“You, as in you personally, Captain?” I asked, staring at the bear of a man. There were a lot of words and phrases that came to mind when I looked at Captain Pierce, but “technologically-savvy” wasn’t one of them.
“We still have a rat, Sandra. Officer Kimball was compromised, and now he’s dead. We have no idea how deep this rabbit hole goes. The entire operation needs to stay quiet until we have the dirt we need on this asshole. Don’t let his boyish charm fool you, though. Nathaniel Hale is smart, and he may be dangerous. Letting you go back there is a risk, but if you don’t, there might be thirty-six more women at the bottom of the ocean, and that’s going to be on you.”
None of this made sense. How could I have been so wrong? How could I have let the needs of my body get in the way of my morality? I became a cop to serve and protect, not to let myself fall for the sweet-talking billionaire with a dubious history.
“What if he’s innocent, Captain?”
I was grasping at straws and I knew it. This was the “denial” phase of grieving, it seemed. I’d seen suspects’ families do it all the time. Nobody wanted to believe that their wife, their brother, or their child could be a killer. But if there was even a chance that this might not be what it seemed, then I had to look for that angle.
Nathaniel Hale represented everything I’d always hoped for. It wasn’t the money I was after, or the lifestyle he could afford. It was the feelings I had when I was with him. He made me feel… whole. Was that just another lie?
“If he’s innocent, I want to know who’s pulling the strings. Wallace is in jail and O’Rourke is dead, but the wheels are still in motion. Somebody is bringing those women over, and you know damn well what will happen to them when they get here.”
“What do I tell him?”
“You tell him you quit.”
I nodded. It was a sound plan. That was what I’d originally come here to do, after all. “When do we get started?” I asked, steeling myself against the tide of my emotions.
“Pick up your badge. Take your gun. We get started right now, Detective,” Captain Pierce replied.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I stood quietly in front of the huge oaken doors at the front of Nathan’s mansion, but I knew something was wrong even before he opened them. His private security team, usually quiet and more or less invisible, was out in force. They seemed to be scouring the exterior of the building, although after a quick glance in my direction, they completely ignored my presence.
Relax. Innocent before proven guilty. Don’t just let yourself fly off the handle, I told myself, trying to calm my nerves.
It didn’t make sense. Wallace was in jail. O’Rourke was dead. Any Paddie left would be too busy stuffing their pockets with the leftovers to bother with retaliation. Nathan didn’t need this kind of security presence, unless there was another, more sinister reason they were here.
One of the men walked past, sweeping a long antenna through the air, the business-end attached to a strange little electronic box. He barely even acknowledged my presence.
When Nathan finally opened the door, he looked different. On the courthouse steps he had seemed a happy man, a braggart and a lover. Now, he carried a look that was anything but calm. I’d watched him stand up and allow himself to be shot. The last thing I’d expected to ever see on his face was fear.
Was it possible to be sexy and scared? Nathan pulled it off. Sort of.
“Get inside,” he whispered, pulling me through the door and shutting it behind us. I could hear a mechanical whirring and a high-pitched electronic whine, and I glanced back to see expensive looking locks sliding into place behind me. They looked better suited for a bank vault than a front door.
“What’s going on, Nathan? You’re scaring me,” I said, my hand instinctively moving toward my purse and the piece of death-dealing metal within. Before I could go any further, Nathan had grabbed my arm and dragged me through the living room, past the kitchen, and around near a staircase. Hitting a piece of the wall paneling, I watched in silence as it slid away, revealing a heavy metal door. It swung open, and I could see the three enormous metal bolts that had retracted from the wall.
“Get inside,” Nathan said fiercely. I complied, despite every instinct in my body telling me to get the hell out of here. A moment later, the man I had come to both love and fear in such a short amount of time was standing before me, the huge metal bolts closing off any hope of escape.
“What are you doing, Sandra?” Nathan asked, staring down at the gun I’d pulled out into the open. “Put that thing away.”
“You just locked me in a dark room and you look like something has you scared to death, Nathan. You tell me what the hell is going on right now and I’ll think about putting this away,” I replied, my hand shaking ever so slightly.
What the hell was he doing? I stepped backward as he moved toward me, one step, then another, until I was flush against the cold metal wall of our makeshift prison.
“Stop. I’m warning you, Nathan!” I shouted, holding the gun up. He stepped closer, reaching out. Every part of me wanted to pull the trigger. Here he was, the man I thought I could trust, ready to show me how foolish I’d been… But I couldn’t do it. His hand wrapped the barrel of the gun and pushed it aside as he swept me up into his arms.
“Oh, God. I thought I might not see you again,” he whispered, tears streaming down his face. I didn’t even have a chance to protest as he forced his lips down onto mine. What the hell was going on? He ran his hands over my body, my gun clattering to the floor. I pushed him back as hard as I could, separating us.
“What the hell is this?” I asked, looking around the small space. Shelves lined the walls, and a phone was wired into one of them. Next to me, a small cot was pushed up against the side of the space and a laptop sat atop a little table, open to what looked like a stock market ticker.
“It’s a safe room, Sandra. Three-foot-thick walls, enough food, water, and air for a month. I had it built a few months after I moved into this place, as a precaution…”
“Why the hell am I in here?” I asked indignantly, staring into his crystalline eyes. Despite its name, this room made me feel anything but safe. I felt claustrophobic, like the walls and Nathan were all closing in around me. I felt like a cornered animal, like a victim waiting to happen.
I had never felt this way with him before. I didn’t like it.
“Because I needed a safe place to talk about this,” Nathan said, tossing a small recording device onto the table. I recognized it immediately. It was a standard issue t22 short range video and audio transmitter. We used them to listen in on people during investigations. “There’s dozens of them all over the house,” he added.
“Of course there are. You were potentially connected to one of the biggest human smuggling rings we’ve ever taken down. Do you really think the police wouldn’t have ears on you?” I shouldn’t have been so open, but I also didn’t like lying to the man who had stolen my heart. I needed to look into his eyes and know one way or another if he was guilty.
“I’m pulling these things out of here. All of them. I’ll live in this goddamned safe room if I have to. The police offered me protection for my testimony, they gave me immunity,” Nathan replied.
I almost smirked. Immunity protected you from past crimes, not the present. The captain had to be hell-bent on taking Nathan down if he was investing this much of the budget into tracking and listening in on him. Any little misstep and the asshole billionaire would be behind bars. Just thinking about the women on that container ship made my blood boil. I wanted to be the one to slap the handcuffs on this asshole…
This asshole who made me love him.
“And there’s this,” he continued, tossing a small box next to the transmitter. This box was far more chilling. Photographs spilled out onto the table, dozens of shots from every single angle. My apartment, my car, the inside of my bedroom…
And one of me from just last night, asleep in my bed.
I stared at it for a moment, fear washing over me.
“What the hell is this?” I asked, trembling in place. I had to maintain my composure. Nathan was trying to put me off balance. He was trying to make me need him. I could see right through this game—he’d put someone in my bedroom and had them take pictures of me. He had to…
“Did someone hurt you?” he asked, his eyes suddenly alight with an angry, terrified fire. “So help me God, if someone hurt you…”
“I’m okay. Nobody hurt me. I didn’t even know they were there,” I whispered, sitting down on the cot next to him. He seemed sincere, and that set warning bells off in my mind. Was he playing me for a fool? Was this whole thing an act? Did Nathaniel Hale have me photographed in my own bed? And if he didn’t, who the hell did?