The Death of You

by Allyson Young

  Connor was out of the vehicle almost before Rafe threw it into park, making his way with long, determined strides to the front door, obviously intent on powering up his very expensive laptop. Rafe followed after locking up the truck, stopping only to praise the dogs for their diligence. The Dobermans were a silent, deadly deterrent and the only downfall was their care when he and Connor were in the field. Their loyal housekeeper moved in during those times, but Mrs. Evans was a little anxious about the killers on four feet—not personally, but more for any fool who thought to breach the gate to try and sell something. As he secured the front door behind him, Rafe wondered if Maddy liked dogs. There were many things to learn, a task he looked forward to, and expected to be ongoing.

  He’d start making notes about her for them to compare later. It wasn’t like he didn’t remember every little thing about Maddy, everything and anything she’d said, how she moved, responded, acted. The kind of person he believed her to be when she wasn’t running in fear. But together with Connor they might be able to paint a more complete picture if they put it down in black and white. Then, no matter what Connor turned up, they’d pay their little sub a visit. Rafe figured a stop at a florist’s wouldn’t be amiss—Connor would know for sure, but Rafe thought he knew just the bouquet to choose. Maddy smelled like wildflowers, a fresh yet heady scent. Pleased he had a mission, he went to join his friend.

  ****

  “Sir?” His right-hand man, a true psychopath, lounged in the doorway of the study. Abbott shoved back from the computer screen and blinked to focus on Ryker.

  “What is it?”

  “Somebody running matches on Margaret Madelines. Wilkes just called it in.”

  Abbott felt his mouth stretch up in an interested smirk. “Well, now. That somebody looking for my Margaret Madeline?”

  “Could be. Wilkes said it flagged about an hour ago. Some kind of alarm he set up. I don’t speak that computer shit.”

  Wilkes had worked for the government before losing his position because of his rather eclectic sexual interests. Those and his incessant greed. Abbott therefore now had his own hacker, one with innate skill, honed by considerable training at taxpayer expense. When he’d turned the problem over to the asshole, Abbott had figured it was a last ditch effort. Private investigators, individuals with contacts everywhere, and a finger in many pies hadn’t turned up a whisper of Margaret. But then, she was a master at subterfuge, learning at her father’s knee, so to speak, before Abbott had claimed her because of her good old dad’s gambling debt. This was the second time she’d struck out on her own, obviously not learning from her first mistake, which meant he’d have to get more creative to dissuade another attempt upon her return.

  “I want to know the minute Wilkes gets a sniff of her location, understood?”

  “Uh-huh. The minute. You bringing her back?”

  “Maybe.” Abbott hadn’t missed the undertone in Ryker’s voice. He’d been the one Abbott sent to fetch her before, and the collateral damage was something he could do without this time around. Local law enforcement was one thing. The feds were another, and that debacle had focused a hint of attention on him, taking a great deal of money and influence to divert. It was like the other man hadn’t given a shit about drawing that attention. And he suspected Ryker had laid hands on Margaret.

  Not that he’d asked her. Because then he’d have to kill the man—Margaret was his pet and he wanted her unsullied for his future plan. He required both Ryker and Margaret in his life at this point, however, so it was simply easier not to know.

  “Fine.” Ryker didn’t reflect an opinion one way or another, but Abbott felt one. He dismissed it for now.

  He went back to checking spreadsheets, cross-referencing random columns, ensuring the money was flowing in the right direction and none of it had been sidelined or skimmed, although he had other programs for that too. There was just so much of it to monitor. He had his own boss, and that man cared only about success. Abbott had no intention of letting him down, at least not until he felt he could take his place. He idly wondered if Margaret had changed her appearance or otherwise tried to thwart him. It didn’t matter. She’d fit the mould again, if he had to break her and recast it.

