The Asset (27 page)

“I do like it when you do that,” he murmured hoarsely. “I like the way your chest heaves and your breasts strain against the cups of your bra.” His knuckles brushed against my rising and sinking breasts. “You look so tempting,
querida
. So seductive when you’re scared.”

His cold hand crawled beneath my bra and settled over my breast. His fingers cradled my flesh, toyed with my nipple and squeezed until it hurt. I straddled the edge of sanity, but I refused to scream or cry. That’s what he wanted. Instead, I fixed my eyes on the fresco on the cupola and tried to regulate my breathing.
Cope and keep at it.
The duct tape wasn’t yielding and I needed more information if I was going to escape.

When I spoke, my voice sounded even and flat, as if his touch had no impact on me whatsoever. “How did you dupe the monitoring device?”

“I’m still wearing it.” He stretched out his leg and, letting go of me, pulled up his fine trousers to show me.

It was such a relief to have his hands off my body. I slumped on the couch, covering myself as well as I could, glad that I’d managed to steer his attention away from me.

“Your friends forgot I’ve got access to resources they can only dream about,” he said. “The world’s foremost technology experts like their money and I pay top dollar. As far as the Feds are concerned, I’m still caged in my New York apartment. It was simply a matter of transferring the electronic signature from one device to another and presto, here I am.”

The signature transfer was probably the slight fluctuation that Will had detected, the one he and Ash had discussed. Ash had been right to be suspicious of the anomaly.

I probed deeper. “Did Steiner give me away?”

“I lost count of how many years Steiner spent trying to nail me,” Red said. “What a pathetic little man. He had no weakness, but he had no joys either, and nothing I could use to control him. Why would anyone want to live like that?” He shook his head. “I’ll admit he had some competencies. He did manage to get Adam out of Hacienda Dorada. But people on my payroll regularly sorted through his mail. That’s how I came to be in possession of this.”

He pulled a packet of Red Rush from his pocket. It had my handwriting on it. My will to live wavered.

“You didn’t like my new line of business?” he asked, tapping the fragrant packet against my nose. “Weren’t you impressed by my new venture? Why did you try to warn Steiner? What’s in it for you?”

“I’d explain it to you,” I said. “But you wouldn’t understand.”

“Watch your mouth.” He slapped me so hard that my cheek burned and my neck hurt from the whiplash. “See? You made me lose my temper again.”

I ground my teeth. If only my hands were free.

“You think I’m a bad man,” he said. “You think the world is black-and-white, that good and evil have clear distinctions. But the world is not simple,
querida
. In Colombia, I’m a national hero. I build schools, fund churches, feed thousands of poor families and sponsor great works of art. How’s that evil? Explain it to me. Come on, speak up. How can I be evil when I do so much good with my money?”

“You get people hooked on drugs,” I spat between clenched teeth. “Kids who can’t think of anything but their next fix. Men and women who get sick, overdose and die when they buy what you sell. You kill people for a living. You force others into lives of violence, dependence and misery. How’s that good?”

“Free will.” He pocketed the incense packet. “Supply and demand. It’s their choice to buy what I sell. I simply provide the product they want.”

“An illegal poison that destroys a person’s capacity to think.”

He scoffed. “Drugs have been used since the dawn of mankind. This moment in time is no different from, let’s say, Prohibition.”

“It’s not the same.”

“But it is,” he said. “Listen and learn,
querida.
When you met me, I was but a local warlord who couldn’t even speak good English. Look at me now. The world is changing again. Yesterday’s vice is today’s virtue. The unacceptable has become commonplace and complete acceptance is the only standard of morality.”

“Murder is murder.”

“I’m a businessman,” he said. “There are plenty of opportunities for legal business ahead. Uncle Sam likes his share and as long as he gets it, he’ll square off with us. People today prefer settlement to war. The drug lords of yesterday are today’s entrepreneurs and tomorrow’s senators and presidents. The voters are generous. I’m the tax base of the new economy.”

I shook my head, rejecting a world ruled by drug lords, murderers, sex traffickers, kidnappers and psychopaths whose crimes were ignored for the sake of the almighty dollar.

