Re/Deemed (Doms of the FBI Book 8)

by Michele Zurlo

  Now he jumped from his seat with a lightning speed she only saw when he was jogging. The table rattled from the force of his thigh hitting it, and it shoved in her direction, pinning her between it and the wall.

  He stormed in the direction of the door, and dread pooled in Brandy’s gut. He was pissed about last night, and he was looking for a suitable target, one he obviously hadn’t found yet.

  She feared for his safety. Self-preservation had her pushing the table away and scrambling after him. If he did something stupid, then nothing stood in the way of Yoseff and his insidious plans for her. She caught Bull before he got to his shoes, and she threw her body in his path.

  Setting a firm palm on his chest—which wouldn’t be at all effective if he didn’t want to stop—she appealed to his better sense. “Bull, don’t. Please, don’t go out there.”

  His gaze dropped, and his eyes, liquid gold with too much agony for this all to be about one night, regarded her with a rawness she’d never glimpsed in another person before. He was hurting, and he wasn’t thinking clearly.

  Taking a chance, she slid her hand up his chest to cup his cheek. She moistened her lips. “Daddy, please don’t go out there. Talk to me. Let me help you.”

  He closed his eyes and leaned into her caress. “You use that title like you mean it. You touch me like you mean it. Firebrand, I can’t be around you anymore.”

  Opening his eyes, he closed his hand around hers, holding it against his face as he captured her with an intensity that was as new as the stark desire in his gaze.

  Brandy recognized that he was punishing himself for last night. While he hadn’t broken his vow, he’d definitely cracked it, and he was struggling to shove his emotions back into tidy little boxes where he could pretend they didn’t exist.

  The pieces of him she’d come to know during her captivity pointed to a man with deep principles and strong convictions, and that was the extent of what he allowed himself to feel. He’d developed real feelings for her—more than simply what it took for a man to want to protect a vulnerable woman—and that shook him in a way he couldn’t handle so neatly.

  Leaning in, she chose to ignore his declaration that he couldn’t be around her. She lifted to her tiptoes and brushed her lips against his, her action equal parts self-preservation and desire.

  The spark exploded. His arm snaked around her waist, lifting her against him as he deepened the kiss. She wrapped her arms round his neck, clinging to him as he filled her senses and set her core on fire. With both hands on her ass, he lifted her higher, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. This put her in a better position for kissing and rubbing her hot parts against him.

  Wood rattled as he pressed her against the door. His searing kisses moved to her neck, and she moaned loudly. “Oh, yes, Daddy, yes.”

  He ground his cock against her core, and his hands squeezed her ass harder, as if he was fighting the urge to explore her body.

  She didn’t want him to wage that war. “Touch me, Daddy. Please touch me.”

  With a groan, he surrendered to passion. One hand remained under her ass, and the other slid around her hip and up her ribs. It closed over her breast, and someone pounded on the door. The rude percussion made the wood hit against her head.

  Immediately on alert, Bull set her down and shoved her behind him. He wrenched the door open, thunder in his voice. “What the hell do you want?”

  Brandy peeked around him to see Karter standing in the threshold. His pinched features were particularly sour today. In deference to the weather, he wore a thick jacket, and a scarf and hat covered most of his tattoos.

  He thrust a cell phone at Bull. “Willowlands. For you.”

  Bull accepted the phone. “Xuereb. Go.”

  Brandy started at the greeting he used. She was familiar with Xuereb as a last name. She even knew it started with an X and not Sh. For the first time, she realized she didn’t know his name. Everyone called him Bull, and she called him Daddy—but he had a name he hadn’t shared with her.

  She hadn’t shared hers either, but that was different. She needed to protect her identity. If they found out she was an FBI agent, they wouldn’t hesitate to kill her. Not even Bull would be able to save her—and he probably wouldn’t want to. She threatened the very ideals to which he’d dedicated his life.

  “Yep… Mmm-hmm… Yes, Mr. Ross. Right away. Thank you.” He ended the call and handed the phone back to Karter.

