Deep Cover: A Dark Billionaire Romance Page 3

  I ground against him, bit his lip, heard him murmur, "Hey, I'm right here! It's okay…"

  --and thought that it wasn't.

  I loved him. I'd tried to convince him to go. I'd tried to tell him I wasn't who he thought I was and I wasn't worth waiting for but Mark was good and true and Mark was waiting, convinced I'd see the light and leave narcs and maybe leave the force.

  And I knew I had no intention of doing that.

  The sex was sweet. I didn't think I was looking for sweet anymore. But sex with Mark was sweet.

  And it felt like goodbye.

  It wasn't goodbye quite that easily. Jesse called and told me to stay with my dad for a couple days. Things were weird. They thought the Asians had double crossed them and two of his soldiers were dead.

  The fact that he thought about my safety felt a little weird. The fact that I felt kind of like I would be betraying him when he eventually got taken down? That felt weird too.

  I accepted the extra time. On the second day at the apartment I set out to wash the clothes I'd brought with me as cover, including the ones I'd been wearing at the buy. I was dumping everything in the laundry room, preparing to go through pockets when my phone rang and this time mom was crying.

  At first I couldn't make sense of anything she was saying. My heart began to hammer so hard I could barely hear over its racket and the ringing in my ears. Then Sarah took the phone (translation: We're here at the hospital; why aren't you?) and said, "It's the investigation, Anne."

  Hello to you, too. But honestly I was more interested in what was happening with dad than in saying hello to my sister.

  "Has something happened?"

  "Yeah," said Sarah, and uncharacteristically, "Those sons of bitches are going to bring him up on charges of falsifying a crime scene and arrest report."

  What I wanted to know was when was the surgery and what were his chances. Because I loved him and I was scared, my toes were cold on the carpet because I wasn't wearing shoes. But the chills going up my arms and back, they were all because of dad.

  "Surgery is tomorrow morning," she said. "Will you be here for that?"

  I didn't even need to translate that one.

  I called the hospital, proved who I was, proved it again, told them I didn't give a shit about their HIPAA privacy laws, called back because apparently life and death hospital stuff is all dependent on us not swearing like good little grade school children.

  That time, I got a doctor who knew what dad had done and who he was, and who was willing to talk to me.

  "It's not good, Ms. Knox. He's got a lot of issues with blockage, which is the usual reason we do open heart, but worse, his heart has been weakened from years of it."

  When I could make my mouth work, I said what dad had said. "Fifty-fifty?"

  A silence, and then he said, "Thirty-seventy. Maybe thirty-five."

  I hung up and sat down on the floor beside my clothes. The need to go the hospital was tempered by the facts: I couldn't do anything once there. I was still a little afraid of blowing my cover by running into somebody who knew me and equally afraid that would put my family in danger. Waiting with my sisters was in no way better than waiting alone.

  Eventually I got to my feet and went back to picking up my clothes, shaking out the pockets, finding a key to the clubhouse (which was never locked), a wad of cash (which probably couldn't be traced and didn't have to be turned in for evidence because I was undercover).

  And some packets full of white powder.

  China white.

  4

  "I was afraid you'd be gone when I got home," Mark said.

  We were making dinner together, one of us using her most-prized culinary skills (me: I was boiling water for spaghetti) and Mark using the skills of a surgeon to chop up onions and garlic and tomatoes and throw them into olive oil to sauté before adding tomato sauce and paste along with bay leaves, fresh basil, oregano, red and black pepper freshly ground, and salt.

  "I expected to be." Not that I could tell him my main squeeze biker had told me to take some time because he was afraid for my life. Or that I might let slip something he needed kept secret. "It's nice to be home."

  "I checked on your dad," he said, sliding a tray of garlic bread into the broiler.

  I managed to splash water all over the stove dropping in the spaghetti. "You did?" I was afraid to ask anything else because Mark would understand the odds and the medical jargon. Of the things he didn't understand about me, he knew me too well to pull punches.

