Chapter Sixteen
Harley
The outside world was a revelation.
Harley had never been so grateful to feel a breeze stirring her hair or the sun on her skin. She didn’t even care that she was likely going to burn without sunscreen if they were out for longer than an hour or two. All she wanted to do was lie down in the grass, spread her arms and legs like a starfish, suck the sea air deep into her lungs, and soak in the healing power of sunshine—the opposite of the glaring fluorescents that had sucked the life out of her inside her cell.
Instead, she marched sedately along in front of Clay, keeping her expression neutral and her joy at being let out of her cage to herself. She would not share her emotions with him, she would not show weakness or vulnerability, and she would not give any sign that she was ready to run at the first sign of a break in his focus.
Though he undoubtedly knew that. He’d come into her cell with a Taser, for God’s sake. He still had the weapon in hand and aimed between her shoulder blades, obviously having realized that she wouldn’t be able to sever the current’s connection if he shot her from behind.
She couldn’t believe she’d overcome the nervous system overload the first time around. She’d just been so angry and so focused on getting out and getting to Jasper that somehow she’d convinced her arm to move.
Time was growing short.
Marlowe’s men would be showing up at her bungalow by the beach soon. She had to make sure she had safely disposed of every trace of Jasper’s existence before they arrived. Even if she couldn’t have the sculptures ready, at the very least, she had to make sure there was nothing left at the house to lead them to her son.
Considering Clay seemed determined to keep her here indefinitely, it looked like there was only one way that was going to happen.
“You have to go back to my house on Ko Tao,” she said as they started down the dirt trail leading into the rainforest. “I was supposed to ship my next batch of statues last Friday. If they don’t arrive at their destinations by the tenth, Marlowe will send a team to find out why. You have to make sure Jasper’s room is empty and all signs that he was ever at the house are gone before they get there.”
“So you really have kept Jasper a secret,” Clay said, his voice as calm and unmoved as it had been since the moment he appeared in her cell.
If she hadn’t seen the telltale bulge at the front of his shorts, she would have believed he’d been indifferent to her little show.
But she had seen it. He still wanted her and she intended to use that weakness against him at the first opportunity. She just had to make sure she kept her own weakness for him under lock and key. Focusing on Jasper was the best way to do that.
“Yes. I told you, nothing is more important to me than Jasper. His safety and happiness are my first priority.”
Clay grunted softly. “If that were true, you would have warned me that I needed to take care of clean up before now. At this point, there’s no way I could get to your house before Marlowe’s people. It’s already the sixteenth.”
Harley spun to face him, staggering to a stop in the middle of the trail as her blood ran cold. “What?”
“Today is June sixteenth,” he repeated, his eyes flat, unreadable. “You were in the cell for two weeks.”
Her jaw dropped.
She couldn’t help herself. She had estimated a week at the very most.
No. She shook her head slowly back and forth. There was no way she’d lost two weeks of her life. It couldn’t have been that long.
“You’re lying,” she said, fresh anger surging hotly inside her chest. “You’re lying to get me to tell you where Jasper is.”
“I’m not lying. See for yourself.” He reached for the strap of his watch. When it slipped free, he tossed it to her, keeping the stun gun aimed at her chest as he moved.
She caught the black band and twisted it in her fingers, glancing down to see the display insisting it was ten fifteen in the morning on June sixteenth.
Her mouth went dry, terror and rage fighting for supremacy. “You could have rigged this,” she said, but the accusation sounded far-fetched, even to her own ears.
“I could have, but I didn’t.” He shifted closer. “Which means that Marlowe either already knows that you’re missing or he will know very soon. And he will also know that you have a son you’ve been hiding from him.”
He paused, giving that miserable knowledge a moment to sink in.
As if she needed it. She’d had nightmares about Marlowe discovering Jasper’s existence for years.
