Page 173 of Deep Cover

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Cole

Vincent Geddes. Standing with his men, vehicles behind them and running, ready for the getaway.

My own men were - where? But a fast look around and I saw them all down, on their faces in the dirt. They were all armed. All of their guns were laying beside them. Three guards. One lay in a pool of blood spilling out from his shoulder.

They'd done what they were supposed to do. They’d defended the keep, even with me and Annie out on a run. The lead guard, Keith, lay with his hands laced behind his head and his face turned to the side. His cell was still in his fingers.

He'd tried to call, tried to warn me.

He was the one lying in an ever-expanding pool of his own blood. I needed to get an ambulance out here for him.

But first things first. The only thing I could do for Annie was step between her and the guns. I'd already done that. I couldn't tell her to run. She's fast, but they had cars, and those SUVs would easily skim the desert here. She couldn't outrun them.

We didn't have a panic room because we'd never had a need for a panic room and I disliked such things on principle.

Even if we did, the men in black had already surrounded us where we stood. She couldn't get into the house or into her own cell.

Everything went through my mind at the speed of light. The weight of the small Beretta Nano pressed into the small of my back, concealed carry in a custom holster for easy running. I could get to it, but Vincent had come armed with so many men, there was no way it would do any good.

He was grinning as he made his way over to me. His blond hair caught the early morning light and lit like a halo. Totally inappropriate. The son of a bitch made sadist sound like saint. I didn't know what to call him. He was one of our unofficial group of whatever we were, the Dark Philanthropists who got their kicks hurting each other's women and paying for the privilege, the proceeds going to charities designed to both do good, and make us laugh.

Stopping human sex trafficking. Charitable contributions from men who bought and sold women and used them as we did.

Programs to teach girls in other countries skills they could use to stay out of the sex trades, while we bought and sold prostitutes when the games we were bidding on and meant to play were too rough even for the concubines in our beds and homes.

Those nights we assembled to eat good food, smoke good cannabis, drink amazing bourbon or tequila and whip and fuck the women we’d brought until they collapsed from the pain or shame or stress.

I watched Vincent. He was violent. He was crazy. Stepping out from behind him, grinning like a gargoyle and clearly at this point as insane as her owner, Kie sported new and unhealed cuts on her face.

I'd gone cold, the sweat of my run cooling on my back. "What do you think you're going to do?"

He laughed, sounding delighted, and clapped his hands as if he were a child, about to be given the best toy ever. But the display was purely to unnerve. Nothing of what he was doing had touched his eyes.

His eyes were cold and dead and avid. His gaze kept going back to Annie.

I'd wanted to keep her away from him and keep her safe. Safer. Because she was safer with me. I'd only hurt a girl permanently once. She was a freak and was partially responsible for what had happened, but I had been wielding the cane that broke her ribs and I'd never forgotten it. For all the sadism and savagery I inflicted on Annie, I knew where every blow would land, what every strike would feel like.

By trying to keep her away from him and keep her safe, I'd made her a target. By telling him he couldn't have her, I'd made him want her more. When I had put her up for bidding, I'd done so because it was early days. She meant nothing to me then.

That's what I told myself.

But then, I'd refused her to him.

So maybe I was lying to myself.

"Don't worry, Cole. It's only two weeks, right?" He turned his burning grin on me and I got an idea just how far gone he was. It wasn't drugs. It seemed to be simply insanity. "I'll leave you a marker," he said. "Collateral?" He gestured at Kie and she gave him the beatific smile of someone just as unhinged as he was and maybe, impossibly, even more cruel. "But I'm afraid that Kie is owed a bit of recompense from me – " He reached out and cupped her face hard, squeezing her damaged cheeks. Clear fluid oozed from the unhealed cuts. My head swam. "And I think from you as well."

He moved directly toward me and I didn't reach for the gun, schooled myself, put a hand up against him. His fist looked the size of a grapefruit as it came at my face. I deflected it easily and grabbed him by the front of his tailored shirt.

"Take your men and leave while you still can."

He looked down slowly at the fist curled into the linen. One hand rose and gestured and suddenly the men with guns weren't at parade rest any longer, they were on top of both of us, because Annie hadn't run.

Annie had only moved closer to me.

Now there were the barrels of assault weapons pressed to my temples and probably to hers. Now there was the sound of those guns being brought to bear. Now there was the promise of what could so easily be the next and the last sounds.

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