  Chapter Three

  “Jeez.” Even that one word hurt, as much as she’d needed to speak it to affirm she was alive and not perishing someplace where hammers were beating a dreadful tune on the inside of her skull. Maddy rolled onto her side and carefully pushed up on one elbow, the morning light creeping past the blinds and making her eyes water. She should probably invest in some over-the-counter sleep aids that didn’t give a person a hangover. Or better brandy.

  She had to pee, so she bowed to the inevitable, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, wincing when the soles of her feet met the hardwood instead of the little plush mat. Hustling to the bathroom, she took care of business and washed up, trying not to notice her swollen eyes and the dark circles beneath them. Soaking a cloth in cold water, she held it against the bridge of her nose, then wrapped the fabric over to her temples, hoping the coolness would ease the puffiness. After a few such efforts, she thought she saw a discernible improvement and tossed the cloth into the hamper. Brushing her teeth, she padded into the kitchen and flipped the coffee maker on, then rushed back to spit, the paste foaming beyond belief. After rinsing the sink, she slathered her face and throat with her favorite lotion, and the subtle scent of wildflowers calmed her senses a trifle. She steadfastly didn’t think during her intense focus on the mundane tasks.

  Choosing some sensuous yet practical underwear from her small wardrobe, she tugged them on, forcing her fingers, when they would have lingered, away from the two small marks Rafe had left. She pulled some well-worn jeans over the panties and found a sweatshirt that proclaimed her to have toured with a famous rock band named Free and Easy. Thrift store items tended to lean to the strange and wonderful, but she loved the vintage look, the older styles, and wearing used clothing distanced her from Abbott’s world. A little hiccuping sound caught in her throat until she snared her thoughts and steered them back to the matter at hand. Spilt milk and all. Her daddy didn’t like her to cry over anything, and no matter that he’d hardly been the patron saint of fatherhood, he’d been all she had after her mother died. She hadn’t run from Abbott until her only surviving parent passed, leaving Abbott nothing to use against her.

  Pouring a cup of coffee, she carried it over to the corner table where her laptop sat. The rental house was high-end, close enough for a quick commute to downtown where the offices were, and far enough away for the peace and quiet so many executives required to unwind. One wouldn’t have known from looking at the neighborhood, what a gem this house was. Maddy wasn’t so averse to luxury that she avoided it altogether. If she had to spend much of her time alone, she was going to spend it in comfort. Besides, Abbott was paying for it.

  The first thing she did was check the security feed, although if anything had happened in the night, there would have been no way for her to defend against it. She’d been well and truly out. So that was another reason to see her expulsion from the club as a positive. Her sexual interests made her weak. Like it’s only sexual interests. Nope, she wasn’t going there.

  Aside from video of Mrs. Barrett’s old tomcat making the rounds, the creature terrifying all the animal and insect night life, she didn’t find anything untoward, so backed up the drive and set it to monitor again. Her stomach rumbled, but she ignored it. First things first. A few clicks of the keys and she considered Abbott’s most recent activities—much of the same, laundering money and more money, mostly through his numbered accounts. She saved that information in another file and wondered if it was time to send what she had to the feds, make it their problem. After all, she’d be moving on shortly, and didn’t want to risk losing the data if something happened to her. In the end, she saved it in the Cloud, using an innocuous name and attaching a difficult password for retrieval. One thing about the curse of her memory
, she could store any number of passwords for any number of things. Like Abbott’s doings.

  The house came furnished, of course, and all she owned could be packed into a couple of big suitcases. But she’d leave the fetish wear behind and make it less tempting to find another club in the next city. Lesson learned. The thought of being confined much of each and every day was daunting, but she couldn’t afford to connect with other people. Not until Abbott was taken care of, and it didn’t feel time.

  If she pared down her scant amount of clothing, and carried her laptop, she’d manage it with one case. Drive to the airport, lose the car, and fly somewhere. Maybe Canada. Yeah, Canada. The sense of being tracked, of someone getting really close, was incredibly strong and she wasn’t going to pretend it was anything else. You’re fooling yourself. You know who’s getting close and… With a great effort, she shut down the earnest little voice emanating from the region of her heart, and focused on survival.

