by Mary Calmes
“And?”
“And I hired them, of course, and they made me Você, which we market a scaled-down version of called Bloodhound to the masses.”
“So you have Você at Sutter, and you sell Bloodhound.”
“Right.”
“Okay, so Bloodhound is what Wells has?”
“No. Like I said, he has what we used to use five years ago when I took over Sutter.”
“And it does what?”
“It only does surveillance, not the web. It’s all internal; nothing external.”
“Okay.”
“But the one thing they all have in common is the program lets you monitor everything from one centralized interface.”
“Which is how you’re messing with it.”
“Yes.”
I made a noise and then just listened to him type for a while until he gently shook me.
“Head hurt?”
I made a noise of agreement.
“Maybe you should drink some water?”
“Yeah, okay.”
I drank half of the twenty-ounce bottle and then put my head back down.
“If you have to pee, I’ll get you another bottle.”
“I’m okay,” I whispered.
“Okay. Rest some more. I’m transferring different chunks into one file. If I could just get to my phone, we could have Internet.”
“And, ya know, backup,” I teased.
“Well, yes, there would be that.”
“So you found Wells and Polley together already?”
“I did.”
He didn’t sound happy. “What’s wrong?” I asked, rolling my head to look at him.
“There’s someone else on the surveillance too.”
“Oh? Who?”
“Nick McCall.”
I groaned loudly. “Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“I totally bought it. The whole concerned friend thing. Fuck, I’m an idiot.”
“You were a horny idiot,” he said playfully, kissing my right eye closed because I was turned that way. “Lucky I didn’t let you fall into his clutches.”
“Yeah, because hanging out with you is so much safer.”
He laughed and so did I, even though it hurt.
WE COULD drink water and pee. The problem was, after three days, we would need food. I also suspected from the way I was losing time my head was in worse shape than I thought.
“You have a serious concussion,” Aaron assured me. “You get beat up too often.”
No argument there.
“Hey,” I began, watching as he continued to type. “I wanna tell you about my juvenile records, if you still want to hear.”
“Yes, please.” He cupped my face, giving me all his attention.
“Check on the door real fast.”
“There are only maybe five men out there now; the rest of them went with Wells to walk around the grounds. Maybe they’re looking for a rocket launcher.”
“What?”
“Or a bazooka.”
“Really?”
“Would a flame thrower help?”
“You’re not funny.”
“I’m a little funny,” he said, sliding his thumb over my eyebrow. “You know, if I haven’t said it enough, you are just beautiful.”
“You’re biased. I’m yours, so you gotta think I’m pretty.”
He stiffened.
“What?”
“You belong with me.”
“We already settled that.”
“No. I mean….” He took a breath. “When we get home, just move in.”
“If we get home.”
“No. When.”
“Let’s talk about it later,” I placated him.
“I want to talk about it now.”
“Aaron,” I began. “You––”
He laughed. “It’s going to suck for you.”
“In what way?”
“In the being taken seriously way,” he snorted out a laugh.
“I can shoot somebody. I bet that would let them know I mean business.”
“Stop. Just think about it a second.”
“Gimme an example.”
“Okay, let’s say you show up at a crime scene, and before you can even ask a question, the press is there and they’ll yell out crap like ‘Hey, we saw you on TV at the black-tie event to open the new exhibit at the Field Museum. How were the hors d’oeuvres, Detective?’”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “And you’ll go places with me and I’ll get out and then you, and you think they went after you in Vegas? Oh, baby, when you’re in your tux standing next to me, it will be insane.”
I absorbed that.
“Your days of ever going undercover again are over.”
But I already knew that.
“We’re talking about newspapers, magazines, the web…. I mean, people will Google ‘Aaron Sutter’s boyfriend’, and your picture will pop up.”
Yes, it would.
“I mean, are you getting this? Are you truly understanding—”
“I got it,” I said, reaching for him, sliding my hand inside the collar of his shirt so I could touch his warm skin.
He flinched.
“What’s wrong?”
“Your hands are freezing.” He sounded worried. “Why are you freezing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you hold me?”
“Sure,” I grinned.
“No, idiot. I mean, will it hurt you if I get in your lap and give you some of my body heat?”
“No. C’mere. Make with the heat.”
“Such a hedonist you are.”
“I dunno what that means,” I said, leaning back so he could get up and then sit down in my lap, straddling my thighs. “You wanna maybe—oh.”
He wrapped me in his arms, and only with him against me did I realize how cold I was.
“You feel so good,” I said.
“So do you, Detective. Now tell me about your juvenile record.”
“Okay.”
And he listened attentively, never once glancing away, as I recalled the greatest horror of my life. When I was done, I waited for his response, the outrage, the righteous anger for me and for what had happened, the yelling that was the usual reaction of everyone I ever confessed the truth to.
