Sweet Seduction Sacrifice (10 page)

"Is it really that bad?" I asked, still nibbling on that bottom lip.

"I'm afraid so, he's got some rather determined enemies. If we get to him first, we can protect him. You want him protected, don't you, Ms Cain?"

I briefly thought that was an unusual thing for a police officer to ask. Brett was my ex-boyfriend after all and maybe they didn't know that he had lost my gran's inheritance on a bad gambling bet, but they must have assumed that for him to no longer live here for four months, that things weren't perfect in our world. I'm not sure why I didn't cotton on to that suggestion more firmly, but it slipped from my mind as the detective went on.

"Your boyfriend has upset the wrong people, Ms Cain. There isn't much time before they will find him, they are very good at it, and when they do, there won't be much left of him for you to have back."

I didn't say, that I didn't want him back at all, I was kind of getting sick of repeating myself, and besides, what the detective was implying simply couldn't be true. Things like this didn't happen in Auckland. We weren't a big city like some overseas, where gangs fought and guns could be found on the streets. I'm not naive, drugs most certainly exist, I hear about them on the news every night, and if they exist, then I guess other more nefarious things do too. But I still thought this officer was being melodramatic, at very the least, exaggerating to get me to comply.

"Perhaps if I come down to the station tomorrow, I can talk to you all then, although I really don't know if I will be of any help. But if you think it might assist you, I'd be happy to go over things then."

I thought I was being more than reasonable, accommodating in fact. It was after nine at night, after all, and Brett was my
ex
-boyfriend, surely tomorrow would be soon enough.

"You don't understand, Ms Cain. Your boyfriend will be dead by tomorrow if we don't get a lead right now and you're our only chance of that. His death will be on your hands. Now please, open the door."

He'd said it in a low, firm voice. No doubt his trained policeman voice, the one he uses to control a stampeding crowd. Because even though the words felt like a slap against my face, I still think I would have stood my ground a little longer. I didn't love Brett anymore, even when I took him back those four times, love had somehow not been the impetus for my actions at all - which said something about me I didn't want to look too closely at right now. But his tone, his forcefulness, coupled with that policeman obey-my-command voice, meant I found myself slipping the chain off the door to let him in.

The second the chain came unhitched the door was slammed back in my face and I realised, as the world turned slow black, that I'd been the worst kind of fool. The signs had been there, but I'd ignored them. I'd let any lingering feelings I had for Brett blind me, cut me off from my common sense.

Cops don't browbeat everyday citizens. And they sure as hell don't slam a door in their face.

I woke with a killer headache and unable to breathe through my nose. Even before I started cataloguing my aches and pains, I knew that police-detective-that-was-
so
-not-a-police-detective had done some serious damage. Who would have thought a door to the face could achieve so much? I now, unfortunately, knew the answer to that question.

I lay with my eyes closed for a while, trying to decipher any noises around me and the condition I was in, before I let on to my captors that I was lucid and awake. There was some muffled conversation, probably behind a closed door, that I couldn't make out. Male voices, low and gruff, and more than one. It sounded like they might have been arguing, but not raising their voices to do it. So, thinking I might be alone, I chanced a look through slitted eyes.

No one was in the room I was in. It was a bedroom, in what looked like a low-rent motel, but the phone - if it had existed at all - had been taken from the night stand and the curtains were closed. Sun shone through a gap in the centre. Holy crap. I'd been here, wherever the hell here was, for the rest of the night and into the next day. I sat up gingerly and immediately regretted it, my hand flashing to my forehead in a pitiful attempt to keep the pounding inside. And then I realised I wasn't tied up. I was completely free and had been placed on top of the bedspread fully clothed. Things were looking up.

If only the room would stop spinning.

I shifted my body to the side of the bed, knowing time wasn't on my side. Those deep masculine voices would soon come to check on me, I needed to make my escape through the window as soon as I could. It took, what felt like, an eternity to get my body to obey any commands. That first moment of sitting upright had led me to believe I was in charge, but the next however many years it took to swing my legs over the side dispelled that illusion pretty much completely.

I kept thinking of moving one body part, only to find another moved instead. This would have been hilarious, if I hadn't have just been knocked out, kidnapped and in a strange, unknown environment, fearing for my life. My hand smashed against the night stand, making the lamp clatter to the floor, when I had been expecting my leg to move sideways instead. The resultant reaction to the sound of the pottery lamp base shattering, made my other hand punch out and crack my knuckles against the same night stand - and had there been a second lamp, no doubt that would have been destroyed too - when I was attempting to stand and take a step away.

Fuck!

My head swung towards the door - it was obeying commands, even if my limbs weren't - and my heart leapt into my throat. The quietly arguing voices had stilled. Silence reigned on the other side of the closed door. I swallowed past a suddenly very dry throat, flicked a glance towards the window, which, for some reason, felt further away than before. And then shifted my gaze back to the door - all the while internally cursing the way the room spun crazily with each movement of my head - as the door came open.

"Baby? Are you awake?"

In the split second I heard that familiar soft voice, all cognitive thought left me. My heartbeat became erratic, my breathing laboured, sweat started to coat my skin. Escape kept repeating on a permanent loop inside my head, but my body simply shut down.

Well, the part of my body that didn't include my mouth. "Brett?"

He pushed the door open further and stood just inside the room, as though afraid to come any closer. And well might he, I thought numbly. Even in a spinning room though, with a pounding head and a staccato drum beat in my chest and burning lungs and a sore-as-fuck nose, he looked kind of good. But then Brett always did. Tight faded denim jeans, worn white T-shirt stretched over well defined muscles. Slightly unruly blond hair, needing a cut about two weeks ago, with a small smattering of stubble across his square jaw. His hazel eyes were pinned on me.

