13. Smith
Chapter 13
Smith
R odriguez is an old asset of mine. I trust him enough—about as much as I trust any non-Knight.
Throwing the knife, losing my temper like that… it’s not me. I keep everything tucked up, compartmentalized. But there was something about how she got in too close to things I didn’t want uncovered, or rather, how I let her. No one had a fucking gun to my head.
Dakota’s normally off-limits for conversation. Jones knows enough of the story. Orion knows whatever he needs to know, as do the others. But there are some Knights who don’t know a thing and I kept my relationship with Dakota fractured for a lot of reasons.
So why I even told this fucking child a thing about it is beyond me.
And then I let myself soften toward her, like I’m losing my motherfucking mind.
I’m violent, primal, a hunter with no conscience. My sex games are so much more than what Calista’s ever seen. Most of the time, my kind of D/s play is wrapped up in clearly spelled-out rules.
But with her, I don’t want any rules governing my actions. I want it elemental.
I want her as mine to pull apart and devour.
I grit my teeth. Like I said, I’m losing my fucking mind.
Rodriguez and Sofia are heading to their home and farm a few miles down the road. This mission is on their property but on the edges, a place where very dark things have gone down. In the next week, it’ll be occupied by the militia, men waiting for a war that might not even happen.
If it doesn’t, they’ll move the cocoa leaf crops as planned. Some might say to just put a stop to this kind of farming altogether, but it’s not my place to give a damn. If rich fucks want to snort cocaine, then let them. I’m not being paid to stop it.
But if trafficking young girls enters the picture, and it’s likely that’s the case, then I’m here to shut it the fuck down. One of the other Knights has an operation to stop an outpost in another region of this tiny, troubled country.
The CIA is looking into things in Central America, but they have the wrong intel. Maybe it was crafted to misguide them, either deliberately or by accident. I don’t fucking know, and I need to find out. And I can’t let Calista go until I can piece this whole thing together. I need to know what she knows and she’ll stay with me for as long as it takes her to divulge it.
The mere mention of Belize only got the mildest of reactions back home. But the most I’ve seen was the expression on Calista’s face after Sofia mentioned it. That’s how I know I’m onto something here. And it’s more proof that I can’t let her go. Not just yet.
I’m gathering clues and she’s my map.
“Thanks.” I put my feet up on a wooden stool as I recline back in a chair outside. Narrowing my eyes at the satellite- linked laptop from Rodriguez, I shoot off a message to Jones using Harry’s Fix It—the Knight’s messaging system that masquerades as a boring little store. We all know the codes and what they mean but nobody else would have a clue.
Need some pipes looked at. Possible leak. This week?
It doesn’t take long to get a response. Tuesday, ten a.m.
Sounds good, I message back. Book it.
“Trouble?”
“Nah, just some boring crap at home.” I don’t look up as I send the message. I shut down the messaging app, close the laptop lid, and hand the computer back to Rodriguez.
Jones’ll have a small plane waiting for me. I can’t fly my own jet since we’ll be operating under the radar. I just need to tell him when and where. But now he knows my location. And if Rodriguez tries to sell me out, he’ll have that information, too. The laptop was no doubt being tracked by the IP address from the second Jones got my first message.
Even if Rodriguez just looks up what I did, he’ll just see a front business that handles mundane plumbing issues.
Some might say using his computer’s a risk. But I prefer that to using my phone. That’s for emergencies and for me to tell Jones where I am when I need the help. If I need the help. Using it for anything more is too big of a risk, one I’m not willing to take.
Dinner is spicy and good. My little reluctant captive is quiet, not that I blame her. The closer we get to the handoff, the more real her problems become and the tighter the noose around her neck becomes.
As I stare at her, she shifts in her seat and breaks her eyes away from mine. I don’t know what she was up to back in the kitchen, but I’ll find out. As the others say good night and file out, she stays put, eyes so stormy one could get lost in them and be dragged under by the volatile waves there .
