Among the Flames (Kisses and Crimes Book 3)

by Natalie E. Wrye

  “You sound like Cinderella, leaving the ball before midnight.”

  “I’m more like the pumpkin in that story.”

  “Then you’d better go before the magic starts to wear off.” He pulled back to stare at me. “I heard the organizer of this party is a real prick…”

  My heart stopped. I swear it literally stopped. It wasn’t what he was saying, no. It was the voice that said it. The teal eyes I was looking into turned turquoise, and suddenly it felt as if I were swimming in their depths, caught in a current that was pulling me deeper and deeper under. And how could I not drown in them? How could I not lose my breath and surrender complete control of my sanity at the realization that Mr. Mask, Mr. Savior-of-the-day was Parker…?

  And Jeff DeSantos…

  One and the fucking same.

  ***

  SIENNA

  He held nothing back this time. Eyes on full power, he fixed me with a gaze that could melt the wax off a candle. But it was nothing compared to what his voice did to me. Like the strummings of a Spanish guitar, Jeff DeSantos’s voice thrummed on my nerve-endings, sending my pulse high. Fluid and full of finesse, everything he said held the same depth I’d heard over the phone, that almost indiscernible accent that made my throat feel tight and put a tingle on the surface of my sweat-tinged skin.

  His tone was smooth… and so very, very deep. He smiled like he knew exactly what he’d been doing. He extended his hand for me to shake.

  “Nice seeing you again, Sienna.”

  I didn’t take it. Fear held me fixed to the ground. Shock sent me stumbling back onto my heels, and with Jeff’s large hand clamped over my tiny wrist, I had no choice but to listen. Listen as the sexiest, and deadliest man, I’d ever seen propositioned me in the middle of a crowded room. Surrounded by unsuspecting spectators, I felt invisible. If it weren’t for his touch on my skin, I’d think I wasn’t even there. Nobody seemed to notice me but him.

  He pulled me close.

  “Don’t panic, ok?” He waited. “Just listen. You’ve got bigger problems to worry about than me right now. If we make a scene, it’s not a stretch to say that both of us will be killed. Technically, we’re both crashing this party. It’s a Gafanelli celebration. And you probably know more than me, living in New York, what the Gafanelli mafia is capable of.”

  Tight-lipped, I nodded. I honestly didn’t know what else to do.

  He began.

  “Look, Sienna…” He slid his hands from my wrist to my fingers. “I’m only going to make this offer once. I want you…” The words stole my breath. “To join me.” He finished. “I have a job to do, and to do it, I need the help of someone capable, someone smart. Someone like you.”

  His green eyes grew dark.

  “You’re never going to find another job like this. Ever. I wasn’t lying when I said I had an opportunity for you. I do, but in order for me to extend the offer, I’m going to need some reassurance. I’m going to need you to put your FBI comeback ambitions to the side… and be mine. Well… be my employee.”

  My blood, once hot at Jeff’s touch, began to run colder than ice. I was beside myself. I blinked twice. “What?”

  “You heard me.” Jeff’s voice was hard. “I know about your last investigations. I know who you really are.” He paused. “And I also know that if you got the chance, you’d put me in cuffs…” He smiled, his green eyes sparkling. “And not the good kind, of course.” His face grew serious. “It’s about the senator’s daughter. Robert Fletcher’s missing daughter.”

  I felt my insides tighten.

  “You want to talk to me about Robert Fletcher’s only daughter? The daughter of a man we both worked against?” I stopped. “The daughter of the man that you put in a coma?”

  “So the sensationalist tabloids would lead you to believe…” He glared harder.

  I shuddered. “You’re fucking crazy.”

  His stare slanted. “Am I? You know some of what I’m capable of, Santiago. You know that if I didn’t want to be caught, then I wouldn’t be. I’m here because I want to do the right thing… for once.”

  I shook my head, staring at his beautiful light green eyes. Even beyond the mask, I could see the question in them. Other than that, they gave nothing away. He said he wanted to do the right thing… but what did that even mean? And what did that have to do with the senator’s daughter?

  I backed up out of his arms. “How can I believe you?”