  Karter eyed Bull with grudging respect. “You got the call-up, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I’ll need a car.”

  Lifting his chin, Karter indicated Brandy. “What are you gonna do with her?”

  Bull squared his shoulders. “She’s coming with me.”

  Karter spread his hands wide. “Willowlands ain’t someplace you bring a surprise visitor.”

  “She’s not a surprise.”

  Accepting Bull’s pronouncement, Karter backed out of the apartment. “I’ll send Anita over with some boxes.”

  “Not necessary. Everything will fit in my duffle.” Bull closed the door and faced Brandy. “Take all the clothes out of the drawer and stack them neatly on the bed.”

  He opened a cupboard and extracted a box full of soup, and he unloaded the soup back into the cupboard.

  Brandy glanced at the bureau holding their belongings. “Bull, what just happened? What is Willowlands?”

  He finished unloading the soup and closed the cupboard door. “Firebrand, there’s a reason you don’t ask questions about what I do.”

  Because she didn’t want to know the details about a man who showed her his gentle and caring side and then went out and did wet work for The Eye. At first, she’d needed to survive. Now she needed to know what the hell was going on. If things were progressing the way she hoped, the FBI was preparing to raid Redemption Center tonight. Freedom might be hours away.

  “Daddy—”

  Cutting off her protest, he stabbed his finger toward the chest of drawers. “I gave you an order, Firebrand, and I don’t have time to spank you for disobedience.”

  The threat of a spanking didn’t scare her, but the quiet deliberateness of his manner did. Bull was no longer the tortured, conflicted man who’d kissed her minutes ago. He was a True Believer, a Man on a Mission.

  She stacked their clothes on the bed, and then she got his duffle from the closet. Rolling up each piece of clothing, she fit it all into the bag with room to spare. Neither of them had much. She set his other possessions on the bed, the memory box and the books they’d read to each other.

  Bull emerged from the bathroom, the box filled with their personal care items.

  She stared at the box. “We’re not coming back, are we?”

  He set the box next to the duffle and peered inside. “You have military training?”

  There was no harm in him knowing that much. He could obviously tell from the way she packed that she either had a military background or she traveled a lot. Both things were true. She knew he wouldn’t ask for particulars, like what branch or where she’d been stationed. “Yes.”

  He nodded curtly. “Explains a lot.” He gestured to the box and books. “Put those back.”

  “You don’t want your pictures and mementoes?”

  “Those aren’t mine. They were here when I took the room.”

  “Oh.” It explained why he didn’t seem particularly attached to them. She hadn’t come across him looking at the pictures or handling the objects. “Are you leaving the food?”

  “We’re only bringing what we need.”

  “How about I make some sandwiches for the road?”

  He glanced at the kitchen. “There’s another box in the bottom left cupboard. Fill it with whatever you want to bring. Four day car trip. Maybe five, if the roads are bad.”

  She busied herself with packing staples—peanut butter, canned fruit, bread. She threw a few utensils and napkins into the box. She’d never seen Bull with cash, so she wasn’t sure what the eating arrangements
would look like.

  Thirty minutes after she’d kissed Bull, she found herself in the passenger seat of an older model SUV. Two boxes and a duffle bag in the cargo space made up the entirety of their possessions.

  As they exited the compound—Brandy had been bound and gagged in the back of van on the way in—she noted the deserted highway and the miles of fields in every direction. Small stands of trees delineated the fields, but there was no mistaking they were firmly in farm country.

  They passed a few clusters of houses as they drove away. Brandy looked across the car, peering out of Bull’s window at Redemption Center. She saw the path where Bull took her to run. A thick stand of evergreens separated it from a section hidden behind high privacy fences topped with razor wire. “It’s bigger than I thought.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t take you to most of it.”

  A few miles down, they passed a farmhouse with a huge barn. Though they passed quickly, she noted the presence of FBI and SWAT vehicles barely visible through a small access door someone hadn’t closed.

