Pretty Perfect Toy -- A Temptation Court Novel (Temptation Court, Book 2) (32 page)

And running into the Marriott Marquis.

On a different day, Hodge has caught a full video of her—

Entering the same hotel, through the front entrance.

Still images return—with shots of her inside one of the hotel’s clear glass elevators. Then a video of the same thing, on a clearly different day.

I tear the stick out of the drive. Clench fingers around it so hard, the plastic casing cracks beneath my thumb. Hodge and Doyle are still and silent—poised as if ready for anything. But I have no fucking idea what that “anything” is. I spin away from them, elbow propped on the arm of my chair, thumb digging at the two inches’ worth of data that have imploded my soul, wondering how the hell I’m going to take my next breath let alone move my body or form coherent words.

“Christ.” Doyle finally slices it into the silence like a dagger on silk. “Jesus
Christ
, I thought she was,”—he clears his throat—“different.”

“Me too, lad,” Hodge murmurs. “Me too.”

I yearn to wheel back around and punch them both. Strain the astonishment from their statements, and there’s one thing left. Their pity.

Goddammit, not for me.
Not now.

My lips finally part. And shockingly, a word stammers out.

“Name.”

When neither of them answer, I bark it.

“
Name
, Hodge.” I spin back around. Slam the drive to the desk. “She’s going to the same goddamn room, isn’t she?”

“Y-yeah,” he stammers.

“So
what
is the fucker’s name?”

Hodge straightens. Jerks up his chin, grimly accepting exactly where I’m going with the interrogation. “He’s in a suite on the high floor.”

“Of course he is,” Doyle spits.

“His name is Bourne Jackson.”

At once, the wrath drops out Doyle’s composure.

As the bottom drops out of my damn soul.

No.

Shit. Fuck.

No
.

The room lurches, even as it’s filled with a fresh sound: Doyle’s howl of a disbelieving laugh. “Bourne…
what
?”

“Jackson.” Hodge glances from D to me, confused. But his perplexity comes nowhere close to mine, still hanging on for its fucking life as the room keeps cavorting like a seaside funhouse—

The kind Damon and I used to spend hours in…

“That is
not
the asshole’s name.” Doyle’s protest pings through my conscious, disembodied and fuzzy, like someone trying to communicate over the funhouse’s PA.

“That’s the name on the room.” Hodge’s voice isn’t much clearer, still replete with bewilderment.

“Dude,” Doyle asserts. “I’m telling you—”

“He’s right.” I bite it out while yanking open the top drawer of my desk. “Hodge,” I clarify, while sliding out a piece of paper that’s folded into fourths, “Hodge…is right, D…”

“What the fuck?”

I don’t answer him. I can’t, propelled backward by over fifteen years as I stare at the paper, printed on one side with algebra equations. The answers, all in pencil, have faded with time. On the other side of the paper, in pen, is a page full of adolescent scribbles, topped by a headline in careful block lettering.

THE ARTICLES OF THE SUPER SECRET BROTHERHOOD

Bourne Jackson, President and CEO and Secretary (better at cursive)

Bond Connery, Vice-President and COO and Treasurer (better at math)

My psyche is a windstorm. A turbulent, flailing mess, whirling rage and confusion and anguish through the glass of my soul and the boundaries of my heart, until I am decimated past all else but one certain plan of action—which I begin by jolting to my feet, and impaling Hodge and Doyle with a pair of take-no-prisoners stares.

“Call Scott,” I charge to Hodge. “And tell him if Ella ‘gets out of her show’ before I arrive, he is to tell her to walk her ass back into the Marquis and wait for me there.”

I flip my attention to Doyle—but he is already on his feet, truck keys in hand. “I’ll drive. You’re not seeing anything straight at all right now.”

I nod and follow him out the door.

I don’t argue with the man when he’s right.

*

Mishella

“P
lease tell me
we are done.”

