by Sophia Reed
"You're thinking very serious thoughts," Cole said in my ear as the limo purred to the far end of the airport.
My eyes had to be wide as saucers. We were about to tour Rio. His comment brought me back to myself. This wasn't a time or place to be thinking about the bad things that got me here.
I could enjoy where I was.
"Thank you for this chance, sir," I said.
Cole looked surprised, then he winked. "What do you want to see first?"
"Um, everything? Seriously, what I know is about the buildings where your meetings are, and the people you're meeting with, to the extent I could find them. The only thing I know about the local food is there's too much fish."
It was weird to make Cole laugh. He was rarely serious, often concerned with small strange cruelties or his own pleasure, but outright displays of humor were rare.
But that made him laugh.
Billionaires have a certain rock star status but the nice thing is they're not really rock stars. Place a lousy tourist hat on Cole's head and some baggy tourist shorts on him and once I managed to control my urge to laugh to the point where he wouldn't kill me for it, we were good to go. Yes, he had an entourage and yes, the security dudes were obviously just that, but it could be toned down so only those people who know such things – that's private security, that's a bulletproof car – would notice.
Leonard Clark was one of the two men we'd brought along. Cole's head of security, Matt Branch, was a short red-headed dude who was more deadly with the French martial art Savate than anyone I'd ever met. He remained in a room near the airport, only ever out of contact by minutes. Cole had told him to carry his phone and go enjoy himself, but I thought Matt would spend his time working out, reading through the news of the day to make sure nothing untoward was heading for Rio (or given it was Rio, more untoward than usual) and keeping in contact with me and the new guys.
Matt didn't look likely to relax at the hotel pool with a drink in hand.
And he was hella pissed with me.
I wasn't completely sure why. I hadn't tried to take his job away. He was in Rio. He really could have seen some sights. He'd have to make his way from the airport to wherever we were as it was, though I did understand that the airport hotel was a fixed location. He had each day's itinerary. He could more easily move from the airport to us than from another location. But we weren't always going to be in the gleaming offices Cole had rented for the meetings.
I got it. Branch was dedicated. And he was angry at being on the outside. But he got it. I was eye candy. I could hang on Cole's arm and look like a rich guy's piece. The fact that my own piece was a Glock and my backup a Smith & Wesson M&P just made me useful eye candy.
It felt good to be working.
It felt wonderful to only be doing surveillance as we took in the iconic sights. By the time you finally get to somewhere like Rio, a million images are already in memory. The iconic Christ the Redeemer statue, so much more startling in real life than in the photos. I'd seen how many bird's eye views of the thing? All vertigo inducing images but looking up at it was just as impressive. There were beaches I never wanted to leave and national parks full of birds and jungle vegetation. The air was soft, warm and wet and there was more food than fish and Cole didn't monitor what I ate.
For two days, I was on vacation with a strange pack of people I didn't know. Kind of like choosing to go on a tour with luxury accommodations but a bunch of strangers for company.
Sometimes life is officially strange.
And then it was time to go to work.
12
Cole
"Right this way, Mr. St. Martin." The girl was beautiful, dark complexion, big dark eyes, perfectly groomed. Her waterfall of black hair fell to her shapely ass, which moved under a tight white dress. Endless legs and very high black stilettos. I tried to imagine Annie in that outfit and bit my lip so as not to laugh. Annie was sexy in her natural unawareness of her charms. This woman, Alyssa Montpellier, was beautiful and exquisitely turned out, but every perfectly managed component that put together the whole of her was intentional.
Not that it wouldn't be a pleasure to peel the dress off her and leave stripes on that round ass. But there were times my attention was elsewhere.
The tour of Rio was breathtaking as always. Matt was back at the airport, seething, put in his place by Annie's outlined security measures. I went along with them because I liked the idea of none of my staff knowing exactly what I was doing here.
The building was a skyscraper, all gleaming metal and glass looking out from the penthouse conference room at vast blue seas. I'd need more beach time before we headed back to the States.
My own safety is paramount to me. I can't function if I'm constantly on the lookout and afraid. I can't do anything if I'm dead.
But hiring the best freed me up to meet with people who would give me an in with those people I needed to secure land from.
The Amazon Rainforest covers 60 percent of the landmass of Brazil. Mindboggling expanses of that are burned every day by shortsighted people who want to cattle farm or clear cut and do something else with the land. Wildfires had devastated huge swaths as well. The whole of the naturally beautiful and vitally important forest was in danger.
I was securing what I could in Brazil before I branched out into nearby countries.
The fact that Rio runs from the ultra rich to the ultra poor is no secret. That there's rampant corruption there is no secret either. There's corruption everywhere – other places just hide it better.
The meetings I had set up were with government officials who might or might not have sway in local politics, with politicians who might or might not have ties to organized crime, private citizens who could be part of god knows how many dangerous organizations, both legal and illegal. I would talk with anyone I needed to in order to secure tracts of land I could at least begin to protect and manage. I needed feet on the ground in Rio, and there were offices full of people in the U.S. finding me the people to meet with to arrange that. Background checks were being run as I toured the beaches and local hires would be doing interviews with candidates for me to meet with during this sojourn.
