Awakened (16 page)

He tapped the laptop he’d brought. “The stuff we need to be working on is in here.”

“I have a flash drive. Copy it and transfer it to my laptop so I can have a separate record and analyze it if you’re not here.”

His dark gaze moved quickly to where she pointed. His reply was blunt and immediate. “That thing? No way.”

“It’s encrypted—” she started to say.

“Barrett, if I didn’t personally do the encryption, I don’t trust it. And no system on earth is 100 percent safe from attack. Unless you want a blast of malware to shred your hard drive—and some character getting his jollies reading your files—you use a throwaway laptop with a dead-end URL.”

“With everything you’ve told me, I don’t need a tech lecture right now.”

“I think with everything I’ve told you, you’d want to focus on any mundane fact you can.”

True. She stuck her tongue out at him.

His brows lifted. “Don’t tempt me. Not yet. I’d love nothing more than to strip you naked and forget about everything else, but I think you’re going to want to hear what else I have to say.”

“Okay, fine.” She made a wrap-it-up gesture with one hand, not wanting to admit how much she wanted to be in his arms, as well. “So you only trust your laptop. I get it.”

“Yep. Only problem is this thing takes a little while to warm up,” he informed her.

If he meant to be deliberately annoying, it was working.

His grin told her he knew it was true. It also told her he was trying to keep her calm. Focused. She appreciated that more than he could ever know.

He clicked open the lid of the laptop. It did look like an old one. “The information this contains comes from the NSA. Guaranteed to be true, accurate, and relevant to your investigation. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

A huge rush made her heart hammer because she knew he was speaking the truth. It hit her then. This was a man she could trust. She’d known she could trust him with Jane. Hell, with her life. Why couldn’t she trust him with her heart? With everything he’d just told her, including the fact that her friends might be—that they might be—

She closed her eyes, refusing to think that way.

The point was, life was crazy. To survive it, she had to grasp on to whatever she could regardless of the risk. That meant when she found a man who made her body sing when he touched her and her heart jump with joy just at the sound of his voice, she should grab him and hold tight rather than letting fear drive her away. “Now, I want you—” he started.

She threw herself at him, causing him to stumble slightly before he caught her. Wrapping her arms around him, she kissed him with a loud smack and hugged him firmly. “Thank you, Nick. Thank you for always being there for me.”

The strong hands that encompassed her upper arms held her fast for an unbearable moment. Then his fingers stroked her skin. Barrett wanted to melt. His head bent to hers, his gaze serious and intense.

There were no other words. Just a sensation of nearness that blew her mind. She swayed in his gentle grip, taking a half step forward to balance herself. The move brought her close to his thighs. Nick drew her even closer. His belt buckle—army issue, flat metal, pressed against her middle, bare under the loose top. Everything that rounded out his worn zipper said hello and got hard as she leaned into him.

The denim held the heat. She kicked off her slippers and stood on tiptoe to make the most of that fine erection. Nick pulled her against his chest, looking into her eyes one more time, sweeping her hair back over her shoulders, sliding a hand around the curve of her waist. Shamelessly, Barrett rubbed her breasts against him, her nipples instantly taut with the sensual friction.

Then he kissed her. His soft tongue ran between her lips, then opened them. She tipped her head back, sliding her hands into his thick, dark hair, wild for what only he knew how to do. No one could kiss better than Nick Maltese. Deep, slow thrusts. Pulling back. A nip on the earlobe. Then another. A soothing lick and a tug with just his lips, taking the whole earlobe into his mouth, teasing it.

Then more kissing. She writhed with pleasure. It had only been two days. Not that long. But unbearable without him nonetheless. Barrett gave in completely.

Until Nick stopped all of a sudden. He held her flushed face between his hands, then let her go completely. He was breathing hard.

“I want to, angel. Believe me, I want to, but let me tell you what I found first. I don’t want to be right in the middle of things when you remember Jane, okay?” When she didn’t answer, he shook her slightly and stared deeply into her eyes. “Okay?”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Of course. I just had to tell you. Had to show you …”

She bit her lip, hesitating, and he cupped her cheek.

