Chapter 29
Greer
After Koen and I showered, he left. But not before watching the meeting I had with Agent Helms over and over on a loop and brooding through the cabin like a bull in a china shop.
I took a nap, woke up to the dark cabin, checked my new burner for updates from Koen, and then wound up in the kitchen.
After cooking some frozen ravioli I found and pairing them with a meat sauce, I plop down in Koen’s living room, which looks ordinary despite his outward appearance and otherwise cutthroat personality.
There’s an L-shaped, overstuffed couch, littered with throw pillows that look as if they came stock with the piece of furniture. Its pristine light gray fabric makes me wonder how much time Koen spends out here.
A mahogany coffee table nestles in close, atop a dark, shag throw rug over the wooden floors. It gives the room a cozy feel. The room is rounded out by a massive floor-to-ceiling entertainment center, boasting a flat-screen, a surround-sound system, and what looks like a game station.
I click on the television to find there’s a cable connection readily available and land on the news.
“A string of disappearances has authorities perplexed. A local bar, nestled back in the thick cover of the Oakland National Forest, has come under fire. Sip, as the bar is so eloquently named, is known for its less-than-reputable attendees and has been under the microscope before. Years ago, when the Oakland Nightstalker was on the prowl, Sip was thought to be the place he was hunting, or even the place he was snatching his victims from. No word has come from authorities about this investigation, but we’ll keep you updated with every new detail as it unfolds. Back to you in the studio, Dan.”
The blonde woman standing in front of Sip, a bar I know well since becoming entangled with Koen, fades away as the screen pops back to a man behind a news anchor desk, pristinely dressed in a suit that looks like it costs more than my house.
I sigh and turn the channel.
It’s not until I land on some random late-night sitcom from the 90s that I realize my heart is racing.
My life since hitting Koen has been in tatters. I’ve been a shell of who I used to be since then.
Now, I feel as though I’m blossoming, becoming a version of myself that I thought lost the longer I’m with Koen. I also know I shouldn’t want to be here with him.
It feels as though last night I resigned to my fate, so I swallow my food and snuggle into the couch, letting worries be something I deal with another day, when more about my future is solid.
For all I know, I don’t make it out of this.
I might as well have fun.
At least, that’s what Allison would say.
I’m jostled awake by movement, and I gasp as I come to, flicking my eyes open.
“Koen?” My voice is meek, and I hate the fear that shakes within it.
“It’s me.” He lifts me into his arms. The room is still illuminated by the television show I’d been watching. My discarded dishes cover the coffee table. I glance back at them as he carries me towards the bedroom.
My eyes grow heavy again as the warmth of safety blankets me while a killer carries me to bed.
I nuzzle into his neck. “You smell like cigarettes.”
“I know. I’m going to shower in a minute.”
I bite back a million questions that I don’t think I should ask. The more I know, the more I’m complicit in whatever it is he does, and that’s something I don’t need or want.
Koen tucks me into bed like I’m a precious gem, hovering over me with a strange look in his eyes.
“What?” I ask, running a hand up one of his arms. He’s in his bike jacket, and it’s damp. It must be raining outside.
Sometimes, I hate that he’s such a fucking mystery. Others, I think that’s why I’m attracted to him.
“Nothing.” He shakes away from some thought that grows distant in his eyes as he straightens.
Shutting off the bedroom light, he leaves the room. “Goodnight, poison.”
Tucked into a bed that smells like him and reminded of the way he fucked me here, I close my eyes and drift off, unworried about the way his eyes were haunted or how rigid his body was.
Koen Grady made it this far in life with his demons; he’ll make it another night with them without me prying.
When I wake, the house is silent. Koen’s spot next to me hasn’t been slept in, and the living room has been cleaned when I walk through.
The door to my library, which he built for me, is wide open, but the other doors are shut.
I have a gym key, but that’s not really my thing.
When I get to the surveillance room door, I pause. He liked me in here well enough yesterday, but I don’t know if the door being shut today means something.
Maybe he’s busy?
I knock a few times. “Koen?”
Nothing.
Testing the doorknob, I’m all but sure he can hear my heart beating in overtime in my chest.
It opens, and I tentatively peek inside to find him slumped over in his computer chair, snoring.
I allow myself to linger for a few moments, grinning as I watch him struggle to breathe because of how his head is lolled to the side.
His computer screens have something running, almost like software or code scrolling across two of them. The rest are mainly surveillance of my house, Allison’s house, and somewhere I don’t recognize.
It looks like an office of some kind. People are milling about, and, given that it’s Monday morning, that makes sense.
Movement on one of the screens to the left catches my eye, and I turn my head in time to see men in tactical gear slink through my yard, leaping from a dark, nondescript van as the driver stays in place.
I gasp, which startles Koen.
He jerks awake, knocking me backward. “What are you doing in here?” he growls.
I point toward the feed, where he turns his attention.
“What the fuck now?” he mutters, leaning in. Sitting, his hands work magic over the keys; it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Quickly, he’s moving from camera to camera, finding angles I didn’t know he had in my house as he watches men filter through, presumably looking for me.
“Helms?” I ask him.
“After what I discovered last night, yes. This is Helms.”