  After accessing a certain site, she typed in some commands. The screen flickered, a virtual door opening on silent hinges, and a single word lit the darkness. What? She snorted at the drama, although she knew and appreciated how effective the security was.

  Rapidly, she typed in her request, paying exorbitantly for the service with funds drawn on an offshore bank account Abbott didn’t realize that Maddy knew existed. That was the deal with accounts like that. There weren’t any statements or friendly tellers keeping you apprised of each and every little thing. If Abbott didn’t check that particular account today, the interest on the remaining money would have equaled the withdrawal in the same time frame. She deemed it only fair that he pay for her latest adventure, well aware she was whistling past the graveyard. Because if he did check the account, her run time had just been pared to the bone. Wilkes would follow the trail with his eyes closed.

  Another cup of coffee later, she found the perfect identity, regretting the necessity to lose Madeline, but accepting it. Bonnie McCrimmon. Thirty-two, five five, one fifty, red over brown. Canadian—now that was fortuitous. Former mortgage broker. Maddy figured she could eat her way up to the one fifty in no time, seeing as she’d have to hunker down in yet another house in yet another unfamiliar city until Abbott either went away with her help, or died. The real Bonnie was unfortunately incarcerated, and wouldn’t be out and about for at least another two years. Apparently, white-collar crime wasn’t well tolerated up north.

  With a sigh, she began the search for a property in Montreal. In a neighborhood that spoke English, her command of anything French being miniscule. Don’t think about ménage. Just don’t.

  After lining up a few such places, she contacted a real estate agent in that city via a chat service and narrowed her search further. Making an appointment to meet with the woman in a few days’ time, Maddy breathed a sigh of relief before reluctantly making her next move. Her passport and other such identification would be couriered late in the day. It was handy living in a large center with such obliging black market resources, but Bonnie M required some glasses and at the very least, red highlights in her hair. Or a wig. Maddy had a reverse-reverse ombre going on as it was, her blonde roots creeping in against the sable dye that had proven to be an excellent disguise, and she had visions of green hair if she colored it red. Bleh. Good thing her eyes could be considered brown.

  The short, black wig on the closet shelf could be pressed into service again. She’d wear it out today, and pick up some clear lenses, different makeup, and some spray-in red to tint the wig. Women changed their hair color all the time, hence the new leaning toward featuring eye color prominently on ID. That, and height.

  When she was finished dressing, the woman looking back at her simply wasn’t Maddy. The ebony ends of the wig were feathered and flyaway, and suited the red lipstick and dark mascara and liner. She’d exchanged her jeans and shirt for her only pair of tailored pants and a loose, silky top, adding a pair of chunky heels and some costume jewelery. With the spandex undergarments, she looked quite trim and hardly an armful.

  Shoving that errant thought back where it belonged, in the file labeled “stupid things she’d done in her life,” Maddy locked down her laptop, after ensuring there would be absolutely nothing available to view, should anyone break in while she was gone. She’d done it religiously, hiding anything important in cyberspace, saving nothing. But she’d been in one place for too long, and it was time she moved on.

  As she’d speculated, the meager every day contents of her closets barely filled the one suitcase, and she stuffed the remainder of her belongings, primarily fet wear, into a black garbage sack. She’d dispose of the bag while she was out, and was now ready to go as soon as she got her new documents. A quick forage in the kitchen dumped anything in the fridge that would spoil—her landlord could turf the rest with the money she’d leave—and she gathered up the garbage to drop into the sack with her cherished fet wear. The corset and tiny skirt she’d worn the night she’d scened with Connor and Rafe were visible, all lacy red fabric with hooks and ribbons. She blinked and tied the bag off.

