39. June 19th

JUNE 19TH

Sylvan

Waters had beenthe one to break the silence that had infiltrated the room. "Okay, so put two and two together; we get someone named Gendry who is trying to reclaim Flame. Why the other girls, though?"

"Compensation," came the muffled reply.

All heads turned to Sylvan. She unburied her head from TB's chest. "If I'm right, and I was going to be used to pay off his debts, he lost a lot of money when I ran away. People in his line of work—they don't accept mistakes, let alone apologies. Punishment would have been swift and costly. And if he's angry enough to come after me all these years later, my guess is he lost almost everything."

"Could he possibly, in that short amount of time, build himself back up financially to do this?" TB asked.

"It's not impossible," Sylvan hedged. "If he were punished for using the product and skimming from the profits, he would be denied access to inventory and suppliers. If he needed to make up for his losses quickly, running girls would be a fast way to do it. The risk is greater, but so is the reward, and he doesn't need someone to supply him with the product. He can just go out and snatch it off the streets. He's also stupid enough to have sold himself to a boss, especially if that boss supplied him with ways and means that would get him to me faster. It's possible that the other girls were contingency plans to recoup some of his money if he couldn't get to me, or… he could simply be rebuilding his stable of prostitutes."

Waters cleared his throat. "So, that means these girls probably aren't the first. They're just the ones locally, or at least that we know of. Flame, we need you to help Midas. We need as much information as possible on this Gendry asshole. We confirm and reconfirm everything.

"Demon. Inventory the infirmary. Once we find those women, they're likely going to need medical attention. Prepare for drug detox, open wounds from restraints, dehydration, possible broken bones, internal injuries, contusions, anything you can think of. Order whatever supplies you might need and have Cherry get them today if at all possible.

"Steel. Go through the armory. No telling what kind of firepower we're going to need. Make sure everyone has enough extra clips for their personal gear, and then make sure there are enough flash bangs and tear gas canisters and that all the NVGs, masks, and gear are good to go. We're likely going to be working in public areas, so not one speck of skin can show.

"Nemo. You're on the trucks. I want three SUVs and a panel van. Fueled up, cleaned out, inspected, and reloaded. Then I need you to load them with whatever you can think of for a snatch and grab. Water, blankets, med kits, body bags. We know there are six girls, but who knows if there are more, and no clue how many douchebags we'll need to transport.

"I want us to be one hundred percent ready the moment we know where he, or they, are."

God had been inordinately quiet until now. "What about the triad?"

TB scanned the faces of the men around him. "They're not traffickers. They're something… else. Not recovery, not special forces. I don't know. I trust them, but I don't. If they knew Ka-Bar was a captive, they didn't make any effort to retrieve him. However, they clearly know who he is, which means they know who we are and what we do, and they did pass on the information. And it's clear they're scouting out that club for something."

Crinkling plastic could be heard over the speaker. Was that a sigh of reluctance? God's voice, muffled by his caramel apple sucker stuffed in his mouth, gave the order. "Make contact," God ordered. "We have fuck-all idea what we're walking into. This could be the work of one giant asshole, or it could be something much larger. We could use the extra help. If need be, we'll erase any problems after the fact."

"Will do."

TB turned his attention back fully to Flame. "Will you be okay with Midas for a little bit while I track down Loki?"

She nodded but squeezed him tightly.

"I'll be back. As fast as I can. I promise, sweetheart." He returned her embrace by wrapping his arms around her shoulders to pull her closer, and his lips lingered on her forehead. And then he was gone.

She satwith Midas and gave him every scrap of information she could remember about her parents, the drug route, and where they lived. That was hard. But what came after that was worse.

His voice was gentle but firm. "Flame? I don't want to ask you, but I have to. I need everything you can remember about Gendry and your time with him."

She stared at him. Helpless. Panicked. Her head hurt, her stomach churned, and everything felt like it was closing in on her.

"Breathe, Flame. If you pass out on me, TB's going to kill me, and I don't mean figuratively. It'll be death by pi?ata punching."

"Pi?ata punching?" she hiccupped.

