Beneath the Surface (7 page)

“You never know when a man’s going to have to protect his twelve grain.”

Okay, that was funny. Quinn laughed. She couldn’t help herself. If she wasn’t careful, she might start to find this man charming. “Or . . . when some crazy woman will show up on your doorstep begging you to help her.”

He fixed her with that multihued stare. This man really was too handsome for his own good. It didn’t help matters that he was standing here half-naked. Though admittedly, her experience with men was limited—she’d never seen one in the flesh before with this hard of a body. The thought crossed her mind for the briefest moment—what would it feel like to be taken by a man like Asher Tate?—possessed by him?—dominated by him?

All right, she must be suffering from PTSD or something, because she should definitely not be thinking about him like that.

“You’re not crazy, Quinn. A little odd, maybe . . .” His lips curled in a teasing grin, giving her a flash of straight white teeth. “But definitely not crazy.”

She gasped in mock outrage and playfully punched him in the shoulder. It was like hitting a brick.

“My culinary skills leave something to be desired,” he warned, taking the twist tie off the bag and pulling out a stack of bread. “I’ve lived on MREs for years and I hate cooking, so if you want anything fancier than a grilled cheese, you’re going to have to make it yourself.”

He gave her his back and began buttering the slices, then slapped them down on the pan.

“Grilled cheese is fine. Thank you. Do you have any fruit I can cut up?”

“It’s in the fridge. Help yourself.”

She pulled the door open and was surprised to find the refrigerator reasonably well stocked, and with healthy options. Then again, he probably wouldn’t have a body like that living on junk food—no Twinkies and Ho Hos for this guy. She pulled a few peaches out of the produce drawer and set them on the counter. He handed her a plate from the cupboard above him as she retrieved a knife from the block. “Thanks. I didn’t know you had horses.”

“Yeah, two. I grew up on a horse farm. My parents live about a half hour into the mountains. Horses come in handy around here. You ride?”

“Me?” She looked up from the peach she was peeling. “No. There’s not much of an opportunity to go horseback riding in Manhattan.”

“You like it there? In Manhattan?”

“Not especially. But then I haven’t really thought of it as home since—” She caught herself before Spencer’s name left her lips. “Well, in a long time, anyway. I’ve been traveling for the last two years so I haven’t been there a lot. That’s why I got a roommate.”

Her chest tightened at the thought of Emily, a sharp ache reminding her that although she may be far from the city, the memories were just a moment away. She didn’t finish what she was saying. It didn’t matter and she wasn’t in the mood to talk anymore. If Asher noticed her discomfort, he ignored it. She returned to her task, focusing intently on cutting the peaches.

They settled into companionable silence after that and she helped him finish making lunch. It was nice—surprisingly amiable. She should have known it wouldn’t last.

CHAPTER

7

A
sher studied the woman sitting across from him, eating her grilled cheese and peaches in contemplative silence. He suspected she was thinking about her roommate and wanted to give her the silence she needed to process. Grief was a tricky thing . . . You think you’re fine one minute and the next you’re not. It was a traumatic shock, seeing someone you cared about dead like that—especially when you weren’t used to it. He knew what she must have been going through—been there, done that, too many times to count. He was no stranger to grief. The doubts, the guilt, and the what-ifs that plagued your mind during the day and haunted your dreams at night. They’d eat you alive if you didn’t find a way to shut them off. After all these years, he still remembered his first. S’pose you never forget your first anything.

The problem wasn’t always shutting the emotions off—sometimes that was the only way you could survive the next five minutes. No, the problem came when you refused to turn them back on, which had become the problem for many men like Jayce, and the temptation Asher lived with every fucking day. Once you become numb to everything—eventually your conscience just withers up and dies. He’d seen it happen time and time again to good soldiers—great men—destroyed by the atrocities of war.

Everyone had their breaking point, and Asher had reached his two years ago when he’d watched one of his best friends gun down a kid on the streets of Kandahar. He couldn’t have been any older than thirteen. Then again, many of them were killers long before that. The kid was reaching into his jacket. Slater thought he was carrying a bomb and reaching for the detonator.

That was the day Asher decided he couldn’t fucking do it anymore and resigned from the Special Forces, taking an early out. He knew if he didn’t, there wouldn’t be anything left of him and he’d be blowing his brains out just like Slater did after he’d realized his mistake. He was one bad call from a pine box.

He should have just retired. If he’d known then what he did now, he sure as shit would have. But no, he’d gone and started up his own private security consulting agency. He should have fucking named it Mercenaries “R” Us, because that’s exactly what they turned out to be, but it didn’t quite have the same ring to it as Tate Security.

