

### Tamed By Him

### Book One - The Billionaire's Desire

Copyright 2015 Drew Sinclair

Published by Drew Sinclair at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

### Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Start Reading The Billionaire's Desire

Sample Chapter: The Billionaire's Request

Other Books by Drew Sinclair

About Drew

Connect with Drew

### Acknowledgements

To all the family, friends and mentors who have made this possible - I hope you all know how truly grateful I really am.

### The Billionaire's Desire

### Tamed By Him: Book One

Sign up for the author's New Releases mailing list and get a free copy of _The Sinfully Sweet Collection_ , four full length steamy romance novels in one box set edition.

Click here to get started: www.drewsinclair.com

### Intro

"What's so special about me?" she asked.

The look he gave her revealed an intensity that sent a thrill through her body like a small hurricane. Instantly, she felt how naked she was before him with only a bathrobe shielding her full nudity from his gaze; underneath she was wearing nothing –no underwear, lingerie, not even a suntan.

"You mean you seriously don't already know?" he said huskily.

The look on his face made it clear that tonight, her total satisfaction had just become his Holy Grail.

### Chapter One

Katy eyed the untouched grande latte sitting next to her. It was probably cold already, but she hadn't come here looking for good coffee – she had better blends at home – she was here to get some work done and the Cool Bean Café in the heart of Lovett, Maine was her favorite spot in town to drop in, tune out the world, and get down to business.

Today of all days, she wanted nothing more than to lose herself in her work. It was the only way she could really forget about who she was and the problems that had haunted her for years. After all, she hadn't had a blackout now in over four years, and every birthday that went by made it seem more likely that she would never experience one again.

She hunched over and busily tapped commands into her 'clean' laptop. She was working on an untraceable, digitally unidentifiable high end machine. It allowed her to snoop without being snooped herself, and was one of the key tools of her trade.

She tried to focus, but the man conspicuously _not_ looking at her from three tables' away required attention. He didn't look like the kind of dork who would wear high-tech smart glasses, and the sleek eyewear he was sporting was no chunky, nerdy, Google Glass prototype. Nevertheless, she was sure he was wearing something. It was her business to be sure. Her survival depended on it. The guy had clearly looked directly at her, whispered a command, and then his eyes had moved erratically, angling slightly upwards towards the ceiling, indicating a screen effect behind the slim frames perched on his nose.

For the last three days, she hadn't been able to shake the feeling that someone was watching her, but every time she thought she had identified someone, they melted away. She still couldn't shake it though, and now here was this guy, just sitting, not reading, not talking to anyone, not even checking his phone.

Was this it? After all these years? Had they finally tracked her down?

It wouldn't be the first time they had come close to getting her, but they had never made visual contact, not that she was aware of anyway, but if this was it then she wouldn't go down without a fight.

The bedraggled old lady opposite her looked at the male stranger, then back to Katy and smiled. She held up the coffee that Katy had sent over to her table by way of thanks. Katy nodded back. They were good that way in this place. They never asked old Maria to leave unless they desperately needed a spot for a paying customer, and if that were the case, Katy was always happy to oblige by making a purchase on the old lady's behalf and inviting her to her own table.

There but for the grace of God go I.

Katy half glanced over at the man again, trying not to make it obvious that she was so intensely aware of his presence. The last thing she wanted was contact, even if he were just an innocent stranger, and even if it were a stranger who looked like he had just stepped out of the pages of a men's magazine. Normally G-men weren't so hot and Mafia guys weren't so smooth, at least not the ones she had been involved with.

She so didn't need this right now. A cat and mouse game or another uprooting of her life to stay one step ahead of her pursuers. She needed time to focus if she were going to keep her one-woman consultancy from going down the tubes. Even fugitives needed to make money and one of her clients, a minor national celebrity, was in trouble. It was all the guy's own fault, but the blame was being leveled squarely at her. It didn't matter that the idiot had involved himself in a sex-tape escapade with hookers and crack cocaine, he expected her to take care of all of his 'privacy' issues, and the threats of exposure he was receiving would ruin her too if the story came out.

She looked down to her laptop and began shutting down connections. She had been snooping into the backgrounds of the individuals with copies of her client's tape, coming up with dirt on them and examining all of their potential digital weaknesses, but maybe it was time to leave and see if this guy made a move to follow her.

"Excuse me."

Katy's heart jumped when she saw the tall stranger with the glasses standing next to her. She had been so focused on making a clean digital exit from her investigation that she had never seen him move.

She wondered if she should jump and run, but that had never been her style. She had smarter ways of evading identification and capture.

She stared up at the man, and although he had looked good from across the café, the full on impression of him standing over her was something else entirely; it hit her like a wall-sized breaker on Waikiki beach. Dark hair, Mediterranean looks, lips that cried out to kissed, and a sharp suit made complete with cufflinks, tie pin, and waistcoat. This guy's good looks and dress sense were to die for. Most folks in Lovett, Maine dressed down because they were all so rich, they didn't need to work anymore. This guy wasn't one of them and he had gotten the drop on her.

"Excuse me?" he repeated, as though she might not speak English.

"What is it?" she said, watching him closely.

"I don't know your name." His voice was calm, deep, and supremely self-assured.

Katy extended her hand. It was possible, after all, that he was a business prospect. New clients occasionally approached her in this way, wishing to avoid any obvious connection even to the person whom they would expect to take care of all of their digital privacy issues. If he were Mafia, she would be dead by now, and if he were government, he wouldn't be wearing the designer suit with all of the expensive accessories. This had to be business.

"Katy Maldon," she said. "Privacy Specialist."

He took her hand and all of a sudden, she felt so tiny by comparison. He was warm, strong, all-encompassing, and a thrill ran through her taking her completely by surprise. Men were not high up on her to do list, especially not with her business about to go down the tubes and her obsessive attention to keeping a low profile.

"Privacy Specialist." He considered the words as though he had never heard the term before. Katy began to relax; her intuition for people and business were giving her the right signals. This man clearly liked to be enigmatic and to keep his motivations to himself. His thoughts would have been unreadable to anyone else, but Katy was pretty sure she knew what he was thinking about; he wanted privacy and he would be willing to pay whatever it took to find the highest quality service available.

Hands down, that was her.

"That's right," she said. "I'm the best there is. If you need to keep a low profile in a world of high surveillance, then I can help you. Provided your business is legitimate. I don't take on clients involved in any criminal activity."

"I'm sure you don't," he said. "May I sit down?"

"Please do."

He pulled up a chair, sat back, and rested one cuff-linked wrist onto the table.

"If you're the best there is then could you explain to me why it is that I've never heard of you?"

"First, you need to lose the technology." Katy nodded to his eyewear.

"Excuse me?" He was genuinely surprised.

"You heard me, and you know exactly what and why."

He smiled at her assertiveness and for a second, the cool, distant business man was gone and someone else entirely shone through. It was too short though, too brief to tell much about who this man really was.

He put the slim glasses down on the table and fixed his gaze onto Katy. The effect was startling. His eyes were a piercing blue despite his otherwise dark looks and they watched her with such focus that she almost wished he had kept the glasses on. Her heart began to beat a little faster. This guy was taking her totally off guard. Maybe she was wrong, maybe this wasn't about business all.

"Happy now?" he said.

"I'll be happier when I know your name."

He waited a moment, as though giving his name away were more than he wanted to do.

"I'm new in town," he said. "I just bought the Beechwood Cove place down on the seafront."

Rich. Rich as hell. If this was true then he wasn't just any ordinary business man; this guy was either a huge crime boss of some kind, a child of vast inherited wealth, or an immensely successful individual. By her best guess, he could hardly be more than thirty years of age so that meant it was more likely one of the first two options.

"Are you going to tell me your name?" She asked.

"Frankly, Ms. Maldon, I'm not sure I should. To be honest, you've made me feel somewhat nervous today."

"Well I can't imagine why. All I'm doing is drinking coffee."

"I think you're doing a bit more than that," he said knowingly. "Clayton Hargrave is my name and it's a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Maldon. Now would you care to explain to me how you know about that glassware on the table?" He nodded down to his eyewear.

"I don't know anything it, Mr. Hargrave, except that I don't like being filmed or photographed or ID'd without my consent. Not that any of it would get you anywhere, but still, there is the principal."

"Do you know how much it cost to develop that prototype? It should be virtually undetectable."

"Well, the glasses are undetectable; it's your blinking and staring off into the corner of space and whispering to yourself that gives it away."

He nodded his head as though acknowledging the obvious flaw in design.

"Well, nothing has given _you_ away," he said. No cell phone signal, no signals from any wearable technology, and nothing at all from that no-name laptop you have there. No references to your image on the internet or in any database that I have access to."

"Is that so strange? Why should I broadcast my identity to the whole world just because I want to do some work in a café? Surely there's nothing strange about that?"

"Everyone broadcasts, Ms. Maldon. The only people who don't are either homeless or naked, and even then, billions of faces show up instantly via facial recognition cross-referencing social media. You aren't homeless, I presume, and you certainly aren't naked." He paused for a micro-second after the word 'naked' and Katy felt it acutely. She hadn't been naked for anyone in a long, long time. The thought of being naked for this guy... she pushed the thought back down again.

"Now unless that laptop is a chunk of plastic molded to look like a computer, you have the quietest and most sophisticated device I've ever seen outside of a military lab. You are a blank space in the digital electromagnetic field, Ms. Maldon, and that makes me very, very curious about you indeed. In fact, this puts you on my need-to-know list."

Katy smiled but her palms had become moist with a mixture of fear and excitement. It was a confusing cocktail and one she wasn't used to. This guy was coming too close to the bone in more ways than one.

She weighed up her options.

He could be military, NSA, or some other government agency, and none of that was good. The technology she made use of to protect her clients always skirted the edge of what the government was happy to provide access to the public. She dreaded getting a call from the NSA, asking her to hand over files about her clients but it hadn't happened so far, but maybe this was it. The big boys of technology could survive that kind of scrutiny, but it would ruin her reputation, put an end to her business and most worryingly of all, expose her identity.

She was in enough trouble with her current client as it was.

"What would you like to know?" she said, buying time while weighing up her options again.

"I _need_ to know who you are. In fact, let me put it this way: I'm not comfortable with you leaving here until I know exactly how it is you've managed to hide yourself so effectively from my technology."

Her palms were getting wetter and her heart was beating faster. Privacy was Katy's strength but also her weakness. She was an expert in remaining invisible, but if someone threatened to get close to her, it tended to rattle her nerves. This guy, whomever he was, had spotted her and confronted her more quickly and directly than anyone ever had since she had decided to go off grid and devote herself entirely to making herself and her clients as invisible to the world as it was possible to be.

Cornered and fearful, her instincts told her to go on the attack.

"I understand that I've made you nervous, Mr. Hargrave, and clearly there's a reason for that. Would you like to share it with me?"

"Sure," he said sarcastically. "I'd love to share my most closely guarded personal secrets with you out here in the open, in a café, in the middle of the day. I suppose we could just make love to each other right here in front of all these people as well and it would be perfectly normal."

Katy blanched but a spark of fire ran through her at the same time. His brazenness in using the image of their making love out in the open in full view of the world caught her by surprise and part of the surprise was how instantly thrilling the idea was. The down side of privacy was not being able to share anything with anyone. Her life had been a closed book for three long years, ever since the death of... she couldn't even bear to think about it.

"I think I need to go now." She said, and began gathering her things together.

Clayton watched her quietly but inside he was panicking. This was going horribly wrong. He had no idea who this girl was and the idea was intensely exciting for him. His instinct for control found its most satisfying outlet in people, especially when the person was an attractive woman he badly wanted to fuck. He was driven to find out everything about her that there was to know: mentally, emotionally, physically, and most of all sexually. This was for him, the most gratifying experience in the world and it was, outside of his work, his absolute passion.

Not to mention that he was exceptionally good at it.

Knowing how to read people was one of the reasons he had been so wildly successful in business and it was the main reason he had had his prototype glasses developed. He had no intention of competing with other products in the market; he just wanted the absolute best, cutting edge technology for himself. What he had developed and pulled together from other surveillance projects over the years now allowed him to put another person's life at his fingertips with just a glance. Any hint of mystery set him on fire and the mystery of this woman, Ms. Katy Maldon, was complete.

Therefore, she would be fucked by him. That much was sure. And she would be fucked in a way that he would extract from her the deepest, darkest, sexiest fantasy. She, like all the other women he had had, would never be the same again afterwards.

But that was future tense. If he let this girl go now, he might never see her again, never get to solve her particular mystery, and never get to see her break into a million little pieces as her sexual fantasy was fulfilled to the absolute letter; I's dotted and T's crossed. Plus, if she were really as good as she said she was, and if she were as good at covering her tracks as she was at hiding electronic signals from her personal technology, then this could really be goodbye and Clayton Hargrave only ever did 'goodbye' strictly on his own terms.

"I did learn one very important fact about you through those glasses, Ms. Maldon," he said. "But, of course, if you aren't interested to know what the weak spot in your 'cloaking' technology is, then all you have to do is walk away right now and it will remain forever a secret. Until, of course, the next person comes along who can see right through it and read your life like an open book."

"I've got nothing to hide. If you have something to say to me then I suggest you go right ahead and say it, because I don't have time in my life for games."

"Nothing to hide except that military grade privacy technology you have protecting all of your personal devices. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing the government doesn't know much about your 'business activities.'"

Katy sat down again. If this was it, the knock on the door she had feared since she got into the business, then she would have no option but to face it head on.

"And what's your connection to the government? Why keep me in suspense? Go ahead and tell me what's on your mind."

"I have no connection to the government, but I'm sure they would love to know about that technology you're using. Maybe they'd be interested in your client list as well."

He was hitting her right where it hurt. It couldn't be co-incidence, this bastard knew exactly what he was doing.

"Is this what they call a 'shakedown?' You soften me up with some threats first and then get me to play ball?"

Hargrave watched her and smiled inwardly. The walls surrounding this mystery were coming down even faster than he had anticipated. A beautiful woman obsessed with privacy to the extent of making it her profession. Stripping her down to the bare naked truth would be about the most satisfying thing in the world, his ultimate conquest yet, but it would be, like always, on his terms; he _would_ have her, but it would be within an environment that was entirely under his control.

"Go," he said. "You're obviously smart enough to figure out the flaw in your security all by yourself. You don't need me and I certainly don't need you."

It was an insult to her professionalism, a challenge to her competence, and it stung her deeply.

"You're bluffing, Hargrave. I'll admit you're good with that sexy poker face of yours--" She stopped in mid-sentence and watched his lips curl up into the hint of a smile.

"Don't worry," he said, "I can assure you that the attraction is mutual."

"I didn't say I was attracted to you, I just said, just said that--"

"You said I was sexy."

Katy threw her head back and sighed. What did it really matter anyway?

"Okay, so I find you attractive, big deal, the important thing is that you're bluffing. Your glasses didn't tell you jack squat because if they had, you wouldn't have had to approach me and ask my name, you wouldn't have had to ask about my reputation and you certainly wouldn't have had to make idle threats about the government being interested in my perfectly ordinary privacy software controls."

"I don't bluff. Ever. Now I'm telling you that I know something about you that you can't even imagine, but I need to know more, and one way or the other, I intend to find out, but I'm going to give you a choice here."

"Is that so?"

He reached into his jacket and drew out a sleek, embossed business card and pushed it across the table to her.

"I'm taking a chance here by revealing to you exactly who I am," he said.

Katy looked suspiciously at the card, as though the mere acceptance of it would change her life irrevocably.

"Take it," he said. "It's just a business card, not a subpoena."

Everything in her told her to walk away from this. Everything except one tiny voice inside. Privacy had been Katy's Holy Grail for three long years and she had come to depend upon the bubble of invisibility that she had cloaked herself in, reveled in it even sometimes. The tiny voice inside her could barely be heard above all of the alarm bells going off in her head but it was there, insistent, crying out to heard, wanting to be known, needing to be seen, desperately wanting to be recognized.

She reached out her hand and picked up the card. It read:

Clayton Hargrave

Hargrave Robotics Inc.

Below the name was a mobile number and email address. Katy breathed a sigh of relief; at least he wasn't government. She had heard of the company but didn't know much about it; from what she remembered, it had an excellent reputation and was a pioneer in the field of nano parts for wearable technology. So she had been dead right about the glasses all along and he hadn't been lying about them either.

"So what's the angle, Hargrave? Your x-ray specs couldn't profile me – is that such a big problem for you?"

"I've been wearing those glasses for months and you're the first person to see them. To me that's a big deal. You're also the first person in possession of modern technology who's come up a total blank for me and that is a huge problem." He paused. "However, like all problems, there is a solution."

"I'm all ears."

"You come to work for me at Hargrave Robotics."

Katy smiled.

"Thank you, Mr. Hargrave, but I'm not looking for a job."

"You haven't heard the conditions yet."

"Okay, if it will keep you happy, what are the conditions?"

"Number one, you come to work for me personally and exclusively. No other clients. My business and I will be your number one and only priority."

"I'm sorry, but I don't do exclusivity deals."

"Number two, you will take your best year to date and then double the amount to arrive at your total annual salary."

He watched her, waiting for her reaction. She did her best to remain cool. She didn't really know this man, this could be all hot air.

"Triple it and then maybe," she said.

"Done. My last and final condition is that you are totally honest with me, meaning specifically that I need to know everything about you. No question is off limits. If you are to protect my privacy, this means you will learn a lot about my personal life, and likewise, I need to know about yours, intimately and in detail, if we are to trust each other and work together in harmony."

Katy started to laugh, although she wasn't sure exactly why. Her entire body had suffered a kind of contraction at the idea of revealing everything to anyone, particularly to a stranger. More particularly to a stranger whom she had had two lightning-fast sexual fantasies about since meeting him just minutes ago. At the same time, the idea of learning more about Clayton Hargrave, whomever he really was, knowing him in intimate detail and learning about his personal life, was kind of thrilling to her. If she were crazy enough to accept it, then this would be an assignment like no other she had ever had.

"Why are you laughing?" he asked.

"You have no idea how totally ridiculous what you just asked me is. Like I said, I don't do exclusivity, and as for you learning everything there is to know about me? Forget it. You either trust me or you don't, so the answer is no. We can discuss you hiring me on the usual terms, but that's as far as it goes."

Clayton took a breath and then leaned forward onto the table between them.

"That, Ms. Maldon, is unfortunately a bigger problem than you spotting my technology or being able to evade it. A much bigger problem. But it's not the problem I'm most concerned about."

A huge part of Katy wanted to just bolt and run. This was unwanted interest at its most intense, but if she just ran, wouldn't it only make things worse?

Clayton leaned in even closer towards her. There were only a couple of people in the café now and just one teenage staff member busy cleaning off a counter top.

"Come here," he said to her. Katy didn't like being told what to do. Not usually, but there was something about Clayton that was different. Her heart hadn't stopped racing since he had sat down in front of her. She had no interest in rock stars or celebrities, not unless they were clients, but this man was making her feel like a little girl again looking at her favorite boy band member. It was compelling, intoxicating, and incredibly frustrating all at the same time.

She leaned in towards him.

He looked into her eyes with only inches between them, and my God, was he gorgeous. She could only imagine melting into bed with him, feeling his mouth against hers, his arms surrounding her, and then in an instant he was there, really there; his lips were against hers.

This was happening. This was real and the sensation was intoxicating. The daring nature of his public act of stolen intimacy sent a rush of excitement swirling through her. It was more physical contact than she had had with a member of the opposite sex in years.

The pressure of his lips lasted just a moment, just long enough for him to reassure himself that she would not pull away from him, at least not for a moment, and then he was gone again.

"That," he said with complete composure, "is the biggest problem of all."

He stood up, put his glasses back on and smiled.

"Don't look so shocked," he said. "Surely I'm not the first man to lose control of himself in your presence."

Uncharacteristically, Katy had nothing to say.

"I'll be in touch," he said and then walked out of the café, leaving Katy sitting in a daze.

Maria, the little old lady sitting opposite Katy who she regularly sat with and bought coffee for, caught her eye and smiled.

"Sometimes you have to give a little to get a little, honey. Don't be like me and hide it all away your whole life. Nobody even knows who the hell I am anymore..." Her voice trailed off into a mumble and the smile left the old woman's face.

### Chapter Two

Katy set the business card onto the passenger seat beside her and started her drive home. She lived a little outside of town in a small farm house that she had converted into a sanctuary of absolute privacy. It was invisible from the road that led up to it and if you didn't know it was there, you would never have guessed that anyone lived there.

She still had an impulse to throw the card away and forget about Clayton Hargrave. In fact, she felt an impulse today to throw everything away and disappear again, leaving no trace of her existence in the little north eastern town she had called home for nearly a year. The encounter had left her profoundly unsettled. For a long time, her business had depended on a complex interaction of technology and instinct, and today threatened to be her first major screw up. She shouldn't have introduced herself as a privacy specialist – that was a major mistake. Overconfidence maybe? Or had she been caught off guard by the good-looking stranger?

Then there was the eye-wear. It would have been better if she had just let him record her than to challenge him on it. Facial recognition would bring up nothing about her, she had made sure of that, and there wasn't a signal coming off her that could be traced to anything, anywhere. She conducted regular scans to make sure she was clean.

This was what you would call a bad day at the office.

She arrived home and let herself in just as her cell phone went off. It would be her celebrity client asking how things were going in shutting down the story of his x-rated, class A indiscretions.

_No more celebrities,_ she swore to herself. Business people were better; more rational, and more serious about their privacy. This celebrated idiot was blaming her for his cocaine-fueled episode with hookers, something she had never guaranteed she could protect him against. Her specialty was electronic privacy, not damage control for idiots with self-destructive behavior patterns.

"Maldon," she answered the phone coldly.

"Katy Maldon?" The male voice was too familiar, too frighteningly recent. She had only left the café barely half an hour ago.

"How did you get this number?"

"I got it from Peter Goldstein, he recommended your services very highly."

"Who is this?"

"My name is Dale Hargrave, of Hargrave Robotics."

"What the hell is this crap?"

There was a pause.

"Peter told me you weren't exactly friendly but this is a little too much," the man said.

Katy's mind raced; first she meets Clayton Hargrave in her favorite local java house where he calls her out on her privacy technology but also offers her a high paying job in his company. Then he plants his gorgeous lips on hers in public, leaving her stunned. Now she gets a call from someone else from Hargrave Robotics trying to contract her services as well?

Too much of a damn coincidence. This day was crazy enough as it was; she was not going to let it get any worse.

"I'm not taking on new clients at the moment, Mr. Hargrave. Thanks for the call."

"Now hold on a minute, Maldon, you haven't even heard me out yet."

"This conversation is over."

She ended the call and sat down. This day wasn't getting any easier. She would need to unwind somehow, so she headed to her bedroom and got her running clothes. There was a quiet five mile run she did regularly in the woods behind her home which always helped to get her back on track when she couldn't shake the unease. She put on the sneakers, grabbed her iPod, and headed out. She was about a mile into the run when she stopped, removed the buds from her ears, and did a slow, full,360 turn, scanning the forest all around her and the trail behind. It was something she had never thought to do before, but today she had the constant gnawing feeling that the pounding music in her ears was masking something else, hiding another noise within her surroundings.

Come on, Katy, shake it off, let's get going.

She continued her run but didn't put the headphones back in. Something was wrong; she just couldn't put her finger on it, and although her heart was racing from the run, she couldn't ignore the underlying trace of anxiety adding to the rapid pace of her pulse.

She pressed on, setting a faster pace than usual and eventually saw her house coming up ahead, the last hill before arriving home. She instinctively breathed a sigh of relief, thinking of the relative security of being in her house again.

"Oh shit." She stopped dead in her tracks.

There was a sleek car outside her house with no reason in the world for it to be there. Katy Maldon didn't do visitors and nobody ever got lost in the woods out this way.

She looked behind her and considered running back into the woods, but she had just come from there and had been almost overcome by the dread feeling of paranoia.

No. She would wait and watch from where she was. No more bad decisions today.

She began to back away down the hill, away from the house.

"Katy." The voice made her freeze. "Ms. Maldon, I'm presuming that's you over there."

It was _him_. Him _again_. Clayton Hargrave had come into view, standing on the edge of her porch, still dressed to run the world in his sharp business attire, and looking as relaxed about having stalked her to her home as though he were an old friend she had invited over for coffee every other Wednesday.

"What do you want, Hargrave?" she said, advancing up the hill towards him, her instinct for attack kicking into high gear. "And how did you find me? No-one has this address."

Clayton smiled.

"Well, that's hardly true, now is it?" he said playfully. "I have it. My team has it and we aren't no-one."

Stay low. Stay clean. Leave no trace. Her mantra, the one she shared with her oldest friend and professional associate, Suzy Falstaff, had just been seriously, possibly irreparably violated.

"You're beginning to annoy me, Hargrave. I said I wasn't interested in your offer and you weren't invited up here, so I think you need to leave my property before I call the police."

"Do the police have this address as well?"

"I can give it to them pretty easily."

"Ms. Maldon, really, I think you're getting the wrong idea here. The fact is that I tried getting your number but obviously you haven't got one listed, and as your cell phone signal is masked and there's no fixed line coming into this house, I had to be creative."

"This is bullshit. I'm calling the police."

"There's really no need for that. Besides, something tells me that someone as interested in privacy as you probably doesn't need any extra attention from the authorities." He stopped and waited, calling her bluff. "Why else would you be living out here in the middle of nowhere in a property listed as vacant?"

_Shit._ Katy had to hold on tight not to lose it. The asshole had done his homework and this was getting way too much in a very short amount of time.

"You really are one nosy little sun of a gun, aren't you?"

"Ms. Maldon, may I please come inside and sit down? I'm beginning to get the impression that I'm not welcome here, standing out on your porch like this."

Despite the fact that bringing someone inside her home was anathema to her, Katy knew he was right. She definitely did not want cops snooping around and asking questions.

"Okay, you can come inside but then I want answers."

She walked up to the house and passed within inches of the tall man on the porch in order to get to her front door. He smelled good, masculine, expensive, understated, damn sexy, but it didn't make her feel any better. If anything, it was having the opposite effect.

"You'll have to excuse me," she said. "I've just been running."

He smiled and followed her into the house.

"Can I get you anything?" she asked.

"Wow," he said. "No really, I mean wow. How long have you lived here?"

"That's none of your business."

"The house was built four years ago but never occupied. Don't tell me you've been living here all that time."

He was right about the house but way off on the time frame. He obviously didn't know everything, or was pretending not to.

"What if I have?"she said.

"Well, what do you have against pictures for a start?"

She looked around. It was true that she had never hung a single picture on the walls. They had been bare for so long she had forgotten about them.

"I like walls," she said. "Why don't you sit down, I'll get you some coffee."

"Do you have any tea?" he asked, sitting down on a barstool by her kitchen area counter top.

"No. Just coffee. I've got Costa Rican, Colombian, some Java Sumatra--"

"Got any Jamaica Blue Mountain?"

"You don't ask for much, do you? That stuff is a little pricy for me. Not that I wouldn't mind tasting it of course."

"Well I think that could be arranged. If you ever come over to my place for a visit, I'll personally make you a cup."

He was good. Really good. A charmer, obviously used to talking and smiling his wealthy way into the pants of swooning females. But that wasn't Katy Maldon's profile; he was way off here.

"Is that an invitation?"she said.

"Is that an acceptance?"

"Definitely not."

She busied herself preparing coffee, grinding fresh Indonesian Arabica beans, one of her current favorites. Obviously not Jamaica Blue Mountain quality but still good nevertheless. It would have to satisfy her gourmet guest's taste.

"Let's cut to the chase, Hargrave; why the stalker act? What are you doing here and how did you find my address?"

"I came for two reasons," he said, still looking around the room for any signs of a personal life. "The first is to find out if you will reconsider my offer."

"The answer is still no."

"The second is to ask you to have dinner with me tonight."

Katy laughed harshly. Clayton had a way of making her feel very, very uncomfortable but very intrigued at the same time. She had never had a visitor to the house in the eleven months she had been living there, and like any recluse, it made her flesh-crawlingly uneasy to have anyone in the house at all. Add to that, she had sworn off relationships four long years ago when she had gone into hiding, and this was making her very uncomfortable indeed. Most guys were as easy to swat away as house flies and were as about as desirable, but Clayton Hargrave clearly wasn't just any guy.

"I'll cook," he added.

"Is that a threat?" she answered reflexively.

"Well I hope I don't have to resort to threats," he said with a smile. "So how about it? We could combine business with pleasure. I'll send a car over about 8 to pick you up and then we can discuss the terms of business over dinner and Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee."

Katy watched him. He was so calm, so self-assured, and so covered in quality and good taste. He was obviously a successful man who dated regularly and was probably surrounded by people all the time; employees who feared him, women who desired him. She had met them all before, looked after their interests, made their secrets disappear, but none had ever been quite so strikingly good looking or so threateningly sharp as Clayton Hargrave.

"You still haven't told me how you found me," she said.

He picked up the business card he had given her that she had left on the counter top. He slid it over towards her.

"This," he said. "It's a tracking device."

Katy blanched.

Fucking asshole.

"That damn thing," She hissed and then stopped herself. He didn't need to see how unsettled she was. She should have tossed the damn thing out the window. Technology and gut instinct; that's how she survived, and this is what happened when she ignored those deep, wordless intuitions.

"I like to keep tabs on people that I have an interest in," He said.

She slid it back to him.

"That's a pretty weird and creepy device if you ask me."

"You would be surprised at the demand there is for technology like that. We've sold millions of them already."

Katy thought of the handful of business cards she had in her possession from clients and from her tiny handful of associates. She felt like a fool. It wasn't a feeling she was accustomed to.

"You're an asshole," she said.

Clayton grinned playfully and, asshole or not, that was one gorgeous smile he had; perfect teeth, sun-kissed skin, the linen of his shirt packaging everything up just good enough to eat.

It had been so, so long since she had been with anyone...

"I'm sorry," he said. "I promise I won't do anything like that again. Not if you come and have dinner with me tonight and at least hear me out. I'm not a threat to you, Ms. Maldon, in fact, I think I could use your help. That's the only reason I'm here. You've made quite an impression on me and I don't like to let good people go, not easily anyway. Hargrave Robotics wasn't built by one person; it's a team effort and I need someone like you working with me. Privacy is key in today's business and I need someone to safeguard all of my communications, both personal and private, and I have a feeling about you, an instinct if you will and I always try to listen to my instincts."

"Is that why you kissed me earlier on in the café?"

He never took his eyes off hers.

"I kissed you because I couldn't resist it," he said with complete seriousness. "And I know that's a problem, but it's one we can work around."

"I wouldn't be so sure."

When her battered old Bialetti Italian kitchen style coffee pot began to hiss, she found two cups and set them down. They were all she had.

"It's just straight Indonesian Arabica," she said. "How do like yours? Cream and sugar?"

"I like it straight," he said. "No adulterates. I don't like anything to get in the way of the original flavor."

She poured a cup and walked to the counter top to hand it to him, but he stood up and walked around to meet her.

"What are you doing?" she said.

He looked at her steadily and took another step forward.

"This is bullshit," he said and pushed her hand aside, sending the coffee cup crashing to the floor. He put his other hand around her waist and drew her to him. Before she could say a word, her body was crushed against his and his lips were devouring her neck. Katy felt herself come alive in a way that she had forgotten existed. Forced to live a solitary existence, she had pushed every thought of relationships and desire out of her mind... but she was only human.

His hands found their way down to the small of her back and then to her tightening ass as she pushed her abdomen willingly against him. It thrilled her to find that he was already hard for her and the feeling of his rock-hard member pressing urgently into her was wildly exciting. All she had expected from her evening were frustrating exchanges with her irrational client followed by a cold shower, a simple meal, and a glass of wine before bedtime.

Getting fucked in her sweats on the kitchen floor by a wealthy and smoking hot business tycoon had been as remote a possibility as finding a unicorn in her bathtub.

But here she was.

Clayton picked her up so that his face was at her chest, his mouth looking for access to her neck and breasts, and she had instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist. He laid her out on the counter top, smashing her only other coffee cup and sending the pot to the tiles below. Then he began to work his way down lower. He unzipped her top to reveal the tight t-shirt she was wearing underneath and began to pull his own jacket off.

Katy watched in awe as he revealed his tanned, rock-hard, chiseled six pack, broad shoulders and massively well-developed chest. Her clit was already buzzing like a bee in springtime as crazy thoughts surged through her mind.

"We can't do this," she said breathlessly.

"Yes we can." He dropped his shirt to the ground and began pulling her sweats down. Her hands clutched to keep them where they were.

"Stop this, Hargrave. I don't want this."

He watched her steadily, as though trying to read her mind, her true thoughts, and then let go of her pants.

"I think we both know that you do want this, Ms. Maldon. I don't have to be an expert in human behavior and body language to know what I felt just now and what I felt back in that café. It's what I have already referred to as a problem, a very big problem and I know of only one way to solve it."

"And what's that? By fucking me?"

"Would that be so bad?"

"You have no idea what you're getting into." She pushed back up onto her elbows and began zipping up her running top again. Her breasts were swollen and tight under the fabric and her heart was racing. "The best thing you can do is just walk out of here right now and forget you ever met me. People have a tendency to get hurt around me, even people as wealthy as you."

"Maybe I don't hurt as easily as you imagine." He reached down for his shirt and began to put it back on.

Katy watched him move. He was more like a pro surfer than a business man under that clipped, European-cut suit he was wearing. It was a shame she had to force him to cover it all up again.

"Look, I'm not going to pretend I'm not attracted to you--"

"Well that would be a total waste of time, wouldn't it?" He smirked and the look he gave her was too sexy for words.

"But it doesn't matter. That's just sex."

"I never use those two words together, Ms. Maldon. I take sex very seriously, and the attraction between a man and a woman is something I treat with the utmost gravity."

"And staying alive is something I take very seriously, so without any more of this flirtatious crap, could we just call it a day and say goodbye already?"

Clayton continued dressing himself and somehow managed to look as though absolutely nothing at all had taken place between them on the kitchen counter. Katy meanwhile, felt like something the cat had dragged in backwards through the bushes and then been stamped all over as if she were on fire. There were a million and one reasons she wanted Clayton out of her house, but just getting cleaned up was the one that felt most urgent at that particular moment.

"You look gorgeous," he said. "I bet almost no-one ever gets to see you like this."

Her heart began to beat faster again and incredibly, she could feel her color begin to rise.

"Is that a blush I see?" he said, with every intention of making it worse. "The greatest privacy consultant in the country can't even hide her own emotions? I'm beginning to doubt your story again."

"Will you please just get out of here?"

"You know you're forcing my hand by not being reasonable."

"Is that a threat?"