Annie was, for now, a pleasant distraction. For me, and for anyone I needed to distract with a beautiful girl on a well turned out man's arm. Together like that, we would fade into the background, another beautiful couple set among all the beautiful couples in this country.
And it was a chance to watch Annie in action. When she left my company at the end of our contract, she'd be looking for a lot of new things in her life, I expected. If the engagement to Mark Tomlin made it through her "treatment" and, unknown to him, her sexual slavery, he'd find a far different woman coming home to him.
He was probably used to that. I expect her undercover assignments changed her every time. Personally, I thought Mark Tomlin sounded like a shit, but that wasn't my business. Once Annie Knox walked away from our contract at the end of our year and a day, she was no longer my concern. Like selling one of my favorite cars. I might enjoy it while I had it and I might put it through its paces and expect the most out of the high performance toy. But once sold, she was somebody else's baby. But I thought when she returned to what she thought of as her life – as if time spent with me was somehow outside her actual life, a detour she wasn't actually living – she'd find herself making changes she couldn't foresee.
Watching Annie now was a joy, though. Here, while we were working, she was dressed in a white button-down shirt and black slacks. The pants had straight legs, not tapered or pegged, not loose and flowing. She'd been very specific about what she wanted and my seamstress had custom created them for her. The pants needed to hide the Smith & Wesson at her ankle and allow her to get to it quickly. She wore ankle height black boots with flat soles with great traction. At her waist she wore a Glock in a holster and that wasn't hidden. Whatever official paperwork had to be filed for Annie to open carry in Rio, it had either been done or the right people bought of
f. I didn't know or care because when it came down to You're not supposed to be carrying that gun, I thought the person actually carrying it had the upper hand. Violation of laws is something that I can afford to take care of.
"Let's go over the day's schedule again." That was Matt Branch on speaker phone from the hotel. He was in the loop but he wasn't present, and I thought the instant she got him off the phone, Annie would change things.
She didn't not trust Matt. But she wanted him out of the loop for the meetings because she wanted full control.
That was something I could very much understand.
The meetings took two days. Two days of my limited Portuguese put to the test. Annie spoke Spanish, which was marginally helpful, though it would be more useful for ordering drinks and food than understanding the meetings.
Mostly she watched. Silent, respectful. Doing her job and as far as I was concerned, doing it well.
There would be rewards in her future.
13
Annie
It was nice to be working.
I'd done a few freelance moonlighting jobs in security. Nothing this big. Planning it had been like putting together an undercover operation. Hiring the right people had pissed off the existing people at the same time I saw acceptance in their eyes. They understood why I was doing it. They could even respect it and my handling of it.
They just didn't like me. That was all right. I'd already determined that Cole's people were loyal. It wasn't just the money. It was something about Cole.
I was the least loyal of his people because it was hard to swear loyalty to a man who laddered your legs and ass with cane marks, or made you wet just thinking of that.
But I was loyal to the job. And it was nice, having the guns on me, being hyper aware, moving through scenarios every second, what would I do if this happened?
And it was nice to be on an amazingly beautiful beach with Cole, his body beautiful in swim trunks and my bathing suit laughably tiny, cut to show more of my ass than I'd ever contemplated sharing with the world, and yet the runs and weight training and even the damned yoga combined with the martial arts I was still doing meant I could move with confidence in those scraps of material and spend my time on the beaches gazing at the beauty.
Not admitting one of the most beautiful things there was Cole St. Martin.
I enjoyed knowing I was impressing him, too. He'd seen me at my lowest, vomiting and going through withdrawal, sneaking Advil by the handfuls, sobbing under his cane or his whip or his hand.
It was nice to move into a room ahead of him, one gun on my hip, one gun in my boot, and a job to do.
It was nice that he respected the job. I slept in a room adjacent to his. There was no sex, no propositions, no beatings.
It was nice.
And I'd be happy when it was over, too. When the stress of hoping every instant that there were no tests, either designed by Cole or designed by the stranger holding and selling. Or that none of the people he was meeting with would turn out to be a problem I had to meet with lethal force.
It would be nice when the stress of the assignment faded into the past.
Which wasn't to say I didn't appreciate the present of the beaches. And the fact that there were other things on the menu besides fish.
In the end, over three days Cole met with eight people. Two of them were from rural areas and probably involved in slash burning or whatever it was called. They were the least dangerous of any of the people he met with and I couldn't convince myself of anything else. I watched, just as on alert, but wasn't surprised when nothing came of it.
The other five included at least one man I figured was part of some cartel or another, three nondescript men, one of whom brought a blond who was pretending her IQ was in single digits and who was probably smarter than all of us. She had a look in her eye. She didn't count as one of the people he met with.
