Seduced in the Dark (9 page)

His hair is somewhat disheveled from where
he’s run his fingers through it so many times to keep from punching
David in his face. Every now and again, his eyes flick to me and I
feel a dark thrill just thinking about what he’d like to do to me
if only he could. If he were Caleb, I would assume a spanking is
most certainly in order!

“
When exactly did you imagine yourself
as…? My lover?” My heartbeat vibrated my skull. “Was it the first
time I made you come with my mouth? Or one of the many times since,
that I’ve put you over my knee? You seem to like that.”

And there he is – Caleb, in my thoughts, in
my blood. I can feel my face getting warmer, my stomach getting
tighter and already there is the drumbeat of my arousal pulsing
between my legs. I squeeze them together and get so lost in my
thoughts it takes me a second to realize Reed is still staring at
me. When our eyes finally meet, I blush – hard. I smile when he
blushes too.

Agent Reed clears his throat and takes a
drink of water. It’s enough to bring back his control. I sigh
through my disappointment.

“Agent Reed,” David says, reclaiming Reed’s
attention, “my client is being held on ridiculous charges that
would never stand up in court. She was living with her mother and
attending high school at the time of her kidnapping. Even though
she’s eighteen, the U.S. Attorney would be hard pressed to try her
as an adult. If she’s considered a minor
and
involved in a
human trafficking case, under Section 107 of the Trafficking
Victims Protection Act of 2000, she’s protected from the FBI’s
tactics of investigation. There’s no point in us even sitting here.
I should be talking to the U.S. Attorney, not you.”

Reed does not look happy, but he doesn’t
look beat either. “Your client has two-hundred-fifty-thousand
dollars in a foreign bank account. How did it get there? She won’t
say. Also, she’s been living with suspected terrorists. She’s
admitted to it. Then, there’s the small matter of her knowledge of
a meeting between enemies of the United States taking place in less
than a week! We need information and her refusal to give it
qualifies as an obstruction of justice –”

“What terrorists!?!” I yell at Reed and move
to stand, but David calmly pushes me back into my seat.

“Muhammad Rafiq, Jair Baloch, Felipe
Villanueva, and of course
Caleb
,” he says. “Do you or do you
not
, also have information about Demitri Balk?”

“I never said I knew him!”

“You said you knew where he’d be,” Reed says
with a raised eyebrow.

“Miss Ruiz, please stop talking and let me
handle this,” David says in an irritated tone.

“By the way,” begins Reed anew, ignoring my
lawyer and focused on me, “Balk is suspected of having ties to arms
dealing and narcotics trafficking. And until I know how you,” he
jabs his finger in my direction, “are involved, you’re a suspect
too. You can deal with me or I can let the DEA and Homeland
Security in here and when they use Patriot Act against you, don’t
say I didn’t warn you.”

“That is enough,” David said firmly, glaring
at us both.

“Caleb is not a terrorist. I don’t know
about the rest of them, but he’s not a terrorist! And neither am I!
And–” A cold wave crashes over me.
Felipe
. I never said
anything about Felipe. Reed knows things he’s not saying.

Caleb! Fuck!

I can’t breathe; all of the oxygen is
suddenly being sucked from the room, from my fucking lungs! I keep
taking deep, deep breaths, lots of them, but I can’t get any
air.

My heart is racing.

I can’t breathe!

“Olivia?” says Reed and I can hear him
shuffling around.

“We’re done here, Agent Reed. I’ll be
speaking to your superiors.” David reaches for me and tries to get
me to stand. I don’t like his hands on me. I can’t breathe! He’s
suffocating me. I need to think. I need to breathe.

“Shut up! Everybody just shut up!” Reed and
David go silent and I ignore them as I put my hands on the table in
front of me and try to catch my breath.

You fucked up, girl. Don’t make it
worse.

I squeeze my eyes shut and will myself to
breathe slower, deeper, calmer. My heart starts to slow in degrees
until finally I feel only a fraction of my panic. Without looking
up, I think about what I need to do.

How does Reed know about Felipe? Does he
know more about Caleb? Is he really going to charge me with murder?
It was self defense!