I push away the fact I like it, the danger of the hunted getting feral. Maybe she took the knife from the wall earlier, maybe not.
There’s a guard farther down the road just out of sight. I don’t need to check with Rodriguez or confirm it for myself. The four-by-four sitting in the shadows speaks volumes.
What it doesn’t do is tell me if we’re being guarded or kept under surveillance. It doesn’t matter if Rodriguez is loyal to me. In places like this, trust can be twisted and things turn on a dime.
I don’t think Rodriguez is trying to make a quick buck or save his family by handing me over to an enemy. But who the hell really knows?
I trust him. But I get the conflict.
Family comes first.
He’s aware I can get out of most situations. And he’ll bet on me not looking for payback if he does happen to use me.
I have enemies. All Knights do. And being CIA, ex-freelance intelligence. My enemy quota’s high.
I can add little Calista to that list now.
She has a glass of rum in front of her. It’s rough, burns the esophagus on the way down. But I’ve got something else in mind for her. Smoother, guaranteed to give her sweet fucking dreams, but I leave her alone and wait until she sees the bag next to me.
I watch as her gaze skitters over to it, but she doesn’t do more than stare at it like it holds her way out of here. She’s thinking passport. Not her computer. I need to get into the device, but it’s got a thumbprint lock.
“You know, you still haven’t explained the whole thing,” I say, taking a sip from my glass.
“What do you know about the Collectors?”
I hide my smile. She’s trying to play me by bouncing the question my way. But she’s still too new to how this game is played.
Her interest is deep, on some kind of personal level, but I’m not sure of the connection. I don’t think she’s involved in that sordid industry, although it’s not unheard of for women to do that. There’s disgust on her face, and it makes her wild, fierce, and all the things I want to explore in her.
I shut that carnal thought down fast, just like I shut down the thoughts of her long legs, one of which she has drawn up. Her skirt pools up a little, showing thigh.
She’s not wearing panties. They were drying when I used the bathroom before, tucked on a low rung of a chair just outside the room. And now… fuck yeah, I’d love to follow the line of her thigh, slip her skirt up higher, see if I can catch a glimpse of pussy, of the tattoo. See if she’s wet and stroke down into the slippery heat of her.
“Enough.” I could goad her but decide against it. I need her to spill information. I need to see what she knows.
If I hadn’t seen that text from the Estonia number, I’d have already handed her back to the CIA—or whatever group wants her—and her head would still be spinning as I walked off to collect my fee.
But luckily, or maybe unluckily for her, she’s uncovered something about the people who took my daughter.
And I don’t care if this tiny trafficking cell she’s found never heard of fucking Dakota Hunt; I’ll destroy them anyway.
Just like in Scotland. Even if the leader there had survived, it would have been only a “long enough” scenario.
My mission is to murder every last motherfucking one of them.
Reaching into the bag, I pull out her computer and her eyes light up. “I saved this, you know.”
“B-but?— ”
“Had it in that car to be loaded up last, and then the plane blew up.” I pause. “Why?”
“Oh my God…” She gets up, rushing over to me. Cramming herself cross-legged like a kid into the chair next to me, she puts her hands out. “I can’t believe it!”
But I don’t hand it straight over. “Why?”
“The plane?” Calista shrugs. “Maybe in the information I have? I had threats, those low-level ones, and my agent… I…” Her cheeks turn pink. “Maybe I poked into something I shouldn’t have. That’s the thing, I don’t know. One day I was going to work, and then there were looks and online lockouts. I could get around them, but I didn’t know what I was looking at. Whoever blew the plane up could be after me for something I have no idea about.”
She sounds so innocent, and I’m halfway to believing her. But I stop myself. She might be young and deskbound but she’s fucking smart and they trained her.
I change tactic because yeah, I know who blew up the plane.
“Can you show me?”
“No, because—because you can’t read code.”
