by Isabel Wroth
I want to come home, but I don't know if there's anything to come back to. He told me you never stopped looking for me. Is it true?
Beneath the note was a phone number, and despite his desire to check it out and make sure this wasn't some kind of cruel a trick, Nasa folded the note back up and took the glass pen from Dillon to carefully settle it inside the case.
“It's not for me.”
He whistled sharply to get Duke's attention, circling his finger in the air to let him know it was time to get back on the road. Duke gave a jerk of his chin in answer.
“Satellites catching up to us?” Nasa rolled his eyes at the mocking drawl, deciding to spend some time freaking the commando out with just how many times his face got captured on camera in a day. Nasa wasn't wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses to look cool.
“Get in the fuckin' truck, idiot. We need to move. Where's Tobias?”
“Takin' a leak. Go on, we'll catch up.”
Nasa shuddered in disgust as he climbed in his rig. “I can't believe anyone would piss in a gas station bathroom after what I told them about how unsanitary public toilets are,” he muttered darkly, glancing sideways at Dillon when she gave a soft laugh. “What?”
Dillon held her hands up peaceably. “I didn't say a word.”
He clicked his tongue at her regardless, and not long later, her phone whistled to alert her of an incoming message.
“Patti, checking in,” Dillon reported, her brow furrowed as she slowly scrolled through the text. “Everyone is settled in and on their way to calm. Patti says she let them know how someone managed to get inside, and it appears the woman responsible—one Eedie Chambers—has disappeared. Surprise, surprise. Huh.”
“What?”
“Eedie checked in three days after Ghost sent me to Austin.”
Nasa quickly did the math. “So she's about a week over the thirty-day limit. Is that unusual?”
Dillon waffled her hand from side to side. “Not terribly. Thirty days is typical for a woman who has no place to go and no cash to get herself anywhere.
"It sounds like Eedie volunteered to do a large portion of the housekeeping, and with the high turnover happening, Patti says she needed that extra help, so she let Eedie stay longer.
“Apparently, Eedie told Patti she accidentally spilled a bottle of bleach inside the supply closet last night, and Patti told her it was okay to leave the window cracked for ventilation.
"On the fourth floor with no line of sight to any other windows, and barely big enough for a human to fit through in a room that's always kept locked? I didn't think of putting bars on it.”
“Why would you have?” Nasa replied, recalling what Ghost said about his inside girl. 'I promised she could leave if she did what I asked. You would not believe what that woman was willing to do in order to get away from her old man.'
“We'll get some still shots from the security camera of Eedie when we get home.”
“Sounds good,” Dillon answered, her thumbs flying over the screen even as she heaved a long, tired sigh. “I am not looking forward to relocating the shelter again.”
“Do you feel like you have to?” he asked carefully, because the building really was ideally placed and expertly fortified. Bars could be put on that window and the shelter would once again be sealed up tight.
“It's in all the Monumentally Foundation contracts. If a building is breached and any occupant harmed, we move the occupants to another safe house.”
“How many times has someone actually broken into the building? Like, gotten past all the security doors and set foot inside the shelter where the occupants are?”
“Today would be a first,” Dillon admitted.
“How many years since the shelter opened there?”
“Four.”
He huffed in amusement. “Yeah, you don't need to rebuild or move, Tiger Lily. Ghost wouldn't have been able to get inside without Eedie's assistance, which negates the safety clause in your contract, and no one was hurt.”
Dillon twisted in her seat to give him her complete and total attention, the look she gave him? Withering.
“Did I imagine finding you face down on the floor with two bullet holes in the back of your fancy-ass vest?”
The bite in her tone—the one that dared him to try and brush off what would wind up being nothing more than a bruise—turned him on like none other.
“No, you didn't, but I promise the only thing hurt is my pride.” Less than satisfied, Dillon harrumphed at his reassurance. “I meant, none of the women in the shelter were hurt. Ghost wasn't there for any of them; his accomplice is the one who broke in, and she exploited the singular vulnerability in the entire building. If there'd been any easier way to get in, he'd have found it.”
Dillon narrowed her eyes briefly before turning around to sit correctly again, folding her arms over her chest.
“If one of their husbands, boyfriends, stalkers, or rapists break into the building after an incident like today, Monumentally is on the hook for a lawsuit.”
“I'm not trying to convince you not to build another shelter, but you're speeding past the fact the people you've put everything into protecting feel safe in the building even after the cops and the bomb squad invaded their sanctuary. That's a big deal, Dillon. Huge.”
“It is,” she agreed, her voice thickening a little as the emotion that accomplishment brought swelled inside her.
“But with the news crews, the cops, and all the people going in and out? It's created a precedent. All it will take is for an abusive husband to make an anonymous call to 911 to say someone has left a bomb inside. The bomb squad and all the cops in the precinct respond; his wife is forced to come out, and he snatches her off the street.”
