by Meli Raine
A Harmless Little Plan
Meli Raine
Contents
Copyright © 2016 by Meli Raine
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
About the Author
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.
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Author’s note: I also write romantic comedy as Julia Kent and paranormal shifter romance as one-half of the writing duo Diana Seere. Check out those books as well. ;)
Chapter 1
Lindsay
There’s a gun in my ribs, right above my hipbone, and Mark Paulson smells like metal and death.
It’s a beautiful Southern California day, with not a cloud in the sky. The air smells like salt and sweet freedom. Freshly-mowed grass tickles my nose as a light breeze sweeps past, just a passing fancy, an airborne visitor.
This is Hollywood perfect. We could be on a movie set. But we’re not.
“Lindsay,” he says, his face hidden by my proximity to him, his arm holding me close, as if he’s protecting me as he escorts me to the stairs to board the helicopter.
But if he’s protecting me, why is he holding me at gunpoint?
What the hell?
That’s not Mark.
My world pinpoints. I can’t see his face, but that’s not his voice. I know that voice.
I’d know it anywhere.
John Gainsborough.
I look back at Anya, who just walked me out to the landing strip, leaving me at the halfway point. Like the good little girl that I am, I followed. They’ve trained me well, right? Besides, I’m surrounded by my security detail. What am I supposed to do – disobey?
Certainly not now.
My knees buckle. His grasp is hard, holding me up, not caring that my high heel snaps, my feet an afterthought. I try to look over to the building, the helicopter blades slicing through sound itself, taking over.
I’m about to faint.
No. I can’t faint.
Drew, I want to scream. Where are you?
“Get in,” John says in a pleasant voice, as if we’re taking a day jaunt to a private island. As if we’re off for a pleasant sun-filled trip with yachts and jet-skis, cavalier and free, troubled only by our own stresses and worries about not conforming to the expectations set by our peers and parents.
If only.
I can’t scream, because the sound of the helicopter blades takes over all the available space for noise. Nothing I do will get anyone’s attention.
How’s that for irony? The whole point of coming home was to blend into the scenery and be a boring prop for Daddy’s family image.
And now I can’t make myself stand out long enough to be saved.
Daddy said I was going back to the Island. Even he couldn’t lie to me and pretend his coffee plantation plan was real. Gentle yet firm, he’d sat me down last night to explain it all.
And I’d complied, because good girls do what they’re asked, right?
All the while, I’d rubbed my hands together, worrying that little Band-aid next to my thumb.
Nothing they do matters.
Nothing.
Not Daddy, not Stellan, Blaine and John, not my mother – no one.
Because Drew’s smarter than all of them.
And he’s coming for me.
No matter what.
That thought comforts me as John shoves me, hard, up into the helicopter. My shin bangs against the iron step, the metal’s edge scraping up the long, thin bone so hard I know it’ll leave a speckled bruise in the morning.
He’s strong, with tight muscles. That’s right. Baseball player. John Gainsborough, big league pitcher extraordinaire. His knuckleballs are un-hittable, and those same knuckles dig into my ribs. Top of his game, and in prime condition. A guy like that has some serious discipline, right?
I should scream. Pain sears me, his scent a swift reminder of the past, John’s musk drifting into my nose.
I’m transported back four years.
Only this time, I know what he’s about to do.
What they’re about to do.
I’m not sure which is worse.
Not knowing or knowing.
I go limp. I’m not making this easy for him. The longer I delay, the more time Drew has to rescue me.
“Cute,” he hisses in my ear, licking the shell. Horror bursts through me, my blood carrying messages to my limbs, my brain, all screaming danger! as I stop breathing. My breath halts as if it can’t continue.
Just can’t.
“If you think your participation in anything, including walking, is optional, Lindsay, you’re sorely mistaken. We’ve been waiting for you. We have quite the plan.” His voice is filled with glee.
“You’re so screwed,” I whisper, the defiance unable to keep itself inside. My words come out in a whoosh as my body remembers to breathe.
“Screwed? We’re all about to be screwed. And so much more.” John’s face splits into a grin.
When we were in high school, I had a mad crush on him. We all did. Tall and muscular, with pale gray eyes and the look of an athlete with a fine brain, he was the golden boy. The guy every girl wanted for her own.
I find him repulsive now. Being touched by him is like being caressed by an angry slug.
“Drew is coming for me.” The words are out before I know it. I have made a mistake. I know I have, yet I’m emboldened by saying it. Acknowledging the truth gives me power, even as the world turns to white and black dots before my eyes. He is. I know he is, my cells screaming for him, sending signals to the man who loved me enough to spend the last four years readying for this moment.
Which is unfolding without him.
“Drew?” John’s laughter is bitter and nasty, condescending and so self-assured that a zing of electric fear shoots from my teeth to my ass. “Drew is in police custody for stalking you.”