Their last mission was doomed to fail from the start. Then again, how in the hell would he know the job they’d been hired to do was a setup to undermine the emergence of the Iraqi military? Asher couldn’t help but wonder if Del Toro had taken that job when he’d offered it, instead of Peterson, would things have ended differently? There was a good possibility seventeen people would still be alive.

Shoving his own mental shit aside, he cleared his throat and focused his attention on his houseguest. He almost didn’t want to disrupt the unspoken truce that seemed to have settled between them, but he knew she wouldn’t volunteer the information on her own and he needed to know what the hell was going on. “I discovered something I shouldn’t have in Haiti” just wasn’t going to cut it. If he was going to risk his life for her, he damn well wanted to know why.

“You’re staring . . .” She spoke into her bowl of peaches without looking up.

Yes, he supposed he was. But he was still having a hard time believing Quinn was actually here. He hated to admit how many times in the past four months he’d thought of her, none of those times fondly, however. But nonetheless, she’d gotten under his skin at that wedding—bad.

Mumbling an apology, Asher dragged his hand through his sweat-dried hair. He needed a shower and to wash off this dirt clinging to him like a second skin. The heat index was pushing ninety already, and he’d shed his sweaty shirt to work out Jack, the horse he’d left behind when he’d gone to scout the property earlier this morning. So far, there wasn’t any sign she’d been followed.

“I need to know what happened in Haiti, Quinn.”

She tensed but refused to look at him. It was just as well. He was a sucker for those violet eyes and he didn’t need her making him soft—or hard, which seemed to be the case more often than not. As much as he tried to fight it, Quinn’s effect on him was far more visceral than he cared to admit. He’d known it back at the wedding and foolishly thought it would pass. But seeing her again had brought all that desire, and more, rushing back. He needed to figure out a way to get a handle on that shit and fast, because he could not do his job, could not keep her safe, if all he could think about was being with her. Chrissake, at this rate he was going to get them both killed.

He hadn’t slept at all last night. The only thing that was harder than that god-awful couch was his cock. And that crotch shot she’d given him this morning had been the last damn thing he needed. So far, he’d done a pretty decent job of pretending he didn’t want her—now if he could only convince his dick of that lie, he’d be doing pretty fucking swell.

She sat her fork down and reluctantly lifted her gaze to his. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything. The more you can tell me, the better chance I’m going to have at keeping you alive.”

She looked hesitant, like she was trying to decide whether she could trust him or not—a little late to be having second thoughts now. “Listen, Quinn, you’re in some serious shit. I know it and you know it, or else you wouldn’t be sitting in my kitchen right now. It’s pretty apparent that you’re not here for my company. You don’t have to like me, but you’re going to have to trust me.”

He must have made a convincing enough argument because after a minute she nodded. “I was hired to do a publicity story on the Children’s Global Resource Network to raise awareness and support for the organization. They are the main and sometimes only source of food for many villages in Haiti.”

“I’ve heard of them. They’re known for their humanitarian aid to third-world countries.”

“Right. I was staying in Meille. It’s one of the smallest, poorest villages in central Haiti. Most of the huts are one-room dwellings. There was a family there that was kind enough to let me stay with them. They have five children, their oldest is a girl named Aileen—she’s sixteen.” She glanced up and the pain in her eyes made something in his chest cramp. “A few weeks ago, she was out with two of her friends and they disappeared. Her parents were devastated. We searched everywhere, but no one saw anything, or if they had, no one was talking. I began doing more digging and discovered that Meille wasn’t the only village where teenage girls were going missing. It was happening all over the area. One here, two there . . . Once I began documenting the location and details of their disappearances, I discovered a commonality—the CGRN.”

“Fuck . . .” It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where this story was headed or what happened to those kids.

“I wasn’t the only one who suspected they were taking these girls and selling them, but no one would say anything because if the CGRN gets pulled out of their region, many more people will starve to death.”

“So they turn a blind eye to the atrocities of a few to save the lives of many—it’s utilitarianism.”

“It’s barbarianism.”

“I don’t disagree. But many underdeveloped countries operate with this mentality.”

“Well, it has to stop. And I’m going to do everything in my power to see that it does.”

The conviction in her voice, the determination in her eyes, was admirable—inspiring even. It’d been a long time since he fought for something he believed in, or believed in something enough to fight for it.

