Second Sight (9 page)

Chapter 15

Three hours later, Zach sat out on the back patio drinking a beer, still highly amused about the little misunderstanding with Ella. In all honesty, he’d hoped she’d play into his little word game, and she had. He would give almost anything to see the pink flush of embarrassment on her cheeks. Yeah, he could be a bastard like that.

Joe had messaged them a few hours ago and said he would be calling tonight, referring to the list they’d given to him as ‘interesting.’

The door opened, then shut, and the faint smell of lilacs met his nose. “Hi, Ella.”

“Hi.”

Based on the scrape of the lounge chair next to him, he guessed she’d sat down.

“Do you need another beer?” she asked.

“That would be wonderful. Thank you.”

“There’s one on the table next to you.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, the only sound being the waterfall. It soothed him into a quiet state of mind.

“Joe should be calling soon,” she commented.

“Yes.”

The silence stretched on, and he felt no need to fill it. He became very comfortable in it, and appreciated that it wasn’t being ruined with unnecessary words.

The phone shrilled, startling him, breaking the reverie.

Ella answered on the second ring. “Joe? Yes. Let me put you on speakerphone.”

“Okay, we’re both here,” she added a moment later.

“Hi, Joe,” he said.

“Hello. I’m glad both of you are present. I’m very impressed with the work you two have done. The list you gave me proved to be very interesting.”

“Why?”

“Well, this Ahmed Ahmadi character is quite curious. He’s an Iranian, the son of a very wealthy businessman. It’s believed he also has ties to, and funds, ISIS.”

“That Muslim extremist group?” Ella asked.

“Exactly. Since we know our President is hesitant to put boots on the ground, he’s trying to take them out in a more covert way.”

“So, what do you think is happening?” Zach asked.

“I think the President has activated a member of Group Nine to kill Mr. Ahmadi so part of the ISIS funding is gone.”

Zach let out a low whistle. “On U.S. soil? That takes some big balls.”

“Yes, but think about it. If Group Nine gets to him, the man literally disappears, and no one is the wiser. It will most likely strain our relationship with Iran, but that’s been fractured for a long time, anyway. There’s not a lot to lose.”

“Except nuclear war,” Ella muttered.

“It won’t get to that,” Joe said.

“I don’t understand what they’re going to do, how they’re going to cover up something like that,” Ella said.

“They’ll probably get a body double to make a few appearances around town after the party,” Zach said. “Then, someone will photograph him getting on his private jet. The plane will go down into the ocean, and it becomes nothing but a tragedy.”

“That sounds very probable,” Joe said.

“He must be giving them a lot of money if killing him will negatively affect their organization,” Ella commented.

“Yes. From what I understand, it’s millions.”

“So, what do you want us to do?” Zach asked.

“Well, I also looked into the list of functions you’d put together. Ahmadi will be attending the fête where the technical company is going to talk about their new chip to cure blindness. From what I gather, they will be talking with people willing to pay to be a part of the experiment. They’ve had pretty good results in lab animals, and they feel they are ready for human testing. They’ve received permission from the FDA. Mr. Ahmadi’s father is almost totally blind, so the connection of why he would be attending is there. Lord knows he’s got enough money to buy his father’s way into the trials, as well.”

“Makes sense to me,” Zach murmured.

“I want you two to go to that party, or ball, or whatever the hell it is. I want you to let the Group Nine operative do his deed, and then I want you to kill him if you get the opportunity.”

Ella gasped. “Joe, I’m not particularly comfortable with that. Besides, in case you forgot, Zach is blind.”

The silence stretched for a long time before Joe spoke again. “Zachary? Your thoughts? I believed sending you in would be an excellent idea. No one feels threatened by a blind man with a beautiful woman on his arm and a happy seeing-eye dog. Not only that, you’ll fit right in. You’ll just be another guest interested in what the device can do to further his sight.”

