by P Nelson
“I am innocent.” Dickhead. Dillon had thought the urge to punch Detective Stanford had been too much to bear. Apparently, the shark in a suit beside him was even more problematic.
“Ordinarily, I wouldn’t care either way.” The lawyer scrutinised Dillon from head to foot. “But Mistress Thea has helped me out a few times with my Domme, and I owe her. You’d better not have had anything to do with this, or I assure you there are many ways to ruin a man’s life without touching him.” The car stopped, and the lawyer reached into his briefcase once again and brought out a charger for the cell phone.
“This isn’t my place.” Dillon looked out the window to find the lobby of one of the high-rise apartment buildings lining False Creek outside. A man with a set of shoulders only handed out to line-backers in professional football stood just inside the doorway.
“No shit.” The lawyer snapped his case shut. “You can’t go back to your place. The police have helpfully supplied your name to the media as a person of interest in Thea’s disappearance. You and everything about you are now going to be under so much scrutiny, your best bet is to hide out until they find Mistress Thea.”
“Whose place is this?” Dillon asked placing his hand on the door handle. He didn’t feel comfortable staying with anyone now. He was in a shitty mood, and worry over Thea was driving him nuts.
“The building belongs to one of Mr Bancroft’s holding companies. He has had some of your belongings transferred over to the apartment to make you more comfortable. I’m sure he’ll be in touch.” The lawyer turned his attention away from Dillon and pulled a vibrating phone out of the breast pocket of his jacket.
Summarily dismissed, Dillon looked around at the empty pavement and opened the car door. He thanked the driver as he stood up and closed the car door behind him. Striding over to the front of the expensive-looking lobby, Dillon felt strangely vulnerable. This was not his territory. He loved his loft back in Yaletown, set amongst the new and the old buildings, surrounded by the chaos of daily life. It was cold here. But he guessed that’s why it would make a good place to hide out. No one would think to look for him here. The man waiting just inside the glass door opened it and waited for Dillon to step inside.
“Mr Ross, I’m Joe Green. I work for Mr Pearce. He asked me to come down and make sure you settle in OK. I see you have the phone.” Joe Green peeked down at the cell Dillon had in his hand.
“Yeah.” Dillon’s world was collapsing. He stared down stupidly at the phone. It was his only link to Linkin and Flynn, the only way he could get news of Thea.
“We’re going to get her back, Mr Ross.” Joe Green was surprisingly comforting for a man of his size.
What state will she be in when we get her back? Dillon wanted to ask out loud but nodded his head slowly and forced his stare away from the cell. The other man gave him a moment before gesturing towards the set of elevator doors behind a discreet concierge who was currently typing on the computer in front of him.
“Let the waiting commence,” Dillon muttered and followed Joe to the elevators. The concierge glanced up as they passed and nodded discreetly before returning to his work. They stepped inside the elevator, and Joe used a key card to activate the buttons. Dillon wasn’t surprised when he hit the button for the floor below the penthouse or when he had to press another code into the keypad. He peered over at Dillon when he finished.
“Mr Pearce ensures Mr Bancroft has complete privacy at all his residences as well as his places of business.” Even though he felt miles away from the opulent surroundings, he appeared to take it all in his stride as the elevator doors opened, not into a hallway, but a huge apartment.
“Shit.” Dillon forgot he was the number one suspect who could turn out to be the cause of the love of his life’s disappearance.
“Way too OTT for my taste, but then, I grew up in a trailer way down Fraser Valley,” Joe commented as he exited the elevator and continued to walk into another room. “You want a coffee?” he called back.
“Sure,” Dillon agreed, his brain still trying to register the huge apartment his loft would fit into about twenty times over. He jumped as the elevator doors tried to close and shoved his way through them. English Bay lay out before him. The tankers, lying in wait for their turn at the terminal, bobbed with the waves and tides.
He ambled through the tastefully decorated living area and dining room. Someone had paid a serious amount of cash to make the place appear inviting, even though it was obvious no one lived here full-time. He wandered down one of the hallways and pushed open a door to an opulent bedroom. There was a four-poster on the far side of the room with a green duvet. Matching pillows made a mountain against the headboard, and briefly, Dillon allowed himself to think of Thea not as a kidnapping victim.
