“Is that right?” Quentin asked, sitting back in his chair and turning toward Naomi.
“Yep.”
He nodded, then sat forward. “So… what is it going to take to get you back? I mean yeah… it feels like we’ve always been after Wolfe, but it’s different this time. You seem … defeated now. What’s going on?”
Naomi took a deep breath. “It’s not just me this time. I have to think about the baby, and what it’s going to be like bringing him or her into a world with Wolfe. Look at what he’s doing to Ren. How he’s manipulating us to get to Ren. I’m afraid of that.” She stopped, shaking her head. “You know… in a lot of ways, Ren and I have a lot in common. Both sixteen when Wolfe left our lives in ruins. Both haunted by the shadow of what he did. Neither of us able to… do what all women who want a family should be able to do: enjoy their pregnancy. It’s like he gets off on terrorizing women, and I don’t understand why. I mean… that stuff at the hospital, about my mom… why would he even say that to me?”
Quentin placed his hands over Naomi’s on the tabletop. “To fuck with your head. That’s all he does.”
“Well it’s working,” she scoffed. “Has me second-guessing everything I thought I knew. I mean… I didn’t see her body when she committed suicide. The funeral was closed casket. I don’t really know where she was, or what happened to her when she was supposedly kidnapped by Wolfe. I didn’t see it. She didn’t tell me. I’m just going by what my father said, and if we’re being completely honest here… he was a criminal too. Maybe all of it was a lie, you know? Even the story about how he and my mom ended up together. Maybe Wolfe did have her first.”
Quentin turned away, unable to help a scowl of derision from crossing his face.
“What?” Naomi said, grabbing the arm of his chair to turn him back around. “What is it? Why that face?”
Shaking his head, Quentin gazed up at his screen, where the conversation with King and Wolfe was still up. He quickly weighed his options between telling Naomi about the tapes and not. If he didn’t… it was kinda the same thing as telling her a lie, and Quentin had exhausted his ability to lie to her when he was keeping the secret of painted_pixel being in trouble. His lack of focus, and overlooked information, could’ve honestly gotten her killed. He really wasn’t up for a repeat of that.
But on the other hand… what would Naomi gain, hearing her parents talked about that way? Her mother as an adulteress, her father as an abuser… but those little tidbits did raise questions. What if… things really weren’t as they seemed? They’d hinged their lives not only on what they knew Wolfe had done, but also on what they thought he’d done, as reported by Naomi’s father. If Nelson Prescott really was abusive… it wasn’t exactly a stretch that he could have been a liar as well.
And where did that leave them?
It hadn’t really hit him while he was listening to it, but it did now. What if their entire plan for vengeance… wasn’t really what it seemed?
“Q, are you gonna answer me?”
With a heavy sigh, Quentin picked up the headphones, and put them on Naomi’s head, positioning them over her ears. He skipped the audio file back a bit, then hit play, watching the emotions play over her face as she listened.
“What the fuck was this?” she asked, snatching the headphones off when the audio file ended. “Was this Wolfe, and Terry King, talking about my parents?”
Quentin nodded. “I’m afraid so, cher.”
Naomi shook her head, tossing the headphones onto the table. “What… so, I’m supposed to believe that Wolfe was… waiting on my mother? That he loved her or something?”
“I know as much as you do, Mimi. Less, actually. You lived with them. Does anything ring a bell for you?”
She stood, her hand clutched to her stomach as she walked back and forth. “No. My parents were like the perfect couple. I mean… I was little, so I saw what a little girl sees. Always stealing kisses, and holding hands, and they wouldn’t even fight… in front of me.” She stopped where she was, covering her mouth with her hand.
“What is it?” Quentin asked, turning his chair to face where she stood. “You said they wouldn’t fight… in front of you. What does that mean? Did you ever see them fighting?”
