4
Linc’s body went rigid in the folding chair before the window, green orbs widening behind the lenses of his binoculars. Something willed him to lower the instrument from his eyes, but a stronger part of him couldn’t surrender the vision before him for long. The sight of Mia Ali’s svelte, naked form—even more beautiful than the tight evening gowns she was famous for had always promised—was too captivating to relinquish. The binoculars were back on his eyes in a flash as Malik pulled her gold dress down to her feet. Her panties came down next.
Linc breathing grew faint, making his chest heave. Completing a full breath past his hammering heart proved a battle hard won as blood gushed through his veins so ferociously they nearly made mountains under his skin. He tried to swallow back the lump in his throat as Malik suckled each of Mia’s dark nipples until they were erect, licking every inch of her body as he feverishly removed his own clothes.
Linc cringed at the loving smile on Mia’s face. How the hell could any woman with a lick of self-respect or compassion smile at that monster? Just more proof that a gorgeous face didn’t guarantee that the same beautiful vision lingered deep inside. Clearly, Mia Ali was just as savage a creature as her husband, which was why Linc didn’t bat an eye when Malik yanked her body toward the window of the closet. He didn’t flinch when Malik exposed her naked form to every security guard lingering in the grass below, all of whom were surely getting an eyeful. He didn’t care about the shame she must feel, having her husband expose her so indecently.
Perhaps she even liked it.
The shining smile remained on her lips as Malik moved her closer to the window, persevering through each of his tongue-fueled kisses. It wasn’t until Malik turned Mia and slammed her against the floor-to-ceiling window that the smile vanished from her lips, leaving her face and eyes completely vacant. Like an empty canvas.
Linc jolted, mouth falling as she transformed in the blink of an eye. Her face alight with a beaming smile one second and darkened with black clouds the next. Clouds almost as eerie and clandestine as the ominous masses looming overhead in the starless night sky. A cold chill raced down his spine when the desolate look not only remained on her face but slowly evolved, her lips curling down at the corners, eyes utterly devoid of feeling. The only sign of life was her manicured nails digging into the glass, so hard the acrylic tips seemed moments from breaking away.
Malik entered her violently, causing her ample breasts, her cheekbone, and the tips of her fingers to slam into the glass. She jammed her eyes closed as he fucked her. A single tear racing down her cheek. It got smashed between her skin and the window, leaving a streak of moisture across the glass. She clenched her teeth as if she were in pain.
Was she even wet?
Linc lowered the binoculars, frowning, and then he rebounded, placing them back over his eyes, reclaiming the sight once more.
It was wrong to watch, but a man still haunted by the memory of the last wisps of life shuddering out of his wife’s body, still haunted by the flash of curly blonde hair in the top story window, and still blackened by just as many foreboding clouds as the ones staining Mia’s eyes at that moment… he hoped she was hurting. He hoped she hurt the same way his wife had hurt for the five long years she’d been trafficked against her will. He hoped she hurt the same way his daughter had surely been hurt.
Did she know his daughter was in that house?
His stomach tightened into a million knots.
Malik’s thrusts grew more savage as the minutes drew on, and Mia’s tears continued falling, but Linc felt no pity. The anger pumping through his veins wouldn’t allow it. All he could feel was what any man who hadn’t fucked a woman in six years would feel. All he could feel was the warmth of Mia’s skin against his as if it were his hands on her body and not Malik’s. All he could feel was the warmth of her wet pussy tugging at the erection aching against the zipper of his jeans. All he could hear were her breathy moans, rising in volume and ferocity with every thrust she took, charred with the tiniest hint of pain at its core. All he could smell was the fresh scent of her hair as if it were his own nose buried inside it, along with the carnal scent surely wafting from between her thighs as the velvety flesh of her pussy grew slick with her own unexpected desire.
His raging dick swelled larger, leaving a sizable dent in his jeans, which had grown so taut he worried it might rip right through the denim.
The rustle that sounded behind him, however, made him go flaccid in an instant. In an instant, the pistol he’d lodged in the waistband of his jeans was in his hand, and he’d swiveled in his chair, aiming the barrel of the gun in the direction of the unexpected noise, nostrils flared like a feral animal.
