Deadly Truths: Kiss Her Goodbye #3 Read online

  “Oh, Trace, where are you?” I stared up at the sky. “I will find you, my love. I will.”

  I could practically hear Kade roll his eyes from the distance down the beach. The woman approached me. She was what my grandmother would have said was an example of a person who had spent too much time out in the sun. If I had to guess her age, I would have put her at forty, but the lines and the sunspots made her look older. She’d clearly spent some time working on her body. I would have killed for her arm muscles.

  I wiped at my eyes. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m sorry, but I heard your friend call you Everly. Is that your name?”

  I put surprise on my face and in my eyes. “It is. How can I help you?”

  “It’s a very unusual name, and one I’ve been hearing a lot lately.” She had the slightest accent. Her English was flawless, but there was a touch of something… maybe Eastern European. I’d been listening to a lot of podcasts in my runs. One of the commentators on the state of the world was from Armenia. She sounded similar. I wasn’t good at this. I bet Trace would know.

  I narrowed my gaze at her. “Oh? That’s interesting.” I was going to play dumb. “Sorry, I’m looking for my boyfriend. Funny to call him that since he’s a little bit older than me. Boyfriend makes him sound… I don’t know. I’m looking for my love. He’s missing. He had a business meeting and things went wrong. I don’t know. I’m afraid he’s dead. I mean, I’m not sure how he could be okay or why I thought I could find him.” I pointed down the beach. “His two best friends are trying to help me. I can’t let him just be… gone.”

  I hoped I hadn’t overdone it. She kept her cards close to her chest. I really couldn’t read her that well. I spoke again, trying to finish it off. “Sorry to dump this on you. I guess you have one of those faces that people just talk to you.”

  “Your friend. He is a good looking man, brown, blondish hair, and he wears all black?”

  My mouth fell open. I had two choices. I could continue to play this ruse, or I could grab the gun in my bag, hold it to her fucking head, and demand that she tell me where he was right that second. I forced myself to smile. This was working. I didn’t need to blow up the world, yet.

  “Yes, that sounds just like him. Have you heard something? Do you know? Please. Could you help me?”

  She leaned forward. “What’s it worth to you?”

  “Everly,” Derrick called down the beach. “We’re going to keep looking. Stay here. We’ll come back.”

  Okay. They were making it look like they were disappearing, but they’d heard that, too. They knew what was going to happen here. That was also Derrick telling me not to attack her. He’d never have even pretended to leave if that was going to happen.

  “How much is it worth to me?” I hated this dumb person I was playing. “Oh, everything. He is the love of my life. And… I’m pregnant.” Yes, I’d gone there. I needed to seem desperate. There it was.

  She liked that. I saw a gleam of happiness in her eyes. She thought she had me right where she wanted me. “Five hundred thousand dollars U.S.”

  “You want five hundred thousand dollars to tell me where Trace is?” I widened my eyes. “How do I know he’s okay? I’m not just going to give you that money for nothing…”

  She smirked. “He says your name in his sleep. He calls out for you in pain. That is how I knew you, Everly. Fine. You come with me. I’ll show you where he is. You transfer me the money, and I’ll give him to you. Tell your friends or the police and I’ll kill him. Well, my husband will. He’s very good at causing pain. We knew when we found him that this would be a payday. That’s why I haven’t given him to the police. I could still do that.”

  “Oh,” I cried. “Please show me. I’ll do anything. Anything.” I followed her, whimpering the whole time. “Is he okay?” Not a hard act, I wanted to know.

  She shrugged. “I have some experience treating wounds. He might be fine. Right now he has a slight fever.”

  I’d love to ask anyone if that was normal. Instead, I just cried louder. At this point it was all pretend. Anger was the predominant emotion rushing through me. And it was everything I could do not to lose my shit. I followed her into her shack. If I’d actually been alone, and not at all certain that the guys were right behind me I might have been legitimately nervous.

  I should have been scared. A sane person would have been anxious.

  I wasn’t any of that.

