed, her hands steady as she reloaded her gun and glanced behind us. “That was unexpected.”
“Was it, though?” Cyryl snapped, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “This is clearly about that woman . I’m almost certain that was the same guy who shot Mauricio.”
“Then why the fuck are we running away?” Mo shouted, punching the back of his seat. “Turn the fuck around, and let’s kill that bastard.”
I shook my head. “No. He was prepared. I don’t feel confident that we would all come out alive.”
Eli turned slightly to give me a long look. “You think this was to do with Danielle?”
Did I? “No,” I admitted with a long sigh. “There’s no way she was involved in this. The meeting was only set after she was in our custody, and she had no opportunity to get word out. I think, if anything, this proves the attack in Shadow Grove was also unrelated.”
The silence that followed my statement was deafening, and the accusation in my sister’s eyes was enough to turn my stomach. If I was right about that, then it was possible Danny wasn’t an undercover agent at all. And that meant I’d been torturing an innocent woman.
If . Deep down, I just wasn’t convinced.
24
I lost track of the days that I spent in the little cell. The lights were never turned off, and that deafening music played every minute that I was alone. Something was different, though. Cyryl stopped paying me visits, as did Mo and Eli. Instead, the only people I saw for… a while… were Jae and Sam.
Sam had clearly been warned about not killing me, because while he was still rough and heavy-handed, he didn’t try choking me to death again.