Page 238 of Deep Cover

29

Cole

There was no doubt who the men were on the doorstep. They came with private security, the same as Vincent had, and were met by my private security. Because this time there was just enough warning.

I was headed back to Annie's quarters with breakfast, thinking it would be a good day to take a break from the usual routine. No run, no cleansing, no spanking. No fish.

She'd like that.

I was outside her room but still inside the compound, the tray in one hand as I maneuvered with the lock, when I heard her on the phone. She was shouting. By the time I got through the door and into her suite, I could understand her.

"Tell him not to open the door!" she shouted into the phone. "Whoever is on guard duty, stop the men who just got here!"

"Annie!" I dropped the tray onto the bed as I passed it. "What's happening?" In the back of my mind, insane scenarios played out where even Vincent wasn't dead, let alone Kie, that Annie not only wasn't just paranoid, but dead right.

I knew better. I saw what she did to him in the second before I pulled the trigger. Even if I hadn't hit him in the center of the forehead, she'd already driven his nose into his brain. He'd have been on a respirator for the rest of whatever life he had.

Even as I rounded the corner into the office, I knew. Pounding had started up outside her room, on the actual door that led into the suite from the outside. Whoever they were, they were armed. I could see them on the monitors over the desk. They carried guns, and though they weren't drawing down on my men, they had made it this far already.

Annie's father and fiancé. Had to be. Annie had been talking to her father undoubtedly, just minutes ago. Because she always called him before she called her fiancé and she talked longer with her father than with her fiancé. I don't think she realized that.

"Annie!"

She turned her whole body toward me, bringing the phone with her. Relief showed on her face. She reached her free hand to me and it didn't occur to me to do anything but take it.

"Yes," she said into the phone, and hung up. "It's my dad and Mark."

There was shouting from outside the suite.

"I know." I felt anything but calm but I didn't let it show. I'd talked to more than one set of desperate men holding guns. Not just Vincent and the men he'd come with but men in the rainforest in Brazil. Men who had nothing to lose and a whole lot of nowhere to lose one white man in, billionaire or not.

Actually, being a billionaire was worth fairly little in Brazil.

Annie's eyes were flicking everywhere, taking in the entire room she'd spent months exploring every aspect of. If there was an alternate way out, she'd have already found it. That didn't stop her from looking.

"Annie." I put just enough of the Dom in my voice. I needed her to listen. "These are your people."

I could see her wanting to argue. Undoubtedly she wanted to ask why I wasn't upset. "You can go with them. They won't hurt you."

Now there was outright panic on her face. I wasn't far behind her. These stolen minutes might be our last.

"I don't mean forever. I mean to keep everyone safe. For now." She was starting to fight, panic clearly showing because the door wasn't going to hold much longer. "Go with them. See what they want. Then come back to me."

I definitely put the Master in that one.

Her eyes wide, she shook her head. "I just got back! I don't want to go!"

There wasn't any more time. Very fast, probably incoherently, I said, "They won't hurt you. Come back when you can." Then I spun her and struck her half a dozen times on the ass, a sendoff, and turned her back to me and kissed her once, very hard, on the lips.

Annie said, very clearly, "Cole, I –" Her eyes were wide and staring at me as the men with guns came through the door, shouting some kind of movie script instructions – Get away from the girl! Or Get on the floor! Things I had no intention of doing.

Instead, I gave her a smile and said, "That's one, Miss Knox."

She was laughing when her father and her fiancé threw themselves between us, protecting her from the monster in running shoes and shorts, who was still laughing. I kept laughing even when the retired cop brought up on charges of maybe being a little too violent in the past, threw me into a wall and proceeded to search me in a very thorough manner considering I wore only shorts and running shoes.

I stopped laughing when they attempted to cuff me, pulled away roughly and called out to Annie.

She answered promptly, struggling against the man I assumed was her fiancé, a golden-haired teddy bear in the making. He'd go to fat later in his life.

---