They’d drugged him. The realization helped his brain to kick in even as his body remained way too content. “Listen, April. I don’t need help.” His tongue felt thick. The sense of euphoria was interesting. A small dose of meth? It could’ve been a hundred different things.
April set the bar of soap against his chest and began massaging him.
He grabbed her wrist and set her to the side, turning back into the spray. “How old are you anyway?”
“I can be any age you want.” She moved into him, pressing her breasts against his back.
An image of Pippa flashed through his head, and he shut off the water. “Sorry, sweetheart. My guess is you’re around eighteen, and that’s way too young.” He shoved wet hair away from his face and turned around to face her. “Why did you come in here?”
“To help you,” she said, her face earnest.
“Why?” He studied her eyes. Clear and probably not drugged? He wasn’t sure.
She reached out and ran her hands over his chest. “Because that’s what we do here. We help people. And I thought you could use a release.”
The wrong woman had her hands on him. He grasped her wrists and pulled them away from his body. “Is that what happens here? Everyone has sex and finds release?” A part of him wanted to disappear back into the steam by himself. Just get lost in the steam and not have to do this job. Stupid drugs. “April?”
She shook her now-wet hair. “No. We’re encouraged to find our own paths. Our own bliss.”
His bliss at the moment would be putting his fist through the face of whoever had taught this kid to use her body to manipulate men. “Where are the towels?”
For the first time, her expression changed. Fear and then hurt filled her eyes, and tears started spilling over. “You don’t think I’m pretty. I’m fat. I know it.”
Now that manipulation he recognized. “You’re perfect the way you are.” He released her and moved out of the shower, finding towels and quickly wrapping one around himself. He handed one over to her, and she took it, holding it to the side.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked, dripping water onto the expensive tiles.
Trying to find out about his life, was she? Man, she was good. “No. No girlfriend, no family, no more friends.” His jaw hardened, because it might be the truth. “I was a cop, and when you’re undercover, you have nobody.”
“You can have me.” She shook back her thick hair.
His heart broke a little. There was a sweetness to her, and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Yeah. That’s what they counted on. But he had a part to play. “Like I said, you’re too young for me. Too cute and bouncy. That’s a good thing, April.”
“I’m not a virgin or anything.” She pouted out her bottom lip.
Yeah, he got that. He looked around. “My clothes are gone.” Instead, neatly folded linen pants and a white shirt waited on the counter. Great. The cult uniform. Just for him. He sighed and drew on the clothing.
“Yours are being washed.” April reached for a linen sheath hanging on a hook and shrugged into it, turning around. “Zip me?”
He barely kept from rolling his eyes but zipped her up.
She smiled, the bounce back in her step. “This way. Isaac wants to meet you.”
About time. Mal finger combed his too-long hair and followed her through the bedroom, through the big living room, and down to the end of a hallway. A woman was coming out, and Mal recognized Orchid, the informant. He gave her a nod, and she barely nodded back before continuing past him.
April knocked on the door.
“Enter,” said a man’s voice with a slight accent.
They entered.
Isaac leaned against his desk, looking pretty much unaged from the photos Mal had seen. A woman huddled by a brick fireplace with a boy of about six in her arms. Both had bruises on their faces.
Fire lashed through Malcolm and he pivoted, putting his body between Isaac and the terrified duo.
Isaac cleared his voice. “April, would you please take Mrs. Thomson and her son to the kitchen for food? They haven’t eaten in a while.”
Mal could take the guy out with one hand around the neck. Just squeeze until Isaac flopped like a fish on a hot dock. It was all he could do to let April escort the other two out of the room and shut the door. His fists clenched, but he couldn’t help it.
