Maverick (Elite Ops 2)

Jordan stared back at her, his blue eyes glowing with anger as he glared at Micah over her head. But Jordan wasn’t the one who held her attention.

She heard Micah’s vicious curse behind her, Ian’s “God, Jordan, what the hell are you doing?”

Her eyes were held by the man who stared back at her, his topaz gaze shattered as his head lifted from the pictures scattered over the table.

Mac Knight.

He had been her friend when so few young men would even take the time to speak to her. He had danced with her when she would have been humiliated at not having an escort for a particular part of an event.

He had been like a brother. He and his parents had lived on the estate next to the Clays’, so they had socialized often. He had taught her how to play poker one summer. He had slipped her her first bottle of beer.

He was one of the few good memories she had from her youth.

“Risa.” Mac rose slowly to his feet, his oddly colored eyes damp, filled with horror as he stared back at her with pity. “I didn’t know. God, Riss, I didn’t know.”

His voice was thick with anger, regret. And pity.

“I would have done something.” His voice was thick with emotion, with regret.

Risa ignored it. Her gaze was captured by the pictures spread out on the table.

Pictures of her.

She remembered the flash of lights as someone had taken pictures in the plane. She also remembered something about video. They always took pictures and video of their victims, she remembered distantly. Diego Fuentes had insisted on it. He’d had a very small supply of Whore’s Dust, so it was only used on victims who could benefit him. The sons and daughters of powerful men. Women who worked in sensitive or classified areas. They were predominantly the victims he’d chosen himself.

Sometimes, his associates had bought the Whore’s Dust from him and used it in other ways. But always there had been pictures and videos.

“It wasn’t exactly my best pose,” she said, staring at the top picture.

Her face was red, her eyes wild and filled with tears. There were more under that one. Vivid, shocking, explicit pictures.

She heard Micah behind her; it sounded as though he were ready to kill, but her gaze was held by the pictures.

“Riss,” Mac’s protest was swallowed by the roaring in her ears.

She hadn’t seen the pictures. She’d had no idea Jordan had them.

“They made you look at these,” she said as she gestured to the pictures, feeling the numbness in her lips before it moved through her body. “I guess you were being berated for telling on Micah.”

She slid a few more pictures free. They were grainy but explicit. Nothing was hid from the eye of the camera that night. It was all there in glaring detail. At least it wasn’t in color, she thought faintly.

She had to put her hand over her mouth to hold back her screams, to hold back the need to gag as she was greeted with the sight of her own nude body. Bruised, filthy. The canvas beneath her was smeared with her blood.

“How tacky, showing these to you.” She couldn’t breathe. She could feel the need to draw oxygen into her lungs, but she couldn’t seem to get enough inside her. “You should have shredded them for me.”

She could hear herself screaming. In the back of her head, she was screaming and begging Janse

n. Daddy, please. Please make it stop.

You damned crybaby. Big girls don’t cry, you little bitch, he had accused her.

And she could hear his laughter. It raked through her mind like diseased talons and left her feeling feverish, weak.

She could hear voices behind her. She could hear Micah cursing Jordan, Ian, Mac, and anyone else he could curse. She didn’t see the tears Kira had to hide, or the redhead who had turned her face to the wall as her own tears began to fall from her eyes.

Risa lifted her gaze to Mac. “How sad,” she whispered. “Definitely the ugly duckling, aren’t I?”

Her expression was twisted in those photos. She was ugly, blemished, dirty. She had been a creature, an enraged animal, and it showed in the grainy photos that had been printed out.