I have a feeling Reed would be a lot more
amenable if my lawyer weren’t here. Still a prick, but less likely
to push this hard. Dr. Sloan said he was a good guy and would do
right by me. I don’t have much faith in anything anyone says to me
lately, but a glimmer of hope is better than none. I take a sip of
water when Reed slides the paper cup beneath my face. I hope he
feels guilty, the son of a bitch.

David puts his hand on my shoulder and I
shrug it off, “Don’t touch me.”

“I think I should take you back to your room
now, Miss Ruiz,” he says.

“I want you to leave,” I whisper with my
eyes still fixed on the table.

“Excuse me?” David says, indignantly. “I
don’t think that’s a very good idea, Miss Ruiz. I strongly advise
you to keep silent and let me do my job.”

“She wants you leave.” Reed says. He knows
he’s won this round. He boxed me in a corner and I let him. I
realize I should have assumed he knew a lot, not just about me, but
other things too. I feel stupid, and angry and scared. But right
now, I need time to think and Reed is the devil I know.

They argue for a bit, puffing their chests
at each other in some
National Geographic
display of
machismo. In the end David gathers his things and leaves. Reed and
I are alone again. I have a feeling it’s what he wanted all
along.

He sits quietly, relaxed and patient,
unwilling to break the silence. He doesn’t want to lose ground. He
wants me to come to him, and I know it’s exactly the way it’s going
to play out. I need him on my side. Just the way I once needed
Caleb.

My voice is soft on purpose. I need him to
see me as fragile again. I need to bring out the alpha male in him.
I need him to believe I’m his to protect, even if I already belong
to someone else. Caleb would have been proud. I remind myself that
I am now my own master. “You wouldn’t really let them take me to
jail would you? After everything?” I let the threat of tears simmer
beneath the surface of my words.

Reed exhales deeply through his nose and I
hear his fingertip tapping softly against the table. “I would never
put an innocent person in jail, Miss Ruiz, but I still need you to
convince me you’re not guilty.”

“I thought I was innocent until proven
guilty, not the other way around.”

He chuckles a little, but it doesn’t quite
reach his eyes. He really is stunning. “I think most people
subscribe to the better-safe-than-sorry philosophy these days.” He
leans forward, conciliatorily, “The truth is, I think you’re just a
girl who got caught up in a whole lot of awful shit. I think you
did what you had to do to get back home and I think that makes you
incredibly smart, and incredibly brave. You don’t have to be brave
anymore, Miss Ruiz. You don’t have to protect anyone. You’d save
yourself, and me, a whole lot of grief if you’d just tell me the
truth so I can make sure what happened to you doesn’t happen to
someone else.”

It would be so easy to believe him. I’m more
tempted than I’ve ever been to just spill my guts to Reed and let
him figure out what to do. It’s no wonder he’s so good at his job.
“I wish I could trust you, Reed, but I know I can’t.”

His brow furrows in confusion, but there is
a wry tilt to his lips, “Why?”

I give him a small smile of my own, “You
think you’re different from men like Caleb. You see everything in
black and white, you don’t care about the whole story; you don’t
care about the gray. Some stories aren’t black and white, Agent
Reed.”

He shakes his head a little, obviously
amused, but still professional, “In my experience…the only time a
woman wants to tell you ‘the whole story’, is when she wants you to
make a decision based on emotion instead of logic.”

My eyes narrow and I stare at the surface of
table, the scars not visible at first glance but clearer as I
stare, unblinking, “Maybe,” I begin, my voice hollow and far away,
“but if it weren’t for emotions overriding logic, I wouldn’t be
here.”

Reed’s smile is gone, his gaze intent,
“Meaning?”

“Caleb. It wasn’t logic…what he did for me.”
The words are a revelation. I hadn’t been expecting to say them,
but I know they’re true. Caleb might not love me, but he cared. He
kept his promise to keep me safe, even if it meant we couldn’t be
together.

It makes the pain so much worse.

“
I’ve been doing this a long time –
manipulating people to get my way. That’s why you think you love
me. Because I’ve broken you down and built you back up to believe
it. It wasn’t an accident. Once you leave this behind…you’ll see
that.”

“
Please. Please Caleb. Don’t make me do
this, don’t make me go back to trying to be someone I don’t know
how to be anymore.”