His heart beat wildly in his chest for two reasons. First, the thought of having something slipped into his brain that may or may not help him see again both excited and disgusted him. If given the opportunity to have the procedure done, he didn’t think he’d do it. Perhaps he had just learned to deal with the fallout of the last experiment performed on him, but taking on the role of guinea pig again didn’t sit well with him at all.

Second, it had been a long time since he’d actually been assigned to kill someone. Of course, he’d killed someone just over a week ago, but he looked at that as self-preservation. This happened to be different. This would be an assignment he needed to carry out, and the thought made him nervous, yet his adrenaline ticked up a few notches. The past year, his life had been terribly boring, and the thought of being back in action excited him. However, he wasn’t going to jump into this without doing his own research.

“I’ll need the file before I make a decision, Joe. Preferably in Braille. Ella can help me conduct my own investigation into the man, if you would be so kind. And, if I do choose to accept this, Savannah is not going. That is not debatable.”

“Of course, I’ll help you,” she murmured.

“Excellent,” Joe said. “I’ll make sure you’re on that guest list.”

“We’re on a fairly tight timeline, Joe. I’m not saying that I will do this, but I think it would be prudent to move forward as if we are.”

“Agreed.”

“Wait a minute,” Ella interrupted. “I don’t like being out in public, not with this scar. It’s like a beacon for someone to recognize me, especially if we’re dealing with the government.”

Joe sighed. “Ella, I know you think there are people behind every mailbox looking for you, but that simply isn’t the case.”

“You don’t know that!”

Zach reached across the space separating them and grabbed her hand, giving it a quick squeeze. “I’ll protect you, Ella.”

“Zach, I—”

“Let’s talk about this later, okay?” he said softly.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Good,” Zach continued. “We’ll need clothes, most likely a ball gown and a tux, if this party is a black tie affair. I’m sure you can find a couple of designers to visit us? We’ll also need schematics of the building where the party will be held.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’m not comfortable having strangers in the house,” Ella said.

“I promise you they’ll be well-vetted, Ella. You won’t be in danger,” Joe said.

They discussed a few other things needed for the operation, and then they hung up.

“Tell me about your past, Zach,” Ella said over the distinct hiss of a beer bottle being opened.

“There’s not much to tell.”

“Well, if I’m not going to kill him, that means you are.”

“Yes, I suppose it does.”

“So, spill it. When did you become a murderer?”

He tipped back his beer, and told Ella how he used to be a member of a clandestine government group, similar to Group Nine.

“We were different, though,” he said. “We didn’t pull crap like doing experiments on unsuspecting soldiers. We killed, but to me, it was always justified.”

“Like who?”

He told her about the President’s brother. “Obviously, the President wanted him gone because he was bad for politics, but honestly, the man was a horrible human being, diddling his daughter and raping women.”

“I remember that. I thought he’d died of a heart attack.”

He grinned, wishing he could see Ella’s face. Body language often told more about what a person thought and felt than actual words did. “Then I did my job well.”

The last thing he wanted was for Ella to fear him. They had begun to get along so well, and he didn’t want that destroyed. “Don’t be afraid of me, Ella.”

“I’m not. However, I feel like I should be. Maybe it’s my military background, but I’m not scared of you.”

“Good.”

“What do you want for dinner?”

Yo
u
.

“A fish taco sounds delicious, but I know you hate seafood.”

He grinned at his little joke and wondered if she would get it, or if it would sail over her head. He and Garrett had always used
fish taco
when they saw a woman they’d like to bed. No, it hadn’t been very mature; yet, it had been funnier than hell back in the day.

“You’re right, I don’t.”

And he imagined that one leaving the yard. No, she didn’t get it, and if she did, she hid it pretty well.

“Pizza?” he asked.

“Delivery?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds good to me. I’ve never had a pizza brought to the house. I was always afraid that it would end up being the government and not a delivery guy.”

