Chapter 24
Nicole
Nicole sipped her green tea, and studied the mosaic of information covering the walls of her headquarters.
It included every scrap of info she’d ever gleaned about the Masters and their associates, the Unredeemables.
Some combination or other of those dipshit assholes had dashed every one of her plans so far.
But they were on the defensive now. She was coming for them, and they were going down.
If she’d only kept Shane Masters for herself after she had first nabbed him eight months ago, she’d been on the top of the world right now.
With SmokeScreen, she would have shaken off Halliwell’s yoke forever.
But she’d had weak links in her team, and that shithead Vincent was one of them.
Halliwell had assigned Vincent to her to babysit.
She’d been cleaning up after that incompetent little prick for years.
Halliwell knew just how to get the maximum sting out of his punishments. To let Vincent strut around, lording it over her. Fucking with her just because he could.
Her jaw throbbed, in spite of the anti-inflammatories she’d taken, against Vincent’s orders.
She’d never forgive the look on his face while Vin watched the dentist pry out her molar and implant that poison tooth, without the benefit of anesthetic.
Vin’s eyes, so bright and eager. Enjoying it.
He liked to see her naked and in pain. He’d always been envious.
Jealous of any attention Halliwell gave her.
And Halliwell had signed off on that. He’d deliberately given Vincent permission to abuse her that way. His own daughter, his tool, his loyal servant.
Afterward, as she lay limp in the chair, naked and blood-spattered, Maynard, one of Vincent’s men, assuming she was unconscious, had given her breast a squeeze.
The memory still bathed her brain in killing-rage-chemicals.
And the green tea was not delivering on the calming effects the online brochure had promised.
The heat hurt her sore jaw. And it tasted like ass.
She needed to drain this bad energy, or she would lose control. Do something unfortunate. Which was to say, something impossible to hide from Halliwell.
That was what had gotten her into trouble before.
The Masters had fucked her up twice. First, when Jed Clearwater survived the Ready Line massacre.
Second, when he and Freya had survived that debacle in Oregon.
Ethan and his Unredeemables had descended upon them, and she and her then-partner, Wex Boer, had gotten their asses hammered.
Wex had been killed. She’d been in disgrace with her father ever since.
Father, in a manner of speaking. Vincent and Nicole had never been able to think of Halliwell as a father.
None of them had. He was anything but paternal, behaving more like a capricious god.
He knew perfectly well she had more brains and talent than Vincent, but he had promoted Vincent above her. Because she had fucked up.
Hence, the demotion, the tooth. She was being spanked.
She and Vincent had seen what happened when Halliwell’s patience reached its end. Being his biological child was no protection. On the contrary. Halliwell hated it when his genetic offspring failed him. He took it very personally.
If she failed, the next lesson would be definitive.
Fine. The apple did not fall far from the tree. She took things personally, too. And her grand plan would change all the cards on the table in her favor.
The ideal activity to calm her inner torment would be to torture the activation codes of SmokeScreen out of that prick, Ethan Masters.
Maybe breaking his dumb blonde girlfriend, right in front of his eyes.
The bitch had no idea what a lying user Masters was.
Most men were just as bad, but Masters bothered her more than the rest.
He’d lose interest in Kat Banner. He always did.
Nicole had followed his career with the ladies, and his affairs all ended like the one she’d had with him, back when she worked at MasterTech.
That had been her first assignment after being kicked out of medical school.
Halliwell had been so furious with her, but it really hadn’t been her fault that time.
She’d scared them, with her vision, her steely nerves.
One of her med school instructors, while lying naked in bed with her, had told her she had sociopathic tendencies.
That guy had died that same night, of a heart attack. No one autopsied him, but if they had, they would have found no trace of the air bubble she’d injected between his toes. She’d dressed his body in his wife’s underwear, too. Just for shits and giggles.
Pervert. Calling her a sociopath? Hah. The fucking nerve.
Masters had fucked her and then ghosted her, as if she were a dumb bunny.
A toy to be used and discarded. He hadn’t seen her, or sensed the power inside her.
Hadn’t been intrigued by it, hadn’t feared it.
She would never forgive him for that. She’d rather be hated, despised and feared than brushed off and forgotten.
He would fear her, before this was all over.
Banner was just a toy, as Nicole had been, which meant she might have to dig deeper for a good lever to move Masters. Little Holly, now…the guy would turn somersaults for that kid.
Nicole spat out the tea with a grimace. Fuck this stuff. It wasn’t performing as promised, so it got poured down the drain. Like she would be, if she failed again.
She would not fail this time. She would never be punished again. Not by anybody. This time, she’d do the punishing. She would be top dog.
“Nicole?”
Nicole splashed tea onto her wrist as she turned, jaw throbbing at the sudden movement. Well, well, well. It was Maynard, the dick-faced tit-fondler. “What?”
“Katrin Banner’s tracker is on the move.” Maynard’s gaze didn’t meet hers. Maybe he sensed his life was forfeit for having enjoyed the dentistry show so much.
“And?” she asked. “Where’s she headed?”
“She’s at the bus station right now. She went there from her house.”
“Already at the bus station? She got all the way from her house to downtown before you noticed? What, were you distracted, Maynard? Jerking off, maybe?”
Maynard’s mouth tightened. “No,” he said. “What do you want to do?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Yes, it is. But Egan made you team head, so it’s your call.”
“Aww! Maynard! You recognize chain of command. That’s adorable. You and I will go and retrieve her immediately. We’ll need a tranq gun and a nail gun, in addition to the usual weaponry. Get them immediately. I’ll meet you at the car.”
Maynard turned and left without a word.
He’d die screaming for that tit-squeeze. For that hungry, slobbering, entitled look on his face as he’d watched her strapped into that dentist’s chair.
But not quite yet. She’d keep using him until he ceased to be useful.
Nicole was nothing if not practical.