by Jay McLean
I cleared my throat, trying to breathe freely again. "Do you think she's still in Turkey?"
"Unlikely. The shots came from a transit area of the airport. She was being taken somewhere else. Probably somewhere in the Middle East."
"How would these international creeps have even known about Hadley? You're not trying to tell me there are sex traffickers operating out of Cranton."
"Probably not, although with two fancy colleges here in two adjoining towns, Cranton isn't exactly Nowheresville. It's not impossible that traffickers could be checking out the local talent at Penshurst and Whittacre. What's more likely, though, is that Hadley came into contact with someone through her family in New York City. Her dad's conglomerate owns hotels in countries all over the world. Hadley worked for her father during the summers, as you know. She was in Thailand one summer and in Dubai the next. She might have met someone who took an interest in her."
They didn't say it, but I knew what they were thinking—she might have had sex with one of these trafficking freaks who "took an interest in her." Risk-taking Hadley. Why the fuck hadn't I been able to stop her doing that? Maybe if I'd been willing to try some of the edgy shit she'd wanted to do she wouldn't have needed to seek satisfaction from strangers?
I knew it was a fucked-up way to think about this. She was alive. Or at least, she had been alive recently. I needed to stop blaming myself for what had happened to her.
"I need to know how we're going to get her back."
Brandon gave me a sympathetic look. He obviously didn't believe it was possible. I looked to Connor, whom I liked less but respected more. He shrugged. "The feds have already been notified. But you have to understand that no one has had much success so far freeing women who've vanished into the trafficking nets. Still, there are people working on stuff like this."
"What people? I want to meet these people."
Brandon gave his brother a wary look and turned away. "I'll wait outside," he said, making it clear that he wanted no part of whatever Connor might have to tell me. But all Connor said was, "If you're serious about that, I'll have someone contact you. But it will be dangerous. And there's no guarantee, none whatsoever, that anything can be done for her."
"I want to know more." I could hear the raspy hardness of my own voice. It didn't even sound like me.
"Then you'll have to shut the fuck up and wait. I mean it, O'Malley. Act like nothing has changed. Because nothing has. She's still gone and she's still probably dead. And as far as anybody around here knows, you still murdered her."
"You're technically off the hook," Brandon had said.
"If any of the bad guys find out that a picture of her has been ID'd, she'll be killed instantly. So this entire conversation we're having here today never happened."
"Fine. I don't care about that. What I care about is finding her and bringing her home."
"So where's your girlfriend?"
It took me a moment to realize he was talking about Rory. "I think she went for a walk."
"You'll have to silence her, too, if that's even possible. And keep her out of the loop from now on. This is dangerous shit. I'm sure you don't want to endanger the life of a second young woman, right?"
I thought about hitting him. I fucking wanted to knock that sneer off his face. But I knew this wasn't about him. My emotions were roiling for other reasons altogether.
He didn't let up, though. "I'm amazed she's still here when she could have jetted off to Hollywood for some serious partying. You must be showing her a real good time in there." He nodded toward the bedroom.
"Right," I snorted. "I can just see Rory in Hollywood."
He gave me an odd look. "You do know who she is, right? I mean the two of you sure seem cozy. And she knows jack-all about you."
I was beginning to feel queasy. "She's a student at MIT."
He laughed. A hard unpleasant laugh. "Yeah, when she bothers to go to class or study. Usually she's flitting around the country on a private jet."
"Right, Finlay," I snorted, unable to imagine Rory on a private jet.
"She's a damn fine hacker, I'll give her that. Who knew? She must have stood out like the freak she is at Beverly Hills High."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Sorry, man." He gave me a quick, faintly superior look. "I thought you knew. She's searched out stuff about you in every public database on the planet, and God only knows how many private ones. You telling me you haven't even Googled her?"
"She kinda took over my computer," I said, knowing how lame the answer was. Why hadn't I looked her up anywhere? I'd meant to. "What's this crap about a private jet? She comes from a disadvantaged background."