  He blinked. “I don’t know. I doubt you ever will.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “You shouldn’t… but do you really have a choice at this point? I’m the one with the knowledge. Not you…”

  Technically, he was right. Jeff/Parker knew more about me than I’d ever known about him. My federal training, every fucking skill I’d learned, had gone soft. I let a man I didn’t know back me into a dangerous corner. I allowed a man I never met to draw me into a game—a game that I knew would have no rules.

  This whole time with Parker, I was holding a stick of dynamite. It only made sense that it would explode right in front of my face. But I was too curious to turn back. And on top of that, Jeff wasn’t exactly giving me a choice, was he?

  The asshole.

  And even though Senator Robert Fletcher was more crooked than Hugh Grant’s old teeth, how could I, as a former FBI agent, let the man who shot him—and may have even kidnapped his daughter—get away from me?

  I looked at Jeff’s face—the gorgeous face of my mysterious Mister Parker… and I hated him.

  “Say I do believe you,” I stared into his green eyes, wanting to scratch them out. “Say I do want to take this job—whatever it is. What then?”

  “Then I’ll tell you the rest.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “The ‘how’ doesn’t matter.” His aqua irises darkened. “The ‘when’ is what’s more important.”

  I felt my chest go tight. “When?”

  “Starting tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow. Craziness. And yet there was nothing crazy about the look in Jeff/Parker’s eyes. He was dead fucking serious. So serious that it scared me. Almost.

  “Tomorrow…” I snorted. “Unbelievable… You’re giving me a job, Parker-Jeff.” He didn’t like that. He glared. “You’re giving me an opportunity, you say. You’re giving and giving… Tell me,” I continued. “What is it that you want from me?”

  He grinned. “Straight to the point. As always. If you meet me tomorrow at this address…” He held out another business card for me to take. “You’ll find out.”

  “And if not?”

  “If not, you’ll never see me again. In case you haven’t heard,” his grin turned wicked, “I’m really fucking good at disappearing when I want to…”

  And that wasn’t all he was good at it. But I didn’t want to reveal any more of my cards to him, this master gambler. He was a liar—a damned good one at that, and he had played me like a fiddle. He grabbed a drink off a waiter’s tray nearby downing it, and I was sickened at how good he looked doing it. He was more debonair than ever, ten times the attractive man he’d been when I’d known him as Jeff DeSantos. His dark features, clashing against the sea-green of his eyes, were gorgeous.

  I shook my head, reading his card, thinking of Marco. I gripped the parchment so hard I thought it might rip.

  “You brought me here, put me in danger… for absolutely no reason.”

  He glared at me. “Of course there was a reason. There is.” His voice was molten. “This was your interview. You handled yourself well amidst your own enemies. Congratulations, and welcome to Salt of the Earth… You passed. I said I’d give you an opportunity. That means a conditional offer, not a definite. But if you do accept, if you want to find out more, you would have to understand…” He glared. “That you work for me now. And in that way, I will own you, Sienna…”

  He turned from me, walking away.

  “You have twenty-four hours to decide.”

  Tears Dry on their O
wn

  SIENNA

  I knew I needed my head examined when Don Julio seemed to be the only man who understood me. I drank him in, feeling the familiar burn of his bitter taste on my tongue. I swallowed every drop of him, and as I tilted my head to finish, I reveled in the feeling he gave me.

  Amy Winehouse and Don took their turns with me, twisting my emotions into knots as her sultry voice over my bluetooth loud speaker and his flavor, followed by salt, sedated me.

  My twenty-four hours was up.

  I twisted the glass of DJ in my hands, letting what little was left of the tequila drip in my mouth before placing the container back on the wet bar in my hotel room. The reflection shining back at me on that shiny surface wasn’t mine, and I looked at the woman in the glass.

  A woman different than I’d been just this morning.

  That was Jessica’s doing.

  With the sun barely cracked on the horizon earlier that morning, the eyes of a small stocky woman on the other side of the room stared at me, assessing me. Switching the light from the desk lamp on, I shrieked, throwing everything—including the lamp—in her direction, diving out of my hotel bed just as she reached the edge of my sheets. I was two seconds from clocking her ass with a tabletop bible when she spoke up.