“He must have loved you so much,” he said gruffly, tears in his voice as he leaned forward to hold me as tight as he could.
No doubt about it, Aaron Sutter knew my heart as no one ever had. I was never going to let him go.
Chapter 14
THE following morning, Saturday, I understood the mess we were actually in when I woke up and realized the image of the outside door I was looking at had changed. “What happened to the camera angle?” I asked Aaron.
“They shot down the camera over the door last night.”
I jolted. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“For you to do what?” Aaron studied me. “Yell? You needed your sleep and I can still see them, just now from a little further away.”
“Aaron––”
“Lay down,” he ordered me. “Everything will be fine.”
He was being very optimistic but the reality was that Clay Wells could not let us out of his surveillance tower.
Wells wasn’t stupid; he probably had a pretty good idea why a homicide detective would have gone in there and what I was after. He also had to have figured out that either Aaron or I could work the interface. He was probably kicking himself for not putting a passcode on it. His biggest problem, however, was time. Monday morning, Aaron Sutter was supposed to walk off the property. Miguel Romero would be waiting for him at the gate in forty-eight hours. If Aaron didn’t show, Miguel would start with a call to Special Agent Summers, move on to a press conference, and end by calling the governor. It was, Aaron assured me, Miguel’s SOP to basically scramble the marines. There was no way that Clay Wells had ever had such a public figure as Aaron Sutter on his property. T
here just weren’t a lot of billionaires wandering around, and even if he had, inviting my boyfriend had been a mistake, one I was certain he regretted. We could see him pacing the grounds close to the tower.
Even though they had shot the camera down over the door so we couldn’t see, there was another higher up that no one had yet bothered with and another in a jacaranda tree across the way. Clay Wells probably didn’t even know it was there. I couldn’t imagine anyone could just sit down and recall how many cameras there actually were on any one property. We could see him walking up and down, flailing his arms, worrying his bottom lip, and kicking at the ground. The man was getting more and more wound up by the second.
“See,” Aaron said to the man on the screen as if he were schooling him. “This is what comes of letting your little head think for your big one.”
I watched from the floor, where I was sprawled out on a tarp using Aaron’s suit jacket for a pillow. “What are you talking about?”
He turned in his chair and looked down at me. “If Clay Wells had been less interested in your ass and more focused on business, he would have surmised from what he knew of me that I don’t share. I never share, and thus inviting you and me here was an exercise in futility.”
“That’s crap,” I scoffed.
“What the hell do you mean by that?"
“You told me when we first met you shared your boyfriends. You used to get off watching them get fucked by other people.”
“Yeah? So?”
“So you did, in fact, use to share them,” I pointed out.
He scowled at me.
“Right?”
“I guess,” he snapped.
“No guess, it’s the truth.” I pinned him down. “So what you’re actually asking him to have known is that, with me, your agenda suddenly changed.”
His eyes were locked on my face.
“Isn’t that correct?”
He nodded.
“The man had no idea that you weren’t actually going to give me to him or to anyone else for that matter.”
“No one touches you but me. Ever.”
I laughed softly. “Which is real nice of you to say and all, very scary alpha, but I’m the one who makes that decision Sutter, not you.”
He took a quick breath.
“And since you’re the only one I’ll let touch me, we’re on the same page.”
It was endearing the way he was biting the inside of his left cheek as he quickly nodded.
“But your point, that you don’t share, I mean, how the fuck was he supposed to know that?”
“I would have,” he groused at me. “I make it my business to stay up to date on everything.”
“That’s gotta be hard to do.”
“Hard yes, impossible, no. It’s lazy to do anything less. I know everything about anyone I’m even thinking about going into business with.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Of course.”
“So that guy Goran, you know all about him?”
“Yes.”
“You know who he fucks?”
“Names and dates, yes.”
I was impressed, and Aaron could see it on my face. “I’m sorry you stopped a business deal because of me.”
“No,” he said, smiling. “I’m glad you discovered the man was a snake. Imagine if I had made the mistake of going into business with him. Then any one of his indiscretions might have tarnished my reputation. But now I’m free of him, thanks to you.”
“Okay. So what do you think Clay Wells is going to do now?”
He thought a moment. “If I was him, I would try to find some leverage to get us to open the door.”
“Like?”
“Like holding a gun on someone you love and threatening to shoot them if we don’t open up.”
“Yeah, that won’t work,” I replied, yawning and rubbing my eyes. “You’re already in here with me.” Clay Wells would be wasting valuable time looking into my background, only to find an estranged father, stepmother, and half sisters who weren’t sure what city I lived in.
I was thinking I should get up and give Aaron a chance to rest. The cement floor covered by the thin tarp wasn’t much, but he had to be exhausted. “Hey,” I said, looking up to make the offer that we switch places only to find him sitting there, frozen, staring at me. “What’s wrong?”