"Of course not. I'm just saying that if we are discussing business together, then my interests are your interests, but if we aren't then unfortunately you are a potential threat to my organization and I need to take that into account."

"Trust me, your secret is safe with me. It's not like glasses with cameras in them are exactly a new idea, you know. There might be a particular internet search engine giant you may have heard of with a similar product that's already out on the market."

"It's got nothing to do with that, but let's say, Ms. Maldon, that you've been working with people who don't have Hargrave Robotics' best interests at heart, and that therefore, I intend either convincing you to work for me, or to prevent you from working for them."

Katy's mind raced through her short client list. None of them seemed an obvious choice as a rival to Hargrave and none of them had ever mentioned him, so she couldn't imagine who the hell he was talking about.

"I don't discuss my client list with anyone and I don't believe you even know anyone on the list anyway."

Clayton watched her swing her legs off the counter top and then hop to the ground.

"I think it's time for you to go," she said.

"You're definitely good at keeping secrets, but I'm an expert at uncovering the truth, especially when it comes to people I believe can add value to my company and particularly when I feel as attracted to them as I do to you. I've never come across any woman who was harder to dig up facts on than you, but even that is a clue in itself. A clue to your true nature."

His words were transfixing. She had to shake herself loose from his gaze.

"Out. Now. Before I call the cops."

"Stop it, because we both know you aren't going to call anyone. Now I'm guessing that your life was seriously threatened at some point because when I look into your eyes, I see a lot of fear there. I look around this house and I see someone who is desperately afraid to reveal anything about themselves."

"Stop it, this is nonsense." She felt a cold sweat break out, prickling the skin on her back as the tall, imposing man continued staring at her, mentally peeling away the layers of her concealment.

"I think there's only one way a girl could get the kind of squeaky clean past that you have, am I right?"

Katy wanted to tell him to get the hell out, but she was experiencing the closest thing to a panic attack she had ever felt in her life and chasing him out of there wouldn't solve the problem anyway.

"Call me crazy," he continued, "call me a man with a vivid imagination, but I'm guessing WITSEC."

Katy's heart almost stopped, her vision began to narrow.

Clayton continued relentlessly.

"The Federal Witness Security Program or Witness Protection Program as it's more popularly known."

He let the words hang.

It had been four years since she'd disappeared off the radar of everyone she had ever known and three years since she had fled the program itself to run solo. Now this damn fool walks into her life and because he feels 'intrigued' about her, decides he wants to bed her and control her, now all that work and secrecy and sacrifice was set to unravel.

She glanced around her bare kitchen, her eyes stopping on the woodblock that held a barely used set of steak knives. She looked back at Clayton and their eyes met, locked, narrowed, and focused in on each other, striving to give nothing away but speaking volumes.

_You won't take me,_ her thoughts ran feverishly through her mind. _You don't know who you're dealing with here, you have no idea at all._

### Chapter Three

"Shall I go on?" he said, but when Katy didn't reply he continued on regardless. "I think you were already involved in the privacy business in some way before you gave evidence."

He watched her intently, waiting for a crack to appear. Sure, she looked desperate, and fuck if it wasn't as hot as hell to see her cornered like this, still all hot from her run and their little skirmish together on the kitchen counter. This was going to be the best lay of his life. Make her crack, the unbreakable privacy specialist with her mysterious past, and then drill her into screaming submission on her own smooth household kitchen surface.

He was getting close and he could feel it, scent it, like a lion rounding on its prey.

This would be a day to remember.

"The program didn't want you to go back to your old business, but you decided to do it anyway. You believed, correctly I imagine, that you could do a better job than them and of course you probably missed your old life. You missed the money and you certainly missed the challenge."

He was close alright, so very close.

"Stop," Katy said. "Please just stop it now. Look, what will it take for you to just walk out that door short of me calling the cops?"

"I want you to reconsider my offer. That's all."

She glared at him and up at the ceiling in frustration.

"You just don't give up, do you?"

"Never." He smiled.

"Okay. Give me until tomorrow--"

"Tonight. Eight pm. My car will pick you up. I have cold water Maine lobster fresh from the bay, so I hope you like seafood."

"I'm a vegetarian," she said, just to be awkward.

"Not a problem. Although somehow, I doubt it."

He leaned in to kiss her but she drew away.

"And none of that," she said. "If we're going to talk business then let's keep it strictly business. I don't mix business and pleasure."

"That's a big mistake." He smiled that sexy half smile. "Dress comfortably. We're eating at my place not at Jean Jacques in Manhattan. I don't want my guest of honor to feel uptight about anything."

"I never get uptight." The remark was so ridiculous that after a moment of silence both of them laughed.

"Sure," he said. "I'll see you later, Ms. Maldon. Anything you need in the meantime, just give me a call. You have my card." He smiled that smile again.

*******************

After Clayton left, Katy set to cleaning up the mess they had made during their 'almost' moment of passion. She shook her head as she swept up the remaining shards of porcelain, hardly believing what had just occurred. She filled the dustpan with broken pieces and then stopped. She was right at the spot where he had put his hand around her waist and drawn her to him. It seemed bizarre, unreal, and yet he had really done that. This guy was something else. A real piece of work. Before she had gotten in trouble and then entered the Witness Protection Program, she had been in a relationship with a nice guy, but God, nothing they had ever done together had felt as exciting as this and they hadn't even gotten fully naked, let alone had sex. In all of her relationships, she had always been in control, always called the shots, and she liked it that way.

_Do I? Do I really?_ she asked herself. If that was the case then why was this particular man and his controlling, bossy attitude to sex so damn thrilling?

She looked at her watch. It was 5:15pm. She had noticed Clayton looking at her in the café at about 2:30pm. In under three hours, this guy had dug up and guessed more truth about her than any human being in the last three years and had rocked her tightly controlled world to the foundations.

She had to find out who the hell he was.

She put the dustpan down and went to her laptop.

Within minutes, she had more information than she needed. Clayton Hargrave was obviously a very public man and exactly the kind of person who needed her services. He was surrounded by controversy with women, as well as corporate lawsuits on patent infringement, usually with him being the initiator and with the press, waiting like vultures for he and his brother Dale to step out of line. No wonder Dale had contacted her today. It couldn't be a coincidence. He was lying to her about just coming across her by accident in the café; he had to be there checking her out before his big brother made the call.

Whatever the story, they were both of the new breed of young, high-tech billionaires. Unlike their contemporaries, however, these guys were no geeks. Clayton and Dale were as hot as they come, each in his own unique way. Although self-made, Clayton looked as though he had been born into money from another age. Nearly every picture showed him sporting hand-cut suits of European cut like some sort of James Bond 007 CEO. His older brother Dale was more the macho all-American type; much more dressed down, rough and ready with a kind of Texas rancher chic. Not that he looked like a rich hick, not at all; the raw intelligence in his eyes showed he was much, more than that and his incredible good looks would have allowed him a career in modeling. There was another man who often appeared with them, also young, extremely good-looking but quite enigmatic in his association with them. His style was more urban and he would have looked equally at home in an exclusive New York night club or rubbing shoulders with movie stars in the Hollywood Hills.

Their company wasn't just any old company either, and she was surprised she didn't know more about them considering her business. Obviously they liked to keep a low profile, but it was clearly getting harder with the increased media attention the impossibly good-looking trio were attracting. These guys weren't gray, boring Warren Buffet-style money machines, waiting idly for blue chip stocks to turn over and go up in value, but neither were they geeky, pale-skinned code warriors turned good. These guys were serious boys with toys. The kind of toys the military were interested in and the kind that changed lives at the cutting edge of medical technology.

"No wonder he was edgy about my noticing his glass," she murmured.

She decided to call Suzy, her old friend and information specialist. They had known each other for a long time, and Suzy Falstaff was the only person from her old life who knew for sure that she was still alive. They had grown up side by side and then studied engineering together; the only two girls in a class of over one hundred socially challenged guys. Suzy had always been interested in ethical hacking and she was very, very good at what she did. When Katy needed information on someone beyond an internet search then Suzy was her point of contact. If her girl couldn't get the dirt then nobody could.

She found her secure Blackphone, routed it through her clean laptop, and then zigzagged the call through several continents via her personal, customized VPN technology. If Clayton Hargrave could track this call, he would be a whole lot smarter than her and good as he was, she still doubted that. She had to, or why even bother putting up a fight?

"What's going on?" The friendly voice at the other end greeted her, the sound of her golden retriever, Redmond, barking happily in the background.

"Information," Katy said. It was enough to let Suzy know that things were serious.

"Who is it?" One of the first thing Katy did with any new client was a background check so she assumed this was what she wanted.

"Clayton Hargrave."

"Of Hargrave Robotics?"

"You've heard of him?"

"Who hasn't?" She turned to her dog and loyal friend who had just come in from the beach. "Pipe down, Redmond, I'm speaking here." The dog went quiet. He knew not to interfere in his owner's business. She turned back to her phone. "Not everyone lives like a hermit, you know. Are you going to be working with him?"

"Come on, you know better than that. No details. Just get me whatever you can on him and then send it via the usual channel."

"Ouch. No problem boss," she said with a twang of playful sarcasm. "Did you run out of coffee this morning or something?"

Katy looked at the smashed coffee pot on the floor. Caffeine and good coffee beans were her one addiction. That and her obsession with secrecy.

"You could say that," she said with an involuntary smirk that annoyed her and quickly left her face.

"Hmmm, mysterious as always. Don't sweat it, boss, I'll have information within the hour. Just hang tight."

"I'm not tight," she said quite ridiculously.

"Uh... whatever. I'll be in touch. Look, just remember, stay low, stay clean--"

"Leave no trace, I know, I know. Don't worry. Call me when you have something."

She ended the call. Suzy was used to her friend being moody and it didn't bother her. She let a lot of things slide for old time's sake, not only because her old friend was a very well paying client, but also because she had to imagine that living like a dead person for years on end would leave you feeling more than a little grumpy at times. Not to say lonely. Hell, sometimes the secrecy even got to her as well, especially when mutual acquaintances talked about what a great girl Nadia, her friend's original name, _had_ been.

Katy finished cleaning up the mess and went to put more coffee on before realizing she had no cups to drink from and no coffee pot to make it in.

_Shit. Screw you, Hargrave. Men and sex. Such animals._ She smiled again and wiped it quickly from her face. Again.

She fished a stainless steel saucepan out of the cupboard and a glass tumbler from the cabinet. They would have to do because she seriously needed caffeine.

It wasn't quite dark yet, although the autumn sunshine was fast fading in the early evening. The silent flash of blue and red lights that filled the house sent fear snaking down Katy's spine.

"What the hell has that asshole done now?" she hissed as she looked around to see if anything in her home were obviously out of the ordinary.

She heard footsteps approach her front door and her heart began to pound. It had been a long, long time since she had had anything to do with the police. When the doorbell went, she jumped, even though she had clearly seen the officer approach through the a small panel of frosted glass.

She didn't move.

"Open up, it's the police."

Shit.

There was no point in running. She knew that. The face of the young officer was pressed close up against the glass, scanning the interior of the house for signs of life.

"It's the police," he said. "Can you open the door please?"

She went to the door like a dead woman walking. Was this it?

Stay calm, Katy, stay calm. It's probably just a misunderstanding.

She opened the door and struggled to smile, but her mouth wouldn't move. Another of the consequences of living like a recluse; loss of basic social skills.

"Good evening, officer, what can I do for you?"

He peered inside before answering.

"May we come in?"

"Uh, sure, please do." She stepped aside and the good-looking young man brushed past her followed by a stern-looking female cop. They looked around her bare living room and kitchen area as though it were a crime scene.

"Been living here long, ma'am?" The male officer asked. His badge said 'Officer Hardy.'

"No, not long. In fact, I've just moved in."

"Is that so?" Officer Smity, the female cop said.

"That's right. Just last week."

"Can I see some ID?"

"Sure, sure thing." Katy found her wallet and produced her driver's license.

"Ms. Katherine Maldon. State of California," he said, as though her name and the state of issue were both highly incriminating. He handed the license back to her. "We got a report of a disturbance up here," he said.

Officer Smity began walking around the living room.

"Well, it must be a mistake," Katy said. "I live alone up here and there's nothing going on. I just went out for a run earlier, and then came back to make coffee and do some work before going to bed."

"Did you have any visitors today, ma'am?" Officer Hardy asked.

This was it. Twelve months of anonymity and peace ruined. Should she lie? Her relationships with clients were strictly confidential, but then again, no client had ever placed a tracking device on her and followed her to her home.

"No, sir," she said. "None at all."

"Did you have a little accident earlier?" The female officer asked from the kitchen area, looking into her trash can where the broken coffee pot and cups were piled up. The remains of two coffee cups.

_Shit,_ Katy thought.

"That's right, actually, I did have a visitor earlier. Sorry about that. An old friend. We were having coffee."

Officer Hardy put his hand to his weapon. "I'm getting confused here, ma'am. Did you have a visitor or didn't you?"

Katy faltered. Her expertise was electronic privacy. Lying to the cops face to face was far, far outside her comfort zone.

"Who's Clayton Hargrave?" Officer Smity asked, picking up Clayton's business card from the counter top. It was the only damn thing that hadn't hit the floor when impulse had momentarily overcome them.

"He's... he's an old friend," she said.

"An old friend who left you his business card?"

Shit, shit, shit.

"That's right. We kind of lost contact with each other and he looked me up again. I haven't seen him in years. Then my stupid cat came along and knocked over the coffee pot and cups from the counter top and that was that."

Hardy and Smity exchanged a glance.

"Where is Mr. Hargrave now?" Hardy asked.

"He left. We agreed to meet up again later."

Hardy waited for a moment until Smity had joined him again. Katy fixed a nervous smile on her face.

"Okay, ma'am. That about wraps it up. You have a nice day." Neither of the officers smiled.

"You too, officer." Katy said and then escorted them to the door.

"By the way," she added as they got into the patrol car, "who called in the report of a disturbance?"

"That's confidential, ma'am. You have a nice day." Officer Hardy rolled up his window and pulled away down the deserted road. Katy looked around the surrounding hills and woodlands. There wasn't a visible neighbor anywhere for miles around.

### Chapter Four

As soon as the cop car went out of view, Katy ran from the house and scrambled into the woods behind her house. She kept her getaway pack hidden under a shallow layer of dirt and some rocks. It had everything she would need to get out of town. One hundred thousand dollars in cash, her Sig Sauer P220 compact –a low caliber semi-automatic pistol designed for self-defense rather than putting a huge hole in someone – credit cards and fake IDs for various states in the USA.

The only other items she would need were her clean laptop, secure Blackphone, smart watch, and various other small items of electronic privacy hardware. She would melt away and stay low for a while, a few months maybe or even a year. She could spend the time trying to hunt down her birth father, a project that never left her mind but for which she had never been able to find the time.

Now she could do that; find some damn closure in a life so ragged with loose ends.

When she returned to the house, she stopped dead. She heard the sound of wheels again on the road in front of her house. Three times in one day was a record. Three times in a year would already have been too much. She drew out her pistol and approached the house with extreme caution. The sound of the wheels was definitely receding away. Someone had come and gone. She came around the side of the house holding her pistol at the ready. It had been a long, long time since she had held a firearm and she definitely did not like the sensation. She had never shot anyone in her life and hoped she would never have to.

Rounding the corner, she saw a small package on her doorstep. A bead of sweat trickled down her forehead. The statistics of the US Witness Security Program were excellent. Stay in the program and you die of natural or accidental causes. Leave the program and turning the key in your front door was likely to shoot you twenty feet into the air and leave bits of you spread out over a three hundred foot area.

Was this a warning of some kind? Why leave it there in the open? Why not just find her and kill her?

She approached slowly, the feeling of choking beginning to take hold of her throat again. Then the package fell over.

Katy froze.

A set of huge green eyes stared up at her. It was Brad Pitt, her cat and closest companion of the last three years. He was pawing relentlessly at the brown packaging.

"Brad! No, stop it, don't do that."

He paid no attention and quickly tore a huge hole in the paper, letting a small sixteen ounce bag of dark coffee beans fall out onto the porch.

"What the hell?" It was almost certainly not an explosive device. She looked around, put the safety back on her weapon and then picked up the package. Inside was a brand new coffee pot with two new cups and another sixteen ounce bag of coffee beans. There was also a note. She looked around again, scanning the hills and trees and then picked it up. It was handwritten.

Sorry about the pot and cups. Here's some Peaberry Jamaica Mountain Blue to make up for it. I watched them harvested myself on the Langford estate in the Blue Mountains. See you later,

Clay.

She held the note in her hands and then looked up into the darkening forest around her house. Tears began to come to her eyes while Brad Pitt stared up at her.

"What the hell is wrong with me, Brad?" The cat didn't move, he was hungry, but Katy imagined what he would be thinking if he had a shred of human emotion in his body.

I'm just a cat but as your closest companion, I'm going to suggest that maybe three years of living like the deceased has left you a little on edge. Maybe three years without any human interaction other than listening to your clients' paranoid demands for secrecy has made you an emotional wreck. And finally, as my final word, maybe, just maybe, three years without any human contact other than a handshake has fucked you up, girl.

She wiped the tears away as her internal monologue subsided.

Brad still looked hungry, but somehow wiser.

"You're right," she said to her living companion. "I've been alone too long. I'm getting psychological advice from you, a cat, via _your_ voice inside _my_ head."

She wiped away the last of her tears and then gathered up the beans. The coffee pot and cups could stay where they were. She would have no room for them in her suitcase, but the beans she would enjoy whenever she got to wherever she was going, and if she never saw Clayton Hargrave again, she would at least have that handwritten note to look at and pretend that... pretend what? That she was an ordinary woman with an ordinary life who could have a relationship and settle down somewhere, be happy, have a normal life with children, vacations, holiday celebrations?

It all sounded so ridiculous, so impossible.

The tears began to come again but she forced them back down.

"Screw it." She threw the beans and the note away into the darkness and went inside to get her suitcase.

"You're a big girl, Nadia..."

Shit.

She had used her real name out loud. That hadn't happened in a long, long time. She clamped her jaw shut and plunged into the darkness to retrieve her bag and resume getting the hell out of town.

********************

After he had dispatched his gift to Katy, Clayton set about preparing dinner. He had not been resident in the stunning hilltop and waterfront property that long, but it had already been so fabulously equipped at the time of sale that he had decided to keep most of what was there. He would adapt things to his taste in good time. Between his work and his leisure time passions, interior design and decoration didn't feature that highly on his list of priorities.

He called his personal chef and gave him basic instructions for an excellent vegetarian meal. Obviously, he had no intention of cooking himself. Time, always time. Instead he checked in with his private detective, Lacey MacMahon. She had come to him via an excellent personal recommendation from one of the Demovic brothers in New York and he had found her to be excellent in meeting his needs thus far.

"It's Clayton," he said when she answered. "Do we have anything new?"

"I think you're correct about the Witness Security Progam, Mr. Hargrave. But if you are, it means whoever she was before is, to all intents and purposes, now dead. There's no way to get information from that program. It is easily the tightest run department the government has. It'd be easier to get credit card details for the Area 51 security team."

"In that case, what exactly am I paying you for?"

"For this. I did a thorough search on cases that involved protected witnesses from two to four years ago and narrowed the criteria down to crimes that involved electronic eavesdropping or the use of military grade technology to hide criminal activity."

"Spare me the mechanics, Lacey, I'm meeting this person in under an hour. What did you find?"

"There was a case in Washington DC about four years ago involving the Russian Mafia. It turned out that a seemingly legitimate business, BoyTech Inc, with connections in the White House was a front for a big time Vory, a Bratva, a Russian mobster by the name of Mikhail Boyevik. Government secrets seemed to be the major currency involved with a major tax evasion and pyramid scam going on as well. One person had the guts to blow the whistle on these guys but her name was never released."

"You're sure this person was a she?"

"Absolutely. She paid a heavy price. Family members were sucked into it but she stuck to her guns. After the case, she disappeared, presumably into the WITSEC."

"What's the connection to Katy Maldon?"

"Nothing. Not on the surface at least, except that this WITSEC girl was a technology expert with the same kind of expertise you say this Maldon has. One part of the Mafia front operation, the part that was legit, had a contract with Uncle Sam to provide military grade security devices for electronic silence. She was pretty damn good by all accounts. Maybe the best in the business. Sound like your girl?"

A video call from the surveillance team he had left with Katy was coming through.

"Good work, Lacey. I have to go. Keep digging." He took the video call and Angel Montoya, his head of security came through. He was good-looking man of Colombian and Hawaiian origin. He had gone to college with Clayton and worked for him ever since Hargrave Robotics had hit the big time two years ago.

"What's up, Angel?" Clayton said with perfect Spanish pronunciation of his friend's name.

"She's on the move, Clay. Something's up. A cop car was up there earlier."

"Did they see you?"

"Not a chance. They didn't stay long. Seems funny though. Out here in the middle of nowhere."

"Did she get my gift?"

"Sure she did. She came at it with a handgun."

Clayton's mouth fell open.

"A handgun? Are you crazy?"

"No, but it sure looks like she is. Looked like a Sig Sauer, compact model."

"Hm, nice choice."

"No kidding. I'm telling you, be careful with this one, Clay. Her cat opened the box and your girl picked up a bag of coffee with your note. She read it, started to cry, and then began talking to her cat before throwing your coffee beans away into the bushes."

"That was Peaberry from the Langford plantation," he said with some irritation.

"I know," Angel lamented. "I'll go back later on and get it from the bushes."

"Don't go anywhere near the house, Angel. I don't want you spooking her. You're there to take care of her, remember?"

"Sure. That's why I took this job; to take care of your girlfriends. But look, I'm nowhere near the house anymore. She left in a big hurry and I'm tailing her now, but this area is pretty deserted so I can't get too close to her."

"Where the hell are you? Why didn't you tell me she'd left the house?" Clayton was surprised and not happy with the omission.

"I'm telling you now, besides, she went back to that coffee place first. The place you saw her today."

"What did she go there for?"

"She brought her cat there. Gave it to an old lady."

Clayton was baffled.

"She gave her cat away?"

"That's right. Looks like she's getting out of town. That's why I'm calling. She put one small suitcase in the back of her car then dropped the cat off. I thought she might head back home but instead she headed out onto the coast road. I'll be honest with you, if she ain't seen me following her yet then she's got vision problems. This ain't a secret operation no more."

"Goddamn it. Keep on her. Don't let anything happen to her. I'm on my way."

He ended the call and grabbed his customized Hargrave secure phone with the tracking device software to follow the card he had given to Katy. Sure enough, it was showing her as being in town at the coffee place. She must have brought it with her and left it there to throw him off the scent. He swiped the screen and went to the second tracking device he had left with her. A smaller one than a business card this time and fixed to the inside of her car's body work. He believed in protecting his assets, even when they were still just remote prospects. She might be good in her field, maybe the best, but she wasn't better at this game than him, not by a mile.

He jumped into his Bugatti and sped off down the driveway.

********************

Paranoia couldn't describe what Katy was feeling. She had picked up on the Latino-looking guy following her in the midrange conspicuously inconspicuous sedan as soon as she had headed out onto the small back road that led from her remote neighborhood into town.

Every time she looked at Brad Pitt, she had to choke back tears.

"I'm so sorry, baby," she kept saying to the completely impassive animal. "I can't take any chances. Those cops might ask questions, they might start digging. And they weren't there by accident. Someone wants to screw with me and I think I know exactly who it is."

When she arrived in town, she sat in her car outside the café for a full ten minutes, waiting for Angel to do something. Finally she decided to risk it and she stepped out of the car carrying Brad Pitt with her. Angel never moved so she figured she was allowed to go inside. Angel was tracking her as well via the business card, so he was comfortable enough to allow her to enter the café alone.

When he heard the car pull off, he was taken by surprise.

"Hijo puta," he said as he realized she had shed one of her tracking devices and snuck back into her car while he watched his phone.

It was shortly after that he called Clayton and now, he was half way out in the middle of nowhere again, feeling like an idiot for following this poor woman just so his crazy but incredibly successful friend could bone her. It wasn't the first time he had been put on 'pussy duty' as he and his team called it. It didn't happen often, but by God when Clayton got a woman into his head, he was very, very serious about it. He didn't dare screw up or he was sure their college friendship wouldn't be enough to save him his very comfortable and extremely lucrative job, even if he did have other plans in mind for his future.

Katy meanwhile, heard her phone buzz and snatched up the Blackphone from the seat. It was Suzy.

"Information," she said as soon as she heard her friend's voice.

"Not good."

"Shit. I knew it."

"I'm not sure you did. First off, who the hell is Jack Patterson?"

"Jack Patterson? How did you hear about him?"

"He's all over the news talking about you and his hotel room crack cocaine and prostitution bust. You're in the news, Ms. Maldon."

"Don't say my goddamn name. You know the rules."

"The rules are out the window. This guy is making you famous. You better hope he has no pictures of you anywhere."

"What has that loser been saying?"

"He says he's been setup and he blames you, his privacy consultant, for the whole thing. He says he's been working with you for about six months, that he's paid you hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, and that your shit, excuse the language, doesn't work. He thinks you might have set him up."

Katy put the phone to her chest, hissed out a long sigh of frustration and then put the phone back to her ear.

"He's an asshole. A moron football player. I told him I was only able to cover him electronically. How the hell was I to know he'd party with hookers and land himself in a sting operation?"

"Well, he doesn't see it that way. Looks like he's out for blood. Does the town of Lovett, Maine mean anything to you?"

The words felt like a punch to Katy's stomach.

"Shit," she said. "He's doing this to ruin me. He's an idiot, but he's smart enough to know this kind of publicity will destroy my reputation. If he produces a picture of me and the press come looking, then that's it; game over."

"I'm sorry, boss, but it looks like it's over already. At least for now. Do you have enough money to stay low for a while?"

"Sure. Money's not an issue. I've got bigger problems than that right now. The cops were at my house today. A disturbance was reported but I live in the middle of nowhere. Someone put them up to it and I have my suspicions who."

"Forget suspicions, it was your boy Patterson."

"Shit, shit, shit. I knew it wasn't my imagination. Someone's been following me for days. I thought I was going crazy. Damn it. Of all the people to get me, that schmuck. The dumbest, most arrogant--"

She stopped in midsentence. There was no use in getting upset about what was done. She needed to focus on more immediate problems and finding solutions.

"What's new on Hargrave?"she said.

"He's the least of your worries. Apart from his bizarre relationship to women, the guy is clean. Cleaner than clean. He's up to his ears in lawsuits over patents and other corporate stuff but only because his company is so good. All the other guys are falling over themselves trying to copy his equipment. He's a big time philanthropist and a lot of his tech goes into ground-breaking medical devices that have changed people's lives. He and his brother are pretty damn awesome. Right now they're working on light weight tracking devices to be worn by military and security personnel. The days when warzone kidnap victims can't be located will come to an end by all accounts. Pretty amazing and 'out-there stuff.' Despite all that, still no rabbit-holes."

'Rabbit-holes.' This was Suzy's way of talking about red flags that threatened to lead down to less than savory places. Katy was familiar with her friend's terminology.

"What's the bizarre relationship to women thing?"

"Oh shit."

"What is it?"

"I'm watching CNN. This guy Patterson has a picture of you."

"Fuck. Goddamn it." Katy glanced nervously in her rearview mirror. That damn sedan with the scary looking Latino was still following her.

"How the hell did he get that?"

"How should I know? Maybe I've been getting sloppy or maybe he already had some technology that passed my sweep when we met. Maybe the guy just isn't as dumb as he looks."

"Obviously not."

"Is it a clear shot of my face?"

"Clear as day."

"Goddamn it."

"You better stay low, baby. This doesn't look good. If your old employer sees this--"

"Shut up. Not another word. I've got to go because it looks like they already have."

Suzy froze. Her crazy long distance, no name, covert relationship to her old friend was a lifeline to her. She was the oldest friend she had and the loss of her to that evil crime dynasty had hit her hard. She desperately wanted to call her friend by her old name but didn't dare.

"Stay on the line. Don't hang up."

"I've got to go. Someone's following me. This isn't safe for you anymore."

"It never was. Don't hang up. Tell me where you are."

"No way. Come on, I don't know how much longer I've got. What else do you know about Hargrave."

"It's not important."

"Just tell me, for Christ's sake."

"Okay, it's about his women. He's choosy. Very choosy. But he always goes for geeks, engineering types, high IQ. Always slim and good-looking but always tech-heads."

"I'll be damned."

"He has a thing for girls like..."

"Girls like you." They both said at the same time.

"Ah, ah. Girls like _you,"_ Suzy said. "You're the hot one."

Suzy glanced in her rearview and saw the car behind her looming closer than ever.

"Cut it out, Suzy... shit, I've got to hang up. I need to take care of this right now."

"Wait--"

Katy ended the call and pulled her car over. Her Sig Sauer was in the glove compartment and she considered taking it out. If this was her old boss tying up a loose end then it might actually come to that. On other hand, whoever it was probably had more experience with firearms than she did.

She looked in her rearview mirror to see how close her pursuer had come but there was nothing there; just trees and country road.

"What the hell?"

There was no sign of the car or its burly occupant. Katy didn't know whether to be relieved or more terrified than ever.

Her phone buzzed and she picked it up. Only a very short list of people had this particular number and she didn't recognize the one on screen.

Not good.

She made a few taps on her phone to access a feature known only to manual reading geeks like her, and in an instant she was listening to the caller go to voicemail on speaker phone.

"Ms. Maldon, I need to know where you are?"

_What the hell?_ It was Clayton Hargrave.

She snatched the phone up.

"How the hell did you get this number?"

"Why the hell aren't you at home getting ready for dinner? I've been busting my ass getting a goddamn vegetarian meal ready for you for the last hour and my surveillance guy tells me you are halfway to Canada already. I thought we had a deal?"

This is a Blackphone, encrypted, noiseless, how the hell...?

She searched the forest around her and then looked into her rearview mirror.

"Oh shit. He's there again," She hissed into the phone.

"Stay calm, Ms. Maldon. Don't leave your car. Tell me what he looks like."

"He's tall, over six foot, Latino looking or maybe Hawaiian--"

"Stop there. That's enough."

"He's walking towards my car. I'm gonna use my weapon."

"Don't do that, Katy; he's _my_ guy. That's Angel, for Christ's sake, I asked him to stay with you and keep you out of trouble until my car came to pick you up for dinner."

Katy looked into the rearview mirror and the figure she saw looked obviously concerned and extremely non-threatening. She sobbed into the phone with relief.

"You damn asshole. You scared the life out of me. I thought I was... I thought he must be..."

"Must be who?"

Another near slip up. It felt like she was falling apart, her fake life beginning to crack up inside her own head.

"No-one. I just didn't know who the hell was following me."

Angel tapped on the window.

"Ms. Maldon, my name is Angel Montoya, I work for Mr. Clayton Hargrave. Can I please speak to you for a moment?"

"Tell your goon to leave me alone," Katy said.

"He's not a goon, he's an old college friend and the best personal security professional on the east coast. However, if you insist, I will tell him to leave you alone. Give him your phone."

"Call him yourself, I'm not opening the door."

Clayton sighed and then put the call on mute while he dialed Angel directly and spoke with him through his earpiece. The tall man nodded and backed away from Katy's car and then Clayton's voice returned to her ear.

"Is that better?" he said.

"It's better. Now can you please tell me how you got this number?"

"Of course I can. I'll tell you just as soon as you get here."

"I'm not going to your place so you can tell me now."

There was a silence while Clayton considered his words. He was more used to putting people under pressure than trying to put them at ease.

"Would you mind telling me where you are going?"he said.

"I can't. It wouldn't be good for you."

"I think I can be the judge of that."

"Not this time. I can't help you, Hargrave. I'm officially no longer in the business of protecting other people's privacy. As of one hour ago, I am now retired. You'll have to find somebody else."

"Is this because of Jack Patterson?"

_Shit._ From total blackout, untraceable anonymity to total wide-open exposure in a matter of hours.

"I've never heard of Jack Patterson," she said in low, grim voice.

"That is what I would call a perfect example of implausible deniability, Ms. Maldon. Shall I ask the question again?"

She sighed. "Goddamn it. No. Don't ask it again."

"I'll take that as a yes in that case."

"Take it whatever way you want. Why don't you cut to the chase? What's your damn angle in all of this?"

"I keep telling you, I just want you to consider working for me."

"Does working for you include taking care of your bedroom needs as well?"

There was a tense pause. Katy had spoken in the heat of the moment, barely considering her words. Now that they were out there, the effect was beyond ridiculous; the thought of taking care of his physical needs set off a minor explosion of prickling sexual desire between her legs. It wasn't what she needed at this precise moment.

"I'm not a teenage boy, Ms. Maldon," he said, noting the twitch the words had sent through his cock. He might not be a teenage boy, but this woman was making his body behave like one with her brassy, sassy, and direct language.

"If I engage you professionally then I assure you that the utmost professional decorum will be maintained at all times."

"You sound like a sociopath, Hargrave. Did anyone ever tell you that?"

"And you sound like a female Mike Hammer. Did anyone ever tell _you_ that?"

"If you know about Patterson then why would you even want me to work for you?"

"Because I know that Jack Patterson is one of the biggest ignoramuses in the world of pro football. What surprises me is that you agreed to work with that moron in the first place, but then refused to consider either me or my brother Dale as clients."

"So you and your brother both like to play stalking games. That's as creepy as it gets."

"He's not stalking you. He gave me your number right after he told me that he had just had a narrow escape from you today. He saw your mug on CNN not a half hour after you turned his business down flat."

"So that's how you got my number, but why the hell would he even give it to you? What did you tell him? That you wanted to hire the failed privacy consultant yourself?"

"I told him I thought you were beautiful." The words disarmed Katy momentarily. Clayton continued on. "I told him I was interested in meeting you and that I wanted your number. He warned me to stay away from you, but he also knows that when I'm serious about something then I don't let anything get in my way."

"You should take your brother's advice. He must be the smart one in the family because when I told _him_ to take a hike, he high-tailed it."

"Dale is the brash one. _I'm_ the smart one, and right now, the question on my mind is why exactly would a beautiful and mysterious young lady, obviously highly intelligent and extremely accomplished, go on the run just because her face showed up on CNN as a celebrity 'privacy consultant' for a football player the whole world knows is an idiot?"

"Are you waiting for an answer from me?"

"I'm not expecting you to play ball right away, Katy, you will eventually, but in the meantime I can only draw my own conclusions. And here's what I've come up with. First off, your first name isn't Katy and your last name isn't Maldon. Shall I tell you what I think your real name is?"

Katy's heart tightened. Her name was the key to that would unlock all of her past, all of her most closely guarded secrets. She couldn't bear to hear him say it out loud.

"Stop," she said, her voice choked with emotion. "Don't say it. I don't want to hear what you think my name is."

