Their Virgin Hostage, Masters of Ménage, Book 5

by Black, Shayla

  “Yes,” she murmured. “It was a gift from him. I’m kind of technologically idiotic. I can use my phone to make calls and text, but other than that, I’m lost. Greg bought my phone, too. Do you think my emoticons are evil?”

  Law stifled a laugh. When he’d been California Mike, Kinley had texted him many times. She ended every single message with a flurry of smiley faces and thumbs-up symbols. He’d kept every single one.

  “Since that’s a readily available app, your emoticons should be safe. So Jansen loaded the photos?” Riley asked.

  “He loaded everything. I gave him a list of the books I wanted. After I’d read those, I figured out how to buy more, but the last time I tried, the device gave me a message that I didn’t have room, so I had someone in my office teach me how to archive my books. Do I have a virus?”

  Law sent his brother a long look. He had a feeling Riley was on the right track. He wasn’t the technophile Riley was, but even he knew that it was damn hard to fill up a tablet with nothing but forty books, a couple of games, and some photos. There should be tons of space left. She didn’t have any video on the system to eat up her memory. No audio, either.

  “You don’t have a virus, but you do have a rat fink bastard,” Law growled. He hated Jansen more and more every single minute.

  Riley nodded at him, then turned to Kinley, reaching out for her. She took his hand, and he tugged lightly, pulling her into his lap.

  Yeah, something had definitely happened. Kinley seemed awfully comfortable naked in Riley’s lap, and he wrapped his arms around their bare bundle of femininity with an air of familiarity. Law might not have to worry about losing his brother after all.

  He glanced over at Dominic, who looked both as surprised and pleased as he was.

  “Pet, you amaze me.”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t do anything.”

  Dominic nodded at her perched on Riley’s lap. “Are you sure?”

  Kinley blushed, and Riley utterly ignored him, though he tightened his arm around Kinley’s waist, pulling her closer.

  Then Riley was all business again, pointing at the screen with his free hand. “It’s all about these photographs. Everything we need is in here. It’s called steganography.”

  Kinley frowned. “Like stegosaurus?”

  Dominic shook his head, his affection for Kinley visible. “No, pet, it’s not a dinosaur. Quite the contrary, this is on the cutting edge of criminal practices.”

  “I’m going to kill that fucker,” Law snarled.

  Jansen was willing to let Kinley carry his fucking criminal banking information? He was going to die and slowly. Technology might be Riley’s forte. Dominic might be the money behind their operation. But Law was the muscle, and that meant he got to kill Greg Jansen. He knew just how he’d do it, too. He was going to eviscerate the son of a bitch, but not so much that he died immediately. Oh, no. He wanted to make sure Jansen suffered for a nice long time.

  “Killing aside,” Riley interrupted Law’s vivid fantasy, “steganography is the act of hiding secret messages in seemingly innocent data. You see this picture as a whole, but the computer sees it as a series of data bytes. What criminals do is imbed their information in the very fabric of whatever they’re corrupting. In this instance, Jansen is hiding his financials in these photos.”

  Kinley frowned at Riley. “All I see is a picture.”

  Riley clicked a few keys and an entirely different screen came up. “That’s because you have to know how to extract the code. And there it is.”

  Kinley gasped. “That looks like an accounting report. Like one of my accounting reports.”

  Dominic cursed. “Well, now we know where he put the second set of books to Kinley’s charity. What does it say, Riley?”

  “That Hope House is doing just fine. He’s had a mole in your organization for about a year as far as I can tell. He’s the one who made you think your charity was going under. You have an employee named Fred Buck who sent through these records.” Riley scrolled through the files with a scowl.

  “Yes. He was in charge of my donations. Are you saying I have more than I thought I had?” Kinley put a hand to her mouth. “I feel so stupid.”

  Law reached for her. “You aren’t stupid. Baby, they played you. You couldn’t have known. He sent this guy in before you had even met him. He selected you as his target, and you didn’t have a chance. I bet Jansen swept you off your feet, then arranged one distraction after another from the charity.”