“I’ll protect you,” he said. “At night is when I see best.”

“Oh, Zach. The jokes are so bad.”

“I
will
protect you,” he said again, more serious this time, and meaning every word.

She must have heard the weight of his voice because she answered him this time, seriously. “I’m sure you will.”

As she called the local pizza joint, he couldn’t help but notice how they sounded like a couple who had been together for a long time, despite most of their conversations gravitating toward a corrupt government, murder, and some of the very bad people of the world.

Ah, well. It seemed more exciting than discussing kids’ homework, the car repairs that needed to be done, and fighting over who would fold the laundry.

Give him a good clandestine operation any day.

Chapter 16

Ella woke the next morning completely exhausted. She’d tossed and turned most of the night, her thoughts filled with Zach, the little detail he hadn’t mentioned about him being a killer, and her realization that she remained very attracted to him.

Joe had asked her to be in on this mission, and a large part of her wanted to say no. However, a small fraction of her being yearned to go for numerous reasons.

First, she wanted to step out of her life.

Zach’s arrival had skewed her reality in such a way, she no longer felt content with her existence. She realized how sorry she’d been feeling for herself because of her scar, and what it represented to her—the loss of Joe’s love.

Yet, Zach had lost his sight, and he still came to her with a grin, with jokes, and showed her how self-sufficient he could be.  She admired his tenacity, his dedication to proving everyone wrong in the assumption that blind people needed to be helped.

She had wasted so much time wallowing in her anger and self-pity. The thought of being there while Zach killed someone didn’t disgust her, especially if the guy truly was funneling money to ISIS. This seemed to be an important step for her to take, a way of starting over.

Slipping out of bed, she used the toilet, washed her hands and brushed her teeth immediately afterward, a habit she’d learned from her father while growing up, and one she hadn’t bothered to break. She missed her parents, but they were safer believing she lay dead in the ground. Pulling on her light, cotton, blue robe over her nude body, she made her way toward the kitchen.

She smelled coffee, and her mouth watered while her body begged for a shot of caffeine.

As she turned the corner, she heard a couple of grunts coming from the living room, and she bypassed the coffee machine to take a peek. Zach usually moved around like a cat—silent and stealthily. The first few days, she hadn’t been sure where he’d turn up, especially in the mornings. He’d surprised her more than once. Hearing grunts coming from the living room almost startled her, and if she hadn’t set the burglar alarm the night before, she might have wondered if they had an intruder.

Zach moved furniture around, clearing a large space in the middle of the area, while Savannah sat in a corner, staring at him questioningly with her ears perked and her head tilted to the side.

“What are you doing?” she asked from the juncture between the kitchen and living room.

He stood, a couple beads of sweat dampening his brow. “Moving furniture.”

She chuckled. “That’s obvious, Zach. I guess my question should have been, why are you moving furniture?”

He leaned over and gripped the arm of the couch. “Because we need to learn to dance together.”

Uh-oh. She did
not
like the sound of that. “No. I don’t dance, Zach.”

Standing upright, he wiped his forehead. “What do you mean, you don’t dance? Didn’t you go to the prom in high school, or any dance, for that matter? Didn’t you let loose in the military on your days off and hit the bars, break out into a little old school
Footloose, YMC
A
,
or
Achy, Breaky Heart
?”

She studied him, seeing he teased her with his smile and expecting her to admit to some, or all, of what he’d listed. However, she couldn’t do that truthfully.

“No, I haven’t, Zach.”

His face fell, and disbelief took place of the playfulness. “Seriously?”

Taking a deep breath, she entered the room. “Zach, I moved a lot when I was a kid. I learned not to make friends, nor date anyone while I went through school. I stayed home from dances; I didn’t participate in after-school activities. I didn’t want to be close to anyone because I knew sooner or later, I would be leaving them. It became a coping mechanism while my father led us all over the globe, advancing his career.”