  "He looks good."

  I jerked my head up to stare at him.

  He nodded, like he understood the hope and didn't want to encourage it. "I mean, for someone in his condition, he's at the higher end of the odds for making it."

  I toyed with my food. "Why don't his doctors say so?"

  Mark snorted. "So they won't get sued. Eat that."

  I did.

  For the first time, I felt a little bit of hope. And later when I had my hands in the soapy water and Mark came up behind me, naked from the shower, and wrapped himself around me, his hands on my breasts, his face ghostly in the dark window over the sink, right beside mine, I shut off the water and turned within his arms.

  He lifted me effortlessly onto the counter, and stepped between my legs. I was wearing one of his long shirts, nothing else, and he slid into me easily, his erection filling me up. All of Mark is just right. He didn't make me ache, but he touched everything that needed touching.

  I bit his neck. He stilled, as if considering, and I tried to remember if I'd ever done that before. I wanted him to rip the shirt away, to have his teeth find my nipples, to wrap my legs around him and have him carry me.

  But instead he helped me down from the sink and put his arms around me, the two of us moving through the kitchen in a series of bumps into appliances and chairs and, impossibly, each other. e reached the bedroom and he knelt before me, pulling my legs to his shoulders and burying his mouth between my legs. He sucked and licked and swirled his tongue and I bucked and arched but didn't cum. Not until he climbed up on the bed, sliding his erection between my legs and not even then.

  Not until I spun him unceremoniously and got on top. That surprised him. His hands went to my breasts and I leaned back, gently fingering his balls, which made him start and stare at me, more aware behind his eyes than I thought he should be.

  A satisfactory time was had by all.

  But only that.

  Over the next two weeks, my father got stronger, got weaker, got pneumonia, got well, and got scheduled for his procedure.

  Over the next two weeks my phone rang with messages from Jesse, once, and then not anymore because he'd told me when to come back and it was a long time off and I couldn't promise but I wanted to.

  Because I had work to do. That's why I wanted to.

  During those two weeks, three more middle school children OD'd on China white.

  During those two weeks, my mother got into an accident and totaled her car and my sisters took turns driving her to the hospital, leaving me out of the rotation.

  During those two weeks, Mark made love to me and I continued to surprise and confuse him until I stopped accepting his offers. Too tired. Too worried.

  During those two weeks, my father, who was fighting for his life, was brought up on charges that were just waiting for him to be released. My mother raged, my mother who can barely bring herself to talk back to someone who’d just done something totally egregious, called dad's captain a motherfucker.

  During those two weeks, Jesse was shot and killed.

  The white powder bubbled down to an injectable. It was child's play getting the needle.

  For the first time in two weeks, my heart stopped racing and my breath stopped coming in like I was asthmatic or slowly being strangled.

  The afternoon passed in a drifty unreality that didn't hurt like other days.

  5

  "Babe?"

  Mark found me sleeping in the sun on the couch. I n
ever nap.

  I rarely giggle.

  He sat down beside me and looked deep into my eyes. I gave him a fatuous smile then I realized he was looking at my pupils.

  "You're fucked up," he said flatly.

  "No, no." My words were mostly clear. "I was very sleeping." I cleared my throat. "I was very sound asleep."

  He gave me a look of utter disgust and got off the couch. "What are you on?"

  "Nap." I wasn't trying to be cute I just wasn't thinking very fast.

  "Jesus, Annie. I know you've had a hard couple weeks. I'm not going to turn you in to anybody. I want to know what you took so I can keep you safe."

  "As if," I said. "I'm fine. I can take care of myself."

  He gave me a very long look, the kind I thought he'd give me when he finally told me he wasn't going to wait for me any longer. "Then see that you do," he said before he left to go back to work.

  6

  Once became twice. Became half a dozen times. A dozen. Became the need to score some more and that wasn't hard either.