"Yeah. Nemo has a war going on with TB. No one understands why. My brother is… annoying. I love him, but he marches to his own beat. For some reason he has this need to ambush TB with all kinds of crap. Confetti cannons, water balloons, air horns. It never ends. We're still finding feathers from an incident two years ago. Anyway, he threatened to truss Nemo up like a pi?ata not too long ago, and he meant it."

The story had its intended effect—light and funny to ease the tension and help her forget she was on the verge of a panic attack.

She considered the scenario. "Yeah. He probably would. Is that why he never calls Nemo by his name?"

"Yup. Always calls him something negative starting with the letter N." Midas snuck a look at her. "Okay, Flame, everything about Gendry. And I mean everything. Height, weight, hair color, body marks like tattoos and scars, you name it. Then, address or description of the part of town. Anything you can remember. After that, associates."

"Okay." Her voice was small and lost. Even she could hear that.

A warm hand reached for hers and clasped it with a reassuring squeeze. "I'm right here. None of them can hurt you anymore. But I'll be honest—we need to get through this part before TB gets back. He's gonna lose his shit as it is. If he has to hear it live… well, let's just make sure he doesn't."

He reached into his desk jar and handed her some mini Snickers bars. "You'll need the sugar. And do me a favor. If Waters comes in, even if you're not hungry, make a big production of eating one."

"Why?"

Midas winked at her. "He'll know why, and that's all that matters."

There'd beena lot of tears. Midas had held her through several bouts that were soul-crushing.

There had been a lot of jaw-clenching on Midas' part.

Demon had been in and out to make sure she was hydrated and warm.

Cherry had brought her TB's leather jacket out of his office after the second long crying jag, thinking it would calm her. She'd been right. It smelled like him mixed with the leather, and it made her feel like he was there with her.

Three hours later, they were still in the conference room, just finishing up, when she felt a sizzle go up her spine.

Will I always feel this when he walks into a room?

Leaning in the doorway was TB. "You okay, princess?"

She flew into his arms, his jacket hanging on her small frame like she was playing dress up in an adult's clothes.

He caught her in his arms and lifted her off the floor into a hug, then carried her back inside the room. "You look good in my jacket, princess."

It felt so good to be in his arms. But for how long? Once they caught her stalker, would he leave her like everyone else had? Or would he simply drift away with time?

Could she even hope to be what he needed so that he stuck around permanently?

Not likely.

She registered that somewhere along the line, Midas had snuck past them, leaving them alone in the conference room.

"I didn't thank Midas."

"He hasn't done anything yet to be thanked for," TB grumbled into her neck. "And a nicely addressed envelope sent by mail from your house will be sufficient. If you're feeling especially generous, you can send him a box of Snickers candy bars."

She smiled.

Possessive and jealous. More reasons to be called Total Bastard.

One of TB's hands slid from around her shoulders to her braid, pulling on the end so that her head tilted up to his. Heavens, but she loved when he did that. So powerful, and it seemed to pull at every other part of her insides as well, all the way to her core.

Their eyes met, and all she could do was stare, trying to find the answers to her questions in his eyes. While she surveyed them, as usual, they were devoid of answers.

"TB—"

"Stop. Please." He set her down on the floor, making sure she was steady before taking her hands in his. "There are a lot of things I should say to you right now. But everything's all jumbled up, and I don't even know where to start."

She gripped the front of his shirt so tightly he was likely to have wrinkles from her stretching it. "Just start," she whispered. "I'll listen. I'm smart. I'll figure it out."

He smiled sadly at her, his fingers squeezing hers. "You are. And you will. I just—" He swallowed a huge lump in his throat and looked down at their hands. "I don't think an apology could ever be enough. And what I have to tell you isn't an excuse for my behavior."

He lowered his face to hers, brushing her forehead with his lips, her eyes fluttering closed at his touch. Foreheads touching, the sun coming in through the glass windows, she felt heat surrounding them, but he felt freezing cold despite the warm summer's day.

