Chapter Fifteen

Dev stood at her open kitchen door, looking out. The night seemed especially dark. Especially empty. Exhausted after the drama of the day, Scottie was fast asleep in his room. Cord had yet to explain himself. He’d been on and off his cell most of the evening, talking with his guys. Stevie “Wonder” James had been by, but hadn’t stayed long, just enough to tell Cord that this—whatever this was—was bigger than the two of them. That they’d really stepped in a pile of shit this time.

How well Dev knew. She’d Googled the Khadeem name and came up against the intimidating profile of a very wealthy, very powerful Mideastern family. Not only did Lianna’s father, Farraq Khadeem, own the entire peninsula that extended into the Persian Gulf, he also owned one of the world’s richest oil conglomerates. With three sons by his first wife, and five sons by his second, Lianna’s mother, the man dabbled in investments that had doubled his wealth over the last two months. Two months! He seemed to have everything, but obviously, that wasn’t enough, or he wouldn’t have given his only daughter to a known pedophile and a serial rapist, would he?

In every news photo of him that Dev located, Farraq Khadeem looked every bit the part of an arrogant man. His nostrils flared as if he challenged all reporters and photographers, both Saudi and foreign. He interrupted interviews, and he sneered when he spoke, as if everyone were beneath him. His face seemed ever wrinkled with permanent disgust, making his hawkish nose more pronounced.

The white, flowing robes he wore lent the usual mystique that other leaders in that part of the world exhibited, but Khadeem’s dark eyes never smiled. There was no illusion of graciousness to anything he said or did. The man even walked like an apex predator as if people everywhere had better get out of his way.

His wives’ faces had never been photographed, and the women were not seen in public. His daughter, Lianna, was the only one who’d accompanied him on diplomatic visits. Even then, walking briskly with her at his side, he rarely glanced her way. If anything, it was as if he was the important one. Not her.

In every aspect, he portrayed a powerful man—at least, a man who thought he was powerful—yet not a one of his tall, dark, and handsome sons were ever seen with him. Instead, one very blonde woman, whom Dev learned, would one day inherit his kingdom, always accompanied Khadeem.

Dev couldn’t locate anything on the two women Farraq had married, but Lianna’s mother had to be of European descent. There was no record of a wedding anywhere Dev looked, yet it seemed obvious. As dark as Khadeem’s skin and hair were, as dark-skinned as his sons were, there had to have been a white woman—somewhere—in Khadeem’s past.

Dev had also Googled Basheer Bagani. Though not directly related to the reigning kingdom of Saudi Arabia, there was enough royal blood in his line to merit the title he flashed around the world. Ugly rumors and accusations surfed the swells of his shadowy wake. It seemed playboy Basheer particularly liked the energy of high-roller cities. Las Vegas, Nevada. Atlantic City, New Jersey. Monte Carlo, Monaco. Macau, China. He enjoyed being seen and photographed with call girls, showgirls, and supermodels, their ages unimportant. While he flaunted his illicit contacts, police reports abounded, yet the Teflon-coated snake had avoided indictments in several countries, the latest in Ireland.

The puzzle remained. How had Lianna, a woman of seemingly protected, noble birth, ended up in the basement prison of a depraved human trafficker? Perish the thought.

Chills raced up Dev’s spine at what she herself had lived through in that dark, dank place. There’d been no lights when she’d come to that night, on what had smelled and felt like a concrete basement floor. She’d never seen the actual structure of her prison after she’d been jostled off the streets of Havana and shoved into a nearby rusted-out van by two random guys, not after they’d pulled a burlap bag over her head. Then one of those big, brave men had knocked her out.

Why they’d taken Gru along with her became apparent when she came to, and someone struck a match to the kerosene lantern hanging on a chain from the ceiling of the squalid room. Gru had been crammed into a wire cage dangling from the same ceiling. Over a bed of coals.

She’d screamed and wished she’d left her handsome pet home. They’d laughed. Then things got ugly. Instead of torturing Gru like Dev thought, they’d left him to hiss and cook, while they’d dragged another screaming woman out of her cell and bent her over the metal rail at one end of the rounded room. Dev had watched as the men took turns with the poor woman. While Gru squealed and grunted in pain, she’d watched in morbid fascination at what would surely happen next—to her.

By sheer coincidence, Ryland “Sonic” DeLorenzo had been on the same Havana street that day. He’d seen Dev’s broad daylight abduction, then tracked the men who’d kidnapped her. In hours, Cord had shown up in all his big brotherly glory, armed to the teeth, and glowing with nuclear rage. How Montego’s dirty little secret still stood after the barrage of hellfire he’d let loose in that cramped Cuban basement prison remained a mystery. Cord meant to kill anything that moved that night, and Dev was okay with it. All she’d wanted was to be safe at home.

While Cord had grabbed Montego’s rape victim on their dash to freedom, Dev grabbed Gru’s cage and ran like Cord told her to—like Hell was on her heels. She never looked behind her, just ran all the way to the beach, over sand and stone, until she leapt into that lifesaving boat where Miguel waited. Her feet were cut and bleeding by then, but Gru was safe and wet rubber had never smelled as sweet as it did that night.