He can't know, he's bluffing. Stay low. Stay clean. Leave no trace.

Her heart had gone from frozen to pounding hard.

"Why is that, Nadia--"

"That's enough. I don't want to hear it."

"Nadia Komerov."

"It's enough. Don't say my name anymore. Don't use it. Not over the phone, especially not on the fucking phone."

The pain in that voice was new for Clayton. He delighted in breaking down walls of silence, in gently squeezing the darkest secrets from his women before he pushed them to heartbreaking orgasm, but the rent tone in this woman's voice was uncharted territory.

He relented. It would be enough.

"Okay, Katy... Ms. Maldon, whatever you want to be called, just listen to me now. Take a deep breath, calm down, I'm on your side and everyone who works for me is on your side as well. Now take a look around you."

Katy looked desperately from side to side, like a hunted animal. The headlights of her car illuminating the twilight woodland seemed tinier and lonelier than ever. The tall, solid figure of Angel Montoya waiting patiently by was, by comparison, compellingly comforting in a way she hadn't felt since she was a scholarship student at MIT without a care in the world beyond passing her next exam.

Clayton's deep, calm, even voice continued on. Her cell phone was squeezed to her ear and it sounded as though the tall, sexy man was in the car next to her.

"Now I'm telling you, Katy, that wherever you think you're headed tonight, it won't be safer than turning around with Angel and coming to stay with me tonight. I guarantee you."

She looked out into the now inky blackness of the forest again and quailed. She had planned to drive all night to the Canadian border and then change vehicles as soon as she crossed over, but she knew no-one north of the border; it would be just her, some money, and an account number in the Cayman Islands. She would be more starkly alone than ever before.

Angel stood by her car; a figure of infinite patience.

"If you don't come then I'll be forced to call the authorities for your own safety," Clayton added.

"That would not make me safer.," she said in a low, quavering voice. "You have to let me go. Please."

There was a silence. Katy strained to hear with all her being.

"I can't," he said. "And I won't. Now you have your choice. I suggest you ride with Angel and let my people go out to pick up your car."

She gave no answer. The feeling of being cornered was suffocating, but the idea of giving in to Clayton Hargrave and accepting his protection was dizzying.

Continue on into the forest, alone, knowing that the police would soon be after her with all of what that entailed, or get into Angel's car and drive back to his secure mansion on the seafront and spend the evening with easily the most attractive man she had ever met, a man she had almost given herself to just a couple of hours ago...

Clayton waited. He was sure of the outcome and he was never wrong about these things.

"I'll take my chances," she said in a voice barely above a whisper.

The billionaire didn't move, didn't breathe; _this_ answer was strictly not an option.

********************

An hour later, Angel's car was passing through the automated front gates of the Beechwood Cove estate. When Katy had said she would take her 'chances,' Clayton had almost panicked, but after a short pause, she had continued. 'I'll take my chances with you for now, Hargrave.' She made it sound like a death sentence. 'I need a place to stay for tonight but this doesn't mean I'm working for you.'

Clayton had breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

The distraught woman had passed the gates of the Beechwood Cove estate a couple of times in her year-long stay in Lovett, but she had never been inside. It took a while before the house came into view on the long, winding drive from the entrance, but when it did, the property was breathtaking. Outside lighting made the house appear surreally beautiful and the view out onto the water was magical.

"I see your boss likes to keep a low profile," she said sarcastically. "Does he think that keeping his shopping mall-sized house lit up like the fourth of July is a good way of protecting his privacy?"

Angel grunted.

"Anybody comes within two hundred yards of this property will already have been on camera for five hundred yards. Clay doesn't want to be invisible; he just likes to be left alone. "

"Is that a fact?"

"Surely is. Especially when he's feeling the love."

There was a weird silence.

"I hope you're not talking about me there," Katy said. "I'm grossed out enough already by your boss's stalker personality, don't make it any worse."

Angel pulled the car into one of the many parking bays.

"Ain't no other ladies allowed on the premises tonight, Ms. Maldon." He looked at her with just a shade of a mischievous smile on his handsome lips. "I'd say you better watch your ass in that big house tonight. You may be safe from everything outside those gates, but it's what's inside those doors you should worried about."

Angel's large presence had felt comforting up to this point, but now he was just being creepy.

"Don't worry about me, big guy," she said. "Your boss may be a big shot to you, but he's just another client to me."

"Is that a fact?" Angel quit the engine and turned fully to his passenger. "Well, just so you know, Clay and I go back a long way. All the way back to college when we bunked together. I used to look after the little punk even back then, and I always knew he'd make good. I've never and I mean _never_ , not even in the military, met anyone more determined, more clever, and more downright obstinate than that guy."

"You don't know me yet," she said defiantly. She was here, but she was here because Hargrave wanted something and that meant bargaining power. She wasn't out for the count yet.

Angel grinned widely.

"I like your style, Ms. Maldon, but guess what, so does Clay. As soon as I laid eyes on you this afternoon, I knew what I was in for. Clay was always very particular about his women. As good-looking a boy as he is, there were always sorority girls, cheerleaders, you name it, all running after him, but he never had an interest. God, it used to make me mad sometimes to see him pay those hot little mamitas no attention at all because he would have spotted some nerdy little bookworm computer geek like you buried away in the college library, or glued to a computer terminal in the lab all day long. I don't know what he sees in women like you." He paused. "No offence of course."

"None taken."

"I've only seen him with three women in all the time I've known him and compared to them, you are the closest to what he's looking for that I've ever seen."

Angel hadn't stopped staring at her all the time he was speaking. Katy was trying to stay calm, keep her head on her shoulders, but she was beginning to feel as if she was floating. It had been one hell of a long day and now this hulking human brick wall was telling her details about the emotional and sexual life of his boss, insisting that she was somehow his ideal woman.

What the hell was this really all about?

"Is this a joke?" she said, trying to bring herself back down to earth. "I mean, really, where's the camera? Trust me, Angel, I'm nobody's dream girl and certainly not your boss's."

"I didn't say dream girl, _Ms. Maldon_ ; ideal fantasy fuck would be closer to the truth."

Katy's mouth dropped open. Angel was still grinning like a stupid, immature little boy playing a game. The crudeness of his words were lost in the infuriating playfulness of his smile.

"I... but I... I'm just..."

"I know," Angel said. "A geek, a nerd, a high IQ bookworm with an attitude that stinks and a life that looks like it's about to go down the toilet. I don't get it either. Add to it this goddamn secret life you have and bingo, Clayton Hargrave is well and truly fucked. I've never seen anyone tick all the boxes like you have. I swear to you, I don't know what he would have done if you hadn't agreed to come back here with me. You could have ended up in the damn trunk of the car and that's one scenario even I never want to see play out."

The implied threat put Katy back on the offensive.

"I don't get it, why the hell are you telling me all this? What's it to you who your boss takes to bed?"

Angel leaned in close to her and his expression changed from playful to deadly serious.

"I'll tell you why, Katy, because this guy is like a little brother to me and if you fuck with him, I will personally take you apart."

Katy drew back from the menacing stranger in shock. She had expected to feel safe and protected on Hargrave's property, not threatened and cornered by him and his closest buddies from college. Maybe this was just one more mistake in a day littered with bad decisions.

"I'm no threat to him," she said hastily. "None at all."

"We both know that ain't true. You're on the run for a reason and those two cops had no business at your place today. You're trouble. I can smell it. Now Clay, he thinks he can save you. He thinks you're this nice geeky girl with a fighting spirit and a boat load of secrets he can unlock like some kind of mystery game, but he's taken it too far this time. I want you gone by tomorrow. One way or the other. You give him what he wants and then you get the hell out of here."

"I wish I knew what he wanted. I'd give it to him already, right now just to make him leave me alone, for Christ's sake."

"Then we don't have a problem. I'll tell you what he wants. You tell him everything there is to know about you and that will get him off, big time. He wants to know what makes you tick. He wants to know your deepest, darkest, sickest secret and then once you've told him everything, confessed all your 'girl' sins to him, then he can fuck you until you scream for him to stop. Then and only then, will that be enough. Me entiendes guapita? Do you understand me?"

Katy had gone pale. She looked up at the house and imagined the full force of what was waiting for her there inside. It seemed there was no way back from here, no way out, but the craziest thing of all? She didn't want to back out now. As scared and confused she was, she wanted to be there, in that house, with him and give him not only what he wanted but a whole lot more than even _he_ had bargained for. If that were possible.

And for one night only.

Then she would get back to her real world; alone, anonymous, untraceable, unbreakable. Nadia Komerov, still free, still strong, and needing no-one to take care of her.

"Don't worry," she said with a new determination. "One night's all I'll need. He'll be satisfied."

"Completely."

"Completely, deeply, absolutely. Don't worry, Angelito, I want to get just as far away from your boss as you want me to be."

"I seriously doubt that," he said and then put his hand to his earpiece. "I've got the package outside, Clay. You want me to send it on in?" He nodded his head and then looked back to Katy. "You're up," he said and then gave her a more serious look. "Don't screw up, Maldon, or you might find someone worse than the cops looking for you if you do."

He leaned roughly across her and flung the door open.

"You got twenty-four hours to do what you gotta do. Now get out of my car."

********************

Katy walked the brightly illuminated wooden staircase towards a vast decking area to one side of the house. Her secure Blackphone had been buzzing in her bag throughout the journey from the woods to Beechwood but she had studiously ignored it. She was tempted now to throw it out into the sea together with any other device that connected her to the identity she was on the brink of annihilating. Except that throwing it away might just land it on the rocks below, ready to be gathered up by Hargrave's staff, and then, potentially cracked by his technology. She would have to keep it for now.

She was still wearing her running clothes and her legs felt weak beneath her.

When she got to the top of the staircase, she was surprised to see that the deck was as homely and welcoming as a family home. She had expected something more austere from the sharply dressed and weirdly obsessive billionaire.

He was standing with his back to her on the other side of the deck taking a call.

"I thought our security was iron clad, the best there is; I don't see how anything like this could even happen." His deep, velvet smooth voice carried easily through the evening air and sounded annoyingly familiar already. She didn't want familiarity. Not with him, not with anyone.

He turned around and stopped speaking when he saw her.

"Ms. Maldon. I'm so glad you could make it," he said with the sexiest of half smiles she could have imagined.

"You're shitting me, right?"she said.

He smiled a little more, only adding to his sexiness and then spoke into the phone.

"I'll be in touch, Dale, keep me posted on the security breach."

He put the phone away and directed himself to Katy.

"Are foul language and verbal aggression part of your psychological defense mechanism? Or is that your actual personality?"

"Psychoanalyst as well as military hardware tycoon. Is there anything you aren't good at? Or is that just a massive superiority complex you have?"

He smiled. This was going to be good.

"You've been doing your homework I see."

"If you want to call a ten-minute Google search homework, then yes, I did some homework. Something tells me the research you did on me took a little more than an internet connection."

"Dear, oh dear, we are a bit grumpy this evening, aren't we?"

"I'm standing in the sweat pants I went for a run in three hours ago and I'm a prisoner in your, admittedly gorgeous, home; should I be singing choruses from The Sound of Music?"

"You really are something," he said with obvious pleasure. "I've never met one quite like you before."

His use of the word 'one' brought Katy back to reality. This wasn't a fantasy date with a supermodel rich enough to outbid Bill Gates, she was here under duress to stay one step ahead of the Russian Mafia, the police, and the FBI, and if that wasn't enough, she would soon have one of the smartest men she had ever met digging into her past for his off-the-wall sexual gratification. Add to this the insane best friend outside who essentially had her on the clock with a mission to satisfy all of his boss's perverted needs within the next twenty-four hours, and the atmosphere became something less than romantic.

She put her hand to her forehead and looked around the deck, over into the house and then back out over the dark ocean.

"Clayton..." It was the first time she had said his name.

"Katy?"

"Clayton, I don't feel so good..." The room began to spin around her, the feeling of disorientation making her nauseated. Had she moved far enough away from the steps she had climbed to get to the deck yet? Jesus, she would break her neck if she fell back down there.

She felt the ground go from under her feet and saw blackness; the inky darkness of the clouded night sky above them seemed to move in slow motion, and then her vision was filled with two most beautiful eyes she could imagine.

For a moment, she didn't recognize them.

The black night was replaced by soft light and soft, warm, comforting interior colors. She was indoors.

"Where am I?" she said, looking up into the eyes still gazing down at her.

"It's okay." The voice was so deep, so soft, so comforting and powerful. "It's okay. I've got you. Everything is okay. You're safe here. Everything is okay."

She shook her head and looked into those beautiful eyes again, so dark, so brown, so profound and intense, and then recoiled. They were piercing eyes, not soft; inquiring, watching, not caring.

Recognition returned and she looked around at the immense living room that dwarfed her entire house on the hill.

"It's okay," Clayton repeated. "Nothing can happen to you here. I've got you."

She pushed herself up from the couch he had laid her on.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know what happened just there... it's been a long day."

"it's okay," he said, and brushed a loose strand of hair out of her eyes. The gesture was intensely caring and personal, but also so very sensual. A vibration of incredible attraction ran through her. They had been so close again; he had lifted her in his arms, and for a moment, had stared into her eyes with such concern.

Maybe giving in to him wouldn't be so bad after all.

"I need to clean up," she said. "If you don't mind. Is there somewhere..."

"Of course there is. I'll bring you to your bedroom and you can freshen up there. Take all the time you need."

_Your bedroom._ He had said _your_ bedroom. As ridiculous as it was, she felt a sting of disappointment. Wasn't she his dream girl? No, that wasn't it. What had Angel said; ideal fantasy fuck? If that was the case, then wouldn't he just take her to his bed and use her until she screamed like Angel said he would?

"Thank you," she said. "We have a lot to get through tonight. I won't take long."

She watched for a reaction to her words and if they hadn't been so close together and so alone in that vast room, it would have been impossible to see.

But she did see it. She was sure of it. He wanted her in a way the he didn't even realize yet. No matter how smart this guy thought he was, she was still one step ahead and she would use it. Her survival depended upon it.

Clayton swallowed hard and then stood up quickly. The truth was that her sudden willingness to comply, right there in his living room, had threatened to give him a hard on like an Apollo moon rocket and he needed to get moving or make a fool out of himself. It didn't happen like this. Involuntary erections were not part of the plan. He needed to be in control while she broke down and revealed herself to him. Then, and only then, would the relationship become physical. After that, it would be intense and something neither of them would ever forget.

"Step this way, Ms. Maldon," he said and put his hand out to take hers. Katy didn't move.

"That's not my real name," she said and watched him go rigid with anticipation in front of her.

"May I call you by your real name?" he asked softly, his dark eyes revealing little of the excitement he was feeling.

"Maybe," she replied as she took his hand and stood up, holding his gaze."Or maybe you need to earn that." She watched him swallow hard again and then turn quickly to lead her down the hall.

"I look forward to earning that privilege," he said.

Katy trailed along like a rag doll in tow to a bear. It was like nothing she had ever experienced with any other man before. Again. She had always met men on equal terms, strictly eye to eye, word for word, deed for deed, and dollar for dollar – but for Clayton Hargrave, she was turned on to the core just thinking about being his rich man's plaything.

When they had met earlier that day, she had been in complete control of her world and he had just been a prospective client who needed her expertise, but now that she knew more about his particular tastes and motivations, she could see that she had been as innocent as a lamb playing with a lion's mane. It had taken him only a matter of hours to strip her down to her address, her phone number, and even her real name, for Christ's sake. Step by step, he was taking away all of her protections and barriers, all of the walls she had set up around her to keep the world out.

His strong hand around hers felt immensely controlling but immensely comforting at the same time. If he could do this to someone like her, make her feel this way, then maybe he really was capable of protecting her from the ruthless enemies of her past, from the US government and its secret services. Maybe she wouldn't have to be the strong one all the time, alone in the world except for an occasional voice at the end of a secure telephone line.

"This is your room, Ms. Maldon. Take all the time you need. I'll check back on you in thirty minutes. You can leave your old clothes in the laundry basket. All the clothing you'll need for the next twenty-four hours will be in the closets in your bedroom."

"I hope you got my measurements right. I don't like things too tight or too loose."

Clayton smiled.

"Don't worry," he said. "They'll fit perfectly. Any complaints, just let me know."

Of course he would already have her measurements. Why wouldn't he? He had found out everything else about her.

He left her to her own devices and she instinctively locked the door behind him as he left. Not that it would matter. She presumed he would be able to get inside if he wanted to, but at least she would hear him enter. The room was warm and inviting, just like the rest of the house and completely at odds with the obsessive sexual goals that dominated Clayton Hargrave's personal life.

She was dying to get out of her old sweats and headed straight to the bathroom. To say it was of five star hotel quality didn't do it justice, and obviously staff had been told to light candles, dim the lighting, and make everything as comfortable as possible.

The king-sized tub looked amazingly tempting but a shower would be quicker, so she shed her clothes carelessly and headed straight inside. The powerful jet of water against her skin was immensely refreshing and for just a few moments, all of her worries disappeared, melting away with the grime and sweat of the most stressful, bizarre and weirdly exhilarating days of her life.

She finished her shower, dried off and then grabbed a thick, remarkably soft, white bathrobe to wear while she explored the wardrobe that had been provided for her. Now that she felt clean and refreshed, she was curious to see what kind of clothes a hardware engineer turned tycoon would have chosen for her. She pulled open the doors to reveal that it was a full walk in closet. She smiled. It was no surprise really; what else would a billionaire have? She found the light switch and walked inside but it seemed quite bare. In fact, there was nothing there at all. She took a quick look around to make sure she wasn't missing something and then returned to the bedroom to look in the dressers and drawers, but there was nothing there either.

"Great," she muttered. "What am I supposed to wear now?"

There was a light knock at the door.

"Is everything alright in there?" It was Clayton.

"Everything's just fine except for one thing. The closet's empty. There are no clothes in here for me to wear."

"Oh that," he said. "Can I come in?"

"Sure, why not. It's your house."

"The door is locked."

"Of course. Sorry."

She unlocked the door and it opened slowly; Clayton stepped cautiously inside and then stopped to look at her.

"Getting a good view?" she said.

"It's a perfect view."

"I thought you said all the clothes I would need were in the closets?"

"They are."

"There's nothing there. I don't... oh, I get it. This is all I'll need for the next twenty-four hours, is that it?"

"I just want you to be as close to your true self as you can for the next twenty-four hours." He pulled up a chair and sat down. "Is being yourself really such a bad thing?"he said.

Katy moved away from him and sat down on the king-sized, four poster bed.

"If by 'being yourself' you mean being deprived of clothing in a stranger's house, then no, it's not a good thing. I mean, how would you like it if the shoe were on the other foot?"

Clayton smiled.

"I wouldn't have a problem," he said. "On the other hand, I can't quite imagine getting into that situation. Look, Ms. Maldon, there's nothing sinister here, clothes are on the way; it's a rare oversight on the part of my staff, after all, you are rather an unexpected guest, so I'd be grateful if you could cut them a little slack just this once."

"I guess I don't really have any choice," she said. "So look, are we going to eat any time soon or do we talk business first?"

"We'll do both very shortly, but I have the feeling that if you're like me then you could use some strong coffee before either of those things. Would I be right?"

As if on cue, the smell of excellent coffee wafted into the room.

"That smells so, so damn good," Katy said slowly, suddenly realizing just how caffeine deprived she had been since she had left the Cool Bean Café earlier that day. She looked at Clayton and smiled.

"Okay, at least you know enough about me to serve the coffee first. Bring it on and let's do it."

Clayton got up, opened the door, and wheeled in a cart laid out with ornate coffee pots, glass coffee cups, and a mouth-watering selection of fresh fruit.

"It's Peaberry Blue Mountain," he said. "The one you so cruelly threw into the bushes earlier this evening."

"You don't miss a thing, do you, Mr. Goldfinger?"

Clayton smiled and gave her a disapproving look.

"Is that how I appear to you – an evil genius manipulating your actions?"

"At least Goldfinger didn't want to strip James Bond naked and take him to bed."

Clayton shook with laughter now.

"You're making it hard for me to stay serious, Ms. Maldon. Here, have some of this Peaberry, I think you're delirious with fatigue."

Katy took the delicate cup with great pleasure. She was famished and exhausted, but coffee was always, absolutely always her first port of call for sustenance and she had missed out on her all-important afternoon cup. The smell of this one was excruciatingly delicious but nevertheless, she knew to savor the moment.

Closing her eyes, she drank in the aroma.

"Oh sweet Jesus," She murmured. "That is the hottest smelling cup of Joe in history."

Clayton nodded. "Too damn right it is. And you flung a whole bag of it into a bush! Did you know I hand-wrapped that package?"

"You mean you didn't have a servant do it? My God, your poor hands must be chaffed from using scotch tape and scissors."

He pursed his lips and looked at her darkly from under his hooded eyes.

"You can be one snotty little bitch when you want to be." He paused. "I think I'm liking you more and more. Go on, taste it already. I love slow pleasure as much as anyone, but you're taking so long with this, it's beginning to annoy even me."

She smiled and lingered a little longer, holding her nose just above the cup to draw in the perfectly balanced and delicately nuanced aroma.

"I have no other vices, Mr. Goldfinger; coffee is my thing and I've never had occasion to cup a Peaberry," she said, using the official terminology for professional coffee tasting. "Let me enjoy myself a little."

"Cup a Peaberry? Are you serious now or are you just teasing me? Are you a coffee nerd as well as a technology geek?"

She ignored the insinuation, but took note; it was true what Angel had told her – he had a thing for nerdy girls.

"How was the coffee made?"she asked.

"Six ounces of hot water to two tablespoons of fresh grounds, sitting for," he checked his watch, "just over three minutes," he sighed. "You've already lost the moment, Ms. Maldon."

"Let's not be too uptight about this, Hargrave – it's just coffee after all." She brought the cup closer but Clayton put his hand to her forearm and the skin to skin contact was thrilling again – this time as it had been every other time they had come together.

"It's not just coffee, it's handpicked and freshly ground Peaberry, brewed in the Jura Impressa J9--"

"Stop right there. You brewed this in a machine?"

"Not just any machine, the Jura is the Rolex of coffee machines, producing the perfect cup every time."

"How much did this thing set you back?"

"Just under three thousand dollars."

Katy let out a loud, very unladylike guffaw. When she had finished laughing and looked at Clayton, it was the first time since she had met him that he looked anything less than perfectly in control or the closest thing to a Greek sex god, but the look of disconcertion only made him more fuckable than ever.

Caution was slowly giving way to the powerful winds of temptation. She could just spin him some crap about her life as Nadia Komerov, have an almighty one night stand to end all casual encounters, and then chalk it up to a thrilling, unforgettable life experience.

"And just what, exactly, is so damn funny?" he said.

" _You_ , Hargrave – wasting that much dough on a machine to put hot water on coffee grounds. The French press you smashed at my place today cost $15.99 and would have made a better cup than your Rolex coffee machine."

"I'll happily replace your French press. In fact, if you had looked in that package I sent you then you would have seen that I already had. Also, you haven't tasted this coffee yet, so why don't you shut that smart, delicious mouth of yours and 'cup' this damn coffee already."

_Smart, delicious mouth._ The words lingered in her mind and drew her eyes unconsciously to the gorgeous man's mouth. An image of those lips plunging low between her thighs flashed through her head.

Fuck...

She broke eye contact and lowered her head to the cup, breaking the crust lightly with the tip of her nose– textbook coffee-cupping procedure – and let the aroma flow upwards. It was more than delicious; if the smell of good coffee was said to be an aphrodisiac then this was clearly what they were talking about.

Clayton watched her with intense focus – the sight of that delicate, pert nose dipping so elegantly into the glass gave him a hard on he was having immense difficulty coming to grips with. He waited, breathless, for those lips to part and see the first sip disappear into that slender throat.

You better come clean fast, you little tease, or we'll have to skip the formalities.

He had lost control with this woman once before and it had unsettled him, making him feel unsure of his ability to hold himself back. Lack of control was his bugbear and she was the first woman to make him do that. Ever.

She parted her lips at last, just slightly, and allowed her tongue to slip out and into the glass. Clayton's cock pressed hard against his pants. The slow, delicate sip she made to cover her tongue almost made him lose it. She raised her eyes to him without lifting her head and a spike of pleasure peaked into the swollen tip of his manhood.

This was getting ridiculous.

_Who the fuck is in control here exactly?_ he thought feverishly.

He wasn't a man who raised the 'flag' for any hot-looking girl who passed through his bedroom, and the women he took to his bed needed to perfectly match his ideal fantasy or there was no point in having them; there would be no physical reaction – but therein lay precisely the problem – she _was_ the perfect match, down to an absolute tee.

"Ms. Maldon," he began with a strangled sound and then cleared his throat. "You better not be fucking with me here."

"Why not? Isn't that what you wanted when you tried to tear my pants off on the kitchen counter top today?"

Katy felt increasingly uncontrollable sensations of warmth, pleasure, and sexual responsiveness spreading out from her center in all directions. The combination of the coffee, the crazy day, the tantalizingly brief physical contacts with this impossibly sexy man and now his overpowering presence next to her; so close, staring at her, devouring her, wanting her...

"If you keep waving that pretty little nose of yours over that coffee cup and pretending to be in ecstasies of pleasure each time you dip the tip of your sharp little tongue over the rim, I am going to have a serious problem sticking to the program tonight."

She dipped the tip of her tongue onto the surface of the liquid again and reveled as the flavor ran through her. She threw back her head, closed her eyes, and let out a long moan.

"Oooohhhh, God, is that good," she said and then opened her eyes with a slight grin on her perfectly parted lips to see the effect the performance had had on her rapt audience of one.

He was breathing heavily and sitting up straight with his long legs firmly crossed.

"You'll pay for that," he said. "Now please, for the love of God, hurry up and finish cupping that glass before I send you back out into the woods with Angel."

The mention of Angel was a slap-in-the-face reality check. Katy looked instantly serious again as she downed the rest of the cup and felt the exquisite flavors cross her palate, the warmth of the liquid enter her belly, and the life fire back into her tired brain.

It was, without any doubt, the best and most thrilling cup of coffee she had ever tasted; better than a whole night of so-called hot passion with some of her ex-boyfriends.

"The coffee's alright," she said, as nonchalantly as she could. "Probably better made in a French press though."

"Screw you. You loved it. I've never seen anyone enjoy coffee like that before. That was better than..." _better than a private booth and floor show,_ "better than drinking the damn stuff myself."

"I'm good at faking it," she said. "I'll give you a demonstration some time if you like."

He took a deep breath in, a demonstration of her faking ecstasy. It would be hot, incredibly hot, but not as hot as breaking her and hearing her scream out in true ecstasy.

When you play with best, why settle for less?

He rubbed his knees and considered the woman in front of him; no-one, but no-one had ever had this effect on him before. Her pleasure tonight had just become his Holy Grail.

Katy eyed the coffee pot – another one of those would be pretty damn good.

"This stuff's not bad, I'll give you that, you know _something_ about coffee. Is this what you drink all the time?"

"Absolutely not. I never want to get used to it, so I drink it maybe once a month or less. If I have a special guest then sometimes I invite them. Like you for instance."

The after effects of the strong, flavorful coffee on her empty stomach was beginning to kick in to her exhausted brain and all of a sudden she felt like a Christmas tree with all the lights turned on.

"What's so special about me?" she asked. The look he gave her revealed a flash of near desperation that went through her like a small hurricane. Instantly, she felt how naked she already was before this man – only her bathrobe shielded her full nudity from his gaze; no underwear, no lingerie, no nothing.

Not even a suntan.

Clayton steadied himself.

"Before we talk, Ms. Maldon, I need to get a couple of things absolutely straight."

It was becoming an effort for him to speak at this point. The impression of a man barely on the edge of restraining himself made Katy feel incredibly turned on. She was well aware of her ability to control information, to outwit the media, electronic snoops, and even the US government, but her direct and immediate control over this man's powerful body left her with a heady feeling that her mastery of information technology lacked.

_Give him what he needs,_ she thought. _Maybe I should give him what I need..._

"Shoot," she said and then raised her arms to slide her wet hair back into place behind her head.

_Come on, Mr. Billionaire,_ she dared him. _Stop playing games and tell me what you really want._

"Number one, I need you to be totally honest with me about everything I will ask you tonight and about everything that we will do together, do you understand?"

"I hear you. But how will you know if I'm being straight with you or not? Are we going to use a lie detector as part of your little game?"

"Believe me, Ms. Maldon, I don't need any special equipment; I _will_ know. So just keep it simple and tell the truth. If the truth is too much, then just tell me that you can't answer. Agreed?"

"I can do that."

"Number two, you need to undergo a full physical inspection in order for me to feel reassured that you are not carrying any devices, electronic, nano, or otherwise, that could lead to this conversation being recorded or stored at another location."

"I'm naked under here," she said lifting the lapels of the bathrobe slightly, just revealing a hint of glistening cleavage. "What more do you want?"

"I'll need a whole lot more than that, after all, I only have your word and besides, appearances can be deceiving. What the average man considers to be naked might not be naked enough for me. I'll need to do a complete examination, electronic and physical, or else you can leave right now. I've instructed Angel to be available for the next twenty-four hours. He can take you anywhere you need to go. I won't ask him any questions when he returns, it will be as if you never existed in my world. That is the only conceivable way I could let you go. Any memories or traces of you in my mind would be..." he paused to consider, "intolerable."

Katy had begun to shake. Not visibly, but the tremor felt very real in her exposed condition. Was he threatening her? Did that mean Angel would make her 'disappear' somewhere, like into a hole in the ground in some deserted woodland?

"I don't like Angel very much," she said, looking intently into Clayton's dark eyes for a clue of some kind.

"I didn't think you would. The kind of women I like rarely do."

"Has he made other women disappear from your life?"

"Never one like you. But that's another story. Now do I get to examine you or are we going to say goodbye to each other right now, forever. And I mean forever."

Physical threat or not, the thought of leaving quite suddenly seemed 'intolerable' to her as well. In all her years alone, no-one had ever come so close to her, expressed such a need for her, or pursued her with such intense interest. It was intoxicating to feel so needed by someone so quickly.

She had only met him a few hours ago and now here she was in his home, semi-naked, deciding if she should submit to a physical examination... it was crazy but also the sexiest crazy thing that had ever happened to her and if she were to leave now, she would be plunged back into the terrible loneliness of her former life.

Clayton was watching her intently. Her breast was rising and falling rapidly, agitated by the confusion, fear, and by her unbelievable attraction to the man in front of her.

"So how do we work this?" she whispered.

Clayton swallowed hard and exhaled a deep sigh through rounded lips. Although this wasn't his first time, every time it was different, and for a reason he couldn't quite identify, this one was surely the most powerful encounter with a 'fantasy girl' of all.

"Are you sure about this?"he said.

"Do I have a choice?"

"Of course you do," he said a little too quickly, as though the idea that he was coercing her was in any way problematic for him. "If I hadn't seen you in that café this morning, you would be in the middle of the woods right now and trust me, the cops wouldn't be far behind. Someone sent them to you tonight and it wasn't me. The only difference is that I've given you the option to be here, under my protection and personal guarantee of safety for as long as you need or want. However, as a guest in my home, you need to obey certain basic house rules. At any point, you can call time and Angel will see to it that you are re-inserted back into your old life at any point in your getaway that you think you could have made it to while you were here, or even further if you like. But while you _are_ here, you need to stick to the rules. That's not coercion, that's giving you an additional option that wasn't available to you before. I'm not forcing you to do anything. So what's it to be? Allow me to reassure myself that I'm safe from you via a simple pat down and electronic sweep? Or is it to be a one-way trip back to your old life of fear, darkness, and running from enemies you can't even name?"

Katy stood up from the bed and began to undo the belt on her bathrobe. She still felt coerced, manipulated, but his words also made sense on some level. She had taken extreme actions to protect herself before; blowing the whistle on her boss, going into the Witness Security Program, _leaving_ the Security Program. Being patted down by a GQ model type she had the hots for anyway couldn't compare to any of those, but before she could expose herself, Clayton put his hand out to stop her and again his touch to her bare skin was electrifying. Their eyes met and his look had even more charge than his touch. He was forcing her to take full responsibility for her actions, but at the same time, he was freeing her of any guilt. That was the subtext he wanted to convey and it suddenly seemed so clear. He wanted to let her off the hook for whatever would happen between them.

"Sit down," he said. "It doesn't work quite like that." He stood up and towered over her, his broad chest level with her upturned eyes. "I'll explain everything to you. Please sit down." He put his hands to her shoulders and eased her back onto the edge of the bed.

Her soft compliance in his hands made him aware of his painful erection again.

"I need to look into your eyes first."

"My eyes?"

"That's right. Tilt your head back a little so the light comes into them." He put a curled index finger under her chin and gently extended her neck a degree or two backwards. Katy couldn't remember when last a man had touched her so gently. Certainly no man had ever given the impression of controlling her so completely.

"Our corporate IT system suffered a highly sophisticated attack in the last hour. A combination of session hijacking and cross-site scripting. You wouldn't know anything about that would you?"

Her head was still tilted back, but her eyes met his instantly and told him all he needed to know.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, but it was bullshit. The techniques were well known to her and her friend Suzy often used them to gather information on clients for her. If they had noticed her snooping then it meant these guys were good, very good, better than the average blue chip corporate security team.

It also meant that they might successfully track Suzy down and get her best friend mixed up in all this too. She had to shut him down.

"You must have hundreds of cyber-attacks every day. Do you think I'm behind all of them?"

Clayton watched her eyes, held her gaze until she broke off.

"This one was different," he said. "But don't worry. We'll track down whoever it was. We always do."

Katy felt the pit of her stomach tighten.

"Head back down again," he said and cupped the back of her head to tilt it forwards. She opened her eyes wide and looked up at him. The full force of his gaze filled her vision. He was intent, silent, and totally focused as he looked into her eyes. The feeling that came over her was something like love and something a little like wanting to be thrown onto the bed behind her and fucked within an inch of her life.

Either would do, both would be better.

"What are you looking for?" she said, noting the slight quaver in her own voice.

"If you have to ask then it's not there," he said cryptically.

"Now open your mouth, wide."

She did so and felt his thumb and forefinger gently steady her chin again.

"I need to examine your hair now. Stay completely still."

Katy held her breath as he sat down next to her on the edge of the bed. He placed one hand carefully to the back of her head and then began to run his fingers gently and methodically through her damp hair. The first stroke already sent a rill of electricity through her skin, down her neck and into her back. As he continued, unhurried, careful, thorough and complete, the tension began to build. His hands were strong but sensitive, his caresses long and slow. She wasn't sure how much more of it she would be able to bear without gasping, sighing, or arching her back to relieve the tingling sensations growing between her legs, spreading outwards through her inner thighs. What other reason could a straight man have for slowly combing out a woman's hair through his fingers other than to make her wet and prepare her to be slowly fucked at his leisure?

