“Burn in hell.”
“I’ll pay you. Name your price.” She was talking out of her ass. She had no money. “I’ll pay you whatever you want for your cooperation.”
“What was your exit strategy, Lydia? You seduce me and learn the hard drive’s location. Then what? How were you going to sneak out of here, with me, without giving your boss the information he wants?”
She lowered her gaze to his body, taking in his strength, his sheer muscle mass.
“I see.” Disappointment roughened his voice. “You thought I’d be so blinded by your pussy that I’d lead you out like fucking G.I. Joe, maybe take some bullets for you in the process. And if I survived, I’d be useful in infiltrating the next target.”
“You have powerful friends. Once we get out of here—”
“You want my friends to help you? The same friends you targeted with hellfire?”
“The drone wasn’t armed.”
“Lydia,” Mike growled.
“You were bluffing?” Cole barked out a laugh. “Fucking awesome.” In the next breath, he sobered, his eyes hard as steel. “Give me the name of the motherfucker who’s funding this shit show.”
“He’s—”
In a blur, Mike pounced, swinging the pistol and whipping it across Cole’s head. The smack echoed through the warehouse, leaving Cole knocked out cold.
She gasped. “Why did you do that?”
He turned his furious gaze on her. “You said too much. If you tell him who’s involved, he’ll go after the hard drive himself.”
“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.”