Page 174 of Deep Cover

Still, I didn't move. For a minute I met him face to face, eye to eye. There were rules in our charitable games, enforceable treaties.

"Nothing permanent." My voice was like ice. I felt Annie tense all over behind me and realized she'd moved close enough to touch me.

"Nothing permanent," Vincent agreed with a carelessness meant to nettle.

"Nothing broken."

"Most likely," he said. "Old boy, you have no bargaining room. I will return your property marked but not permanently, possibly broken, but not in a way that won't heal. Eventually. Nothing will be cut off or dug out. Haven't those always been the rules?"

Behind me, Annie was shaking.

Behind me, the men with guns had grabbed her arms and she cried out and now I turned, letting go of Vincent's shirt, not caring if he struck at me again, but he didn't.

The pain he'd already inflicted had been more than enough for him.

She screamed and struggled as they shoved her into the SUV. The instant his men began moving to the vehicles my men were surrounding me, their guns again in their hands.

Exactly what they were supposed to do. I wanted to go after Vincent and they stood in my way.

I had to let them. I couldn't get her back if I were dead.

When the cars started to pull away, I came out from behind them, knelt, aimed and shot at the tires. The men around me shot at the vehicles she wasn't in. But of course a billionaire has the money to armor plate his cars. Several of the tires were hit but anyone going off-road in the desert is going to go with the kind of tires that would get them out of the back country and to a service station, still hard, waiting to be replaced.

The minute I stopped firing, I started shouting orders. For helicopters to go up. There's one at the compound and the pilot was already sprinting for it before I finished the order.

There were two other choppers I called in, launching from the city no more than fifteen minutes away from our location, but that was too long.

Another guard took a dirt bike, streaking out in the direction they'd gone.

Another went with me, in one of our own SUVs, and I was still on the phone, shouting now to the police, to the officers I knew who understood the lifestyle and understood the occasional bribe and all of it was far, far too late.

By the time the chopper was up, the bike was out, we were following, the police were called, they'd already convened in the desert in a different direction than Annie and I had come running from. The guards watching us were watching us as we ran. They'd done everything right. Everything had gone wrong anyway.

Out in the desert, in a direction she and I hadn't been, Vincent and his men had changed vehicles. The black SUVs would show nothing until closely inspected and then there'd be some trace evidence that she had been in one of them but probably nothing more. Whatever vehicle she was in now, it wasn't a black SUV.

I had been to Vincent's house. I had fucked his wife and beaten his girlfriends and he'd had similar times in my company. I had been to the houses of others in our circle, and interacted with Vincent there.

None of the others would be a part of this. But none of the others would be a part of this in my defense, either. This was predators going after each other's prey and everything was already outside the law. Only the bribed members of the metro PD and those who didn't know she wasn't my girlfriend but something else would act. It would all be treated with kid gloves.

Both sides.

At our level of wealth and power, either one of us could make the other disappear. But either one could disappear himself and Vincent had already done so, and taken Annie with him.

When I first became a part of our so-called philanthropic circle, I knew none of the men I now routinely interacted with. Of all of them, I'd say Claude was closest to a friend. I didn't believe he'd step in and take sides.

Times like these I understood that money doesn't ensure friendship. Or safety. Or any of the things that matter in life. Whatever games I played with Annie, I would never have hurt her beyond her capacity to endure. There was her addiction to worry about.

There was her loss to fear. Like I had lost my sister. To drugs and to men who didn't deserve to walk the surface of the earth.

There were other men out there with secret pasts and frightening presents. Men whose specialized training and horrific backgrounds made them ill-suited to modern life in polite society but who, as vigilantes and mercenaries, I could hire to go where I couldn't and do what I was incapable of.

"Take me back," I told the driver.

Paul turned without question and headed back to the compound. "What can I do now, boss?"

"Call everyone in." I had six guards though Keith was on his way to the hospital with the shoulder wound, and Jason was still shaky, not so much physically but he'd had a hard time coming back from being whipped. That left Paul and three others. I wanted a short, fast meeting where they’d present their ideas and then get out there and search again.

Useless but they had to be somewhere. Though if I were Vincent – the thought made me grind my teeth, thinking what I'd do to Kie if I ever got my hands on her – I'd already be at the airport.

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