At last he finished and took a deep breath.

"What was that bit for?" she said breathlessly.

"Partly to see if you were concealing any devices in that beautiful hair of yours, partly because it felt so damn good."

She gulped, her eyes widening.

"What's next?"she said

"I need to examine your ears, your neck, your throat. You can help by lifting up your hair."

"Why would I want to make anything easy for you?"

"True. You certainly haven't done anything without a fight up to now."

"Sure. It took you all of about eight hours to relieve me of any clothing and get me into your bedroom. How long do they usually put a fight for? Eight minutes?"

He scooped up her hair and held it deftly in place with one hand while he steadied her shoulders with the other. Every movement felt expert, as though he had been trained to handle her body and hers only, quite distinctly from that of any other woman in the world. She closed her eyes involuntarily and then waited, thrilling silently to each light touch of his breath on her exposed neck while he examined her ears.

His mouth, his lips felt so close.

And then there was the feather light touch of his fingertips against her moist, clean skin. It was unbearably delicious, better by far than the zing of Peaberry Blue Mountain coffee on her empty stomach.

Slowly and methodically he began to cover ground, passing lightly over the vertebrae at the back of her neck, his finger trailing slowly down into each small indentation and sending ripples of response down through the length of her spine and all the way to her beautifully bare ass. He traced a finger tip along either side of her jaw line, passed over her forehead, carefully tracked her hairline, and then softly found his way down to her throat. At the base of her neck, he found the perfect rounded dip between her collarbones and then fanned outwards to the point at which her bathrobe blocked him from further progress.

Katy's heart had begun to beat wildly, and she wasn't sure if what she was feeling was the beginning of an orgasm or if she were becoming delirious. Certainly she had become steadily, more uncontrollably moist between her legs, and she was wearing nothing underneath the robe to hide the fact.

"Is this... is this going to go on for much longer?" she said thickly.

"I'm afraid this is going to go on for as long as it takes. The human body has many hiding places and as you know, my company specializes in nano wearable and nano surveillance technology. Relative to such a device, the human body is almost infinite but still not impossible to examine effectively when you know what you're looking for."

"I think I'm going to need a break before we continue."

He stiffened in resistance to the suggestion.

"You can take a break, but then I'll need to start from the beginning again."

He was looking directly into her eyes, daring her, challenging her to defy him.

"It's getting very warm in here," she said.

"In that case, I suggest we proceed to the next phase of your examination."

"And that would be?"

"I need to examine you fully. Your entire body. I'll use a scanner first, I have one here." He took out a small handheld device and showed it to her. "But then I'll need to confirm via a full, tactile examination. Despite all our advances in technology, there are still some things for which the human touch cannot be substituted; thorough surface examination of the human body is one of them."

Katy didn't know whether she felt terrified or elated.

"You can say no to this," he said. "And you can say no to anything at any point during the examination."

She looked at Clayton again as though that would somehow help her to clear her thoughts.

He was gorgeous. Impossibly so. She was sure that beautiful women lay awake at night dreaming about this man and his Mediterranean looks, his impeccable style, and his incredible confidence and calm. She thought of the cheerleaders and hotties that Angel had spoken about. Nevertheless, to be laid out before him like a slave or a concubine, explored and touched everywhere imaginable at his slow, obsessive pace... was it a fantasy come true or a nightmare?

"Let's get it over with," she said.

She hadn't been with a man in over four years. She had even stopped satisfying her own needs some time ago as her forced abstinence slowly, steadily sapped her libido away, but in the last hours it had returned with such incredible force that now she was seriously worried she might come all over this bed while Clayton Hargrave watched, teasing her with barely a fingertip to her skin.

Angel had been right. His friend and boss was a peculiar man and he clearly wanted to know everything about her, beginning with her body and then working his way inwards.

She didn't know if she would be able to take it.

"We will be in complete darkness of course," he said calmly, and Katy felt a surge of relief. "I need to touch, not see," he continued." These devices are made to be invisible so visual inspection is not important at this point. Are you ready for this?"

She nodded.

"Sure you're sure? Angel is still on call."

"I'm ready."

"Okay then." He used the handheld scanner to click off the lights and the room was plunged into thick darkness. "Now undo your robe, remove it, and then lie back down on the bed."

This was it. Soon he would be upon her. She was giving her body up to him in exchange for freedom from her enemies and the police, but wasn't there part of her that wanted this too? Was she just as perverted in her desires as this twisted, ivory tower billionaire?

She shuffled off the robe and then lay back onto the covers. Darkness or not, she felt her nudity keenly from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes and everything in between.

"I need you prone first," he said. "Turn over and lie on your front."

For some reason, the request shocked her. She had been ready to lie on her back and wait for him. Lying on her front seemed somehow as though it would leave her even more helpless, more exposed.

But still she complied.

It was this or be confronted with Angel's anger; be caressed into unwilling but explosive orgasm by a drop dead gorgeous billionaire or take a ride out to the middle of nowhere with an angry, violent thug.

You take your pick...

Katy rolled over and the feeling of helplessness she had anticipated was more than she could have imagined. She felt herself go wet and weak inside.

"Turn your head to one side," he said, sounding more intense than ever in the darkness. "Turn it to the left. Put your hands behind your back. Separate your legs slightly."

She followed his instructions to the letter and instantly felt more open, more exposed than ever. It was as though he were gently fucking her already.

"Okay," she whispered again. "I'm ready for you."

"Good. Now lay still. Don't move, don't say a word. I need to concentrate."

Concentrate on not coming in my pants, you dirty little bitch. 'I'm ready for you, 'goddamn it. You are going to pay for that, little girl.

Clayton loved the search. This was only the fourth time a beautiful fantasy girl had submitted to him, but then again, this was only the fourth woman he had asked to submit to his request. It was a perfect record. So why the hell did he feel like _he_ was the one being used this time, and why the hell did that make him so damn hard and out of control?

He heard the woman below him take a deep breath and then wait. _Stick to the plan,_ he told himself. _Stick to the plan._

Katy heard _him_ pad around the room as confidently as though the lights were still on. The bed dipped down to her left as he leaned his weight onto it and she heard his breath come closer in the darkness.

"Just stay still," he repeated. It only took a moment for him to conduct the electronic scan and it was over nearly as soon as it had started. She heard the device fall softly to the bed.

The anticipation of his impending touch was excruciating and then all of a sudden it was there; the feather-light contact of his fingertip to the gooseflesh skin on her back caused her spine arch spine involuntarily, raising her ass sharply upwards from the bed.

A short gasp escaped her lips.

His hand then made its leisurely way down along her back, finding every tiny contour of her spine and the soft flesh to either side. Katy felt herself begin to shake, imperceptibly at first but then more with each new inch of her body that he covered with his touch.

"Stop that," he told her. "I need you to be absolutely still."

"How can I? It feels like you're... like you're..."

"Like I'm getting to know you more than you want me to?"

"God, that's putting it mildly."

"Just stay still. Do your best."

He had covered most of her back, her neck, her shoulders and arms. Each time his fingers reached the base of her spine, they crept just a fraction to her ass. What would he do when he finally got there? Was he going to skip it entirely? A gentlemanly omission?

She couldn't have been more wrong.

He continued tracing with one light fingertip over every part of her behind, both sides, while she chewed on the bedspread, stifling moans.

"Stop contracting," he said with apparent calm. "I need to go a little deeper and I need you to relax."

She unclenched as well as she could and then his finger tips carefully found the base of her pelvic floor, the sensitive area between her pussy and ass. The touch set her on fire – tongues of raw sexuality fired through her and staying still was absolute torture.

"Don't move your legs closer together. I need them slightly apart."

"You're a fucking pervert," she hissed. "This has nothing to do with technology."

"If I'm the pervert then why are you so wet down here?"

She bit down on the blanket again and tried to relax as his finger traced higher, softly parting her behind and then running slowly between her quivering cheeks. She arched her back again and moaned.

"Fuck you," she hissed.

His finger passed all the way through just lightly passing the bud of her ass and causing her to tip into orgasm as he did so. She choked her response as well as she could. No-one, but no-one had ever come close to making her climax like this before.

"Okay," he said with a choked voice. "You can relax. I'm going to do your legs now."

Hours ago, having him run his hands the length of her naked legs while she lay face down on his bed would have been unthinkably erotic, but by comparison to what he had just done, it felt like a welcome relief; tender caresses, safe and mild.

"I hope you're not ticklish," he said as he came to her feet.

"Are you kidding me? After what you just did to me, you're concerned about my feet being ticklish?"

"I'm not concerned. I'm just being polite by letting you know I'm ready for the soles of your pretty little feet now."

The careless compliment by the man who had just made her come on his bed face down in front of him sent another streak of sensation through her. He wanted her, everything about her seemed to please him, and it was exhilarating.

She felt him straddle her legs and the feeling of him unexpectedly astride her was yet another shock to her impressions. He had controlled her up to now only with words and options that weren't really options, but obviously he was capable of physically restraining her as well. She felt the weight of his rippling, muscular ass come down onto the back of her thighs and the unbreakable grip of his fist around one ankle. He folded her knee towards him, completely immobilizing her foot.

As his fingertip came into contact with the delicate skin, instead of the tickles she anticipated, the feeling was indescribably sensual. She began to pant heavily into the bedspread while his fingers traced every contour of her foot and then explored in detail the spaces between each toe. Her back struggled to arch again but with his weight on her legs, it was impossible. He took his time, then released her foot and did the same with the other side.

When his weight finally lifted from her legs, she felt exhausted.

"Mental note," she heard Clayton say. "Ms. Maldon is one of the three percent of women capable of sexual excitement through the soles of her feet."

She was too tired to fight back, verbally or otherwise.

"Turn over," he said in the darkness.

When Katy complied, she was even more grateful for the blackout. She felt how wet she had left the bedspread underneath her. For sure there would be a revealing stain there and if he wasn't sure or not if she had enjoyed his examination, the obvious wet spot would be clear evidence. He already seemed to be in control of her entire life, he didn't need the additional leverage of knowing that he could control her orgasms as well.

Now on her back, she wondered why lying face down had made her feel so vulnerable. If she had felt denuded and helpless before, she felt like a willing sacrificial virgin now.

"Put your hands over your head," he said quietly. "Then bend your knees and place the soles of your feet together. Just relax your knees outwards and don't think about anything."

Sure. Forget about the toe-curling, tongue-biting close encounter of the orgasmic kind you just gave me while you spread my legs apart for round two? No problem at all.

She followed his instructions and in the new position, she felt ready to come just lying there, even without any help from the sexual maestro hovering over of her. Her arms stretched over her head made her breasts feel like an offering for his pleasure; her legs folded and opened wide made her feel like a spoiled French courtesan waiting for her king.

"I'll think about Unix programming source code if you don't mind," she said, picking the un-sexiest thing she could find to occupy her mind.

One orgasm per physical examination, she decided, was her limit.

Clayton gave a soft grunt and then closed her wrists together over her head with one hand while he began to trace out the lines of her arms with the other. As he came close to her exposed and smooth under arms, it became harder for her to stay still. Then his finger continued the journey along her collar bones where he had left off earlier. From there he traced a line down between her breasts and across her abdomen, just lightly passing into the shallow dip of her navel and then continuing his journey all the way down to her pubic bone.

Her back arched sharply as his finger entered lightly into her trimmed pubic hair, and her legs spread out rigid and straight on the bed.

"Wow," he said. "I'm jealous of that Unix programming source code."

"Fuck off," she hissed. "You know exactly what you're doing to me. This is all just a part of your sick little game."

"A sick little game that you enjoyed enough to soak my bedspread, you little pervert. Now come on, put your legs back in the position I asked for. Stop being so disobedient or we'll be here all night."

She slid her legs back into the position and felt her clit throb in anticipation as her legs opened up again. He had felt the wet spot. He knew. Was he right? Had he known all along that inside her wrapped up exterior, there was a dirty little pervert just waiting to be touched by him?

"That's good," he said, interrupting her feverish thought processes. "Now hold still please."

His free hand came to her bosom and his fingertips began to caress lightly again, geometrically tracing the contours of her breasts, gradually working inwards towards the center. He reached the sensitive skin of the areola, carefully examined it fully and then stopped, leaving her engorged, tight nipple untouched.

"I've never heard of a device implanted there," he said softly. "No need for further examination." He repeated the process with the other side, leaving Katy to silently curse him. If she had had the power, she would have slammed his head to her breasts and shouted at him to lick and suck and kiss her tits until she was satisfied, but the tables hadn't turned yet, if they ever would, and he was already down at her thighs now. He had finished with her abdomen, straddled her middle, and was exploring the sensitive inner part of her upper thighs.

"Don't close up," he said softly but firmly. "This is a popular area for surveillance equipment, so I intend to examine you here with particular care."

Her back arched sharply and she put her hands to his waist and thighs, grabbing him from behind.

"Ah, ah," he said. "Not yet. We're still in the preliminary stages, Ms. Maldon. We've barely even been introduced to each other yet. Now hold still and don't make me ask you again or I _will_ throw you out of here."

She put her arms by her sides and pushed her feet together.

"Go on," she said. "Get it over with already."

He proceeded to examine both legs at the same time, the movement of his hands synchronized as they found their way upwards along her inner thighs, stopping tantalizingly at her pubic triangle with each stroke.

Katy wasn't sure if she hoped that this inner spot was an unpopular area for surveillance equipment or not.

When he had finished with her legs, he placed one hand softly to her pubic mound and waited, holding her, cupping her.

The heat and pressure squeezed a soft, silent orgasm from the utterly exposed and helpless woman below.

"My apologies in advance, but unfortunately this has become a popular area with women of late and I would be foolish to neglect it. If you want to change your mind... if this is too much, now is the time to tell me."

The rapid beating of her heart spiked. She was two orgasms in and _now_ he was going to enter her with his fingers?

She made no response, whatever she could have said would have been half strangled and probably incoherent anyway, but as he slowly, deftly pushed his way inside her well lubricated passage it was too much; she started to moan out load with abandon.

"Stay calm. And stay still," he admonished her.

"You fucking stay calm," she gasped and then continued to moan as his fingers explored deeper, passing inexorably over her clit, searching the full diameter of her channel, kneading into her g-spot and then just as her climax arrived, he withdrew and her body went limp beneath him.

He lifted himself from her and then, leaving her lying naked and exhausted, went to clean his hands. The light from the bathroom filled the darkened room and she could see his tall muscular silhouette leaning over the washbasin.

He normally didn't feel a ball-aching urge to relieve himself after a body scan, surveillance equipment search but this had been like no other. He had counted three orgasms in total and that was a record. No woman had ever been so whole-heartedly responsive to his touch and he was in awe.

But she hadn't revealed herself fully to him yet, and she certainly hadn't given him permission to fuck her.

This was the hardest lay of his entire life, certainly the best so far, and things were still, more or less, going according to plan.

"You can get dressed now," he called out to her. "And, Ms. Maldon... thank you for being so... so honest."

Katy was too exhausted, exhilarated, and confused to care what he meant by that. She pulled the bathrobe around her and shuffled into the bathroom.

"Get out of here," she mumbled. "I need another shower."

"Of course," he said. "I'll send up some clothes for you and one more thing."

"What is it?" she said with her back to him.

"I've never experienced anything like that before."

When she turned to face him it was too late, he was already gone.

### Chapter Five

The second shower Katy had in Clayton's house had to be the most relaxed and luxurious shower she had ever had in her whole life. Sure, the shower was a fancy one but that had nothing to do with it – she could have been under a bucket with holes punched in it hanging from a rope and it would have felt like warm water from Heaven.

The hottest man she had ever met had just rocked her world with a sexual experience that she wouldn't have dreamed up in her most private fantasy, and according to him, what they had just done was only an introduction to his world. Even outside, the grumbling Angel didn't trouble her anymore because all that mattered now was what Clayton wanted. There was only one top dog in the Hargrave world and that was the man himself. If Clayton wanted to be with her then who cared about his ill-tempered bodyguard?

She finished drying herself off and returned to the bedroom. There was a fresh round of Peaberry Blue Mountain coffee waiting for her and three full sets of evening wear laid out on the bed. All three were tasteful and elegant, but she chose the one which was the most flowing, the most revealing, and by far the most relaxed.

The choice of attire was totally unlike her and considering her current situation, wildly inappropriate.

_I'm screwed anyway,_ she thought. _Might as well have some fun._

She was half-dressed when she realized her how many calls and messages had been left on her phone since she had ended her conversation with Suzy from her car in the woods. Several hours had passed and her friend, her only friend, must have been worried sick.

She grabbed the phone and sent a short text message to reassure her that she was okay.

'In safe place. Don't worry. Contact u soon.'

Her conscience eased a little, she continued dressing and then left the room to head down the hallway back to the main living area. Whatever happened tomorrow, she could still enjoy tonight.

When she got to the living area Clayton was laying plates on the table. For a man who seemed so incredibly confident in everything he did, setting a table looked to be about the most awkward thing in the world.

"Need some help with that?" she said. He lifted his head and then stopped to look at her.

"Wow," he said. "I was hoping you would choose that dress but I couldn't have guessed you would look so... so..."

She walked over to him and pushed his mouth shut with one fingertip.

"Don't worry about it. I'm glad you like it. Now stop screwing around with these plates and let me help. You're obviously better at making billions of dollars than you are at entertaining."

He accepted the comment graciously.

"Well, maybe I do need some help. I might as well tell you that I know nothing about vegetarian food, so I had my chef make something that I hope you'll like."

"I'm not a vegetarian."

"What?"

"You told me I should be honest with you. I'm not a vegetarian. I just said that before to be difficult."

"Great. Now we have to eat shrubs and berries because you wanted to be difficult. I hope this teaches you a lesson about being honest."

"I'm sure that whatever it is, it will be delicious. Why don't you show me where everything is and we can serve it together?"

"Follow me," he said with a half-smile.

Clayton didn't seem to know where much was located in his own kitchen, so it was up to Katy to get things organized. After their experience together in her bedroom, the scene in the kitchen was bizarrely domestic. They could have been young lovers on an awkward but flirtatious first date, except that her host had already explored literally every inch of her body with just his fingertips and then pushed her into not one, not two, but three soaking wet orgasms while he looked on in silence.

At last the table was laid and the meal was served. It looked surprisingly good to the two meat eaters but still, something seemed missing.

"Bon appétit," Clayton said and then gestured for her to begin.

She reached for her wine glass and took a sip. Maybe not a good idea considering her empty stomach, but she still wasn't in the mood for eating.

"Clayton... " she began hesitantly. "I mean, Mr. Hargrave--"

"Clayton is better. For most people I prefer Hargrave but Clayton sounds good on your lips. May I call you..." _By your real name?_ He didn't say the words but she knew what he meant and shook her head. Not yet. It was still too soon.

"It's okay," he said quietly. "There's no hurry."

"Sure. Only twenty-four hours."

"Twenty-four hours? What are you talking about?"

Shit. That's Angel's thing, not Clayton's.

"Nothing. Forget about it."

"I don't think so, Ms. Maldon--"

"Call me Katy, at least call me by a first name."

"Okay, Katy. Tell me about the twenty-four hours and tell me the truth."

"I can't. You told me I could tell the truth, but that if it was too difficult or complicated that I could say so, right? The terms of our agreement?"

He nodded, reluctantly.

"Well this is one of those truths. Now next question, and make it snappy because I can't eat until I have this truth or dare crap out of the way."

"You're getting defensive again, but that's okay. It's normal and we can work with that. If you weren't a little protective, I'd be disappointed. Defensive means you have something to hide and that it's close to the surface, just waiting to be revealed. Low-hanging fruit so to speak. So let's just leave the twenty-four hours issue and move right along. First question, how old are you?"

It was a simple question but still it made her tighten up. Nobody asked her questions like that. Nobody had the right. It was personal, identifying, it constituted unnecessary digging under the surface.

She could pick her witness protection program age of 29 or her real age of 26...

"Next question," she said.

"I'm guessing about twenty-six years old," he said coolly.

"Shit," she hissed. "If you know everything about me already then why these dumb, pretend questions? Why don't you just tell me what you already know and then I can fill you in the gaps? It'd save time and I could eat this rabbit food already."

He took a deep breath and looked at her with impossible to read eyes, but still she could guess what he was thinking; 'more defensiveness, good, we're getting to the truth' or some crap like that.

"Your real name is Nadia Komerov. Am I right?" She wanted to slam the plate of vegetarian gunk into his face, as sexy as he was. Stay low. Stay clean. Leave no trace. What a joke that was now. Clayton calling her by her real name was more of a personal violation than being pinned down by the man while his fingers took a walk around her g-spot.

"Just nod your head if I'm correct," he said.

"You might as well be fucking me now," she hissed but he didn't react, never blinked, never said a word.

"You are twenty-six years and one day old today."

She was breathing hard and could feel unpleasant emotions stirring.

"You were a prodigy, a genius if you will, who graduated from Caltech and MIT at the age of just seventeen years." He spoke slowly and watched her reaction to each new piece of information.

She nodded, just barely.

"Being so smart meant that you had very few friends." He waited, watching her with his deep, all-encompassing brown eyes.

She nodded again.

"You took a high-paying job at the age of eighteen with a company supplying military grade technology and software to the US government."

She nodded. The memories were unwelcome and had never been articulated by another person in over four years. In fact, they had never been articulated like this at all.

"Your employer, Mikhail Boyevik, is a brilliant man, a US citizen but originally a native of Moscow and formerly a giant in the world of international organized crime. While supplying technology to the US government, he was also leaving his own technology behind with each delivery. Surveillance hardware, tagging devices built into the hardware and software of US military equipment."

Katy was breathing hard and fighting back tears.

"He was also selling information to the authorities in Russia and perhaps elsewhere, but he hadn't counted on his brilliant young American employee with the Russian surname also having the courage and integrity to--"

"The stupidity and the naivety is what it was. Can we leave that one for now? I don't want to talk about it anymore."

"We can leave it for now, but not forever. I think you'll agree with me that you're a dangerous woman to know, isn't that right, Katy?"

She nodded her head. He was taking a huge risk by having her here, especially in his position as another supplier of high-tech equipment to the US government.

"It's still not too late for you to see sense," she said. "You don't want me working for you. Trust me, you've had your fun now so why don't you just put me in a car with your goon, Angel, and tell him to drop me off in Mexico or Berlin or some damn place where I won't cause harm to the people I love anymore."

"He's there whenever you need him, just say the word."

She hesitated. It was so good here, so much like a family home, something she had never really had. She and her mom had shuffled from one shabby apartment to the next from as far back as she could remember. If those memories of her father were real, she couldn't even be sure. Maybe they were just a dream.

"Not yet," she said, remembering Angel's condition of at least twenty-four hours and giving Clayton _everything_ he needed. "I'm not finished with you yet."

Clayton smiled. "I like the sound of that."

"Oh really? Well you better, because after what you put me through in there I'm due some pay back, and you won't know what hit you when I'm done with you."

"Is that a fact?" She tried to look serious as a playful grin hovered around his gorgeous lips. "I think you're bluffing. But before we find out, I still need to know more about you."

_Fuck._ She scowled.

Another face off in the bedroom would have been preferable to more prying and quizzing.

"We don't need to talk about your confrontation with the Russian mafia anymore. Most if it is a matter for public record, so I imagine the truth isn't very far from what the courts and the media have recorded. It's what happened after that that I'm curious about."

He waited for her reaction but she didn't move.

"You went into the Witness Security Program after your family was threatened. That was a little under four years ago, the day after your twenty-second birthday to be precise. About one year ago, you moved to Maine to live like a recluse, leaving the program, and created a new identity with which to start a covert business in protecting people's electronic privacy. You use a combination of sophisticated technology gained through illegal dark net sources and software that you write and develop yourself."

Her head was dipped but her eyes turned upwards to look at him intently. Although she was wholly unaware of it, the effect on Clayton was near excruciating. His sense of anticipation was at breaking point. The moment was coming when she would reveal to him one of her most personal and closely guarded secrets. This girl in a million, in a hundred million, with her incredible mind and so very fuckable body was eating him alive with those huge green eyes and it felt like he was coming home at last. This was the one he had been looking for. This sexy little warrior of the mind was sinking fast and he would be the one to swoop in and save her, and when he did, she would be so, so ready for him – so eager to fuck him that maybe, just maybe it would be perfect this time.

"So why did you run from the Witness Security Program, Nadia? Why not just stay with them and live a quiet life somewhere in the mid-west or wherever it was they sent you to live out your days?"

Katy stood up abruptly, jerking her chair backwards across the dining area floor and then pushed the table aside. Clayton remained in his chair, frozen in shock and anticipation, his heart racing. Katy put her hands on his shoulders and then proceeded to straddle him, settling herself down slowly onto the rock-hard mound of his bulging cock struggling in his pants.

"Fuck..." he breathed out unsteadily.

"I told you not to call me by that name," she said with a wild look in her eyes and then worked herself harder down onto him. "I'll tell you what to call me." She pushed his head back and began to devour his strong neck and throat with her hungry lips. The feeling of turning things around on him was exquisite. He had used her body for his pleasure and now she would return the favor.

She pushed one hand down between them, looking for his zipper, but in an instant he had lifted her up in his arms, his hands and forearms cradling her ass and pushing her against him – the loose, flowing garment she had selected to wear allowing full and easy access to her inner thighs, her pubic mound, her waiting pussy.

Soon, she was on her back on the dining room table and their vegetarian meal was in pieces on the floor. The smooth wood of the table felt perfect on her back and ass. The contrasting sensations were delicious; the cool, flat, unyielding surface below her, the smoking hot, pulsating hardness of the man on top.

"It's not supposed to happen like this," she heard him say into her ear and she unleashed a peal of laughter that seemed to stimulate him even more. The hand that had been searching for his zipper now pushed its way down inside his belt and dug deep into his shorts. She found his cock and balls and gripped the throbbing shaft firmly between her fingers.

"You think you know everything about me, Hargrave?" she hissed into his ear and then snaked her tongue inside, making him groan as she worked his shaft. "You're not even close." He groaned again and then gripped her wrist to try and release his cock from her grasp but his strength was no use against her; the harder he wrenched her fist, the harder she pulled on his cock and the stiffer it became.

"No," he gasped.

"Yes," she responded and worked harder. The feeling was exhilarating. He had been railroading her and controlling her since the moment they had met, but now she was literally inches away from having him by the balls and it felt so damn good.

"I'm going to make you come all over yourself now," she whispered into his ear and then licked teasingly, expertly with the tip of her tongue.

She continued working his cock while he writhed in response, as though every muscle in his powerful athletic body could be controlled by the instrument between his legs. He buried his face into her neck and strained with every fiber of his being to not release himself into his pants.

He still had one hand to her wrist, but he was barely managing to control her movements; instead, he was only making them slower, more intense. His other hand was trapped between the table and the small of her back, the top of her ass. It was one of his favorite places to touch his women and he struggled to release it but couldn't. It was the perfect spot to hold a female body in the moment of climax and he sure as hell didn't need it there now.

"It's time," she hissed into his ear and then bit the lobe between her front teeth. She felt the swollen tip of his cock press hungrily and uselessly against her pussy, blocked by her underwear and the fabric of his trousers. He would not fuck her yet, not until she was ready. Still he struggled to resist but she wasn't finished with him. Her other hand worked its way down into his pants from the other side, slowly, an inch at a time.

"No, please stop, Nadia--"

"Don't fucking call me that," she hissed into his ear and then forced her hand the last inch down into his shorts and quickly found his balls. At the same time, she clamped her legs around his back and the trap was complete. He began writhing and thrusting as she worked him and slowly increased the pressure to his balls. Within seconds, he was screaming out incoherently and she felt his hot, sticky cum run down her fingers and spoil his designer shorts.

It was done. They were even, and although she had been the giver rather than the receiver this time, her mind was blank for several moments, reeling from what she had just done. She had never acted like that before; never had such boldness or confidence to just take a man and make him a slave to his lust for her. He had humiliated her with her cum stain on his bedspread; she had taken exhilarating revenge by making him ruin his own shorts, probably his pants as well.

She released him slowly, pushed his spent, shattered body from her and then went to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. Clayton rolled to his back on the dining room table and stared at the ceiling.

She spoke over her shoulder as she busily scrubbed herself clean.

"I think you're going to need a change of underwear and a shower, Mr. Hargrave," she said with a hidden smirk. "That was quite a... " she searched for a polite word, "quite a heavy load you just released, don't you think?"

He pushed himself up to his elbows and looked down at the stain all over his crotch. He didn't have sex that often and he rarely masturbated so when he did deliver, the load tended to be quite full.

"You dirty little bitch," he said quietly.

Katy finished washing her hands and turned to him.

"I feel a bit more comfortable speaking to you now. The score has evened up a bit, wouldn't you say? You smashed my coffee cups and made me come on my kitchen counter; I smashed your dinnerware and made you shoot your load onto your dining room table."

He looked dazed.

"I made you come on your kitchen counter?"

Ridiculously, completely ridiculously, she blushed and turned away. It had been a slip of the tongue but it felt like some great admission. She hadn't come on her kitchen counter but her world had been rocked alright. Maybe that's why it felt as if she was spinning out of control with nothing too sure to hold onto anymore.

"Can we order out for pizza or something?" she said, surveying the scattered fruits and greens. "Double pepperoni, for Chrissake, because I am freaking starving!"

********************

By the time Clayton had showered and changed clothes, the pizza had arrived, and they sat down to eat together by the coffee table on the living room floor. Clayton was wearing just a t-shirt and jeans which looked unbelievably sexy on him for what they were, and the look was a total transformation from the clipped, sharp as a scalpel blade impression that he gave in his business suits.

Suddenly the crazy, controlling, uptight, sexually obsessive billionaire seemed a million miles away.

_Is it the change of clothes or being made to come in his pants that's made the difference?_ Katy mused, a slight grin playing across her lips.

She pulled slices of the pizza apart and scooped up a sloppy meat-covered piece for herself.

"I guess you needed that, huh?" She gave him a mischievous look over the thick crust of her deep dish. After a day of near starvation, it tasted like the best gourmet food imaginable.

"What are you talking about?" he said. She didn't answer but continued to look at him with the same sexy, bold eyes.

"Oh _that,_ " he said. "You could say that. Although, I have to admit, it's a first for me and I'm not sure what I think about it yet."

"By the stunned look on your face afterwards, I'd say it was pretty damn good," she said.

He looked shocked for a second but then relaxed into a smile. It was all new territory for him. Normally, the women in his life were either very submissive or impossibly sexually aggressive, but this woman was a head-wrecking confusion of the two types he was used to.

"You really are something," he said, shaking his head. "So how about this. As you're completely different from anyone I've ever had in my bed before, I'm willing to change the rules a little, just this once and just for you."

"Oh really? I guess I should feel privileged, but I think it's me who changed the rules here, not you."

"Do you ever just listen and try to hear what people are saying to you?" he said in exasperation. She shrugged her shoulders and took another bite of pizza.

"Whatever," he continued. "Here's the deal; you get to ask me a question, any question you want. I have to answer truthfully. Then I get to ask you a question and you have to answer likewise. Is that more fair?"

"Well, I'm not so sure. I don't know if there's anything that I particularly want to know about you other than that you tend to come quite easily in your pants on top of your dinner guests."

"I'm being serious here, Katy. Now is it a deal or not?"

She took another slow sip of wine and swallowed her mouthful of pizza.

"How do you make everything look so damn sexy?" he said in awe.

"Just a gift I have," she said playfully. "Okay, so what the hell? Let's play this kindergarten game and see who wins in the end," she said, lifting up her arms and pointing her two index fingers straight at herself. "I'm game. Let's shoot. I get to go first and that's a deal breaker."

He took a deep breath. She was infuriating, not least because he could feel his erection beginning to make itself felt again.

"I don't like talking about myself much either you know," he said.

"Well, now you'll get a taste of you own medicine, Hargrave."

"Clay. Please just call me Clay."

"Okay, _Clay._ So here's my first question: How many women have you given that perverted body search to in total. No omissions please."

"In total? Three. Not including you. So, four I guess would be more accurate."

Katy was amazed. She had been sure it would be more like four hundred despite what Angel had said.

"Now my turn. How many men have you violated in their own homes by forcing them to come into their own pants? No omissions."

"None. And that includes you. You were on top of me trying to fuck me. I, in fact, attempted to stop you by gripping you where it counts, but like any horny guy, it only made you worse."

He sighed. That mouth. So sassy he just wanted to fuck it right then and there.

"Whatever," he said.

"My turn. How many girlfriends have you had in your entire life?"

"Girlfriends... I guess you could say... none really. Unless I count you. Are you a girlfriend?" He gave a ridiculously innocent smile that would have been enough to make the panties drop off most women, but Katy was well beyond that stage with him by now.

"You may know a lot about sex, Clay," his shortened first name still felt strangely intimate on her tongue, in a good way, "but you sure do have a lot to learn about women. No. I am definitely not a girlfriend."

"Well, do you wanna be one?"

"No. My turn."

"Hold on a minute, that doesn't count as a question!"

"Yes it does. Now here's my next one. When we met today, you said I attracted your attention because my equipment had no electromagnetic signature, no digital print. I asked you to stop filming me with your geek glasses, but then you said they had revealed to you something about me that even all my 'cloaking' measures couldn't hide. Now I need to know what that was and you promised you would tell me if I came to dinner at your house." She looked down at the sloppy pizza. "So here I am eating _dinner_ , of a kind, and this is your house. So spill it. What's the chink in my professional armor?"

"Those are two different questions. That's not allowed. I'll give you one answer for now. There is no chink in your professional armor. You just had bad luck today. It's a miracle you got this far without being picked up by the feds or the NSA or whoever the hell else is after you. Now my turn. What is the most intense sexual experience you have ever had in your life? No omissions."

"That's not fair. You didn't answer anything. But I'll play your game. And I'll win."

She settled back to rake over her last serious long-term relationship prior to going underground and off grid. He had been a nice guy, a geeky guy she'd met at MIT. The polar opposite of the anti-nerd in front of her. Her old boyfriend was really smart and nice as hell, but he wasn't quite as smart as her and he was passive to a crazy fault in everything sexual. She always had to initiate everything. Not that she had been short of possible boyfriends as one of only two girls in most of her lectures, but Rob had been the only guy she truly felt comfortable and safe with.

_Sex_ had always been safe. Neither of them even liked the lights on, for Christ's sake.

Before Rob, there had been a handful of guys she had dated, some she had sex with and some not, but by and large, they had been unsatisfactory. Like it or not, she had to accept the inevitable; what she had experienced tonight had been by far the wildest sexual adventure she had ever had in her entire life.

"I pass on that question," she said demurely.

Clayton waited for a while, watching her with his gorgeous, I-love-every-inch-of-you eyes.