  Jesse was dead and dad was sick and being charged and Mark was angry and kids were dying and –

  And Dave Samuels said they were pulling the plug on my operation. I'd been given leave I didn't ask for and when I came back to work - once your father is doing better which I thought translated into your fiancé had some things to say and we believe you need a month, and you're valuable enough to us to get it - we'd discuss my next assignment.

  "Narcotics?" I said.

  "Yes," he said, and then, "Annie, your voice isn't right and you've missed calls from the captain and I get it, your dad is not doing okay and when he does he has a shitstorm to work through but you've got to get it together."

  "I don't know what you mean," I said angrily.

  "Really? Okay, let me put it this way. You want your job back? You need to get clean."

  On the last day of the two weeks, my handler Dave Samuels said he knew what was going on with me and hinted it was a very delicate thing, not letting everyone else know too. On that day he told me if I got cleaned up and did it now, there was a chance no one on the force would ever know, other than him, and he could keep a secret.

  I almost asked him What do you need in order to keep that secret? But I didn't have to because he went on to tell me.

  All I had to do was show up clean at the end of my month’s leave.

  Right. But it had already been two weeks. The stuff was strong. And currently? I wasn't.

  He knew a guy who could help, he said. Worked in pharma and when I asked - no, the legitimate pharmaceutical industry, and he was working on a drug that was rainforest-based and had the tremendously promising effect of ending most addictions without killing the addict and without harsh measures.

  It would be just like going undercover again, he told me. Because I was to tell no one where I was going or what I was going to do.

  "How am I supposed to disappear on my family? My fiancé? My father's in the hospital!" I didn't want to admit to myself how out of the loop my family was keeping me, as if they expected at any minute the job would pull me away.

  "Find a way," he said. "Because otherwise it's going to get out, what's happened to you. Even if you can deal with it, can your father? Your fiancé?"

  It was a low blow. But it worked. Even now I could feel the fire starting to crawl through my veins, the desire for more. My teeth kept sinking into my lower lip and the hand not holding the phone kept scratching the skin on my other arm. Digging for something. Sanity. Clarity. An end to the pain.

  "All right," I said finally. "All right. I'll find an excuse. I'll meet this man. They'll all just think I'm undercover again, right?"

  Dave didn't actually answer.

  "Right?" I was crushing the phone in my hand.

  "Let me tell you what you need to do," Dave said.

  7

  The town car that picked me up had windows tinted so dark it had to be illegal but though we passed several state police units, no one stopped us. There were no identifying marks on the car, no license plates, and my phone had been taken before I could have dreamed of running anything through DMV.

  There were no handles on the inside of the car in the backseat. There was a dark walnut and glass wet bar, with a silver bar attached to it for a towel to hang decorously upon. To my credit, my cop-ish paranoia suggested it would be a good place to cuff someone.

  I carried very few belongings, only toiletries and a couple changes of clothes, a small bag containing my drug of choice and my kit.

  Halfway through a very long drive, the car stopped and a woman met us, escorted me to a restroom inside a convenience store in an Oregon town. When I got back in the car, we continued. Into California. Into Nevada. All the way south to Las Vegas.

  On the outskirts, the driver pulled over, put down the window between us, holding a taser trained on me and held out a thick black scarf. "Tie this over your eyes and nose." He didn't bother to threaten what would happen if I didn't. He was, after all, holding a weapon.

  A month here, with whoever the reclusive billionaire with the pharma miracle was, and I'd return to my life on Seattle PD, clean again. Safe again. Ready to work.

  It was worth this indignity. Once I'd tied on the blindfold he said, "Hold your hands out to me."

  I did, unsurprised when cold metal cuffs went first around my left wrist, then around the silver bar on the wet bar that graced the back of the front seat, up the other side, I could assume, and snapped around my right wrist.

  "We're almost there. You get carsick?"

  He hadn't been actively mean. Just quiet. "I don't know," I said. "I don't usually ride in bondage."

