by Cj Howard
“I’m sorry,” Bill said from the driver’s seat as he pulled away from the hotel. “I know it doesn’t really mean anything, but I am.” He was older than Alan, his hair fully gray, and he wasn’t quite as sharp-looking in his driver’s uniform as the usual driver who worked for Benjamin.
“You’re right,” Claire said. “It means fucking nothing that you’re sorry.” She met his gaze in the rearview mirror steadily. “You participated in something that would get more than one person killed—and one of those people might just be your boss. If there is a god, and justice of any kind in the universe, you’ll die too and rot in hell forever after.”
Claire lapsed into silence then, a little appalled at the intensity of her dislike. She fastened her seatbelt, and Bill apparently decided to leave her remarks unanswered, instead directing his attention on the road in front of him.
Claire mentally prepared herself as he made the somewhat brief drive to New York New York. She would hand over her phone and let them frisk her, and hopefully they wouldn’t notice her surveillance materials. Of course, nothing recorded would be admissible in a court of law, but it would give the investigators a path to go down, if nothing else—to go after the whole organization. She could only hope that she would be meeting with, if not the top man in the group, then at least someone more important than those she’d met with so far. They were getting desperate, Joe had said.
Claire said nothing at all to Bill as she got out of the car at New York New York. Even as stressed and anxious as she felt, she wasn’t immune to the thrill at the sight of the hotel and casino’s facade, showing a miniaturized, compressed view of the New York City skyline. Any other time, it would have been utterly breathtaking, and she would have loved to have visited with Benjamin—but at the moment, Claire only wanted to get to the meeting point, and get the process of retrieving the man she had only just agreed to begin seriously seeing underway.
She heard joyous screams from the rollercoaster and headed into the main entrance. Claire turned sharply right as soon as she entered the lobby and stepped into the casino with a minimum of fuss. The text message had said that she would be intercepted there.
“Thank you for arriving in a timely manner,” someone said from behind her as Claire waited near one of the tables. She resisted the urge to twist around fast, and instead slowly turned to face the man she’d heard speaking. She didn’t recognize him, so Claire knew at least that it wasn’t Trevor.
“Yeah well, I’m not sure your gratitude is worth all that much to me,” she said. She met the man’s gaze and felt rather than saw the other people working with him, approaching them without being obvious about it.
She wasn’t sure if they had people working with the casino, but clearly they had the overall goal of, if possible, getting her out of the building without a fuss. Claire had already decided to go along with what they wanted as much as possible, for as long as possible, but she would be looking for ways to get herself and Benjamin out of their grasp as quickly as possible.
“You’ll come with me?”
Claire held the man’s gaze for a moment and then nodded. “I don’t really have much choice, do I?” She gave him a curt smile and let him lead her out of the casino, towards a discreet side exit, where she was sure there would be a waiting SUV. Claire was surprised to see a regular car—a Prius—waiting instead, but decided not to make a fuss about it.
“You’ll need to give me your phone,” the man said. “And I will also want to check you for devices or weapons.” Claire submitted to the demands and handed over her phone. She wasn’t sure what the man intended to do with it, but she was almost completely certain that she wouldn’t be getting it back. The quick search didn’t arouse any suspicions, and in a matter of moments, Claire was in the back seat of the car, blindfolded, being driven to some location she had no way of knowing.
She thought about Joe, back at the Halston, and about the senator, and all the people who would be waiting for the right moment to spring into action. But what would the right moment be? Claire knew that there was no way to really know. She would try and escape as soon as she could—but she wasn’t going to leave Benjamin hanging. She would possibly have to stall, but Claire thought that she could, with luck, do a fairly good job of that.
“I hope you understand, Ms. Stevenson, that this isn’t really personal,” the man who’d approached her on the casino floor said.
“It feels personal enough,” she told him, unwilling to abandon her sense of self-possession, even in the danger she could sense flowing around her.
“We just need to get business done,” the man said. “If you had played ball, none of this would have been necessary. You could have either told us where your father was or volunteered to take care of his work.”
“You wanted me to engage in illegal activity,” Claire pointed out. “I love my father, since he is my father, but not enough to land myself either in jail or in a grave when you decided that it wasn’t a good thing for me to know anything I might say to law enforcement.”
“Well, unfortunately it seems likely that you’re going to be in that position anyway,” the man said. “If you can’t bring your father to us, and you aren’t going to provide us with the payment we need, we don’t have many other options.”
“Sure, there’s never a choice to just give it up as a bullshit sunk cost,” Claire said.
“Not for the people I work for, no,” the man said. “But you’ll see.”
*
Benjamin knew that he should have expected to see Claire in the custody of the same people who had taken him, but that didn’t make it any easier when he actually did see her, when he was brought into the conference room where she already sat, opposite the men who had greeted him upon his own arrival.
She looked much more confident than he felt, and Benjamin tried to take heart from that fact. “I won’t cooperate until you prove to me that he hasn’t been harmed in any way,” Claire said. Benjamin’s eyes widened; she was going to cooperate?
