Authors: Courtney Lane
“You’re giving me a stop word?” Incredulity and shock weighted my words, turning my question into a coarse whisper.
“It’s not a stop word. It’s a reprieve.” Without another word to me, he opened the door to the home.
The furniture was sparse and reminded me of how an older eccentric and wealthy widow would’ve decorated.
“Did you steal this house from someone?” I kept my feet firmly planted on the marble floor in the two-story foyer. The ceiling contained a mural of angels in variant shades of blue and dark gold.
Catch hadn’t answered me. Instead, he examined me as if I showed up to a black tie dinner without my clothes. “Take one of the unlocked rooms upstairs. Shower and change into something suitable for a dinner.” He looked at his watch. “You have an hour.”
“Change into what?” I turned to him and gestured over what I was wearing.
“Take one of the unlocked rooms and change,” he pressed curtly. “In the future, don’t pretend you have difficulties hearing me.”
I wagged my finger at him. “Remember. I haven’t signed anything. You’re a criminal-slash-good-Samaritan right now. You don’t own me.”
His brows contracted. His frown became so dramatic it created lines in the corners of his mouth.
Catch must’ve been a very serious child growing up. I wondered about his parents, and if they were as rigid and regimented with him as Michael was with me. “Anyone ever tell you you’re humorless?”
He took one large step forward. “I’m being very gentle with my commands. Would you like me to show you what I’m capable of when I'm not gentle?”
I smiled. “I think I like it when you threaten me.”
His eyes changed, darkening and warning me.
I arched my neck to revel in the mural on the ceiling. “What do you do, Catch?”
“What is it you think I do?”
I dropped my chin to my chest and threw my hands on my hips. “Assassin?”
“No.”
“Bodyguard?”
“No.”
I attacked my lips with my teeth for a moment, at a loss as to what he could’ve been. “Can you give me a hint?”
“I’m surprised I have to tell you given my name.” A sudden skewed grin lightened his face. “I’m an extractor.”
“Of what?”
“Information. Most of the time…things of a more complex and intangible nature.”
“In other words, you torture people for hire?”
He shook his head at me, scorning me like I was a disobedient child. “Torturing people with crude devices might be fun, but it does nothing to gain information. When people are pushed to their limits, they will do anything and say anything. I don’t need anyone to be my bitch. I need them to give me things of use to me. Information is like love; it takes finesse and trust to gain.”
A sudden headache throbbed between my eyebrows. I drew my hand up to massage it away. The man was a walking mental mind fuck. I had an inkling I’d barely witnessed the full extent of how much he would attempt, and maybe win, control of my mind. “Lucky for me, I don’t know anything interesting about anyone.”
“You think I want information from you?”
I nodded. “I don’t know why. I had a boring, tragic life. My parents died in a house fire.” A frown contorted my lips. “My childhood home—the apartment building caught fire. It killed my mother, my stepfather, and dozens of other people. Blame it on the slum lord who never fixed anything when he should have. He was sued and went to jail. It was all over the national news. Surprised you didn’t hear about it. I’ve been an orphan on my own ever since. I didn’t care to be put in the foster system, so I ran away and made my own way. The most interesting thing about me is that I fight in underground matches on the weekends.”
“Be that as it may, you keep the company of Michael Leone,” he drawled, appearing to have trouble believing my lies.
“Yep.” I nodded with conviction. “Don’t pity me. It could be worse, right?”
A tightness took over his face and his forehead creased severely with the furrowing of his brow. “How did you, a woman who isn’t exactly well-versed in the inner workings of the streets, happen to get into underground fighting?”
Darren’s grandmother hadn’t said much to Catch other than the small tidbit about why I sent her money—or at least, I hoped she hadn’t. Thinking she spilled everything while Catch pretended he knew nothing about it threatened to make my head reel. “I stumbled into an arena looking for a club. I turned right back around, but it didn’t matter. I received a strange phone call a few days later; fight or die. It was entrapment.” My feet moved in the opposite direction and headed up the stairs.
“Sugar,” he called after my back as I never halted my stride, “don’t succumb to curiosity. If a door’s locked, it’s inaccessible for a reason.”
I waved at him from over my shoulder and disappeared up the stairs.
As I stood in the massive hall, a central point adjoining the left and right wings of the house, the magnitude of the situation trickled into my thoughts and threatened to infiltrate my protective shield.
He said to take any unlocked room I wanted, but almost every room on the right and left wings of the house were locked, with the exception of one.
I was blinded by clinic white the minute I walked inside the bedroom. Everything contained the same vision-offending color. From the polished marble floor to the walls and decorations. The white crown molding was hand carved with intricate designs fading against the color of the walls. The bed took up half the width of the room. The four posts of the bed extended into the vaulted ceilings. A narrow hall doubled as a walk through closet, leading to a beige bathroom.
The windows revealed the view of the beautiful maze garden below.
I slumped on the bed, back first, staring at the ceiling and allowed the events over the past few days to affect me—only for a little while.
All cried out, my anger projected into the poor silk embroidered pillow, I dusted myself off and headed to the walk through closet.
On painted white bars and draping from silk hangers were different garments in white shades. On the right were clothes in jewel-toned colors. While well-kept and maintained, I knew enough about the brands hanging in the closet to know nothing was brand new. Many things were several seasons old. Some were straight off the runway or limited edition runs. Every item was generally around the same size and it wasn’t mine. The shoes were a half to a whole size too small.
The clothes weren’t exactly reflections of my style, not that I had one. I ran my fingers along the garments and found something wrapped in a plastic garment bag with a note tag, “Open me.”
