Chapter 21
21
CHARLES
C harles Marskib was completely and utterly enraged.
So very enraged that the baseball bat in his hands would have pulverized Kyott’s skull if he’d been standing in front of him. As it was, his office took the beating because Kyott and his unexploded head were safely on a different continent.
He’d not been so thoroughly pissed in a very long time.
Counting was doing nothing to calm his temper.
Deep breathing did not calm him.
No, no. He was fine. He was thinking again. He could focus now on something other than destroying his once lovely office.
“Sir?” Rage erupted once again at the sound of his employee’s timid voice.
No. He was fine. He was under control. He took classes for this shit. He was in control of his anger. Talk it out. He could talk it out. Charles knew the steps.
“I am not happy, Kyott.” Fucking understatement of the year. “Not fucking happy.”
Charles Marskib had spent a good amount of money on merchandise that his incompetent employees had let run off. A ‘good amount’ of money was a slight under-exaggeration.
“Yes, sir.” Kyott’s voice was a whine made even more grating coming through the speaker of his phone.
He’d spent an obscene amount of money. An obsessive amount of money.
Obsessive was the right word for that and all things Caden Quinn. Absolutely manic obsessive about the bitch he’d bought and paid for that had just up and walked out of his secure compound.
If nothing else, Charles Marskib was self-aware. Aware of his faults, his weaknesses, and just exactly how fucked up he was over one tiny woman. The knowledge that she was out there somewhere having escaped him ate away at his sanity. He’d finally recaptured her. She’d been his for all over seventy-two hours.
“Do you know why I am not happy, Kyott?” He had to think hard about each word to focus enough to speak instead of growl.
“Yes, sir.” He kept saying sir like the word would somehow keep him alive. “Caden Quinn escaped.”
By all rights, the woman should not have even been a blip on his radar. She was nothing. She was a fucking mercenary. Compared to her, he was a goddamned king.
Inconsequential. She was in-fucking-consequential.
So why was the mercenary front and center in his mind every free moment? Why was he obsessing over one little mercenary?
“Explain to me again how you let her walk right out the door?”
He knew the answer to that, though. It was because she didn’t break. No matter how imaginative or depraved or just fucking cruel he’d gotten in the three weeks they’d shared together in those dungeons, she hadn’t broken. Hadn’t even cracked. Only a special kind of person stood up to that kind of horror. A special kind of person that he wanted to have. To keep.
“She had help, sir. She wasn’t alone.” There was a panicked, almost angry pause in which the man did nothing but mush his words and stumble his way through a half-assed explanation. “There was a whole goddamned private army. We weren’t expecting her to have help.”
She’d escaped. Unbroken. And had then eluded him for years. When she’d been put up to bid, it was like his prayers had been answered.
“The help you provided her.”
He could kill them. He could slaughter every single one of the idiots that had let his woman escape. But dead was dead. The dead didn’t learn from their mistakes. Still, he had to count backward from twenty just to get his breathing level again.
“Err...” The sound of the man’s hesitant halting speech put Marskib back on the fence: to kill or not to kill. “I—I didn’t give her any help.” Then he added, “Sir.”
“Do not waste my time, Kyott. You used my men and my compound to capture and detain an ex-government agent.” The same agent that had been on his ass for the last two years.
Charles was in complete control of his rage now. Now he could focus on alternatives and punishments and Caden Quinn.
“I... I thought... I—he was in Moscow. He was right there without any?—”
“Tell me, Ralph. Did I ring you up and say, ‘hey, you know what would be the ultimate birthday present? You know what would make my life complete? Nathan fucking Savage.’ Did I give you explicit instructions to capture and torture the man?”
“No, sir, you didn’t. But I thought?—”
“How about,” a migraine was throbbing to life in his temples, “you tell me what I did instruct you to do.”
“You, uh... You said to keep her. To not let her escape. That’d you be here in seven days.”
“Perfect. Yes. I said that. I gave you the money, the manpower, and the goddamn hidden away compound. And you let her escape.”
“I’m sorry, sir.” A pathetic, useless apology and another gulping pause decided it. Kyott would live until the very moment his use ran out. “I’ll get her back.”
“Oh, you’ll get her back?” He’d spent countless hours and thousands of dollars trying to do that very thing. And then he’d only captured her because she’d been for sale. “So where is she, Ralph?”
“She escaped, sir.”
“I didn’t ask what she did. I asked where she is.” Charles righted the chair he’d chucked in his rage and carefully sat. “You seem to know where to find her. So, please, enlighten me.”
“I... I’ll find her.”
“Okay, so now explain to me why I should allow you to continue breathing.”
There was a sharp inhale and Kyott started sputtering. Charles didn’t usually make threats. Actions speaking louder than words and all that. But he felt like maybe this was a special case. Kyott was proving to be especially stupid. Maybe he’d need it spelled out for him.
“You have not only put my business in danger by detaining and torturing and failing to kill a US government agent, but you’ve also failed to do the one job I assigned you. So tell me Kyott, why is it that you are still alive?”
“I’ll find her.” Kyott’s voice was cold now that he’d masked his terror. “I will.”
“How are you going to do that?” The computer was now trashed. The screen was busted, and the keyboard was in pieces around the room. He’d have to wait to do anything until he got home.
“I’ve got information on her. Information we didn’t have before.” His voice didn’t betray a tremor. “I’ll find her.”
Charles knew that Kyott was lying in an attempt to save his own skin. There was no information on Caden Quinn. No little bits of evidence that pointed in any discernible direction—he knew this for a fact. He’d hired plenty of private detectives to find out that exact fact. Kyott knew that. Kyott was also aware that dangling Caden Quinn’s possible whereabouts in front of him was the only thing that was going to save his life. The enraging part of it was that it was going to work.
“Bring her to me and you’ll live.” Fucking woman. Just like his temper, she was a weakness a man like him could not afford to have.
Charles disconnected the call and counted to ten before he allowed his temper to destroy the phone.
Kyott would most likely run and hide, but a small stupid part of him was holding out that the man really did have new information. Kyott had had her for three days. Maybe she’d let something slip. Maybe she’d left a trail.
It was stupid to hope, he knew, but hope he did. It had already been three days, and the idiot had only just reported. Had she left a trail, which was unlikely, then it was already cold. The woman was a wraith who only surfaced to do quick jobs before she disappeared again. Another ghost was what he needed to catch her.
And he obviously needed to handle the Nathan Savage situation. The thought gave him pause. Savage was supposedly retired. Would he escape with Quinn and hand her over to the powers that be? He’d been told that Caden Quinn had been in bad shape when she’d walked out of his compound. Did she have a chance of escaping that giant pain in the ass?
Forming a mental checklist, Charles picked up his phone again and decided on a course of action. He’d hire someone to torture and kill his disappointing employee after he came back empty-handed.
He also needed to deal with Nathan Savage. Savage was retired, but he was well-liked and connected. If handled improperly, he was going to have a shit-storm of trouble.
As for Caden Quinn, it was only a matter of time. She’d eventually be his again.