He had met with the same people about an hour before and spent the time since then waiting for something else to happen. The man seemingly in charge of everything was a lean, ropy-looking guy who Benjamin thought was maybe a few years older than himself—not significantly enough older for it to be immediately obvious, but enough that it was less shocking that he seemed to be in charge of such a developed empire.
Benjamin had refused to honor the man’s request to “take some of the burden off of poor Claire” by giving up the secrets that they’d wanted her to find out about his business, and from there, he’d been largely bored—taken out of the room, sequestered in a glorified office with access to a spartan bathroom, a fridge with water, and a few snacks. If nothing else, his prison cell had been comparatively nice.
That Claire intended on cooperating with them now was almost enough to make Benjamin angry, but the way she glanced at him, briefly, told him there was more going on—that there was something strategic in what she was saying.
“What kind of proof do you need?” The man in charge—Benjamin hadn’t gotten a name—seemed to have a slight accent, but it was difficult to place. By his dark blond hair and blue eyes, Benjamin might have thought one of the Nordic countries, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Give me ten minutes alone with him to check him over,” Claire said. Benjamin was almost certain that the man in charge wouldn’t agree to that; it wouldn’t make any sense to give them a chance to coordinate anything.
“Five minutes supervised,” the man countered. That surprised Benjamin. They must really want to wrap this up—or they’re really confident. Maybe both.
“Five minutes, alone,” Claire said. “I don’t want anyone breathing down my neck while I’m making sure that Benjamin is okay.” The man considered that for a moment and then nodded.
“Take them both to where we’ve been keeping Mr. Minken,” he said, gesturing to one of the lackeys in the room. Claire moved closer to him, and they both followed
the man out of the conference room, down the hall, and to the office space that had been used to hold Benjamin until Claire’s arrival. There was someone watching the door, as Benjamin would have expected; the man let them in, and Benjamin tried to figure out—quickly—what he might be able to accomplish in the short time they had alone.
“They haven’t done anything terrible to me,” Benjamin remarked, knowing that they were likely monitoring the room; he couldn’t imagine they didn’t have cameras or some other kind of surveillance equipment already in place.
“Yet,” Claire said. She looked at him for just a moment and then, seemingly making up her mind about something, threw her arms around him, kissing him hungrily on the lips. “I’ve been so worried,” she murmured against his lips.
“Are you really going to cooperate?” Benjamin asked, keeping his voice as low as possible and his lips only an inch away from Claire’s. With any luck, the people watching wouldn’t be able to see or adequately hear them like that.
“We need time,” Claire replied, not quite answering the question—at least, Benjamin hoped, if someone was watching, they wouldn’t be able to get a definitive answer from that. They wouldn’t be able to completely conclude how to handle the situation.
“What do they want you to do?” Benjamin let his hands stray a bit; in spite of—maybe because of—the danger they were in, he found himself starting to feel turned on. If we somehow get out of this alive and intact.
“They want me to make a video that they can post in different places to draw Dad out of hiding,” Claire said. “If he doesn’t come out of hiding…” she shrugged.
“Yeah,” Benjamin said. He kissed her once again, more hungrily this time, and let his hands roam over Claire’s body. For the moment all he could think of was the fact that he had no idea whether he would have another opportunity to kiss her, to touch her, to see her like this—ever again. It was petty of him, he knew; they both should be doing something to make sure they could get out and to safety. But Benjamin didn’t want to let things move forward without at least feeling Claire’s body against his one more time.
“It’ll be okay,” Claire murmured as they pulled ever so slightly apart from each other.
“You sound confident,” Benjamin told her, pressing her body against his own for a moment longer. They had to be getting close to the end of five minutes—he wanted to enjoy every second that he could.
“I am as confident as I can be,” Claire confirmed and pulled back just enough to look him in the eyes before kissing him again. Benjamin wondered what she had up her sleeve, but there was no way to ask; a minute or so later, there was a knock and then the door opened.
As they walked back to the conference room, Benjamin thought about how they might—possibly—escape together. But of course, that would require them not to be surrounded, not to be under surveillance by the people holding them captive. Nonetheless, Benjamin looked around, trying to find gaps in the system to exploit. He didn’t know where they had taken him or Claire, which was a major obstacle—though of course, there would be cars they could take, if they did manage to escape.
“So, are you now willing to cooperate with our demands?” Benjamin looked closely at Claire and watched as she nodded.
“I’ll make the video,” she said. “The same conditions apply: if I make it, you have to release Benjamin.”
“That was always the plan,” the man in charge said. “A Vegas billionaire disappearing would just end up bringing feds to our door.” Benjamin wasn’t sure he quite believed the man, but it was still a relief. If they let me go and hold onto her, maybe I can get Joe to work out where this is, how to take them out before time runs out.
“Then I’ll make the video,” Claire said. “I don’t know how you think it’ll get to him specifically, but I guess you’re short on options.”
