by Lili Valente
He lunged the last few feet separating them, wrenching the shotgun from her hands before she could fire. Her finger hadn’t been on the trigger, but even if it had, she couldn’t have pulled it. She wasn’t capable of killing one of the few people she had truly loved, even if she hated the devil he’d become.
She stumbled back until her bottom hit the control console, and stood, heart pounding, bracing herself for whatever Clay would do next.
Would he shoot her, beat her, or simply fist his hand in her hair and force her back to his torture chamber?
Instead, he opened the gun, shook the shells out onto the floor, and stood staring at her over the evidence of what looked like an attempt at a real truce.
Chapter Twelve
Clay
There was no other way. This was his last shot.
What he’d said to her was true—he did believe that she had changed. The old Harley wouldn’t have hesitated to destroy anyone who got in her way. She would have left him to drown at the falls and never looked back.
Or maybe not. Maybe you were more than a means to an end, even back then.
Maybe she did love you, in her way.
It was a dangerous, pointless thought.
It didn’t matter whether their love had been true or false, the enmity between them now was very real and if he couldn’t find a way to defuse it, Harley was never going to take him to Jasper. And that’s what would need to happen. She was never going to tell him where his son was hidden. The only way he was getting to Jasper was by taking Harley with him and then only if she trusted him enough to agree to work together.
There was only one thing he could think to do, one way to earn the trust he’d proven he didn’t deserve.
“I have footage of you in the sensory deprivation cell,” he said, his voice soft and careful in the combustible silence. “We can go back to the installation and you can film my confession that I was the one who put you in there—without orders or the knowledge of my superiors.”
Her head turned, but her wary eyes remained focused on his face.
He took a step back, increasing the distance between them before he continued. “Then you can upload the confession and the footage from the cell to the cloud so you’ll have it in case you need to use it against me.”
“I won’t be able to use it against you if I’m dead,” she said, pushing on before he could respond. “But if you’d wanted me dead you could have shot me just now. You need me alive, at least until I take you to Jasper.” Her lips trembled but fell short of a smile. “I imagine then all bets will be off.”
“That’s not true,” he said, not surprised that she had worked through the logic of that possible scenario so quickly. “But I realize you have no reason to trust me. That’s why you’ll have the confession, evidence to prove that I kidnapped you, treated you terribly, and did it all pretending to be on orders from the US government.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t respond. She simply watched him as if waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“You could destroy me with even a fraction of that evidence,” he continued. “If I try to trick you or take Jasper away, you leak the video and I’ll be on a most wanted list within twenty-four hours.”
“And what about the information you have on me?”
“That’s my leverage.” He leaned against the doorframe leading into the cabin, trying to look relaxed, knowing desperation never played well during a negotiation. “To be handed over to my superiors if you go back on our deal.”
“No.” She shook her head, sending her still-damp curls rocking around her face. “Then you can take Jasper, leak my file, and—”
“And then we both go to jail,” he cut in. “And believe me, I have no urge to spend so much as a night in prison, let alone a decade or more. I was in a coma for eight months. That’s enough life lost. I value my freedom. I’m not going to give you any excuse to leak my confession.”
Her tongue slipped out, wetting her pink lips. Her entire face was flushed. No wonder, since she’d probably broken a few speed records on her race back to the black site. The color looked good on her, making the exhausted part of him wish they could pick up where they’d left off at the falls, rewind to before he’d taken things too far and just make love in the water.
Fuck in the water, he amended. Neither one of you is capable of more than fucking, and don’t you forget it.
“And what is this deal going to look like, Clay?” she asked. “Because unless it involves me in Jasper’s life for the long term, I’m not making any bargains.”
“Shared custody,” he said. “But we work it out between us, keep things out of the court system. Considering you’ve been declared legally dead and I’ve been deep undercover for years, I figure that would be for the best, don’t you?”
She frowned, her brow knitting as she shook her head. “I don’t understand. What changed between this morning, when I made this exact same suggestion, and this afternoon?”
“You,” he insisted, silently begging her to believe him. “Or my perception of you, anyway.”
He stepped away from the door, facing her over the shotgun shells rolling drunkenly back and forth on the ground between them as the boat listed on the waves. “You could have killed me, more than once, but you didn’t. The fact that you have value for human life, even the life of a man who tortured you…”
He trailed off with a sigh. “Well, that means something. It means a lot. I know that to make co-parenting a child work we’re going to have to find more common ground than that, but at least it’s a place to start.”
Silence fell between them again, but it was a more peaceful silence, the kind that might be broken by birds singing instead of a scream ripping through the jungle.
“Film the confession and help me get it uploaded to safe virtual storage,” she said with a breath deep enough to move her shoulders up and down. “After that’s finished, you let me stay online and send the man who’s guarding Jasper a message that danger could be on the way. When both of those things are done, we can talk about what the future might look like.”
“All right.” Clay knelt to catch the shells as they rolled toward him. “Just let me lock up the gun and we can head up to the main building.”