I punctuate it with a long groan, a longer stretch and a tired glance over at Damon. We have been, in his words, “hitting it hard” for the last two and a half hours, attempting to connect the final name on Cassian’s Arcadian contractor list to any known entities associated with Rune Kavill. So far, it looks like this sole company might be a legitimate resource: a steel company who will make custom girders for several bridges to be rebuilt within the next five to ten years.

Damon rises too. Rolls his head, making his neck crack several times, while making another pass in front of the billboards. “For today, we are,” he answers to my question. “Overall, I’d say we’re damn close.” He scrubs both hands down his face. “At least I fucking hope we are.”

A breeze of concern blows nettles through my belly. “Because…?”

“Because I was only given clearance to chase this shit for two weeks.” He lets his arms fall, stretching his hands and wiggling his fingers. Everything we have mapped out on the boards, he has also carefully recorded on his smart pad—meaning all ten of his digits have had no rest for the last week and a half. “We don’t have it all buttoned down, but it’s enough to make the higher-ups listen, and hopefully start on some action against all these fuckers.”

“When?”

“End of the week, likely,” he responds. “If not, first thing next week.”

It is not the answer I’d expected—but so much better. Relief hits me in a rush, making me drop back down to the couch. “Thank the Creator,” I blurt, also in a rush—but hurry to fix the fallout, as the man’s shoulders visibly slump. “Damon…hey…”
Ugh.
Why am I actually stumped here? He is a grown man. A
spy
, for the love of the powers. “It has…been real,” I stammer, going for one of Vy’s favorite trite-isms. “And it has been fun. Just cannot say it has been real fun, okay?”

He groans. Chuckles. Shakes his head. “Where the hell did you scrape that one up, Sancti girl?”

I grin. “Somewhere in Sancti, I think.”

“Right.”

He rocks back on his heels. A long moment stretches by, thick with us both scuffing toes into the carpet, awkward as a pair of tortoises on a dance floor.

Finally, I query softly, “There is no spy movie precedent for this, is there?”

“Not a damn one,” Damon mutters.

“Or any obscure CIA handbook thing?”

“Only if one of us was getting ready to diffuse a bomb first.”

Tick…

Tock
…

The pounds at the door, three demanding blows in a row, lurch me to my feet, heartbeat surging to my throat. Though Damon’s reaction is not so skittish, his face creases and his body tenses. In seconds, His Court lion takes over. He prowls across the room, silencing me with a finger at his lips—stunning me by brandishing a revolver that seems to appear from nowhere.

Three seconds. Three knocks. And everything has changed. Less than a minute ago, we were sitting here laughing about spy movies. Rune Kavill was just a black and white name up on a board. Now, there is a gun in Damon’s hand and Kavill could be the furious fiend on the other side of that door…

This is dangerous.

The awareness stabs deep and hard, gushing raw terror to my throat as Damon motions for me to duck behind the couch.

This is real.

I cower, trembling and cold, as he creeps coolly to the door. I am almost angry at him. Spy or not, how can he be so calm?

This is truly insane.

Every cell in my body freezes as he yells out, “Who is it?”—

I could truly die.

And am now certain that I
will
, as the intruding assholes do not wait to knock again.

They break down. Crash in. Invade, whooshing in like a clash of Titan-class super heroes—only a thousand times more loud, terrifying, and floor-shaking.

“Room service, mother fucker.”

Doyle?

“Drop the heat.
Now
.”

Hodge?

“Against the wall. Do it!”

Oh, dear Creator. No.

I forget about cowering now. My shock propels down my arms and pulls me up on knees still made of mush and feet still formed of lead. Compels my gaping eyes to comprehend the surreal truth of the scene in front of me.

“
Cassian
?”

I am answered only with a look full of so much fire and agony and pain, it forces me to drop again. I kneel on the couch, every nerve clenching, my stomach turning inside out, as I realize exactly why his face is contorted like that, and why his eyes pierce me with such glimmering green allegation. He has leapt to the same conclusion
I
would, in his place. A lover gone every afternoon. Vague texts during those hours. Every night, giving him a pretty, perfect toy to make up for it.