"It was tonight, wasn't it? With me," he said.

She felt her color begin to rise, her face cooking up a slow burn.

"It's okay, Katy, that's nothing to be ashamed of. I know my tastes are a little... off the beaten track but..."

"But I made you come in your pants on your own dining room table. Don't you forget about that," she blurted out, sounding like a complete stranger to herself.

His eyes dropped for a second and then he nodded his head, smiled and returned his irresistible gaze.

"That you certainly did, and believe me, I will never, ever forget it."

"Good. Now it's my turn. I want to know what you feel for me." She shocked herself again with her directness. "You've fingered me into a climax and I've had your balls in my left hand, so now that we've played those games, tell me where the emotions fit in? Or do they?"

"I'll be generous to you and answer two questions at the same time. Let's go back to the thing about you that all your cloaking couldn't hide."

"Okay, but I want an answer to my second question as well."

"It's the same answer. When I saw you today, I only had to take one look to know just how lost you were. All your high-tech dark net hardware and Caltech training couldn't hide that from me."

The answer was like a slap in the face and was the last thing she had expected him to say. It made her incredibly angry for reasons she couldn't explain.

"I don't need my 'geek glasses' to see that. What I saw today and what I'm looking at right now is a hot, beautiful girl, smart as hell and all wrapped up in herself, shutting out the world in every way she can, even to the extent of using illegal technology to encrypt, cloak, and hide all of her life away."

Her heart was pounding again while Clayton looked incredibly calm, as though he knew exactly what he was doing. He was back in control again.

"I also saw someone I couldn't walk away from," he continued. "I've been waiting my whole life to meet someone like you--"

"Stop," Katy said. "I want to change my question. I'm sorry I asked you that."

"It's okay, I want to answer."

"I don't want to hear it."

"Then that's my next question. Why don't you want to? Why are you so goddamn hell bent on shutting the world out? What happened to you that I don't know about yet? What is it my people didn't find out about you?"

Katy prayed for him to stop. Another word and she would be torn in two. One minute, he was making her come and the next minute he was making her cry.

"What is it?" he repeated softly. "What is it that you think you still can't tell me?"

The silence between them as he waited for her response rippled with intense emotion.

At last she whispered. "So much, Clay, there's so, so much I just can't tell you."

He reached out and brushed her cheek lightly with his hand.

"You _can_ tell me," he said. "I already know more about you than anyone else you've met in the last four years, right? And the sky hasn't fallen down, you're still here, still safe, still with me."

She nodded her head. It was true. He had achieved in one afternoon what no-one else in the last four years had succeeded in even coming close to doing. He was truly unique in her world, but did she dare go deeper down this particular rabbit hole? After all, he was a mystery to her as well.

"If you can't elaborate then just answer yes or no, okay? If yes or no is too much then just shake your head when I'm off the mark. Can you do that?"

She nodded, slowly, every question left her more naked and alone than the last. She wasn't sure how much more she could bear.

"You entered the Witness Security Program for a very specific reason. Nadia Komerov was a very brave woman, but even brave women have weaknesses and yours was your family."

Katy trembled while he watched, carefully gauging her reactions to his words.

"Although it was covered up, you lost something. You lost a lot. The witness protection program didn't come soon enough to save your family."

Tears filled Katy's huge green eyes at the thought. He was stripping her soul bare and she didn't even need to say a word.

"Was it a friend? Your boyfriend?"

She shook her head.

"A family member?"

She nodded.

"Your mother?"

It was too much. The trembling of her limbs had become a constant shudder and now Clayton drew her in, enclosing her in his huge strong arms, rocking her from side to side. Since her mother had disappeared, no-one had taken her into their arms like that. She had refused all comfort. The disappearance of her mother after she had agreed to testify had made her even more determined to see the case through.

"It's okay," he said. "I won't let anything happen to you. But you have to tell me the truth about everything, absolutely everything if I'm going to help you."

She shook in his arms, torn between her need to confide in someone, her need to trust another living, present human being, and her desperately ingrained need for secrecy.

She pushed him away again and rubbed her eyes clean of tears.

"You can't help me," she said. "Not even you can help me. It's too big."

"Just try me," he said softly, watching her intently. She was still shaking, still wondering if she could tell him the truth or not without hurting him. Her enemies were too many, too strong, and he was just a business tycoon, albeit beyond wealthy and hands down the hottest one she had ever seen.

"It's not the mafia you're running from, is it?" he said. Her silence was all the answer he needed.

"You were too smart for them, too smart for Uncle Sam to just let you go live your life quietly somewhere in Idaho or Montana or wherever they wanted to leave you. The government wanted you to work for them. To spy for them."

She didn't move a muscle. If she didn't say a word it then it wouldn't be her fault what the consequences were, but God she so didn't want him to be hurt because of this.

"You had had enough of being controlled and manipulated and so you ran from them as well, the people who were supposed to protect you. The NSA must have been dying to get their hands on you, but instead of using your intelligence to help the US government spy on the whole world, you decided you were going to help paying citizens avoid being spied on. And you've been extremely successful in what you've done."

He was close, so very close, but did he know everything? Absolutely everything about what they said she had done?

She waited but he didn't say anything else.

"Like I told you," she said. "I'm the best there is."

He watched her with those eyes, those damn eyes looking into her soul.

"The best there is, but maybe one of the loneliest too."

They held each other's gaze, watching, waiting.

"You have no idea," she whispered.

Clayton felt more intensely alive right now than he had in years. He was getting close, but there was something more, he was sure of it, something she was still holding back.

_She's the one,_ he thought. _This has to be the one._

He was no romantic and no believer in happy endings, but still this girl was the closest thing to perfection he had ever seen.

He moved closer beside her and against her weak resistance, gathered her into his arms again.

"I just want to see her one more time," she whispered. "I don't even know if she's alive or dead."

********************

When Katy woke up, it took her several seconds to realize where she was and that old fear ran through her. The same thing always happened when she woke up in an unfamiliar bedroom and didn't recognize her surroundings. _Is it another blackout? Has it happened again?_

The room was still dark, but dawn was breaking on the ocean through her bedroom window and slowly filing her room with the first light of day.

No. Images were coming back. There was no loss of time or events. Her last memory was of being held by Clayton Hargrave and she had fallen asleep in his arms.

She pushed herself upright in bed and scanned the room. She was still in his home. She looked beside her. There was no-one. She must have fallen asleep in his arms and then he had put her to bed. She was still wearing her dress from the night before.

A massive hand covered her mouth and she began to struggle.

"Don't say a fucking word. Don't fucking move."

She froze, recognizing the voice instantly. It was Angel.

"I'm not going to hurt you, I just want you to shut up. Got it?"

She nodded her head and he released her.

"You did good, Katy. I've never seen him so happy. Now get your shit together so we can get out of here."

"He won't be happy--"

"Shut up," he hissed. "Get your shit together. Don't make me say it again." He pointed to a small bag he had for her but she shook her head. All she needed was her phone, cards, her bag. It was all she had left. That and the one hundred thousand dollars in the back of her car.

"That it?"

She nodded.

"This way," he said. The walk through the silent house was as hard as anything she had ever done. It would be another permanent goodbye to someone who she... who she what? She had met Clayton Hargrave less then twenty-four hours ago; what could she possibly feel for him? She stopped in the middle of the living area and looked back to the hallway that led to the bedrooms. He was asleep in there somewhere. Was he really finished with her? Was Angel right? She felt his huge hand push against her.

"Keep going," he hissed, but she didn't move yet. She glared back at the hulking figure in the morning half-light and stared defiantly.

"You're making a mistake, Angel," she whispered to him.

"Ain't no mistake. Keep moving."

He went to push her but she shoved his hand away.

"He's not finished with me. I know it."

"Keep. Moving."

"I'll scream."

Angel looked at her. Gauging the situation. He had considered just chloroforming her or injecting her with a sedative while she slept, but the CCTV footage showing him carrying her unconscious to his car would have been hard to explain. He needed her to walk out of that house on her own two feet, without a struggle, and to all intents and purposes, of her own free will.

"You want him dragged into all this shit with you? Is that it? You want him to save you from the mess you made of your life?"

Her defiance faltered. It was true. Whatever she felt for him was outweighed by her need to be protected. She had always looked after herself and his desire to protect her was just foolish male pride. He would never be able to hide her, and the mob or the government would bring him down as well.

But what if she were to protect him? If she worked for him, she could cover her own tracks. No-one would ever know. She could stay with him, contribute her expertise to his business and technology. She had hidden herself from the Mafia and from the NSA without any help for nearly three years. With the resources of the Clayton Robotics Corporation, she could hide forever and be with the one man she had ever met who could... goddamn it, the one man who could...

"You want to know what happened to Louise?"

Katy's mouth dropped open. That was her mother's name.

"Keep going." Angel shoved her again and this time she complied without a word.

### Chapter Six

Clayton woke early with a knot of inexplicable anxiety twisting his stomach. The last twenty-four hours had been bizarre, even by his standards. He considered going to Katy's room to check on her, but changed his mind and set to preparing breakfast instead. She hadn't eaten much the day before and had been under enormous emotional stress. He was sure she could use the extra rest and some food when she finally came to. He went down to his personal gym at ground level and got on the treadmill to begin warming up. What he saw outside stopped him dead in his tracks.

Angel's parking spot was empty.

He threw his headphones to the ground and sprinted back upstairs to Katy's room.

The door was open.

He bit down hard, the muscles in his jaw tensing as he approached, knowing already what he would find, but hoping against hope.

The covers were thrown back on the bed. Her bag, the one possession she had arrived with, was gone from the bedside table where he had placed it the night before.

He walked over to the bed and sat down, staring at the light dent in the pillow from her sleeping form.

He took a deep breath and then lay back down across the bed, his eyes shut tightly shut.

After several seconds, he released a long, slow howl of anger and regret.

********************

Angel hadn't said a word since he had gotten into his car with Katy and they had been driving for a full hour already. She had been in shock since he had spoken her mother's name and her mind was still racing a thousand miles a minute trying to figure out what his connection could be, what he might know. He had made it clear he wasn't interested in conversation and as they travelled further south on back roads, it became clear that he had no intention of volunteering any more information to her than he already had.

After a long interval of staring out the passenger window, she finally figured she knew what was really going on.

"You're not going to drop me off anywhere I want to be, isn't that right, Angel?"

He didn't answer.

"In fact, you don't care about your boss or so-called friend at all."

He still didn't answer her.

"I bet you don't even answer to him, isn't that right?"

"Shut up!" He shouted so violently at her that she jumped in the seat, but she wouldn't be cowed. If this were her last journey then she would speak while she could and wouldn't go down without a fight.

"You know you're completely fucked, don't you?" she said.

"Last warning, Katy. Next word and you're in the trunk."

"You can do whatever you want to me. Put me in the trunk or put a bullet in my head and bury me by the side of the road. It won't stop them from tracking you down and locking you up for the rest of your natural life."

Angel threw his head back and laughed.

"You really do want to ride in that trunk, don't you?"

"Not really. In fact, I'd much prefer it if we could come to some arrangement that would benefit both of us."

"I've already got an arrangement, but the only benefit will be to me. Don't break a sweat though because I'm not gonna hurt you. Not unless I have to."

"So who are you selling me to? Because that's it, isn't it? You tell Clayton I walked out of his life, asking you to go to the grave with the secret of where you left me, but in reality, you just hand me over to the highest bidder."

Angel nodded his head and smiled.

"It took you a whole hour to figure that out? You may be good with machines honey, but kidnapping and crime is not your thing."

Katy took a deep breath.

"It's the Mafia, right? My old employer? Well, at least you could tell me how they found you."

Angel smiled but didn't answer.

"Oh, of course. _You_ found _them_. How silly of me. Clayton hasn't done enough for you over the years, in fact, he has demeaned you by hiring you as his top goon; all muscle and no brains and now this is payback time. He told you all about me, confided in you as a friend, and you saw your opportunity. Nice."

"You can talk all you want. Won't change a thing. We'll soon be there and you can tell Mikhail and his boys all about it. Maybe they'll give a damn about your bullshit."

"Honestly, Angel? When I first met you, I knew you had the strength of a gorilla and I thought you had the intelligence of one as well. Now I see how wrong I was because even a great ape wouldn't be dumb enough to try and get away with a stunt like this."

"You are beginning to annoy me now. Trust me, the trunk fits two people comfortably. I know from experience. I'm going to pull over now."

"Aren't you curious to find out why what you're doing is so incredibly stupid?"

He sighed loudly, but the truth was, he had to hear what she was going to say.

"Go on then. Shoot. I'm all ears. What is this great mistake I've made? Because the way I see it, you don't exist. When I hand you over, you disappear forever and no-one is going to come looking for you. No cops, no missing persons bureau, no relatives. You've taken care of all that a long time ago by being the invisible girl. Clay will think you walked out on him because of all that creepy shit he does with chicks he likes, and he won't think twice about you once he starts hunting down the next sucker to land in that screwy bedroom scenario of his. So tell me genius, MIT grad, what am I missing?"

"Mikhail wants me dead. Or maybe he wants me alive for a little longer. Who knows? He also wants no witnesses, no paper trail, no nothing. Hell, I'll probably live longer than you will."

Angel snorted.

"I thought you said I would be locked up, now I'm going to get whacked?" He pulled the car over. "You can make your mind up in the trunk."

"I told Clayton last night that I would never leave him."

"You didn't. I was listening. Now I'm serious. Get in the trunk. Just in case these guys don't kill you, I don't need you knowing where any of this shit went down."

"Are you serious?" The bluffs hadn't worked.

"It's not as bad as you think. Now come on, don't make me have to force you."

The trunk closed with a clunk, and to Katy, it sounded like the end of everything. Things had come full circle. Soon she would be looking at Mikhail Boyevik again, the man she had tried but failed to put behind bars, but whose billion-dollar company she had ruined. At least it would put an end to her running and no-one else would be hurt because of her.

It was crazy to think Clayton could protect her. After all, she had no idea if or when those black outs would return and what she would do if they did.

Her one regret, never having taken the time to track down her natural father. If she made it out of this alive, she would do it. She would use everything that she had learned about running and hiding to track down the man whose ghost haunted her childhood memories.

Tears welled up in her eyes, but she choked them back. That man, whomever he was and wherever he was might be was the only living relative she still had.

She couldn't give up. Not yet. Not until she had found him.

She felt around in the dark, trying to find tools for a spare tire change. As soon as Angel popped the trunk, she would lash out and knock him unconscious. She visualized it in her mind but soon abandoned the plan. The guy was huge and he was a trained body guard. Plus he would be with Mikhail's men the next time he opened the trunk, so even if she did manage to somehow take him out, she would hardly be able to fight off whomever else was there with him.

Her hands stopped at something which felt familiar. It had to be her getaway bag. Angel must have put it into his car when he had picked her up in the woods or maybe later when her car had been collected by Clayton's staff. How it got there didn't matter; the important thing was that there were one hundred thousand dollars in there and he obviously hadn't brought it along for her benefit.

She had locked the hard surface suitcase and would need to put in her combination to get it open. In the pitch black of the trunk, bouncing around on the back roads, she might as well have had no idea what it was. She would have to get out the tools from underneath her and see if she could pry it open. In the darkness, it seemed to take forever, but eventually she found something sharp enough to wedge in underneath the locks and pop them open.

She found the small bag of money inside ordered together in neat stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills. That would make one thousand notes in all.

It would have to be enough.

She set to work right away – this shindig wasn't over yet.

**********

The emptiness Clayton felt was unlike anything he could recall. Normally, he was unshakeable but something wasn't adding up. The woman he had comforted and put to bed the night before had been ready to open up to him completely, so why would she change her mind and run? He considered calling Angel but that wasn't part of the protocol. If a woman said she wanted to leave then she had every right to go without any interference from him or anybody else. No meant no on both sides, and he had promised her there would be no questions asked.

But Katy was different.

She was in real trouble, unlike anything he had come across before; she might have made a decision without thinking it through completely.

He checked his watch. Angel had been gone a long time. He went to the living area and clicked his fingers making a huge, curved screen TV rise up from the flooring and then lay down on the sofa holding his customized, secure Blackphone. There was zero tolerance for security breaches at Hargrave Robotics, so essential elements of the phone had been designed and manufactured in-house. The feature he considered accessing now was one he had created himself but he had never used it live before and he now hesitated. Ethically, there was no question; it was absolutely wrong. He had promised to let her go, and this was a breach of that agreement.

There was also the possibility that it could compromise Katy's, or more accurately, Nadia Komerov's anonymity.

He swiped the screen on his phone and activated the tracking software. She needed his protection. If he didn't do this, the consequences for her could be far worse.

For several seconds, there was nothing on screen.

"Shit," he hissed. Maybe Katy had been clever enough to find the device.

"Impossible," he whispered to himself. "It's undetectable, untraceable." It wasn't a question of intelligence – she would have no idea the device was even on her.

As the pathway started mapping out on the screen of his phone, he breathed a sigh of relief and then frowned in confusion as he examined the route they had taken. It was an erratic line, heading south and clearly following only back roads. Then they had abruptly veered off towards the highway and began making a beeline towards New York City.

He closed down the app and picked up the phone next the bed. Dialing zero put him in contact with his property manager.

"Get the chopper ready. I'm flying today."

********************

Angel rapped heavily on the trunk.

"No funny business, Katy. I'm gonna open up now so I need you on your best behavior. Knock once if you understand."

There was a dull thud from the inside and then as the lid lifted, Katy peered out, momentarily blinded by the high midday sun until her eyes could adapt.

"Get out."

She climbed out and looked around to get her bearings. She was in the middle of a forest on a small, dead end road. There was a shack nearby.

"Walk," Angel said, pushing her in the back with the muzzle of his gun.

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

The one-hundred-yard walk to the small building was the longest of her life. Stark reality was beginning to hit home.

This would be it.

The game was over and justice hadn't been done. She would never see her mother again and never know what had happened to her. She would never know who her father was, never get to say goodbye to him, just as she had never said goodbye to her mom.

In her darker moments, she had often pictured this scenario in her mind and wondered why people walked meekly to their doom. Why didn't they run? Just make a last ditch break to get away?

Now she knew why.

If she ran, then Angel would surely catch her, probably beat her, and maybe even kill her. If she walked then she was guaranteed at least a few more seconds of life, and perhaps even find something unexpected to fight back with. Walking was the only smart thing to do, whatever the outcome.

They reached the warped wooden door of the shack and she stopped, looking surreptitiously from side to side, but there was nothing. No object within reach to be turned into a weapon.

"Open the door and go inside," Angel said with another shove.

She put her trembling hand to the door and pulled it slowly inwards. There was a sound of soft, regular grunting from insides – it was sickeningly familiar. As her eyes re-adapted to the shadows, she made out the figure of a man, prone, in the push-up position, slowly counting out his reps.

He was up to eighty-seven.

Three other men stood around watching him.

Katy looked at Angel, but for the first time he seemed uncertain as to how to behave. He had already holstered his weapon.

"This is her," he finally said.

"Shut up." One of the men reprimanded him in a heavy Slavic accent.

The old man doing push-ups continued his slow count. As he approached one hundred, his count became excruciatingly slow, but nobody said a word.

Finally he reached his goal.

"One fucking hundred," he said as he collapsed to the floor and then reached for a towel to mop his brow.

"Not bad for old man, eh, Nadia?"

Katy would have liked to say something but her fear was visceral. She had always been intimidated by Mikhail Boyevik, but in the old days, she had thought it was just because he was her boss. When she realized how evil he really was and how violent his past had been, she had been terrified that she had spent so much time together with him, sharing her ideas with him, unknowingly betraying her own country.

He jumped up from the floor with the energy and agility of a man a third of his age and began toweling off his naked, glistening torso. He was in good shape for someone over sixty, but still, his body was that of an old man.

He put his hand out and took a hold of Katy's chin, then held it firmly as she tried to turn her head away from him.

"Still as pretty as ever. Brains and beauty." He paused. "And of course treachery. Aren't you pleased to see your old mentor again, Nadia?"

She was trembling too hard to give a reply.

"There will be no attempts to follow her, Mr. Boyevik," Angel said, breaking the tension. Mikhail didn't acknowledge the remark. Instead, he took a shirt handed to him by one of his men and began to get dressed.

"I said there would be no attempts--"

"Get rid of this guy." The old man muttered in Russian.

"They're going to kill you, Angel," Katy said softly. She had learned some Russian from her mother and then more from working with Boyevik. It wasn't perfect but enough for basic comprehension.

Four sets of hands went to shoulder holsters.

"Don't listen to this little traitor," Mikhail said calmly. "If you do, you are dead man. I guarantee. If on other hand, you leave with Piotr and Stefan then you will have your money and you can go home to your boss, and pretend like nothing ever happened here."

A gun slowly went to the back of Katy's head.

"Of course, this girl will also die, so there is nothing for you to worry about," he added.

Angel's hand slid back down by his side.

"The deal was she would go to work for you."

"She will. But only if you follow my instructions and leave now."

"They're going to kill me and they are going to kill you too," Katy said, her voice rattling with fear.

Mikhail smiled at her.

"Nadia never knows when to keep mouth shut," he said with a smile.

"You should have listened to me, Angel. We should never have come here."

The smile left Mikhail's face as Angel stood, frozen with indecision.

"You are beginning to try my patience, bodyguard," he said. "If you do not leave now then you are dead man."

Katy watched him; from being a scary figure, he had suddenly become her last lifeline. Once he walked out that door, she was on her own. He was going to have to fight for his life whether he stayed or went, but at least she had tried to warn him.

"Get me my money," Angel said. "Give it to me right here, right now, and then I'll leave."

Katy looked around the room. It was almost bare, only a broken stool underneath the window and a pile of old newspapers in a corner. She needed a plan. It was coming down to the moment, once Angel had left or was left lying dead on the floor, it would be over for her too. If this wasn't the time to fight then there was no other.

She took a deep breath and prepared to launch herself at the old Mafioso. At least Angel would be fighting with her now. Maybe.

Her heart pounded as she readied herself to jump, but just as she did, there was a tap at a small and filthy window in the back. It was almost totally obscured with dirt. Everybody froze and then Mikhail began barking orders in Russian. Two of the men left the room; Angel drew his weapon and so had Mikhail. The goon behind her put his hand to her head and shoved her to the ground.

Her eyes were at floor level and right next to her, close in to the skirting was a piece of rotting wood with a bent nail protruding from the end.

She might be able to reach it, but maybe not.

"Don't be stupid, Angel," Mikhail was saying. Angel was tough but this kind of situation was new to him. He was panicking, pointing his gun back and forth from Boyevik to the goon immobilizing Katy. She tried to catch his attention but he was too freaked out to notice her, and then the most bizarre thing happened; all the mobile phones in the room began to ring at once.

All four men darted their eyes to their phones and Katy snatched the piece of wood into her hand. In one swooping arc, she brought it around to impale the powerful Mafioso's ankle. He crumpled to the floor with a scream.

Mikhail began firing but not at her or Angel – one of his men had come crashing in through the window and his boss was firing through shards of falling glass at whatever was out there.

The stunned and bleeding man's phone was ringing as well.

Angel took his chance to duck out the front door leaving Katy by herself.

"Bastard," she hissed and began scrambling to her feet.

She was nearly at the door when a hand clamped around her ankle. It was the goon whose ankle she had skewered and he was pointing his gun at her.

She froze, but her mind was working a mile a minute. If they wanted to kill her, wouldn't she be dead already?

The phones in the room were all still ringing. Could it be? She knew it was possible... someone with the technical know-how would find it ridiculously easy to activate the ringers on a set of geographically proximal cell phones.

She kicked the Mafioso in the face and scrambled out the door. She was barely to her knees when a powerful set of hands swooped her up from the porch and a set of piercing eyes met hers from behind a thin layer of sleek glass.

"I've got you," Clayton said. She had no time to speak as he dragged her running into the thick woods next the house.

A shot rang out in the woods and Clayton pulled them down into the brush for cover.

He put his fingers to his lips and she watched him in awe.

"But how--"

He pulled her close and pressed his lips to hers. The kiss was different to any she had ever known, the passion of the moment, the extreme circumstances, the last minute rescue; it would be seared into her memory forever. He released her and put his finger to his lips, silencing her in order to listen for activity in the woods.

The sound of feet trampling was terrifying but at last began to die away. They stayed silent and tight next to each other for an hour before Clayton would permit them to move. As scared as Katy was, the prolonged closeness to another human being was something she had longed for, without even knowing, without admitting it to herself, since forever.

She didn't want it to end.

But it couldn't last.

"Come on," he whispered. "Let's get out of here."

"Wait. Clayton. How did you find me?"

"I'll tell you later. We have to get to the chopper while the coast is clear."

They started off through the trees, Clayton apparently knowing his way. It took a seemingly endless time, walking through unidentifiable woodland until at last they came to a clearing and he slowed down the pace. Katy peered through the remaining trees and saw, quite incredibly, a helicopter parked in the middle of an open pasture.

"How the hell did you find me all the way out here?" she whispered.

"Something's not right," he said. "They must have found it by now, so why is it still there? Why didn't they take it or damage it?"

"How would they even know whether or not it belonged to you? They may have searched it and then moved on."

Clayton took out his phone and began swiping the screen.

"It was you who made the their phones ring simultaneously, wasn't it?"

He nodded.

"The same technology that made me realize you weren't kosher. It can pick up any signal within two hundred yards, figure out the call number, and then activate up to ten cell phones simultaneously."

"Why would anyone ever want to do that?"

"No one would. Except me. This is the kind of stuff you figure out if you're a hardware geek, right?"

She smiled and nodded. They really were more alike than she had given credit for.

"You don't look like any hardware geek I've ever met."

"Neither do you."

He pulled her in close and held her gaze. It was as thrilling a moment as she had ever had with him, or with anyone, and this was the theme of their time together so far; one bizarre, thrilling, unparalleled moment after another. Now they were on the run together, pursued by people wanting to kidnap or kill them, but still the way he looked at her made it all just seem like a crazy game they were playing for kicks.

He put his lips to hers again and she molded herself to him. After hours spent in the trunk of a car, the fear of her brief encounter with Mikhail Boyevik, and her hour spent motionless in the underbrush, his warm, strong body and absolute confidence felt like heaven.

Their lips parted and he whispered in her ear.

"We're going to get out of this. Katy."

"You better believe it," she whispered back into his.

The sound of cell phones ringing simultaneously reached them through the forest.

"Damn it," he hissed.

"You said the range was two hundred yards," she whispered.

"That's right. Maybe we can make a run for it."

"No way. It's too dangerous. They may not hurt me, but they won't think twice about putting a bullet in you."

"I thought it was the other way around."

"That was Boyevik back there. Those are his men. I think he wants me for something more than just revenge. I think he wants to start manufacturing again. Otherwise I'd already be dead."

"You really are some hot property."

"Too hot to handle. If you had any sense, you would have walked away from me in the Cool Bean Café when you had the chance."

He shook his head slowly.

"Not a chance in hell. I've never met anyone like you before and you're not getting away from me now." Katy watched as his attention was drawn over her shoulder and he gave a smile of recognition.

"Thank God," he said. "Angel, what the hell is going on here?"

Katy didn't turn her head but her look said it all. Clayton caught her eyes and was momentarily confused.

"That's right, Clay. Now just put your damn hands up." He pointed his weapon at them.

"What is this? What went wrong? I told you to take her wherever she wanted to go, not to hand her over to the Russian mob."

"Shut up, I'll explain later. Step over here, Katy, don't make me hurt you."

"He's in on it," Katy said. "He's the one who contacted them and arranged the whole thing."

"Not possible; this is a mistake, right, Angel?" Clayton said.

"I told you to shut up and listen to me for once, Clay, don't make me tell you again. I'm going to get us out of this mess and this girl is our ticket out of here alive. She arranged the whole thing. They were gonna kidnap me and extort money out of Hargrave Robotics. Don't believe this lying bitch you met ten seconds ago. We've known each other fifteen years, now trust me, I can get us out of here but you have to follow my lead."

Katy looked at Clayton, her eyes pleading with him but he had retreated into his unreadable, dark self, coldly evaluating the situation.

"I've been looking after you since college, Clay – never let you down once. Now be smart and give me that phone of yours."

Clayton didn't move.

"Angel, I don't know what you're doing, but this game is already over and you should know that by now. I'm not giving you anything and there is no way in hell I am handing Katy over to you for any reason. Now stand down and put your gun away."

"He's desperate," Katy said. "Be careful. He tried to sell me to them but they we're going to kill him. I tried to tell him but he was too stupid to listen to me."

The gun was trembling in Angel's hand.

"She's a fuckin' liar, now hand me your goddamn phone so we can get out of here."

"Put the gun away, and we can forget all about this. You disobey me and it's over. You know I'm in control of this situation, just like I always am, so don't be a fool."

"Goddamn it, you fuckin' smug prick, this one is out of your control, now give me that fuckin' phone before I put a cap in your rich ass."

"Shoot me? Go right ahead, Angel, if that's all you've got. Our people will be here in minutes. It sounds to me like you don't have a plan. All we have to do now is wait it out. Another ten minutes tops. Zidane and Jones will be here with the whole team. I sent out the co-ordinates over an hour ago." He paused. "Do you hear that noise?"

Angel listened.

"Ah fuck it," he spat. It was the sound of choppers coming through the air. He backed away and ran into the woods.

Katy looked at the man who had just pulled her from the jaws of her worst nightmare and her head went light again. She hadn't eaten since the night before; she was dehydrated, exhausted – stars and a high pitched squeal began to eat into her vision and then the lights went out on her world for the second time in twenty-four hours.

### Chapter Seven

The room was dark and she didn't know how long she had been out. The feeling of déjà vu was nauseating for some moments. Was this another one of her blackouts? Had they returned? She looked around and could make out nothing except one thing: a face – handsome, caring, deeply familiar, and yet also unknown to her.

Could she trust him?

She focused her eyes slowly and with great effort, then reached out and put her hand to his strong jaw.

He drew back.

"Clay! Hey, Clay, she's awake," the man said. She watched as another face joined the one already in her vision. She had reached out to the wrong man.

"Thanks, Dale, I'll take it from here." That was unmistakably Clayton's deep, reassuring voice.

"How are you, baby?" he said, crowding out the other face and filling her gaze with his perfect, handsome features.

She tried to sit up but he eased her back down.

"Take it easy. The doctor said you're exhausted; you'll need at least a week in bed to recover.

"What happened?" she asked him. "The last I remember, we were in the forest, in the middle of nowhere. Boyevik and his guys were chasing us."

"That's right. Then my people arrived. Angel disappeared but we'll find him. I got good facial recognition on most of those goons, so we can go after them as well if we need to. There was no reason to hang around, so we airlifted you the hell out of there to have you looked at by the medics."

"Do the police know?"

"Not a word. You're still invisible. For as long as you want to be. Not that it matters anymore."

"What are you talking about?"

"Your friends know about me because of Angel. They know about you. Isn't that the reason you were hiding out? So what's the point in being a fugitive anymore? It's time to start living out in the open again."

"It's not that simple."

"Yes it is," he said intently. "This is over Nadia."

"Don't call me that, please. That person doesn't exist anymore."

He looked down for a moment and then back into her eyes.

"It's over, Katy. They'll never get to you. As soon as you decide to come alive again, the police will protect you just as they would anybody else. We have evidence against Boyevik – communications between him and Angel. Sooner or later, we'll track Angel down and he'll play ball. Boyevik will be behind bars where he should have been four years ago.

Tears began to well up in her eyes.

"What is it? You've got to tell me. Secrets can only hurt you with these people."

She desperately wanted to believe him, but it just wasn't that simple.

"We got you away from that evil scum and now we have them on the run. All you have to do is be honest with me. What else is going on?"

"They aren't the only ones who want me, Clayton. It's the..." She stopped. This was dangerous information. Even telling him could get him into trouble, especially with his hotheaded desire to help her and his belief that he could always come out on top against any adversary.

"Who, Katy, who is it?"

She pushed back the blankets and rolled out of bed before he could stop her.

"Just what exactly do you think you're doing?" he asked her, attempting to block her way, but she pushed him roughly aside.

"What does it look like? I'm getting dressed. I can't lie around here because some doctor wants to cover his ass. I told you there's more at stake here than just Boyevik. I did pretty good at avoiding his sorry ass until you came along and allowed your bodyguard and so-called best friend to blow my cover."

"Whoever said he was my best friend?"

"He told me himself."

"And you believed him?"

"You said you've known him for fifteen years."

He sighed heavily.

"It's true. I trusted him and he let me down. It happens, but we're still here. Life goes on. I will still trust people who've demonstrated loyalty to me until they give me a reason to do otherwise. If there's a better way to live your life then I'm all ears."

He waited.

"Will that be a key phrase in your self-help bestseller? Is this supposed to be some kind of message for me on how to live my life?"

He sighed again.

"No wonder you don't have many friends."

"No wonder you've never had a girlfriend."

"Always have to get the last word in, don't you?"

She paused to look at him

"Yep," she said curtly.

"So you don't want to tell me anything else, but since I've done such a good job at figuring out your secrets so far, how about I try a little more guesswork and you can tell me how close I am to the truth."

She felt her stomach tighten.

"I'd be careful if I were you. Look where your guesswork has landed you so far."

"Alone in a bedroom with a girl who gets a thousand times cuter when she's backed into a corner? I'd say it's not so bad."

"Goddamn you. You're pretty good at last words yourself," she said, pausing to stand with her hand on her hip. She had pulled on jeans and buttoned a blouse nearly the whole way up.

"That is way, way too much," he said, looking at her.

She looked down at herself.

"Way too much of what?"

"Just look at yourself; that cute little ass in those tight jeans and your hand on your hip like the sexy little miss you are. You're obviously doing it on purpose."

She took her hand off her hip and turned back to the drawer full of clothes.

"You're the one who left the tight jeans in here. I normally wear baggy."

He watched her a moment longer. Fantasizing. Once her life was sorted out, it was going to be the greatest sex of his life, or hers, period. Damsel in distress sex was the absolute best, the ultimate thrill, and it didn't come much better than saving a girl from the Mafia or... what else...

"Run out of ideas?" she said, interrupting his reverie and bringing him back to the task at hand. He had an idea but was still missing some detail. It would come though. It always did.

"It's the government," he said quietly. "They have something on you."

She froze again. He had to be just fishing around. They had coerced her alright but nobody knew about it, and there was no way of finding out about it short of breaking into FBI headquarters and stealing her files.

"You're guessing," she said.

"Educated guessing and I'm close. Very close. They either had something on you or they made something up."

"Stop it," she said, more urgently now. Every time he opened his mouth, it was like he took a step closer into her soul.