I sniff, then sniff again, my body’s desperate attempt to get oxygen in me. My tongue is flat in my mouth, pressed hard against my bottom teeth, and my throat goes dry as sandpaper.
“Shut up, John,” shouts another voice. I can barely hear him over the helicopter. They get me into a seat and quickly close the chopper’s door. No one bothers to buckle me in. I close my eyes.
“Playing possum? Cute.”
Why are they ruining the word cute?
As the helicopter lifts off, I crack one eyelid.
Stellan. Of course.
I say nothing. I can’t. If I have a speech center in my brain, it’s shut down so the rest of me can work on pure survival. I know from four years on the Island that the mind can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Thoughts loop through me, triggering a rush of fear so great I think it’ll tear my skin into ribbons in an attempt to flee my body.
Because my body is
the target.
Drew’s in police custody? For stalking me? What does that all mean? He didn’t stalk me.
My mind scrambles to put the pieces together.
Set up. It’s a set up. Drew’s being turned into the scapegoat.
Oh, God.
If they’re telling the truth, how will he get out? How will he rescue me?
I can’t look at them. Screaming won’t make a difference. Out of the corner of my eye I see Silas outside, right by the double doors to the house. My heart squeezes in my chest. As we rise higher and higher, he gets smaller and smaller.
He failed.
He doesn’t know it yet, but he failed.
Drew
I wake up on a thin blanket on the floor in a holding cell, my cheek ice cold, the throbbing in my head a bass drum. The ground beneath my body is clean. It smells like mildew and bleach. The distinct ammonia odor of piss is mixed in there.
I know this scent.
It’s the smell of jail. I’ve spent plenty of time immersed in it in the past, but always as the jailer.
Not the jailee.
Gingerly, I start to sit up, inch by inch. My body is unclothed except for my boxer briefs. Shoes are gone, pants are gone, shirt is gone.
Dignity – long gone.
I hear the click and clack of a heavy-duty lock opening. The door to the cell moves and there stands Mark Paulson.
He’s white as a sheet and his jaw is tight.
It takes me a few seconds to realize he’s not mad at me.
He’s in crisis mode.
“Just got off the phone with Harry Bosworth. Re-establishing a connection was hell. According to the senator, his assistant Anya was told Mark Paulson would bring the helicopter to take Lindsay back to the Island. She escorted Lindsay halfway to the helicopter, then I -- ” He chokes on the word, running a furious hand through his blond hair, face exploding with rage “ -- someone impersonating me escorted her to the copter, where they took off.”
“When?”
“An hour ago.”
“Sweet Jesus, I’ve been out cold for an hour?”
“Look, Drew, this is a fucking mess.”
“This is fucking unreal. We need to get Lindsay now!”
“You’re being charged with so many federal and state crimes you’ll be lucky to get out of jail when you’re a mummy.”
“Not funny.”
“Not joking.”
“What the hell are you doing to rescue her, Mark?”
“Everything we can. We’re trying to track her, but the chopper turns out to be...” He gives me a bleak look.
Yeah. I can guess. It’s not one of Harry’s. Not government-issued, but made to look like one.
We’ve been had. Badly. Outsmarted and outmaneuvered.
“She’s chipped,” I blurt out, talking more to myself than him. Reassuring myself.
Because that’s all I have right now. Words.
I don’t give a shit about Mark’s feelings right now. Losing a client is one of the worst experiences for a person whose sworn duty is to protect people. Losing my girlfriend turns this into a clusterfuck of emotional madness.
The look on his face when I say that gives me hope.
“You chipped her?” He grimaces as he confirms what I said. “That won’t do us any good. A microchip only gives us information about her when we scan. It’ll be good for identifying her body if -- ”
Might as well kick me in the gut.
“It’s a GPS-enabled microchip.”
“Those don’t exist.” Mark shoots me an incredulous look. His eyes narrow as if he’s rethinking my mental state.
I’d do the same if the roles were reversed.
I give him a sour look. Of course they do. He should know better.
“Whoa,” he hisses. “I thought we were years from that.”
I don’t bother to answer. My tongue licks the corner of my mouth, finding a raw split and blood.
“How do you track her?” he asks, bending down to talk at eye level.
My skin starts to crawl with awakening. The aches and bruises will fade over time, but time is of the essence now for Lindsay. She must be terrified.
And I know she’s waiting for me. I can’t fail her.
I won’t.
“Get me out of here.”
“I can’t! They’re --”
“Get. Me. Out. Of. Here.”
“For a guy who’s being charged with enough offenses to stay in prison for the rest of your life, Drew, you’re awfully demanding.”
“And for a guy who just kidnapped my girlfriend, you’re being an asshole, Mark.”
His eyes widen, jaw dropping, face gobsmacked.