Her skin would look magnificent against the dark green of the duvet cover, her green eyes reflecting the colour all around her. Dillon would worship her body; take her places she had never, ever been before, love every inch of her. A sob threatened to escape, and he lifted his hands up to his face. His body slid down the wall just inside the bedroom, and he cried. What would the police chief think if he saw Dillon right now, curled in on himself, the big bad Dom of the kink world, crying his heart out?
Dillon wasn’t sure how long he lay on the floor, the silent cell phone his only companion. At some point, he pulled the charger from his coat pocket and plugged it into the wall, not wanting to risk missing any info Linkin or Flynn might provide for him. He prayed to God for Thea’s rescue, her safety. He wished on every single thing he could think of that she was just held somewhere, that nothing bad had happened to her.
Hope started turning to despair as evening set in around the city. The girls the Reverend had kidnapped and tortured hadn’t made it until dawn. The sick bastard had tortured them all night and dumped them in the early morning hours. Dillon pressed his forehead into the carpet. Sickening dread filled his gut, his head. She was dead, and he never had the chance to tell her he loved her, hold her like a lover. Rage choked him, but he couldn’t stop falling further into a black abyss.
“Dillon?” A tentative voice called his name. It was familiar, and the hand on his arm, even through his sweatshirt, was warm and gentle. “Dillon, it’s Calla. Can you sit up for me?” One hand became two insistent ones. Dillon took a deep breath. He didn’t want to sit up, but if Calla had bad news, he wanted to face it like a man, not some snivelling bastard on the floor. He was a Dom, for fuck’s sake.
“Calla.” He croaked out the name of The Cage’s resident psychologist as he sat up, leaning against the wall.
“I’m here.” She smiled kindly at him, her professional demeanour in place. The tight lines around her eyes and her mouth gave her away. She was just as worried about Thea as he. For some reason, Dillon comprehended Calla loved Thea as much as he did, which made it easier to lean on her. She opened her arms, and he fell into them, seeking her comfort and warmth. He didn’t care about his Dom reputation. All he wanted was Thea back. After a few minutes, Calla pulled away from him.
“We have news from Linkin, would you like to come into the living room?” she asked doing her best to sit on the floor next to him in a pencil skirt. She must have come from her private practice downtown.
“Why didn’t you say that first?” He surged to his feet, staring down at Calla’s wide-eyed expression. Dillon decided he hadn’t lost all his Dom credentials.
“Because she was trying to comfort you in your time of fucking need, asshole,” Flynn barked out from down the hall. “Get your ass down here and have a cup of coffee. It’s going to be a long fucking night.” Dillon was already turning to apologise to Calla, but she wasn’t paying any attention to him. She was staring at the owner of The Cage, like she would like to curl up in his lap, snuggle in, and never leave. For his part, Flynn ignored the look of adoration, turning on his heel to stride back down the hall.
“He loves you,” Dillon said the first thing that popped into his brain.
�
�We have bigger problems, friend.” Calla smiled tightly and urged him down the hall, back out into the generous living room overlooking English Bay and False Creek, the elegant room now fitted with computers and monitors. Dillon could see body cameras flickering to life on the screens. Before his eyes, soldiers readied themselves for combat in gear that surely had to be illegal in Canada. He was about to ask what the hell was going on when his eyes drifted to Joe sitting on one of the expensive cream couches, a headset resting over his severe crew-cut. He was speaking with someone on the other end of one of the feeds.
“Sit down,” Flynn ordered and pressed a hot coffee mug into his hand. Dillon obeyed but never took his eyes from the screen.
“This is some real Hollywood hero movie shit, Flynn.” The action of bringing the coffee cup to his lips automatic rather than necessary, he took a sip of the strong coffee. “Is any of it even legal?”
“Don’t tell me I need you to sign a nondisclosure,” Flynn’s tone was dry and humourless.