  If she’d been in charge, the person responsible would have had their ass handed to them. She wondered who was leading the raid. Not Liam. He was golden with technology, but he wasn’t ready to lead a raid. Jordan, perhaps. Even though he was a good decade younger, the two of them had a special bond going back years before either of them joined the FBI. Avery—her dear friend—could handle a command like that. Jed would as well. She wondered who else was there. She had a lot of friends in the Bureau, and many of them would volunteer for a rescue mission, especially if she was the target.

  As she noted the setup and extrapolated their plan of attack, a car appeared behind them.

  Bull’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror too often for him to not have noticed they’d picked up a tail. After a while, the tail disappeared, but Brandy knew they were still following. The FBI was using a two-car formation. Their new tail was in front of them. On this two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere, there weren’t many places for them to disappear.

  On the highway, her crew did a better job of disguising themselves. Even she lost them for long stretches of time.

  “You’re quiet,” he noted.

  “You made it clear you don’t want me asking questions.”

  Resting his elbow on the door, he dragged his thumbnail across his lower lip as he thought. Mile markers passed, and a sign indicated a rest area coming up. He sighed. “Firebrand, the less you know, the safer you are.”

  She understood his reasoning, but she thought withholding their destination was a bit much. Also, she knew the FBI was going to arrest him the moment he crossed the state line—unless it appeared she was in immediate danger. The penalty for kidnapping was much stiffer if the perp crossed a state line. She needed to gather maximum intelligence until then. “Okay, so I’ll be quiet for five days, and then, when we get there, I’ll find out where in the Southwest we’re going.”

  He glanced over, his head barely moving as he noted her crossed arms and how she pushed her lip out in a pout.

  Sometimes having to be a little was freeing, like now. She could pout and be a brat without fear of judgment or ridicule.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  She huffed dramatically. “You don’t have to tell me anything, but I’m supposed to narrate my private thoughts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not gonna happen.” She redid the crossing of her arms, adding tons of attitude to the act.

  “Firebrand.” A warning in a single, growled word.

  “Are you going to pull over and spank me? It’s not going to make me talk, and then you’re going to turn into a bear because you touched my ass and walked away—again.” She looked over to gauge his reaction.

  His nostrils flared. His lips pressed together, and his hands flexed as he squeezed the steering wheel harder.

  “You’re thinking about touching my ass, aren’t you?”

  “No.” He exhaled hard, and his grip on the wheel eased. “I’m thinking about how, in five hours, I’ll never see you again, and you want to spend the last of our time together being a brat. Look, I understand that you didn’t choose to be with me. I didn’t choose you, either. But—you’ve come to mean a great deal to me. I know your life has been hell for the past six weeks, and I’ve tried to make the best of a bad situation.”

  She hadn’t expected anything he said.

  “I’m fond of you, Firebrand. You’ve been a bright spark in the darkness that is my life. I’m going to miss you.”

  “Where am I going to be?” She sputtered the question, wondering what the hell he had planned for her. He wouldn’t save her from the hell of Redemption Center just to murder her in a secluded location. Would he? “What happens in five hours?”

  “In five hours, we’ll be at the last rest stop before the state line. We’ll stop. You’ll get out. I’ll leave. I don’t know how to set you free any other way, Firebrand. I’ll ask you to give me a half hour head start before you contact the authorities.”

  “You—you’re going to let me go?”

  He slammed his palm against his thigh. “I’m not the one holding you. Well, not voluntarily, anyway. I did my best to keep you safe and sound. Now that I have a chance to get you out of all this, that’s what I’m going to do.”

  She blinked hard, wondering at the tears pricking her eyes. She felt his hand close around hers.

  “Firebrand, I know you have family and friends. If they care about you half as much as I do, they’re missing you something terrible. They’re probably out of their minds with worry. When you’re gone, I’ll worry about you, but since I know you’re going back to the people who love you, I can rest easy knowing you’re okay.”

  A tear splashed down her cheek. “What about you?”

