One last assignment to bring down the devil himself. She shivered again as she remembered the past week.
* * *
Marcus Porter.
Just reading that name in the report had made Gina’s skin crawl. Even though she’d turned the AC in the storeroom off until the room’s temperature rose to eighty degrees she still had chills running down her spine. Marcus Porter was one powerful, well-connected man. He ran a hedge fund, moved money around for billionaires, probably weapons as well to feed militias that supported causes that benefited those same billionaires.
That’s not what made her skin crawl. It was the rumors about him. The whispers about kids in cages and how he used them to blackmail his biggest clients. The same innocent children he used for his own pleasure before trafficking.
He supposedly kept them on a private island in the Caribbean, Little Edward Cay. Unless invited, no one could go near it, including the CIA. Until they had proof, they couldn’t move against Porter. He was too well-connected. They needed an asset Porter trusted enough to bring to the island and gather proof. And that’s where Regina Sparda and her worldly connections came in.
After rescuing Princess Sana, Regina Sparda the diplomat’s daughter had returned to the States, attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, received a master’s degree in art history, then opened an art gallery in Santa Monica—that was all part of her official cover story. Unofficially, Gina underwent training at the Farm, just as Jeremy had promised her.
Now, she was sitting in the storeroom of her little art gallery, trying to fall back on her training. If you’d asked Gina what the biggest challenge was at the Farm, she wouldn’t have answered the grueling physical training—she was in fantastic shape. Or the constant pressure of being under 24/7 surveillance—that was old hat. Or even learning how to survive capture and torture—though that was pure misery. No, the hardest part was learning patience. Meditation helped, once she got the hang of calming down her ‘monkey mind’ that constantly chattered at her. It gave her the calm demeanor that helped her recruit assets, including the one she would be meeting with this afternoon. Gina closed her eyes and tried to enter a state of calm.
Abangas the storeroom door hit the wall brought her straight out of her meditation as she jumped in her chair. Jeremy walked in, already tugging at his collar as if the temperature was getting to him, and Gina had to refrain from rolling her eyes. She and Jeremy were supposed to be newlyweds—a husband and wife team running a gallery in Santa Monica with lots of trips to Europe and Asia scouting out new talent and old, forgotten works. Their cover allowed them to travel and mingle with the glitterati. And that’s where Gina’s skills paid off.
As Regina, she’d befriended a supermodel who collected art—and had caught Marcus Porter’s eye. Eva Lambert was no saint herself, but she wasn’t a monster. While still feeling a little guilty about it, Gina had managed to collect enough dirt on her to ‘persuade’ Eva to work with her and Jeremy.
It’s to bring down a monstershe’d told herself. And I’ll do everything in my power to keep her safe.
After dating for a year, Eva had finally convinced Porter to bring her along to Little Edward Cay. In preparation, Eva had stopped by the gallery a week before under the guise of art shopping for her home in London. She was really there to leave behind her famous Mason Peason hairbrush so that they could make a few modifications to it ahead of her visit to the island. Some women had purse puppies or kittens as support animals—Eva had her hairbrush. She never went anywhere without it. The damn thing even had its own social media account. Gina could never understand why people would care to look at photos and videos of Eva Lambert tucking a fuckinghairbrushinto its own little bed on her nightstand every night, but at least it worked to their advantage.
There was one unexpected complication when Eva came to the gallery to ostensibly look at art but leave her hairbrush behind. She was accompanied by Marcus Porter himself, who kept his arm wrapped around her skinny frame even while he ogled Gina. It was one of the few instances when she was thankful for her cover. She’d leaned into Jeremy and planted a kiss on his cheek with the hope that Porter would back off but instead it spurred him on. Jeremy countered by flirting with Eva, which Gina considered a bold move, but it seemed to work and Porter backed off. Gina wished she could have slit the man’s throat instead of putting on a simpering act.
