by Stormy Glenn
Sal stared at me until Clarke called out to him, drawing his attention away. I wasn’t sure whether I was grateful or not. I slowly backed up before turning and heading for my office. It was the closest to the main doors.
Once inside, I quickly wrote out a note to Sal, telling him what was going on, what I was doing, and that I loved him. He was going to be so angry with me, but I just didn’t see any way around this. I knew Sal. He’d go in guns blazing. I couldn’t allow that. Too many lives were at stake, including his.
Especially his.
I laid the note in the middle of my desk where Sal would find it and then walked to the door. I watched everyone move about until I found a moment when no one was looking my way, and then I hurried out the main doors.
I carefully closed them behind me and then raced for the elevator. I had no idea how long the mad bomber in the lobby was willing to wait before blowing the whole place. I needed to get down there as fast as I could manage it. I had already wasted precious moments saying goodbye to Sal and writing my note.
When the elevator doors slid open, I hesitated before stepping in. There was a part of me that knew this was wrong. I should be telling Sal everything and letting him take care of it.
I just couldn’t.
There was no way that Sal could evacuate everyone who lived in the building without the bomber knowing about it. I couldn’t take the chance that he would set off the bomb to get to me and Sal, and kill everyone I cared about plus my neighbors.
With heavy resignation, I hit the lobby button. When it arrived, I stepped inside and hit the lobby button. I glanced up just as the doors started to slide close, startled to see Sal storming toward me. I hadn’t even heard the doors to the penthouse open.
And man, was he pissed. “Lany, what in the hell—”
“Bye, Sal,” I whispered as the doors finished closing.
I winced at the heavy thunk I heard as the elevator started to go down. It sounded suspiciously like Sal had hit the elevator doors.
Yeah, he was pissed all right.
It didn’t take more than a few moments to reach the ground floor. When the doors slid open, it took every bit of my resolve to step out of the elevator.
I expected him, and yet the identity of the man who stepped out of the shadows still took me by surprise. “Dr. Cruz.” Oh wait. That wasn’t right. “I’m sorry. Mr. Juarez, isn’t it?”
The man’s dark eyebrow arched. “Mr. Delvecchio.”
I glanced past the man, looking for the security guard and doorman. The lobby was empty. “Where’s Jenson and Gilbert?”
“I tied them up in the employee lounge.”
I looked back at the guy. “I want to see them.” I needed to know Jenson and Gilbert were still alive. “I won’t go anywhere until I see them.”
“Very well.”
My mouth almost dropped open in shock. I had expected the man to deny my demand or smack me or something. When he stepped back and waved his hand for me to precede him, I started to wonder what his game was. He had to have something up his sleeve to be giving in so easily.
I was even more surprised when I reached the employee lounge and found Jenson and Gilbert tied up just as the man said. I had seriously thought he’d killed them.
“Are you two okay?”
They nodded, which was about all they could do. There was tape over their mouths and wrapped around their wrists, keeping them bound behind their backs. That was so going to hurt when it came off.
Jenson had a black eye and a bloody lip, but other than that, he looked good. Gilbert didn’t look much better. These guys seriously needed raises if they continued to work here.
“Satisfied?” Juarez asked.
“You’ll let them go?”
“I’m not interested in them.”
I really didn’t want to find out what he was interested in.
“Let’s go,” the guy said as he grabbed my arm and started leading me out of the room.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
“You have my face on video,” Juarez said. “I can’t allow that.”
I stopped at the security desk and turned to look at the guy. I really wanted to smack him. The gun in his hand stopped me. “You know, until you kidnapped Sal, none of us knew about you. No one was even looking.”
“I couldn’t take that chance.”
“If you had just left it alone, no one would have been the wiser and you could have gone on and peddled your drugs for as long as you wanted.”
The man’s laughter was tinged with surprise. “You think this is about drugs?”
“Isn’t it?” I asked, ‘cause that was kind what we were all thinking. “Aren’t you dealing in temazepam?”
“Small beans, Mr. Delvecchio, very small beans.”
“Dealing drugs is small beans?”
Compared to what?
And who used the term small beans anyway?
“So, what do you deal in then?”
I jerked my arm back when I felt a small, painful prick. I gaped at Juarez as I watched him pull back a small medical injector. I grabbed onto the security desk when the room started to spin, my head growing heavy.
“What…what did you…what did you give me?”
The smile on Juarez’s face was malicious and made me wish I had talked to Sal before coming down to the lobby. My twenty-twenty hindsight was blind as a bat.
“Temazepam, of course. A concentrated doze.”
“Why?” I cried out as my world began to tilt sideways.
“You asked me what I dealt in, Lany?” I got a cold chill when the man laughed. It was a cold, evil sound. “I deal in pretty young things, and you’ll do nicely.”
Salvador
I slammed my fist into the metal elevator door one more time before spinning around and storming back into the penthouse. I was so going to paddle Lany’s ass when I found him.
Like, glowing red.
“Does anyone know where Lany is going?” I snapped out to the room in general. I didn’t care who answered me as long as someone did. When everyone just stared at me, I ground my teeth together. I wasn’t going to blow my stack.