  A sense of despair assailed her, so thick it hampered her breathing and affixed her feet to the floor. Mustering the strength to move past it, Maddy grabbed her purse and the sack, then headed for the door. She’d find a dumpster along the way, and leave off these absurd feelings about a certain two Doms while she was at it. It was best she didn’t have anything around that reminded her of them.

  ****

  Connor peered at the numbers as they cruised up Maddy’s street. “The fourteen hundred block. Three more blocks to go. It’s a good location. Close to everything but quiet.”

  “You didn’t get anything during all the time you spent looking?”

  “No. Lots of Margaret Madelines. A few queries back, one in particular that had a flavor of…” Connor trailed off. His spidey senses had tingled when somebody out there inquired about his search. It wasn’t anyone from any government agency he recognized, and it seemed curious he’d been jumped on so quickly for something with innocuous parameters. He’d shut it down, almost by reflex.

  “Not a tripwire.” Rafe knew the lingo, even if he spent as little time as possible behind a desk.

  “Maybe.” Connor’s gut clenched.

  Rafe checked the mirrors. “We better not be drawing an arrow right to her doorstep, if somebody else is looking.”

  Connor had thought of that, and wondered if whoever verified back with him had the capability to trace his IP address, no matter how he’d diverted it, using several different destinations. Someone really good might, although it would take them a while. “I don’t think the odds are great anyone could put anything together that quick, and there was nothing to concern us at our place. Nobody lurking around. But to be on the safe side, just cruise on by and we’ll find a place to park. Walk back.”

  They passed the correct address, and Maddy’s innocuous little grey import crouched in the short drive of a cookie-cutter house, probably built back when front yards weren’t more than the size of a postage stamp. He’d read someplace that people didn’t value yards as much as what they could put on it. All the drapes were drawn on the windows visible from the street, and the place had a blank, anonymous look.

  “There.” Rafe chose an alley with a lot backing onto some kind of semi-industrial building, maybe two blocks from Maddy’s. They left the truck between two similar vehicles and cut through another back lane, then sauntered back, keeping to the opposite side of the street. The trees were nearly bare of their leaves and he and Rafe crunched through the curling brown shapes.

  “Is that Maddy?” His friend pointed at a woman exiting a house a block away and climbing into a car after tossing something black into it. He thought it was Maddy’s house, and the color of the car seemed right.

  “Maybe…” If only he had been able to really see her move. Maddy had such distinctive movements. Connor picked up the pace, but without breaking into a dead run, there was no way to make it there without alerting Maddy,
if it was indeed her. They’d freak her, and draw attention.

  The small grey car backed out and turned away from them, picking up speed as it accelerated away.

  “Short black hair. Taller than our sub. Thinner.” Rafe ticked off the differences and Connor relaxed. Maybe a roommate? Or a friend borrowing her car?

  The neighborhood was very quiet, although he could hear the freeway several blocks away, a steady hum of traffic and other road noise. Several driveways had cars parked in them, and he speculated there were a number of older people living in the area. There were no vehicles sitting on the street with anyone occupying them, and nobody else but them on foot. Connor kept scanning the area though, aware Rafe was doing the same thing.

  “You take the door. There’s not room for both of us on the top step, so it’ll look natural for me to stand back. I’ll keep a look out.”

  Rafe nodded and they crossed the street in a few long strides and gained Maddy’s driveway. His friend paced up the steps and pressed the doorbell, casually glancing around. Connor took up a station just to the left of the bottom stair.

  “Security light. No wires to a system, so a good one, I think. Temporary.” Rafe spoke quietly. “No place I can see to access it outside. Cameras too. No way to tell if they’re static or not. Probably night vision. Fuck me, Connor. This is sophisticated, past what most people have. Maddy wasn’t being dramatic. She has reason to protect herself, because I don’t believe this is the result of extreme paranoia. She’s too…natural for that. It’s an executive rental too, I think. She can leave at the drop of a hat.”