Absently, Naomi nodded. “Uhh… yeah. It wasn’t a lot, but… it was always about Wolfe. They thought I was sleeping. And umm… there was actually a really bad one… a few nights before she disappeared. Oh my God.” Her voice broke as tears filled her eyes, and Quentin stood, pulling her into an embrace.
“I don’t know why I never remembered this, but…” she stopped, wiping her face with the back of her hands. “But… that next day, after that fight… she brought me into our little home dance studio, and she had her arms and legs covered. Q, mama never covered her arms and legs when we danced. But that day, she did. And now… I’m wondering, did my father hit her? Was she covered in bruises, is that why…?”
Shit!
“Mimi, stop,” Quentin said, cupping her face in his hands. “Dr. Morris said as little stress as possible, you don’t need to be getting upset like this. I should’ve thought about that before I even let you listen to that shit.”
Naomi shook her head. “No. No. I needed to know this, because… Quentin, when she came back from wherever she’d been, my mother was different. Like she was dead inside. My dad told me Wolfe had taken her, so I believed it. My dad told me Wolfe’s men left her beat up on our doorstep once he was done using her body for whatever, and I believed him. But… my mother wouldn’t let my dad touch her. Every time I was able to get her to come out of that shell, and talk to me, if my dad walked in the room, she was done. And I thought it was just the trauma of what happened to her, but looking back on it now, as an adult? She was scared of him.”
Quentin scrubbed a hand over his face as Naomi started pacing again. “Please, don’t do this to yourself. This isn’t—”
“No! You’re listening to me! The nightmare that I have, that awful memory of the night our fathers died… the ugly things that Wolfe said to my father, taunting him about my mother… yeah, they were ugly. But what if I misunderstood?”
“What? Naomi, we know, for a fact, violating a woman isn’t outside of the shit that Wolfe is willin’ to do, for whatever his twisted ass reasons are. You told me he threatened your father, with doing to you, what he did to Renata. You’re telling me you don’t think he could’ve done it to your mother too?”
Naomi shook her head. “No, I’m not saying that at all, I’m just saying that… with new stuff coming to light, I’m just not sure he did. Not that he’s not capable. When I think about what he said… giving Noelle to me when I asked for her, he mentioned my father taking so much time to retaliateabout Noelle — which I always thought was strange. He talked about her misbehaving, he called her out of her name. I mean… he could have been talking about what Wolfe is talking about in this recording. If the brothers got into it, fought about my mom…”
“The audio is from thirty years ago. This is a wire-tap, that Terry King paid to get converted into digital, so he would have something to hold over his enemy’s head.”
“I know. What I’m saying is, if Wolfe and my father were doing this back and forth over my mom, for all this time, that explains why they hated each other. If she’s sleeping with both of them, I’m not saying it’s right, but… I can see Wolfe being angry about that, calling her a bitch, calling her a slut. He said something along the lines of I can’t believe it took you three years to get back at me about Noelle. Three years before that night, that’s when my mother disappeared. I’ve always thought that Wolfe was taunting my father about taking my mother, and abusing her the way he did.”
With a heavy sigh, Quentin lifted his hands in mid-air. “What else could he have meant?”
“What if… my mother wasn’t taken by Wolfe at all? What if she ran?”
Quentin narrowed his eyes, prepared to offer a rebuttal, but… he really didn’t have one. The more he thought
about it… the more it made sense. He couldn’t imagine not wanting to put a bullet through the head of any man who violated his wife — hell, he wanted to put a bullet through Wolfe’s head over Renata. Waiting three years to exact his revenge? It did seem odd. But if the situation was adjusted, just a little, so your problem was that your wife had left you for another man… that would take a little more finesse. A little more time. A little more patience, to ensure maximum suffering time, and maybe even time to let your victim think you forgot. With that scenario… three years actually made sense.
But what, in the grand scheme of all of this… did it even mean?
Naomi turned to him, hands propped on her hips, head held high.
“I think my mother faked her death. I think she’s with Wolfe. He has her. She’s alive.”