And she doesn’t have it on her computer. She doesn’t know what she might have seen or found, or maybe they just think she’s guilty in regard to the weapon. Because it’s a big deal, from what little I know. It’s fucking huge.
“The Collectors? Other sex traffickers?”
“I don’t know much. Just…” She opens the lid of her computer and I’m a little surprised there’s no password, but all she does is open an album. It’s full of photos. Her as a kid with a boy, as a teen with the same guy, now a young man. Her brother. And then there’s a beautiful woman and an older version of her. I’d guess those are mom and grandmother.
I look at Calista and then her mom. She had to have been as young as me and Sylvie, maybe younger, when she had her kids.
“Did they take her?”
Calista only shrugs. “Why don’t you have a relationship with your daughter?”
Her shrug speaks volumes. It tells me she’s convinced a Collector was involved with whatever happened to her mom.
And if so…
She’s got information on them. A girl like her would.
So I give her a little in return.
“I didn’t know I had a kid until I returned from the UK. It’d been my second trip there. I was recruited, went to college young like you, and then I trained. When I finally came back to Michigan…” I sigh, rub my face, and this time I take a swig of the rough rum from the damn bottle. Then, just before I hand it to her, I slip a small pill into it.
She takes a sip, waiting for me to finish my thought. “I discovered I had a kid. I was twenty-one at that point.”
Close to Dakota’s current age now.
And she’s marrying?—
Nope. Not going there. I can forgive some things. And Orion’s one of my closest friends. She’s good for him, too. Any fucker can tell. But there’s no fucking place here for a heart-to-heart over my kid and her future.
I’m not ready for that.
Just like I’m not ever gonna be ready to talk to Dakota about any of this.
“Your ex didn’t tell you about the baby?”
I close my eyes. The pain still festers deep in my soul. I’m not the boy who loved Sylvie. But I remember that guy. Sylvie thought that guy took off on her. In her eyes, I didn’t care.
Neither one of us knew her letters to me had been intercepted. She was lied to. And she died thinking I didn’t give a shit about her… That created jagged edges time can never smooth out.
“Sylvie was a good girl. Way better than I ever deserved. What can I say? We were kids, and hormones are beasts. But I did love her. It never would have lasted, but she never got to tell me anyway. Her parents were rich, stepped in to help, and then she died in a robbery before she got to see her daughter grow up. Before her daughter even reached five. She was twenty when she was killed. It fucking sucks.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
She shuts her computer, gets off her seat, and kneels at my feet. Then she reaches up and places a hand on my cheek. It’s warm and good, and I feel like a fucking prick. I am a fucking prick.
“Because I am. Because death just makes pain sit with nowhere to go and heal. Time never helps. The pain just wears on.”
I nod. “Time’s a bitch.”
“What about your daughter?”
“Fuck, she hates me with a passion. But that’s okay. That hatred has protected her. She lives with a friend of mine and his daughter, her best friend Harley. We hardly see each other, but I know she’s protected.”
Calista bites her lip, those stormy eyes filled with softness that irritates. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t really know her. Father through DNA only.”
“Bullshit.” She pushes away from me and grabs the bottle of rum I gave her. She takes the final swallow, and I’m almost positive when she looks at the empty thing, she’s thinking about hitting me with it. “No man gets a big-ass tattoo of North and South Dakota in red if they didn’t see themselves as an actual father. And you love her, even if you deny it. I know the truth.”
“Calista?”
“Yes?”
“Come here.”
She sways, her eyes a little glassy. And I kiss her, pulling her into my arms. She kisses me back dreamily, open-mouthed, melting against me. Seconds later, her body slumps over, the kiss dying on our lips.
I pick her up, hugging her close as I grab the laptop with my free hand. I walk into the bedroom and settle Calista onto the mattress. Then I use her hand to unlock the computer.
The drug should work for a few hours, so I take the computer and head back out.
She may claim to be innocent, but she has secrets.
And I’m about to uncover each and every one of them.