Panic sets into my stomach, and I start pacing behind where Koen still seems zeroed in on his many screens.
The ringing of a phone is what brings me back to reality, and I turn the second someone speaks through Koen’s phone.
“You have the intel I asked you for?” Koen barks.
“Not yet, brother. Working my fingers to the bone to get it.”
“The tracker still up?”
“Yeah.”
“Got a location on Helms?”
“Our boy hasn’t moved from the office all day.”
“Someone’s at Greer’s house. Full tactical. Clean job. They were in and out, with minimal damage in three minutes.”
“Shit, man. You move her?”
“She’s with me.”
My mind is racing. Who is this man who knows me by name?
Koen told me he had an associate who would always keep me safe if something happened to him. Why hadn’t I paid attention?
Tears fall down my cheeks like warm rain as I stow my hands in my robe to stop their shaking.
“What’s our play?” the man asks.
“I’m thinking.”
“If Helms knows you’re onto him, he’s going to come for you. You know that. It’s not like he doesn’t know where you are.”
“He won’t come here. He knows better.”
“But you have to surface. When you do, he’ll find you. When he finds you…”
Koen turns, locking his dark, haunted eyes on me. “He’ll take Greer.”
“Exactly.”
Koen blows out a long exhale, leaning back in his chair. His long legs twitch, his boots shoving across the floor as he crosses one ankle over the other. “What the fuck. I should’ve just killed Lasko.”
Shock simmers in my chest. He’s never spoken so openly with me in the room.
“Lasko?! The FBI agent?” I whisper, hoping whoever’s on the phone won’t hear me. “You can’t kill an FBI agent!” I whisper-yell.
Koen grins as the man on the other line laughs. “He can if he’s higher up the food chain, baby.”
I take a step backward. “What does that mean?”
Who the fuck is higher than the FBI?
CIA? Government Ops?
The idea that he could be either has me swallowing over a growing lump of fear that I’m in way over my head with this man.
Still, I watch with rapt attention as his tattooed hand grips the chair arm, folding over it, causing his veins to pop as I bite the inside of my cheek and remember what it feels like to be Koen Grady’s property—to be his fuck toy.
“Poison? You doing alright over there?”
The man on the phone huffs a laugh. “I’ll get back to you when I have something more.”
Koen drops the phone onto the table, standing and stretching with a groan before striding closer and crowding me toward the door.
“Aren’t we worried about the move Helms just made? How he was at my house?”
“No. Not presently. Means I’m doing my job. He’s nervous.”
“Aren’t you supposed to work for him and do as he says? He said you were stalling on a job. Maybe you should just—” My words cut off as Koen lifts me, throwing me over his shoulder as he heads toward a room I’ve never been inside of before.
He fumbles with a key in the lock as the blood rushes to my head.
“I think you should let me worry about the bad guys, and you worry about being a good girl. Sound like a deal?” he says, dropping me back onto my feet in a room with dim lights and the overwhelming scent of leather.
The ceiling is edged in red rope lights, while the rest of the room is lit only by a few dim corner lamps.
A massive bed in the middle of the room looks like something out of the Middle Ages. At the end of the bed, there’s a stock where a person could be restrained by their neck and hands.
Swallowing, my mouth grows drier. My eyes dance around the room, taking in all the toys pristinely displayed. A black leather bench runs the expanse of the room to my right, and there are straps on it for restraining.
A swing hangs from the back right, and in the opposing corner, there’s a lounger that looks to be used with the sexual partner lying on their back.
“This is…” My words trail off as Koen walks closer, lifting the stock.
“Get on the bed.” His tone is dour, nothing like it was a moment ago when he was speaking on the phone.
“Why do I feel like I’m about to be punished?”
“Because you are.”
“What for? I didn’t do anything!” I don’t mean to scream, but fear is lacing with the throb between my thighs, and I don’t quite know how to behave.
“You didn’t? Hmm.” He mocks, his finger on his chin.
Anger roils in my belly, but I know better than to take on Koen. The last time, he left me on the edge of coming, aching and miserable.
Oh, God. I hope he doesn’t mean to do that again…
“Koen, I’m sorry. Whatever I did, I didn’t mean to upset you...”
His dark chuckle follows his steps toward me, his menacing smile pulling his lips into a sinister grin. He backs me toward one of the bed’s four posts. “Remembering how I took you to the edge of bliss and left you there, are you?”
The husk in his tone has me panting, forgetting all about how badly I don’t want him to punish me.
His hands wrap around the post at my back, his muscles bulging, his scent overwhelming me.
“What if I need to punish you, but you did nothing wrong? What if it’s me who’s fucked-up?” he whispers, his forehead pressing against mine.
“You need to punish me?” I breathe.
“Mm. What if I ache to see my marks on your flesh? Would that make you run again, pretty poison?”
“No.” The answer’s out before I can think twice about it, and it’s my truth.
Something about this dark, deranged man calls to me. It’s something I can’t explain, and it’s also something I don’t think I’ll ever explore for fear of coming too close to the darkness in myself that finds solace with him.
“Didn’t even hesitate,” he points out.
My eyes fight to remain open as his presence douses me with the electric feel of our connection, something I’m a sucker for. “I won’t run.”
“Good. I’m tired of chasing after you.”