It was his turn to snort. "Disadvantaged my ass. Her mother is Nina McKenna. You've heard of her—famous movie star? Do-gooder humanitarian? She even won an Academy Award. The mom's getting a bit old for the good roles now, though. That's why she wants to turn our Lorelei into the next major ingénue."
I was gaping at him. "Lorelei?"
"That's her real name. Lorelei McKenna. She calls herself Rory, and the McKay's obviously just a variation of McKenna, probably to give her a little distance from her mom."
"You are fucking kidding me." But I knew from the look in his eyes—there was amusement there, and maybe a flash of pity—that he was being straight with me.
Unlike Rory.
I knew who Nina McKenna was. Everybody did. She was famous for her violet eyes and her incredibly wide and fetching smile. Hadn't she started her career back in the 80s playing the proverbial prostitute with the heart of gold? In addition to being an actress, she was into various causes, like poverty and save the whales and global warming and shit. She wasn't exactly a genius, though. No way Rory had gotten her super smarts from Nina McKenna. "Who's her father?" I could barely hear my own voice asking.
"Don't know. Her mother's been married a couple times, but not when she was pregnant with our Lorelei. But her brother Jesse is a rock star and her sister Lily is a supermodel. What is it about you, dude, that you attract all these rich chicks? Do they go for the bad boy type? That must be it."
"I found her on the outskirts of Boston, running from some guy with a shotgun." A rock star? A supermodel? I was getting dizzy. "Are you telling me that was all an act?"
"I guess you don't read Variety."
I glared at him.
"Well, it's true that she's bright and that she goes to Geek-I-T. But she's also an actress, which is probably how she fooled you so completely. Last summer she made a small indie movie about a sex worker's daughter who uses her brains to get out of the life and go to college. Sort of a feminist Good Will Hunting. She wrote and directed the thing, using mommy's money. I think she sees herself as the next Lena Dunham."
I was too dumbfounded to say a word.
"I don't think the film did very well, but she got good reviews for her part in it. Supposedly your honey spent several weeks living on the mean streets of Roxbury, MA. That's where they shot the film. She made some friends there. Sounds like she may have gone back to visit some of those folks. But she got herself into trouble, and voila, you came along."
Un-fucking-believable. I was getting a headache, which only happened when I was sick. I was remembering several things she'd told me that had struck me as off at the time. The expensive cell phone she'd disabled when she'd jumped into my car. LaVerle, the prostitute who was supposedly her mom, then not really her mom, then someone she'd met during a "project." Miguel the Mexican pool guy. The dead girl who had been found on the side of the freeway. We don't call them freeways in Massachusetts. The girl's parents had been out at an Oscar party. Holy shit. I'd sensed that Rory had been lying, but I hadn't put the pieces together.
I could feel my stomach churning, my fingers clenching. I wasn't sure who I hated more—Finlay for telling me this, or Rory for lying to me. "So it was all a game? Right from the start, it was all just acting for her?"
"Probably. Except the hacking. That was real.
And the info she fed me really did lead to me finding those pictures of your ex. She's wasted as an actress, if you ask me. She's nowhere near as gorgeous as her mother, anyhow. She needs to quit this acting shit and do what she was born for. Hell, I might even offer her a job, if I thought I could tear her out of the arms of Hollywood."
Finlay gave me a nasty grin. He was enjoying this. Bastard.
"Take some time to think about what I've told you. But keep quiet about it. If there's any possibility of getting Hadley back, it will have to be done in total secrecy." He gripped my forearm, hard. "I mean it. Breathe a word of this to anyone and you risk killing her. Make sure your little starlet hookup knows it, too." He paused. "You'd better dump the girl if you want to keep her safe. The last thing either of you need is to call attention to yourselves. Just imagine if the tabloids got hold of the story: Nina's Daughter Dating Suspected Killer. They'll never leave you alone."
With that parting shot, he left.