  He knew how Jansen worked. He’d seen a ploy like that before. The last thing he wanted was for Kinley to beat herself up with guilt.

  “He absolutely swept me off my feet. Two days after I met him, he took me on a date to Paris. We spent a week there. In separate rooms, but I’d never been. I’d never taken the time before. It was so different.”

  “He knew how to dazzle you,” Dominic said. “I understand that Alaska isn’t Paris, but we brought you with us for the right reasons. I want you to think about that when the tabloids start gossiping about us.”

  Law followed Dominic’s line of thinking, and he was in complete agreement. “Yes. We didn’t play you properly at all.”

  Kinley smiled slightly. “You didn’t have to. You took off your shirts.”

  Dominic and Riley laughed.

  Law couldn’t. He couldn’t stand the thought of losing her now. “I’m just saying that we’ve been real with you because what we wanted from you in return is real.”

  Panic had flooded his system when Riley had shown him the crap Jansen had put on her computer. Everyone else had seemed happy to find some concrete evidence, but Law had known it was the beginning of the end. He’d thought he would have more time with her. He’d thought he could take a week or two to bind her to them, so that when Jansen was behind bars, she’d stay.

  Now… Well, fuck. He didn’t see how it was going to work.

  She leaned over the table, her breasts swaying enticingly. She reached out and cupped his face. “Is it real? I don’t know what’s real anymore. I thought those were just harmless pictures. Now I have to question every one of them. Everything. Annabelle tried to tell me, didn’t she? I was stubborn, and I didn’t want to listen.”

  Law knew that story. “She tried to explain her suspicions about him to you, and you nearly walked out on her. She was terrified of losing you.”

  Tears pooled in Kinley’s eyes. “I was afraid of everything and everyone falling apart around me. She sent you to save me, didn’t she? I know it sounds dumb, but if I can keep Annabelle, I think I might be all right.”

  “Baby, she loves you. And we approached her. She wanted us to talk to you, but we couldn’t tell how you would react. If we had, and you’d confronted Greg… We were worried for you. And given that you’d been a bit upset when Annabelle tried to talk to you—”

  “I was a raging bitch,” Kinley acknowledged. “But I felt wretched for marrying a man I didn’t love and didn’t want to admit it because I thought I didn’t have a choice. I thought my family would collapse if I didn’t.”

  “Given all that, we decided to take a ‘wait-and-see’ approach,” Law explained.

  “Until Jansen took out that policy on you two weeks before your wedding,” Dominic continued. “Then all bets were off. We couldn’t allow you to marry him and we didn’t exactly have the proof we needed.”

  “It was a desperation play.” Riley admitted, cuddling her against him and stroking her hair. “Although I didn’t think Law would let your marriage to Jansen happen. When we decided to kidnap you, he practically did his happy dance.”

  “I don’t dance,” Law retorted. “But I was happy. Kinley, I know the way we saved you was unorthodox, but we really were thinking of you. I truly believe he planned to kill you on your honeymoon. And I think that tablet proves it.”

  “He was using me to take his information to his contact?” Kinley frowned.

  “That’s my guess.” Riley tapped on a few more keys. “And it looks like he’s usi
ng your charity to smuggle something into the country. I can’t tell what. It’s in a numeric code. Stock 2445. That’s all the description I’ve got. Damn, that is some expensive shit if I’m reading this right.”

  “But what is it?” Kinley looked totally puzzled.

  “It could be anything,” Dominic explained. “It could be cash, bonds, drugs…anything, but he’s moving it through your charity. I suspect it has something to do with the new manufacturers he found for you. They’re shipping him something in those boxes. Not a lot of people look through charity donation shipments.”

  “That bastard.” Kinley looked ready to spit nails.

  Riley soothed her with a caress. “We’re getting closer to nailing him. This strongly suggests that he’s using your U.S. based nonprofit to move funds offshore so the mafia can use it for their purposes. I think this is what we’ve been looking for so we can get him on RICO charges. A forensic accountant should be able to take him down.”