“Or threaten to poke both your eyes out.” Joe craned his neck around, the beefy man gave Dillon a hard stare. If Joe wasn’t a Dom already, Dillon wanted to offer him lessons at The Cage.
“Linkin has pinpointed three places where the Reverend might be holding Thea.” Dillon registered that Flynn was referring to Thea as if he believed she was still alive. He glanced out the window at the lights of the downtown core and prayed for the same thing, not quite able to believe his luck.
“Why hasn’t he been able to get anything before now?” Calla asked. She had curled up on the couch on the other side of Dillon; her arms wrapped around one of the couch pillows. Flynn couldn’t offer the sub he pined for the comfort she needed, Dillon set his coffee mug aside and wrapped an arm around her.
“He needed the last piece of the puzzle.” Studiously ignoring Flynn’s narrowed eyes where they rested on Dillon’s arm around Calla’s shoulders, Dillon peered up at his friend.
“Bondie.” That little fucker.
“All of those girls.” Calla gasped.
“Yes. It looks like Bondie has some serious issues. When Linkin contacted Big Daddy BB, his former Dom, he said that Bondie had become increasingly needy, wanting to experiment in scenes that were way out of Big Daddy’s kinks. Edge play, knives, the sort of thing most vanillas think we’re up to daily.” Flynn shook his head at the ignorance. “Big Daddy BB hasn’t played with Bondie for around six months, he ended their contract. There was some residual anger, and Bondie begged him to take him back, but about four months ago, all the calls stopped. Since Big Daddy BB had spotted Bondie around The Feather Flogger looking well, he assumed his former sub had moved on.”
“He had moved on.” Calla sat up straight, her face a mask as she thought over all the information Flynn had given her.
“Using information creatively obtained from various sources, Linkin has narrowed down the potential holding sites to three places.” A map popped up on the screen, and three red dots came to life. Dillon leaned forward to look at them all. Joe turned away from the screen he was staring at and put a hand over the microphone at his lips.
“We have one location up near Pemberton.” He pointed at the red dot located up the coast past Whistler and Blackcomb. “Another potential site is here.” He pointed to a spot in Surrey near the White Rock border. “And lastly here.” Joe pressed the screen where the last red dot was out near Abbottsford. “Linkin is convinced the Abbottsford location is where the Reverend has been hiding his previous victims. The dumpsites along the Fraser River correlate well with him using Abbottsford as his main location, the other spots used as decoys. We have three highly trained teams closing in on each of these locations. I can’t tell you how much precision we need during these raids. We cannot allow civilian interference of any kind. It might jeopardise Detective Demopoulos’s life in the extraction. Do you understand?”
Dillon nodded at first, unable to find any words. This whole situation was surreal. He stared up at Flynn who was watching the monitors with men riding around in the back of vans or getting into position as if he ran illegal military operations on Canadian soil all the time. He realised Flynn was a scary-ass dude.
“We’re merely observers, people.” Joe returned his attention to the keyboard, and the images on the screens fine-tuned. “The command centre is controlling the men, but we can hear each operation as it takes place simultaneously.”
Dillon caught a glimpse of Linkin on one of the monitors and focused on the action taking place. He was instructing his men, but the sound was too low to hear. Joe glanced around at Flynn, Dillon, and Calla. Nodding his head, his fingers flew over the keyboard, and abruptly, Linkin came over the speakers.
“Every one of you has their orders. Tonight is the first time some of you have been in an operation since leaving the military, but I have faith in you. We’re going to catch a psychopathic asshole who preys on women. Dead or alive, men.” A round of agreement from the stony-faced men on the screens cut off Linkin’s statement. The whole scene sent a shiver down Dillon’s spine, and Calla tensed on the sofa next to him. He pressed her closer and held his breath. All the men appeared motionless for one instant before a calm feminine tone came through the speakers.
“Team leader green, three two one.” One of the screens split into five different moving pictures as men burst from a van. The screens were all in night vision, making it hard to see what was happening. There were plenty of hand signals, heavy breathing, and meaningful looks as the five men infiltrated what looked like a house set amongst trees in the middle of a property. The men took their time scouring each room, bursting into a basement that held an array of BDSM furniture and toys, but nothing else. A strong voice came over the speaker.