But poor Lianna was different. She had been tortured. She couldn’t have walked, much less run, which meant someone carried her out of Montego’s lair. Dev wondered which of Cord’s guys had that honor. But how exactly had they known she was there? Had anyone? The order to rescue these women hadn’t come from Uncle George this time. Then who?

“Get it done,” Cord growled into his phone. “You should’ve been straight with me from the get-go, damn it, Rabbit.”

Dev stepped out into the night, missing Gru. Missing Seth. But not needing Cord’s steady angst in her ear. He’d been adamant to the point of hostility that she lose Soldier Boy—his tag for Seth—once and for all. Cord said he’d tell her what was going on as soon as he heard from Cleve “Rabbit” Miller, one of his guys. But Cord was on the phone with Cleve now, and getting angrier by the minute.

Lowering to the single concrete step off her kitchen, Dev left her brother’s foul mood behind. She had bigger, more mundane problems. Rent. All of her dreams sat behind her in the little bungalow that wasn’t really hers, but needed paint. The rent came due in three days. She’d never been late before, but she worried now. And food. She’d given everything in her cupboards away this morning. The refrigerator was bare. Breakfast would be dry cereal because she had no more milk. No coffee. No juice. Scottie had eaten dry cereal before, but damn it. Dry cereal was a fun treat when it was his idea, but when it was the only thing to eat? This was no life for a child.

A match struck to Dev’s right, and Trish’s face came out of nowhere. “Soldier boy go home?” she asked, blowing a puff of cigarette smoke upward. Cigarette smokers always did that, as if they could ever send second-hand smoke high enough to not hurt the people around them. Trish didn’t smoke often. She must be upset.

“He won’t be back,” Dev said simply. “How’s Miguel?”

Trish didn’t need to know how Seth’s departure had hurt or the look of betrayal in his soft brown eyes when Dev let him down. But Cord had been so fierce, insisting there were things going on that Soldier Boy had no business knowing. That one more operator was a definite no-go. But seriously, all Seth had done since he’d shown up was help. He hadn’t pried, just followed Cord’s orders and put up with his shitty attitude and his bad language.

“Skippy’s fine,” Trish replied, her gaze on the billowing fumes she’d just spewed at heaven. “One fragment splintered off his collarbone into his pec. Stupid man refused painkillers.”

“You like him.”

Trish grunted. “Maybe.” Another puff of leftover nicotine hit the night air. Another lie along with it.

“Maybe, nothing.” Dev arched her back, tired of being tired. “I see the way you look at him. He’s different and you know it.”

Another puff and another indifferent, “Maybe.”

Dev turned to look at her friend. “I think you and he would make a good couple. He’s obviously smitten with you, though I’m not certain why. You’re so hard on him. You’re mean. Even when he’s wounded and flirting with you, you still put him down.”

Trish’s shoulders lifted. “It’s a gift.”

“You call him Skippy?”

By then Trish had taken a seat next to Dev. “I call him a lot of things. The guy’s a jerk.”

“All guys are jerks,” Dev answered, not sure if she meant Miguel or Cord at that precise moment. For sure not Seth. The only mistake he’d made as far as Dev knew had been hanging onto the memory of his dead fiancée too long. Even that wasn’t so bad. It spoke of dedication and honor. Of a good man’s broken heart. A man who loved that deeply was a rare find indeed. And because of that ornery Marine blustering on the phone in the house behind her, she’d told Seth to get lost. It didn’t seem a fair trade.

“You’re sure quiet.”

Dev didn’t dare look at Trish. “Yeah, well, it’s been a long day. Aldrich wasn’t happy filling my shift on short notice.”

“He give you any shit?”

“He said there’d better not be a next time. You ever feel like you’re burning the candle at both ends, while you’re running out of wax in the middle? That nothing you do is good enough? That everyone wants a piece of you until there are no pieces left?”

“Yeah. When I lost Evan.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not my…” What else could Dev say? Losing the husband you loved, watching him waste away day after day because his heart had never been strong, was infinitely worse than losing a minimum wage job pushing crab cakes. “Please forgive me. It’s not my place to tell you how to feel about Miguel. I had no right to complain.”

Trish’s warm hand landed on Dev’s wrist. “’S okay, Devereaux. You meant nothing by it, and I’m glad you think Miguel’s got his eye on me. For so long I’ve dreamed…” She sent another puff into the night. “Let’s just say that it takes a while, you know? Part of me’s still stuck in the past with Evan. When I wake up in the morning, I expect to see him beside me like when he was healthy. He used to roll over in bed and grin at me, his hair tousled and his eyes bright, and you know. He’d get frisky. We’d make love, fall back to sleep and start all over again.”

Man, how would that be, to have loved someone so perfectly, even for a day? Dev honestly didn’t know. The only one who’d ever truly had her back was Cord. And Seth…

Trish swallowed hard enough that Dev heard it in the quiet night. “Never thought I’d be the one to be left behind, not like I was. Not after all we went through together. Always, right up ’til the end, I knew he’d get better. I just knew.” She stabbed the cigarette butt into the side of the step. “But I was wrong. It’s hard to trust yourself once you’ve been wrong like that. Don’t think I could handle another…” She let her heartache trail away.