“I know. Me, too. And I’ll tell you more. I’ll show you more. As soon as I get you up to date and the moment’s right. I promise.”

She butted her cheek into his palm one last time and whispered, “Okay,” before stepping back. She took a deep breath, pushed back her hair, and said, “Tell me.”

The white room was the same, except that it had stopped moving. The rumble of traffic had stopped, too.

Jane felt different. She had slept, she knew that. There was no mirror, but she could feel the puffiness in her face she got when she’d conked out for hours.

The strange dreams she’d had still hovered at the edge of her mind.

Silent women dressed in outfits like maids’ uniforms had undressed her, commenting on how skinny she was and how undeveloped.

Malcolm would say she dreamed that because she was anxious and conflicted about the developmental stages of adolescence. And then assure her that she was perfectly normal, just right in his professional opinion, quote unquote. Keeping that creepy smile on his face until his eyes glazed over.

She wasn’t anxious about crap like that. Some girls she knew had been granted their three magic wishes by Mom and Dad and a plastic surgeon: giant boobs and weird little noses and butt-cheek implants to fill out their seven-hundred-dollar jeans.

Jane had only ever wished to be even thinner than she was. So thin she could slip under a door. So she could get away. Where to, she didn’t know.

She looked down at what she had on, realizing that the dream had been real enough. Her torn dress was gone. It had been replaced by a chemise made of flimsy plain fabric, almost see-through, trimmed with lace that itched.

Her underwear was gone, too. She wore bras just to keep the nipple maniacs in homeroom from staring at her nearly flat chest. But the lightly padded one she’d had on had been taken away by the women. Her panties were nowhere in sight.

After she and Dante had been separated, she sort of remembered her panties being dragged off and down her thighs. She had tried to fight back. Then one of the women had pressed a cloth over her nose and mouth. So much for that.

They had left her some food. A sandwich cut in quarters, mayonnaisey glop on soft white bread. Ugh.

But she did feel weak. She would eat some. Just to keep up her strength in case a door ever opened in the seamless plastic walls. Jane took a small bite and set the quarter sandwich back on the plate. No cutlery, she noticed.

A vague recollection about getting a lecture on the subject of not hurting herself came back to her. It wasn’t allowed. A man had told her that. He had some kind of accent. She hadn’t seen him—well, she had seen his eyes.

On a little screen, high up in the wall. That was gone, too.

Where in the fucking fuck was she? Shit. She was totally fucked.

She never should have gone with Dante at night, never should have told him to follow Malcolm to that crummy club where he drooled over girls half his age wearing nothing but teeny G-strings. Her guardian was even creepier when he was off the chain. She’d snuck in by herself one night and watched from backstage. And he thought no one knew.

Jane had intended to take pictures and post them online, then tell Ginny. The revenge had backfired. Someone had grabbed her. Dante had tried stop it, but others had moved in to take care of him. She’d blacked out and then …

Jane crossed her legs just in case some voyeur—she’d found the word in Malcolm’s
Encyclopedia of Sexual Dysfunction
—was looking up her chemise. Staying in the sleeping alcove, she leaned back on her palms, troubled by a different memory. Before she’d ended up in this box.

There had been another woman. Not in uniform. In one of those things that jacked up women’s boobs super high, with a ton of hair and red fish lips that looked like a gallon of collagen had been pumped into them.

She’d shoved Jane around, pushed her in front of a video camera on a tripod. Told her to say something.

Jane had refused to cooperate. Then something else had happened. She’d seen someone she knew on a screen in back of the camera, but only for a few seconds. She closed her eyes, willing the memory to return. Her mind was a blank.

A collapsing sound made her open her eyes. The floor of an empty alcove was sinking. The surface of the walls changed, opening up into pores that oozed water. It was a bath. Hot and steamy.

She was sore all over from sleeping on a hard surface. She didn’t care who might be looking.

Jane stared down into the bubbling water, wondering if it would overflow when she stepped into it. There didn’t seem to be a drain.

She peeled off the chemise and tossed it onto the floor, then lifted her hair and tied it in a thick knot. One foot in. Then the other. Jane squatted down.