“
It’s time for you to go,
Kitten…”

Reed’s voice jolts me back into reality,
“What did he do for you?”

I wipe my eye, sweeping away the tears
pooled there, “Everything,” I say through a pained smile, “but it
had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with emotion –
revenge, honor, betrayal, lust, even love...all of these things
stem from our emotions.” I paused. “I’m sure you’re not doing what
you do without some kind of emotion, Agent Reed.”

“You made your point,” Reed says softly and
leans toward me, “but I’ve been around and seen some shit.”

“Why should that matter to me? Is that
supposed to make me trust you?”

Reed shrugs. “What other choice do you
have?”

“How do you know about Felipe?”

He smiles, “I thought that might get your
attention. I’m good at my job, Miss Ruiz, and I’ve been digging
through anything I can find on Muhammad Rafiq. What I’ve found so
far is pretty damn disturbing. Looking through his known
associates, and cross-referenced with those in Mexico, it didn’t
take me too long to find Felipe. As far as I can tell, the man is
quite…eccentric.”

Eccentric wasn’t quite the word I would have
used. “Wait…if you know where he is, why haven’t you–”

“Mexico, isn’t the US, Miss Ruiz, we can’t
go rounding up every criminal in another country based on
suspicions we can’t substantiate. Also, he’s left the country and
gone who knows where. Maybe Pakistan?”

I look up and shake my head. “Hard to say.”
I wonder if they’re all dead: Felipe, Celia, Kid, and Nancy. I’d
like to believe Caleb wouldn’t hurt Celia, but then I remember the
blood and I wonder if…. No, I can’t handle it.

“Miss Ruiz, where’s the auction?” Reed’s
words are sharp and serious. This is his end game. I really would
have to make a choice.

“I don’t really know, Reed. I don’t. Not
specifically, but I could probably give you an idea. Maybe if you
listened to the whole story you could figure it out for yourself.
You probably know more than I do.”

“Okay. Tell me.”

It’s my turn to smile and shake my head,
“No. Not without some concessions.”

He’s exasperated, “WITSEC. I told you, I
can’t guarantee it. More than that, I don’t think it’s the right
move for you. The last thing you need is to be separated from
everything and everyone you know. It’s a cop-out.”

“I don’t care what you think it is. I want
to disappear. I want this whole mess behind me and if and when I
ever decide to deal with it – that’s my business. Not yours.”

Reed and I go around for a few minutes as I
lay out everything I want in exchange for my story. It isn’t
pleasant. Reed is a scary bastard when he wants to be and I would
be lying if I said he didn’t intimidate me, but I’m willing to take
him on. There are things I will not bend on. There are battles I’m
determined to win.

“I know what I want, Reed, and if you can’t
give it to me…you’re shit out of luck. After what I’ve been
through, I don’t care what you think you can do to me.”

Reed’s jaw is clenched and I can hear the
subtle pop as he grinds his teeth. He stares long and hard at me
for a while and even though I want to, I don’t shrink under is
gaze. “Start talking.”

“Will you help me?” I whisper, but keep my
chin up, my eyes level on his.

He exhales slowly and unclenches his jaw,
“I’ll do my best. If you get us there, get us to the auction, I’ll
help you.”

My heart is in my throat. I want to leap
over the desk and hug the hell out of him. He’s given me hope. Hope
for all the things I want most in the world. With great care, I
lick my lips and prepare to tell Reed what he wants to know.

***

Where to begin?

So much was different between Caleb and
me.

So much remained the same.

He was still the man who had hired ruthless
men to kidnap me. Still the cruel person who had locked me in the
dark for weeks, forcing me to become dependent on him, crave him,
rely upon him until even my own instincts stood no chance. He was
the man who had saved my life, and the one who had put it in
danger. Finally, he was still the man who planned to sell me as a
sex slave. A whore.

He’d had his own reasons for wanting me back
and they’d had nothing to do with my well-being and everything to
do with revenge. Did I know why he wanted revenge? No. Trust did
not run both ways between us. There were certain things I had no
choice but to trust him with: keeping me alive, fed, safe, and
unless it was him – untouched. It didn’t leave much, but I refused
to trust him with the most important thing of all, my future.