“Team green is clear. I repeat Team green is clear.” The man’s speech was steady.
“Acknowledged, green team leader. Pemberton is clear,” the female spoke. “Ready team yellow.”
“Affirmative,” another male responded. Dillon held his breath, as the first team continued to search through the Pemberton location making sure it was clear.
“Team yellow leader, three two one.” The female once again counted down. Dillon’s heart choked his throat as the cameras showed the team moving into a suburban house. He leaned forward further off the couch, the arm squeezing Calla beside him. This time he was much better at following the action on each of the little individual screens. By the time the initial sweep of the house was over, Dillon’s heart thumped in disappointment. By the time the team leader called in to announce Surrey was clear, a glance at the digital clock revealed only eight minutes had passed since the first operation in Pemberton was in progress.
Dillon swallowed hard and had to remove his arm from around Calla. She clutched the pillow tighter to her chest but didn’t make any moves to touch him. The tension thrumming through his body was making him light-headed. He did his best to focus on the screens, trying not to panic. This was the last lead. What if Thea wasn’t there? Or even worse, was he about to see her corpse? Had the Reverend already taken her body to dump somewhere along the Fraser River in a cold wet grave alone. God, he hated this. Why hadn’t he become a soldier instead of boning chicks for a living? He could be saving Thea right now instead of Linkin.
“Ready, red team.” The female spoke over the speakers. Linkin looked directly at one of the body cams. Dillon’s shoulders jerked. The other Dom might be on the other side of the Fraser Valley to him, but the intensity of Linkin’s gaze tore through him, giving him the strength he needed to get through the next few minutes. He needed to be strong now. Thea needed him. Whatever shape she was in, she would need him strong. Even though Linkin couldn’t see Dillon’s reaction. He nodded at the screen anyway.
“Affirmative,” Linkin responded.
“Team red leader, three two one,” the female repeated for the last time, and as Linkin’s last team sprang into action, unable to sit and watch the events unfold, Dillon stood up and crowded behind Joe. The team wit
h Linkin had gone through the windows in a kitchen, beams from high-powered flashlights flicked over walls, ceilings, and the floor. The team exchanged nods and hand gestures before one of the men kicked a door open. Stairs led down to the basement. Dillon stopped breathing as the men travelled down the stairs in a crouch, still shining their flashlights and illegal weaponry around at potential threats.
“Fuck.” The curse rang out in the luxurious apartment perched on the side of False creek.
“Close your eyes, Calla.” Flynn moved swiftly behind Dillon probably to protect Calla, but there was no protecting any of them from the sight of Bondie’s mutilated body hanging from one wall.
“We have signs of life,” someone said over the speaker. Dillon let all the air burst out of his lungs. It wasn’t possible for Bondie to still be alive. The gaping wound at his throat appeared final to even his untrained eyes. Dillon swung his gaze over to another monitor. He froze at the sight that met his gaze, a woman tied to a St Andrew’s Cross. The soldiers around her were already in action, untying her, putting in an IV, covering her bruised and open flesh. One of the soldiers was speaking to the woman over the coms link. They were talking about a helicopter, the closest hospital.
“No.” Dillon didn’t recognise his own voice as one of the soldiers delicately put an oxygen mask over Thea’s mouth. It looked as if she had taken a horrible beating. Her eyes were swollen shut, her face distorted with bruises. But it was her. In the next minute, the whole team was moving in a unit, up the stairs using a makeshift stretcher. The sound of a helicopter came over the speakers until the feed from the soldiers carrying Thea abruptly cut away.
“No.” Dillon said louder this time. “Get it back.”
“We can’t.” Joe shook his head. “They’re coming into Vancouver General; it has the best trauma wing. We need to get her dropped off quickly and get the guys out of there without too many questions. Do you understand?” Dillon forced his mind to work. These guys had just saved Thea’s life. He didn’t want to be ungrateful, but fuck. Calla’s sobs broke through his racing thoughts. There was more going on than just him. Dillon slowed his breathing, forcing his brain to focus.