Jason O’Malley, a six-foot tall Anglo in his early thirties but already balding prematurely, froze mid-step and held his hands up the moment Linc primed the gun in his direction. He wobbled atop in the uneven rubble he’d been trudging through a moment earlier—rubble that had left his shiny Italian shoes but a shell of their former selves, saturated with the dirt and dust that dominated that entire house. His black suit hadn’t survived the gritty perils of the long abandoned house either, a layer of dust clinging to the fine fabric, making his stark white pocket square look almost cream-colored.
“Easy,” Jason breathed, low and scratchy.
Exhaling, Linc lowered the gun and turned back toward the window. “You almost lost your life. Woulda hated to see you dirty up your precious Armani suit.”
“Little late for that,” Jason grumbled, swiping away the stubborn dust speckles that still clung to his jacket. His shoes crunched on the gravelly floor as he came up next to the chair, adjusting his tie before bending down to seize the binoculars still clutched in Linc’s hand. Facing the window, Jason pressed the lenses to his hazel eyes to look across the street. “So hypnotized by whatever the hell you were watching you didn’t even hear me coming. This I gotta—”
Linc saw the exact moment Jason hit the bull’s-eye.
“—see.” A knowingly smirk spread across Jason’s slim lips, making his long dimples poke out through the low-cut beard that shadowed his jaw. “Quite the view you’ve got there.” He tossed the binoculars into Linc’s lap. “Bloody pervert.”
Linc caught the binoculars, cringing up at him. “Being a duel-citizen doesn’t mean you’re allowed to say ‘bloody’, a’ight? Don’t forget I grew up down the street from you in Shadow Rock.”
“How could I forget? Left that godforsaken island nearly a decade ago and still have nightmares about it.” Jason moved to the window, swiped away more dust and debris that had collected on the ledge before leaning against it, crossing his arms over his chest and his legs at the ankles. He took a deep breath before nodding to Linc. “Still going through with it?”
“Yes, and if you’re here to give me another lecture, I’m good on that.”
“No lectures.” Jason held his hands in the air before crossing his arms once more. “Just because I sit behind a desk now doesn’t mean a world teeming with shades of gray has suddenly become black-and-white. At least not to me.”
Linc snuck a look up at him, raising his left eyebrow, which had a deep scar in the middle that sliced it right in half.
Jason stared at that marred eyebrow, as many often did. “I know this is what you feel you have to do to get her back—to finally be free from the hell of worrying about her twenty-four-seven. I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to sit here, knowing she’s just down the street. Having no way to get to her without getting yourself killed or arrested. I understand. I didn’t come here to talk you out of anything.”
“Then why’d you come?”
Jason let a long silence fall, giving him a look that ensured he really hadn’t forgotten that they’d grown up together on a poverty-stricken hillside in California. Nor had he forgotten the years they’d spent working side by side in that city’s only police precinct. “I’ve done everything I could to help you get Emma back. But this…” He shook his head softly. “If you go through with this… I can’t help you anymore.”
A muscle under Linc’s jaw rolled, staring out of the window, the Ali estate but a spec in the distance without his binoculars. “I know.”
“At most, I can buy you a round once it’s all over.”
Linc breathed out a laugh that flared his nostrils. “Last round was the reason I fucked up my chance to save her the first time. I’ll never take another swallow. No matter how bad I want it.”
Jason gave a sideways grin at the memory of Linc’s disastrous ‘last round’. “The fucked up part about a drunk hitting rock bottom is he doesn’t see the ground coming before he plows into it headfirst. It’s also the reason he usually survives the fall. Too buzzed to go rigid in fear of the hit. Part of me worries you might go rigid tonight… and it’ll backfire.”
“This your idea of not lecturing?”
Jason lifted his chin, chest rising. “There’ll be roadblocks set up on the south side of the pavilion from east to west. The mayor’s security will be swarming every door. Back alley’s your only shot, and even then you might run into trouble. Once you’re out—if you get out—be sure to take the northern or southern route once you come off the A100. Northern, preferably. It’s your only prayer.”