Really.
“Lany just got on the elevator and went down to the lobby. Does anyone know where he is going?”
“Didn’t he say Jenson called about some sort of package had been delivered to the lobby?” Lyn asked. “Maybe he went down to get it.”
“Lany knows we’re on lockdown.” Damn it. “He knows he’s not supposed to go anywhere without me or Marcus with him.”
I was so going to blister his ass.
Oh wait, I’d already had that thought.
It was a good thought.
“You want me to go down and check on him?” Lyn asked.
“No, I’ll do it.” I wanted to get my hands on Lany so I could strangle him. I wanted to hug him too, but definitely strangle him.
When I reached the lobby—the empty lobby—my need to strangle my husband waned compared to my growing fear for the man. I didn’t call. I did pull my gun and started searching the lobby, starting near the elevators and working my way toward the main doors.
The lobby wasn’t that damn big. It took a few moments, maybe a minute, before I concluded it was truly empty. I moved behind the security desk and started for the employee lounge. When I pushed open the door and saw the two bound men on the floor, my fear exploded into outright terror.
I rushed over to Jenson and tore the tape off his mouth before going to work on his hands. “What happened here, Jenson? Where’s Lany?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
As soon as Jenson was free, I went to work on freeing Gilbert. When I was done, I stood back and looked at both men. “Tell me everything you can remember.”
“There was a man, sir,” Jenson said quickly. “He didn’t give me his name. He just told me to call upstairs and ask for Mr. Lany and only Mr. Lany. No one else.”
“Did he say why he wanted Lany?”
“No, sir.” Jenson turned pale, which was quite the feat considering he was already pretty pale. “Sir, you know I would never—”
“I know, Jenson.” I had no doubt whatsoever that Jenson had done the only thing he could think of in the situation. The black eye and fat lip attested to that. It was just too bad that had included putting Lany in danger.
“He had a bomb, sir, in a bag. He threatened to set the bomb off and bring the entire building down if I didn’t do exactly as he said.”
“Bomb?” I quickly surveyed the room for anything that looked like an explosive device. “Where?”
“He had it with him, sir.”
“Do you know if he took the bomb with him or left it here?”
“I don’t know, sir. After Mr. Lany checked on us, they left.”
“I saw the guy give Mr. Lany some sort of shot, sir,” Gilbert said as he rubbed his wrists. “Mr. Lany started walking funny after that, like he was drunk.”
Damn it.
I pulled my cell phone out and quickly dialed my second-in-command. “Clarke, get your ass down to the lobby and call the bomb squad. We need to evacuate the building.”
“What’d Lany do now?” Clarke asked.
I gritted my teeth before replying. “Lany’s missing, Clarke.”
Chapter Fourteen
Lany
Waking up with my hands bound over my head was not reassuring. I hung there—clearly unable to go anywhere else—and pondered how I had ended up in this predicament.
Oh, right, I lied to Sal.
Yep, that would do it.
So, okay, assess the situation.
Arms bound over my head?
Check.
Locked in a windowless room?
Check.
No neck goon with a really big gun standing by the only door?
Check.
Dressed in nothing but some sort of shiny golden thong thingy? Well, that one was new, but the rest of this was kind of old hat.
I knew I should be scared, but I wasn’t. I ate situations like this for breakfast. I had to wonder what sort of person I was becoming if violent circumstances were becoming common place in my life.
Didn’t that say something about me?
“Hey, you,” I called out to the no-neck goon. “You need to call your master down here.”
I assumed it was “down” considering the old faded brick walls and the slight chill in the air. It felt basement like.
The goon grunted.
There was a surprise.
Not.
“Do. You. Speak. English?”
You had to speak slowly to these no-neck types.
The narrowed eyes were cute. Who knew goons could do that?
“I need to speak to your master. Call him.” When the guy just stared at him, I sighed deeply. “Go on, call him. Tell him I want to speak to him.”
It would be polite to at least warn the guy he was going to die.
The guy kept an eye on me as he reached up and touched a device in his ear. I heard an electronic crackle before the guy spoke.
“He is awake and asking for you, sir.”
I had no idea what the guy on the other line said, but the goon just nodded. After a moment, he lowered his hand. I was pretty sure that meant he had been hung up on.
“Well?”
The goon just glared at me.
Whatever.
I looked around, trying to assess more of my situation. It was pretty dismal, but I had been in worse, and that kinda sucked. I needed to get a hobby or something. This was getting downright ridiculous.
Okay, so my hands were bound by a rope. I grimaced when I realized that I knew the ropes would loosen and I would be able to slip free of them once my wrist started to bleed.
I shouldn’t know shit like that.
While my hands were bound over my head, I could still stand on my own two feet.
That was a plus.
The golden thong still concerned me. I didn’t like the idea that someone had seen me naked, and they had because I sure as shit hadn’t dressed myself in the damn thing. I could pull off a thong, but I wouldn’t be caught dead in something shiny and gold.
