Saving Tess

by M. S. Parker

  “You need to come, Tess.” The voice was husky, rough, and did all sorts of strange things to my stomach, and it sounded impossibly familiar. “Come on my fingers, and then I’ll make you scream on my cock.”

  Did I know him? The voice?

  My pussy clenched, and I whimpered. I wanted him so badly that it hurt.

  Then his tongue rasped over my clit, and the hurt turned into the sort of white-hot pleasure that I’d only ever dreamed of.

  I jerked awake when I heard the bedroom door close. Disoriented for a moment, my hand tightened around my pen, and the familiar feel reminded me of where I was and what had happened.

  Or, rather, the fact that I couldn’t remember what had happened.

  Except a piece of me felt as if my erotic dream had been more memory than fantasy.

  But that wasn’t possible. I’d never had sex, oral or any other kind. Hell, I barely had a sex drive. There was no way in hell that, in the few weeks I couldn’t remember, I’d met someone I would’ve liked enough to lose my virginity to. That sort of thing just didn’t happen.

  Five

  Clay

  “I’m telling you, that son of a bitch knew something.” I cut a sideways glance in Brianne’s direction. “He looked nervous.”

  She tapped a finger to her bottom lip. “I thought you said he looked guilty.”

  “He had a reaction to Tess’s picture,” I countered, my voice growling out my frustration. “Does it matter exactly what emotion I saw?”

  “It does if we’re wasting our time sitting outside this guy’s building instead of searching for my sister.”

  I ground my teeth together. This was why Brianne and I had been doing the majority of our searching separately. We disagreed on almost everything except the fact that we both wanted to protect Tess.

  Even when we did manage to come up with a plan both of us could live with, we still bickered. I didn’t know if we’d simply changed enough in the last sixteen years that who we were now just couldn’t get along, or if it was because I now knew that it was Brianne’s fault I’d lost Tess the first time. Either way, if staking out the building didn’t yield results, Brianne was going to use it against me at every turn, and it wouldn’t do anything to help how things were between us.

  “What do you suggest we do then?” I asked, trying to keep the snark to the minimum.

  “I don’t know, Clay,” Brianne snapped back, “but anything that’s actually taking action instead of sitting here on our asses has my vote.”

  I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore. “You know, Tess wouldn’t have even been here if it wasn’t for you. She came here to find you. It was pure chance that we met. I tried to keep her safe, but when it comes to you, she doesn’t care about her own safety.”

  She snorted, crossing her arms over her chest. “Real bang-up job you did there, Clay, keeping her safe.”

  “I was doing just fine until you showed up.”

  Brianne half-turned in her seat, her eyes narrowed into what I assumed was supposed to be an intimidating glare. Unfortunately for her, I’d faced off against people a whole lot scarier than her.

  “Just fine?! You took my sister into a Colombian drug house!”

  I looked away from her and back to Luis’s building, struggling to keep my voice even as I addressed the accusation. “I don’t know how well you actually know your sister, but she’s not the sort of woman who can be controlled. She was determined to be part of the rescue on the off chance that you were there. If I’d told her to stay, she would’ve just come on her own.”

  “I know Tess better than you,” Brianne retorted. “And she never should have had the opportunity to get involved. As soon as you realized she wasn’t here on vacation or doing a story, you should have sent her home.”

  “And how do you think I should have done that?” My hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Picked her up and carried her onto an airplane, screaming and cursing? I’m pretty sure that’s frowned upon. And illegal.”

  “I’m sure you could’ve thought of something if you’d tried hard enough. You’re an FBI agent, for fuck’s sake! You could’ve reported her to the local police and had her locked up for a couple hours while you did the dirty work.”

  “She’s not a child, Bri.” Even as I said the words, I could hear Tess in my head telling me the same thing. I promised myself that when we found her, I’d make sure she had the opportunity to mock me for my change of position.

  “You think we should just stop looking then? She’s an adult, so wherever she is, it’s her choice to be there. That, or it’s the consequences of some decision she made?”

  I squashed the irritation that made me want to yell. “No, I don’t think that. Tess fought to find you. She wouldn’t have left without a word, or at least not for this long. Wherever she went, something or someone kept her from coming back.”

  “Maybe she just realized what a colossal mistake it was to sleep with you.”

  Shit.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Brianne turn back to face the windshield. “Who Tess sleeps with isn’t any of your business.”

  “It is when it’s someone who’s going to mess up her life,” Bri retorted. “Tess isn’t some random woman to warm your bed. She deserves better than you. Better than someone who’s going to break her heart.”

  “You don’t know me!” I nearly shouted, my frayed patience finally snapping. “You haven’t seen me in sixteen years, and I know you and Tess haven’t been close in that long. You have no idea what she needs or what I can give her.”

  “I know she deserves better than a guy who’s going to leave her as soon as he gets bored.”

  “You don’t know a damn thing about me or what I’d do.” The fury in my voice surprised even me. “I’ve never hurt Tess. That’s all you, Brianne, doing whatever you want and not caring who you hurt.”