Women didn't. Plus she was the only one.
The eighth man was angry before he even walked into the room. Maybe he'd been sitting in the lobby watching how many other people came and went, though he couldn't have known where they were going in the gleaming building and it turned out Cole had only paid for the top three floors.
Number eight was just angry. He came in blustering and when I asked him to please calm himself and take a seat, he rounded on me and started what I assumed was a volley of swearing. I don't speak any Portuguese.
The guard who had seen him to the door had retreated into the outer office, the way he was supposed to. The office Cole and I were in was a secondary office – the offices on this floor were like Russian nesting offices – it took a while to move past the bigger shells to the actual office, though it had two outer walls, both of them largely glass. We could see the ocean.
The desk was set with its back to the door which I'd thought stupid from the start, but when Cole had security and me it was fine. If he'd been intending to keep the office, that would have changed or I would have walked.
I mean, if I had the ability to walk away from the job.
I was on the far side of the desk, where someone visiting the person whose office it was would sit, mostly so I could have my back to the corner between the two outer walls, covering the door that was almost straight across from there. It also put me directly beside and a little behind the two seats where Cole's guests would sit.
Cole was standing slightly behind the desk where he sat. All he had to do was take a step to his right, shake hands, and go back to sit behind the desk, which was roughly an acre of highly polished cherry wood with gleaming brass drawer pulls.
Number Eight entered looking like a puffed-up alley cat, already angry and intent on making himself look bigger. He was already big enough, and he was spitting in his fury, his words tiny showers no one wanted. But where I stood, facing him and prepared and armed, I wasn't in any danger.
Still, before I could move – or rather, before I'd decided that I would move, sweep his legs out from under him and deposit him in the chair, Cole moved. Because the man was facing me, muscles all bunched, arms drawn in close to his chest and his fists bunched, Cole was able to round on him from behind.
He took the simple expediency of taking the guy by a handful of hair I don't think I could have brought myself to touch – it was thick and greasy and hadn't seen soap or comb in longer than I'd been alive – his other hand going to the man's shirt collar. He pushed him forward and banged the guy's head into the edge of the desk.
Hard enough to leave a pretty instant mark.
Not hard enough to draw blood.
That didn't mean my services weren't needed. Lots of people knew how to take care of themselves and they still needed more eyes and ears and protection.
But it both scared the crap out of me and impressed the shit out of me at the same time.
The minute Cole let go of him it was my turn. Because Cole just let go and stepped back. I don't know if he was certain that I had it from there, or if he was just finished. Maybe he'd never released somebody only to have them go on fighting.
If that was it, this would have been the first time for him. Because Greasy Hair wasn't finished.
When he came up, snarling with anger and pain, he made a move toward Cole.
He managed one step and only because if he had one foot in front of the other it would keep him from falling when I grabbed him.
I didn't want to touch him more than necessary.
I moved behind him, grabbed the arm that had started to swing back, and yanked it behind his back. He tried to swing toward me, in that direction since it was his dominant side, he over-balanced. As he started to topple, I grabbed his left arm, then braced myself. Not stopping him from falling. Just slowing it.
The instant he was down I knelt, one knee in the small of his back, the other outside a hip, my lower leg along his leg so he would have a harder time swinging it out for leverage. I had both of his fat wrists in flexicuffs because it was doubtful I'd have gotten handcuffs through an air
port even with a private jet. At some point I'd have encountered security if I had handcuffs. That's just how it works.
Unless the handcuffs are covered in pink feathers or rhinestones. Then they're discovered because they're embarrassing.
I had neither. Flexicuffs I had and with his fat wrists, it was just as well.
I cuffed him, dropped him and stood.
"Where do you want him, sir?"
Cole had a decided smirk on his face. "There's fine," he said, and over the course of the next ten minutes he told the man he wasn't going to get a deal for his stretch of land. Which probably wasn't his anyway but if the man was guarding it, he'd now be guarding it for Cole who would have biologists and botanists and whatever those people who work with healing and hallucinogenic plants are called down there to collect.
If there was any problem they encountered, he added, taking out his phone and taking several photos of the man before emailing them to himself and his people, not only would the man's family not inherit anything from the land, they would end up inheriting whatever Number Eight was leaving them – and right then.
Was that clear enough?
Personally I thought it was somewhat veiled. I thought "If you fuck with us, we'll kill you" sent a more direct message. But apparently being assaulted by both of us and then met at the door by two goons of hired muscle holding weapons was enough for him. He settled, allowed the agreements to be read to him, was uncuffed, signed, and actually shook hands with Cole.
Who used copious amounts of Purell the minute the man left.
He grinned at me. "Great meeting."
I was smiling too hard to pretend to be a serious bodyguard. "Yes, sir."
He finished wiping his hands off. "You know what I've been thinking?" There was a gleam in his eye that told me I might have an idea.
"No, sir."
He advanced. "That you haven't had a maintenance spanking since we've been here."