"Baby, I heard something crash. Did you hurt yourself?" He stepped closer, concern written all over his face.

I lowered my head to catch up with my jaw.

"I didn't get the broken nose from a lamp, Brett," I said, after finally finding my voice again.

"Yeah, about that. Lofty didn't mean anything by it, he kinda tripped as he pushed the door open and well, he's a big guy, his weight behind the door made a bit of an impact."

"A bit of an impact," I murmured, jaw still firmly out of my lowering head's reach.

"I've had a go at him. He wasn't meant to harm you in any way. Once he got inside the apartment and got to talk to you, you'd have understood what all the fuss was about."

"All the fuss was about." I seemed unable to form my own sentences, I just kept repeating bits of his.

"Yeah, your place is being watched. And what's up with that?" he asked as though that was the most important thing and me not informing him was all somehow my fault. I glared at him, jaw firmly back where it should be and lips now in a thin line. He accepted I wasn't going to answer, so went on. "He couldn't tell you what was what in case they had surveillance in the hallway and could hear, so he pretended to be a cop and once inside, he was gonna tell you the plan."

"Tell me the plan." Oh god, I'd returned to repeating his words again.

"Yeah, but he couldn't tell you, 'cause you were unconscious, so he and Greeny carried you out the back of the building and into the van and then after driving around to make sure they weren't being followed, brought you here. I had a real go at him, babe, he's made a fuckin' mess of your face. You look like a bleedin' raccoon."

"Raccoon." It was getting worse, I was regressing. Repeating only one word now.

"Yeah, but you understand, eh?" I blinked at him, it felt extremely slow. Like maybe it took a good few minutes, I'm not sure, but with the spinning room and pounding head and thumping chest and everything, slow seemed OK by me.

"I want to go home," I announced and I wasn't ashamed that it sounded whiny. He could kiss my whiny butt.

"Baby, we need to talk."

He walked closer, somehow I found myself pressed against the headboard, knees to chest, arms out to ward him off. So, that was the trick, don't think about the movements, just let the body do its thing. He cocked his head at me and frowned.

"Gen, it's me, Brett." I did the blink thing again. "Baby I know your head got hurt, but we need to talk. I wanna come home."

No. No, no, no. This could not be happening. Brett kidnapping me was a shocker, but Brett still insisting we should live together made it pale in comparison. He just didn't get it, but then I'd sent plenty of confused messages, hadn't I? This was really all my fault. I'd let him back home four times. I had no one to blame but myself.

"Brett," I said shaking my head and then quickly closing my eyes as the room picked up speed around me. I swallowed the small amount of sick that sprang uninvited up my throat. "You can't come home."

"Is there someone else?" he demanded and the soft voice had disappeared. This was the Brett who threw things at the wall, who stormed out of the loft and spent six hours at the pub, then phoned me to come pick his sorry, drunk arse up. This Brett didn't come out too often, more so at the end, but it was well hidden behind soft voiced Brett. It was how I convinced myself things would be OK.

But I was past OK now, I had finally woken up. And there was no bed of roses anymore, just cup throwing, drunken Brett who threatened to take my dream away.

"It's over, Brett," I said, surprisingly softly. "You've got to know it's over." Maybe if I said it enough times he'd eventually hear me.

"Is this the way you want to play it, Genevieve?" My name did not sound nice on his tongue. "You push me away, baby, I will go for your store."

"I have a lawyer," I said, regretting confiding that little bit of news immediately. "It's not as easy as you think. You lost my gran's inheritance." Shut up now, Gen! "You didn't pay a cent in rent or board when you lived with me. I carried you completely." Shut it! Shut it! Shut it! "Your threat is hollow."

"Is it?" he said casually, as though none of what I had just said meant a blind thing. "I've bailed you out more than once. I've picked you up when you've been so down, you couldn't even work. I ran errands for you, dropping off crap to your folks down south, bringing shit back, looked after the apartment. Cleaned it, changed washers, made sure the windows didn't stick." That was a lie! I did all the domestic stuff and maintenance did the rest. He saw the look on my face. "My word against yours, baby. Can you risk it?"

I couldn't and he knew it. It was my dream. The only dream I will ever have and I couldn't even stand up to Brett for fear of losing that one chance at my dream. He knew me well, he knew what buttons to press and he knew I couldn't do it. I sagged into the pillows at my back, defeated, exhausted and disgusted at myself.

"I've just got a coupla things I need to sort out and then we can move back in. Kelly will be fine looking after the store in the meantime and you can stay safe here, watch some TV, get some rest. Heal those eyes, so no one sees how bad you look right now. You wouldn't want anyone to see you like this, would you, baby?"

I stared numbly at the hideous floral bedspread under my feet. I felt his weight settle on the side of the bed next to me, his hand came out and wrapped around the back of neck. The world stopped and not in a good way.

"We're meant to be together, you and me. You know it and I know it. And if you question that, baby, just remember I can take away your dream. Just like that. Then where would you be? No Sweet Seduction, no man, nothing. I'm all you've got and all you're gonna get. Don't fuck it up."

I bit my bottom lip and blinked my eyes several times to stop the tears that threatened to spill. I'm not sure it was working. He pulled my head towards him and kissed my forehead. I pretended I wasn't there.

"Tell me, you're mine," he whispered, hot, sticky breath against my skin. "Tell me, we're meant to be together. Say the words, Gen."

I flicked my eyes up to him and let the tears fall. Fuck him. His face didn't soften from its determined look. He expected an answer. I just stared, crying silent tears and thinking I would do anything to save my dream. If this is what it takes, then I'd do it.

Maybe he saw the conviction in my eyes, maybe he just knew me that well. Because he didn't press for me to
say the words
. He kissed one cheek and then the other and then stood up from the bed.