She watched him as he tucked the shells back into their box and fit the gun back into its case. “You need a better lock on that. If you’re planning to have guns in the house when Jasper is with you, you’ll need enhanced safety measures. He knows better than to play with guns, but I don’t like to take chances. Since he was born, I’ve stored every one of my weapons in a double lockbox.”
He shut the bench lid and stood with a nod. “Sounds smart.”
She nodded for a long moment before her features pinched toward the center of her face. “This feels…strange.”
“It does,” he agreed, feeling more awkward around her than he had since he’d crept up behind her with a syringe in his hand. “But we’ll get used to it. People do this kind of thing all the time.”
“You think?” She raised a wry brow. “They go from wanting to kill each other in the morning to sketching out co-parenting rules in the afternoon?”
His lips curved. “Judging by the divorces I’ve been witness to, the killing part isn’t far off, but you’re right, the swift turn around isn’t the norm. Usually, it takes a few months of screaming at each other in a room with lawyers on either side of the table before compromise starts to happen. But we’re not divorcing.”
“No, I was your prisoner and now I’m not,” she said, an incredulous note in her voice. “That’s way more fucked up than most divorces, Clay.”
“But there are fewer feelings involved.” The words felt like a lie, but they weren’t.
Yes, he felt different about Harley than he had the day she’d woken up tied to a bed, but that didn’t mean he had feelings for her. It just meant that he’d let go of some of the rage that had been seething inside of him, poisoning him as surely as anything Ha
rley had ever done.
She was right, he’d been out of his mind with rage. It was only now that he’d begun to move forward in a more reasonable fashion that he was finally starting to feel like himself again, to feel like he was regaining control and ensuring the best possible future for the son he’d never met.
“I have lots of feelings,” Harley said, her eyes darkening. “So many feelings, I’m not sure what to name them all, but I do know this: if you betray me, the next time I have a clear shot at you, I won’t hesitate to take it.”
He nodded. “Understood. And if you betray me, I’ll send you to prison for the rest of your life. I don’t care if Jasper ends up being raised by one of the miserable, selfish members of your family. If I’m rotting in jail because you released my confession, I’m going to make sure you rot right along with me.”
A smile stretched her pink lips. It wasn’t the sunshine through the rain smile that took his breath away, but it still transformed her sweat-streaked face into a thing of beauty.
“There, that’s the charmer I’ve come to know,” she said, her voice husky. “For a moment there, you were being way too reasonable and level headed.”
“Baby steps,” he replied, turning back to the cabin door and holding out an arm. “After you.”
Harley’s eyes narrowed, but after a moment’s hesitation, she moved past him and out onto the deck. She remained wary on their walk up to the installation and throughout the setup of the camera in the control room where he’d monitored her cell, but by the time his confession was in the bag and uploaded to her cloud drive via satellite connection, she began to relax.
She allowed him to remain in the room as she posted a blog entry about catastrophic chocolate shortages on the horizon and even laughed when he questioned the choice of topics.
“What could be more terrible than a chocolate shortage?” She stood up from the desk chair, hands on her lower back as she arched her spine. “If that doesn’t convey imminent danger, I don’t know what does.”
“Sore from the run?” he asked.
She nodded. “I don’t usually run five miles in bare feet and those boots weren’t much better.”
“Let me take you to the storage room,” he said, moving toward the door. “You can look through the women’s uniform pieces and shoes and pick something out to wear after your shower. Or you can have a bath if you’d rather. There’s a tub in the bathroom in the infirmary.”
He stopped in the hallway, turning back to see Harley standing where he’d left her, studying him with an inscrutable look.
“And what then?” she asked. “Are you going to make me dinner?”
“Dinner should happen,” he said, with a shrug. “We don’t have to eat it together, but there’s a picnic table outside the kitchen that has a nice view of the ocean. We could eat and then start packing up. If we head out tonight, we should reach Bangkok by morning. I’ve got connections there that can set you up with a passport and we should be able to book a flight to wherever Jasper is.”
“I’m not telling you where we’re going until we’re boarding the plane,” she warned as she crossed to the door. “You give me the money and I buy the tickets alone. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” he said. “But you never leave my sight, not even for a second.”
Harley blinked up at him. “This still feels so odd. It’s like you’re a stranger. I can’t tell what you’re thinking.”
“That’s not that surprising, is it?” he asked softly. “Neither of us was being ourselves before. We were playing our parts, doing whatever it took to get the upper hand and get what we wanted. It was all lies and dirty games.”
“Not all of it,” she said, sadness creeping into her tired eyes. “Some of it was real. You know that, even if you won’t admit it.”
Longing and regret swirled through his chest. Agreeing to a truce had made things more civilized between them, but it had also taken touching her off the table. And damn him, but he still wanted to touch her. Maybe even wanted it more than he had before. He wanted to learn what it would be like to fuck her without all the drama in the way, for it to be just him and her and enough pleasure to mute the pain of the past.