“This is the least invasive option we have at our disposal,” the man said with a shrug. “If this doesn’t work, we’re going to work hard to—shall we say—confirm the truth of your story that you don’t know where he is.” Benjamin had insisted on his own part that he didn’t know where Shawn Stevenson is; they had seemed to believe him, but he was fairly certain that if he wasn’t released, he would be subjected to the same “confirmation.”
“Then let’s get started, I guess,” Claire said, her voice level.
One of the security men pulled Benjamin aside, and Claire stepped up to the table, toward where a man with a camera stood. Benjamin watched her shoulders rise and fall slightly as she took a deep breath. Someone handed her a script, and Claire shook her head. “If I’m going to do this, I’m going to use my own words.”
Benjamin felt powerless—a sensation that he hadn’t experienced in years—as Claire positioned herself in front of the cameraman and set herself up to begin. When the man gave the signal for her to start talking, Claire took a quick breath and began to speak.
“This video is intended for my father, Shawn Stevenson,” she said slowly. “Shawn, I’m sure you’ve probably already forgotten about this, but apparently in addition to running up an incredible amount of debt at the Halston Grand, you indebted yourself to a group of people who make Al Capone look like a responsible businessman and community paragon.” Benjamin resisted the urge to snicker at that remark. He glanced at the man running the show to see if he took offense at what Claire had said; the man’s face was impassive.
Claire went on for a while, describing the danger she was in, and Benjamin felt his anger rising at the reminder of just how real it all was. He wanted to do something—but he knew there was nothing that he realistically could do.
“So to sum things up, father,” Claire said, and Benjamin heard the bitterness in her voice, “Because of you and your self-centered, irresponsible stupidity, I’m going to be tortured and murdered unless you show the fuck up in Vegas.” Claire stopped there, and Benjamin wanted more than anything to cross the room, to hold her and tell her that everything would be okay.
“That was good,” the man in charge said after a pause. “But I am going to need you to not specify any crimes that may or may not be committed.”
“I’m not redoing the whole thing,” Claire said. “You can edit together the parts you like.”
“You know, for a woman who knows she is going to potentially be tortured and killed, you certainly feel entitled to make demands,” the leader said. Benjamin had been wracking his mind, ever since he’d been brought before the man, to identify him. He had thought he knew most of the power players in Vegas but clearly not, and that bothered him. That was a problem for when they got out of the situation, if they were able to.
“You need me still,” Claire said. “You can probably torture me, and I’m sure you’re interested in getting rid of me once the job is done, but for now you have to deal with me.”
“Point taken,” the man agreed. “Let’s just redo the parts where you allude directly to crime.”
But before they could get started again, Benjamin heard commotion outside the room. The rest of the people in the room heard it too—they all became alert, the security detail moving into defensive positions. A minute or two later, the room erupted into chaos as gear-clad FBI and ATF agents breached the door and came into the room.
Benjamin lunged towards Claire and took her down to the ground with him, out of the range of the active shooting going on, but the gunshots didn’t last long. “Claire Stevenson? Benjamin Minken?”
Benjamin rose slowly, pulling Claire up with him. He looked her over quickly to make sure she wasn’t hurt, before turning his attention to the agents who had taken over control of the room. “That would be us,” he said, giving them a tense smile.
“Good to see you’re both unharmed,” the agent that seemed to be in charge said, coming toward them. Benjamin glanced around to see that the man who had been running the show was being led off by two other agents; some of the security detail slumped in their positions, dead or disabled.
“That was pretty
close,” Benjamin commented.
“We had to coordinate with some other agents across two other locations,” the man explained. “But as far as we can tell, all of the raids went according to plan, and we’ve gotten the majority of the organization.” Benjamin nodded, and as people came in to take the bodies out and finish loading the live criminals into the waiting vans, he sat down with Claire and gave his statement.
By the time they returned to the hotel, Benjamin felt a mixture of exhaustion and—paradoxically—desire. He and Claire had nearly been killed more than once in the past several hours. As he followed his girlfriend into the suite they shared, Benjamin let the door close and lock behind him, and then grabbed at her wrist, pulling her to him for a deep, hungry kiss. “This will probably come across as completely inappropriate, but…” Benjamin didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence; Claire kissed him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders tightly and pressing her body to his.
“Personally I just want to forget everything that happened in the past five hours or so,” she said finally, and Benjamin chuckled, letting his hands slide over the curves of her body. He could already feel his cock starting to harden as both of them began groping and teasing each other, touching through the fabric of their respective clothes.
Bit by bit, Benjamin stripped Claire out of her blouse and jeans, while she managed to get his jacket off of him and his tie loosened, then began on the buttons of his dress shirt. Neither of them had the patience to let the tension build, and Benjamin had Claire fully naked in a matter of moments.
They managed to make it as far as the living room couch, and Benjamin pinned Claire down, kissing along the column of her throat even as he slipped one hand between her legs to touch her already-wet labia. His cock throbbed, almost aching as they both shifted into position, moving around each other and settling so that they were only a brief movement from penetration.