Nasa wanted to say that couldn't be a possibility, but had no legs to stand on as Athena had been taken off the street during a busy festival by her ex-boyfriend—a cop who'd stalked her, moved to Texas, and got a job at the precinct closest to her—and no one said a damn thing. The only reason they'd gotten to Athena in time was because she was one brave little ginger.
“I'll put bars on the window in the supply room, but all it'll take to blow the cover of my secondary entrance via the warehouse is for someone to ask a city clerk to pull the building plans and connect the dots.”
“Luckily, you happen to know someone who may have already sent someone else to collect all the physical copies of the building plans that might be surfing around Dallas.”
Dillon paused in twisting her watch around her wrist to look sideways at him. “May have?”
Nasa grinned in answer to her sarcastic drawl. “Definitely did. And any swinging dick could have previously made a call to get inside. Accuse a wife of kidnapping their kid, call in a murder, a fire, and the police could still get in there. Have they?”
Dillon shook her head in amazement, flicking her fingers through the air. “The kidnapping thing has happened before, and an ex-boyfriend called 911 to say he worried his girlfriend called and told him she was going to commit suicide.
"He hoped she'd get put in a hospital on psych watch where he could get to her. Patti handled it, and neither of the women were forced to leave the shelter.
“There's an interview room with the same glass on all the exterior windows. She's on one side; the cops or whoever can talk to her, just like in a prison, and she's safe behind the window. She never has to leave, even to talk to an advocate.”
Nasa heard the problem immediately, but he wrestled with the desire to point it out, versus the need to let Dillon come to the conclusion by herself.
“I didn't have any doubts earlier, but moving to Austin is the right thing for me,” she finally said.
“You know I'm all about it, but can I ask what solidified your decision?”
She nodded, stopping the constant twisting to look at the face of her watch. “I've spent the last ten years of my life barely trusting anyone around me, but I put a lot of faith in people I had precious little contact with, b
ased on the sole fact we all were involved in helping battered women.
“I made the assumption that their dedication to keeping secrets—mine and the other women we helped—was every bit as strong as my dedication to protecting theirs.
"It never occurred to me not to trust them or considered someone involved with Vanguard was the one to give me up to Styles.
“I'm not going to stop building safe houses or volunteering my time to help victims of abuse, but I don't think I can do it through Vanguard anymore. And...”
She trailed off as though she wasn't ready to speak the words aloud for the Universe to hear, but as far as he was concerned, she was done putting her ass on the line.
Dillon had no business bending over backward for people who relied on her protection, her discretion, and her money, who couldn't be bothered to make a damn phone call to protect her in turn.
She didn't need any middleman or woman to keep up with her mission to help women like her find a way to heal after the horrors they'd suffered. Not anymore.
“And?” Nasa prompted gently when she didn't go on.
He heard her swallow nervously, but Dillon's voice was steady when she spoke. “I'm focusing on all the things that could go wrong at the shelter and how it could possibly obliterate my foundation with the lawsuits because I'm rationalizing a way to get out. Even if I build a new one, the same things could happen there.”
“They could,” he agreed as neutrally as he knew how.
Dillon blew out a heavy, ragged breath and pushed her hair off her forehead, bracing her elbow on the door to rest her head in her hand.
“Today has been an unbelievably stressful day, and I'm not going to make any final decisions. However, I know I need to make one, and I will.
"Patti does amazing work for the women who come to the shelter, but I did practically strong-arm her into working for the foundation and manipulated her into making the move from the old building into mine.
“I made it so safe, so strong, so convenient, she couldn't refuse because it meant not protecting the women she helped to the best of her ability.
"I'm sure part of her resented me for the change, for all the rules I insisted she follow, and maybe that helped her go along with Rain's instructions to wait on reporting the incident when the Leviathans came looking for Rachel.
“Either way, Patti broke the rules of the contract, which gives the foundation every legal right to cut ties. I'm feeling a little overly emotional about it right now, but the fact remains I won't be able to put my life in her hands the way I have before, and I don't trust Rain as far as I could throw her.
“If I keep on like I have, I'll question every move they make, paranoid they cut a corner somewhere or weren't careful enough when they asked me to do a transport.
"I'll wonder if today's the day I come home and some other pissed off husband or abusive ex-asshole will be there waiting for me.
“Which will make me even more OCD about whatever role I play within Vanguard. My paranoia will increase, I'll be tense and on edge all the time, going around checking the locks at least three times before I let myself relax enough to even go to the bathroom, and I can't... I can't let myself devolve back into that state.”
Nasa wanted to tell her there was no way in hell he'd ever let that happen without sounding like a supreme dick, but there was no way in hell he'd let that happen.
Already having promised he wouldn't tell her how to run her business, Nasa had to hold back the urge to let her know, anyone she came into contact with from here on out would have their entire lives laid out at his fingertips before he allowed them close enough to make even the tiniest of waves.
He was fully committed to protecting her, and he would definitely be over the top, anal-retentive about clearing everyone Dillon came into contact with business-wise, but now probably wasn't the time to tell her so.
“I'm one hundred percent on board with everything you're saying. You can't help the people you want to help if you're a nervous wreck. So, what is it you're going to wait to decide on?”
