by Wick,Christa
“I can speak with her instead,” Gallant offered. “If this is a legal matter—”
“No,” Kane decided, stepping away from the attorney. Turning to one of the operations team, he jerked his head at the bank of monitors. “Cut the feed from my office.”
Knowing better than to argue with the company’s Chief Operations Officer and de facto CEO, the man immediately complied, his face a blank mask as he executed the order.
“This is irregular,” Gallant objected, following Kane from the room.
Stopping in the hallway, Kane shrugged. “Yes, but it’s not boring. You know what’s boring, Teddy?”
The older man’s face soured at the question. He shook his head, his expression one of parental disappointment. Kane’s opinion of the legal department as delaying meddlers was well known and oft repeated in subtle ways.
“One of these days you’ll learn,” Gallant said, walking away. “You don’t have to walk the razor’s edge to feel alive. There are times when a cautious approach is best.”
Kane huffed but let the man get the last word in. For an attorney, that was like throwing the old timer a bone, keeping him content and, occasionally, making him happy.
Reaching his outer office, Kane nodded at Lindsey before slipping silently past the double doors with their well-oiled hinges.
Daniella didn’t act as if she had heard him, which was exactly what he wanted. Studying her on camera wasn’t good enough. A person’s energy didn’t translate through the screen, neither did scent. And, as high definition as the cameras were, they lost the delicate lines of her curves and the shine on her light, golden brown hair.
A dozen more stealthy steps and he was within arm’s reach of the woman. Inhaling softly, he detected no perfume. He had mentally noted its absence while passing her on the steps outside the building. He would have to get much closer to discover the buried scents, the ones that most delighted him.
With an intentionally brusque cough, he cleared his throat, watching with a smirk as her body lifted some three inches off the seat cushion while she released a startled sound.
With that soft, plump ass touching the cushion once more, Daniella slowly twisted her upper body and looked at him. Her face instantly crumbled from a polite mask to…
Scorn?
The smirking corner of his mouth lifted a little higher as he skirted the massive teak desk and settled in his chair. Keeping a relaxed demeanor, he leaned back and stared at the woman, a cozy satisfaction filling him as she tried to resume that neutral mask while micro expressions she couldn’t possibly control betrayed her inner turmoil.
Kane could read that Daniella wanted to leave but felt that she must stay. She didn’t like him, perhaps because of how he had accelerated away after unhooking her purse. There was also a heavy dose of anxiety, which was standard for anyone sitting on her side of the desk.
People came to Stark International because they had a problem to solve or a valuable asset to protect.
Reading the last feeling that skittered across Daniella’s face, his chest tightened.
Fear.
“Why are you hear?” Kane asked, his voice softening as he stared into the foggy gray eyes with their thin obsidian streaks that stretched from her pupils to the extreme edge of her irises.
Her lips moved, then she shut them to swallow roughly. He lifted an encouraging brow, relieved that her more subtle expressions had turned back toward anxious, the fear—and scorn—gone for the moment.
“You delivered a baby two months ago.”
Her hands twisted at the envelope and his gut twisted right along with them. Gallant was right. She was here to slap him with a lawsuit or try to convince him to give her money so she wouldn’t sue.
But her name was Marquardt. That name hadn’t come up in his brief search into the life and death of Lynn Hoover. The pregnant girl had been a prostitute. Judging by the track marks he’d seen on her inner thighs when he had pulled the kid out of her, she had been a junkie at some point in her life.
But the baby had been healthy, surviving when the mother had not. The last he’d seen of either, they were being loaded into an ambulance.
“What does that have to do with you?” he asked, his voice turning rough as he recalled the details of that night.
The girl shouldn’t have been at the hotel, a place many of its regular visitors had nicknamed “Gray’s” in recent years. She wasn’t upscale enough for the wealthy men who took rooms for the night but only used them for a few hours.
She certainly shouldn’t have been with man who had bought her time.
Kane’s eyes drifted shut. He snapped them open before he could remember the mess he’d made of the girl’s client. From his room down the hall, he had known the screams leaking into the corridor weren’t right. She was in terror and in extreme pain. Pain was a common experience in the hotel—but not terror. Anyone with that kink took it someplace far more private, and soundproof.
“What does that have to do with you?” Kane repeated, clipping each word at its end.
Daniella blinked, the reflex slow enough he had time to see how long and thick her lashes were despite the lack of mascara. She wasn’t, he noted, wearing any makeup at all. The flawless skin and pink glow to her cheeks were natural.
“Christine is my niece.”
Kane’s brain uncharacteristically blurred. He shook his head, forcing himself away from the contemplation of the woman’s soft, full lips. “I thought her name was Lynn.”
“The baby is Christine,” Daniella answered. “Lynn is…was my half sister.”
His gaze narrowed. He had briefly investigated the dead woman, the act nothing more than professional curiosity he had never learned to turn aside, even when there was no point to it. And if ever there was something pointless to him, it was the life and death of Lynn Hoover.
“Same father?” he asked, knowing that no father had been listed on Lynn’s birth certificate. A certain amount of digging showed that Lynn’s dead mother, Ronelle, had no other children, at least not any born in North Carolina. She also had no out-of-state address history.
