by Mary Calmes
“Fuck that,” I said flatly as Ian appeared at my side, gun drawn—the new one, compensator already attached.
They all put their hands up at the same time the curtain shielding them from the patio was pulled. Cano and Taggart and the men who had brought us to the house all stood there.
“What’s going on here?” Cano asked me icily.
“No, Luis,” the girl said as she walked out from behind me, reaching for the man who had been groping her.
He took her hand, kissed it, and drew her into his arms, where he hugged her tight. They both then turned to Cano.
I was at a loss.
“What the fuck is going on?” Ian asked as he holstered his gun.
Cano turned to the woman. “Tell me.”
She pointed at me. “He came right in, didn’t wait, didn’t let anyone explain, just got Emilio off me and put himself between me and the others.”
“And the other?”
“He came when his partner called, no question, ready to shoot, to help him and save me.”
Cano exhaled quickly and then gave Ian and me his attention. “I apologize, gentlemen, but I’ve had nine men come to my home like your boss here, Mr. Huber, to try and help me move my product in the US. The issue is, the men who come with those who would do business with me are not honorable.”
He was testing us, but I was confused as to why.
“I have had my sister, Marisol, and her fiancé, Emilio, play out this scene many times, and sadly most men who have come to my house have wanted to join in on the rape, have wanted to have her when Emilio was done, or have suggested much worse.” He put up his hands, gave us a smile. “I have no issue with any act people agree to willingly, but I cannot have men in my employ or do business with men who would lower themselves to the mindset of a pack of dogs.”
It made sense to me.
“So,” he announced, turning to Taggart, offering his hand. “Your men have passed my test, you have cleared my background check, and guys I trust vouched for you. So tonight I’ll take you to see Wilson so you two can talk business.”
“Excellent,” Taggart agreed. “What time would you like us here?”
Cano squinted at him. “You’re already here. We’ll spend the day together and then go for dinner at his place out in Cave Creek.”
So he trusted us… just not enough to let us out of his sight.
“That sounds fantastic,” Taggart said gamely, rubbing his hands together. “I didn’t get breakfast. Can we have some brunch?”
Cano seemed very pleased with “Huber” being so agreeable.
IT WAS easy for Ian and me to cover our lack of eating and drinking and flirting with the fact that we were on duty.
“My men are also here to protect me,” Cano said suggestively. “You need to loosen up and partake.” He was offering food, alcohol, pot, and blow. “Only you two are sitting here ready to shoot.”
“Begging your pardon,” Ian explained, “you live here, sir. Our boss does not.”
Cano nodded, the logic was sound. “You look like ex-military to me.”
Ian scoffed. “Do I?”
“Yes, and I know the breed well. I have many of them working for me at home.”
Ian had an opening, but to ask any more questions, to say oh, so where do you call home would not have been received well. There was no such thing as an informal chat with a drug dealer.
We spent the day watching people swim, drinking bottled water, and refusing lines of blow, highball glasses of whisky, and frosty mugs of beer. Cano passed out joints, and to not get busted, Taggart had to smoke one. He also had to imbibe a few drinks to keep his cover in place. The good news was, he had taken the pills to help keep him sober and focused, but it was up to Ian and me to watch his back. Neither of us took our eyes off him.
We caravanned out to Cave Creek about six; turned off on 26th Place, twisted and turned down other roads I couldn’t see the street signs for, and finally hit a private paved road before arriving at open gates guarded by men armed with AK-47s. A guy in a suit with an iPad looked like he was checking names on a guest list. I really hoped that the tracer Taggart had somewhere on his body was working.
“Here we are, gentlemen,” Cano announced as the car stopped and the driver rolled down the window so words could be exchanged.
It seemed so serene and quiet at the gate, but once we reached the house, it was lit pools and an enormous bar outside, and strobe lights and a dance floor inside. A bar stood at each end of the ballroom we walked through.
“It’s like a Roman orgy in here,” Taggart commented loudly, laughing and clapping, Cano’s arm slung over his shoulder as they moved through the crowd together.
Then we filed out one of the doors to another pool and a quieter area, then through an underground grotto that emptied out into a private area.
Ian and I kept pace with them, and when we were finally at the end of our quest, I was not surprised that the man himself, Wilson Roan, was sitting with a small group of men watching three very beautiful women have sex. Now I understood what Sodom and Gomorrah had probably looked like. It was definitely as close as I would ever get.
As we neared, Taggart was obnoxious—as he was supposed to be, it was the part he was playing—and catcalled and clapped. It changed the ambience from sultry and sensual, more art than fucking, to flat-out porn. The women themselves were clearly not amused.
Roan was older, handsome, with lines on his weathered face and sun-bleached hair shot through with strands of silver. He was clean-shaven and wore a gorgeous black bespoke suit with a black dress shirt underneath. He was sitting between two younger men, and as we approached, he glanced up, saw Taggart, saw me, saw Ian, and then returned to Taggart, the guy he was supposedly ready to do business with.
They made small talk as Ian and I took up flanking positions on either side of Taggart, and as soon as Roan clarified that the drugs were on the property and ready to go if the money was, in fact, also in play, Ian turned the dial on the dive watch he was wearing, triggering the signal for the breach.