Linc smirked, somewhat offended that Jason assumed he didn’t already know all of this.
Jason pushed off the wall and began moving away, patting Linc’s shoulder as he passed. “Try not to set all of England on fire, huh?”
Linc licked his top teeth, his heated green eyes trained forward.
Rubbish crunched under Jason’s shoes as he continued making his way out of the room.
Linc craned his neck, looking over his shoulder at Jason’s retreating figure. “You really think clapping like a seal for NCA Intelligence is gonna get you to your kid faster than setting England on fire will get me to mine?”
Jason stilled in the middle of the room, lingering with his back to Linc, his shiny shoes still teetering atop the debris. For a long moment, he kept his back turned, his shoulders rising as he drew in a breath so deep the sound penetrated the walls.
Then, Jason looked over his shoulder, his eyes searing to their corners and meeting Linc’s. “Some men go over the wall; some men go under it…” He leered as if he couldn’t decide whether Linc was insane, brilliant, or both. “And some just smash right through it. Which man is right and which man is wrong? Which man is virtuous and which one wicked? Which man lives to hug his child again… and which one dies before he gets the chance?”
Linc’s jaw clenched.
Jason turned and began out of the living room once more.
Linc watched him go, his heart in his throat.
The raining shower head in the ceiling was larger than Mia’s entire body, encasing her in a waterfall of scalding water. Growing hotter by the moment, the water seemed powerful enough to melt skin from bone, but Mia still reached out, head thrown back, eyes fluttered closed, and turned the handle against the wall, taking the water from scorching to sizzling.
She opened her eyes and let it singe her irises, blurring her vision as she faced the shower’s north wall, which had been built all in glass, leaving it open to the opulent master bedroom that sat on the other side. Some nights Malik would lay atop the gold duvet of the king sized bed with his head propped up on the pillow and just stare at her as she showered. One of the many reasons she’d become accustomed to piping hot showers. It created steam strong enough to fog up the entire window. That evening, however, the master bedroom went empty, leaving her to cleanse in solitude.
Pumping a handful of soap from the stainless steel dispenser riveted to the white marble walls, she closed her eyes once more, praying the drain swirling below her feet—inhaling every drop of water that dripping from her sopping hair and moist brown skin—would suck her in too.
Malik’s bulging orbs fell down her body, watching his hands in the mirror as he stroked her waist up and down.
Mia rubbed her soapy hands vigorously along her waist as she thought of Malik caressing it just minutes earlier in her closet, waiting until she’d built up a good lather before she dug her nails in, making sink holes in her skin, and scratching as hard as she could, as if trying to dig caverns that would allow the soap to enter her body.
His roaming hands lingered on the gold mesh cutouts at the ribcage of her dress.
A scowl curled her face as she rubbed more soap into the valley beneath her breasts, scrubbing as hard as she could, digging her nails in, deeper. Harder.
Malik cupped Mia’s breasts in his hands and buried his lips in the crook of her neck.
Her nails scraped at her breasts, leaving claw marks in the thick sudsy soap, and then her neck as well, nostrils flaring as she worked. Every second the steam multiplied and rose up to greet her, making it harder to breathe, leaving her gasping in each strangled breath as she extracted more cleanser from the dispenser.
His fingers, slim as a skeleton, tickled down her shoulders.
Her soapy nails gouged at her shoulders, full lips curled down as her breaths moved to gasps, unable to tell if the droplets gathering all over her skin was water or sweat.
He gripped her thigh where her scar lived. His tongue darted out, and he gave it a long, languid lick, leaving a sheen of his saliva over the raised lesion.
She heaved softly, her heartbeat picking up as she scratched the soap into her scar, so heartily she felt moments from unearthing it straight from her body. She rid the toxins from the rest of her body with just as much vigor, her hair, her pussy, even the valleys in the middle of her toes, and she didn’t stop until every inch of her wasn’t just covered with soap, but with streaks of red in the wake of her fervent scrapes.
And even then, she didn’t feel clean.