“Understanding Marlowe the way I do,” he continued in that infuriatingly calm voice, “I’m sure he’ll begin searching for both of you immediately. You’re going to be hard to find. Jasper…” His head tilted to one side and then the other. “Maybe not so hard, not for someone with the web of connections your boss has.”
Harley swallowed, forcing her saliva down her throat. The muscles there had stopped hurting several days ago—maybe a week ago, she realized, her head spinning as the time she’d lost hit her all over again—but the flesh suddenly felt bruised again.
She had fucked up. Clay was right. She should have told him about the need for cleanup sooner. Maybe he would have listened. He seemed to want Jasper safe, even if he was going about it all wrong.
“It’s okay,” he said, his voice gentler than it had been since they arrived on the island. “You held up better in there than anyone I’ve ever seen, but the cell fucks with your head. It’s no wonder you weren’t thinking straight.”
Her eyes squeezed shut. His kindness hurt more than his anger, but he probably knew that, too.
He was clearly no newbie to any of this sick, twisted shit.
“What are you?” She forced her eyes open, fighting the panic and fear swelling inside her. “The DEA doesn’t have secret prisons in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand. And not even the FBI is this fucked up. So I’m guessing, what—CIA?”
He inclined his head. It wasn’t an answer, but it was close enough.
So he was CIA. Or at least he used to be. She couldn’t imagine even the CIA condoning an agent kidnapping and imprisoning his former fiancée. And if they had, they would want information on Marlowe, not Jasper.
“But they don’t know you’re here,” she said, crossing her arms at her chest. “Have you gone rogue, Clay? That’s what they call it, right? When an operative cracks and goes off the rails.”
“Why would you think that?” he asked, his lips curving.
“If you weren’t off the rails, we wouldn’t be the only ones on the island, and the furniture in the cottage and the counters in the pharmacy wouldn’t have been covered with dust,” she said, determined to banish his cocky grin. “You’re here without permission, using a government facility to carry out a personal vendetta. If your superiors or your former boss or whoever finds out, I can’t imagine that will go well for you.”
“You’re part of a case I’ve been working on for a long time,” he said, his voice still calm. “And I have the liberty to carry out investigations the way I see fit.”
His smile soured at the edges. “It’s ironic really. I’ve been close to learning you were alive for so many years. Even if I hadn’t been keeping an eye on Jackson and he hadn’t found your sister, our paths would have crossed sooner or later. Probably sooner now that my team is closing in on the cartel.”
“Guess we were meant to be,” Harley said through gritted teeth.
“All of Marlowe’s people will be spending the rest of their lives in prison,” he said, his gaze shifting pointedly over her shoulder, toward the main building and the cell he’d used to torture her. “All that remains to be seen is if you’ll end up in a place like this or back in the States where you’ll have access to a lawyer and at least a shot in hell of seeing freedom before you’re too old to enjoy it.”
She narrowed her eyes, searching his face. “Were you always this good at lying? Was I just too naïve to see it when we were younger?”
“Naïve isn’t a word I would use to describe you at any age,” he said dryly. “And I’m not lying.”
He paused, something she couldn’t read flickering in his eyes. “But I do feel bad for what happened between us that first day. That was never part of the plan. And you’re right, my superiors wouldn’t be happy to learn I fucked a woman I’m supposed to be interrogating.”
He let the Taser drop slowly to his side. “Because of that, I’m willing to offer you a deal.”
A deal. Another deal with another devil.
She was never going to escape them. She was doomed to spend her life passing out of one fire and into the next, descending through the levels of hell, meeting the men who were its masters.
Looking at Clay now, seeing the sunlight filtering through the trees catching his sandy blond hair, transforming it into a golden halo, she wondered if maybe she’d finally found rock bottom.
Lucifer, the king of hell, the prince of lies, was supposed to be beautiful, wasn’t he? Like Clay?
Beautiful and smooth and seductive until the moment he betrayed you to the death and worse. It was the beauty that made the betrayal truly heinous, which made it so exquisitely terrible when he took your hand and led you into the fire.