The Mercenary (11 page)

They were all in the vehicle and he breathed a sigh of relief as he climbed into the driver’s seat. “Get your seat belt on. We are heading home.”

He was going to have answers from Burati either the hard way or the easy way.

A
UGUST
4, P
RETORIA SAFE HOUSE

B
urati had been interrogated before. In fact, this wasn’t the first time he’d been taken by men who weren’t cops. But he was South African and had grown up during apartheid, so he didn’t scare easily. Barack, on the other hand, looked nervous and scared.

When the man who’d taken Olivia from him at the airport entered, Burati didn’t even try to pretend he didn’t know what the man wanted. “You are Kirk, right? Who do you work for?”

“I’ll ask the questions,” the man said.

“I’m Leon Burati and I work for Phillip Michaels at the Diamond Consortium.”

“I will check this out and come right back.”

“Very well. My cousin was simply helping me out tonight. He has no information,” Burati said.

“If this is true, he will be let go.”

Kirk left and Burati turned to his cousin. “Don’t worry—you’ll be out of here soon.”

“What about you?”

“I am more involved in everything that is happening here. So I won’t be going home for a while.”

Burati relaxed as best he could with his hands tied behind his back to a chair. His head ached. He hadn’t felt this bad since he’d been a boy. He’d grown up in poverty and violence was a part of everyday life. It seemed no matter how much he tried, violence was the one thing he couldn’t escape. His mother used to say that once a boy took a step down the path of violence the man he became was doomed to always walk it.

That woman had always been right.

The door opened twenty minutes later and Kirk came back in with another man. “Your story checks out. One of our men will take your cousin back to his vehicle or wherever he wants to go.”

Kirk untied both men and Barack hesitated. “Do you need me?”

“No, I’ll be fine,” Burati said.

Barack left and Burati was alone with Kirk.

“Phillip will be calling you in a few minutes to authorize you to talk to us. In the meantime, can I get you something to drink?”

“Water would be nice,” Burati said.

His mobile phone rang just as Kirk returned with the water. “Burati here.”

“It’s Phillip. I’ve talked to Kirk Mann. He has Olivia and is working in conjunction with her friend Anna. Please share whatever information you deem necessary and call me back after you leave there.”

“I will, sir. The camera and bugs are in place.”

“Thanks, Burati. I am already getting signals from both.”

“Good. Maybe we are on our way to finally seeing justice served.”

“I think we are,” Phillip said.

Burati hung up his phone and turned to look at Kirk. “What questions do you have for me?”

“What were you doing at Onyx tonight?”

“Installing some listening and digital recording devices. The consortium needs hard proof that Lambert is stealing from them. They had a man on the inside, but he was murdered.”

“Olivia witnessed it.”

To think if he’d followed her when she’d gone to the mines that day he would have seen his own brother killed. Maybe he could have done something to save Thomas. But he’d never know.

“The man who was killed was my brother.”

“Then you have a personal reason for going after Lambert.”

“Yes, I do. But I’m in no hurry. Justice waits until the man is ready.”

“Indeed it does,” Kirk said.

The men discussed what each of them wanted and Burati found that Kirk was a man he could respect. He realized that Olivia was in a safe place as long as Kirk was watching over her. He apologized for the knife wound he’d inflicted on Kirk and they exchanged mobile numbers to keep each other apprised of any situations that developed.

Burati was blindfolded and taken back to his vehicle. Phillip called him one more time to say that they had enough evidence with what the Savage Seven had gathered to go to the prosecutor and have Ray Lambert arrested. That news made him very happy.

Olivia didn’t stay with the group when they arrived back at the safe house. She went straight upstairs to her room. She closed the door and sank down on the floor. Pulling her knees up to her chest, she breathed deeply and tried to convince herself that she was safe now. She’d known that Kirk wouldn’t let anything happen to her, but watching things tonight…she hadn’t felt safe.

But she knew it wasn’t physical safety that she had lost. It was that inner security that most people carried around inside them. Tonight had reinforced what she’d started to realize the other day when Ray had tried to shoot her and then her own bodyguard had tried to kidnap her: she had no safe place any more. The world had turned into someplace she no longer could identify. She knew that Anna and the others needed her to read over the papers they’d gotten from Ray’s office, and she was determined not to let them down. But right now she was still shaking inside and she needed to be here.

She didn’t want to think where Kirk might be. She had seen how angry he was when Burati had hit her at the airport and she was very afraid that he’d do something violent in retaliation. And she knew now that he was the kind of man who’d exact that kind of justice…vigilante justice, she thought. He didn’t need a judge and jury to tell him if someone was guilty or not. He made that decision on his own.

There was a knock on her door.

“Who is it?”

“Kirk.”