“I know what you’re going to say,” he said in his silken voice. “You had to warn Steiner in order to keep the Feds happy. But don’t worry.” He twirled a strand of my hair in his finger. “I have some ideas on how you’re going to redeem yourself. As to Steiner, he was incorruptible and he had good habits. He never gave us anything much.”

“Then how did you find us in Ohio, when you had Adam killed?”

“Ah, that.” He smiled, happy to torture me by showing off his competences. “Steiner’s assistant was very helpful with that. She also helped with his mail. Poor lady, she had a disabled son who needed pricey special care. I was the answer to her prayers. But she had to be careful. Steiner kept a tight watch on his staff.”

I remembered the truck running over Steiner. Tears came to my eyes. He’d been a difficult person, bitter, unfriendly and cold, but he’d died for me. I said a silent prayer for his soul. We’d never trusted him and yet he hadn’t betrayed us.

“No way you traced that package of Red Rush to the cottage,” I said.

My defiance stung him into the type of reply I needed. “You forget who you’re dealing with,” he said. “The postmark on the packet narrowed my geographical search and then, about three days ago, my technology associates discovered someone trying to hack into my devices.”

Three days ago? The timing seemed wrong. Will had hacked into Red’s devices weeks ago.

“My technology experts were able to track the hacker all the way back to his computer.” Red gloated. “He was quite good, but no match for my experts. e was quiThey hacked the hacker and were able to deliver his files to me.”

They had gotten into Will’s computer?

“There were some interesting files in the hacker’s computer,” Red said. “I found out, for example, that the Feds had set up a decoy safe house to try to nab me. So I stayed away from the trap. The info also told me this guy was for real. He knew stuff no one else knew.”

I tried to wrap my mind around that one. Nothing made sense. Why would Will have such sensitive information available in his computer?

“But it was one particular file that convinced me to expedite my plans,” Red said. “I can be patient. I was prepared to meet you at the courthouse. I can put up with a lot and, in your case, I have. But there are certain things that a man of principle can’t tolerate.”

A man of principle?
Is that how Red saw himself?

“Watch.” Red grabbed the television’s remote and clicked on the screen.

The dark screen gave way to movement. The paused movie resumed. The theater room’s superb acoustic design enhanced the sounds, lusty groans, intimate moans and lots of whimpering. The clip was a grainy, single-angled compilation. It started with a man sitting on a bed. I couldn’t see his face, but he was commanding someone to get naked. A few moments later, a woman stepped into the screen, wearing nothing but a pair of panties. I didn’t recognize her until the man stripped her panties off, pulled her down on her knees and put his penis in her mouth.

My face ignited. I tried to look away, but Red clutched my chin and forced me to watch.

“You liked it, didn’t you?” Darkness ruled Red’s eyes. “You weren’t so eager when you were with me. You balked as if I put out rancid milk. But you sure seemed to like his come.”

Part of me was angry, mortified and humiliated. The smarter part of me was baffled. Think. My mind traveled back to that night. I recalled how Ash had set the laptop aside on the night table. The lid had been opened. The camera had been pointing in the direction of the bed. A game, that’s all it had been, therapy. Had Ash recorded our lovemaking on purpose? Why?

It struck me then. Red’s experts hadn’t hacked into Will’s computer. They’d hacked into Ash’s laptop instead.

I knew precisely what would come next on the TV screen: me, on all fours on the bed, while Ash took me from behind. My mouth open with soundless pleas, my body rattled with the pounding, my breasts flailed with the force of Ash’s strokes.

“You cried when your lawfully wedded husband did that to you,” Red said. “What was it he gave you that I couldn’t?”

Love, friendship, trust, encouragement, empowerment, confidence, pleasure...the gifts were too many to list. But these notions didn’t fit in with Red. He favored pain and anguish.

To be fair, the clip on the screen showed no evidence of the tenderness and affection that had defined my game with Ash. It featured none of the kinder words he’d had for me, or his therapeutic approach, or the earnest ways in which he’d pleasured me.

