Mercy's Angels Box Set (62 page)

I was dressed like an Eskimo and I felt ridiculous. It was my day off, and I had no intention of going anywhere. But Larz barged into my room an hour ago with a plate of scrambled eggs and a glass of juice, and ordered me to get my scrawny butt up and get dressed. Dress warm, he said. Why did I need to dress warm for a day of TV, I had argued? Now I stood on the wide porch, B at my side, Larz and Charlie standing cautiously behind me, and Braiden Montgomery in front of me. He had forgone the Corvette for the more conservative dark grey Lexus SUV. I hated to admit it, but the man looked devilishly handsome. His black hair was a carefully organized mess, and his black eyes promised adventure. He wore a black jacket over a black shirt and black cargos that clung to his muscular legs, capped off with sturdy black boots. The devil dressed in midnight, promising wicked things that made women shudder with heated desire. The fact I could even process such a thought was miracle enough. Sure, I had watched the loving caresses and kisses between B and Charlie, and in my heart I yearned for that. Put into practical terms though, I wondered if I would ever be able to handle that sort of touch. After the evil that had touched me for so long, I shouldn’t have wanted it, but I did. Not only did I want it, but the depraved desires that went with it had me thinking I was, in fact, crazy. Maybe I was more damaged than I thought. Braiden’s grin was wicked, and while half of me wanted to run to him and drop to my knees in submission, the other half wanted to kick him in the teeth.

“We’ll be back in a few hours,” he promised Rebecca.

“She’s not my mother, and I don’t have a curfew,” I growled.

“Chill out, Em. Braiden knows I’ll worry while you’re gone, and after everything that has happened I think I’ve earned that right.” My sister’s tired voice caught me off guard. “Go. If you want to come home, just say the word and Braiden will turn around and bring you back. He promised.” And Shakhta always keeps his promises. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping to block out the pain of that memory that seemed so long ago.

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” I mumbled. I stepped off the porch and moved towards the passenger side of Braiden’s car.

“You have your cell phone with you?” B called from behind me.

“Chill out, B,” I threw her words back at her, waving my cell phone around in the air. “Don’t want you worrying and all.” I was being a bitch and I knew it. I couldn’t help it though. Braiden had somehow managed to worm his way back into my life. A life he had no entitlement to, other than a massive financial IOU which I would never be able to pay back. I was angry with him, angry with the hurtful words he had left me with six months ago: You don’t need me and I don’t need you. Those words were burned into my heart and left more scars on the already damaged organ.

The drive was quiet. Not a strained silence, but it seemed as though we were both waiting for the other to make the first move. I leaned over and flicked on radio. Classical music filled the car and I tensed. Jonas liked to listen to classical music.

“Damn it, Dillon,” Braiden cursed.

He pressed a few buttons and found a channel that played country. Country I could handle, barely. It usually got a little depressing after half a dozen songs, which made me wonder why in the hell anyone would want to be a cowboy if it was that freakin’ miserable.

“Where are we going?” I asked after another ten minutes of silence.

“Surprise.”

I wanted to snort at his lack of information but instead chose to remain silent. If he thought I would squirm under the silent aura in the car, he was wrong. Silence was easy for me. Twenty minutes later we pulled into a small parking lot.

“Come on.” Braiden jumped out of the driver’s seat. I climbed out, slowly, wary. Behind us was the narrow road that cut through the forest. Before us was more forest, lots and lots of forest. Braiden stood at the edge of a path, adjusting a backpack while he waited for me.

“Is it safe to be here?” I asked nervously, wondering what sort of animals might be ready to haul my carcass off to their lair.

Braiden’s eyebrows shot up. “You think I would bring you here if it weren’t?” He seemed genuinely offended.

I took a deep breath and sighed. “Sorry, my shrink tells me trust issues are common in victims of abuse and rape.”