They would never escape the ugly legacy of the choices they’d made, but maybe they could turn down the volume. He already knew how good it would feel to have her soft and willing beneath him, wrapping her long legs around his waist and pulling him deeper, closer. He could almost hear the hungry little sounds she would make as he brought her over, smell the scent of her flooding through his head as he fought the urge to come, wanting to feel her clench around him again before he lost himself.
If he reached for her, he sensed that she would let him do all the things he was dying to do to her, but he couldn’t take a single step down that road. That road led to emotion and complications and wanting more from Harley than she could ever give, even if she wanted to.
She was who she was and there was no changing that. He could find things to admire about the person she’d become and admit that she’d proven that even monsters could become something better than they’d been before, but she was still the person who had used him to ruin his best friend’s life. She was still a woman who had lied to him, played him, and framed a man for a crime he hadn’t committed before running off to start a career as a drug smuggler.
There was no coming back from the things she’d done. Her God, if she had one, might forgive her, but he never could.
And so instead of leaning down to capture her lips and learn if she tasted different without hate simmering between them, he tilted his head toward the stock room down the hall. “Come on, let’s find you something else to wear. I’m sure it will feel good to get out of those clothes.”
She dropped her gaze to his feet with a soft laugh. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
Clay didn’t respond, he simply turned and walked away, knowing it was the best thing he could do for the both of them.
Chapter Thirteen
Harley
Two days later
They touched down in Prague midmorning and fetched the key to the apartment from a PO box near the airport. By noon, they were getting into their third cab and completing their circuitous route to the apartment where Dom and Jasper were staying.
Harley didn’t sense that they were being followed, but it was best to be careful. While they were in Bangkok, Clay had been in touch with his associates at the CIA. They’d confirmed that Marlowe had been in south Thailand a couple of weeks ago, only days after Harley had been kidnapped. Even if Clay hadn’t taken her away, Marlowe’s early arrival would have surprised her. There was a chance she wouldn’t have had time to erase all evidence of Jasper’s existence before her boss arrived.
The knowledge made her less angry with Clay than she’d been before, taking her rage level down to…Not Really That Angry At All.
In the past two days, Clay had been a complete gentleman. He’d cooperated, kept his promises, and been unfailingly polite, even when she insisted they spend a few hours shopping for clothing in Bangkok, ensuring she, at least, had something appropriate and nondescript for the journey to Prague. None of the shops had sizes large enough to accommodate Clay’s shoulders, but he had other clothing with him aside from a castoff pair of scrubs.
No, Harley had no reason to complain about his behavior, but she couldn’t help being frustrated by it. The moment they’d agreed to work together, a wall had come down behind his eyes. She knew she should be grateful that he had seen reason—and she was—but she didn’t like being shut out.
It was madness to prefer the insane Clay who’d kidnapped her and fucked her in the dirt to respectful Clay who held the door open for her as she slid out of a taxi.
But she had never been particularly sane or reasonable, especially where this man was concerned.
“They’re on the tenth floor,” she said, clutching the handle of her small leather suitcase tight as she started around the block.
“I’m assu
ming there’s more than one point of entry?” Clay asked.
Harley nodded. “The penthouse has access to the landing pad on the roof in case of the need for air extraction and there are three exit points—the elevator used by all the residents, the main staircase, and a separate servants’ staircase that was blocked off from the rest of the building when it was renovated several years ago. Now that entrance only services the penthouse. That’s where we’ll go in.”
Clay kept close as she slipped into the alleyway between two late nineteenth century buildings, shortening his stride so that he remained just a pace behind her, ready to draw down on any threats approaching from ahead or behind. He carried his bag in his left hand, leaving his right free to reach for the weapon hidden beneath his weathered leather jacket.
After a brief argument during which Harley had made it clear that she knew her way around a gun, Clay had convinced her to seek cover at the first sign of trouble while he took care of any deadly force. He was a CIA agent, after all, with more legal loopholes to slip through to get away with shooting someone on foreign soil. Harley would have a much harder time explaining herself if she were caught with a smoking gun.
“Should you call ahead?” He stopped beside her, scanning the alley while she slipped the key from her jacket pocket. It was still cool in Prague in June and she was grateful for the light cotton jacket and thick linen pants she’d purchased in Bangkok. “To make sure your man knows I’m not a threat?”
“He’ll know you’re not a threat.” She unlocked the door and stepped over the marble threshold into a tasteful entryway. “And he’s not my man. He’s his own man. He’s watching Jasper as a favor. I don’t give him orders, so don’t assume he’ll take them from you, either.”
Clay grunted as she locked the door behind them. “I didn’t plan on giving any orders, but that’s good to know.”
“Just wanted you to understand the lay of the land.” She started up the stairwell, which was decidedly more rustic than the tasteful entryway where servants from another age would have received packages and sent out messages to other members of Prague’s higher society. “Dom can be touchy, but I can handle him. Just let me do the talking.”