  Her shack was on the beach. I did a quick calculation. It was small, maybe two bedrooms. No. One bedroom, with a center living room if I was guessing correctly. I needed to practice my ability to read a room.

  The woman’s husband rose when we came in. He was huge, maybe as tall as Derrick. I’d put him at three hundred pounds, and it wasn’t muscle. His arms were inked up, and he belched loudly. “What do you have here?”

  “I think she knows our guest. I am proving his alive, and then she will pay us.”

  Trace was here? I shuddered for effect. “Please. Is he okay? What is going on?”

  The husband rolled his eyes. And I let this bitch of a woman lead me into the second bedroom. Trace was on the bed. He was out cold. I rushed over to him. His face was covered in sweat and a bandage covered his side. He was shirtless. The thoughts all seemed to hit at once.

  “Trace?” I said his name, and he didn’t respond. But his heart beat and that was the point. For now, that was enough.

  “I think we are going to ask you for more than half a million.” The woman said. “Take her picture, darling. Let’s see what we can get for her. If we have both of them maybe her family will pay for both of them.”

  I sighed, rising from the bed. “Part of me sort of hoped I wasn’t going to have to kill you. And part of me sort of hoped I would. I’m in a constant conflict. Which Everly wins? Day in and day out. Today, you made it easy.”

  8

  “You think to hurt me?” The older woman lurched forward, and I ducked out of the way, my only concern not to let Trace get more hurt than he already was. These people weren’t going to take me out.

  The door banged open, and she whirled around. Derrick and Kade were suddenly in the room with us. Trace’s captor-slash-rescuer screamed out. “Get them, Archie.”

  Well, now we had a name. I didn’t know what Archie would have done, but he never got the chance. He hadn’t realized he was in the presence of Derrick and his incredibly lethal skillset. I heard a bang, but I didn’t turn to look at it. I knew the noise and so did my nameless enemy.

  “You kept him alive but only so you could extort him or me once you found me.” I stepped toward her. My gun was in my purse, but I didn’t need it. In fact, I preferred not to. I didn’t want to accidentally shoot Kade. “I am grateful to you for keeping him alive. It looks like you performed some basic first aid on him. Do you hear me?” I stepped toward her. “This is me saying thank you? Was he ever coherent? Did he ask for help? He said my name. I bet he said other things. That makes you a liability. A stupid liability. Guess what, cookie? If you want to imprison and extort? You need to do better than you did. We’re not stupid tourists. Take my word for it. We’ve been held hostage by the best. We’ve been beaten. Tortured. Only because you didn’t let him bleed to death on the beach, I am going to make this fast.”

  I ripped the knife off my back, feeling the sting of the tape tearing off my skin. She hit the wall behind her. Ben had taught me that intimidation came as much from intent as anything else. I meant to frighten her. I wanted her to know fear before she died. She’d held Trace here. He was my love. I didn’t have a lot of room for those sorts of feelings anymore, and she wouldn’t take what was mine. I wasn’t losing him to this piece of shit.

  My knife was controlled. I couldn’t accidentally hurt anyone I didn’t want to. And I really did want to cause this woman pain.

  I’d never again wonder what it felt like to jab my knife into someone’s eye. I’d always know.

  It wasn’t as exciting as I’d thought i
t would be.

  * * *

  I cleaned up in the bathroom. There was nothing I could do about the blood on my shirt, but I scrubbed down my skin where the woman had bled on me before she’d dropped dead. I’d save the big shower for later. With no choice, I discarded my gray t-shirt into the bathroom and changed into my white one.

  Feeling a little more like myself and less like something from a horror movie, I came out to see what was happening in the main cabin of Kade’s plane. Whatever the pilot thought about the scene when we boarded, he didn’t remark. Maybe, like Derrick’s pilot, he wanted them back in charge enough to pretend he didn’t see a gravely wounded Trace being carried over Derrick’s shoulder and me covered in all things grossness.

  Trace twitched and muttered to himself on the airplane. Derrick worked on him, rebandaging his wound. “It doesn’t look infected.”