"They fabricated evidence. The famous Nadia Komerov, child prodigy, genius and patriotic whistle blower had to be coerced into working for the Feds and the NSA because she wouldn't do it of her own free will."

"Stop calling me that. And I'm not famous."

"Not to the rest of the world maybe, but to us you are."

She stood up straight and put down the sweater she had selected.

"What does that mean? Who's us?"

"It means what you think it means. In the world of high-tech security, you were something of a legend. The girl who brought down BoyTech Inc. almost singlehanded; the kid barely out of college who layered unbreakable security into hardware components for the government; the eighteen year old who put American military hardware decades ahead of any other country in the world with technology far ahead of its time. Of course I'd heard of you, but pictures of you are hard to come by, so I didn't recognize when I first saw you back in Lovett. I sure as hell noticed you alright, all wrapped up in yourself and your work, a tempting little mystery just asking to be solved. When I scanned you and found nothing but an electronic empty space where there should have been an IP address, a cell phone number, passwords, bank data, login information, an open connection to the internet, that's when I got really interested. All my best hardware got me was a picture of that beautiful face and those lonely eyes."

"Goddamn it, just stop it. Please. This is too much." She was shaking with anger.

Clayton stood up.

"It's okay," he said softly. "Whatever they made you do had nothing to do with who you really are. It was all lies, wasn't it? The made it look like you were implicated in the things BoyTech had been doing."

"Don't come near me."

"Of course I wasn't sure of who you were at first, but when my people checked you out, things began to add up fast."

He began to move towards her.

"Don't you come another step closer, Hargrave. I'm not your property, I don't belong to you, to the Mafia, to the US government, or to anybody else."

"Of course you don't, Nadia."

"Jesus, so help me, stop calling me that."

He was close to her now, close enough to reach out and touch her. They had tried to coerce her but she hadn't caved, she had run instead. They said they had evidence of her complicity but it had to be faked – it had to be, because she had never knowingly done anything for Boyevik that was illegal.

"I've had enough of your pathetic little control game. What am I? Your damsel in distress fantasy fuck? The helpless geek you have to save so you can get a hard on?"

He stopped advancing and held her gaze.

"You are definitely all of that, Nadia Komerov."

It was enough to send her over the edge. He had read her correctly, like an open book or an unencrypted Wi-Fi connection. She launched herself at him, taking him off balance, and landed them on the bed behind.

She quickly straddled him and began tearing at his shirt, buttons popping off into the shadows of the darkened room.

"I've been searching for Nadia Komerov for years," he said into her ear as she devoured his throat, his neck, his bared chest.

"I'm not letting her go now."

She came upright again and tore off her own blouse, undid her bra and dropped it to the floor. He reached up and pressed his hands to her breasts, caressing her taut and hardened nipples. She ran her hands down to her hips and between her legs where his bulging, tight erection strained against her.

"Come on, you fucking asshole," she said, hunching over him and pushing his hands back. "Show me what you can do."

In a second, he had flipped her over to her back and was undoing the jeans she had pulled on only moments before. He drew them down her long, alabaster legs and then pushed her thighs apart. She was already moaning as he pressed his mouth to her pulsating mound and blew hot breath through her panties and onto her waiting pussy.

"Do it," she hissed breathlessly. "What are you waiting for? I'm your goddamn fantasy fuck, so go ahead and take it."

"That's right," he said, drawing the underwear down slowly with his hand. "You're it, Nadia Komerov, you're my fantasy girl but this isn't my fantasy fuck – not yet."

His hand moved back up between her legs, lingering between her thighs. She was already wet, her clit straining for release, hungering for his touch. They had done so much together but still they hadn't done _it_.

"Stop screwing around," she said angrily. "Do you want me or don't you?"

"Damn right I want you," he said slowly and then began the slow insertion of his index finger into her warm crevice.

The sensation was exquisite, causing her to arch her back violently as he found her spot and slid slowly back and forth across her, then circling around. His lips came down to her abdomen at the same time and his free hand pushed her right thigh outwards, opening her up to him even more.

A second finger joined the first and the thrill of his hold on her began the inevitable build to orgasm. Her breath was rapid, her body tense with desire; his control was slow and deliberate. He lowered his mouth to her stomach and allowed his tongue to follow the contours of her mid-section as his fingers explored deep to find her g-spot.

"It's not good enough," she gasped and began pushing against his shoulders, trying to find his wrist to take him out of her.

"It's you I want," she said, gripping a handful of his wildly tousled hair in her other hand. But despite her hold, his head continued to go lower. He was fully focused on the object of his desire now and oblivious to the tearing grip on his mane. He pulled his fingers slowly out and then replaced them with his tongue, using his hands to pin her legs outwards.

She felt the first pounding vibrations of orgasm course through her as his tongue found her clit and licked with evil precision. He was an expert. She looked down in desperation and their eyes met. He was watching her, gauging every reaction of her body, calibrating the slow and precise flicking and circling of his tongue to push her closer and closer to the edge.

She wanted him inside her but it was clear he still had other plans. She wouldn't get exactly what she wanted – not yet – but she would get something and it would be intense.

His strong hands gripped her hips and slid her down the bed like a wanton plaything, forcing her pussy against his mouth as he plunged his exploring tongue deeper inside her. He screwed better with his tongue than her ex had done with his dick.

She heard herself moan and begin to scream, but Clayton showed no signs of relenting. Maybe she could have escaped his hold, but why would she have even tried? She reached behind her and gripped onto the bed frame, her body struggling to escape him but immobilized by his driven hold on her.

And then it was there.

The screaming orgasm of a lifetime.

Her juices flowed, her body bucked and arched, and when she dared to look down, his dark eyes were still watching her as he laved her slowly into a post-orgasmic trance.

"I'm not finished yet," he rumbled, and in the deep relaxation of her release, she barely heard him, barely noticed his hot lips advance upon her, cross her abdomen and then find her breasts, already beginning to harden again under his heat.

But she couldn't ignore him for long.

Soon he was at her neck and shoulders, and his hands were pressing down on her own.

"Tell me your name," he said.

She turned her head away from his.

"Tell me your name," he repeated. "Your real name. I want to hear you say it."

His lips continued devouring her, covering her with soft, hot kisses between his words.

"I can't."

"Tell me your name." His abdomen was pressed against hers now and she could feel his cock stiffening between her legs.

She had gripped him before and made him come against his will, but this time she felt powerless. Her hands were firmly held by his and her legs were pushed apart by his hips and thighs. He had just pushed her kicking and screaming to orgasm, but it looked like he had plans to take her even further.

She squirmed beneath him but only made things worse for herself as she felt the chiseled wall of his perfect six pack press against her own soft, needy white flesh.

His cock pressed against her pussy now, not moving; just waiting.

"What are you doing?" she gasped. "What are you waiting for? Just fuck me already. I can't stand it any longer."

The heat was tantalizing and she knew that with just a soft thrust, he would be inside her well-lubricated channel.

"I want to hear you say your true name," he said, his voice hypnotic in her ears.

"I can't," She barely managed to respond.

"Say it, Nadia Komerov. Tell me who you are so that I can fuck you and make you mine."

"No." A thrust of desperation went through her and she writhed beneath him inadvertently causing the head of his cock to begin entry. She moaned out against her will.

"Let me take you," he hissed in her ear. "Tell me your name."

"I can't. I'll say anything else. Just fuck me. I want you... want to be yours..."

"Say it."

He began playing with her, pushing in a little and then drawing out, methodical, relentless.

"Say what I want to hear."

"Anything else..."

"Don't think, just repeat my words."

She opened her eyes and looked down along his powerful back, his muscles rippling and glistening with sweat from the forced restraint of his desire. Every cell in his body was crying out for release within her, but somehow he was holding back. His perfect muscular ass moved rhythmically up and down, in and out, and each tiny movement sent fiery, uncontrollable sensations of exploding pleasure through her body.

"Oh God," she whispered.

"My name," he said and then waited for her, pushing a little deeper into her.

"My name," she repeated, barely audible.

"Is Nadia Komerov," he said.

"Is Nadia--" He pushed deep inside her causing her to writhe in pleasure but then withdrew slowly.

"Say it," he said intently. "My name is--"

"Nadia Komerov."

"Say the whole thing now."

He was gasping, clearly unable to hold himself much longer. She gripped the part of his cock that was still inside her with her aching pussy and heard him groan.

"No way," he gasped, withdrawing from her before she could lock her legs around his back. "Not this time. Say the words."

He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. It was as intense an experience as anything that had gone between them before. This man wanted her like no other she had ever encountered and now he was waiting for this one thing from her before he took her for his own.

"My name..."

Clayton stopped moving, stopped breathing.

"...is Nadia Komerov."

His mouth dropped open, his breathing resumed, intense and deep, every inhalation pressing his rock-hard chest and abdomen against the woman below him, making her crave him even more. He nodded, wordlessly, and then began speaking again.

"Good. That's good, Nadia, I'm nearly ready now, there's just one more thing."

"God, I can't." She gripped onto him in desperation, forcing herself against him but unable to take him fully inside her without the use of her hands.

"Tell me you want me to save you."

"Fuck." She threw her head back, squeezed her eyes shut.

_I so, so want you to save me,_ she thought, her body struggling against his, straining for release. _But I can't say that._

"Say it. Tell me you want me to save you. I can do it, Nadia, trust me."

"No you can't." She began struggling wildly, their bodies tangled together, sweat and pre-cum mixing together as they rocked from side to side and then rolled over on the vast bed.

She struggled to push him down, fighting to find his rigid cock and make him come again as she had done before – only this time inside her – but he was too big, too fast. He blocked her hands and pushed her over to her back and down again, but her legs were too quick for him and although glancing, the blow between his legs was enough to make him roll over and fall off the bed to the floor.

When he stood up again, she was on the other side of the bed.

They were both fully naked.

She looked at his body in the dim light of the shaded room and felt awe. He was perfect, toned, athletic muscle from head to toe, and his messed up hair made him the most fuckable thing she had ever seen on two legs.

"I can't say that. I won't say it."

"You will, Nadia, trust me, you will."

He started to come around the bed to her and she advanced towards him at the same time. The unexpected move stopped him in his tracks.

"You're not getting out of here," she said, fixing him in a steady gaze. "Not without finishing what you started."

He felt his rock-hard cock stiffen even more and his mouth fell open.

"Jesus Christ," was all he could manage. He really had never met one like this before.

She advanced further while he remained rooted to the spot, and in a moment her hand was around his cock while his hand was on her ass pulling her relentlessly in towards him.

"Finish what you started, goddamn it," she said into his chest.

"Say the fucking words," he hissed into the top of her head and then groaned as she squeezed harder.

She lifted her head and their eyes locked again in a fierce battle of wills.

Neither of them noticed the knock on the door the first time, but then the rattling of the handle and Dale's insistent voice brought them back to reality.

Slowly Clayton released the ass he was squeezing against him and she eased back from him, finally letting go of his cock as the banging continued.

"Clay! Clay, come on, open up in there. What are you two doing?"

Clayton shook his head to bring himself back to his senses and then began looking for his clothes.

"Two minutes, Dale, just hold on two damn minutes."

"Hurry the hell up. This can't wait, it involves our situation."

"Goddamn it," Clayton hissed. "Get back into bed. I'll deal with this." He found a bath robe and went to the door while Katy watched him.

"I said get back into bed."

She didn't move.

"We're not finished yet," she said, before slowly sauntering off to the bathroom, still naked.

He let out a sigh of exasperation and ran his fingers through his tousled hair. The girl's unpredictability and uncontrollable nature was driving him wild.

He turned to the door, undid the lock, and jerked it open.

"What the hell is it?" he barked.

Dale looked him up and down.

"What the hell are you wearing?"

"It's a bathrobe. Haven't you ever seen one before?"

Dale gave it another once over and then stood back, put his hands on his hips, and cursed under his breath.

"You horny asshole," he finally said.

"Look who's talking," Clay said, stepping into the hallway and pulling the door shut behind him.

"We just rescued this FBI fugitive from the Mafia, air-lifted her to a secret location to hide her from the police, the Russian mob, and God knows who else, and your plan of action is to dip your goddamn--"

Clay shoved his brother against the wall and pinned him there with his forearm across his chest. They were equally tall, well built, and neither feared the other one a bit.

"What Nadia and I do with each other is nobody's business but our own."

Dale gripped his brother's arm and twisted it away.

"It is if she's a missing person with a bounty on her head, you sexed up moron. Can't you think without your dick once in a while?"

"This isn't about my dick. It's about a whole lot more than that."

"Spare me. Really. I don't have time for your weird girlfriend experiences. I'm just about set to call in the feds on this one anyway."

"Don't do that." The brothers squared off against each other. Although they disagreed frequently, a physical confrontation was unheard of.

"I'm... I'm asking you, please. Give us some time."

Dale's mouth dropped open.

"Please? You're saying 'please?'"

"Come on, this is important to me. And to us. You don't know who this girl is. It's not just about me. If she agrees to work for us, you have no idea what she's capable of."

Dale watched his brother for several more seconds, weighing up what he had just heard.

"Call this number," he said and shoved a cell phone against his brother's chest. "I won't call the cops. Not yet. If that woman can get Clayton Hargrave to say please, then she has more than IQ, she must have goddamn Vulcan mind control powers."

"Who am I calling?" Clayton asked.

"It's that prick, Angel."

Clayton's face clouded over with rage.

"What the hell does he want?"

"Call him and find out."

Clayton raised the phone and touched the screen to make the call. After two rings, it picked up.

"What the hell do you want?" Clayton said.

"Everything you've got." A harsh voice with a Russian accent answered. It was definitely not Angel.

"Who is this? Is that you, Boyevik?"

"I have your guy," the voice responded. "Would you like to hear him make some noise?"

"It's not necessary. What do you want for him?"

A howl of pain came through the phone.

"Jesus!" Dale said. "What the hell is going on there?"

Clayton glared at him to back off.

"I want the girl," the voice continued but that was enough for Clayton. He ended the call and stood, motionless. The cloud of anger had left him. He was thinking, evaluating.

"What the hell is going on?" His brother asked again.

Clayton ignored him and called the number again.

"Changed your mind?" the voice asked.

"I'm curious. Why do you think I would care about someone who betrayed me?"

"You are good man, Clayton Hargrave. I know you wouldn't like your old friend to die painful death, even if he double cross you."

"I wouldn't be so sure."

"Well, just in case I'm wrong, and I often am, " he said with a soft laugh, "I have something else that I think you will want."

"I doubt it, but please do tell."

"Tell Nadia I know what happen to Louise."

Clayton froze. He knew that Louise Komerov, Nadia's mother, had disappeared without a trace and was presumed dead. If anyone knew what had happened to her, it was this evil thug.

"I'm listening," he said.

There was another soft laugh.

"I thought you would." The line went dead. Clayton tried to call back but the number was no longer in service. Obviously his enemies had some technical ability of their own. He would have to wait until they contacted him again.

He looked at the phone, considered flinging it across the hall, but then placed it carefully into the pocket of his bathrobe. When he looked up again, his older brother was grinding his teeth and glaring at him.

"You better fucking tell me what's going on here, Clay."

### Chapter Eight

Katy stepped into the bathroom and looked at herself in one of the huge wall mirrors next the shower. Instantly, her mood changed.

"What the hell am I doing here?" she asked herself. She began thinking about the scene that had just played out in the bedroom and then suddenly felt weak again.

"Oh no," she gasped, reaching for the wall. "Not again, not again, not again." She looked around, checking her vision but everything seemed okay. In all, there were three large mirrors in the bathroom and they gave a full view of every angle of her body.

She closed her eyes and stepped back from her reflection, but it was virtually impossible not to see herself.

"I should get dressed," she mumbled and then turned to leave but something stopped her. Something in her reflection. As much as she didn't feel like scrutinizing herself in any more detail, something just wasn't right. She approached the mirrors again and looked down to a spot on her lower back, just at the base of her spine. It was tiny, almost invisible, but something just wasn't right. She tried looking over her shoulder, but the spot was impossible to see without a mirror.

She went to the switch and turned on every light she could find in the room and then looked again.

"Goddamn it, there's something there."

She began examining the spot with her fingers now, but there was nothing to the touch. That or she just couldn't locate the exact spot with her fingers.

She came more directly into the light and began rubbing the barely visible smudge with her thumbs, but nothing seemed to happen. She applied her nails until the skin around the spot reddened, but she still couldn't feel anything there.

But then she noticed it.

It was one tiny area of numbness, so small that it would go entirely unnoticed unless you were searching directly for it.

"What the hell _is_ that?"

She went to the medicine chest and opened it up to see if there was something she could use, like tweezers or nail scissors to get this thing off her, but there was nothing.

She found a magnified mirror and twisted her head to the max to get a view of the tiny patch of discoloration. She pressed her finger to it but nothing happened. Then she held a fingertip above it, barely touching, just barely, and when she looked again it was gone.

"Son of a bitch."

She held up her fingertip to the light and sure enough, there it was, right there under her nose, the tiniest, little dark patch, stuck onto her like a nano-limpet or a second skin.

"That bastard. No wonder he was able to find me."

She began looking all over herself frantically for any more nano tracking devices. She had worked on tracking technology herself, including skin adhesive technology, but she had never seen anything so tiny or so sophisticated.

"He's been with me all the time."

She lightly brushed her fingertip over her other wrist and saw the tiny patch transfer itself there.

"My God..."

The realization came over her. It must have been when he had examined her for surveillance technology. He wasn't just looking to make sure she hadn't brought any with her; he wanted to make sure she would be wearing this before she left his home.

She marched back out to the bedroom, but there was no-one was there. She could hear the muffled voices of Clayton and Dale outside in the hallway.

She pulled on her clothes again and thought about marching out into the hall to confront him in front of his brother, but then she stopped.

"Two can play this game, Hargrave, and you just met the best player in town."

She finished dressing and then went to the drapes to draw them back. When she looked outside, her breath was taken away by the view. This wasn't the house in Maine. The view outside of snow-capped mountains was spectacular and the town far below in the distance looked familiar, although she was pretty sure she had never been there.

When she turned around again, Clayton had just entered the room.

"Nadia, we've got to talk."

The casual use of her old name had a disquieting effect on her. The memory of what he had needed to do to get her to even say it brought a flush to her face. The memories of all the bad things that had happened to Nadia Komerov darkened her mood.

"Is this Aspen?" she asked.

"We needed to get you to a safe place far away from the east coast, so we brought you here, to a friend's house."

Katy sat down, framed by the incredible view behind her.

"A friend's house? More like a friend's palace."

"We have to talk about your mother," he said, walking around her to pick up his clothes from the floor. Katy stiffened at the mention of her vanished parent.

"That one is not up for discussion," she said quietly. "Anything else. But not that."

Clayton pulled on his jeans and sat down on the bed, his muscular torso still slick from their skirmish with love-making. He found his shirt, pulled it on, and then faced her.

"Someone is claiming to know what happened to Louise Komerov. Is that possible?"

She stared back, more confused than ever.

"Anything is possible. The last person who said that to me was your so-called right hand man, Angel. That's how he got me into his car last night."

Clayton dropped his gaze. It was true. He had gotten her into all this trouble. Instead of rescuing her, he had put her directly in harm's way, but he was determined to make amends and be as good as his word. She had almost accepted his protection and this was more than sacred to him; it was something unbreakable at the very core of his being.

"They've got Angel," he said quietly. "I think his life is in danger."

"Good. I warned him. I hope you don't expect me to care what happens to that lying piece of--"

"Do you care about what happened to your mother?"

"Don't you dare try to use that against me. You're no better than him. I hope they give him a good old Russian Mafia send off after they've finished playing with him. That asshole had no idea what happened to Louise. I can't believe I was dumb enough to fall for that."

"What about Mikhail Boyevik? Could he know?"

Katy felt her hands begin to tremble.

"I don't give a shit what they have to say to me. My mother is dead and that's all that matters. I don't need or want to know what those scum did to her."

"Wouldn't you like to see those responsible pay for what they did to Louise Komerov?"

"Of course I would. I'd like to see them burn in hell. And not just for what they did to my mother, but for everyone else they've ever hurt."

"Then tell me what you know. Everything. We can play these idiots. Do you really think they have even half the intelligence that you have? They're fools. The closer they get to you, the closer they are to paying for everything they've ever done."

"That's not what it felt like in that shack with a gun to back of my head."

"But look how that ended up – look where you are now."

She glanced around the room and out the window to the panoramic view.

"First you tell me how you found me. And I want the truth. No bullshit," she said.

"I tracked you."

"How?"

"Why do I get the feeling that you already know how?"

"If I already know then why don't you just come out and say it? Hell, _you've_ got nothing to lose in all this."

"I've got you to lose."

She looked away. He was so direct, always challenging her, making her confront her emotions and feelings which was never her strong point, even less so after four years of living like a ghost.

"I've got Nadia Komerov," he said.

She felt herself beginning to choke up and shook her head.

"Just tell me, goddamn it. If I mean so much to you then tell me the truth."

"I bugged you with a nano device that I attached to your skin."

"To my lower back to be precise."

"To the most beautiful little dip in your lower back, just above your cute ass."

"You put it there while pretending to examine me for surveillance devices when in fact, you were getting your kinky kicks from feeling up my bones."

"That's it. When I was getting my kinky kicks off of your perfectly delicious bones."

She sighed.

He was able to turn her even when he was being a crazy asshole. This was a train wreck of an attraction – already a huge mess but impossible to tear away from.

"How did you make it all the way to the shack in the woods? Why did you set off the phones and throw that guy through the window?"

"I was following your electronic trail, but when I started finding one hundred dollar bills along the road, I knew I was close and I knew you were in trouble."

The paper trail. She had forgotten all about it. Her last, desperate cry for help.

"Scattered, crumpled one-hundred-dollar bills leading up to the back of my employee's car outside a shack in the middle of nowhere with two other cars parked outside – there had to be something wrong. I knew it as soon as I saw Angel's car gone yesterday morning. I knew you wouldn't go without saying something. I knew you wouldn't go. Period. When I saw the trail, I knew I was right."

He stopped for a moment as the emotions he had felt at that moment flooded back over him.

"The thought of you so close to... to... Christ, Nadia, why the hell won't you just trust me? If you had just stayed here."

"It's not like Angel gave me much choice."

"Angel." His jaw tightened. "What did that bastard say to you?"

"Do you really want to hear it?"

"Every word."

She took a deep breath. Truth or dare seemed to be the theme of their relationship so far, if you could call it a relationship.

"He told me that you were playing a game with me. A game that you played with all your women. He told me I was your type; geeky, smart, and of up to my neck in trouble. He told me you have a fetish for getting the truth out of women, getting them to reveal their most personal secrets just before you... before you fuck them."

She stopped there, waiting for his reaction. He hadn't stopped looking at her, never dropped his dark, confident gaze.

"If you're asking me if that's true then I'm not going to lie to you. In essence, Angel told you the truth, but Nadia... it's more than a game. And you made me realize that. I've been looking for something all along and I didn't even know it until I found you."

"Sure," she said dismissively. "Your trusted friend then told me I needed to give it up to you – make you a happy man – and then be out of there by the next day. If I didn't satisfy you in every way then you'd never let go of me until you had what you wanted."

"So that's what you did? That's why you let me do those things to you? And why you did those things to me?"

"You tell me – are you 'satisfied' yet?"

He waited before answering, his mouth slightly open now, watching her every tiny movement. If he had ever wanted to fuck her, the compulsive desire he felt now was ten times anything it had been before.

"You were lying to me all along," he whispered.

"Was I?" She allowed a smile to cross her lips.

_This fucking game has to stop, Nadia,_ she thought and let her mouth fall open. She had called herself by her old name; he was getting to her – using her old name again and again to bring up old memories and feelings that she had done everything in her power to expunge from her mind.

Clayton watched her mouth, entranced and failed to notice the phone buzzing on the bed beside him.

Nadia snatched it from the bed before he could take it.

"It's Nadia Komerov. Who the fuck are you?"

"Nadia, my little Nadia," the voice said in Russian.

"Speak English, Mikhail. Tell me what you want."

"Such a little bossy boots, Nadia. You always did think you knew better than everybody else, didn't you?"

"Tell me what you want and why I should care. Before you ask, I don't give a fuck about that scum, Angel. Feed him to the sharks if it makes you happy and I'll make sure you fry for the crime."

Mikhail gave a long, harsh laugh.

"Ah, you would make such a good lieutenant, Nadia – such things are in the blood –

but you are much too smart for that. Of course you don't care about that slave, Angel; however, I think you do care about FBI, NSA, and CIA. Correct?"

"I'd rather work for any of them than be associated with scum like you."

"Then you work for free. You would be true slave to them after you run from them. Isn't that why you run, Nadia? To not be slave to your own government?"

Katy, or Nadia, as she was beginning to think of herself again, momentarily had no answer. Boyevik was right. If she feared the evil of the vor y zakone Russian mob, the dark world of the NSA and CIA didn't offer much more comfort.

"And don't forget, none of them can tell you anything about Louise."

"I don't want to hear what you did to my mother, you piece of shit."

"What if I tell you that Louise still alive? Would you want to hear then?"

"Tell me where she is, you motherfucker!" she screamed into the phone, but it was too late, the call had ended. She threw the phone across the room, descended into sobs, and was immediately surrounded by Clayton's strong arms. He cradled her lovingly, held her to himself in a way that was becoming more familiar to her each time.

"I can't take it anymore," she said, her face buried into his shoulder. "I can't take this anymore." She repeated it over and over while Clayton rocked her gently in his arms.

********************

The plane ride back to New York was somber. Nadia, the girl formerly known as Katy, slept the sleep of the emotionally exhausted for most of the way. The latest call from a new untraceable number had instructed them to return to the city and be ready to negotiate. Clayton had demanded evidence of Louise's existence and Mikhail said it would be forthcoming. In the end, they had decided to follow instructions and play ball.

At least for now.

They were sitting in the most incredible mid-town Manhattan, Central-Park-view penthouse imaginable – the residence of another friend of Clayton's. Dale Hargrave had travelled with them on one of the family's private jets and they had then taken a bulletproof limo into the city.

Nadia was sitting in a daze, wondering if any of this could be true when another party came through the front door.

Like Dale and Clayton, he was tall, incredibly good-looking, and impeccably dressed. She looked at him in wry disbelief. He had to be gay, at least that much was clear.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, should I?"

"Excuse me?" the impossibly good-looking man said.

"Are they cloning hot billionaires in New York City now?"

The stranger smiled as Clayton approached him for an introduction.

"Nadia, this is Ruben Mayweather, our business associate and honorary third Hargrave brother. Ruben, this is--"

"I don't need any introduction to the famous Nadia Komerov, Clayton. It's a pleasure and a true honor to meet you," he said, extending a long, expensively cuff-linked hand to her. "I'm just sorry it has to be under such difficult circumstances."

"Help me find my mother," she said. "Then I'll give a damn who you are."

"Of course," he said. "We'll do what we can. What's the situation as it stands right now?"

"Mikhail Boyevik claims to have her mother."

"Evidence?"

"None so far."

"Then it's bullshit."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Trust me, if they had the goods then they would want you to know."

"What makes you such a damn expert?" Nadia interjected.

Ruben turned to look at her and raised an eyebrow.

"It's my field, Ms. Komerov. Just as you are the most brilliant mind in software development for privacy and security, I'm the most brilliant mind in physical security. I deal with hostage situations regularly and this is not a hostage situation. This is a desperate bluff situation." He spoke with absolute authority. "Tell them to fuck off unless they have proof."

"This is my mother you're talking about, not a pissing contest for you and your ego."

The colorful language didn't faze him in the slightest.

"This is a figment of your mother we are talking about, Ms. Komerov. Do you really think they kidnapped her four years ago and held her all this time just so they could leverage her against you in the event of your surfacing from the Witness Security Program? I don't wish to be harsh, Ms. Komerov, but please, don't be absurd. You're much smarter than that."

Nadia glared at him in rage, but knew he was right. It couldn't be her mother. She had to let that idea go. She felt Clayton's arms surround her again but she shrugged him away.

"You don't have to do that all the time, I'm a big girl."

He moved back from her, his dark eyes revealing nothing. Ruben watched, appraising the relationship between them. Dale had warned him, but he needed to see it with his own eyes. Clayton with a 'girlfriend?' This was something entirely new.

"So what's the plan, Ruben?" Dale asked. "What do you suggest?" The good-looking older brother was gunning to take action. He hadn't said anything to Clayton, but the truth was that since he had met Nadia, he really could see what it was about this girl that had taken his brother. She had awakened something in him that he didn't even know was there, and he burned with the need to help her somehow. He looked at Clayton jealously but forced the feelings down – now wasn't exactly the time to think about sexual rivalries with his crazy little brother.

"As I said," Ruben continued, "unless there is something you actually want from them then just tell them..." he looked at Nadia, "... just tell them that you aren't interested."

"Sounds good to me," Dale said.

"There _is_ something _I_ want," Clayton said. "I want these sick individuals arrested and jailed for the rest of their natural lives. And I want Angel back so that I can deal with him myself. He may have double crossed me and put Nadia in danger, but he still doesn't deserve to die."

"Okay, so this is something we can get our teeth into." Ruben seemed to relish the thought.

"What about me? Don't I get a say in this?" Nadia put in.

"Of course," Clayton said. "We don't do anything without your input."

"Well, what I want is information about my mother. I don't care what it is, I'll take anything I can get, even..." she faltered, "...even a final location."

Clayton put his arm around her again and this time, she didn't push him away.

"Okay," Ruben said with a look of determination. He reached his hands out to Dale and to Clayton. "Take my hands."

The brothers looked skeptical.

"Take my hands," he said more insistently. "It begins like this. Always. Now take my fucking hands."

The brothers exchanged a glance and then reached out to take a hold. Nadia put her hand in Dale's to complete the circle.

"Close your eyes. I mean it. Everyone. Close your eyes."

As theatrical as the request seemed, it still it felt right to Nadia. She closed her eyes and the feeling of protection, love, and support surrounding her on all sides almost brought her to tears.

"Okay," she said. "I'm ready."

"Good," Ruben said. "Now I want to hear it from all of you. Say this isn't over until Boyevik is in jail."

"The cops can't know about this," Nadia said urgently.

"Don't worry about the how, just say the words. Say it together and say it now."

The three repeated the phrase in unison.

"This isn't over until Angel is with us again."

The three duly repeated.

"This isn't over until we find Louise."

Nadia squeezed hard on the brothers' hands and they squeezed back.

They repeated the phrase.

"And last but not least, let me hear you say; we've got these assholes."

The group opened their eyes and exchanged glances. As cheesy and crazy as it was, Nadia felt better than she had in days. With these three men by her side, what could possibly go wrong?

The phone rang and all four stretched for the phone, but Ruben was the first to reach it. He held it next to his own handset for three rings and then handed it to Nadia.

"Only her from now on," he said. The Hargrave brothers reluctantly stood down.

Nadia took a breath and then answered on the fifth ring. Ruben prodded the screen of his own handset and then put it to his ear.

"It's me," Nadia said. "I'm ready to listen."

"Good. You are intelligent woman, Nadia. I never doubt for second you would make right decision."

"Tell me what you want? Because as far as I can see, I don't have anything to give you."

Mikhail laughed softly.

"How modest of you. Don't you realize how important you were to my organization? I want you back, baby." He gave a soft laugh. The use of the term of endearment sent a shiver of revulsion down Nadia's spine. "It's all I've ever wanted," he said.

"I destroyed your organization, Boyevik, that's why you're back to extortion and narcotics, like any other common criminal. I don't believe you. I don't believe a fucking word you say. So tell me, what is it you really want from me?"

Boyevik sighed like a resigned parent.

"Okay, it's true, I want something more from you than just technical genius." At this point he switched into Russian. "You have new friends, Nadia. Powerful ones. These friends of yours can be very useful to me. Or they can be very dead to me as well."

"Never," she spat back at him in English. "Ask whatever you want from me but--"

"Would you like to hear your mother's voice again?"

She felt herself begin to shake uncontrollably again.

"This is too much," Clayton said. "Let me speak to that bastard."

"Leave her," Ruben hissed at him.

Nadia switched to Russian now.

"Don't fuck with me, you piece of shit; if you have her, let me hear her now or fuck off."

"Come to the phone, Louise."

Nadia's heart missed a beat and her breath froze. A woman's voice filled with fear came to the phone.

"Nadia... Nadia, baby, is that you?"

"That's enough." Mikhail pulled the handset back and spoke violently.

"Ready to listen now?"

"I... I..."

The line went dead.

Nadia looked at the three men surrounding her. Her face was deathly pale.

Clayton took her by the shoulders, turned her to him, and looked into her eyes.

"What is it Nadia? Tell me."

"I..."

"It's Louise," Ruben said nonchalantly. "They have her mother. My bad."

*****************

Clayton sat in the darkness on one side of the room while Nadia lay on the bed. She had become almost disoriented after the phone call, and he had to force her to lie down and rest before the next call. He had left Ruben and Dale together to come up with a plan of action while he watched over her.

"I can't believe they have her," Nadia repeated over and over again at intervals until finally Clayton walked over the bed, took her hand and pulled her to him.

"I know you think you can do it all alone, but nobody is that tough. Just tell me what he said and then we can begin working this out."

"How can she still be alive?" Her eyes pleaded with his for some kind of explanation but he had none.

"Are you sure it was her?"

"Of course I'm sure. Don't you think I know my own mother's voice?"

He breathed in deeply. It was against all reason.

"So we have to get her out of there," he said. "Ruben is very good at what he does. If you trust him--"

"That slick, heartless wise-guy you call a business associate? He couldn't have been more wrong about the whole damn situation. I'd like to see my mother alive again, not in neat, individually packaged, disposable pieces. Do you know who these people are? Do you have any idea what they could do to her?"

"Ruben has an excellent track record. He was off-base about your mother, but he reacts quickly to changing circumstances; if anyone can get her back for you, believe me, it's him."

Nadia didn't look convinced.

"What's the alternative?" he continued. "Disappear into an underworld of international crime? Become slave to a drug lord and extortionist for the rest of your life in order to be near your mother?"

"I'll figure out a way once I'm in there."

"Forget about it. I'm not giving you up – not for Angel, not even for your mother. How do you even know they'll keep her alive if you hand yourself over to them?"

"Don't say that. Not another word, Hargrave. I've spent the last four years wondering what happened to my mother and now I have a chance of finding out. I have a chance of being with her again and I won't give _that_ up for anything."

They stared at each other, neither backing down in their grim determination.

"I'll give you to the government before I give you to them," he said in a low, intent voice.

Nadia glared at him, unable to control her shaking, then got off the bed and walked over to the breathtaking view of Manhattan.

"And I will jump out this window before you have time to call them," she said.

The two faced off again; hostility mixing with love, devotion, and a wild twist of desperation.