The foaming, surging water felt amazing. She splashed some over her shoulders, feeling it trickle down her spine and into the water that circulated around her, up to her waist.

The walls of the bath changed shape again, lengthening in one direction and widening in the other. She could actually lie down if she wanted to. Even float.

Cautiously, she extended her legs and sat. Then she lay back. The knot in her hair came loose and her hair floated free, weightless in the water.

She arched her neck, letting the water cover her ears, listening to the bubbles pop. There was a rumbling sound. After a few seconds, she understood that it was a voice and lifted her head out of the water.

“Jane.”

It was the same man who’d spoken to her the first time. The one with the angry eyes. She sank down until the words became rumbles again.

Louder this time.

Fuck it. Fuck him. Jane forced her entire body under the surging water, held her breath until the tip of her nose was under it, too. The water covered her eyes. Death spa, she thought, almost cheerfully. It wouldn’t be a bad way to go.

The water gurgled, sucked back into the walls almost instantly.

Jane sat up, angry at herself.

There was only the man’s voice this time. Not the screen with his eyes. Maybe it was busted.

“You can’t drown yourself. You can’t hurt yourself in any way.”

She said nothing. There had to be a way. She wanted him to burst through these goddamn walls. She needed something to slash them with. Slash herself while she was at it. Blood would be a relief from the glaring white.

“What a little peach you are. We wouldn’t want to bruise you.”

She stood and grabbed the chemise, using it to dry herself. Then she looked up. The screen was working now. His gaze was frightening. Hard. Intense. Cold.

Jane bit her lip, hard. She was cold but she refused to shiver. She went back to the sleeping alcove and lay down, her back to the eyes.

Somehow, some way, she was going to break free. Another memory, not the one she’d strained to recall, came back. And not the unknown woman.

Her mother.

Weak but alive. Talking to Jane with the last of her strength, trying to reason with her. Unless Jane was hallucinating her voice to drown out the one emanating from the wall.

Jane, listen to me. Please listen. If something bad ever happens, I won’t be there to come get you and bring you home. You have to take care of yourself. You’ll have Ginny and Malcolm, but—

She had broken off, grabbing an oxygen mask, breathing it in from the tank by her bed. What about them? Jane had asked.

Never mind. Just remember that I love you. Remember when life was good. Hold on to that. Hold on to your memory of me—

The man’s voice broke in. “I don’t like being ignored, Jane. And soon, you won’t have any choice but to give me every ounce of your attention.”

The sly menace in his voice sickened her. She refused to look at his eyes. Prying. Watching. Judging. Let him watch, then. She didn’t have to respond.

A silence fell that echoed off the white walls. Several minutes passed as she lay there, mute.

When Nick’s ancient laptop finally came to life, he sat down in front of it and proceeded to give her a crash course in cybersurveillance and real-time hacking. She’d stared at rapidly scrolling code flashing over the laptop’s screen for at least an hour, not understanding it, while he talked.

Barrett got the gist. U.S. data on trafficking victims and sex criminals connected to a global spiderweb of evil. Drug cartels. Illegal arms trading. Murders and assassinations. The National Security Agency collected information on all of it through cybersurveillance. Terrorism had well-established links to global crime.

A division—Nick knew the woman who headed it—had been investigating SexFlash. The code on the screen had taken them into the site and out again. Now he wasn’t sure where he was.

Suddenly the scrolling stopped.

Blocky pixels got smaller, shifted around. A white room resolved in high definition on the screen. Within it, curled up in some sort of nook, was a slight girl with wet hair. It was hard to tell what color it was. Darkish. Her back was to the camera providing the live-streamed feed, barely covered by a damp garment not much bigger than a rag.

“Oh my God. Is that Jane?” Barrett whispered.

“You tell me.”

“Nick—I think so! I have to get her to turn around—but where is she? What is that room all about?”

Nick shook his head. “I don’t know.”

The girl turned. There were tear streaks on her face and a deep bite mark on her lip. It looked like she’d done it to herself. And not long ago. Her eyes rolled wildly.