Eva picked out two paintings on the wall and a third from a catalog, as they’d arranged. She was supposed to come back in a week to inspect the painting in person before deciding to purchase it, at which point they would give her back her hairbrush-turned-spyware, with instructions on how to use it to record conversations and take photos. But with Porter there, he’d know by bedtime at the latest that she’d forgotten the brush, and he'd probably send someone to pick it up.
Gina had thought fast. Just before Eva and Porter were ready to leave, she started blinking quickly, pretending her contact had gone behind her eye, and asked her dear friend Eva if she would come with her to the bathroom and help her get it out. Once out of Porter’s sight, Eva turned her hairbrush over to Gina, who quickly took a video of it from all angles, zooming in on every little scratch, nick, and scuff and taking their precise measurements along with collecting some of Eva’s loose hair caught in the bristles. Five minutes later, the women returned to the gallery and Eva left with Porter. Gina sent the video to HQ and in five days, they had a perfect replica ready to do its job.
That replica sat on Gina’s desk beside the latest intel on Porter, which wasn’t much. She hoped this would finally give them the proof they needed to take the monster down, along with the evil people who visited his island.
“Hey, sorry, didn’t realize you were nodding off back here, but no wonder. It’s boiling.” Jeremy picked up the hairbrush and twirled it in his fingers. “Want me to comb your hair?” he joked.
“You do and I’ll break your arm.”
“Is that any way to talk to your husband?” Jeremy slapped the back of the brush against his palm. “I should spank you with this instead.”
God, stop it.
“Please put it down before you break it. I still need to thread Eva’s hair into it.” There was no guarantee that Eva would be alone today, so she wanted to have the brush ready for a quick handoff.
Jeremy dropped it onto the desk with a clattering sound. He’d been acting up lately, annoying Gina to no end. Jeremy had always joked around, but lately, his joking was ramped up to levels that worked on Gina’s last nerve. Maybe it was the pressure of their assignment. Stress made people react differently and Jeremy’s coping mechanism was to act inappropriately.
At least that’s what she told herself during her meditations to keep herself from flipping him into the Dumpster out back some days.
“I’m sorry,” Jeremy said. He grabbed a chair, turned it around, and sat down in it backwards, facing Gina. “I know this last week was hard for you.”
She only nodded as she picked up the brush and took Eva’s hair out of a plastic baggie.
“Hey, come on. You’re doing great.” He reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and she flinched. Jeremy frowned but quickly covered it up. He’d been casually touching her more lately, especially since putting his arm around her when Porter and Eva were in the gallery. Or maybe it was just her imagination.
She didn’t want to think about the possibility that Jeremy wanted to make their fake marriage real. She obviously did not. Even if she hadn’t been seeing Lachlan, Jeremy never appealed to her romantically. Even though she was grateful to Jeremy for all his help and he’d been a friend to her, she could never in a million years see herself with him beyond their fake marriage. She only hoped the feeling was mutual, but the way he looked at her sometimes made her wonder.
So she countered by keeping him at arm’s length, sometimes treating him coldly. She had to be a little cold to do this job. The assets she cultivated needed to be handled carefully. She had to gain their trust but she also needed to be ready to drop them if they got burned—not that she’d ever let them get burned. At the same time, no one got into her heart, and that was for the best. She was even estranged from her parents and she didn’t know which hurt more—the estrangement itself or the fact that they understood and accepted it so easily. To the outside world, it looked as if Gina had no feelings, unless of course she was pretending to care about an asset.
If it wasn’t for Lach, all of that might have become true. Without Lach, she wouldn’t have a tether to her old life, the one where she was still idealistic, still warm and caring.
She of course never told Jeremy about Lachlan. And if he had a girlfriend he never let on, but she sometimes suspected he did. It was comical the way both she and Jeremy would sneak off for a few days here and there as if their relationship—then marriage—were real and they didn’t want to get caught. But if anyone were watching them, they’d need to at least pretend they were trying to spare each other’s feelings.
