Page 19

He doesn’t seem like the type of man that would even care, but something is bothering him.
“You’re rescuing little girls now?”
Nothing.
The lights of town grow brighter, the streets busier now that the countdown has ended and we’re a half an hour into a new year.
I’m pissed, too, but that isn’t on Angel.
Alan, my handler, gets most of that irritation right now. I could be working, could be helping, could be living in my own pain and retribution. Holidays always have an uptick in crime, especially trafficked women. Drunk men like to fuck, and there’s an endless supply of those that get off on taking things that aren’t offered. They’re loose with their morals and cash.
I was drunkhas been used as an excuse for them doing the shit they wished they were brave enough to do sober since the dawn of time.
Tonight’s celebrations are wasted with sitting in this truck with him rather than being in South America or some dank torture chamber in Mexico.
“Not talking to me?” I ask as he pulls up outside a gas station.
We both sit and watch as a woman wobbles on too-high heels as she returns the gas handle back to the machine.
The store is closed, only offering credit-paid services, and it’s obvious that she’s past the point of being safe to drive, but neither one of us say anything or attempt to stop her as she drives away.
“I wanted to—”
“Get out of my truck, Lola.”
I don’t know what’s worse, the hatred in his tone or the fact that he’s using the name I use when I work undercover.
Lola.
What a fucking joke.
“Lauren,” I snap, needing to remind him exactly who I am right now.
I’m not the lost girl I pretended to be in El Salvador. I’ve got teeth and will use them to tear him to shreds if he pushes me too far.
Slowly, he turns his head to me, and the man I taunted years ago is nowhere to be seen.
His eyes, as dark as they’ve always been, are now soulless and empty.
I revel in the frigid chill that starts at the center of my back, radiating out until my arms and legs are covered in goosebumps. It’s thrilling, dangerous. Just what I’ve been looking for.
“Get. Out.” There’s a warning in his tone, one any person other than me would heed.
This man was a pawn. As an FBI agent, I couldn’t believe that he was there to protect the women, that he was truly upset with what he saw happen between Thumper and me. He was fair to the women in captivity with me. His eyes didn’t linger any longer than he had to in order to get his job done. He was livid when one of the men raped a girl after getting the keys from him, and proud when Thumper shot that man in the head for what he’d done.
I kissed him, turned him on, stroked him off in the hallway of that house in El Salvador, and like the good little boy he was, he let me, begged me to stop without forcing me to do so. He enjoyed what I offered, drank it up like a kitten lapping at milk. He wasn’t the kind of guy I needed to feel whole, but he was a means to an end.
The man staring back at me now isn’t a kitten any longer.
He has either changed or he played the game much better than I ever could.
This man is the one I need.
I’m staring into the eyes of a cold-blooded killer, looking at the face of a man who could wipe my existence from the face of the earth and not even blink an eye when he washes my sticky blood from his hands.
It’s electrifying, the frantic beat of my heart making me feel more alive than I have in months, years possibly.
As a mercenary, he goes against everything I’ve done in my years as an FBI agent. He should be behind bars, rotting away in prison for the things he’s undoubtedly done, not working another job, and collecting a paycheck.