Daniella shook her head, her back straightening and her chin lifting a notch. “Roni, our mother, had me when she was sixteen. I was adopted by the Marquardts, but I’m not here to discuss that.”
Kane filed away the fact that soft, sweet Daniella carried a relatively large chip on her shoulder concerning the circumstances of her birth.
Realizing that he was cataloging information thoroughly irrelevant to his interests, he laughed inwardly. The job never left him, and he never left the job. Work was the only relationship that had ever left him satisfied.
With a glance at the envelope she continued to mangle, Kane extended his hand. “So you’ve got custody and you’re here to threaten me with a lawsuit. For what, a wrongful death or a wrongful life?”
Her face paled at the question, or at least at one part of it.
“Wrongful life?”
He threw up his hands. “If there’s something profoundly wrong with the kid, you might want to consider it’s because your sister was a junkie who shot up heroin rather than anything I might have done, or failed to do, in pulling the baby out.”
Tears glazed the woman’s eyes but she held them in check.
“Christine is in perfect health,” she said, her voice a hot, warbling whisper.
“Great.” He forced a smile. He was genuinely glad the baby was okay, but he wanted this woman out of his office with a sudden desperation he couldn’t identify. The flood of emotions waiting to break free from her made him uncomfortable.
All that touchy-feely crap was for the masses.
For the weak.
And there was nothing as infectious with its weakness as a woman.
“I came here to thank you,” she clarified. “For saving Christine.”
His hands swept outward from one another along the surface of the desk, his forced smile widening in equal measure. “You’re welcome. I’ll have Lindsey—”
/>
Seeing Daniella rise on shaking legs and start to walk away, Kane slid his finger off the intercom button. He had enough experience with people fainting to recognize that, the way Daniella was moving, she wasn’t going to stay upright more than a few seconds.
Jumping to his feet, he slid across the corner of his desk, his long frame landing just behind Daniella as she began to fold toward the floor. He scooped her up before she hit the ground, her fluffy frame light compared to the weights he lifted to remain ready for the company’s tactical operations.
Cradling Daniella in his arms, Kane walked to the sofa in his office and sat her down. He took a seat next to her, his knee and elbow in casual contact with the voluptuous curves of her body. Without a word between them, he took the envelope and pulled out the papers.
Typed with an attempt at legalese, it appeared to be a surrender of parental rights, one Merl Wagner named as the father of baby Christine. Said surrender would be made in exchange for the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars.
Regaining at least some of her wits, Daniella tried to snatch the papers out of Kane’s hands. Playing keep away, his muscular shoulder bossing the woman around, he continued reading. When he finished, he lifted his gaze from the waiver to gray eyes that sparkled with the threat of tears.
“You want to tell me what this is about?”
Chapter Three
Fingers curled tightly around her cell phone now that Lindsey had brought it upstairs, Daniella watched Kane where he sat at the far end of the couch. He had a laptop balanced on his knees, his big hands all but dwarfing the device but his touch light enough that he operated the keyboard without any problems as he sifted through Merl Wagner’s police record. Every minute or so he cut a scowling glance in her direction.
With a standing order to keep her butt planted on the couch so Kane didn’t have to worry about her passing out, Daniella shifted, almost working up enough nerve to at least demand that he return her paperwork. His black as night gaze landed on her and she melted into the corner of the sofa, her mouth squeezing into a furious pucker.
He lifted one dark brow. She looked away and stared blankly at his bookcase.
“I need to leave. I only have an hour before visitation is over at the jail.”
“You’re not paying him to sign away whatever rights you think he has,” Kane growled.
Her head snapped back in his direction, her cheeks flushing dark red as her grip on the phone tightened.
“If I don’t, he’s selling those rights to someone else!” Her throat constricted, the words choking her as they came out. “There’s a buyer already…Merl said—”
Remembering what Merl had said froze her tongue and made all the blood drain from her face. She had the sensation of falling in slow motion then Kane’s computer clattered to the floor. His hands wrapped around her shoulders. He slid closer, pushing her against the couch’s corner to pin her there.
“Breathe,” he commanded.
Her vision swam in and out of focus but she complied with the order. “You don’t understand the kind of people he’s threatening to sell her to.”
“Sadly,” Kane answered, “I understand far better than you.”
Keeping one hand on Daniella’s shoulder to steady her, Kane extended his arm and retrieved the computer. When he showed her the display, it wasn’t Merl’s criminal record onscreen.
It was Lynn’s.
A date was highlighted, the day and month just forty-eight hours before Lynn had come to stay with Daniella that final time. Lynn had been booked under North Carolina Statute Section 14-204.
“I know she was selling herself,” Daniella softly protested, her hand brushing at his so he would stop touching her. The contact wasn’t a distraction she could afford. Whatever help Kane intended to offer, it wasn’t because being around Daniella made his skin prickle in an inviting way or his chest constrict with need.
She pushed at the offending hand once more. He dropped it, but moved his entire body closer, crowding her against the side of the couch. He highlighted another date just a few days before the first. This time Lynn had been cited for loitering with the purpose of committing prostitution.