“Seth was engaged,” Dev whispered, not sure she wanted to share her feelings about him with Trish.

Right on cue, Trish grunted. “Was or is?” she asked, her tone sharp with sarcasm.

She could be a hard woman. She said what she meant, usually with a take no prisoners attitude, a hearty ‘what’s it to you, wise guy?’ and plenty of venom. An early death hadn’t just taken her husband. It had left her traumatized and angry. In a way, she was just like the women Dev had served and waited on today. Trish was in recovery.

“Was. His fiancée, Katelynn, died five years ago. In a car crash. He, umm, still loves her.”

“Like I said, jerk.”

“You’re probably right.” Dev refused to argue. When Trish turned pensive like she was tonight, nothing anyone said got through to her. Which was probably best, since Seth wouldn’t be back, not after the way Dev had hurt him. There was nothing to argue about.

Trish blew another plume up to heaven. “You love him?”

Stupid question. “Who me?” Dev scoffed. “I just met him last night, so that answer would be not only no, but hell—”

“Yep. You love him.”

“I do not.” Dev eyed her friendly, prickly bestie. “How can you even ask that after what I’ve been through with James?”

“Because you’re better than me, Dev. You give your heart away to everyone you meet. You do. James was a fool not to have seen what he could’ve had with you and Scottie, but Seth…” Trish lifted another cancer stick to her lips, covered her mouth as she sparked another match and blew the first fragrant puff away from Dev. “Uncle George’s nephew couldn’t take his eyes off you today. Trust me. I was watching. It was easy to see he thought you hung the moon.”

Oh, that was rich, wasn’t it? “You are the pot calling the kettle black, girlfriend,” Dev chided. “Did you hear me when I said we’d just met? As in midnight, last night? And what about Miguel watching you this morning? As much pain as he was in, that man flirted with you like it was his one and only chance to make you smile. That kind of attention is something you can absolutely count on, yet you ignore it like it’s nothing. What’s in that thing you’re smoking? Hash?”

Another smoke signal went skyward with a melancholy, “I wish.”

An empty kind of silence enveloped the yard, where once a lumbering iguana had made his home. Where once a little boy had delighted in his lizard friend’s forays into the shrubs and up the trees. Dev attempted to salvage the night. “You’re not alone, Trish. You’ve got friends.”

“No, I don’t. Don’t need them. Don’t want them. Only one I like is you.”

That raised Dev’s brows up to her hairline. “Me?”

Trish dropped the barely smoked cigarette to the packed dirt between her sandaled feet and ground it out with her heel. “Yeah, you. You’re… safe. I don’t have to brush my hair in the morning if I don’t want to, don’t have to dress up to impress you. I’m okay the way I am. I’m…” She licked her bottom lip. “…enough. You never judge. You just love people. Yeah, it gets you into trouble sometimes, but that’s who you are. You’re… nice.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, nice people finish last. Look around. I’m not exactly living on the edge, unless it’s the edge of poverty.”

“Which proves my point.” With an unladylike grunt, Trish pushed to her feet. “You don’t have to live like this, but you choose to because you know what it’s like to be where every last one of those women and girls you fed and hugged today were before they came to your place. You know what it’s like to be in their shoes. You might not be smart, but you are nice.”

Dev waved her off. “Enough with the compliments. I get it. I’m nice and dumb. I just can’t…” She looked up into the dark sky, thinking of a man with seriously sexy eyes, seeing the hurt in them, the—something else—she hadn’t yet defined. It wasn’t regret lurking in Seth’s dark eyes, as much as… acceptance? Exactly. That was what had shadowed his eyes, as if long ago—possibly five long years ago—Seth had accepted the single most traumatic loss of his life. As if he’d fully expected her to turn away because everyone else had. As if he knew he deserved nothing but the ghost of the one woman who hadn’t left, the woman he still loved.

Her fingers lifted to her throat at the thought of him out there and alone on his uncle’s island. All she’d given Seth to remember her by was the body of a dead iguana. “I’m not nice,” she whispered to her friend. “I’m a bitch.”

That earned her a snort. “That’d be the day,” Trish bit out as she turned to make her way to her bungalow. “I’m the bitch, remember. You’re Goody Two Shoes.” She loved getting in the last word. Dev didn’t have to wait long.

“Call if either Miguel or that mystery woman run fevers. And don’t let Cord screw this thing with you and Seth up like he’s done with the rest of your life. You’re not one of his soldiers, so stop acting like one. You’re a mother and you owe your son more than you owe that bully you call a brother. Seems like you’re the one who needs to be rescued.”

“Who, me?” Dev could barely make out her friend’s face in the shadows. “Who do I need to be rescued from? Besides Sly?”

Another grunt came from the gate that separated her tiny backyard and Trish’s. “I meant Cord, Devereaux. Answer me this if you’re so smart. If Seth’s been faithful to a dead woman all this time, how long do you think he’ll be faithful to you?”