He'd kept himself from her. But… she had known he was. In a way, she had no right to be mad about that because she had kept herself from him, too. And he hadn't known her secrets. He hadn't known what drove her to bury her past. If she'd just told him, none of this probably would have happened.

But she also knew she wasn't entirely to blame. At least she had been honest with herself that she was keeping him in the dark. TB was so immersed in his false self-identity, he hadn't even consciously known what he was doing.

As he made his confession, his lips remained close to her skin, skimming down to the corner of her eye, to her cheek, and to the corner of her mouth. As if he worried that if they no longer touched her, the words wouldn't be believed.

"There is no excuse for this morning other than Nemo being right on all counts, princess. I'm afraid. Beyond afraid, actually. More like terrified. I haven't been this frightened since I was seven years old." He pulled her tighter to him, his arms banding around her as if afraid she'd run away. "People leave. They don't always mean to, but they do. Sometimes, the reasons why make no sense. You weren't even born yet when it happened. When I was seven, my parents were killed in front of me. Hamas suicide bomber while we were at breakfast. It was a huge story in the news back then.

"Most of that time is a blur. But I remember, even as I held my dead mother's hand, I was alone. Utterly. I was so scared. We had no family. We lived in an over-crowded, near condemnable apartment building where people kept to themselves because it was safer that way. There was no one to come look for me when they died because no one really knew I existed. I doubt it even registered to anyone a family, let alone a child, from the building was no longer around.

"There was a policeman who finally found me. He took me home a few nights to stay with his family. But they lived in a small apartment and didn't have the room for another child, so he left me at an orphanage, hoping, I'm sure, that some family members would eventually come forward and claim me.

"The orphanage was a terrible place. With next to no staff, we basically ran wild. We had to fight for everything, sometimes literally, in order to stay alive. Anything you managed to get ahold of that could be considered your own was a weapon to be used against you. Something to take and use as a bargaining chip. Kids are cruel, but not surprising when you're just trying to survive in a hostile world. I had nothing when I went into the orphanage except the clothes on my body. So I had nothing to take. Therefore, I was isolated from the other kids. I wasn't worth bothering with.

"When I was eighteen, I left and joined the army. Not out of some sense of patriotic duty. It's compulsory for all citizens, but to me, it represented a chance at a family that I'd been missing all those years. I'd find my place again. But that also was taken away.

"Once our initial training was complete, just as I'd begun to feel like I had others I could trust again, I was ripped away from them. Apparently, psychologically, I was the perfect match for the Intelligence Division. A nice way of saying interrogator, which is a professional way of saying torturer. My ability to divorce myself from whatever was going on around me externally made me the perfect choice. And I was oh-so-good at compartmentalizing after eleven years in the orphanage. I felt nothing when working over a suspect.

"I became disillusioned. It was like my heart turned off. Guilt or innocence didn't matter. Only gaining the confession mattered. Motivations, fears, neither of those mattered. Only the result mattered. It was eating away what little humanity remained.

"So one day, I got up and left. Didn't resign. Didn't wait for my tour to be finished. I just disappeared into the desert. Micah Ewen existed no more."

He pulled back just slightly, so she opened her eyes, wanting him to know that she saw him. She understood. Their lives had paralleled each other so closely, except that for her, it had been drugs that stole her parents from her, and for him, it had been a religious and political zealot. Both of them had been abandoned due to forces out of their control. Both had been taught that their lives were worth only what they could bring to other people.

"On my own," he continued, "I became a private contractor. I told you about some of that on your porch. What I didn't tell you was that I was on a self-created path to destruction. I didn't care what jobs I took. I didn't care how dangerous they were. I didn't care if I lived to collect my fee. I was just putting myself in situation after situation, trying to get the world to abandon me altogether. And the worse the job appeared, the more likely I was to take it because perhaps I'd finally be punished for doing something I shouldn't have been doing rather than punishing myself for something I had no control over.

"Waters found me when I had hit the lowest I'd ever been. He hired me to kidnap him. Told me some story about ransoming an American soldier for leverage against the United States and a whole bunch of other stuff I don't even remember. Instead of kidnapping him, I ended up caught in his snare. Took my breath away when I realized he was offering me a job. A way out. A way to rebalance the scales and start over. I don't know that I ever really will. But today, listening to you finally let all that blackness out? I guess it was the wake-up call I needed.