“How many clients you think she had in the week she conceived Christine?” he asked, his voice dropping yet another degree colder.
“She promised that she—”
“Always made them wear condoms?” he interrupted with a laugh. “Come on, you’re not that stupid. It’s not the hooker who decides when a condom is used, not at Lynn’s level, at least.”
Putting the computer aside, Kane turned Daniella toward him, cupped her chin and forced her to meet his gaze.
“Look, no one is listed as the father on Christine’s birth certificate. You did that right. Whatever money you were going to give Merl, save it for the attorney. Once Merl tells his buddies you’re handing out free money, you’ll need a good lawyer to make every last one of the potential baby daddies try to prove they’re Christine’s biological father.”
She shook her head, wishing it was as easy as Kane made it sound. Twisting her chin loose from his grip, she looked at her phone, waking it and thumbing through to her messages.
“I got this when I was at work yesterday.”
Kane took the phone, read the message from Daniella’s seventy-two year old neighbor then enlarged the photo that the old man had attached.
He sent the photo to his computer and retreated down to his end of the couch, tapping away at the keyboard in silence for a few seconds. Fishing his own phone out of his jacket pocket, he pressed a contact number and growled an order into it.
“Find Nazarov. I need to talk to him.”
Leaving the couch, he walked over to his desk, put the computer down then stared at Daniella.
She met his gaze, her chin lifting at a stubborn angle. “I didn’t come here to ask for your help. I thought it was my last chance to thank you for saving Christine—in case I have to leave the state.”
“Apparently I did a half-assed job at saving her,” he mused, his gaze casting around the room and finding nowhere to land in the impersonal, windowless space. “I trust you did not go home last night.”
“No,” she agreed. “As soon as I got the picture, I picked Christine up from daycare and spent the night at a hotel. Then I took her to a friend here in Raleigh, one Lynn would have never heard of, so she couldn’t have mentioned the woman to Merl.”
Kane nodded. Pressing the intercom button on his desk, he spoke to Lindsey. “Have Mr. Henley come to my office.”
“I’m having someone escort you to pick up Christine in one of our vehicles. Your car will be moved to our parking structure. He’ll take you to get some essentials for you and the baby, then he’ll take you to a safe house.”
Listening to Kane, Daniella’s expression stretched as disbelief flooded through her. He was actually going to help? With the way he had acted earlier, she had formed the impression that he wasn’t the kind of man who helped others merely because he could. His delivering Christine had seemed like a one-off, an act brought on by exigent circumstances, after which the infant once again became someone else’s problem.
That was a terrible way to think about a helpless baby.
“I don’t understand,” she started. “Why are you doing this?”
“Your sister’s pimp is in deep with a motorcycle club that has strong ties to some Eastern European white slavers.” Kane explained as he sank into the overstuffed leather chair behind his desk. “From what’s in her file and Merl’s, the MC ran your sister when Merl was in jail in exchange for keeping him protected from the other inmates.”
Daniella looked away. Kane’s tone had turned mechanical, robotic, and she didn’t want to cry in front of a robot. She couldn’t stop the tears, just didn’t want to look at him as they streamed down her face.
“I can fold everything into an existing federal contract on the Europeans,” he added.
She wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be some
kind of answer as to why he was helping, but she no longer cared. She needed Kane, even if she disliked him.
Chapter Four
Falling down the rabbit hole of researching Merl Wagner and his associates, Kane emerged nauseated and hungry a little after seven, more than three hours after he had finally rid himself of Daniella Marquardt. Shoving the papers he had printed into his briefcase, he turned off the lights in his office and walked down to the operations room. Six men were working and they had a strong pot of coffee brewed. He poured himself a cup and spent a few minutes with each team member, talking in hushed tones about the project they were working on.
These were “firemen” of sorts. Each monitored the data flow, including video and audio, of ongoing operations. They were there to catch problems before they erupted and help put them out if they did. During the day, the room was filled with two dozen team members. Lower risk operations where handled by teams elsewhere in the building or onsite across the United States and the rest of the globe.
By the time Kane made it to his car, it was eight and he had compartmentalized the information he had compiled on Daniella’s case so that he was no longer thinking of Wagner or the baby the convict might have fathered.
Fingers dancing with irritation along the steering wheel, he tried to push Daniella into the same compartment, but she wouldn’t fit.
All those curves refused to yield.
With a growl in both his stomach and throat, he headed east out of the company’s parking structure, his car pointed toward a “gentleman’s” club where he could get a late meal and anything else his appetite required.
Forty minutes later, he pushed away his dinner plate filled with a few remnants of steak and asparagus. His gaze went to the wall opposite his table where women lined up shoulder-to-shoulder. He noted a cascading rainbow of blondes, redheads and brunettes, the color of their skin as varied as their hair. All he had to do was pick one and take her behind a curtain to one of the private rooms in the back.
Kane signed for his meal then approached the wall. There was a subtle wave of coming to attention among the women, their bodies shifting to emphasize what they considered their best feature. One brazen blonde turned to face the wall, an ass full of implants sticking out as she arched her back and spread her legs.