  Dominic sighed. “I would love to know what kind of product he’s moving. Please let it be drugs.”

  Because that might up the time the fucker spent in the can. Except Law wanted to make sure Jansen never saw the inside of a jail cell. A morgue was a better place for scum like him. “Let’s see what the feds say. We can call them in the morning.”

  Dominic nodded and turned to Kinley. “We have some inside contacts at the FBI and the Department of Justice. We’ll get them out here. I’m hesitant to send them the information. I would rather talk to them in person. Explain.”

  Kinley reached for Dominic’s hand. Already she was looking to them for comfort, seeking out her men. He just hoped her burgeoning trust was enough to make her stay after the dust settled.

  “Shouldn’t we go to Washington?”

  “Where I can’t control the meeting? Where Jansen has hired scumbags who might try to pick us off and take you back?” Law asked. “Not on your life—and that’s what’s at stake. No. The feds will come here and look over the evidence. We’ll call our lawyers in the morning and set up a meeting. Until then, we stay put.”

  And after everything had gone down? Law didn’t know. There would be a ton of questions, of course. From reporters, from the feds, from freaking society. It would come at them from all sides. They would be tested.

  He wasn’t sure they were strong enough yet.

  Could he handle it if Kinley walked away?

  He needed more time to bind her to all three of them, to make her understand exactly what they could offer her.

  But time had just run out.

  * * * *

  “Did you make the call?”

  Dominic turned to Riley, who had just asked the question. Sunlight filtered into the office, showing off the deep, rich hues of the mahogany and leather furnishings. “Yes. I talked to Kellan. He and Eric will call their contact at the DOJ. Someone from the FBI will call us soon about arranging a meeting. It could take a day or two before anyone can get here. Kinley signed an affidavit for the feds stating that she was never a hostage. Kellan is making sure the FBI sees that before he proceeds. Hopefully, that will keep them from arresting us.”

  Kinley was sitting on top of the large desk and had been for some time. She stared over her shoulder at one of the computers Riley was working on, her hand on his shoulder as he typed. It seemed she always had a hand on one of them now. She was an affectionate woman, showing her caring with frequent hugs and handholding. She’d curled against them most of the night. Dominic smiled fondly at the memory of her in his lap this morning, eating breakfast from his plate.

  “Do you think that will satisfy the feds?” Kinley asked, straightening to look at him.

  Law left his place on the couch and walked to her. “I don’t know, baby. I suppose they could assume that we forced you to sign it, but I’m counting on Kellan to smooth it all over. There’s no way to know until we actually meet with the FBI.”

  Dominic hoped it was enough. He’d been playing through the scenarios and he didn’t like a few of them.

  “But all that information was on my tablet. How can I prove Greg loaded it on there?” Kinley asked, neatly summing up at least one of the ways they could get fucked.

  “I’m working on that.” Riley looked up briefly from his place behind the massive desk that dominated the room. He’d spent most of the morning with computers around him, all cluttering the top of the desk. “Thankfully, the last two of these photos were sent in e-mail. I’m almost sure I can trace them straight back to Jansen’s computer.”

  “I got busy with the wedding. He insisted that he needed to update the tablet’s software before we went on our honeymoon, but I couldn’t find the time to figure out how since I’d never done it. But I didn’t give him the tablet to update until the last minute. Maybe that’s why he had to e-mail them,” Kinley explained.

  “Whatever the reason, he got caught in his own trap.” Riley never looked up. “He tried to keep you so busy with the wedding that you couldn’t see straight.”

  “The wedding planner had me on this crazy schedule.” She closed her eyes. “Damn it. I’m an idiot. The wedding planner was in on it, too. Greg insisted we use her. Becks said she was the best. Becks was in charge of the charity for most of the last couple of months because I was dealing with wedding details. I just walked right into their trap, didn’t I?”

  Law wrapped an arm around her. “Don’t blame yourself. Jansen is very good at what he does. And he had a lot of help.”