  “I’ve never hurt my sister.”

  I laughed, putting as much vitriol into the sound as I could. “All that ‘protection’ you thought you were giving her did more damage than I could ever do. She loves you more than anyone, even after what you did.”

  “What I did?” Bri’s voice suddenly became small.

  “She knows, Brianne. That you lied about you and me having sex. That you and your mom have always tried to shelter her from any truth that might be hard for her. That you two treat her like a child who couldn’t understand the way things work in the world.”

  “What did you say to her?”

  “The truth.” I shot a glare at the woman next to me. “She accused me of sleeping with you, and I told her that it’d never happened. She defended you, said that you’d never lie to her like that.”

  “And you just had to set the record straight,” she said bitterly.

  “Damn right I did!” I smacked the steering wheel with the palm of my hand. “I cared about her, Bri, and you knew it! She cared about me too, and you still told her a lie that you knew would destroy her.”

  “We had to leave,” Brianne said quietly. “I knew that she’d never make a clean break if she held on to you, and we needed that to get away from Darius. He would have hurt her eventually, and I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “You had no right,” I said. “Tess and I–”

  “I had every right,” she countered, a note of superiority creeping into her voice. “I’m her sister. It’s my job to look out for her.”

  “It was her choice to make.”

  “She can’t think straight when it comes to you, Clay. She’s all heart and no head. The two of you are different people. You always have been. That works for a friendship, but she’s always wanted more with you, and we both know that it won’t work.”

  “Again, that’s not your decision to make.”

  Even as I said the words, a part of me couldn’t help but wonder if she was right, if Tess and I didn’t have a chance at building something between us even now. Right on the heels of that thought was the one that asked when I’d started con
sidering this thing between Tess and me as something I wanted beyond our trip to Costa Rica. We hadn’t talked about it, and I hadn’t even really thought about it.

  So why did it bother me so much to think that Brianne might be right and that the best thing for Tess was to stay as far away from me as possible?

  Six

  Tess

  Waking up this time felt more natural than it had yesterday. While not remembering weeks of my life wasn’t exactly normal, I still felt more like myself, though with more aches and pains than I liked. I couldn’t move my two fingers, and I’d forgotten how much that part of having a broken bone annoyed me, but at least it wasn’t an injury that would keep me from being mobile.

  And I needed to get mobile.

  A glance toward the small, boarded-up window told me that it was either night or the weather was bad enough that it’d made it dark outside. Since I didn’t hear wind or rain or anything that would indicate a storm, I was going to assume the most logical solution was the correct one.

  According to Luis, we weren’t in a great part of San Jose, and since I didn’t know any more than that, I wasn’t about to take off into the unknown. I was impulsive sometimes, but I wasn’t an idiot.

  Which was why it seemed so strange that I’d ended up here by myself. Taking off to a foreign country without any real cause wasn’t like me. I had to figure out what had made me come here, and to do that, I needed to leave the apartment. But I had to be smart about it.

  Moving at a fraction of my usual speed, I pushed myself up to a sitting position. My arms shook with the effort, and I muttered a curse under my breath. I’d never been athletic like my sister, but I’d never considered myself weak before.

  I didn’t like it.

  “Tess?” Luis knocked on the door. “Are you awake?”

  I pulled the blanket up, uncomfortably aware that I wasn’t wearing anything under the baggy t-shirt and shorts Luis had given me yesterday. It didn’t matter that he’d washed and dressed me the entire time I’d been unconscious. When he looked at me now, I felt like he was trying to see right through me, and not in a good way.

  Still, he’d saved me. “Come in.”

  The moment I saw his face, I knew that something had changed…for the worse. Gone was the fixed attention he’d focused on me before. His gaze flitted from place to place, never landing on anything or anyone for more than a few seconds. But it wasn’t just his eyes. All of him looked…twitchy.

  “How do you feel?”

  He’d switched to Spanish, and for some reason, that made me infinitely more nervous.

  “Better,” I responded in English. I wasn’t trying to be an ass about it. My brain just wasn’t up to translating both ways at the moment. I needed to conserve my energy.

  “Good. That will make this easier. We will need to move fast.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “What was that?”

  “I didn’t tell you everything about the day I found you,” Luis said as he walked over to the window.

  I’d suspected that he hadn’t been entirely forthcoming at the time, but I’d been biding my time before pressing him on it. Now, it seemed I was going to get some answers without having to ask. Whether this would be the truth or not, I didn’t know, but him volunteering the information would at least keep me from stirring up tension with questions.

  “I heard the crash, and when I got there, I saw another car driving away. The one you were in was a cab. The man driving was dead. You weren’t. I had to choose between helping you and retrieving him.”

  My heart twisted in grief for the stranger. Who had that man been? Had his body been recovered and sent to his family, or had he simply been tossed aside with the car? I understood why Luis had needed to make a choice, and I was grateful that he’d decided to save me, but my heart went out to that man’s loved ones.