Figuring it was the start of a game, I unzipped the bag for a suit jacket with crimson blotches across the front and several splatters on the sleeves. I touched the plastic to the stains. It transferred and appeared more like blood than some sort of paint mishap.
My breath escaped in a wheeze. The invisible force lured my steps into the adjoining bathroom. In the white tub, wrapped in plastic sheeting, a woman was naked. Her stark white hair was stained with streaks of blood, turning it pink in some areas and maroon in others. The discernible wrinkles on her face solidified her age. The smell slowly rushed at me.
“No. NO. NO!” I immediately retraced my steps and moved backward. I paused at the sound of a sob from the other side of the bathroom.
A woman, with dark stringy hair partially hiding her face huddled in the corner of the room. She was covered in blood. A knife rested between her feet. “Please, don’t come any closer,” she whispered her cries, sobbing and sniveling.
I nodded, taking short steps toward her. “What’s your name?”
“J-Jory.”
“What…happened to you, Jory?”
“He…he hurt me. He did this. Please…save me.”
“Stay here and don’t make a sound,” I assured her, keeping my tone calm when I’d suddenly been thrown into panic mode. “I’ll get help, okay?”
She nodded, her sobs quieting down.
I zipped up the garment bag for the blood-stained suit and took two giant leaps backward, hoping to rewind my actions.
Turning my head slightly behind me to keep an eye on the door, I split my time between looking out for Catch and pretending to be enamored with a particular outfit. Satisfied I hadn’t heard his footsteps or spied a shadow dancing across the room, I frantically searched around the closet for a weapon and comfortable clothes.
I thought the situation with Catch would be a long drawn out process; I never expected it to expire so quickly. I had no idea the severity of the danger I would face. In my nosiness, I had to peel back a layer and trip into the truth. Killing the guilty didn’t put me exactly at ease; however, murdering the innocent and helpless crossed an invisible line.
Finding a pair of thin, flexible, leather leggings and a knit shirt, I tore off my rigid and uncomfortable suit and changed with haste. A pair of open-toed black booties with a brass adorned unicorn horn for a heel screamed for me to take them and use them—not exactly for their intended use.
“This room was locked,” Catch’s booming voice caused my body to jerk up in fright.
I kept my back turned and tried but failed to regulate my breathing. “It was the only room that wasn’t locked.” I flittered from one side of the closet to the other and slipped my feet into the shoes that would serve as my tools to seriously injure Catch in order to get away.
Facing him, I gave him a grin, and placed my hands on my hips. The tall heel length of the shoes did nothing to help me gain height over him.
With a dramatic sway in my hips, I rounded him and sat on the edge of the bed.
He studied me, and I found it impossible to hold his eye contact. “I heard you crying earlier, and wanted to give you a minute alone. Is everything all right now?”
I gave him a nod, hoping I kept up enough of a poker face to stave him away from thinking I knew who was in the bathroom. “I’m fine.”
“Someday you’ll learn, you don’t need to lie about how you feel.” He looked down the length of the room toward the closet. “This room is off limits to you. There’s another I’d like you to take… Before you do, I have a gift for you.”
“I haven’t signed anything yet.” Leaning down, I adjusted my stilettos, soon to be my instruments for causing Catch’s pain, leaving them untied. “I’m not accepting anything else from you until I do.”
He set the box down on the bed beside me and stood in front of me, waiting.
“Whose house is this? Because it doesn’t look like it’s yours.”
“Does it matter?” He bowed in front of me, imposing on my personal space, and opened the box. A gold bracelet with several chain links, nestled between two velvet pillows, greeted me. He placed it on my wrist and secured the clasp. He paused for a moment, fingering the ring he gave me and turned it around to properly face outward.
“Yes, it matters.” I twisted my wrist around and out of his hold. The bracelet, while nice, apparently had no easy way to remove it. “What’s the occasion?”
“There isn’t one.”
“Thank you, I guess.”
“Michael gave you gifts often, did he?”
Unprepared, I simply blinked and gave him a robotic, “Yes.”
“I’ll keep it in mind for the future.”
“Catch?” I called his attention back to my previous question. “I’m probably already wanted for murder. I don’t need squatting added to the list.”
“No, it isn’t my home.”
“Inherited it from a seventy-year-old cougar?”
With one knee bent and one foot on the floor, he settled into his position between my legs.
I understood why villains were often portrayed as scarred, one-dimensional people; Michael fit the mold. It made it difficult for anyone to find anything about the villain appealing when they lacked in anything alluring. It was easy to root for the good guy when he was layered with a beautiful soul to match his looks. A villain who had the ability to look angelic and smile while killing you with his cruelty was deadly. Catch was the bad man I was never warned about, and he was nocuous.
“By a person who will not be a problem,” he stated simply.
“Explain?”
“As you saw, she’s dead.” He glanced toward the closet.
My spine straightened abruptly, visibly showing my shock in a way I wished I hadn’t. I called his eye and what I saw behind those violet blue eyes wasn’t anything remotely innocent.
“And what happened to her? How did she die?”
With his chin to his chest, I could barely discern where his gaze landed. His cheeks slightly lifted, indicating he might’ve been grinning. The angle of his head made it impossible to discover if I was right. When he met my eye contact again, his face turned grim. “Suddenly, you’re very fucking inquisitive.”
“If you answer one of my fucking questions instead of dodging them, maybe I’ll stop being
inquisitive
.”
“She’s dead, does it matter how she died after the fact?” Releasing me, he stood upright and turned on the heels of his Italian leather boots, walking in the other direction.