We had been wanded and searched when we entered the compound, our weapons had been confiscated, and we had been patted down just on the off chance someone missed something—which they had. Everyone watched a lot of TV and actually thought the bad guys were as well equipped as the good guys. It was really not the case. Government to government, that was problematic. Had Ian and I been sneaking onto some base in Moscow or in Beijing, they would have caught us. But this operation was not high-tech. It looked like an episode of Miami Vice—not that any of us were cool enough to be Don Johnson from back in the day.
So Ian twisted the bezel on the Rolex Submariner he’d been given as a prop, and in so doing, made it rain DEA agents, FBI, state police, Phoenix PD, and SWAT personnel twenty minutes later, just as Taggart and Roan had begun toasting.
We did our parts, got down on our knees, fingers laced behind our heads, and accused Roan and Cano and everyone else of setting us up. As we were cuffed and led away, Taggart blasted both Roan and Cano, swearing that neither one of them would last a day in prison once his father found out what had happened. He then started screaming that he himself would not serve a day behind bars.
It was impressive; he never once fell out of character, even when the state police officers were rough with him. The only people who knew we weren’t criminals were the FBI and DEA agents, and they were too busy taking Roan and Cano into custody to care what was done with us on the way from the house to the cars.
As Ian was being dragged away in cuffs after Taggart, I realized I was going in an opposite direction.
“Hey, what the fuck?” I snarled at the officers walking me toward a van. “I’m supposed to go with them.”
Ian heard me, strained to turn around, but only succeeded in getting a club to the abdomen as he and Taggart were thrown into the back of a government-issue black-tinted–window SUV. Once he was in there, I couldn’t see him anymore, and so, figuring my night h
ad just gotten really long, I stopped fighting and let them take me to the scary stalker van, the one every woman in every police drama was kidnapped in.
As the door rolled open, I was surprised to see Agent Wojno.
“What the hell?” I asked before I was shoved hard and fell face-first onto the floor of the van. Rolling over quickly, sprawled at his feet, I glared up at him for a moment until I realized how horrible he looked. “Cillian?”
I had not used his first name since we’d gone to bed so very long ago, but it snapped him out of whatever was wrong with him.
“What’s the matter and what’re you doing here?”
He squinted. “I’m so sorry.”
“About what?” I asked as the van door rolled shut behind me.
“Me.”
Jolting, I twisted around, and there hovering over me was Dr. Craig Hartley. I didn’t even see anyone else and definitely missed whoever shoved a needle into my thigh.
“He’s sorry about me,” Hartley said, tipping his head and smiling. “Because, my dear Miro, he’s the leak.”
I tried to process that, tried to yell, tried moving at all, but everything sort of ran like raindrops streaming down glass windows. Everything dripped and was simply lost in a smear of color before I saw nothing at all.
WHEN I read about waterboarding, and even when Ian described it to me, how it was done, I had always kind of thought it was mind over matter. I figured I could take short gulps of air, breathe shallow, and not get too much liquid in my lungs. I’d never been so wrong about anything in my life. What was in my head and what actually happened were night-and-day different.
I never fought so hard in my life.
When water poured down my nose, when I was drowned and held down at the same time, I screamed myself hoarse.
My brain said I was drowning. I heaved for oxygen, my throat was raw, my coughing wet, and the terror of it—that I was dying, that I could not hold my breath another second—was a total mindfuck.
They did it over and over, and even when I inhaled to breathe, it felt like the soaked towels were smothering me.
When they finally let me up, I was dumped sideways off the cot and down onto the icy cement, sprawled there in my water- and urine-soaked dress pants. I’d never thought I’d be the type to piss myself, but the panic and adrenaline were too much for my bladder. I rolled over quickly and vomited until there was nothing left but bile, then curled into a fetal position. I wasn’t surprised when I started retching again moments later.
They never even asked me a question.
WOJNO SHOWED up after I was stripped naked, hosed off, and shackled to the ceiling of a small ten by ten cell. There were bars above me, so the only place to see anything but concrete was if I tipped my head back and looked up.
I was having trouble focusing on him, so I knew something funny was running through my system. “What’d they give me?” I asked, my words slurring when I spoke.
“Some lorazepam to calm you down and—”
“No. Before, to knock me out,” I insisted, wanting to know.
“It was hydroxyzine pamoate,” Hartley said as the cell door swung open and he came in. “But don’t worry, Miro, I would never give you anything bad.”
He was wearing a patterned three-piece suit that was a mixture of brown houndstooth and nailhead on a cream background with a six-button vest, paisley tie, and a pale blue shirt. He looked like he should have been on his way to the opera or some other high-class endeavor.
“Oh no?” I said, trying to keep my voice level.
The scalpel Hartley had in his right hand was terrifying.
“No,” he assured me, walking over and stopping beside Wojno. “I’m actually the only one here who doesn’t want to do something despicable to you.”
His hair had been cut since he was in prison, back to the way it had been on the outside: thick blond hair with short sides, the longer top combed back and slightly to the side. He had always looked like he should have been on the cover of a romance novel.
