“How did you know?” she asked softly.
“Know what?”
“That those men would turn against Mackenzie?”
“They’re good men.” Romero didn’t say any more because that was enough.
They were nearing the halfway mark. Cassidy stopped to catch her breath, her breasts bobbing up and down dramatically with each wheeze.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly.
“I’ll be fine.” She smiled, and then she sobered once again. “When is this going to be over?”
“When we find Rachel.”
“That task feels so big. I thought it was a simple thing, but it isn’t.” Her expression was nothing if not bleak. Then she reached out, slowly at first, and then more confidently as she huddled against his chest.
Romero hugged her close. It was probably the height of stupidity to stand in an open stairwell and linger in an embrace that served no practical purpose. However, Romero felt it was serving a very important purpose for the both of them. This insane situation they’d found themselves trying to navigate was huge. It was bigger than they had ever imagined. And it was too big to solve this mystery alone. He had already begun to accept that. He suspected that Cassidy was beginning to do the same.
CASSIDY FELT THE hard surface of Romero’s pectoral muscles against her cheek. He’d borrowed some additional tactical gear from Hughes, which meant he was now wearing body armor. Cassidy had some too. Still, it was Romero, the man who held her so gently and made her feel loved.
She pulled back just far enough to look up into his face. He was smiling down at her, and she couldn’t help but wonder why. Then he lowered his lips to hers, and she stopped thinking at all.
The kiss was warm and slow. He took his time, despite their precarious circumstances. Perhaps it was because every second mattered right now. Or maybe it was that he just wanted to savor this one snapshot in time. Whatever the case, he gently made love to her with his mouth. She flung her arms around his neck and held tight as he rubbed his tongue against hers in a sensual dance that had her toes curling.
When he finally ended the kiss, she sagged against him. Her knees were shaky, and she felt lightheaded. She also felt like she could take on the whole world and win. Go figure. Life sometimes made no sense at all.
“All right, sweetheart,” Romero told her, nuzzling her neck. “Let’s go get some.”
“Some what?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Information?”
“Okay then, information it is.” She took a deep breath to steady her nerves and then finished the million or so steps left between them and Mackenzie’s office.
It really did seem to take forever. One flight of steps blended into the next until she felt as if they were spinning around and around on their way up. Finally she saw a door marked TWENTY and came to an abrupt halt in front of it. Maybe it was because she’d been climbing so steadily for what felt like an eternity, but her brain barely registered that the goal was sitting right in front of her face.
“All right, sweetheart,” Romero murmured. “I’m going to take a peek. We have to wait for the camera in the hallway to swing to the right. Then we need to haul ass to the access panel.”
“Got it.” She nodded her head. She sort of had it. She’d listened to the explanation from Hughes. She just wasn’t sure she actually understood what it was that Romero had to actually do to the access panel thingy.
He cracked the door open, peeked out in the hallway, and then held up his hand—palm out. She took that to mean no go. Then he very suddenly began waving her on, and Cassidy suddenly found herself sprinting down the hallway toward some unknown panel thing. Romero skidded to a stop in front of it. He dug his fingers into the grate and ripped the thing off the wall. She watched in utter amazement as he pulled a tool from his belt, reached in, and snipped a few wires. Seconds later, he seemed to relax.
“That does it for the cameras. Now we have twenty to twenty-five minutes to get what we need and get out of here.”
“Did you notice that all of the lights in the offices are out?” she asked suddenly.
“Yes. It’s after hours. Hughes said the only thing that would be on was the hallway lighting.”
“Yeah?” She pointed to Mackenzie’s office at the end of the hallway. “So why is his light still on?”
Romero didn’t bother with eloquence this time. “Damn.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Cassidy crept down the hallway behind Romero. The man moved so silently he was like a shadow on the wall. Given the angle they were approaching from, she couldn’t see much of what was going on inside Mackenzie’s office. Then there was a whirring noise. In front of her, Romero perked up like a dog going on point. Cassidy was confused, until she heard it again.
A paper shredder.
Oh, hell no! That man was not getting away with selling her best friend just because he managed to cover his tracks by shredding a bunch of incriminating documents!
Cassidy ducked around Romero and marched down the hallway. Behind her she heard Romero curse beneath his breath before he picked up his pace to cover her back. She knew she was being rash, but this was getting ridiculous.
Bursting into Mackenzie’s office, Cassidy had a moment’s satisfaction at the look of complete shock on the man’s face. “Who let you in here?” he demanded.
“Do you honestly not recognize me, you pompous prick?” Cassidy snapped. “Seriously! You’re so self-involved that the word ‘egotistical’ isn’t enough to cover whatever this is.” She waved to indicate his well-appointed office. “This morning you sent me and my partner here down to your basement holding cells. Remember?”
Mackenzie’s face paled. “Who let you out?”
“Maybe I’m just the ghost of all the women you’ve sold into slavery!” Cassidy took a few more steps forward. “I’ve come to get revenge for what you’ve done.”
“I haven’t done anything!” His voice rose an octave, and he was sounding a bit panicky.