Without hesitating or stuttering, Dillon firmly outlined her plan. “I'm going to give the shelter back to Patti. Monumentally will bankroll her for the next year, but after that, she's on her own and can go back to running things however the hell she wants.
“The lawyer who handles all the foundation's finances will be thrilled for the tax break. I'll keep building my safe houses, I'll probably set up another shelter in Austin with a manager who doesn't know me or have any reason to resent my protocols, and we'll start over.”
Satisfaction filled him as Nasa held her hand and listened to her work out an extremely generous plan he could totally get behind.
“If that's what you want, I'll be right there every step of the way to help however and whenever you need. Can I make a suggestion?”
“Sure,” she grumbled.
Nasa raised her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles, rubbing it in with his thumb.
“A while ago, Veracruz mentioned to me how much it sucked that after all the work his team did to get the victims of human trafficking back home, most times they have nowhere to go.
“No family, no way to rebuild their lives, and no way to afford the extensive treatment they'd need to recover.
"Most of the kids are underage, so they automatically go into the foster care system, and the services offered to them are mediocre at best.
“There are programs for victims but few specific to what the kids and the women coming back after being sold into sexual slavery go through.
"Before long, they wind up on the street to go at it alone because they feel like there isn't anyone in the world who cares or understands what they need to be safe.
“With the large economy and even larger population of immigrants, it's not a surprise Texas in the top three states with the biggest concentration of trafficking.
"At any given time, there are six thousand runaways in Houston alone, and thirty percent of calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline come from Texas.”
Nasa glanced sideways to see he'd captured every ounce of Dillon's attention. Her dark eyes were wide with surprise, but he could tell she was paying rapt attention to every word.
“I wasn't kidding when I told you I knew investors who would leap at the chance to support your foundation, and if you put half the effort into building a place for those victims that you did the shelter in Dallas?
"Maybe some of those traumatized, victimized, scared kids won't run off again and spend what's left of their lives in a dirty hole with a needle in their arm, trying to forget the shit that happened to them.
“Collette and Teague both would donate their time, and they'd know where to find the very best specialized therapists to come in and help.
"You could make the building more of a halfway house and provide spaces for rehab, therapy, get the kids involved in self-defense, maybe even have space for some kind of schooling.
“In Spain, there are programs where victims of spousal abuse are given a dog like Elka, who protect and guard them, and I know there are sponsors here in the states who'll leap at the chance to pay for support animals if one of the women or kids need one. All that to say, you don't have to start over, Tiger Lily. You can start something new.”
Dillon was quiet for nearly five miles before she once again blasted him with an irritated glare.
“From here on out, I'm going to really need you to stop being thoughtful and amazing while we're in a moving vehicle.”
“I can regale you with statistics on infections and diseases contracted in public bathrooms,” he told her with a laugh.
“No more toilet statistics,” she begged, ignoring his shout of protest when she unbuckled her seat belt and slid over to grab his face to give him a hard, quick kiss.
“Put on your goddamn seatbelt, woman!” He took his eyes off the road long enough to scowl at her, but it was weak, and he knew it.
Dillon ignored his order in favor of ki
ssing him again, softer this time, the whisper of her voice across his cheek raising goosebumps on his entire body.
“It's the most wonderful, amazing, generous idea I’ve ever heard, and I'd love some help scouting a property to house everything you're talking about.”
Her smile was that of a siren, calling to him with the most sensual of spells as she slid back into her seat, her fingertips cruising along the slope of his jaw.
He felt that gentle touch like a fist around his cock, and he got it now—why Roar, Saint, Raid, and Damon all talked about their women being able to bring them to their knees with one touch.
Nasa was a Master of decadent, dark, and devious kinkery. He could pleasure Dillon until she fainted from too many orgasms, screaming his name the whole way, and she'd still have the power to make him her willing slave.
“Whatever you need,” he told her gruffly. “Nothin’ I want more than to give it to you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Streaks of magenta, sherbet pink, and bright orange were painted across the horizon as the road fell away beneath the tires.
Exhausted, Dillon found herself holding her breath in eager anticipation as Nasa turned down the long, familiar drive to the Perdition compound.
The enormous concrete and metal building came into view, the place she'd now call home, and she watched it pass by as Nasa circled around to head into the underground garage. Gee was already there waiting to pull the heavy metal door down behind them.
“Finally,” Nasa sighed in relief. and after taking both hands off the wheel to stretch and flex his fingers.
Dillon realized she hadn't been the only one anxious to get back. It hadn't even been twelve hours since they'd left, yet it felt like an eternity.
Nasa twisted slightly to face her, chucking his hat and sunglasses onto the dash. “I know you're wiped, but everyone is probably upstairs waiting to hear from us. Think you got a little bit of juice left in you? I'm betting someone brought or cooked dinner.”
Dillon's eyes were gritty and felt swollen; all she wanted was to rinse off in the shower before climbing into bed, but her stomach snarled angrily at her.
