Page 216 of Deep Cover

17

Cole

We found it.

A simple house on a simple street, lined with flowering trees. There were Fiats parked on the curb. There was an orange cat on the window sill in the house next door.

There was a girl jumping rope three houses down. I wanted to tell her to go inside and lock the door and stay there but I wasn't going to do a single thing that could tip off Vincent that we were here.

She got the message anyway. Her deep brown eyes swept over us two times and she packed up her jump rope and went inside. It was very early morning. Maybe it was simply time for breakfast.

She'd be safer inside. I had no idea what would happen. Only that we were in the right place. I could feel it, like a bell ringing somewhere inside me. Annie was here.

Vincent was here. In the hours before we found the place he'd sent videos, blowing up my phone with images of Annie screaming in pain as Kie finally got the chance to do what I'd stopped her doing back in Las Vegas. Videos of Vincent and Annie in the limo, in the house, things he was doing to her.

There was no way of knowing. We could enter and find him laughing, game well played, here she is, I probably owe you for the extra time, all for a good cause, right? Charity and all.

Or he might meet us with his own guns. He might try to kill Annie.

My intention was not to leave Vincent Geddes alive when we left this place. My intention was to take Annie and go, leaving Vincent dead on the floor. This was the sort of thing police didn't talk about often, the fact that even if they knew who did this, there was more than enough money to make certain there were no ramifications.

Or the fact that likely there would be no trail. No investigation. No dead billionaire. There might be a house fire, unfortunate in the historic district. There might be bodies carted out, squatters maybe. Whatever the story was made up to be, it wouldn't come back to my doorstep.

Except.

If he hurt Annie more than could be corrected, more than medical care or psychiatric care, more than rainforest cure, could handle?

Then I wouldn't kill him. Not outright. And neither of us would leave this place for a very long, painful time.

The little girl had gone into the house, safely behind walls. There was no one else on the street this early. Maybe they'd seen us and decided it was better to be indoors despite the beautiful spring morning.

Then we were all moving forward. The team leader made a sound, something like a bird call if you'd never heard a real bird, and gestured with a clenched fist. Two of the six men ran for the corners of the house and disappeared into the backyard.

The leader made different gestures at the other men and they went up the sides of the house, spikes on their hands and feet allowing them to scale like squirrels.

The last two were with us. We took the front door, going through it silently when it turned out to be unlocked. Me, Jefferson, Joules who was one of the guys from SWAT and team leader. Three men I didn't know but trusted those who had hired them.

We were armed. We carried lightweight automatic assault rifles. There were knives holstered to our belts. We wore jeans and boots and black t-shirts only so we could identify each other quickly in the event of a firefight.

In. Across a silent entryway and to the right, what had been a drawing room was filled with a metal exam table. Less than a minute inside the house and I wanted to find Vincent and rip him limb from limb. The table was ugly and exposed and the thing I'd done to Annie that hurt her the most. There was no question that he'd used it on her. There were coverlets on it, dressings around it, like someone had been hurt and then tended to.

Fury burned brighter.

Until the beginning of March, there'd been no one renting this house. Then a multinational shell corporation had taken it on, theoretically for team building exercises.

It had taken too long to find this. I didn't know what condition An – my sub - would be in. She was my responsibility and the pain and rage I felt was because she was vulnerable, because she was mine to protect just as she was mine to hurt.

Because Vincent Geddes should never have been able to beat me at any game.

Conflicting feelings, out of place when I didn't have time to deal with them:

Shame, a rarity for me;

Desire, a constant. I wanted to do it again. I wanted to turn her inside out. I wanted to clean her out, more than just physically and medically. I wanted to hurt her until every other pain vanished from memory.

Then I wanted to sit with her while she cried. Because I wanted her to come into my arms of her own accord. I wanted to be where she turned for relief.

Past the drawing room. The house felt empty. If they were wrong, if she wasn't here, I'd lose my mind.

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