Cassidy noticed him groping along the edge of his desk. Romero grunted, realizing just as Cassidy did that Mackenzie must have a panic button. She didn’t think. She acted. Snatching up a letter opener, she drew back and then slammed it down. The sharp instrument went through Mackenzie’s hand and stuck into the desktop.
His agonized shriek made her ears ring. Her stomach heaved a bit when she realized what she’d done, but this wasn’t the time to wimp out. Rachel needed her. Every second that passed, her friend was less and less likely to be found.
“Tell me about the women!” Cassidy shouted. “And stop looking at the door. There is nobody to save you. Nobody cares about a piece of shit guy like you that kidnaps women and sells them into the sex trade.”
“That’s not me!” Mackenzie whined, tugging at his hand and then giving a frustrated whimper when it didn’t come loose.
“What do you mean it isn’t you?” Cassidy scoffed. “This morning you were so eager to brag about the Inner Circle. So if you belong, tell me who else does.”
“The club owners,” Mackenzie wheezed. He was looking very pale now, and his hand was seeping blood. “All of us are part of the Inner Circle. We get a kickback for letting The Broker use our clubs as hunting grounds. He’s the one who sets it all up. He hires his own staff.”
“So those assholes that work as bait don’t work for you?” Cassidy wanted clarification. “How do you even know who they are? Do they just show up? Who tells you when this stuff is going to happen? What? Do you have a message board?”
Mackenzie bit his lip.
“Oh my God!” Cassidy breathed. “There’s a message board.” She gestured to his computer. “Log in and show me.”
“What? No!” He waved his good hand at his bad hand. “Look at me! I can’t use a computer like this.”
Romero was already around the desk. He had the laptop open and the password locked screen ready to go. Cassidy pointed to the computer. “I’ve got no doubt that you can use your compute
r one-handed, you piece of shit. You probably sit back here and navigate with one hand while you jerk off with the other. Do not mess with me. I’m so not in the mood!”
Either something she said, or something in her expression made Mackenzie decide to cooperate. He fumbled with the password. It took him two tries to get into his laptop. Then he pulled up a private Internet site. Cassidy craned her neck to see what was on the screen. It looked like a typical employee Intranet site, or a public message board used by members of a club.
“This is your Inner Circle boys club?” she asked incredulously. “So you don’t know anything but how to get in touch with the rest of your circle jerk buddies? That’s pathetic!” Cassidy pursed her lips and shook her head at him. “What about the containers?”
“What?”
“They get dumped at your club and then get picked up every week like clockwork. You’re telling me you don’t know anything about that? You had to have applied for permits from the city. Don’t try to lie to me. I’m not an idiot.” She got right in his face. With Romero standing right next to him and Cassidy still drilling him for info, Mackenzie was looking a little worse for the wear.
“I have a permit for the containers, yes,” Mackenzie admitted. “But I don’t have anything to do with the logistics.”
“So basically you’re just a useless pawn.” Cassidy shook her head. “Do you have any idea what sort of hell you’re in for when the authorities catch up to you?”
“I didn’t do anything!” he insisted.
“Wrong,” she argued. “You looked the other way while innocent people were snatched away from their lives and their loved ones. You might as well have been the one to plan the whole thing. Besides, it’s not like your Broker is going to be around to take the fall when the police come to arrest someone. You think he’ll stand up for you? Do you think he cares? Or is John Jacob Mackenzie just going to be up shit creek without a paddle?”
ROMERO WATCHED CASSIDY with something akin to awe thrumming through his system. She was like an avenging angel. He shook off the flight of fancy and turned his attention back to the computer. A few quick keystrokes removed the password protection. A few more preserved the website information. He needed to get this thing to DC so Yates could pull it apart and see what kind of intel they could get from it.
For now though, he shut the laptop and grabbed what he assumed was John Jacob Mackenzie’s black laptop bag. Romero shoved the computer inside and secured it in the padded pocket. Fitting the straps to his shoulders, he settled it on his back.
“Hey! That’s mine!”
“Not anymore,” Romero grunted.
Cassidy snapped her fingers. “You’re lucky we’re leaving you alive. Do you understand?”
They were getting very close to their twenty-minute mark. He gave Cassidy a pointed glance and gestured to his watch. Her chin dipped in a barely perceptible nod. Then she pointed at Mackenzie.
“We shouldn’t leave him conscious.” Cassidy sounded as if she were both asking and telling. Romero almost chuckled at her sudden bout of indecisiveness. For the last fifteen minutes she’d been practically on fire with righteous action.
Without missing a beat, Romero wrapped an arm around Mackenzie’s throat. Lifting his other arm, he formed a chokehold of sorts. Then Romero tightened his bicep and waited only a few seconds. Mackenzie quickly went limp in his arms. Romero let the man go, and he fell to the ground, his arm still lifted where his hand was pinned to the desk.
“You should remove that.” Romero indicated the letter opener.
She looked embarrassed. “Is it silly to say that I can’t? I honestly have no idea how I managed to do that in the first place.”
“Well, it was damned effective in this situation, I’ll give you that,” Romero teased. He reached over, wrapped a hand around the end of the letter opener, and wrenched it out of the wood. It made a squeaky noise before the wood gave way and the metal slid free. The wound bled sluggishly still.