“Do you know your voice is different when you talk to me?”
“What do you mean?” I wasn’t sure what his point was.
“I mean it changes, just the sound.”
“Does it?”
“Yes. So I always know when you’re speaking to me.”
I watched him as he stood up and then sank to his knees beside me.
“You don’t even know what you said, but even if the words had been lost on me, I would have heard the tone.”
It took a second, and then it hit me.
Everything I loved was in the room with me.
Way to fuck up the declaration. “Shit, Aaron I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
But he cut me off when he rolled forward, took my face in his hands, and kissed me. He led with his heart, and I felt it as his mouth claimed mine, as his tongue pressed inside, as his hand cupped the back of my head to keep me still.
He made love to my mouth, coaxing, sucking, his other hand lifting to my throat, curling gently over my Adam’s apple. The pressure was slight, but like his hand in my hair, immobilizing. He wanted me there, under his power, his mouth sealed to mine, making me his with every kiss, halting breath, whimper, and moan.
God, I loved him, and when I couldn’t breathe, I tore free so I could. “I love you,” I said, and it wasn’t half as terrifying as I figured it would be.
“I know.” He smiled, lips hovering over mine. “And I love you back, Duncan Stiel, and we’re going to live happily ever after.”
“As soon as we get out of this giant thermos,” I said wryly, taking hold of his hips and easing him close.
He loved me. And I loved him back, so fiercely, so completely. I had been blindsided from the start. People would say it was too sudden, but I knew my heart just as well as I knew my mind, and it was as true for me as it was for him. I had wanted to be his from the moment the man had first taken hold of my hand to lead me toward the cab the night we’d met.
I was a sucker for hand holding—that fast, I had been a goner.
“Oh shit!” he gasped.
“What’s wrong with you?”
He was staring at me with wide eyes. “I’m so stupid.”
“No, you’re really not.”
He made a noise like the jury was still out. “Yeah, I am. I’m a huge dumbass because I just now figured out a way to get us out of here.”
“Good,” I grumbled. “Because I was stupidly thinking you were focused on me, you unromantic piece of crap.”
He snorted out a laugh, kissed my forehead, and then got up and walked to the computer.
“What’s your idea?”
“Have you ever had a subscription to an antivirus software site that runs on your computer and has live updates?”
“Sure.”
He nodded. “Well, that’s the same way Keystone works, with web support, so technically, if I put this interface offline, someone should check.”
“But there’s no Internet on the grounds. Clay explained that to us.”
“No, he said there was none for guests to use. But think about it: he checks people in just like at a regular hotel, and he has to have Internet access to do that. More importantly, this system could be hacked just like any other program if he didn’t have help.”
“I hate to tell you this, but it’s Saturday. Nobody gives a crap.”
“Unless they’re paid to care,” he explained. “If you bought the special upgrade that included 24/7 support, like Clay Wells probably did to make sure the surveillance at this resort never goes down, then maybe someone is monitoring it as we speak.”
“That’s a big gamble.”
“Yes, it is.”
I got up and sat down beside him. “Okay, take it offline.”
He turned to me. “If I take it off and no one’s there, we’re screwed. I won’t be able to see anything at all while it’s down. We’ll be blind.”
“It’s okay,” I comforted him. “Do it.”
It took only minutes for him to pull the system down, and it was really strange to see the usual blue screen of death on every monitor on three walls at once.
We sat together in the darkened room with the cerulean glow, and after a minute, I felt his hand slide into mine. “I have a villa, remember? The one on the Amalfi Coast.”
“Yeah.”
“I really want us to go there after this. Can you do that?”
“Is it nice there now, in April?”
“It’s nice all year round.”
“I can ask,” I promised, “though I did just get back from a different FBI task force. I bet my captain would like to actually get some use out of me.”
“Sure,” he agreed. “But you should see it. The ocean comes right up to the edge of the property, and then I have this infinity pool that is separated from the Jacuzzi by only a small rock wall you can just go right over. It’s very decadent.”
“Oh yeah? You get laid there a lot?”
“I have, yes. But I’ve never taken anyone I loved there, and if you let me, I’d love to give it to you so only you could say who’s allowed in it from now on.”
“You’re just going to give me one of your homes?”
“Yes, if you’ll allow it.”
“How ’bout you just put my name on it, too, and I’ll put your name on the greystone I own in Lincoln Park.”
“You own a greystone?”
“Yeah. It’s nice too. I mean, it’s just a small row house, but it’s really pretty.”
“Why don’t you live in it?”
“I need to get some more cash to finish the renovations on it.”
He scowled. “How long have you been fixing it up?”
“Couple years. The thing is, the contractor keeps finding more and more things wrong with it, but I’m just not ready to give up on it yet. He even offered to take it off my hands.”