  She frowned. “And I turned into a bridezilla who wouldn’t even listen when my best friend tried to save me.”

  “She’s going to get spanked for that,” Dominic said.

  “Annabelle? Why on earth would you spank her?” Kinley asked. “She meant well. Besides, I don’t think Eric, Kellan, and Tate would like that.”

  “It’s not Annabelle I’m planning to spank. But to your point, we went to visit her on the job because we thought her help would be valuable. Having lawyers on our side was a perk, too. You wouldn’t believe what those three put us through before we were even allowed to sit down and talk to Annabelle.” Dominic shook his head.

  “Why didn’t you just go straight to her?”

  Law scowled. “Because we honor the rights of other Doms, and it was obvious they’re planning to stake their claim on her.”

  “Doms?”

  Riley finally looked up. “Dominants. BDSM. You know.”

  “BS what?” Kinley asked, wearing a look of pure confusion on her face.

  Dominic raised a dark brow, almost amused. “I thought you read romances. Doesn’t every female walking the face of the earth have a deeply romantic vision of BDSM by now? It’s a catch-all term for bondage, dominance, submission, and masochism. It’s what we started teaching you yesterday.”

  “I’m the submissive. And you three are the Dominants. And Annabelle is a submissive, too? Does she know that? Because I think she would have told me. I know she would have told me if she had three Doms. She tells me everything. She called the other day to let me know she was out of sugar. I was three states over so there was nothing I could do, but she told me anyway. She would have mentioned if there was some backside slapping going on.”

  “Oh, something’s going on there,” Law swore. “They haven’t claimed her yet, but they’re definitely watching over her. In our world, that means they have certain rights. One of those is the right to protect her. After we took you, they completely forbade her from doing or saying anything that might give the appearance that she was an accomplice. Annabelle was allowed to talk to us shortly after we arrived here only because she was beyond worried about you and about to lose her mind. Other than that, the lawyers made sure to leave everything to us. Her men don’t know you well enough to trust that you wouldn’t want a little revenge and throw Annabelle to the wolves if everything went bad.”

  “She’s my best friend. God, she’s just about the only person in my life I can trust now.” She sniffled. “After everything that’s happene
d, she’s my only family. I would never hurt her. And if those three lawyers think they can take all kinds of rights and stuff without giving her anything back, then they should know that I have a shotgun. I don’t know how to use it, but I can take a class. In fact, I just might shoot my sister first. I’ll need a little practice.”

  “Whoa, there, warrior princess,” Law said with a laugh. “If we do this right, your sister is going to jail. You’re going to have to be satisfied with seeing her in an orange jumpsuit. Is your sister bisexual by any chance?”

  Kinley threw up her hands. “I have no idea. I wouldn’t put anything past her at this point.”

  “Well, she should think about shifting her orientation if she’s not because I suspect she won’t be lonely in prison.”

  Dominic watched Kinley, studying her. She looked so young and innocent without a hint of makeup on her face. She was wearing a light sweater and a pair of those blinged out jeans she’d brought with her. She’d obviously foregone the bra, and since Law had been supervising her all morning, Dominic assumed she’d followed the no-underwear rule. Otherwise, they were going to spank her and hard because he had no notion how else to defuse the tension clogging the room.

  The anxiety blended with the light hum of sexuality and hung over all of them. The hard truth was they would soon have to leave this place and reenter the real world—where Kinley had a completely different life and they worked all over the globe. Dominic had no idea how—or if—their relationship could work, and he was pretty sure that neither Kinley nor Riley did, either. Law, he suspected, would tender his resignation before leaving her, but he wasn’t thinking of the long term. Kinley was actually about to be out of money. Her charity’s funds would be tied up in court for years most likely, and she would be involved in a whole lot of legalities. Law couldn’t take care of her and all those expenses if he was working as a mall cop.

  They had to convince her to come with them.

  Starting now.

  “The other day, you asked me for an exchange, pet. Are you still interested?”