  He gave a short laugh and I heard him turn back to me. "Open your mouth."

  He sounded calm and kind but I didn't.

  Pause, and then, "It's crystallized ginger. Feel." He brushed my fingers with it and that's what it felt like. "Combats nausea. Even people who don't get carsick can when blindfolded."

  I took the ginger. I thanked him.

  And I rode to Cole St. Martin's enormous walled estate in the deep desert, blindfolded, trusting, and already craving.

  8

  Cole St. Martin. He looked exactly like a billionaire should. Tall and imposing and impossibly self-confident, he looked like Loki from The Avengers but with more muscle.

  He greeted us at the door, wearing jeans with a thick, well broken-in leather belt, a white linen button up. Bare feet. He accepted my bag from the driver and carried it himself.

  The instant I'd been taken through the door the blindfold had been removed. I'd seen Cole come down the wide, curved staircase and shuddered with the force of something I couldn't explain.

  His hands were long-fingered and strong. His voice brooked no argument. He had the situation, whatever it was, totally under control and I had yet to say a word.

  Something about him made me uncertain I could.

  "Annie Knox." It wasn't quite a question but he did wait for a response. How many blindfolded and handcuffed women did he expect to take delivery of in a single day?

  "Will you join me for a light lunch? Or are you feeling sick?"

  I was starting to shake, but the fentanyl hadn't robbed my appetite yet. "I'd like something to eat," I admitted. "Thank you." Unconsciously, I rubbed my wrists where the cuffs had been.

  "Thank you, sir," he said.

  Confused, I looked up, then looked around. Had I mistaken the man the driver had meant? Sir? And then I understood because he was watching me.

  Sir?

  I met his gaze, cool brown eyes appraising me. Abruptly he nodded to himself and turned into the house. "Follow me."

  Simple but lavish, every part of the house, the formal and informal living rooms, the formal and informal dining rooms, the buffet lunch laid out in the sunny kitchen, and beside the place set for me, a handful of capsules and a glass of water.

  "Go ahead and read it. I have to see to the salmon," he said, and rolled up the sl
eeves of the button-up, all the way to mid-biceps. He pulled on a stark white apron and busied himself across the expanse of kitchen while I read about the experimental, non FDA-approved, rainforest-based drug that could cut through opiate addiction safely and completely. ]The capsules bore the mark of the drug, a stylized "SM" in a circle, for St. Martin, I guessed. There were side effects, very few and infrequent, including stomach upset, fever, headache, sleeplessness. If that was it, I'd take it. This was the way to get my job back.

  This was the way to get my life back.

  Over lunch he read peer review journals to me, which could have put me to sleep but I spent the time watching his face, the square jaw, the stubble gracing it, the sensual, full lips, the brown eyes that looked up to find mine.

  "If you're in agreement, then," he said as I ate the last bite of salmon. "Swallow the pills."

  I took them without question. Nothing I had ever done rendered me high enough on anyone's radar to do something this elaborate just to hurt me.

  I stood then, at his bidding, and he took my hand, his strong and dry. Holding mine firmly, he led me up the stairs and into a bedroom holding only a bed, a four poster that dominated the small and barren room.

  If sex was what I had to pay, there were worse things. He was beautiful.

  He'd explained very little during our lunch, but now, taking me by the shoulders, he stood me in front of him. "Your body is yours to take or give by your own consent," he said, his voice calm, a little formal. "But your wellbeing has been placed into my hands and the person who did so has been paid a handsome fee."

  My attention had strayed but now my eyes snapped back to his. "What?"

  "Your Mr. Samuels," Cole St. Martin said. "He is hoping for the best for you, and doing what he can to help you. He has been compensated for finding you for me."

  My breath stopped coming and his words stopped making sense. I heard snatches of things - that I wouldn't be permanently harmed, that I might find I liked it, that I could sleep with him or not, or change my mind about either whenever I chose, that the cure was real and the cure worked, and after all those articles I didn't doubt that.