"I won't allow that to happen either," he said with a supreme exercise of control.

Nadia heard his determination and felt close to breaking point.

Of course she hadn't meant it about the jump, but as she looked down to the tiny streams of New York traffic and pedestrians far below, there was a part of her, for just one tiny fraction of a second that gave the idea serious consideration. After all, it would solve everything, wouldn't it? Stop the pain in one sharp instant...

Before she knew it, Clayton had his arms around her and was dragging her to the bed. She tried butting his nose with the back of her head, stomping on his feet and kicking his shins, but he had taken every precaution to pin her in an unbreakable hold and he was so much taller than her that she couldn't seem to find anything weak or vulnerable on him with which to latch onto.

"We need to talk rationally about this, Nadia. Trust me, there's a better way."

"The best way isn't always your way. Let me go, for Christ's sake. I wasn't serious; I'm not going to jump out of a window. Where would that leave my mom?"

There was a knock at the door and Ruben's head appeared in the door way.

"You two love birds having fun in there?" he said with a deadpan expression.

Clayton released his hold on Nadia and she pushed herself off the bed.

"What do _you_ want?" she asked him.

"I want you to get ready for the switch."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Clayton stood up from the bed as well.

"I'm talking about the only option we have. They hand over Angel and Louise, we hand over her."

"You see?" She looked accusingly at Clayton. "I'm not out of my mind. This is the only thing to do."

"It's crazy and it's not happening," Clayton said.

"I thought you said Ruben was the best in the business. An expert in his field," she mocked.

"Even experts get it wrong sometimes. This isn't happening. Period."

"It's the only way to get everything that everybody wants, Clay," Ruben said. "No other way. Nadia goes willingly to Boyevik, but she'll be carrying one of your personal tracers so we'll be in contact with her all the way. Zero risk. Angel will return to us with information about Boyevik that we can leverage to take him down. Louise is with us, taking her out of the equation and any leverage they have on Nadia. As soon as we have the area secured, we send our guys in to get Nadia out of there. Then we tip off the cops as to the whereabouts of the very wanted Mikhail Boyevik and his crew of heavies. I'm not saying it's easy or without risk, but I guarantee you that it's the only way out of this mess."

"It's too risky. I don't buy this story about him wanting Nadia back to work for him. He's a vicious, insane criminal and what he wants is revenge."

"And one hundred million dollars," Ruben added calmly, as though it were a minor consideration.

There was a short, deafening silence while the number settled in to everyone's minds.

"He can have a hundred million," Clayton said. "But he can't have Nadia."

"I'm not yours to give," she said.

"It's not negotiable," Ruben said. "It's all or nothing. If Nadia ever wants to see her mother again or if you ever want to see your old buddy Angel back in action, then this is the plan. Do you want her to ever see her mother again?"

"Of course I do. I'll make damn sure of it," Clayton said.

"Good. Then you won't object to my having already made arrangements for the exchange to take place."

"Ruben, I'm warning you. I brought you into this because I trusted your judgment." Clayton glowered at Ruben who arched an eyebrow but held his ground.

"This is the only way. Either you run with this, or you're on your own."

The two stared at each other for several tense moments before Nadia stood up, almost directly between them. The men looked towards her.

"It's on. Tell me what to do, Ruben. I don't need his permission for this," she said. "If he wants to contribute his one hundred million so be it, but I know Mikhail will take me in exchange for my mother with or without the money. I'll tell him what the deal's going to be when he calls again."

Ruben nodded and put his hand out to take Nadia's.

"Goddamn it. Okay," Clayton said. "Tell him we have a deal but I have my conditions as well." He took Nadia's hand away from Ruben's. "She's not going in there alone. Not without surveillance, not without protection."

"I never suggested she would," Ruben said.

"Good, then let's get working on the details before this slimeball calls us back."

Nadia had been ready to go it alone but inside she was relieved; with Clayton Hargrave behind her, maybe she really could beat this thing after all.

"By the way, there's one other thing, Clayton," Ruben said with his ultra-cool demeanor.

"What's that?"

"Jack Patterson."

The name sounded almost like it was from the distant past, that much had occurred in the last twenty-four hours.

"Do you want to deal with him now? He's waiting for your call."

"Hold on," Nadia interrupted. "What are you going to do? He's my problem, not yours."

"He's a player on the team I own. He is my problem. Minor, but still an annoyance nonetheless."

"You own his entire football team?" Nadia's mouth hung open.

"That's right and he's bringing in negative publicity for management, his team mates, and me with these crazy antics of his. Now please butt out for ten seconds while I take care of him. Do you have his number, Ruben?"

"Be my guest," he said, handing his own phone to Clayton.

Nadia couldn't believe it. Just a day ago, Patterson had been the bane of her existence; a high profile celebrity client threatening to ruin her entire career. Today, he seemed like nothing more than a minion in the vast world of the Hargrave empire.

"Hi. This is Clayton Hargrave. Who's this?"

Nadia heard the familiar foghorn voice on the other end of the line, but it was calmer than usual, more polite.

Clayton listened for about three seconds and then cut in.

"Excuse me for talking over you, Patterson, but please shut the fuck up."

There was instant silence.

"You will co-operate with the police. Do you understand?"

Pause.

"You do. Good. You will get help for your problems. Do you understand?"

Pause.

"Good. You will stop speaking to the press and forget about your fucking 'privacy consultant' or whatever the hell she was. Do you read me loud and clear?"

A slightly longer pause.

"Good. Now if you can keep your dick in your pants and your nose clean, we'll support you one hundred percent. Any fuck ups and you're out. You'll never play in the NFL again. Now goodbye, Patterson, don't make me have to speak to you again."

He ended the call and looked at the now amazed Nadia

"I'm sorry," he said. "Was there anything else you wanted me to say to him?"

She shook her head with astonishment. Only Clayton Hargrave could make problems like that disappear with a single phone call and he wanted to solve all her problems for her.

So why the hell did she have such a hard time with that again?

### Chapter Nine

"Okay. Are we all ready for this?" Ruben asked.

Dale nodded, as did Clayton, and then they both looked to Nadia. She took a deep breath in and nodded as well.

"We're going to do a sweep on you with the best technology available on or off the market. If anything shows up, we'll replace it or lose it. Boyevik needs to think that you are one hundred percent clean."

Nadia nodded and waited for the inspection to begin. A female member of Ruben's security company had been drafted to give Nadia a full body search. The two left the men to go into a bedroom and some minutes later, they returned.

"What did we find?" Ruben asked his employee.

"Clean as a whistle, Mr. Mayweather." Ruben didn't look happy.

"You found nothing at all?" he asked sternly. The employee faltered.

"I conducted a full body search and electronic sweep."

"A _full_ body search?" Ruben pressed the point.

"Company standard, Mr. Mayweather. No stone left unturned."

He ran his hand through his short, dark, ruffled hair and turned to Clayton.

"You guys must be getting better at this," he said.

"Best in the world, Ruben, you know that," Dale told him.

"Okay, you can go now. Thanks for your help." Ruben dismissed his employee.

"Okay, Nadia," he said, "as far as I'm concerned, you're ready to go. If my people can't find a tracking device on you or spot the difference between those smart specs and normal glasses, then nobody can. I've got to hand it to you, Clay, your tech is pretty impressive lately."

Clayton nodded. It was something he didn't need to be told.

"We'll know exactly where you are, and as long as you're wearing the contact lenses, we'll record what you see. As long as you're wearing the glasses, we'll have a full picture of whatever is going on digitally and electronically at whatever location he brings you to, and we'll hear everything that you hear. Try not to lose them or give them up for any reason."

She had to admit their technology was pretty amazing. Each of them would wear slim, lightweight, bulletproof fabrics, two of the undetectable surveillance devices, smart glasses which would give a combined audio, visual, and electronic picture of everything around them, and even if all of that failed, there were still the contact lenses to transmit back location coordinates and images of their whereabouts.

They were as safe as you could get.

Nadia looked at the sleek glasses again. The same damned glasses that had outed her as a surveillance professional. Maybe they would repay the debt owed to her now and bring her back into contact with her mother.

"Come on," Ruben said. "We need to get going. The switch will take place downtown at the Battery Park Control House. We'll need to make the transfer of funds and then the exchange. Should all be as smooth as Belgian chocolate. We'll get Angel debriefed and then proceed to track you wherever he's planning to take you. And don't worry," he gave a rare, small, but enormously reassuring smile, "there's nowhere on earth he can take you where we won't be able to follow."

"What if I don't want you to follow?" Nadia asked quietly.

"Don't worry, Nadia. It's going to be okay. We won't leave you with him for long, and the authorities don't need to know about a thing. At least not until this whole thing is over and you and your mother are back safe with us again."

Nadia was still finding it all hard to believe, but she nodded her agreement and prepared to make the journey downtown.

********************

Two hours later, Clayton and Nadia were sitting, as directed, on the nearest bench to the entrance of the Battery Park Control House. Dale and Ruben were parked nearby in a customized, but not out of place, high end BMW M6 with blacked out windows. They watched the couple remotely through a secure laptop, waiting for any sign of trouble.

It had been four years since Nadia had seen her mother – four years since she had disappeared. How she would react to seeing her now in front of her, alive and under such disturbing circumstances, she had no idea.

"Don't worry, Nadia," Clayton said quietly. He could feel every breath the woman next to him took, every beat of her racing heart. "Everything is going to be okay. We have this. Trust us. Nothing is going to go wrong here."

She was about to look at him, reach for his hand, when she saw them emerge from the train station. Her breath froze, her heart pounded.

"That's her," she whispered and rose to her feet. Her mother looked confused and lost and then frightened as the man next to her stopped walking and corralled her back in. The phone next to Nadia on the bench rang. She sat back down and picked it up.

"That is better," Mikhail said. "Please don't move yet, Nadia."

She looked around to see if Mikhail were visible anywhere, dreading the sight of his evil face.

"Don't waste time looking for me. I see you clearly but you don't find me nowhere near you. My employees take care of this little business for me. Look behind you. My representative is there."

She turned her head and saw a man in his mid-thirties, in need of a shave but wearing a smart business suit, approaching them nonchalantly.

"That is him. You can call him, 'Mitch.' He will take over from here. Of course, I still watch you, Nadia, so only intelligent decision, please. I trust you, but idiot American boyfriend, I have to watch. Don't let him do nothing stupid or he die very quickly."

The call ended and a shiver of horror ran down Nadia's spine.

This was the man she intended to hand herself over to. Maybe Ruben and Clayton thought they could outsmart him, but it was also likely that they were out of their depth here. She might disappear into this evil man's world and never see Clayton again.

It was a moment of revelation. She looked at Clayton, his fearless demeanor and absolute calm was awesome. He didn't just look the part, this guy was the real deal and there was no-one else here beside her.

Would she be able to stand losing him? She had lost her mother for so long, never known her father, said goodbye to a whole world in order to maintain her integrity and freedom. Did she have to lose him as well?

Boyevik's guy sat down roughly next to Clayton, bumping into him. Clayton gave him a cold look.

"Where's Boyevik?" he said, looking down at the smaller man.

"Shut up, you prick," Mitch said. He spoke with a Jersey accent, a local recruit into Boyevik's organization. "I'll fuckin' tell you if I need you to speak or not. Fuckin' asshole." Clayton blinked slowly, took a deep breath, and visualized the moment when he would cave in this mobster's jaw.

"Look at your mommy over there, Nadia," Mitch said. "Good to see her again, ain't it?"

Nadia nodded, struggling with her desire to run to her mother, hold her, make sure this was all real.

"Where's Angel?" Clayton asked.

"Didn't I tell this prick to shut up?" Mitch said to Nadia.

"This prick is going to ruin your organization, put your disgusting boss in jail, and then destroy you personally," Nadia said. "I'd be nice to him if I were you."

Mitch made a wry face and then addressed Clayton.

"I do apologize, Mr. Hargrave," he said sarcastically. "Your guy Angel is right over there."

"Where? I don't see anything."

"See that parked van?"

"I see it."

"I got the keys right here, boss." Mitch reached into his pocket.

"Slowly," Clayton warned him. "Move very, very slowly.

Mitch smiled and with great deliberation pulled a set of car keys out of his pocket and held them up in front of Clayton, gripping them tightly. Clayton put his hand out to receive them as Mitch slowly unwrapped his fingers, put his mouth a little closer to his hand and then blew. A barely visible cloud of white dust lifted in front of Clayton and Nadia's faces, making them close their eyes and draw back.

"Sorry about that. They're a little dusty," the mobster said.

When Clayton and Nadia opened their eyes again, everything seemed okay. Clayton still had his hand outstretched waiting for the keys.

"Take them, Hargrave," Mitch said. "And smile." Clayton did exactly what he was told to do. "Now let's go check out that truck. You guys ready?"

They both smiled and nodded.

Dale and Ruben watched on a laptop from their car across the street. Ruben had Nadia's view and Dale had Clayton's. The plan had been to make the switch and then quickly close in on Boyevik's men as they tried to get away with Nadia. A moment of quiet shock had run through Ruben as the thin, white dust floated in front of Clayton's face.

"No," he whispered, barely audible. He had travelled extensively in Colombia where the drug scopolamine was widely used for criminal purposes. He never left his hotel there without two wads of cotton inserted into his nostrils to prevent inhalation of the world's most dangerous drug. One breath and you were out on your feet, all free will gone, willing to carry out any request for your captor.

But this was the Russian mob and they were in New York City, not Bogota.

"Crew stand by," he said. "Come on, Dale, we have to move."

"Wait, everything's going to plan, they're going to make the switch."

He was following Clayton's view on his screen, looking into the darkness of the back of the van.

"It's a drug," he said. "They're under his control, we have to move it."

"Don't screw this up. Stick to the plan."

Ruben hesitated. If they moved out too early, it could ruin everything. The switch wouldn't take place, they would be back to square one, and was that really scopolamine? The chances were slim to none.

He looked back to his screen and saw Nadia stepping into the back of the van and then look around to see both Clayton and her mother. They were all leaving together.

"Shit," he said. "That's not in the plan." He held his ear piece in while he barked orders to his team.

"Don't lose that van," he said, and two black BMWs pulled out immediately in pursuit. "And someone get that phone." The phone they had been using to communicate with Boyevik was still on the park bench.

"Downtown Manhattan Heliport," Ruben barked at their driver. It was a short drive from where they were, but they could better pursue from the air if the van left Manhattan, which it was likely to do. From the back of the car, they continued to watch through the eyes of Nadia and Clayton who were now chatting amiably with Mitch in the back of the van.

"Okay, rich guy, now's the time to come clean. Tracking devices, surveillance equipment. Whatever you two love birds got on you, I need to know about."

Clayton began to list the catalogue of undetectable devices that would guarantee their safety.

"We're each wearing two of the latest surveillance spots from Hargrave Electronics," he said calmly. I've got one on my left wrist, the other is on my back under my right shoulder blade."

"I've got one on my neck and one on the inside of my right ankle," Nadia added.

"What the hell is going on?" Dale hissed in exasperation. "Why are they telling him this?"

"Scopolamine," Ruben said. "They'll do anything he asks and won't remember a thing."

"Lose the tracking devices first," Mitch said. Ruben and Dale watched as the dots on the screen went stationary one by one, flicked out the windows of the moving vehicle.

"I'll be damned," Mitch said. "Technology is a bitch. You sure that's all you got on you?"

Clayton nodded.

"Now what else do I need to be aware of?" Mitch asked.

"Super-thin bulletproof material in our clothes," Clayton added. "But probably the most important things are these," he said tapping Nadia's glasses. "My guys will already have picked up and identified any digital signals you and your men have. You should probably get rid of all your cell phones and any other electronic equipment you have."

"Shit," Mitch hissed. "My damn phone is my life. So what if your guys know my number? Can't I just turn it off?"

"That might work, might not though," Nadia offered happily.

"Shit. All phones, give, give, give. Now. We can't risk it." His men handed over their electronics reluctantly and he began taking out the chips and destroying them.

"What else?" he said with growing irritation.

"Our glasses need to go; they can track us and see you through them."

"Is that a fact?" Mitch grimaced first but then smiled into the screen at Ruben before taking the glasses. He smashed them under his boot and tossed them out the window like the tracking devices.

"Shit," Dale hissed as sound left the laptops as well. "Please don't tell them about the contact lenses," he whispered. It was the last thing left.

"I better take these out too," Clayton added. The view into the back of the van disappeared. Ruben put his laptop quietly down while Dale angrily wedged his into the back of the seat.

"So much for our damn technology," he said. "Do your guys still have them in view?"

"They do. Looks like they're headed the same place as us.

"Shit. To the Heliport?"

"Looks like it. If that's really scopolamine, Clay will walk them right in there, clear it with security, and take them anywhere they want to go. We didn't see any weapons on any of them, so there won't be any security issues."

Dale grabbed his phone and dialed the Heliport. "The hell there won't. They won't get anywhere near a chopper." The phone picked up and Dale began barking into the receiver.

"It's Dale Hargrave. My brother is on his way to you right now. He's been kidnapped and drugged. Don't do a word he says. He's with a woman who's also drugged and at least two men who are unarmed but in possession of life-threatening drugs. Don't challenge them, but don't let them take off either. We'll be there soon."

There was hesitation at the other end of the line.

"This could be a terrorist situation," Dale continued. "If you let them fly, it will be your responsibility."

"Okay, Mr. Hargrave. It's just that Mr. Hargrave Junior, your brother, he called before you to clear his group for take-off already."

"I told you he's been drugged, goddamn it. Don't let him get into the air. Do you hear me?"

"Okay, roger that, we'll do our best to keep him on the ground until you get here."

"Damn right you will." He ended the call.

"Let me handle it once we get there," Ruben said. "My people are well trained. They'll take care of this."

"They had better, Ruben. This is your screw up if those guys get away with my brother and Nadia."

Ruben didn't reply. He knew the stakes and would accept responsibility if it came to that. But he was determined it never would.

They rode the next minutes in tense silence, the short journey seeming to take forever, but at last, the heliport entrance came into view.

"I don't see their van," Dale said.

"They're already inside. So are my people. They're being stalled, don't worry. As soon as we have a direct view, we can take them down."

Dale felt like pushing his friend and associate's head through the BMW window, but that wouldn't achieve anything.

"Give me the first aid kit," he said to the driver. Dale looked at him incredulously, wasting time when every second counted.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Ruben took out a swatch of cotton wool and tore off chunks for each of them.

"Block your noses. They might have more scopolamine."

Dale nodded his head. He should get used to it; Ruben was the boss when it came to situations like this.

In seconds, they were flashing ID at security and then they were through. Nadia and Clayton were with a group heading towards the Hargrave Robotics chopper. The bird was already fired up, the blades picking up speed.

"Let's go, people," Ruben ordered his team. "Make it a clean one. Don't get close enough to let anyone blow in your face or make physical contact."

The group were only a few feet from boarding. The BMW drew closer to them and Ruben rolled down his window, shouting over the noise of the chopper. He could see his people, eight in total, emerging from various points in the building. The fugitive group began sprinting for the chopper. The car was within yards of them but they wouldn't make it in time; Mitch's men piled Clayton and Nadia on board, climbed in themselves, and slammed the doors shut just as Ruben and Dale reached them.

Nadia's smiling face looked at them passively through the glass. She would remember nothing of this afterwards.

Ruben looked at Dale, too sorry for words as the helicopter lifted away into the sky. He was rarely this wrong and never with Dale Hargrave. They had known each other since the seventh grade, had shared experiences both good and bad since even then, but nothing quite like this.

Dale was angry, but as much with himself as with Ruben, and this was not the time for words.

And they were not beaten yet.

"Come on," he said. "That's a Hargrave Robotics chopper. We fly it remotely as long as we can get the pilot to play ball. I'll get my people to track it while you get us one of these other birds to fly in."

Ruben turned to go but his way was blocked.

"I'm sorry, sir," the Heliport Security Guard said to him firmly. "But I can't allow you to go anywhere until the authorities arrive."

Ruben looked at him archly. "I'm Ruben Mayweather," he said. "You work for me. Call the police and tell them not to come, there's been a mistake." The guard hesitated, an airspace security breach in lower Manhattan was a big deal, but so was Ruben Mayweather. "Look, here's my ID." Ruben held it up for him to get a clear view. "We have this situation under control. Not a word to anyone and I mean no-one. Do you understand?"

The Head of Security arrived to back up his guard and take control.

"Not a word, Mr. Mayweather. Don't worry," he said. "None of this ever happened. You have my personal guarantee."

*******************

When Nadia awoke, she felt fully aroused and totally confused. She lay for a minute, afraid to even begin to think about where she was. She was sure that when she did, the fear would set in. The room was dark and her ear was filled with the sound of heavy male breathing. Something warm, massive, and living was directly underneath her, but she had no recollection of how she had gotten there.

Too late. The fear was already there.

"Oh, God," she heard her own voice – slurred, inebriated. "Where the hell am I? Why is this happening again?" She shook her head and felt it. Unmistakable. It had happened again – this time it was a real blackout and it was every bit as bad as any she had had four years ago.

"Thank God you're awake." She heard Clayton's deep voice, full of concern, next her ear. An unbelievable wave of relief came over her but was soon followed by more confusion. She lifted her head and looked down. She was lying on top of him.

"I was afraid to move... afraid you wouldn't...." He had been terrified for several long minutes that she might be gone, overcome with the feeling that something terrible and nameless had occurred but that he could no recollect.

"What's going on, Clayton? I don't remember a thing. This is scaring me."

"I don't either. The last thing in my head is sitting on that bench with you and then I wake up here with you lying on top of me. They must have drugged us somehow, but I don't remember eating or drinking anything."

Nadia tried to move only to discover she was restrained and there wasn't much give in her bonds. They had been tied up, her on top of him. She continued to writhe and pull to see if her hands could slip free.

"Nadia, you've got to stop moving." Clayton's voice vibrated through her entire body. It was good to know he was there, even if they were trapped, kidnapped, and possibly left to die. At least they were together.

"We have to get out of here. I need to get my hands free."

"We will get out of here. Of course we will. It's just that with you so close to me. I've been lying here for I don't know how long with you strapped down on top of me..."

She stopped moving, momentarily confused but then she felt it. The swell of his trapped erection between her legs. They had strapped them together with a kind of perversity, her legs straddling his hips, trapping her above and him below.

"I'm sorry. I didn't realize. I'll try to move a little."

She began to slide up and down to free herself some and move away from his cock.

"That's not helping," he said with a kind of anguish.

"I know what you mean," she said huskily as the sensation of his hardened member sent a surge of excitement through her. "Whoever did this is kind of sick."

Clayton looked at her with his intense eyes.

"Sick, yes, but in kind a good way," he said. Nadia felt another thrill go through her and then watched as his ridiculously handsome face cracked into a smile. She began shaking with laughter as well, pushing their bodies even closer.

"Oh, Jesus, whatever you do, please don't laugh," he said. "I'll have to shout for a change of trousers from our kidnappers if you do."

The two began laughing uncontrollably.

"Jesus Christ, Clay," Nadia finally said when the shuddering had stopped. "Only you could turn me on and make me laugh at the same time while tied up in a bed waiting for..."

The seriousness of the situation overtook her again. She had no idea what the plan was, for either of them. Clayton looked at her again with his unreadable eyes and then lifted his head from the bed to face towards her. She began shaking her head from side to side. The realization was hitting her hard. Boyevik had taken them. He was a sick and evil man, probably watching them even now, and this could be the last time they got to share a moment together, alone or not.

She pressed her lips to his, shut her eyes tightly and kissed passionately.

Every moment could be their last.

Clayton laid his head back at last and she rested her head to his chest.

"When we get out of here, baby," he said quietly, "I want to make sure I spend the rest of my life with you."

The words went straight to her heart and she buried herself in his neck, biting down into the flesh to hold back the tears. He strained his head to press his lips to her head, longing to put his hand to her hair but instead intertwining his fingers into hers and gripping both her hands in his powerful but helpless grasp.

"I love you more than anything else in this world, Nadia Komerov," he whispered urgently into her ear.

Her body clung to his – desperately, tenaciously – every heartbeat seeming to last an eternity but one that could be stolen from them at any second.

His cock pressed hard to her again and she shook her head.

"Really?" she said incredulously. "You really can't control that thing, can you?"

He shook his head dejectedly.

"Seemingly not with you around anyway."

The two of them descended into desperate laughter again.

"Look Nadia... I'm serious." He looked at her now without any trace of laughter. "No more of this defensive stuff. I can't help what you do to me, that's not my fault." She pressed herself tightly to him in response, making him even harder. "But I mean it when I say I want you to be with me every day of my life once we get out of here."

Her heart was ready to burst but her defenses just wouldn't go down; she needed to keep it light, dirty, silly, to protect her fragile emotions. But none of that would work with Clayton Hargrave.

"I love you, Nadia. I've never been surer of anything else in my life."

She squeezed hard on his cock again and bit down on his neck.

"You can play with me all you want, but it won't change the way I feel and it won't change a word of what I'm saying to you. I love you and I want you to be with me forever and I know you want the same thing... " His granite-like confidence faltered momentarily. "At least I think you do."

She squeezed him hard again.

"God, will you please stop doing that and admit to me, for once, that I am completely right?"

She kept her head buried in his neck.

"I made you lose control of yourself once before, you know."

"I know, God, how could I forget and I want you to make me lose control again, just not now while we're hostages of a psychotic Russian Mafia boss."

"I don't know," she said, her words muffled in his shirt. "If I can make you lose it here, I'm pretty sure I can make you lose it anywhere." She bit into his neck and he squirmed.

"Come on. Say it. Say what you've always wanted to say to me since we first met. You felt it just like I did. Now let go once and for all and let me take care of you..."

Crazy as it was, as stupid as it was – this man tied down and helpless underneath her – still she felt that he was the one who could turn her life around, bring her back out into the light of day, and transform her world of cold secrecy into love, light, and warmth.

She clung to him, squeezed him, trembled, and then lifted her head to look into his eyes.

"Clayton... I..."

A heavy boot kicked the door in before she could say another word.

### Chapter Ten

Ruben holstered his weapon, and with Dale, set to untying the bewildered couple They began filling them in on the sequence of events since their blackout.

"You were drugged using scopolamine – a narcotic from Colombia. It doesn't knock you out, but it makes you lose your will power and forget everything that's happened to you."

Nadia's stomach tightened and her mind reeled with fear. What had they done together? What had they been forced to do? What had they been forced to say? The feeling of dread was unlike anything she had ever imagined. Four years of her life devoted to covering ever track, every footprint – digital or otherwise – and now she had been reduced to a helpless shell, her mind, her past, all of her secrets an open book to her worst enemies.

A pair of strong hands took her head gently and drew her gaze down. She was still lying on top of Clayton but they were free now. His gaze was unwavering. He didn't say a word but his look spoke volumes. They would be okay. This was nothing. Everything would be made good again.

"We have everything up until you told him where all the tracking and surveillance devices were on you and Nadia," Dale said.

Clayton looked up at him, shocked, still holding Nadia's head in his hands.

"I told them all of that?"

"Of course you did," Ruben reassured him. "It's the drug, you'll say or do anything you're asked to do."

He looked back at Nadia and a scant moment of absolute understanding passed between them – they were in this together and they would overcome it together. Without each other, this could be too hard to bear.

He released her and they pushed themselves up from the bed.

"What happened after that?" Nadia asked. "How did you find us?"

Ruben tapped his nose knowingly.

"You didn't tell him about all the tracking devices because you didn't know about all of them. I put an extra one on each of you just to make sure, and then another on the chopper before it took off. Those idiots never had a chance of getting away with you guys."

"And it was our chopper," Dale added. "We could have taken control of it at any time, but we needed to find out where Boyevik was holed up."

"How long have we been here for?" she asked.

"Don't worry. Not long. We caught up with you inside of an hour and when Boyevik contacted us with his demands, we had our own list of demands for him in return."

_An hour_ , Nadia thought. _A whole goddamn hour._ A girl could spill a whole lot of her guts in the space of sixty minutes, but would she ever know what she had said?

"What were the demands?" Clayton asked.

Ruben winked in that arch way of his. He was back in control now.

"My people have been busy, Clay. We found out a whole lot about Boyevik while he's been waiting for us to cave."

"Did you find out where he is?" Nadia asked. Something was missing. Her head still wasn't clear from the drug but something huge was missing.

"Your old boss is not a popular man, Nadia, and yes we did find him. He was here."

Nadia's heart lurched in her chest. She had been face to face with him but had no memory of it, not even a trace of a recollection.

"He didn't expect to be located so quickly," Ruben continued. "They never do. We threatened to sic the feds and his current enemies in the crime world on him unless he vacated the premises without you. When he saw how many choppers we had closing in on him, he backed down. There was no way in hell he would have gotten out of here in one piece, even without the government behind us, and even if he did, he would have had the Ukrainian Mafia salivating for him and his family not far behind. We left him a corridor of escape and he took it. He said he left you two drugged up and playing cards together." He looked over to a table with two chairs and two hands of cards lying face down on the table.

"So how did we end up like we did? Tied to each other?" Nadia asked.

"You got me," Ruben said without a trace of a smile. "Maybe you got bored playing Pinochle after a while and decided to do something more fun together."

Nadia felt a hot blush begin to rise to her face. Clayton glanced over at her but she didn't look back.

"That's impossible," she said. "How could we have tied ourselves together like that?"

"Clay always was a good boy scout," Dale said.

"Shut up, Dale," Clayton said quickly. "It doesn't matter how we got that way, the point is we're free now and we have to track down Boyevik and bring him to justice."

"I don't think so." Ruben shook his head. "A deal's a deal, Clay. Besides, we have no idea where he and his boys have gone to."

Clayton stood up from the bed and came eye to eye with Ruben.

"Fortunately, Mayweather, that's where you're wrong. I took the precaution of slipping a tracer onto that slimeball, Mitch, when were on the bench together in Battery Park. Just in case Mayweather Services didn't do its job correctly."

Dale grinned. "Always a good boy scout. What did I tell ya?"

Even Ruben had to smile, despite the aspersions cast on his professionalism.

"Okay," he said. "We let them run for a while before we inform the authorities and the feds catch up with them. An anonymous call about a disturbance somewhere, suspected armed mobsters, foreign accents. They'll be arrested on outstanding warrants, possession of firearms, and probably resisting arrest. They go away for a long time but as they are criminals, they won't be talking about us. Everybody is happy, case closed."

It sounded good, but a growing swell of panic was rising through Nadia as she scanned the room. She stood up abruptly from the bed.

"Where's Louise?" she said. "Where's my mom? She's still here, right? Tell me you didn't let her go with them?"

"It's okay, Nadia," Dale said. "She's here. Our medics are examining her right now."

"What happened to her? Where is she?" she asked frantically.

"She's on a chopper back to New York City. She's being taken care of. She was drugged as well, but we don't know how much or for how long, so we have to take precautions. You two need to be checked out thoroughly as well."

"You're right," Clayton said. "Nadia, you go back with Ruben's people. I'll go with Ruben and Dale. We need to catch up with Boyevik. We can't let that vermin go free."

"It's too late, Clay" Ruben said. "He's gone. If we catch up with him now, it'll just start a war."

"If we don't catch up with him then he's still free to do whatever he wants to us or to anybody else. Nadia will never be free of him. This story ends now – today."

"Even if he lands up in jail, he'd still be able to get you. Trust me, this is the best thing to do."

"He's right," Dale said, "as much as I agree with you about putting this vermin away forever, we have to be smart and let this one go."

Clayton turned to Nadia.

"This is your call," he said. "It's your life this asshole is playing with. What do you want to do?"

She looked back into his deep dark eyes; so powerful, so caring. The man could be so incredibly fuckable when they wanted to be.

She took a deep breath and considered her options.

Let Boyevik go and justice would not be served. Worse still, she would never stop looking over her shoulder to see if he was coming after her again.

Try and catch up with him and there would be a fight. The police would probably get involved and she would be on the NSA radar again. Anything could happen. If Boyevik went to jail, he could still get them, and would justice really be served anyway? He would bide his time in jail, running his empire remotely, and continuing to hurt even more people. With involvement from the authorities, she would have to disappear again.

"Don't worry about the government, Nadia," Clayton said as though reading her mind. "Once Boyevik is locked up, they'll have no leverage on you anymore. You can forget all this secrecy and lead a normal life again."

"They'll never let me go. And they'll never let you go either. Not if they find out how messed up in all this you are."

"Nothing is impossible." He glanced at his brother. "We've done the impossible before. We'll take care of you."

Dale nodded in response. He hated to give up on anything every bit as much as his brother. If they couldn't stand up to injustice, with all of the resources they had, then who could?

"We have strong government connections," he said. "Hargrave Robotics and Mayweather Services." He glared at Ruben, daring him to disagree. "If you're working for us, you'll be working for them anyway. You and your mother won't have to worry about a thing. Everybody wins."

Nadia covered her mouth with both hands and looked at all three men. Could it really be? With these men around her, these two fearless brothers and their friend Ruben – a master in playing criminals off against each other and protecting people from threats to their safety – surely they would prevail. After all, this wasn't just about her – Boyevik had threatened her mother's safety and the Hargrave family as well.

"Every minute we wait, he's getting further away," Clayton said.

Nadia took one more deep breath and then met Clayton's gaze again.

"Let's get that bastard," she said.

The three men exchanged a glance that said it all, but Clayton was the one to put it into words.

"Gentleman, it looks like we have a new member in this exclusive boys club," he said. "Except she's a hot-as-hell gorgeous girl. Now come on, people, let's move it out."

An hour later, Mikhail Boyevik didn't know it, but his past was rapidly catching up with him. He and his men were headed for an airstrip for light aircraft near Trenton, New Jersey, ready to fly north to the Canadian border. They had stopped along the way to fix a blowout to a rear tire on their vehicle.

The secondary road they were on was deserted – in the last forty minutes, only one car had passed them going in the opposite direction and that was shortly before the blow out. Nevertheless, Mikhail still had his men stand guard while one of them did the work to replace the tire.

"What the fuck is this?" Mitch cursed under his breath. The single car that had passed them was backtracking to them, probably to offer help on the deserted stretch of road. Mitch got ready to send the do-gooders on their way. The car got closer and he saw the two men inside, both in their thirties and dressed in almost identical bomber jackets with dark shades. He reached a hand into his pocket to find his gun and a small pack of scopolamine. The amnesia drug might do the trick, after all, nobody had been killed yet and that was fine by him – less of a trail for the feds or anyone else to follow.

The window of the black BMW rolled down and Mitch pinched the Devil's Breath dust between his fingers.

"Need any help there?" the driver said.

"No thanks, we can handle it," Mitch growled.

"Is that so?"

Mitch heard another vehicle approaching from behind him and hissed a curse under his breath.

"Why don't you let us take a look?" the driver persisted.

