23. April 13, 2023
Demon
They walked in silence until they were around the first curve in the path, out of view of the buildings. “So… what did you see?” she asked him.
“The security is pretty high for a banana plantation. They even had cameras out in the lunch area.”
“Looking for tells on business deals? Or just general paranoia?”
“Definitely the former. Probably both.” He paused, turning her into his arms and ducking his head into her neck just below her ear.
“They also have them here on the path. If we keep our voices pitched lower and obviously quieter, they won’t be able to pick up sound.
I’ll keep us turned so they can’t read our lips. ”
“Got it.”
“Not that making love to your neck is a hardship,” he admitted. His lips traveled down the cord from under her ear to her throat .
“Just my neck?”
“I don’t think you want the rest on camera. I’m saving my best moves for later in private.”
After grabbing his earlobe with her teeth and giving it a soft nip, she whispered, “I look forward to it. Besides cameras, what did you see?”
“They hustled us through that tour. Nobody asked us if we had questions. It took effort to insert them in Deschamps’ monologues. And everything felt very much for show.”
“You think all those people we saw working were acting?”
“No. I don’t mean that way. If I were a betting man?—”
“Which you are,” she reminded him.
“If I were a betting man,” he repeated, “I’d say those were honest-to-god workers. But there’s something else going on here, Cherry. You remember those boxes Nemo and Steel found in Sallum? And the one they found Flame in back home?”
She buried her face in his chest as his hands wandered to her spine, his fingertips lightly dragging up and down the vertebrae. “You saw some here?”
“Yeah, pretty sure. They were traveling in that elevator. I was watching the numbers. The carriage came from upstairs, and the main door opened briefly on the main floor. I think it was an accident because as soon as the guy in the elevator saw us, he inhaled pretty sharply, and his eyes went wide. He couldn’t manually close those doors fast enough. Then it continued downstairs.”
He kissed the top of her head, then framed her face.
He was within a breath of touching her lips when he spoke, his palms hiding that he was talking.
“Think about it. The main floor is a clean facility. Place is soundproofed. The building is new and modernized. Lots of scientific equipment.” He turned her sideways, his arm over her shoulder, and pulled her tight to his side, tucking her face into his chest again.
“I suspect those elevators go to more than one underground floor.
They probably have tunnels connecting the buildings underground.
They could easily move anything that way.
“Plus, boxes were being loaded out from a truck out back. He passed it off as a truck moving compost. You wouldn’t use a box truck for that.
You’d use a dump truck. Plus, the boxes had markings showing medical supplies.
You wouldn’t need any of that for splicing plants and developing natural fertilizers. ”
She thought about his observations and conclusions for a moment, drawing the lines from A to B and all the way through to Z.
“So they’re using purchased women for breeding, and they’re using the upper floor as a hospital where they’re delivering the children.
When the children are born, they kill the mothers.
Then they remove the bodies through the same coffins to what? A burn facility?”
“Probably right here on the grounds. Less they have to move off the grounds, the better. We need to get on those other floors and look around. Need to think about how to manage that.” He kissed the top of her head again.
“I need you to stick extra close, fireball. Between Zion’s focus on you and the lovesick puppy who just left us, this is making me nervous having you here. ”
She looked up into his gaze. An eyebrow quirked at his suggestion. “You think they’d want to get their hands on me as a breeder? I get the Zion concern, maybe, but don’t you think I’m a little old, not just for that, but for an eighteen-year-old boy?”
He looked at her over the top of his glasses. “Sweetheart, you’ll be even sexier when you’re sixty.”
He watched her pupils expand and felt her pulse increase under his thumb, where it stroked her pulse point. Her lips were slightly parted, and her tongue darted out to lick them.
Tipping his sunglasses up to sit on top of his head, he stopped in the middle of the path, his hand pulling her face close to his mouth.
He dipped his head to bring her lips the final distance to his.
Mouth closing on hers, he slid his tongue inside.
Her hands clutched his biceps, making his fingers thread through her hair at the base of her neck, pulling tight at the roots to tilt her in the direction he wanted so he could seam their mouths tighter together.
When she clutched him even harder, her manicured nails dug into his skin, and a whimper came from the back of her throat.
He knew he needed to slow them down, or before long, he’d have her up against one of the trees.
Given the cameras in the electric wires above, he refused to give anyone a show.
And he certainly couldn’t jam the cameras, or security would be on to him.
Reluctantly, he pulled back from her. “We should keep moving,” he told her, the regret clear in his voice.
She closed her eyes and nodded.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “I promise to pick this up later.”
“You’d better,” she warned. “Or I just might have to go find some hot security guy to take care of me. Maybe even Matthew.”
“Oh, hell no!”
He pulled her along the path again, turning into the last curve, the main building just visible through the branches in front of them.
“Do you think…” she began.
When she didn’t continue right away, he asked, “Do I think what?”
“If your suspicions are correct, then Bananato del Sole is Salieri property. Probably being used to launder money, at the very least. Given all the evidence so far, it would appear that my uncle is at least aware, more likely complicit. While that’s disturbing, it doesn’t…
well, I won’t say it doesn’t surprise me, yet it does. ”
He waited out what he knew was coming.
“My father’s disappearance tied up his money because there was no proof of death.
Until I turned twenty-one, the family attorney paid all the bills, oversaw the investments, and I lived off the interest of the trust my mother left for me.
Then, on my twenty-first birthday, I received control of that trust. I had to wait another four years so I could declare Dad legally dead and get hold of the rest of our family’s money.
I needed it to put forward my plans for Tribe.
We went through everything, but I saw nothing about an investment in the plantation.
“Do you think…?” She blew out a breath and shook her head, a determined look on her face. “No. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t have invested money with Zion if he knew what they were connected to. ”
“Remember. Deschamps said he was a start-up investor. He may have only given a lump sum at one time. But no, fireball, I don’t think your father would have been a part of something like the Salieri.
Not on purpose. The guys and I discussed this last night.
I didn’t want to bring it up until I saw what was happening here.
Didn’t want to get you wound up for nothing.
But we’re all of the same mind that your father was an honest investor in the property with no knowledge.
Probably some men here this weekend are as well.
The closer illegal activities run to legitimate ones, the easier it is to hide. And their money is just as good.”
“But he was investigating the Salieri when he died, based on the files on his computer. Do you think he figured out they were involved with the plantation, and that’s why he started looking into things?”
“I do, and so do the guys.”
She seemed to relax in his embrace slightly. “Good. Good. I could never imagine him being a part of something like what’s happening to these women.”
“Maybe that’s why there’s no record of the investment either.
Maybe as soon as he realized what was going on or became suspicious, he pulled his funding.
Maybe the Salieri electronically erased the investment to prevent it from being traced back to them.
Could be what put your father on their list of loose ends to tie up.
Can’t have uncommitted people who know what you’re doing running around.
This isn’t the kind of thing you can expect an NDA to keep quiet.
” He kissed the top of her head, and they passed out of the trees and onto the circular driveway.
“Let’s head back to the estate. We could go spend some time on the beach.
Or we could…” Did he dare push? “We could hide out in our room like the newly married couple you suggested we be on the way to the airport.”
Their eyes locked.
The tip of her tongue peeked out between her lips, swiping across the flesh. “All that good food, the heat, the walking. I feel the need for a nap.”
Yeah. There’d be no napping.