He hung his head. “Jesus, Ella. To me, it seems you’ve lived most of your life as a shut-in.” He looked her way. “It makes me really fucking sad for you.”

“I don’t want your pity, Zachary.”

“Of course you don’t.” He took a few steps toward her. “But here’s the thing. It looks like we’re going to sign on to go murder some douchebag. We need to make our cover as believable as possible. This is one of those hoity-toity events where people will be checking each other out. We need to do everything we can to convince people we belong there.”

“The people there are going to be blind.”

“But there will be those lucky bastards who can see, as well, and we need to impress them.”

“Zach, I—”

He took a couple more steps toward her and smiled while holding out his hand. “Trust me, Ella. With your beauty and my dashing good looks, we’ll look like we belong. We just need to put the finishing touches on it to convince everyone.”

She hesitated just for a second, then put her hand in his. He pulled her close so that they stood thigh-to-thigh and chest-to-chest. After placing her hand on his shoulder, he wrapped one arm around her waist and held her other hand.

“You’re awfully confident,” she murmured as they moved together. He hummed a tune she didn’t recognize.

“I have to be.”

“Why is that?”

He stopped, and she stared up at her reflection in his glasses. “Because the world is full of people who want to do nothing but tear you down. If your confidence is firmly in place, they can’t do it. It becomes impossible. Oh, they may put a chink or two in your armor, but they’ll never reach your heart.”

With that, he turned her, and resumed humming his tune. As their bodies moved together, she concentrated on every step. She certainly didn’t want to squash his foot.

Having never learned to dance, the whole experience made her nervous.

“Relax, Ella. Just move with me. Don’t think so hard about it. It’ll come naturally.”

“There’s nothing natural about this for me.”

He stopped. “Let’s put on some real music. Something mellow, something slow. Can you do that for us? Do we have anything like soft jazz? Or something soulful?”

Now that, she could do, as she loved soft soul music. She pulled out a CD from next to the stereo. Yes, it was totally old school, but she liked having CDs, especially of her favorite music. When she used the stereo, the music sounded all over the house through the built-in ceiling speakers in each room.

“How about some Erykah Badu?” she asked.

“Never heard of her.”

Ella grinned. “Oh, you’re missing out. She’s amazing.”

She pushed play on the CD, and the sound of ‘Window Seat’ wafted through the whole house. A beautiful-sounding, smooth tale of a woman who, in the end, just wanted to be loved and desired. 

“Very nice,” he murmured as he pulled her closer. “Gorgeous.”

As they moved, she finally felt herself relaxing a little bit, and she let the music soften the muscles in her shoulders, a place where she always held so much tension.

“See, if you just move to the music and don’t think about it, then it comes naturally.”

He pulled her closer, and without considering it, she lay her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes.

She became intimately aware of Zach as the soulful music with the emotional words played on.  She’d listened to the song many, many times, and it always brought up memories of Joe. Yet, here she danced with Zach, and it felt so right. In the end, she guessed she just wanted to be loved and desired, as everyone did.

The softness of his t-shirt against her cheek, the way his strong arms encased her, making her feel protected, and just a hint of a pleasant, woody-smelling aftershave hit her senses.

She pressed her chest into his, the hard plains against her pliant body exciting her, while her heart beat so loudly, she felt certain he could hear it.

Yes, being this close to a man after so long, to Zach, had her head spinning with salacious thoughts of all the ways he could take her running through her mind. The couch. The barstool. The floor.  A bedroom.

Heat pooled in her core as desire tore through her and she tried not to think about her scar.

Zach ran his hand down her spine, his touch firm, but not hurtful.

“I always told you I’d be honest with you, didn’t I, Ella?”

Her breath caught in her throat.

“Yes,” she breathed.

“So here’s the truth. I can feel your hardened nipples against my chest, and I want one in my mouth so badly, I’m almost shaking. Your cheek against my shoulder burns, but in a good way.  And the most telling thing of all is that I can
smell
your arousal. If I were to slip my hand between the folds of your robe and slide my fingers between your legs, I know I’d find you slick.”