  “I recognized the car that left,” he continued. “It belongs to the drug dealers who live in this neighborhood. Colombians.”

  The tone of his voice when he said that single word sent a frisson of fear through me. I didn’t need to remember why I was in Costa Rica to know that a car belonging to a Colombian drug cartel was never a good thing. I just hoped that I hadn’t been stupid enough to be poking my nose into their business. I was all for finding the truth and exposing wrongs, but there were plenty of stories in the States. I wouldn’t have needed to come all the way here to find one. So what had done it? Had I, at some point after Christmas, gotten some sort of tip that had sent me to Costa Rica to pursue someone or something important to me?

  I pressed my fingers to my temples. Amnesia was a funny thing. Some things I could remember so clearly. Others were like black holes in my brain.

  “Do you think the Colombians were just involved in the accident by chance?” I watched him closely as I asked my question. “Or do you think maybe it wasn’t an accident?”

  He pulled the curtain aside enough to peek out the window, but the way he held his body against the wall made me think that he was worried about someone seeing inside. I filed that information away for future reference, hoping it meant that we were on the first or second floor of the building. That would also mesh with Luis being able to take me into his apartment without anyone noticing him lugging me up the stairs or into an elevator.

  Or his neighbors could have seen and just been reluctant to get involved.

  “I have been hearing rumors that they are using the accident as an example of what happens when they are disrespected.”

  Shit.

  Did that mean that I had disrespected them somehow? Was I responsible for the death of the cab driver? Had I deprived someone of their husband, father, son for a story?

  I didn’t want to think I was that sort of person, but the things Luis said made me think that I needed to start considering that it might have been a possibility. That was another good reason to want to get out of here – and away from Luis – as soon as possible. If I was responsible for what’d happened, I didn’t want anyone else caught up in it, no matter how awkward I felt around Luis.

  If I could get to the airport, I might be able to get a copy of my return ticket printed, and then I remembered that I’d been unconscious for two weeks. I couldn’t imagine work letting me have an open-ended amount of time off, not for a drug cartel story in another country, and it was highly unlikely I could’ve found something more far-reaching in such a short period of time. All of that meant it was almost guaranteed that my return ticket date had already passed.

  I could buy a new ticket, even if it meant maxing out a credit card and flying to some random country before finding a flight home. No matter how much of a pain in the ass that would be, I’d at least be safe.

  “After all you’ve done for me, I hate to ask for a favor, but is there any way you can get me to the airport?”

  Luis might’ve been keeping things from me, but he hadn’t hurt me, which meant he was my safest bet. I didn’t want to risk having to ask anyone else for help, especially in this neighborhood.

  He switched to English. “No airport. They will have people watching.”

  “What then?” I asked, curbing my impatience. “You borrow a car? Take me to the train station?”

  He shook his head. “You must not leave the country right now.”

  “If they haven’t given up on finding me yet, when do you think they will?”

  His expression grew grim. “They will not. Their honor demands they never forget.”

  Harsh. Unfortunately for Luis, I wasn’t in the mood to deal with harsh politely. “Well, I don’t plan on living here the rest of my life, so why don’t you tell me your plan.”

  “We go to a safe place and wait,” he said. “I will find a way out, but I need more time.”

  “The US Embassy,” I said, hope rising in my chest. “I’ll be safe there, and they’ll help me get home.”

  “You will not be safe there,” he said, his voice rising.

  “I’d be on US soil,” I argued. “I’d thi
nk that the Colombians would realize that attacking the embassy would most likely result in the US giving Costa Rica resources to get rid of the cartel entirely.”

  Luis glanced out the window again. “That, I do not know, but I do know that the cartel has eyes and ears in many places, perhaps even in your embassy.”

  As much as I wanted to tell him that there was no way anyone at the embassy would sell me out to the cartel, I was far too jaded to believe in the majority of people being decent. I’d seen far too much evil and corruption in the world not to take his statement with the weight he intended.

  That also meant, however, that I didn’t completely trust him either.

  “What are we going to do then?” I asked.

  “I know of a place where we will be able to stay tonight,” he said. “In the morning, we will make a more permanent plan.”

  As he walked over to the tiny closet and began rummaging through its contents, I couldn’t help but wonder if the reason he wanted to keep me close was because he saw me as a ticket to America. Costa Rican Nurse Rescues American Woman and Nurses Her Back to Health. It was the type of headline that could possibly grab the attention of the sorts of media outlets needed to pressure the government into getting him a visa, the perfect combination of human interest and politics. The only thing that would make it a more compelling story would be if we’d fallen in love. Maybe that even explained the looks Luis had been giving me. He wasn’t actually crushing on me, but rather hoping for an attraction to help him get what he wanted.

  All of this was pure speculation, however. I’d go with him now, and while he came up with a plan, I’d do my own planning, just in case.

  “All right,” I said, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. “What do we need to do first?”

  Seven