Braiden didn’t flinch at my frank admission, but his eyes did soften somewhat. “You’re safe with me, Em, no harm will come to you. From me or anyone else, I promise.” This man and his solemn promises would be my undoing. The anger over him leaving me six months ago still hurt, but being with him also made me feel a sense of security that not even Larz could offer. All conversation was again drawn to a quiet lull as I followed Braiden.

The stillness in the forest should have been frightening, but it wasn’t; I personally knew there were scarier things in this world. The tranquility was a balm to my soul. Snow crunched under our boots as we wandered into the shadowed firs. The air was crisp and clean and only the faintest breeze managed to twist around the trunks of the ancient trees. My heartbeat slowed to a leisurely crawl and my mind was startlingly calm. I couldn’t remember the last time I honestly felt so at peace. Everywhere I went I was followed by someone—Larz, Dillon, Charlie, Rebecca—I felt constantly under their scrutiny. Battling to keep myself composed and sane in front of them was never ending and brutally tiring. Now walking into the forest, where the city was miles behind us, wrapped in nature’s serene embrace, I realized just how much I loved it out here. We didn’t walk far before Braiden stopped and pulled off his back pack. He produced two cameras from it.

“Here,” he said, handing one to me.

I stared it like a stupefied moron for the longest time. When I glanced back up, Braiden had the backpack secured back on his shoulders, fiddling with the lens of his camera. He raised it to his eye and looked up into the sky. I followed his gaze and gasped. Sunlight filtered down through the canopy of pines, spearing the shadows beneath with arrows of light that looked simply dazzling. Braiden clicked a few photos before looking back my way.

“Do you need me to show you how to use it?” I looked at the camera in my hands and nodded. “It’s pretty easy to operate. It’s auto focus, so you just point and click. You can zoom in here...” He pointed to a small button on the back of the camera. “If you press this button, you change your view to either the screen...” He pressed the button and the large viewing screen on the back of the camera lit up with the snow at my feet. When he pressed it again it disappeared. “If you hold it up now, you can look through the small window here, much like a conventional camera.” I glanced through the window. I liked that, it narrowed down my focus to a true representation of what I was photographing. “Flash is on auto, but we can adjust it for a particular scene if I think you need it.” He took a small step away from me. “That’s pretty much it.”

I nodded and held the camera up to my eye. I closed the other and focused on a pool of light hitting the snow in front of me. I snapped away at nothing in particular, getting the hang of the camera. Braiden began to walk on and I followed, taking pictures of this and that. As we strolled in companionable silence, it occurred to me that Braiden was the one responsible for the photos in his house and office. I loved those photos. They were all black and white, some of them were candid shots of people, some of landscapes capturing the natural beauty of the world.

“You’re very talented,” I whispered, but I wasn’t sure if Braiden heard me.

Finally he glanced back at me over his shoulder. “My mom took pictures. She gave me my first camera when I was twelve, and I picked it up pretty quickly. When I look through a lens, everything else disappears. The most ordinary things can become extraordinary through a camera. A piece of bark on a tree.” As if to prove his point, he found a fir where sap had leaked onto the bark. It was caught in a ray of light that caused it to glisten. He snapped a picture then showed me it through the view finder. It looked simply beautiful. “Snow.” He wandered over to a small bush whose leaves were heavily laden with snow. Once again, the light spilled into the forest causing the snow to sparkle. “It costs nothing to take pictures and you can do it anywhere in the world. A picture can mean so much to someone. It can carry beauty, happiness, sorrow. For me it’s peaceful.” He took a few pictures of the glistening snow from slightly different angles and again showed me the results through the view finder. My lips parted to express how beautiful they were, but all that came out was a small gasp of astonishment. “I take photos to help me relax. I thought you might find it helpful, too.”

I looked down at the camera in my hands as Braiden continued to wander through the trees, stopping to snap the occasional photo before moving on. Rather than focus on the beauty around me, I found myself watching Braiden. Then without much thought to what I was doing, I raised my camera and took a picture of him. His focus was on the tree tops above. If he noticed me trying to inconspicuously line him up through my lens, he didn’t say anything.