It didn’t go with my skin tone.
I glanced up when the door opened. “Mr. Juarez.”
Why was I not surprised?
“Lany,” the man replied as he walked over to stand in front of me.
“So, what’s the plan here?”
The man smiled—and it was sickeningly friendly—and folded his hands together, letting them dangle in front of him. The black leather gloves he wore made it even more eerie. “You’re going to make me a lot of money, enough to move to a country with no ties to the US.”
“No extradition treaty?”
“Exactly.”
I nodded. Made sense. “I hear Afghanistan is nice.”
And deadly.
“I was thinking more along the lines of São Tomé.”
“Tropical climate?”
“Of course.”
I nodded again. “And you plan to make that money off me by?”
It was good to know these things.
“Oh, I’m going to sell you as a sex slave, of course.”
“Of course.”
“While I doubt I could get away with selling you as pure, considering you are married, I can still make a tidy sum from a bidder interested in the twink aspect. I imagine with the proper training, you will look quite good kneeling at your master’s feet.”
“Yeah, I’ve never been into the whole subservient thing.”
Ever.
Well, maybe with Sal, but come on, he screamed dominant alpha male. Besides, the benefits of submitting to Sal were humongous. Like, curl your toes humongous.
“I’m afraid your opinion does not matter in this case,” Juarez said. There was a slight smirk to his lips as if he was amused by the whole conversation. “I already have three bidders interested in you. I suspect, given enough incentive, a bidding war will start that could net me quite the tidy sum.”
“What are we talking here?” I asked, ignoring the incentive part of what the guy said. I really didn’t want to know what he meant. “A couple thousand dollars?”
Hey, I could fantasize all I wanted to.
“Oh, my dear boy.” Juarez chuckled, obviously amused. “The bidding has already gone up to a quarter of a million dollars.”
My eyes popped wider. “A quarter of a million dollars? For me?”
Hell, I might sell myself for that amount of money.
Well, maybe not.
But damn.
“Someone offered you a quarter of a million dollars for me?”
“Yes, and I suspect the price will go higher as the night goes on.”
A cold chill slithered up my spine. “As the night goes on?”
I didn’t see a camera, but I suspected one was there, somewhere.
The amusement slid from Juarez’s eyes, replaced by a cold, calculating glint. “You and your husband have caused me considerable problems, Lany. While I fully intended to leave the country at some point, I was not done doing what I set out to do. Now, due to your interference, I find I must depart before my plans have finished.”
Gee, my bad.
“As such,” the man continued, “the bidding ends at midnight. My plane leaves at nine in the morning and I fully intend to be on it. Your new master must transfer the money to my account before then or the goods”—yeah, the look Juarez gave me as he looked me up and down couldn’t have been anymore creepy—“won’t be so good.”
Okay, the money gets transferred by nine o’clock in the morning or I get dead.
Duly noted.
“So, who’s bidding on me?” I asked with enthusiasm I didn’t really feel. At this point, I was just trying to figure out how to get out of this mess.
I barely kept my jaw from dropping when Juarez answered me.
“Many people started out bidding, but only two gentlemen and one woman remain.
With the bidding going up so quickly, many have dropped out, but these three…” Juarez grinned. It was a malicious grin. “These three have quite the interest in you.”
Juarez started to pace slowly. “I admit, the woman was a surprise. I made sure to note your sexual preference in the ad I posted. Maybe she sees you as a challenge.”
Just my luck.
“Well, I don’t do women, so she’s out.”
Juarez stopped and turned to stare at me. After a moment, he chuckled. “Lany, I’m not sure you understand your predicament.”
“Oh no, I got it. You plan to sell me on the black market as a sex toy to whoever pays you the most money.”
The man’s eyes widened a bit. “Yes.”
“I still don’t do women. Never have, never will.”
“You do understand that the person with the highest bid will own you, correct?”
“No, I understand the process. Doesn’t change that fact that I—”
“Don’t do women,” Juarez finished.
I smiled.
It was polite.
“Exactly.
“Lany, your new master will decide what you will and will not do. That’s how it’s done.”
“Yeah, I’m not good with that so we’ll need to go with something else. I’ve never been really good at following directions. Just ask Sal.”
“You seem to be under the illusion that you have a choice.”
I tried to shrug, but it wasn’t easy with my hands tied over my head. “I just want your bidder to get his money’s worth. I’d hate for you to have to offer him a refund because I don’t perform as he wishes.”
I could see a small twitch started at the corner of the guy’s eye.
“Oh, and you need to tell them no sex. That’s definitely out. I only have sex with Sal.”
Juarez opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, his phone dinged. He pulled it out of his suit breast pocket. A smile began to curve his lips as he stared down at the screen.
“My, my, you are a popular person, Lany. I just had a new player place down a one-million-dollar bet.”
That made my eyes widen. “One million dollars?”
Juarez was all smiles when he looked up. “If I had known you would garner this much money, I would have taken you earlier.”
Those wide eyes narrowed swiftly. “Did your mother not breastfeed you or something? When did you become such an asshole?”