“Like?” I asked.
He came forward, close, and then slowly reached out and put his hand flat on my chest, over my heart.
“Hartley?”
He cleared his throat as his hand slid down my abdomen. “Some of them wanted to rape you.”
I squinted and tipped my head to the side in disbelief, causing him to make a face like he’d smelled something horrible and then shake his head with a tsking noise for good measure.
“I know, can you imagine? Me? Raping anyone or allowing anyone to ever be raped in my presence?” He shuddered. “Horrible.”
At least there wouldn’t be that. “What else?”
“Well, apparently the cot that you were on the first day, when they put the water down you—if we clipped battery cables to it, we could send great currents of electricity through your body.”
“But you didn’t like that idea?” I hoped.
“Your heart,” he said, like we were at dinner somewhere, his voice mild as he reached down and took gentle hold of my flaccid cock. “I don’t want to accidentally put you into cardiac arrest. That would be devastating.”
I worked hard to remain calm even as my skin felt like it was crawling with ants.
“I will not have anything harm the inside of you, only the outside.”
That was not comforting.
He smoothed his hand back up to my abdomen. “Your skin is so smooth, do you know that? And you keep your body in exquisite condition, marshal.”
I stayed quiet as he walked around behind me, trailing his hand over my skin.
“Agent Wojno said you’re good in bed. I asked him.”
My eyes flicked to Wojno, who looked pained.
“I wanted to know what kind of lover you were.”
“Why?”
“Because one can tell quite a bit about another by how he treats the strangers he beds. Don’t you think?”
“I guess,” I answered levelly, even though his hand slid down my spine to my ass and gripped it tight.
“This is so hard and firm,” he whispered, caressing me. “You never let anyone have it?”
I cleared my throat because it was filling with swallowed phlegm again, the lingering effects of waterboarding. “No.”
“Not even Marshal Doyle?”
I was silent.
“Oh, come on,” Hartley said, hand on my shoulder, still behind me. “I know you two are an item. Agent Wojno says he’s going completely out of his mind as we speak.”
I pinned Wojno with my stare. “Why?”
He gestured at Hartley. “You know why.”
“Are you blackmailing him?” I asked Hartley about Wojno, even as I felt the needle in the side of my neck. I should have known he had more goodies in his suit jacket.
“Of course,” he said as he traced a pattern on my back. “Tell him.”
Wojno took a breath. “I told him you were being transferred to Phoenix.”
“No,” Hartley husked as he shifted to stand at my side.
I was having trouble focusing, and my head fell forward so that I was looking at Hartley’s Cole Haan Brogue Medallion Double Monkstrap brown shoes. “Huh,” I grunted.
“What?” Hartley asked, sounding interested.
“Those are like the ones you wore in court that time.”
“Yes,” he replied delightedly. “They are. I wore them for you, as we share an interest in tasteful footwear.”
I tried to nod, but I couldn’t lift my head. “Yeah, we do.”
“That pair of Jo Ghost boots you had on when I took you were lovely.”
“Thanks,” I slurred out.
“How do you feel?”
“How do you want me to feel?”
“I want you numb before I have you beaten.”
“Why? And why the waterboarding?”
“You were a bit high-handed with me upon occasion, so, like a dog, you have to learn your place.”
“So… beating,” I murmured.
“Yes.”
“But you don’t want me to feel it.”
“Of course not.”
I scoffed. “That makes no sense.”
“To you.”
“To anybody.”
He stepped forward again, and I felt the pressure of his lips on my shoulder before his teeth. I saw his pristine shoe between my two bare, dirty feet. The large drop of blood that appeared a moment later contrasted beautifully with the deep brown tan color.
“Did you feel that cut?”
“No.” I answered truthfully because I suspected that without the drugs, whatever he was doing would hurt.
“That’s excellent, because I need something of yours.”
“Like?”
“A token, really, but it must be wholly your own.”
I coughed.
“Try not to move,” he cautioned me.
“You’re gonna get your shoes dirty,” I mentioned as the droplets began to rain down and Wojno retched hard.
“I don’t mind,” Hartley assured me as a door opened and another man walked in with a tray of surgical tools. “I just need a saw for a moment.”
It got quieter in the room as the floor blurred, going in and out of focus. I felt detached from my own body, only loosely tethered. “Am I dying now?”
“Oh, not at all, I promise you.”
He was a surgeon, after all. “Okay.”
“Did that hurt?” He was checking on me.
“I feel… pressure.”
“Excellent,” he said before he repeated whatever he was doing.
The sound of Wojno puking was the last thing I heard.
I WAS stiff when I woke up, and my head felt like it was wrapped in gauze. Everything was muffled and I was on my stomach on the cot, head turned to the right, arms and legs back in the straps.
“Try not to move,” Wojno said, and the metal frame of the cot creaked as he perched on the edge beside me. His hand moved in my hair, and even though it was him, the guy who’d betrayed me, it was comforting, and my eyes fluttered shut. “You lost a lot of blood when he operated.”
“Operated?”
“It was fast. Are you in pain?”