She should have known he’d be so in tune with her and the way her body betrayed what she felt. The man seemed to have superhuman senses, and she supposed he did. That’s what you got when you became a government experiment.

Her throat became parched, and she couldn’t form any words. She had an idea of what he would say next, and she seemed powerless to stop where this moment would be taking them.

“If I pull you against me just a little bit more, I know you’ll feel my cock against your stomach. My hard cock, Ella. My desire for you is just as strong as yours for me.”

He splayed his hand across her lower back and pulled her close, and yes, his long, thick length did indeed strain against his jeans.

“So, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to count to ten. If I don’t hear a ‘no’ from you by then, I’m going to kiss you. Once I get a taste of your mouth, I know it’ll be over for me. I know that I’ll want things to continue into this very scary, yet exciting uncharted territory. You’ll be the first woman I’ve had sex with since my blindness, Ella. That thought terrifies me.”

She swallowed hard, wanting to tell him he’d be her first man since receiving the scar, but the words seemed to clog her throat.

They kept swaying to the music, Zach holding her body flush against his. She moved her head just slightly so it lay below his chin. His heart pounded against her ear.

He said he had been afraid of what could happen, but the proof lay right there in that accelerated sound. She shut her eyes and listened to the beating drum.

“I’m at five, Ella.”

She did nothing to stop it, nothing to give him any indication she wanted it to end. Instead, she stayed right where she was, her body moving against his in time with the soulful music.

“Eight.”

He certainly counted slow, and she knew why. He wanted to give her ample opportunity to back out.

“Ten,” he whispered.

He waited one more beat, then placed his hand under her chin. He tilted her head up and she opened her eyes, seeing her own reflection in his glasses. Her irises looked wild, almost out of control; yet, her lids were heavy. She stared at the scar down the side of her face as he lowered his head.

Before their lips met, he paused. “If you’re going to reject me, do it now, Ella.”

His low voice, that deep whisper, gave away his hurt, his fear of rejection, as well as his desire. He wanted her, but was afraid, just like her. They had both been damaged physically and mentally by forces greater than either of them. Her anguish showed in her demeanor, while his hid behind a wall of arrogance and self-confidence. As they stood in the living room, their mouths an inch apart, she realized just how raw the events that had scarred both of them had left them.

She laced her hand behind his neck and pulled his head down. “I’m not going to reject you, Zach.”

Her lips met his in a lazy, exploratory kiss, which quickly turned heated. She held his head to hers, both arms wrapped around his neck. One of his hands snaked up her spine, holding her close between her shoulder blades, his other hand at her lower back. There would be no escape in his firm grasp, and she melded her body into his.

Their tongues dueled passionately, and her knees literally went weak. Holy Hell, what did this man do to her?

As she tasted the tinge of coffee and mint, she seemed to lose her sense of reality. The only thing that mattered amounted to Zach’s hands running up and down her back, the feel of her breasts pressing into his hard chest, and the growing ache of need and desire between her legs.

“Ella, take me to bed, or I’m going to fuck you right here on the floor, and I say that with the utmost honesty.”

She reluctantly pulled away from him, her hand firmly in his. “Come with me.”

Leading him through the kitchen, the dining room, and down the short hall to her spacious bedroom, she realized she felt more alive in this moment than she had in years, even before she and Joe had gone on the run. Right now, she delved into uncharted territory; yet, it didn’t feel dangerous, but glorious and exciting.

“I’ve never been in here,” he murmured.

“I know. No one has.”

And it held true.

After Joe had bought the house then tucked her away, no one else had ever stepped foot in her room. Joe had roamed the halls and every inch of the place in his chair, and she’d had more guests than she’d ever wanted. However, no one stepped foot into her private sanctuary, except her.