Cassidy was digging through Mackenzie’s drawers. Romero frowned. “What are you doing? We really need to go.”
“I was going to bind that wound. It would be awful if he somehow bled to death. That would be on me!”
“He’s not going to bleed to death.” Romero gestured to the wound. “Look, it’s almost stopped anyway.”
“Ugh! All right. Let’s go then.”
He took her hand and kissed her knuckles. “I love you. You know that?”
“What?” She looked absolutely flabbergasted. “You’re saying that now?”
He wondered why this was a big deal. “Sure.”
“Now?”
That word again. Why did it matter when he said it as long as he said what he felt? “Yes. I’m saying it now, because I feel like I need to.”
Now she was blinking back tears. Was that bad? He gently touched her arm. To his surprise, she flung herself at his chest. He caught her and held her close. She was trembling. He couldn’t begin to imagine what was going through her head at the moment. He had said he loved her. If that was a big deal, he’d be happy to take it back, but he had a feeling that would make things worse at this point.
“Cassidy?” he murmured, brushing her hair away from her face. “We really need to go.”
“Right. Yes. I know.” She pulled away and wiped at her damp face with the backs of her hands. “Lead on.”
Romero was having a little bit of trouble concentrating on their route. He wasn’t entirely certain what was going on with him, but it bothered him that she hadn’t given the words back when he’d said them. Wasn’t it important that a woman said them back when a man gave them to her? He had never actually told anyone that he loved them, but he had always imagined that if and when he did, the woman would say it back.
“Romero, you’re going the opposite direction of where the exit is,” Cassidy said, pointing down the hallway. “We have to take the stairs to ground level.”
“Right.”
Great. Now he couldn’t even adequately do his job. He was too busy wondering why Cassidy hadn’t told him that she loved him too. He suspected that she did. No. He knew she did. It was there in every touch and word. He could see it in her eyes sometimes when she looked at him. Why wouldn’t she say it?
By the time they reached the bottom set of steps, he was practically stomping his way out of the building. The exit was directly ahead. He shoved open the door using the breaker bar. Once outside he took a deep, steadying breath and tried to find his balance.
“Romero, what’s wrong?”
He chuckled. Hadn’t he asked her that same question less than an hour ago? “I’m fine, sweetheart.”
“No. You’re not. Tell me, please? Are you worried about getting the laptop figured out? I’ll admit that worries me a little. What if we can’t crack it?” she asked nervously. “It’ll be like hitting a dead end again.”
“We’re going to take it to Yates in DC.”
“We are?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you acting so weird?” she wanted to know.
“Because I told you that I love you and you didn’t say anything back.”
“Oh.”
One word. That was all he got, and it bothered him intensely. Yep. Romero was becoming a woman.
Chapter Twenty-Three
By the time they’d driven up I-95 from Richmond to DC, Cassidy was pretty sure that Romero was about to blow his stack. The guy was never super talkative, but at the moment she would have classified him as morose.
Of course, she could well understand his being a little bit miffed that she hadn’t said the L word back to him, but really? They’d been running for their lives off and on for days. She was dirty, strung out, and felt half crazy with anxiety. She really wasn’t in the right frame of mind to even contemplate that sort of thing. Not to mention how overwhelming it had been when he’d just thrown those words at her in the middle of a very intense situation. What had he really been expecting? That she would just turn
around and go, “Oh yeah, I totally love you too”? It wouldn’t have even felt genuine like that.
“How much longer until we get to his place?” Cassidy finally asked. It felt like they’d been driving for an eternity.
“Fifteen minutes, give or take,” Romero grunted.
“Okay. Great.” She drummed her fingers on the armrest.
The car they’d acquired was a nondescript black sedan. She almost would have thought it was an actual federal vehicle from the look of it. It had been sitting in a parking lot a few blocks from Mackenzie’s office building. It had taken Romero all of five minutes—probably less—to jimmy the lock, hotwire the car, and get on the road to DC.
“What do we do with the car when we get there?” she wondered. “Can we turn it in? I feel sort of bad about stealing it.”
“Turning it in would come along with an explanation about why we took it, which would also come with jail time. We’ll just leave it in a parking lot, and someone will have it towed, and the owner will be notified at some point.”
“Oh.”
Minutes spooled by, and Cassidy felt as though there were an actual elephant in the car with them. A heavy silence blanketed the interior of the car and made it almost impossible to breathe. If this was what Romero called love, she wasn’t sure she wanted any part of it anyway. It was a pain in the ass.
Suddenly he pulled into a parking garage. He put the car in a space, and shut it off. “Let’s leave it here and go on foot.”
“How far?”
“A few miles.”
“Oh.”
And that was all they said for the next—well, Cassidy had no idea how much time had passed. Her phone was long since dead. She could only hope that if Yates was some kind of techno genius he would have a charger she could borrow.
Finally they reached what appeared to be a basement apartment in a not-so-great part of town. In fact, Cassidy might have considered it downright seedy before her recent experiences. Now her perception of everything had changed drastically.
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