The clip had been edited to show only selected parts and to eliminate any semblance of tenderness between us. The man on the screen was forceful and commanding. The woman was lewd and obscene. And yet there was something fascinating about the way he claimed possession of her body and the way in which she granted him tenure.

“You’re mine,” Ash said. “Say it. Who do you belong to?”

“You,” I rasped. “You!”

I squirmed. I’d pay for this. It was very possible that, despite Red’s intentions to deliver me to that courthouse, the end of the clip would coincide with the end of my life.

Red’s stare was glued to the screen. White droplets of saliva pooled at the corners of his mouth. He was furious, I could tell, but his crotch bulged with the shape of his erection and his body was abuzz with arousal.

I scrambled to make sense of my situation. A crazy idea began to coalesce in the back of my mind, too reckless to be rational, too calculated not to be logical.

“The most effective defense is an intelligent attack,”
Ash’s voice echoed in my mind
. “Most fights are better fought sooner, rather than later. If all the intelligence suggests that an attack is coming, then it’s coming. I’d rather fight on my own terms and turf, than when it suits the other guy best.”

Had Ash baited Red’s technology experts by making them think that he—not Will—was trying to hack into Red’s computer? Had he lured them into his files only to give them access to the clip he knew would provoke Red into action?

It was inconceivable, dangerous, daring. It was the kind of complex, intricate strategy that only a highly confident, top-notch professional with extensive combat and intelligence experience would consider, someone trained in the harshest and most hostile environments in the world, someone exactly like... Ash.

But if Ash had gone to all the trouble to bait Red—in the only possible way that Red could be baited—why then had Red’s attack on the cottage succeeded? Ash was skilled, careful and calculating. He understood Red’s capabilities. Where had he gone wrong?

The clip ended. The screen went suddenly dark. I could smell the fetid rage puffing from Red’s pores. He turned to me. I braced for a hit. Instead, he put his hands on my shoulders and planted a chaste kiss my forehead.

“See what happens when you go out into the world without me?” He drew my stiff body into his embrace. “You’re weak, Rose. I’ve always known that, since the first time I saw you across the fire, trembling in fear. You’re fragile. You need me. You must be supervised, trained and disciplined in order to achieve your potential.”

Was that really how he saw me? No, this was the rationale he used to justify his dark cravings. I wasn’t nearly as weak as he thought I was.

“This really upsets me.” He shook the remote in the direction of the screen. “I feel as if I’ve shirked my responsibilities, as if I failed you and let your father down.”

I swallowed a full-blown sob. “You killed my father.”

“One thing doesn’t belay the other,” he said as if his twisted logic made perfect sense. “I should’ve kept better track of you. I should’ve been tougher on you, stricter. I should’ve found you earlier, before you trespassed on our vows.”

“I never swore you anything.”

“But you signed the papers, remember?”

“You made me.”

“Rosa, Rosita.”
He caressed my hair. “I know what’s best for you. I also know you missed me a lot. This video? It’s not your fault. That jackass took advantage of my absence and your weakness. He wanted to take my place. He thought he could own you like I do. That’s not something I can tolerate.”

I stared at Red, horrified by the depths of his delusions.

“What he did to you?” Red ran a finger down the center of my body, along the line of my undone buttons. “That’s what I’m going to do to you. Only better. Oh, yeah, so much better—”

A knock on the door interrupted his lust fest. I let out the breath I’d been holding.

Red adjusted my shirt and buttoned up a couple of snaps before he yelled. “Come in.”

The door opened and a group of four men came in, carrying a bundle between them. Red got up from the couch and watched as the men placed their load on the ground and left without making eye contact.

Another man came into the room, a tall, droopy-eyed fellow with a luxurious head of blond hair, dressed casually in a leather jacket, but with a weapon clearly bulging from his holster. I recognized him right away. His name was Samuel, and he’d been third in command when I escaped Red. I guessed he’d moved up in the ranks since.

“Boss,” Samuel said tentatively. “This might not be the best time for this sort of thing. We need to get back to New York before the Feds notice.”

In a blink, Red had Samuel by the throat and against the wall. “Don’t ever presume to tell me what to do. You work for me. My buck pays for that spurt of piss that just wet your pants. Understand?”