  I walked over to his side. “Then what is wrong with him? Did it hurt an internal organ?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Jud or another doctor will know better. My best guess? He got shot. That fucking sucks, and he needs real medical care. He’ll have it soon. He’s tough.” Derrick turned to me. “How are you?”

  “Fine. That might make me a sociopath. I know. I’m just not sure there’s anything I can or want to do about it.”

  Kade laughed, throwing his head back. “No. You’re not a sociopath. You’re just not sorry. You said it yourself, we’re all narcissists. She had what was yours, and she was threatening the safety of it. You took it back. You didn’t want to hurt that cop. You don’t want accidental deaths or needless ones. You feel remorse. Just not about this. Don’t sweat it, my love. It’s just Alliance. This is what we all are.”

  Trace said my name. “Everly.” His eyes were still glued shut.

  I walked over and stroked his hair off his forehead. He was warm to the touch. “I’m here. You’re on your way home. I love you.”

  If he heard me, I had no indication. Derrick kissed my cheek. “It was hard to do what you did. If you miss, it hits the forehead and that is hard. The whole skull is a problem. You have to aim just right. And that was well done.”

  “No one has seen us or spotted us. I’m watching all the cameras. I took care of it all. We’re free. So is Trace. We managed to pull this off. I have an email from Jud. He’s mad. There’s no furniture in the house.”

  I whirled around. “Fuck. I meant to mention that.”

  “Judson’s fixed that. Whoops. And the markets seem to be leveling off for the moment. You know what that means?”

  I grinned. “Warden is up and alert enough to be playing on his computer.”

  Kade touched his nose. “Bingo.”

  Derrick had managed to get an IV into Trace’s hand, not something I’d known he knew how to do, but it seemed my D had some skills I hadn’t known anything about. He yawned. “I gave him some pain meds, and I’m hoping he sleeps until we get to Florida. I’m going to nap. You should sleep, Evs.”

  “Honestly, I’m kind of up right now. Not sure I can.”

  Kade touched the chair next to him. “Come on. Let’s watch shows together.”

  The plane shook just enough to make me nervous, and curling up with Kade sounded nice. We weren’t going to be in the air more than two hours. I’d sleep when we got to Destin. Maybe I’d even have Judson give me something to knock me out. There were things that had to happen now. Once Trace was okay, we needed to know what happened with James Robert.

  There were plans to be made.

  And they had to be right. I wasn’t going to spend my life worried about this Marcus person. He had to be killed and his people dealt with. No one else I cared about was getting a bullet in their body.

  Kade switched the screen from the news to an episode of Doctor Who. I knew this one well from my nighttime television watching. People were using a drug to lose weight and the fat coming off of them was turning into living creatures. It was bizarre, kind of funny, and memorable. Derrick slept across the plane, and I giggled, my body pressed against Kade’s.

  “This is like a dream of mine,” he whispered to me. “You and me, watching this show together. I’m hard. It’s very… sensual for me. You doing this with me.”

  “That so?” I lifted my head. “Keep your eyes on the screen and don’t make too much noise?”

  I saw the question in his gaze disappear the second I slipped my hands through the waist of his shorts. He flared his nostrils. “Evy…”

  “Sshh. Watch the show.” I slipped my hand deeper inside, fitting it through the waist of his boxers until I could rub his cock in my hand. Kade adjusted how he sat just slightly, spreading his legs so I’d have slightly easier access, but he otherwise did as he was told and watched the screen.

  I stroked him, watching the show progress as I did. At first, it was an easy rub. I’d hold his head for a long moment before I’d stroke the length of him, ending up on his balls. I’d repeat the motion the opposite way. Long, unrushed movements. Just touching him, he hardened in my hand. I kissed his cheek, lingering on the side of his mouth. With my free hand, I ran my fingers through his hair.

  As the minutes passed, I increased the pressure and speed, just slightly. He moaned in my ear, the smallest of sounds. “Let me touch you, too.”

  I shook my head. “Maybe later.”