Chapter Fourteen
My head was a mess. Hadley was alive...well, maybe alive. Needing help. Needing rescue.
Rory was a fucking liar.
Last time someone in my family attempted to rescue the people he cared about, he'd ended up underground. I wasn't afraid of that. Down into the depths was where I'd been headed for quite a while. I'd thought once I could escape that fate. Work myself up and out of it, but that hadn't turned out so well, had it?
Hadley had tried pulling me into her dangerous, edgy world before, and I'd resisted. But I got it now. I got how seductive the darkness could be.
The front door slammed. She was back.
I was waiting for her in my bedroom.
"Rory? Come in here."
She did her thing of hesitating on the threshold. I knew what she was thinking. She was wary about how I had received the news that Hadley was alive. She hadn't expected that. When she'd gone scouring the internet for what had happened to my old girlfriend, she hadn't fully thought it through. Not quite as smart as you thought you were, huh, Rory? She hadn't believed she would actually find Hadley.
I had pulled a certain gym bag out of my closet and set it on the edge of the bed. I was rifling through it. Rory had never seen any of the stuff I had in that bag.
"So," she said brightly. "I talked to my friend Izzy. She's back at her apartment, and she says I can come crash with her until my dorm opens up again."
"Talked to her how? You deactivated your phone."
She held up her cell. "I put it back together."
"You're leaving?"
She continued to smile at me, but it looked to me as if the rims of her eyes were a bit red. "Yup. My work here is done."
She couldn't just leave, could she? I'd gotten used to having her around. But at the same time I wanted to shove her into my car and toss her in a ditch on the side of the fucking freeway. Lying bitch.
"Izzy even said she'd come get me. Or I could take the train." She paused, blinking at me. "I'm sure you're anxious to get rid of me. I mean...now that Hadley's alive, and all."
I said nothing. I was staring at her through eyes that saw everything differently. I could see the resemblance now. Finlay was right—Rory didn't have her mother's extraordinary beauty. Her features weren't quite as perfect or symmetrical. But she had Nina's smile. Was that why it had seemed familiar to me?
I think she was crushed that I didn't deny wanting to get rid of her, because she sagged a little in the doorway. Then she squared her shoulders and did her usual thing when she was nervous—she kept right on talking: "Anyway. I've got to start thinking about my classes. Spring break's almost half over, and I haven't done shit. I've got books to read, papers to write, exams to prepare for. I was planning on getting a lot of this semester's crap finished this week, but I didn't, so now I'm behind. I hate that. I need to keep on schedule if I expect to keep my 4.0 average."
"Come here."
She did. I think she was relieved by the order. She wouldn't be relieved for long.
"What's in the bag?"
"Strip," I said.
"What?"
"You heard me."
Slowly, looking uncertain, she pulled her top over her head. She wasn't wearing a bra. As I gazed admiringly at her breasts, she slid down her pants, getting jaunty about it as her confidence rose. When she got down to her panties, she was smiling. They were the plain cotton briefs I'd seen in her backpack on the first night, but she shimmied and twirled for me as she removed them. My eyes must have been devouring her sweet body, because she began to blush in that adorable way she had.
I blew out a tight breath. "Good girl." I removed a couple pairs of leather cuffs from my bag. "Now put these on."
She swayed, staring in shock as I laid out some of my toys. "I'm not sure this is the moment for—"
"Do it."
She bowed her head. I'd seen hints of it before with her—if aroused, she would submit. Clumsily, she slid her wrist into one of the cuffs. It fastened with Velcro, as she figured out quickly enough. 204 IQ. I put the other one on her other wrist and tightened them both. As always, touching her, smelling her, feeling her close to me got me hard. Watching her obey my orders got me even harder.
I locked cuffs on her ankles too, and got out my already-cut lengths of bondage rope.
"Now lie down in the middle of the bed."