  “Whoa, honey,” she warned, as if I hadn’t just thrown half the room her way. “Your girls are out. Not that they’re nice girls, but… you might want to rein those back into your robe.”

  I huffed, looking down at my bare breasts, which had just popped out of the robe I’d slept in. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. A stranger popped up in my room, nearly took a lamp to the head, and was schooling me on the ways of modesty.

  I looked at her as if she had three heads.

  “Wha—who the hell are you?”

  Biceps bulging beneath a figure that looked deceptively soft, hot platinum highlights shining in her golden hair, the tiny built woman in front of me waved a quick finger at me.

  “The ‘what’ is probably more important to you right now than the ‘who’,” she commented. “Who am I is Jessica. What I am is short on time.”

  There was a certain flair in her demeanor, a good-natured flourish to her movements. She seemed amused by my shock and when I looked into her blue eyes, I suddenly felt more safe. Okay, so maybe she wasn’t here to rob me, but still… What the fuck?

  I dropped the bible by the bed, keeping it within arm’s reach. I exhaled.

  “Okay… Jessica. You’re not here to rob me. So what are you doing here? Who are you?”

  She twirled an arm ostentatiously in the air, reaching skyward.

  “I’m Jessica Lane, and I work for Salt of the Earth. I’m here on behalf of Mister Giovanni DeSalt.”

  I squinted. “Giovanni?”

  Jessica pursed her lips. “I see you two haven’t been formally introduced yet. He has so many names. So many faces. You’ll get used to them…”

  I crossed my arms.

  “Or not,” she finished. “I didn’t mean to barge in. I’m just here to get you prepared.”

  “For what?”

  “The first part of your job training. This is step one.” She dropped a bag—black and heavy on the desk on the far side of the room. The sound of sticks—or something—clacking inside caught my attention.

  She unzipped the bag, reaching inside. She brandished a brush and looked at me. I blinked. Blinked again.

  “Is that—are you seriously going to do my makeup?” I looked at a pound of powder she pulled from the sack, glancing back up at the sturdily built woman with curiosity.

  She simply shrugged. “Something like that…”

  I uncrossed my arms, looking closer at the bag. Foundation, fake eyelashes, a hundred different eye shadows, and was that… was that a wig?

  I looked at Jessica’s perfectly coiffed hair. I hope she wasn’t thinking about putting me into one of those. I fingered a fake eyelash, flicking it to the side.

  “I don’t have money to pay you.”

  Jessica puts her hands to the sides of my face, nearly touching it. She sized me up with a look, digging back into her bag for the dreaded wigs I’d just dropped. She twirled a tuft of hair on one hand.

  “Don’t worry, honey. It’s on the house. Everything is. Mr. DeSalt says you aren’t to pay for a thing…”

  I scoffed. Oh, I’d paid, alright… just not in the way that Jessica was talking about. I’d paid when I’d gotten involved with Parker. When I’d gotten involved with Jeff before that. I’d paid the second I laid eyes on Giovanni DeSalt.

  The man the world—or maybe just the FBI—had come to know as Salt. Not an employee of the secret organization, but the owner himself. International criminal Salt was making me some type of vague offer, concerning the senator’s daughter. He wanted to “do the right thing.” And he told me all of this while he was dancing with me at my ex-murderer boyfriend’s house.

  That was fourteen hours ago.

  And now it was the twenty-third. I was running out of time. Jessica confirmed Giovanni would be back by the twenty-fourth. As that ominous hour neared, I knew I made my decision. I took another swig of liquid courage in my hotel room.

  By the time the knock on the door came, my hands were shaking. Wearing the robe from earlier, barely able to make it out of bed after Jessica had left, I shoved them into the pockets of the garment, but as I stood there, preparing to face Giovanni, they were trembling like fallen leaves on a withered tree.

  My voice was surprisingly strong. But where it projected confidence, the rest of me was coming apart, crumbling to pieces. I held my head high, meeting his green-eyed gaze, not missing the fact that I’d just gone from avoiding Marco, one remorseless murderer, to end up in the presence of another.

  I had no choice.

  I was dead either way.