"I have no right to your forgiveness. I have no right to claim any of your goodness as my own. I am still a total bastard for being selfish enough to want you anyway. Cruel enough to do whatever it takes to have you. Sadistic enough to make someone else hurt if it means I can have what I want. And what I want is you. All of you. Every piece."

His forehead touched hers again, and a tortured plea came out. "Please don't take yourself away from me, Flame. I need your light. I need your warmth. They're the only things keeping me tethered to this Earth. The only thing keeping me from completely disappearing."

This beautiful man. Tortured soul that he was, she loved him. It wasn't a choice. She just did.

"TB, I've been yours since the day we met. No matter how infuriating you are, there's no letting you go. We both made terrible decisions by not talking to one another truthfully. If I don't forgive you for being honest, then I can't ever forgive myself for not stepping forward sooner with my part in these women's disappearances. So yes, I forgive you. But only if you forgive yourself."

"That's going to be difficult."

"I'll help you," she promised.

Something shifted in the room. She wasn't sure what happened, but suddenly, the weight on her shoulders lifted off just slightly. She could breathe again. Everything felt closer to normal, but she needed something from him to show her he was willing to let her in. She desperately wanted him to kiss her until she moaned. Touch her skin until she shivered. Love her until she promised him anything.

He smiled softly and murmured, "Princess, we're at my work. You need to not look at me that way, or I just might stop caring about all the cameras in this room and lay you down on this table right here and now."

Her heartbeat sped up at being caught with her thoughts so obvious despite her best efforts. "How do you always know what I'm thinking?"

"Your eyes hide nothing from me. And it doesn't hurt that your pupils are blown wide open," he admitted. "That's always a sure sign of what my little Flame wants."

His hand had let go of her braid, so her head naturally tilted back down to his sternum. Her fingers played with the wrinkles in his T-shirt. Looking at him actually hurt; she loved him so much.

Be brave, Sylvan. You can't even begin to be what he needs if you can't tell him what you want.

With every ounce of courage she possessed, she returned her face to his gaze. "Then take me home, TB. I need to be yours. Only yours."

She felt his breath stop. Then he growled. Literally growled. She felt it in his chest as well as heard it, and it made her heart pound.

Jinkies, that was hot!

"I still don't believe I deserve you. But fuck if I'm not going to take you and spend the rest of my days proving myself wrong. You have never once told me, without prompting, what you wanted. Hot as fuck, little Flame."

Without a word, he pulled his arms from around her waist, grabbed her by the hand, and stalked around the conference room table to the closed door. Down the hall in front of the elevator, he pulled her, then pushed the down button. She swore she heard a chuckle and a murmured "Thank fuck" from one of the offices they passed.

Arriving just after them, Cherry sat down at her desk, not looking up. "I'll mark you out of the office for the rest of the day, shall I?" she asked.

"Fuckin' right," he grumbled loud enough for her to hear. He punched the down key again as if that would help it to arrive faster. Sylvan felt laughter building at his actions, but she worked hard not to let it come out. He wouldn't appreciate the humor in the situation right now.

When the doors finally opened, he went to pull her into the car, and Nemo stood along the wall by the buttons, leaning nonchalantly against the railing, arms crossed loosely over his chest, popping his gum, and grinning like a fool.

"Going down, kids?"

Sylvan worked extra hard not to giggle. He really was incorrigible but in the most adorable way. Some woman was going to be so irritated and yet so full of laughter at the same time when he was finally caught.

"Get out, Neanderthal," TB ordered.

Nemo held up his hands in mock surrender and pushed off the wall. "Good luck getting to the garage, Teeny Bopper." He shoved his hands in his pockets and sauntered out of the elevator, whistling to himself.

As the doors closed, TB muttered something about, "Thankfully, it wasn't a fucking confetti cannon."

"I think this might be worse," Sylvan said, and now the giggles were getting closer to the surface.