“You want me, don’t you?” I ask.
“You know I do.” His fingers sink into my skin. “But not like this.”
A frown mars my forehead, his words throwing me off track. I’mnaked. Ready and willing, handing myself over on a silver platter. I was certain he’d take me. That he’d stop pretending and fuck me like he wants to.
Like webothdesperately need to.
“Drop the act,” I say, my voice strained. “I’m here. I need you and you want me, sotakeme.”
“It’s not a fucking act,” he seethes, peeling himself away from me. “I told you I won’t touch you without your trust.”
Humiliation heats my cheeks. I’m so turned on it’s embarrassing. I can barely hold back from dropping to my knees and testing my gag reflex to its limits. Maybe that’d sway his resolve.
Before I decide, he storms away, fetching a big, fluffy towel.
“Come here.” He holds his hand out.
For the first time, I’m shy around him. I don’t take his hand. Instead, I flee, tugging the knitted dress over my head and snatching my underwear off the floor.
I’ll have to find a different way to break him.
22
CARTER
“Okay, I’ve had it up tohere,” Broadway snaps, his hand held parallel with his forehead as he exits the control room, probably lured out by the scent of coffee.
“What have you had up tohere?” Koby asks, mimicking Broadway’s theatrical gesture.
“This,” he gestures around. “Sitting on our asses all the fucking time.” He pins me with a pointed stare. “What’s the plan, Carter?You do have one, right? It’s only a matter of time before your father gets here. He’s already too fucking close.”
He’s not wrong. After weeks of trying, Jackson finally snuck a bug onto Apollo’s phone. I have a nagging feeling Apollo clicked the link knowing full well what would happen. I can’t figure out his agenda. Why help me? Why kill his colleagues? Why give me ears into Rhett’s ranks?
Whatever his reasoning, be it lack of trust in my father, or cozying up to me as the obvious successor should Rhett go down in this shitshow, it works in my favor.
Thanks to Apollo, we know Rhett’s getting pretty fucking close to finding us. Right now, they don’t have a precise location. Some of the safe houses Dante has dotted around the USA are less anonymous than others and Rhett’s substantially narrowed down the list, raiding one place after another over the past two weeks.
“We’ll be here until Hailey remembers where the evidence is,” I say, “or it’s no longer safe. For now we’re staying. I can’t risk another Blaze-type situation.”
Time’s not our ally. The list of people interested in Hailey—or rather the locked-away contents of her mind—is growing exponentially.
Every time Dante calls, he mentions another name.
“You sure there’s nothing we can do to speed up the process?” Broadway clips, dropping onto the couch with a soft bounce. “Sitting around doesn’t strike me as the best option. You’re risking the evidence falling into the wrong hands. There might be other routes to it than through Hailey.”
“If you have any suggestions, I’m all ears.”
“Alex’s bank vault,” he says immediately.
He’s been poking me with that stick since the day Hailey went missing. I get why he considers checking the bank is a good idea, but he can’t see the bigger picture.
“You made us harvest that fridge-full of freak show,” he continues, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “We collected everything we need for biometrics. We don’t even need to take the guns if we don’t want to make a scene. Why the fuck did you make me carve off his decomposing eyes and fingers if you don’t want to check the bank?”
Koby chuckles by the breakfast bar where he’s stuffing his mouth with bacon. “That was a fun night.”
“It was disgusting,” Broadway huffs, shaking off the clinging memory.
“Are the parts usable?” I ask, lifting a cup to my lips.