“Since I was already doing a story for the CGRN, I was able to get access to different areas, take a lot of pictures, and interview people without raising suspicion. I don’t believe the majority of the people in the CGRN even know this is going on. I think there’s a small group within the organization that’s using them as a front for human trafficking. A lot of what I learned was circumstantial and I knew I needed proof before coming forward with a story that was so damaging. So I waited. Night after night, I waited and watched until I finally found the proof I needed. I witnessed some of the men with the CGRN military team selling these girls to another group of men.”

Her voice broke, vacancy filling her eyes. She was looking at him, but it wasn’t Asher she was seeing anymore. A knot fisted in his gut at hearing her story, at seeing the agony she struggled with. He had to fight against the impulse to go to her, to take her in his arms and tell her it was all going to be okay. But he didn’t, because it wasn’t. It wasn’t going to be okay for those girls and it sure as hell wasn’t all right for her roommate. And if he fucked this up, it wouldn’t be all right for Quinn.

“I had nothing but my camera. There wasn’t anything I could do to stop them from taking those girls. Standing right there, they stripped them naked and treated them like cattle—grabbing at their breasts and inspecting their teeth . . . It was so horrible. The girls were crying, begging the men to let them go. They clung to each other as they were loaded into a canvas-covered truck. And I just let it happen . . .” Tears filled her eyes, and when one spilled down her cheek, she angrily swiped it away.

“You said it yourself, Quinn, there was nothing you could do to stop it. If you would have tried, you would have gotten yourself killed—or worse.” Because, yeah, there were some things a lot worse than death.

The thought of how close Quinn could have come to disappearing rocked him harder than it should have. He didn’t care about this woman, he reminded himself. And he was a fucking liar too. Quinn had sunk her quills into him four months ago and it appeared those barbs were still imbedded pretty deep.

“They raped one of them—right there in the dirt, each of them taking their turn with the girl. It was all I could do not to throw up. Every time the bile would surge up my throat, I’d swallow it back down and keep taking pictures.”

Fuck . . 
. “You were lucky they didn’t catch you.”

She nodded. “I left the next day, claimed I had a family emergency I needed to return home for. I transferred all my notes and interviews onto the SD card from my camera and gave it to Aileen’s father. He mailed it to Violet for me. I’m hoping it will be here by the end of the week. Instead of going home, I flew into DC, and like I told you last night, I went straight to the attorney general’s office and reported what I’d seen, what was happening over there.”

“Who did you speak with?”

“The attorney general, Mark Madison.”

“And what did he tell you?”

“He asked for my proof, which I don’t have right now. I checked my bag before boarding the plane and never saw it again. He said he would look into my report and wanted me to contact him when I had my evidence. Then he thanked me for coming in. I went home from there, back to New York, but my flight was delayed because of bad weather. I arrived to find my roommate dead and—” Her voice broke and she buried her face in her hands.

“Shit . . .” He came around the table and pulled Quinn into his arms. He was filthy and probably smelled like a sweaty horse, but she didn’t seem to care. She felt so small, caged against him. So fragile . . . Her shoulders shook with grief and he held her tighter. He rested his chin on the top of her head and tried not to let his mind wander down the tragic road this could have taken. He knew how easily she could have been killed—had been on too many missions fucked up by one mistake or another not to know how this could have played out.

Inhaling a deep breath, he drew her scent into his lungs and closed his eyes. She was here now—safe. He just needed to keep her that way.

Once the tears started falling, she couldn’t get them to stop. Putting voice to those memories had been harder than she’d expected, making her relive them with startling clarity. The emotions were too raw, the horror too close to the surface for her to hold them back anymore.

When Asher’s arms wrapped around her, the feeling of safety enveloping her was her final undoing. She just . . . cracked, breaking down and sobbing against him. He held her close, tucking her head beneath his chin as he stood there letting her cry. It shouldn’t feel this good, being in his arms, but when his large hand slowly moved up and down her back, she melted into him, molding against every hard, muscled peak and plane of his body. He was dirty and he smelled like leather, sweat, and horse. And God help her, she never wanted him to let her go. She told herself it was his strength she needed, but as the flicker of feminine awareness slowly awakened inside her, she knew it was more than that.

She wanted Asher Tate, and if she was being completely honest with herself, she’d wanted him from the moment she’d laid eyes on him. It was his arrogant, cocky attitude she’d hated, the flagrant whoring that had given her the self-control to stay the hell away from him. But this was a side of Asher she hadn’t seen before, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to, because the last thing she needed right now was to fall for this man.

She’d had her heart broken once and vowed she’d never give another man the chance to do it again. She had no doubt if she lowered her guard and let Asher in, he would devastate her. Maybe not on purpose, but she knew guys like him, and they had no interest in long-term anything.