How much of a fool have I taken him to be?

The pain of that same question is hard as jade in his eyes, coarse as granite across his lips—

Violent as a pissed-off Titan, in the blow he drives into Damon’s face.

“Cassian!” I scream. “Dear Creator!
Stop
!”

“Stop?” It rips from somewhere deep within him, sounding like an erupting volcano—in the middle of the Antarctic. Fire and ice, fury and pain, laughter and tears all roll from him, sloppy as the steps he traces in a wide circle before wheeling around, honing in again on Damon. “Fuck, I’m just getting started.”

Hodge and Doyle grab Damon by the elbows. Hoist him back up for Cassian’s second punch.

“
Cassian! Calmay olmak! Plait! Plait
!”

Damon groans. “Christ, Cas. Just—”

“Don’t ‘Christ, Cas’ me. Don’t
speak
to me until I get to twenty-four on this count, you mother fucker.” He rains two more blows. “One for every year you were gone. Another one for every day you fucked my woman. The last of it’s going right up your ass, you selfish excuse for a human being.”

“By the Creator.” I scramble off the couch. Stumble over and twist a fist into Cassian’s shirt, though the effort feels like trying to use a dinner napkin to stop the
Titanic
. I throw a beseeching stare to Doyle and Hodge, but it is just as useless. “Cassian,
please
!”

“Get away, Ella. I’m warning you.
Now
.”

“For the love of your God, we did not—
he
did not—”

“I never touched her,” Damon snarls.

He flinches. Just a little. I accept it as a toehold—and after a hard gulp, use
his
shoulder to swing myself around, directly in the path of his fist.

“He was saving your life, dammit!”

His teeth lock. Seethe. His chest pumps. Heaves. His gaze glitters. Shatters. Turns to heavy, agonized liquid, sliding down over his beautiful, broken face…

As his fist spreads apart. Tremors.

And falls, cupping my face instead.

“
We
were saving your life.” I lift my arms. Delve my hands into his hair, pulling him down for a shaking, sweaty kiss. “Just let him explain. Let him tell you everything. He—he saved your life fourteen years ago, and he is doing it again now.”

His fingers tighten against my skin, betraying the terrible conflict of his decision…the incriminating toll it already racks from his spirit. Hating Damon has become the default of his heart, a setting achieved through years of such pain and sorrow, that changing it now is unfathomable to him…a darkness I am begging him to plunge right back into…

I pull him closer as he plummets to his knees, rocking into me, pushing his forehead against mine. “I know what I am asking.” I whisper it, hovering our lips close, swiping the salty drops from his face with my thumbs. “I know how deeply this hurts, how terrifying this is…that I am asking you to trust our future over your past. But think about what I am saying.
Our
future, Cassian. This is for me as much as you. Please…listen!”

Breaths blow in and out of him, rough and desperate and shaking. A low keen echoes up his throat, like a wounded animal begging to simply be killed. “Goddammit, Ella…”

“You
must
listen to him, Cassian. For the sake of your
life
.”

He jerks back. Impales me all over again with the fury of his glare. “Why the hell do you keep saying that? My life? What the hell?”

“The people you’re about to sign contracts with for Arcadia…they want to ruin my country from the inside out, and they will not think twice about cutting you down to do it.”

He jolts again. “What the
fuck
?”

“It’s true.” The croak comes from Damon, released from Doyle and Hodge’s grip and now leaning against the wall, nursing his swollen face. “I know my word means shit to you right now, but I’ve got a wall of proof to back it up.”

Cassian follows the trajectory of his jabbing thumb. “Holy mother of…” He stops, eyeing Damon with new realization. “
Mother
. Shit.
Mom
. When she finds out that you’re—”

“And she won’t,” Damon cuts in. “I’m sorry, boy wonder. She
can’t
. It’s a fluke that
you
did, and now—”