  If he did, he’d find out I was so wet I’d soaked my panties just touching him like this. Then we’d never have been able to control ourselves. I didn’t want to be naked on this plane with Derrick asleep in the corner and Trace injured in the center. I wanted to make Kade come while we watched this show together, and that was all the enjoyment I required right then.

  When we got somewhere with a bed, if he wanted to climb in with me, I’d not say no. As it was, I didn’t think even as turned on as I was that I could relax enough to get to completion right now. He pressed his head down on my shoulder. His warm breath touched my neck as he tried to stay quiet. I sped up my strokes and held him harder. It was difficult as he was still in his pants but that seemed to only add to the pressure.

  “Kade,” I whispered back to him. “I want you to come.”

  He nodded, his head stroking against my neck. “Yes. I’m going to.”

  “I love you, and it will make me feel so good to know I gave you pleasure like this.”

  I didn’t know it my words helped or if it was just time, but on a sigh, Kade gave himself over to the moment, spilling in my hand. I held him while he pulsed. His body trembled. This was a man who could destroy empires if he wanted by shutting down their entire electronic infrastructure. He built homes underground that he could then turn around and explode with a push of button. He could be mean, dismissive, and yet he was mine. Kade held me when I shook in his bed, he made me coffee because he knew that I needed it, and he blamed himself for the pain I caused myself.

  I loved all his rough parts, and maybe he’d needed to hear me say it.

  He lifted his head to kiss me even as he still shook in my arms. I needed to go wash my hand, and so I let go of him only to do that. Kissing him once more, I smiled against his lips. “Next time in my mouth.”

  Kade shook his head. “Next time in your pussy.”

  “Maybe if you’re lucky.”

  He laughed, a low sound. “Careful with the turbulence.”

  “I’m getting better at managing the bumps.” There would have been a time I wouldn’t have believed I’d be up and moving on a plane while it bounced in the air. But then there were lots of things I never would have imagined doing that were no big deal now.

  I cleaned up and came back out, carrying a towel for Kade. He took it, wiping himself down, although I guessed we were going to have to get him some new shorts before he got off the plane. He tucked me in next to him, and we continued to watch Doctor Who together.

  All the way until we landed.

  * * *

  “What do you think?” I must have asked Judson ten times in the last fifteen minutes.
r />   He turned to me, giving me the same version of the answer he’d been saying since I started asking. “I think it doesn’t seem to have done any internal damage. I’m not sure because I can’t take him to a hospital and do a scan. I need to figure out the underground Alliance medical facility in Florida. I’ve put some calls in. I’ll know soon. In the meantime, what I know about gunshot wounds, and it’s way too much considering that I’m a plastic surgeon, but people in my life keep getting shot, is that they can be tricky. It was a through and through. That is good news.”

  I sighed. “Judson? What does that mean?”

  He put his arm around me, drawing me close. “It means I don’t know. Derrick was right. I don’t see an infection. So I’m giving him antibiotics just in case and painkillers. We’ll wait and see. I’ll be able to take him somewhere soon to get more answers if he doesn’t get better. The good news is that it hit soft tissue so… that is excellent. You saved him. I’m sure of it.”

  “Everly,” Trace said my name again before he shook his head back and forth on the pillow. I walked over to him and pushed his hair off his forehead.

  I met Jud’s gaze when I looked up. “Whatever he’s dreaming about me, it isn’t good. He says it seconds before he seems to get into terrible pain.”

  “He hasn’t seen you.” Judson rubbed my back. “Or even if he was watching from afar, he doesn’t really know that you’re doing okay. He’s probably harboring the same guilt as the rest of us, the same worry. He loves you. But he’ll be up and wake and that will stop.” He motioned to the other bed. Warden slumbered peacefully, apparently with the help of pharmaceuticals that had knocked him out. “I’m keeping them both in here. I’ll watch them closely. Warden is going to be fine. He’s already being grumpy about having to follow a healing protocol. I caught him on the computer adjusting the financial markets. He yelled at me about letting you go after Trace. He’s fine.”