Quentin’s eyes went wide, but before he could open his mouth to respond, the door to the war room swung open, and Supervisory Special Agent Barnes walked in, his expression somber. “We’ve got a big problem.”
— & —
“So you’re saying… the drug that King Pharma is putting out, that we’ve spent months preparing to prove is dangerous… really is dangerous?” Renata pushed out a heavy sigh, crossing her arms over her chest. “How did we miss this?”
“Because Terry King is a smart man. None of this has a paper trail,” Inez said. “Quentin arranged a sudden cross-country move for his previous, secretary, so I took her place. I’ve been noticing a lot of last minute meetings with people on the FDA review board, so I snuck a listening device into his office. Well… today I heard money being discussed, with the people from the FDA. He’s paying them off to make sure the drug passes approval. What we were gonna fake is exactly what he’s doing.”
Naomi shook her head. “But what happens when people die? Won’t the FDA get clocked for it?”
“Unfortunately not,” Agent Barnes said from the head of the table. “He’s giving them two mil each. They just don’t give a shit. And when people die, he’s just gonna pay out the settlements. It’s still a fraction of the billions he’ll make off the drug.”
“Or maybe the drug isn’t dangerous? Maybe he’s just ensuring approval?”
Inez smiled at Renata’s attempt to make it not so bad. “No, chica. Sorry. After I heard that, I snuck into R&D, and was able to the get the chemical profile. Quentin plugged it into a simulator, and it estimates that at least ten percent of the millions of people who end up using it will start experiencing organ failure within the first year. It’s bad.”
Renata sighed. “So… What do we do?”
“We gather evidence,” Barnes said, nodding. “We gather real evidence. And we take this bastard down.”
fifteen.
“Don’t you dare scream.”
Inez barely had time to process what was happening before Kendall muttered those words into her face, his normally cool expression twisted with anger.
A second ago, she’d been opening the door to exit her private bath after a much needed shower. Now, she was pressed roughly into the wall, and Kendall had the front of her towel twisted tight around his hand, using the leverage to pull her off her feet. The other hand was clamped over her mouth, so she couldn’t have screamed if she wanted.
She didn’t want to.
Inez didn’t scare easily, but she was scared now. Not that Kendall would hurt her, because she greatly doubted it. If she thought that, she would’ve driven her thumbs into his eyes while both of his hands were occupied, then sent her knee full force into his groin. She could have gotten away from him, but she stayed where she was, reminding herself to stay calm. She was only scared because he was scared, and scared men were unpredictable.
“Are you gonna scream?”
Inez shook her head.
Nostrils flared, Kendall swallowed, then moved his hand away from her mouth, but kept her pressed against the wall, with her feet dangling in the air.
“Why did I get notified that you pulled my wife’s medical records?”
Mierda. I paid that clerk to keep quiet!
Inez kept her eyes on his, didn’t blink. “Because I pulled your wife’s medical records.”
“How did you even get clearance for something like that? They were sealed.”
“I have clearance for lots of things.”
Kendall looked away from her, running his tongue over his teeth — clear signs to Inez that he was trying to check his anger. “Inez… why the fuck are you in my business? It has nothing to do with you.”
“Considering my ass has been on the line every day, I think it does. We’re all supposed to be in together… a team. Does anybody else know your connection to King Pharmaceuticals?”
With a frustrated growl, Kendall smacked the wall beside her, but Inez didn’t flinch, reminding herself that his annoyance wasn’t with her. “How much do you know?”
“Enough to know that you didn’t need a reason to hate Terry King. You already did. Not enough to understand why you haven’t already killed him.”
Kendall shook his head. “She made me promise… that I wouldn’t do it because of her. Not on her conscience. I’m respecting her wishes.”
“Okay.” Inez lifting her hands, cupping his face between them. “Put me down, Ken.”