"It's just a blowout. We can handle it. Now fuck off."

Now there were chopper blades. Mitch wrapped his fingers around his gun and drew it out, the two other henchmen standing guard did likewise, as did the driver of the car and his passenger.

"It's over, Mitch," he said. "Be smart and put the gun down now."

The noise whirring blades got louder, but Mitch didn't dare look up. There had to be at least three of them coming in for landings. Soon the incapacitated van would be boxed in.

Mitch hammered his fist against the vehicle.

"Mr. Boyevik, boss, we got a situation out here!" he shouted.

There was no answer.

Mitch squinted as four figures from the helicopter most directly in front of him began to approach. Every one of them was holding a weapon, everyone of them was clad in body armor.

"It's over, Mitch!" Ruben shouted at him. "Tell Boyevik to step out of the van. The FBI will be here soon."

Mitch's heart raced. This deal was supposed to make him a multi-millionaire, and he had watched the transfer of funds himself. The deal was done, but then Boyevik had wanted to keep the damn girl as well.

"Fuck it!" he shouted and raised his weapon, but he didn't have a chance. A hail of gunfire went off around him and over his head, one bullet just grazing him on the shoulder.

"Drop it, Mitch. It's over." Clayton's powerful voice rang out. "And lose the Devil's Breath, the drugs, whatever else you have.

There was still no answer from the van. He looked around him and then at his two guys. It was a miracle they were all alive.

He dropped his weapon and his two guys followed suit.

Turn and spread 'em against the van," Ruben said. "That goes for all of you."

The men exchanged a defeated look and then turned to the van.

There was only one person left unaccounted for.

Ruben approached the back of the van and, standing to one side, delivered a powerful blow to the door. It was surrounded on all sides by his people.

"Come out, Boyevik. Be a man about it and don't make me call your friends from the Ukraine to come out here and convince you. You're communications are blocked already so forget about back up. Your guys are spread-eagled out here against your vehicle, you have a flat tire--"

The sound of the back door unlocking from the inside made Ruben cut short his list of reasons to comply and his team stood ready. Nadia held a weapon which was shaking in her hand despite the fact that she was covered in light weight Kevlar from head to toe and had her nostrils blocked to prevent a second use of the behavior control drug.

She was about to come face to face with a figure she knew more from nightmares at this point than from reality. Everything had happened so fast in the last few hours that she hadn't had time to think about anything, but events were rapidly condensing down into this moment and the incarnation of all her fears was about to step into the light of day right in front of her eyes.

She watched as the door slowly began to open.

She knew that there were no police on the way. Ruben had made sure of that. They were in the most deserted stretch of county highway in the state of New Jersey. Everything had been rapidly but meticulously planned, from the intentional drive by puncture to the bluffing of imminent FBI intervention.

They had set it up so that she would be free to do whatever she wanted. Nobody wanted this man alive – not even the people who worked for him and certainly no one who worked for Hargrave or Mayweather Services.

She held the trigger and waited as the door slowly swung fully open. One thin, frail leg descended to the ground.

Her hand was shaking almost uncontrollably now and she watched the old man lift up his head. He had aged unimaginably in the last four years and it had given him an appearance of near harmlessness.

But appearances can be deceiving. Nadia knew that better than anyone.

She pointed the gun towards him and the violent tremor left her hand instantly. Boyevik found her eyes and then shook his head gently from side to side.

"There is no need for this, Nadia. All I ever want is for us to be near each other. To know you again."

Ruben grabbed one of his hands while Clayton took the other, effectively immobilizing him.

"Shut up, Boyevik," Clayton said as he twisted his arm behind his back.

Together they pushed the old man to his knees.

"Anything you'd like to say to this criminal before we take care of him?" Clayton asked.

Nadia stood silent for a moment, thinking of the accounts she had read at the time of the trial. Boyevik had personally taken part in more tortures and executions than anyone knew about. He was renowned for his cruelty and lack of mercy. She slowly raised her gun, and pointed it directly at his wrinkled forehead. His long, tangled white hair hung down to either side.

"Do you have any last words, Mikhail?" she said. Her hand was steady as a rock this time.

Her old boss looked up at her without any trace of fear in his eyes.

"Yes, I have last words for you. In fact, I have exactly two."

She moved the muzzle of the gun closer to his forehead. Clayton watched her nervously, but Ruben shook his head at him. They had agreed to give her lead on this, whatever she did was entirely up to her now.

"Speak." she said. "I'm all ears."

Boyevik smiled.

"Devil's. Breath."

He enunciated each word clearly and slowly. Nadia pressed the muzzle of the gun to his flesh, pushing his head back.

"That's it?" she said.

"That's it," he said. "Today is not the first time you taste it."

A tremble returned to her hand.

"What are you talking about?"

He gave a raucous laugh.

"Kill me, Nadia, and you'll never know."

Ruben jerked his twisted arm. "Who said anything about killing you? There are plenty of people who'd be willing to pay money for you, Mr. Boyevik. Most of them in Ukraine, some in Moscow."

"Come on, Ruben," Clayton said, "let's take this piece of trash out."

Boyevik struggled as he was lifted bodily by the two men.

"You don't have stomach to kill, none of you do. You won't give me to my enemies either, so don't waste my fucking time. You can beat me, torture me, but how will you ever now if am telling truth or not? You can lock me up but I will still find you. All of you. Even you." He looked at Clayton. "With all your money, your technology. I will find you from any prison cell. My arms very long and I will come for you. There is nowhere you hide I cannot find you."

Clayton looked at Ruben.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Probably. Why don't you tell me on the way?"

Clayton nodded. "Anything you want to say to him, Nadia?"

She had been staring at him wildly while Clayton and Ruben debated their course of action. It was beginning to make sense – all those things the government had said she had done to help Boyevik, the evidence they said they'd had; she had really done those things, really helped him but without ever knowing it, always in a drugged up dream, acting remotely under his instructions. And then the blackouts... the hangovers... the lost hours that the doctors couldn't explain.

"Is there anything you want to say to him?" Clayton repeated himself.

"Sure," she said with cold rage. "I have just one word for this piece of shit."

Boyevik looked at her, waiting, the smile never leaving his face.

"Speak to me, Nadia. What is your word?" he said.

She put her hand onto his forehead, pushed his head back, and looked into his eyes.

"Scopolamine," she enunciated it slowly and clearly and then held up the pack they had taken from Mitch. For the first time, a look of fear came into the old man's eyes.

"I hope you enjoy it as much as I did," she said and began to unwrap the pack.

Boyevik began struggling wildly.

"I will tell you!" he started to shout desperately. "I will tell everything, all of your blackouts, your lost days and hours. I leave nothing out.

Clayton held back his head with one hand while Nadia removed the cotton wool from his nose.

"There are things you don't even know about yourself, Nadia, that only I can tell you."

She began to unwrap the pack slowly while Boyevik blew furiously to try and disperse the powder before they could use it on him. He was wasting his breath. Ruben pushed his chin up to keep his mouth closed and then waited as the old man held his breath. When he finally exhaled, desperate for air, Nadia held the terrifying drug beneath his nose and watched him inhale deeply.

Within seconds, the fear had gone from his eyes and his whole body relaxed into a scopolamine dream.

Clayton and Ruben released him.

"Now, Mikhail," Nadia said, wiping tears of anguish from her cheeks. "Time to spill your guts, Devil's Breath-style."

He smiled at her like a kindly old man.

"Ask anything," he said in his accented English. "I tell you all you want to know."

### Chapter Eleven

Ruben saw to it that Michael Boyevik was fully apprised of the hopelessness of his situation before they left him on the bare rock jutting out of the sea that would be his home in perpetuity. He would spend the rest of his days on an island as close to the so-called Pacific Pole of Inaccessibility as it was possible to get on dry land. Ruben had maintained a private island there for some years and this was a small satellite some kilometers distant that pertained to the property. They were almost smack in the middle of an area of ocean larger than the entire former Soviet Union. There were no mobile phone carrier signals for thousands of miles around.

There would be no escape.

As they prepared to leave him, he had finally lost control and begun to scream at them, begging them to kill him rather than leave him there forever, but he had misjudged them. There wasn't a bone in any of their bodies that would put another human being to death in cold blood. At the same time, none of them intended to spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders waiting for revenge to come at them from one of his paid hit-men.

He would be looked after for as long as it took by Ruben and Clayton's staff on the main island. He would want for much, but he would survive and come to no harm.

Nadia had never felt less sympathy towards another person's pain in her life and she prayed never to see the man's face again in this world. Despite what he had told her about her life and about her past, she had no misgivings about leaving him there.

Once they arrived back at the main island, they transferred to a private jet with range enough to bring them to Melbourne, Australia. When they reached cruising altitude, Nadia and Clayton went to the private quarters of the plane where Clayton lay down on the floor, overcome for the first time with relief and exhaustion.

Finally, it was all over.

Nadia went to the cabin window for one last look at the island and its satellite as they disappeared into the vastness of the South Pacific Ocean. Then she joined Clayton on the floor, lying down next to him in the luxurious bedroom suite, thirty thousand feet in the air. She tilted her head to lean it against the man who lay next to her and he reached his hand down to close it around hers.

She lay for a moment before rolling over on top of him and locking her lips to his, and then burying her head to his neck to release the tears that had been welling up inside her for days, maybe years, maybe even a whole lifetime.

Clayton held her without a word, as strong as ever, absorbing her pain into the strength of his powerful body.

When she had finished with her tears, she raised her head and looked at the man who had changed her life inside and out in just a matter of short, intense days.

His dark eyes watched her, waiting for her to fully open to him, accepting everything and anything that might come.

"Is it really over?" she asked him.

He nodded his head and smiled.

"It's all over. He's gone. No jail in the United States of America could prevent him from reaching us, but on that island, he's alone and he'll stay that way for the rest of his life. We'll take care of him. It's more than he deserves, trust me."

"What about his organization? His men?"

"What about them? We let them go, paid them off, none of them owe any allegiance to him. If they dare come anywhere near you, I'll make them regret it for the rest of their lives and they know it. You're safe now. Nadia Komerov can be Nadia Komerov again – no more lies, no more secrets."

A surge of emotion threatened to overcome her again.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I know it must be hard, after everything that Boyevik told you. It'll take time to learn to live with that, but we have time now and you'll get all the help you need, the very best therapists, the very best doctors."

"Will I ever remember any of those things though? All those things he made me do when I worked for him?"

"We'll get the very best help that money can buy, Nadia. It's all we can do."

"And my mother..."

Clayton lowered his eyes. Even with all his money and power, there were still so many things beyond his capability to do and it ate at him, shamed him to think of it.

He shook his head.

"It doesn't look good," he said. "The scans don't show any permanent damage but still she can't recall much. The doctors think it may be age, too many doses of scopolamine over too long a period of time. We have to accept her as she is right now, and you have to remember her as she was. She'll get the best of care, the very best. We'll see to it that she's as happy as she can possibly be."

It was a hard reality to swallow, but since she had been freed from Boyevik's power, her mother had shown no sign of being able to recall anything that had happened to her since she had disappeared four years ago. Under the influence of scopolamine, Boyevik had been unclear about her mother. He denied the use of any drugs on her and claimed she was with him because she wanted to be. None of it made any sense. The truth-revealing qualities of scopolamine had their limits, according to Ruben; some things were buried too deeply or were lost to the mind in the state of confusion induced by the drug.

She herself had been induced to carry stolen information back and forth to criminals and spies, betraying her country, unbeknownst to herself. It was hard for her to bear, especially as she had spent so long denying it to those who wanted to bend her to their will. Now she would have the job of explaining to them what had happened and hoped she would be believed or that it would make any difference.

"So what do I go back to now?" she said. "Now that you know everything about me, my real name, how I got to be in the mess you found me in, my secret life. Does this mean you're not interested in me anymore?"

He put a hand to her cheek, then ran his fingers through her hair before cradling the back of her head in his palm.

"You're good at talking, Nadia Komerov, but someone really needs to teach you how to listen. Now for once in your life, pay attention to me while I say something to you."

She nodded her head and felt her heart pound against the muscular chest below her.

"You're a mystery to me no matter how much I know about you."

She began to shake her head but he steadied it in his hand.

"Don't turn away from me. Listen to me. Look at me. You're a greater mystery to me now than you ever were when I first laid eyes on you. So you pay attention to me: I don't care what you say or what you do, I'm going to be looking after you from now on, for the rest of your life. One way or the other. You can accept this like a lady, or run from it like a little girl, it's up to you, but the bottom line is that you dragged me into this world of yours and I just about got myself killed dragging you out of it. So you owe me."

"You are stone-cold crazy," she said, inexplicable, irrepressible laughter beginning to rise through her.

"You can snigger all you want, but you won't be laughing soon. I am going to ask you one single question and I want a straight answer."

She was still trying to hold in the laughter as he searched inside the pocket of his jeans and then, when he found what he was looking for, he raised it to eye level between them.

It was a ring. A simple band with a small but very precious pink diamond.

Nadia began to shake her head again, laughter replaced with tears.

"Will you, Nadia Komerov..." he paused, the lightest of smiles on his gorgeous lips, the darkest intensity in his deep set eyes, "stop being such a damn fool..." choked laughter in Nadia's throat, "and give in to me, for the love of God, and be my wife?"

Still shaking her head in disbelief from side to side, she responded.

"Clayton Hargrave, you bossy, arrogant, and gorgeous man from heaven, will you give in to _me_ and put that damn ring on my finger? Because yes, once and for all, I give in to you. I finally do."

"At last."

"And from now on, you better listen to every goddamn word I say because you are mine," she said.

They smiled, laughed, locked lips, and then Clayton rolled them over, lifted her up like a princess and took her to the huge bed behind them.

Tenderly, he brought her to the edge and then unceremoniously flung her down causing her to squeak like a girl in surprise.

"Get ready, Mrs. Hargrave-to-be, because I'm about to show you who's boss."

"Fuck yeah," Nadia breathed huskily. "But I'm keeping my name, you can change yours if you want. So come on, Hargrave, I'm ready and waiting, give it your best damn shot."

*******************

After some R&R in Australia, the couple at last found their way back to New York City where a reunion was in order. Although Dale and Ruben had their suspicions that something was up, they still couldn't quite believe the change in Clayton. He had called them together with a small group of select friends to a gathering at the penthouse floor of the iconic New York building which now housed Hargrave Robotics Inc. on Central Park. The view of Manhattan was breathtaking and the dusting of snowfall on the skyscrapers made it all the more wonderful.

When Clayton and Nadia entered holding hands, Dale's mouth dropped open and Ruben arched an eyebrow.

"Holding hands?" Dale said. "Did you keep some of that Devil's Breath, Nadia? Or do you have a price on his head with the Ukrainian mafia?"

"Maybe it's Clayton who kept the Devil's Breath," Ruben said. "I might need to take that woman into protective custody for her own good. I'm not sure a man like Clayton can be trusted with a woman of Nadia Komerov's exquisite beauty, charm, and high intelligence."

Clayton held up his hand with Nadia's held tightly inside.

"Back off Siegfried and Roy, this one's mine."

"I beg to differ," Ruben said. "Until a woman has said I do then she's up for grabs. Isn't that right Ms. Komerov."

"I fully agree, Ruben," Nadia said. "Which is why this girl is no longer 'up for grabs' as you put it."

The small group exchanged momentary glances and then rose as one to congratulate the happy couple. One by one, each close friend warmly embraced the glowing Nadia and the quietly content Mr. Clayton Hargrave.

"I'd never have believed it," Ruben said as he leaned in to kiss Nadia on the cheek. "And if you ever change your mind," he smiled mischievously, "I'm always interested in women who are as strikingly beautiful and intellectually accomplished as you."

"I'll keep it in mind," she replied.

"And I'll break your jaw," Clayton smiled, "If I ever hear you say that again."

When they had all resumed their seats, Clayton turned to Ruben.

"Don't we have a little surprise for Nadia, Ruben? Courtesy of Mayweather Services?" he said.

"Of course we do. Give me just a moment."

"What's this all about?" Nadia asked.

"Just wait," Clayton said, taking her hand.

A moment later, Ruben arrived back and led someone into the room. Nadia covered her mouth in shock and then jumped from her seat to run towards her friend.

"Nadia, thank God. You have no idea how worried I was about you," Suzy said.

"Suzy, my God, Suzy I'm so sorry." Nadia was nearly overcome with emotion. It had been years since she had seen her closest friend and had hesitated before contacting her. The story she had to tell was so bizarre, so crazy. Where would she even begin?

"I'm so, so sorry," she continued, despite her friend's protestations. "I just didn't want to drag you into this with me. But it's all over now."

"You should have called me, baby, you know I'd do anything for you. I could've helped you," Suzy said.

"Don't argue, please, not now. It's all over and nothing like this will ever happen again – thanks to these wonderful men here. I owe everything to them. Anything I can give back to these guys is theirs," she said, turning to them. "Not that there's much I can offer three billionaires of course."

"I don't know about that," Ruben said. "I can think of at least one thing right now that I don't have, that I very much want, and only you can give me – if you're really as grateful as you say you are."

"Anything," Nadia said instantly.

"Really? Anything at all?" Ruben gave one of his mysteriously sexy smiles.

"Ruben, I'm warning you," Clayton said, sending a stern look Ruben's way.

Nadia glanced at Clayton and then hastened to qualify her offer.

"Anything in my power to give you. Within reason of course," she said.

Ruben looked back at Clayton, undeterred.

"Okay," he said. "In that case, I have a very special, personal favor to ask of you, Ms. Komerov."

The tension in the room was beginning to build. Clayton looked fit to burst and Dale wasn't far behind. Suzy looked like she was suppressing rage, but Nadia, in her gratitude to the three men and in her joy at being reunited with her best friends, remained totally oblivious.

"Ask away," she said happily.

"I'm warning you, Ruben," Clayton repeated.

"Don't worry, Romeo, I wouldn't dare ask anything inappropriate of your bride-to-be. Besides, this is none of your business." He directed himself to Nadia again. "You'll grant me anything I ask that is within your power, which is within reason, and which the beast over there approves of. Is that correct?"

"Absolutely correct," she answered. "But why do I suddenly get the feeling I'm about to regret just saying that?"

"Because it's what he does best, Nadia." Dale joined in. "Don't you trust a word he says."

"Don't listen to them," Ruben said. "Here is my request." He turned and took Suzy by the hand and looked into her eyes. "I want this one," he said with an intensity that made the woman take a sharp breath in. As ludicrous as the request was, still the directness and absolute cocksure confidence were literally breathtaking.

Nadia looked at her girlfriend, noted the look of shock, and then smiled at Ruben.

"She's yours," she said. "Wish granted."

"Excellent," Ruben said, slipping a hand around Suzy's slim waist.

"Not so fast." Dale who had been quietly seething, rose to his feet and stopped within inches of Ruben, glaring into his face. "Don't forget that you owe me too, Nadia, and I have a request as well. That beautiful woman that the Lizard King has his paws all over is mine."

Nadia shrugged her shoulders and looked at her friend.

"Ball's in your court, Suzy. I owe you some pretty big favors too. If you want either of these two clowns then they're yours. Just remember to be careful what you wish for. Especially with these guys."

Suzy looked at the two impossibly good-looking and impeccably dressed men. One the incarnation of suave sophistication, the other the epitome of rugged, manly good looks.

It was surreal.

"That's right," Nadia said, watching her friend's bewildered expression. "Welcome to _my_ world."

### Epilogue

Clayton walked down the corridor of the private care facility to the luxury accommodation he had arranged for Louise Komerov. Nadia was by his side. She had been visiting her mother twice daily since her return from Australia, but at times she wasn't even sure if her mother knew who she was.

She had just spent the morning catching up with Suzy. Her friend was working through some trauma of her own that she had come close to talking about today and it was still on her mind, but she wanted to stick to the plan of telling her mother the news of her engagement. Maybe, just maybe, the frail woman could share in the joy of her daughter finding love and being free from the long shadows of her old life. Once she had spent some time with her then she would return immediately to Suzy and pick up where they had left off.

She knocked gently on the door and then let herself in.

Her mother was sitting up in bed watching a daytime soap on TV. She smiled happily at her daughter without any trace of recognition.

"Hi, Momma, it's me, Nadia, your daughter."

Louise continued to smile absently, nodded her head aimlessly.

Nadia sat down on the bed next her and took her mother's hands into her own.

"I have some news, Mom," she said.

"Is that right, honey? I hope it's good news."

"It sure is. Do you see this ring?"

Louise nodded her head.

"It's a beautiful ring. Are you getting married, honey?"

Nadia swallowed hard. Maybe she would get through to her today, even just the tiniest moment of recognition would do.

"I sure am, and to the kindest, most beautiful man in the world. In fact, he's right outside. Would you like to meet him?"

Louise looked into her daughter's eyes for a long moment without saying a word.

The smile had left her face.

"What's wrong, momma? Is everything okay?"

"Come here, honey," she said with an authority that sounded nothing like the woman Nadia had been visiting for days. "Put your arms around me."

Nadia leaned in and felt her mother's breath close to her ear. A thousand small memories came back in an instant. She had embraced her mother every day since her return but never at the old lady's request. This was new and it meant hope. Nadia felt tears of joy come to her eyes.

"Save those tears, Nadia," Louise said in a soft comforting voice.

It was the first time she had said her daughter's name.

"Momma, you know who I am?" Nadia whispered.

"Of course I do," She said, squeezing her daughter tightly. "I have all along."

Nadia felt her breath freeze in her throat.

"I can't keep this up any longer." She held her daughter tightly but Nadia began to push herself free.

"Don't push me away. I had to do it. I was afraid to say anything. I had to know he was gone, that we were safe."

"What are you talking about?"

"I've never taken that drug, the one they keep asking me about."

Nadia pushed the frail old lady away at last.

"Momma, stop talking like this. What's going on?"

"My memory is just fine. I remember everything and I have a lot to tell you."

Nadia shook her head in fear, in disbelief.

"Momma, I don't understand."

"But first I have to tell you about him."

"About who? Tell me. Anything. Everything."

"About him. Mikhail. Mikhail Boyevik. The man you hate so much for everything he's done to you... he's not who you think he is."

"Stop talking. You're not well. You're imagining things. I'll call for a nurse."

Nadia reached for the call button next the bed, but Louise stopped her with surprising force for her age.

"I'm fine, Nadia. Now listen to me. I don't know what you've done with Mikhail, but whatever it is, I hope it was permanent because you really don't know who that man is."

"I don't want to know. I know more about him already than I ever wanted to."

"Did I ever tell you about your father?"

Nadia shook her head rapidly from side to side.

"No. Don't say it, Mom. I don't want to hear that. I don't need to hear that right now."

"I've got to tell you, honey, before you get married, you have to know who Mikhail is. You can't say yes to that man out there until you know this. Then you have to tell him too. It's only fair to let him make his mind up on this too. Mikhail Boyevik isn't who you think he is. You're not who you think you are..."

Nadia put her hand over her mother's mouth and looked at the door behind her. Clayton was standing just outside. Her lover, her protector, the man who had saved her from herself. But would he be able to save her from this? Would he even want to?

### END OF BOOK ONE

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### Book Two - The Billionaire's Request

Sample Chapter

### Prologue

_Yes._ She thought. _Yes you bastard, I've got you now._

She pushed her ass back against him and for a second she was sure she heard a stifled moan, but quickly the tables turned as his hands began to slide sensually down her arms, then to her hips, before coming together at her lower abdomen, his fingers reaching tantalizingly down to her pubic mound before separating again to rise up underneath her full breasts, causing her nipples to harden further to the point of pain.

"Fuuuuck." She hissed out slowly, uncontrollably. His hands stopped moving instantly.

"Shhh." He blew into her ear, making it even worse for her. "This is your reward for being a good girl. Don't spoil it or there will be punishment as well."

Something in her wanted to know what that punishment would be, something in her suddenly wanted the punishment more than the reward.

### Chapter One

Suzy listened to the rhythmic thudding of her feet in the sand below. The beach was still empty despite the time of year and the time of day. It was one reason she loved it so much \- guaranteed solitude. And today of all days, she needed it.

The tide was out and as she rounded the last bluff her rented beachfront apartment came into view. The North Oregon coastline had become a place of refuge for her in the years since she had moved there.

Redmond, her Golden Retriever, raced along the shoreline barking at the waves and then snaked over towards her as she headed up the steps to her apartment. She stopped briefly to take a look around. There wasn't a single person on her side of the bluff.

"Perfect." She murmured and then jumped for cover as Redmond raced up the steps, shaking off sand and salt water in all directions.

"Redmond! Redmond, no!" She screamed and ran into the house. "Stay outside boy, until you dry off a little.

She went to the kitchen area and opened the refrigerator door. There wasn't much inside but there was soy milk and fresh fruit for her protein smoothie. It would have to do for lunch until she could get to the market, but first she needed to catch up on her work. She fixed the smoothie, her specialty of cacao, spinach leaves, banana and avocado, and was heading to the shower when a call came through at her work desk. A picture of her client Katy Maldon came up on the screen and she felt relieved. She always did when Katy - or rather Nadia - her friend's former name - called. She was a valuable client but also her oldest friend and in their line of work friends were a rare commodity.

She took the call on her cell phone and flopped into an armchair - one of the perks of working from home - just as Redmond came bounding into the living room.

"What's going on?" She said, with Redmond's loud barking in the background.

"Information." Was the reply. It was enough to let Suzy know that things were serious. One of the first thing Nadia did with any new client was a background check. Suzy was a little disappointed but at least it would mean money and she sure as hell could do with some of that.

"Who is it?" She said, getting in front of her massive work station. The four panel display of 24 inch monitors wouldn't have look out of place on a financial trading floor.

"Clayton Hargrave."

"Of Hargrave Robotics?"

"You've heard of him?"

"Who hasn't?" She turned to her dog who was still barking. "Pipe down Redmond, I'm speaking here." Redmond immediately went quiet. He knew not to interfere in his owner's business. She turned back to her phone. "Not everyone lives like a hermit you know. Are you going to be working with him?"

"Come on, you know better than that. No details. Just get me whatever you can on him and then send it via the usual channel."

"Ouch. No problem boss." She said with a twang of playful sarcasm. "Did you run out of coffee this morning or something?"

"You could say that."

"Hmmm, mysterious as always. Don't sweat it boss, I'll have information within the hour. Just hang tight."

"I'm not tight." Nadia said defensively.

"Uh... whatever. I'll be in touch. Look, just remember, stay low, stay clean--"

"Leave no trace, I know, I know. Don't worry. Call me when you have something."

The call ended abruptly without even a hint of a goodbye. It was something Suzy had gotten used to. She let a lot of things slide for old time's sake, a lot more because she couldn't imagine what the stress of living like a dead person must be like. Sometimes it got to her as well, especially when mutual acquaintances talked about what a great girl Nadia _had_ been and speculated as to what had happened to her.

The two women went back a long way and Suzy was the only person from her friend's old life who knew for sure that she was still alive. 'Stay low. Stay clean. Leave no trace.' That was their mantra now. They had grown up together, studied together, they had been the only two girls in a class of over one hundred socially challenged male engineers together. After graduation Nadia had gone into design of high-tech surveillance equipment while Suzy had found a way to pursue her interest in ethical hacking and ultimately earn a living from it. The problem was that sometimes the 'ethical' in ethical hacking put her on the wrong side of the law. It was getting harder and harder to be both honest and law abiding at the same time.

However, with her friend Nadia, she didn't have to think. If she needed it then she would do her level best to get whatever information she wanted and so she set to work right away. Whatever could be found legally through the usual channels, the internet, public records, etc, she had automated on her computer via programs she had written herself. She set the wheels in motion and headed to the shower. By the time she had returned just minutes later she already had pretty much everything the internet could tell you about Clayton Hargrave.

She went through the information looking for any what she called 'rabbit holes', meaning red flags that would suggest something worth digging into. She paged through hundreds of pictures and articles about Clayton Hargrave and his brother Dale with various news sources running in the background on her wide display of computer monitors. Suzy had no problem multi-tasking and liked to keep abreast of world events with CNN, Fox, Euronews, France 24 and Aljazeera running all at the same time.

"Who the hell is this guy?" She mumbled to herself as she stroked Redmond's head. The golden retriever had quietly crept his way across the living room floor and was currying favor after his misdemeanors by resting his head on her knee.

In almost every picture of the Hargrave brothers online they were accompanied by an equally striking, tall, dark and handsome man of about their own age. Sometimes he was standing shoulder to shoulder with them as though he was part of their organization, sometimes he was far off behind or out in the periphery, but it was rare that he wasn't around. Even in many of the tabloid pictures of the brothers with their many socialite girlfriends he was often there and never in the company of a woman.

"Maybe he's their hot gay bodyguard." She muttered to herself. Still, something about him suggested 'rabbit hole' material, so she clicked open her facial recognition software and then watched as the mysterious man's face flashed rapidly across the screen from every possible angle as her customized programs sifted the World Wide Web. One picture stopped abruptly in front of her and she glanced down at her hands to see that she had clicked to halt the program by accident. The picture was a full screen headshot of the man and filled the entire central monitor on her screen.

Looking back up at it she sat back and then opened her mouth in rapt amazement, gazing at the larger than life portrait. This guy wasn't just good-looking, he was perfect. If he was truly gay then it would be a tragedy for every straight woman in America.

"Wow." She whispered. "Just who in the hell are you?"

Clayton and Dale were magazine model material, unfairly good-looking for people so successful and wealthy, but the mystery man had a depth and gravitas that she had rarely seen in any man, saving perhaps the occasional head of state \- except that heads of state were never as hot as this.

"You're a mystery now superhot guy, but not for long. Suzy Falstaff always gets her man." Redmond began licking her thigh to get her attention. He wasn't happy being completely ignored, especially not for some guy on a computer screen.

"Redmond! I've already told you boy, you aren't supposed to be in here, go on, get, into the kitchen. You still have sand and... oh my God, seaweed all over you." The dog slunk away and she turned back to her screen. The program continued running in the background but she remained looking at that one picture.

It reminded her of something but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

She looked around the room and then over to her bedroom door. The room inside was pristine. She liked to keep everything tidy and in its place, particularly there.

_Not that anyone ever sees the inside of the damn place._ She thought and then shook her head.

"Focus Suzy." She looked back to the screen and to the oversized headshot still in front of her. The man's dark eyes were captivating. He had just the lightest of five o'clock shadows in this particular shot and his dark hair was lightly tousled by the wind.

"What I wouldn't do to you if I got the chance." She murmured. There was a yelp from the kitchen. Redmond was on the very edge of the threshold, watching her with miserable hound dog eyes.

"Don't worry baby." She said to him. "It's only a man, he's not worth it and besides, when was the last time you saw one of those around here?"

The dog barked happily in response.

"If only they could be as simple and reliable as dogs." She said as Redmond wagged his tail furiously, anticipating some kind of affection. "But a girl can dream, right?" She looked at Redmond who stopped wagging his tail. Sometimes she was sure her mutt could speak English. She looked back to the screen, allowing the program to finish, and basked in the gaze of this being from the highest professional leagues of good looks, far, far beyond her grasp.

"God." She whispered. "Imagine having those eyes look at you in the morning and say: I love you, I want you, now I'm going to fu--"

Her attention was diverted away to the panel on her screen running CNN.

"What the hell?" She turned up the sound to hear a recent ongoing story about some jackass football player who had been the victim of a sting operation. The guy had been caught with hookers and cocaine but for some bizarre reason he was blaming Katy Maldon for his troubles.

'What I do in my own time is nobody else's business. Hell, most of what I'm being accused of is legal somewhere in the world or even right here in the USA. I even paid good money to this so called privacy specialist Katy Maldon to keep my name out of the press but instead she set me up.'

'The woman you paid to keep your illegal activities secret set you up?' The reporter asked.

'Yeah, sure, maybe. I mean, I'm not accusing her, but I'll make damn sure she pays if it was her. And no I don't do illegal stuff God damn it. Stop making me say things I don't want to.'

The young man looked like he was still on something but there was no mistaking the clear reference to her friend.

"This is not good. Oh no Katy Maldon, this is not good at all..."

She tried dialing her friend on their secure line but there was no answer.

'Katy Maldon,' the football star continued, 'don't waste your money on her. She was supposed to keep it all secret, I could do anything I wanted and none of you media snakes would ever know about it. That's right, if you're thinking about hiring someone to keep your name out of the press then don't call her. Katy Maldon. Hell, she's the one you should be talking to, the things that woman gets up to are waaaay more illegal than consenting,' he turned to the camera to emphasize the word, ' _consenting_ adults having a little party together. Hey, if you're watching Katy, did you like the little visit from the cops you got today? Up there in the woods outside of Lovett, Maine? That's right baby, I know where you live.'

The man's minders bundled him away into a waiting people carrier and the reporter came into shot.

'There you have it. Troubled ex-football player Jack Patterson in trouble with the authorities again and this time bizarrely blaming hitherto unknown female accomplice Katy Maldon for his indiscretions--'

Suzy muted the channel and got to work. Her friend was in trouble. Big trouble. First she would find out everything she could about the Hargraves. Then she would find out whatever she could on the mystery third guy. In the meantime she would keep trying to get in touch with Nadia to give her the heads up she needed about her assumed identity becoming unusable. Katy Maldon, Privacy Specialist, was no more.

Hell, if things got out of hand and they produced pictures of her then the FBI, NSA and of course her old friends in the Russian Mafia, Mikhail Boyevik and Co. would be all over the town of Lovett, Maine like hair on a Wookie.

This was a crisis and idle fantasies of hot, powerful mystery men in her bed would have to be put on hold. Friendship and business come first and second - lusting over superhot, unattainable guys, a very distant third.

END OF SAMPLE

To continue reading download The Billionaire's Request right now!
Other Books by Drew Sinclair

Tamed by Him

The Billionaire's Desire: Book One

The Billionaire's Request: Book Two

The Billionaire's Strict Requirement: Book Three

Tamed by Him - The Complete Collection

Scandalous Billionaires

Scandalous: Book One

Outrageous: Book Two

Totally Inappropriate: Book Three

Scandalous Billionaires - The Complete Collection

Disgraceful Billionaires

Disgraceful: Book One

Deplorable: Book Two

Totally Unacceptable: Book Three

Disgraceful Billionaires - The Complete Collection

Resisting the Billionaire Series

Teased: Book One

Tempted: Book Two

Tamed: Book Three

Resisting the Billionaire - The Complete Collection

### About Drew

Drew is a Contemporary Romance Fiction Writer leading a glamorous life of international hi-jinks virtually indistinguishable from the those of the characters in this book. When not writing romance or flying high above the world involved in some daft caper, Drew is hanging out with family, doing yoga, writing something else or just standing in the middle of the room staring happily into the middle distance.

### Connect with Drew

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