She did it. She was blushing all over now, a faint pinkish glow of combined embarrassment and sexual excitement. I carefully bound her arms and legs to the four bedposts. I probably seemed calmer and more controlled than I actually was. Being with her, seeing her lovely body, touching her, even hearing her voice excited me intensely. I wanted to fuck the daylights out of her.
"This feels amazing." She favored me with her smile—the seductive one. "Why are you still wearing clothes?"
I stripped off the T-shirt, but the jeans were staying on for a while. If I took them off, forget it, this thing would be over in about ten seconds.
"Should I writhe around or something?"
"You'll writhe around soon enough." Reaching over her body, I pulled open the top drawer in the bedside table and removed the blindfold that I sometimes wear to help me sleep. It was a good one, soft and thick and impossible to see through no matter which way you angled your eyes. I slid it over her head, covered her eyes, and tightened the Velcro binding. A few strands of her luxurious brown hair clung to my fingers as I worked.
“Whoa. Not sure I like that.”
“Tough. My game, my rules.”
“I'd just prefer to see you.” She pulled a bit at her wrist restraints. The rope stretched to its limits and she stopped. "It's weird not being able to touch you. I love touching you, Griff."
I slowly stroked my hand up one of her legs, from her ankle to her thigh. I stopped before reaching her sex and stroked down the other leg to the ankle cuff. I loved touching her, too, but I was damned if I was going to admit it. I caressed her ankle and then her foot. I slid my index finger along the sole of her foot until she shivered and gave a breathless laugh. I thought about snapping a rattan cane against the tender flesh of her foot. She wouldn't be laughing then.
"Are you going to torture me?"
"You read my mind. And since you can't see what I'm doing—" I moved my hand up until it was hovering over her breast. "You won't know where I'm going to strike next."
I let my hand fall onto her flesh and caressed her. Just as I felt her starting to relax into the caress, I pinched her nipple between my thumb and index finger. Hard enough to surprise her. She let out a sexy little moan. I had nipple clamps in the bag, but I wouldn't use them yet. Not while she was wearing the blindfold. I wanted her to see what I was doing when I applied those.
From my bag I took a long, pointed feather. It was wrapped in cellophane, which I stripped off. Brand new. Leaning over her, I touched the feather to the tip of her earlobe, pushing her hair out of the way first. Then I glided it along the side of her throat, turning it slightly back and forth so the feather could brush he
r different ways, producing different sensations.
She shifted in her bondage. "What's that?"
I slid it down to her collarbone and traced its ridge. "You tell me." I drew slow concentric circles with the tip of the feather around one of her breasts. Switching to the other, I grazed the nipple delicately.
"A feather?" She was breathing hard—her chest was rising and falling rapidly. Both her nipples had stiffened into pointy nubs, suitable for teasing. I leaned over and kissed her breasts, enjoying her sweet-salty taste.
"That MIT brain is good for something, after all." I moved the feather down over her belly, brushing, caressing, poking gently with the tip. I kept guiding it lower, inch by inch. "You know where it's going, don't you?"
"Oh my God," she whispered.
By the time I reached the mound of her sex, her body was well into the writhing I'd predicted. The feather skipped over and moved to the inside of her thighs. She moaned, and I knew she was torn between relief and disappointment. The feather was much more effective at arousing than at giving pleasure. It could be quite maddening, in fact, as I proceeded to demonstrate. I only allowed the lightest stimulation of her labia. When I touched it to her clit, her body arched and she strained to break free. I soothed her with my other hand, stroking her sex in a pleasanter way until she relaxed a little. Then I applied the feather again, tormenting her dripping slit for several seconds before closing in once again on her clitoris.
She was twisting dramatically in her bonds. "You want me to beg, don't you?"
"I sure do."
She was breathing hard. "Not. Gonna. Happen."
Bending over, I kissed her there and worked her clit with my tongue. She ground her hips, beautifully aroused, deliciously wild. When I sensed she was about to soar into an orgasm, I stopped. "Did I mention that you're not allowed to come?"
Her groan was considerably louder this time. "If you think that's going to make me beg..."