Slowly, he lowered her. Once her feet were back in contact with the plushly carpeted floor, he took a step back, scrubbing a hand over his face. A second too late, Inez remembered that he had been keeping her towel secure around her body. It hit the floor, and she was quick to pick it up, covering herself, but from the new expression on Kendall’s face — concern — she suspected he’d already seen.
Sure enough, he took a step forward, tugging one end of the towel free from her hand. “What is this?” he asked, lightly brushing his fingers over the blue-black discoloration that wrapped from her belly button around to her back.
“Run in with a security guard on my way out of the building… after I found out King was paying off the FDA. Saw me coming up from Research and Development, knew I wasn’t supposed to be down there. So… me, him, and his steel-toed boots had a little showdown. I won, obviously, and Quentin made sure to scrub it from the security tapes, but… I can’t go back.”
“He kicked you?” Kendall asked, meeting her gaze.
Inez wished that the suddenly renewed rage, and alarm, and need for retribution that flared in his eyes surprised her, but it didn’t. She wanted to wonder why he was so concerned, but… she didn’t. She already knew why, and it was the same reason that if this situation were reversed, she’d be ready to kick ass too.
“I took care of it.”
She nodded, hoping to reassure him, but he said nothing further. The towel got left behind on the floor as he took her hand and led her to her bed, where he sat down, then pulled her in front of him. Inez held her breath as his fingertips brushed over the bruised area again. Pain was the furthest thing from her mind, because Kendall was setting her nerve endings on fire with his touch. He replaced his fingers with his lips, turning her so that she faced away from him.
“Did you think I was gonna tell anybody?” she asked, closing her eyes as Kendall pressed his lips to the small of her back.
“Yes.”
“What did you think would happen if I did?”
He brought his hands up, cupping and squeezing her butt. “Barnes would have removed me from the team. Told me it was too personal. Told me I was too close to be objective. I… can’t risk that. This is my chance to be a part of King’s destruction, without breaking the promise I made my wife.”
“Ken… it’s personal for everybody. Naomi, Quentin, Marcus, Renata… this shit that we’re doing is about as personal as it gets. They think we’re the objective ones.”
Inez gasped as he gently nipped one of her butt cheeks, then immediately soothed the area with a kiss. “It’s personal against Wolfe for them. A long established vendetta. It’s emotional. King Pharma is just a job to them, and as far as anybody except you knows… it’s just
a job to me. Unless it fails.”
“What happens if it fails?”
“King may have a tragic accident. Less anybody knows about how I may or may not feel about him… the better.”
Inez closed her eyes again, sucking in a breath as Kendall flicked his tongue along the crease at the top of her thigh, then began sprinkling kisses over her butt.
“What are you doing?” she asked, as he nipped her again.
He chuckled a little — a sound that released the tension from Inez’s shoulders. “Kissing your ass. I was rough with you, and you didn’t deserve that. Isn’t that what you do when you fuck up? Kiss the other person’s ass, and hope they forgive you?”
“Literally kissing ass, Kendall? What would you do if I was a man?”
“Tell you to man the fuck up and not expect an apology,” he laughed. “I would only apologize like this to a beautiful woman.”
“So this is a habit of yours?”
“Nope. First time for everything,” he said, running his hands up the backs of her thighs. He pulled her down onto the bed, then balanced himself on top her.
“How do you know I don’t have a problem with you touching me like this? What makes you think I don’t want you to stop?”
He lowered his mouth to her ear. “Do you have a problem with me touching you like this? Do you want me to stop?”
“No,” she said, almost immediately, before her brain had ample time to even process the question. Of course her body didn’t want him to stop, especially not when after her “no”, he’d immediately taken the liberty of pushing his fingers inside of her.
No law enforcement guys, she’d told herself. Especially not former-CIA, current FBI, MMA-fighting, fucking dangerous Kendall. Especially not knowing his baggage. But then he licked and kissed her from her bikini line to the small of her back, devouring everything in between, and even the slightest hint of a protest died on her lips, drowned out and forgotten amidst whimpers and moans of pleasure.
Release Me If You Can Page 19