  I decided to go with the devil I didn’t know. From the looks of things, the devil wasn’t taking my tone too well. I was scared—terrified, even, but backing down? Hell no. I repeated myself, knowing that it just might be the last thing I ever said.

  I ground my teeth.

  “What have you done with Robert Fletcher’s daughter?”

  Jeff DeSantos’s green eyes flashed. “What have I done?”

  “Yes, you. The creepy bastard dragging me into bathrooms and pretending to save me at parties. You.”

  “Who said I was capable of such a thing?”

  “You did. A day ago. When you casually let me know that you were one of the most underhanded men I’ve ever heard of… in the world.”

  I removed my fingers from my robe, flipping the black imprinted cardboard.

  “Salt of the Earth,” I read from it. “You gave it such an interesting name. Though I’d have to say that I think of you as more something else of the Earth, but I won’t mince words. I’m giving this back to you…” I handed him the card, reaching over. “The senator’s daughter. Where is she?” I withdrew my hand once he touched the card.

  “Do I look like I have her right now?”

  Frankly, when he looked like that, menacing and fucking gorgeous, he did. But I didn’t want to tell him that. I raised my chin. I placed the hand that accidentally touched him back in my pocket.

  Jeff’s eyes flitted from the card to my hidden hand, lingering. His gaze traveled to my chest, and as it stretched up my neck and past my chin, his jaw seemed chiseled out of stone. He was a statue by the time he looked into my eyes. Then he smirked and blinked. His face changed expressions like the seasons—quick. Without warning.

  How many women had fallen for that smile? I shuddered to think.

  “I know that Jessica explained this to you. The Gafanellis have a hold of her. And if we want her back, we’ll have to pay the price. The Gafanellis won’t give her up for free, but I figure $5 million dollars of Daddy Fletcher’s money will change all of that. We’ll work out the details soon.” He turned. “Grimm…” He looked at the man to behind him to his left. “You mind leaving us alone? There are a few t
hings that Miss…” he licked his lips, “Santiago and I need to talk about.”

  The surprisingly sturdy older man in the suit bowed his head. His tone was curt.

  “Of course, sir.” And then he was gone.

  And now we were alone. Jeff, the assassin, and I. A man I didn’t know anymore. A man I never really knew. Beneath the chocolate-colored strands of hair, his clear eyes stared. He stood motionless, at first not saying a word outside of my hotel’s front door.

  “Are you going to let me in?”

  “Depends.” I leaned against the doorframe. “You okay with leaving with a black eye?”

  “This is not how this works, Santiago.”

  “How does it work?”

  “Like any other boss-employee relationship. I tell you ‘jump’ and you make sure your feet don’t touch the floor again until I tell you to…” His smile was slow. “Kidding. Our relationship is like any other employer-employee case. Just imagine you’re working for Penelope again.”

  I glared. “That was different. You’re different.”

  “How?”

  “You’re a liar. And a murderer.”

  “Attempted murderer, actually.” He stared. “Isn’t that what the papers are calling me these days?” He stepped closer. “And if I’m a liar…” His emerald eyes burned. “Then so are you. You aren’t mad that I lied, Santiago. You’re just mad that I was better at it than you.”

  I exhaled loudly, grinding my teeth so hard I thought they might break. “Maybe. But it was my job to lie. You do it simply for pleasure. You lured me here under false pretenses. Brought me here to have your employee convince me to arrange a deal.” I motioned towards him. “A bargain with the devil. You want to bribe the Federal Bureau of Investigation, trade Senator Robert ‘the Fraud’ Fletcher’s daughter to them for twenty million dollars.” I snorted. “You’re fucking insane. And sorry to disappoint you, but the FBI doesn’t make those type of trades. You might as well take a gun, stick it to your own head and pull the trigger. Because if the Bureau catches you, they’ll do worse. I guarantee it.”

  Jeff sighed, meeting my eye. “I’m doing the Bureau a favor.” His eyes hardened. “It’s not my fault that I found her before they did. Campaigns don’t come cheap. My client is currently in the midst of one, and I guarantee to you that the Bureau will make the trade. What’s one little bundle of cash in exchange for the world’s most famous missing girl? We don’t have to tell them about Fletcher’s ‘donation’; we’ll keep it between us. A secret between friends.”