“I lost Jonas in Peru. My sources indicated he had traveled from Colombia across the border to Ecuador then into Peru, but when I got there he had vanished. I was less than twenty-four hours behind him and he was just...gone.”

I froze in place at the mention of Jonas. I was caught between an irrational sense of fear that his name would alert him, and a little surprised that Braiden was confiding in me.

“My stepfather is Alexander Toporov. His business endeavors are somewhat illegal. He has money and power, which gives him the ability to reach further than your average law enforcement agency, but even he can’t pick up a cold trail.”

“What does your stepfather do?” I found myself whispering. I didn’t expect Braiden to tell me, but I asked anyway. All I could picture was another Jonas Levier, and if that was the case, I wasn’t sure how I felt about him having a part in this ordeal.

“He’s an arms dealer.” Braiden turned to look at me. “It would be best if you didn’t mention Alexander’s involvement in all this if you speak to the FBI again. It could possibly make things a little more complicated for us.”

For some absurd reason, the thought of a man dealing guns didn’t fill me with the dread I probably should have felt. I guess in my own personal experiences, I lived a life where guns weren’t a part of my world of pain and humiliation. People could do just as much damage without a gun in their hand.

“Okay,” I whispered.

Braiden seemed a little shocked that I had so easily acquiesced to his request without argument. To be honest, I didn’t have much faith in the lawful apprehension of Jonas anyway. He had gotten away with modern day slavery, abduction and trafficking of women for so long, I doubted anyone could destroy him. Braiden though, he might actually have a chance. The cold predatory look in his eyes at the mention of Jonas made me shiver.

“The FBI’s involvement drove him into hiding. I told them I didn’t want to talk, but they told me I would be arrested if I didn’t assist them.”

Braiden’s gaze was full of unrestrained anger. “I know. Larz told me. I don’t know how the FBI found out about you. The facility you went to was very expensive because they are renowned for their respect for privacy.”

I had to look away from him at the mention of the psychiatric facility I had been housed in for four months. It was a reminder of his abandonment of me.

“Leaving you like I did was the hardest thing I have ever had to do, Em, and I’ve done some pretty difficult things in my life. I had to try and make you safe. I had to try and find him.”

I could see the honesty in his eyes, but that day, I curled myself on the floor of Rebecca’s house and sobbed under the pressure of disappointment and fear, was burned into my memory.

“And I needed you to see you didn’t need a man like me, you needed to be free. You’re doing well, and you’re stronger now.”

I raised a brow and snorted. “I’ve just gotten better at hiding it. I feel like I’m drowning,” I confessed.

Braiden watched me curiously, his head tilted slightly in careful thought. “Explain.”

His words held that dominant edge that men like Braiden possessed. He wasn’t ordering me but he couldn’t help the gentle command his words carried.

I rubbed my head in an attempt to relieve the ache behind my eyes. “It’s...hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

Gah! His arrogant authority would have made me insane if I didn’t believe I was already there.

“I have nightmares, every night.”

“Larz said they were few and far between now.”

I sighed. “No, every time I close my eyes to sleep I have them. I’ve just got better at controlling the wild banshee screaming that used to wake me from them. The shrinks taught me how to stop myself from succumbing to flashbacks, and I spend so much time centering and focusing myself in an effort not to slip into a horrible memory, I feel constantly exhausted. So, I just want to sleep, but then I have nightmares. It’s like a jarring ride that I can’t get off.” I didn’t dare look up at Braiden. Instead I focused on a particularly thick tree trunk in the distance, took a deep breath and kept talking. I found it easy to confide in him. Somewhere in the fucked up recesses in my mind, I found it easier to talk to him because he was dominant. It was like falling effortlessly back into an old habit. “I see what Charlie and B have, how Jax and Ella are together, and I want that so bad it physically hurts.” I was rubbing my chest in an effort to alleviate the invisible ache that lived within. “The thought of what they have scares me to death though, that kind of trust, I don’t know if I can ever do that.”