And then he bristles.
“You know damn well that wasn’t me.”
“And you know damn well I didn’t do any of the things I’m charged with,” I reply.
“I know that!”
“Then DO SOMETHING about it! You’re Mark Paulson, for fuck’s sake!” I explode.
“Like what?”
“You’re the famous Senator James Thornberg’s grandson. According to Harry, you walk on water. Use that influence. Make calls. Get me the hell out of here so I can go get Lindsay.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Make it that simple.”
“There are limits to what I can do, Drew.”
“Push them all. Push every fucking limit until it breaks, then get me out of here.”
“If – if! -- there’s even the smallest chance I can get you out, it’ll take days. Weeks. Give me the microchip information so I can start pinpointing Lindsay’s location now.”
I stare him down.
Here’s the thing: I trust Mark Paulson with my life. With Lindsay’s life.
But my brain feels like someone filled it with wet helium balloons. I just got the shit kicked out of me in custody after a raid on my apartment for crimes I didn’t commit. “Mark Paulson” kidnapped my girlfriend from her father’s high-security compound.
I don’t know who to trust.
A flash of insight into Lindsay’s frame of mind the day we left the Island hits me between the eyes.
Mark lets out a nasty sigh of disbelief. He knows what I’m thinking. “That wasn’t me.”
I just look at him. He’s blurry on one side. I reach up to find a very raw right eye socket on my face. Pain blooms as I touch it.
“They really roughed you up,” he says with sympathy, handing me a small package of baby wipes from his breast pocket. I open them and gently blot the facial injuries.
“Nothing compared to what Stellan, Blaine and John are about to do to Lindsay. They won’t just kill her, Mark. You know that, right? You know.” My voice rises. “You know they’ll torment her like a cat with a captive mouse. They’ll wring every bit of sick pleasure from torturing her, and then they’ll do the worst thing imaginable.”
“Kill her,” he whispers.
“No. They’ll force her to live.” The idea of Lindsay in pain, wondering where I am, left to suffer by those jackals shoves my blood faster through me, making all my injuries throb. I’m a live wire with nowhere for the electricity to go.
He gives me a pained look, then his face goes blank, his long sigh the sound of determination. “I have a contact.”
“Good of you to think about that now.” I can hear the snarl in my voice. Don’t care.
Lindsay. Oh, God, Lindsay. What are they doing to you right now?
“It’s my dad.”
“Your dad’s dead.”
“No – this is my biological father.”
I squint. It hurts. “Your biological what?”
He shakes his head. “Remember Galt?”
Galt. Galt. Oh, yeah. Mark’s biodad. Deep undercover CIA. Whatever they did to me involved too many blows to the head. My thoughts feel like scrambled eggs.
So do my balls.
Mark continues. “Bottom line: I’ll have to go way, way outside the law to get you out.
And if it doesn’t work, we both end up in prison.”
“If I can’t get to Lindsay, I might as well die.” I pull myself up and stretch, inventorying. My right shoulder’s been wrenched hard, a tendon screaming as I rotate the joint. I taste blood no matter how many times I swallow, and I’m stripped down to underwear. I don’t care.
Get me out.
The words turn into a non-stop thought that won’t let go. Getmeoutgetmeoutgetmeout.
“I wish I could say no one’s dying on my watch, Drew, but I can’t.”
When you spend days in a war-torn region in the desert, hours of monotony and boredom sprinkled in between minutes of terror and chaos, you learn to look at people differently. No shell. No walls. The look Mark and I exchange says thousands of words in seconds.
He’s pretty sure he can’t save Lindsay.
And I’m damn fucking sure I will.
“And I wish I could say I trust you with the GPS tracking system for Lindsay, but here’s the deal, Mark – get me the fuck out of here and I’ll give you that information.”
“She could die in the meantime.”
“She could die if the wrong people get that information. It’s the only way I can save her.”
“You really don’t trust me.”
“If the roles were reversed, would you trust me?” I wince as my eyes widen with emphasis, the skin tender and paper-thin. Compartmentalizing the pain is key now. Pretending it’s not there is how I survive.
It’s how I find Lindsay.
“Fuck.”
He spins on his heel and slams the door shut.
Funny. I would have answered the same way, too.
Chapter 2
Lindsay
“Okay,” I concede. “You win. Why me? Why are you doing this?” It takes so much control not to cry, or whine. The slight shake in my voice is pretty damn understandable, given the circumstances. Every muscle I have, including my lungs, keeps tightening, as if making them smaller will make me less likely to be hurt.
Not possible.
John shrugs. Shrugs.
“It’s nothing personal.”
I cough, choking on a universe-sized dose of incredulity. Nothing personal? This is nothing personal? A thousand responses flood my mind but I’m not rational, so none of them come out.