  “Me?” His harsh laugh lacked any trace of mirth. “Don’t you worry about me, little one. I made my deal with the devil. There’s no coming back from that.”

  The sign for a rest stop passed again, warning them there was less than a mile left before the turnoff, and the start of a plan formed in her head. “Can we stop?”

  He pulled off the freeway and parked near the building. Three other cars were in the lot. On the other side of the building housing the restrooms, two semi-trucks waited for their drivers.

  Before she could get out of the car, he touched her knee. “Firebrand, I can’t leave you here. We’re too close to Redemption Center, and this is the middle of nowhere.”

  She met his gaze. “I don’t want you to leave me here. You said we had five hours left together, Daddy. I want that time with you.”

  A flicker of emotion warmed his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was thick with meaning. “Anything you want, Firebrand.”

  She hopped out of the car. Their tail wasn’t hard for her to spot, and she recognized the agents waiting in their vehicle. Keith Rossetti was a close friend. They’d worked together for years. Before she’d joined the task force to take down The Eye, he’d been directly under her command. With him was Malcolm Legato, his best friend.

  Shaking her head surreptitiously in their direction, she warned them not to make a move. Bull opened the door to the building, and they parted ways to use the separate restrooms.

  She hurried into a stall. When she emerged, she found Malcolm leaning against the counter. Before she could wash her hands, he swept her up in his arms. She melted into his embrace, gripping him tightly. She might have cried a little and wiped her face on his shirt. “Didn’t I fire you?”

  “You suspended me, and I quit.”

  “You’re back now?”

  “Lexee reinstated me temporarily. When you went missing, it was all hands on deck.” He eased his hold, but he didn’t let go. “Why did you tell us to stand down? We can take him, Brandy.”

  She turned on the water to wash her hands. “I’m assuming Liam got my messages?”

  “Yes. Joshua and Joseph Lawrence have been apprehended.”

  “Is the raid on Redem
ption Center planned for tonight?” She soaped her hands slowly.

  “Yeah. Lexee is overseeing it personally.”

  She’d sent Karter and Yoseff’s names in her messages, as well as her assessment of the power structure. At the time, she hadn’t seen the other parts of the compound. However she knew Liam had conducted satellite surveillance, and Lexee knew what she was doing. The operation was in good hands.

  “Look, Mal, I don’t want to be rescued.” Before he could protest, she set a wet hand on his arm. “This morning, Bull got a call from a Mr. Ross at Willowlands, which is a four-or-five-day drive from there. He was ‘called up.’ I don’t know exactly what that means, but I saw the respect and envy in Karter’s eyes, and that douchebag doesn’t respect anyone or anything.”

  “You want to go undercover?”

  “Deep cover. I’ve worked for two years to bust this organization, and I failed. Now that I have the chance, I’m going to blow it up from the inside.”

  Mal shook his head. “You don’t have a cover ready.”

  “I do. Brittney Sorrel. You remember it, right?” Years ago, before Malcolm had flouted FBI rules to keep his loved ones safe and before Brandy had been promoted to be his boss, the two of them had worked a sting operation together. Brittney was a former foster kid who’d worked as a dancer and waitress. She didn’t have strong roots or much of a legal footprint. At his nod, she said, “Get it active.”

  “This is procedurally wrong on so many levels.” He ran a hand through his thick, dark hair. “You’re skipping layers of paperwork and bureaucracy.”

  “I knew you’d appreciate the beauty of my plan.”

  He didn’t look convinced. “I know when you’re working with a half-baked plan, and Brandy, that’s not like you.”

  “Look, I have about five hours to persuade Bull to keep me with him. I’ll hammer out the details. Have Avery meet me in the restroom of the last rest stop on this side of the state line. I’m going to need tech I can hide in my shoe or a tampon box.”

  She went to exit, but Malcolm grabbed her arm. “Brandy, you were kidnapped and sold as a sex slave. I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through, and the fact that you’re so bright and cheerful is freaking me out. This whole ordeal has fucked with your head. You’re not thinking clearly.”