He was exactly who she wanted to see, and yet she was afraid to see him right now because she was really leaning on him. She didn’t say anything, just stayed where she was crouched on the floor like a child. She hadn’t hidden like this since…never. She’d never felt this vulnerable before. And it was affecting her.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yes. Do you want to come in?”

“Yes,” he said.

He pushed open the door and entered. She stared at his boots and his pant legs.

He stooped down in front of her. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “Just scared.”

“You should have a shower. It’ll help you relax.”

She tried to stand up, but her ankle shifted under her and she swayed a little, almost falling over. He caught her up in his arms. She put her arms around his shoulders and rested her face against his neck. Her cheek felt the warmth of his skin and she realized that she’d never felt like this before, like her body wasn’t her own.

“I should have kept you here.”

“They needed me. Savage was going the wrong way. I needed to be useful and not sit here and wait.”

“You aren’t suited to that kind of op. From now on you stay here.”

“I…okay.”

“Shower now,” Kirk said, stepping back.

“I don’t have anything to change in to,” she said.

“I asked Laz to get you something to sleep in while he was out gathering supplies for us today.”

“You did?”

“Yes,” Kirk said. “Get in the shower and I’ll leave it on the sink for you.”

He disappeared into the bedroom and she turned to look at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were huge in her face and she hardly recognized herself.

She started to cry looking at it and didn’t hear Kirk when he reentered the bathroom. “Baby, don’t cry.”

She nodded and took a deep breath.

But deep inside she wasn’t sure she’d ever be fine again. Every day brought another new thing for her to process and get over. Each day, that process was just a little bit harder.

“I’m sorry for crying.”

He thumbed the tears off her face and rubbed his fingers together. “Don’t be.”

“Stay with me,” she said. Going up on tiptoe, she kissed him.

His lips were still under hers for a second and then he kissed her back. “If I stay I’m going to make love to you.”

“Good.”

He reached around her and adjusted the water temperature and then turned the shower on. He came back to her and carefully undressed her and then took off his own clothes. It was then she saw that he’d been hurt at some point. He had a wound on his left side that was bleeding through the bandage he’d put on it.

“What happened to you?” she asked. She reached out to touch the bandage. How had she missed him getting hurt? She hated that he was already so scarred. Not because the marks marred his body but because of the pain he had to have endured to get them.

“It’s from another mission. I tore it when I was working out with Laz earlier,” Kirk said. His eyes were very chilling and cold when he looked at her.

He lifted her up and stepped into the shower with her in his arms. He let the spray hit him first and slowly set her on her feet.

She knew she needed to wash up and get clean, but right at that moment she just needed his arms around her. She leaned her uninjured cheek against his thickly muscled chest and wrapped her arms around his lean waist.

Kirk put his arms around her and held her just as tightly as she held him. Olivia wanted to pretend that this was a normal part of building a relationship, but she wasn’t too sure about that. There was nothing regular about her life now. She was going to just live in the moment with Kirk. She needed him. Needed him like this and that’s all that she knew.

She lifted her head and kissed him right over his heart, then rested her cheek over his left pectoral. She heard the solid beating of his heart under her ear and it made her feel infinitely better.

Kirk was the man she’d been searching for her entire life, but she’d never realized it until now. She would have never thought to look for a man like him, but he was exactly what she needed.

They got out of the shower and Kirk tenderly dried her off. It was all she could do to keep from breaking down and sobbing out loud. She realized she didn’t want him to see that utterly weak side of her.

He pulled a plain brown bag across the vanity and opened it up, pulling at an exquisite negligee. It was black lace with a pretty pattern on it and when he drew it over her head and down her body she shivered a little.

No man had ever given her something like this before. This was a garment meant for a lover. And she realized that to Kirk she was this kind of woman.

“What do you see in me?” she asked softly as he turned to towel dry. She knew she wasn’t much in the looks department. She could clean up good for a party and she knew how to socialize, but those were hardly skills that mattered to a man like Kirk. What drew him to her?

Or was she simply someone to scratch an itch?

“What did you say?” he asked.

She couldn’t say it again. She took a deep breath, realizing she could mumble something else and never have this conversation. “I’m tired and I’m scared and I just want this all to end.”

The words were more a reminder for her of how crazy her life had become. No matter how real it felt to be in his arms, this was still about nothing more than sex. She almost hoped he’d get angry and leave. Then she could just crawl into bed and pull the covers over her head and never leave.

He started tickling her. His fingers moved over her until she laughed without meaning to until she started crying. She hoped she could pretend that they were tears of mirth, but then her breath caught on a ragged sigh. Tears started rolling down her face and she started crying, really crying.

She turned away from him and buried her face in one of her hands. She couldn’t stop the tears and she had no idea where they’d come from. Oh, damn, she wasn’t doing this. She had to get it together.

He put one hand on her shoulder and tried to draw her back into his arms, but she fought him. She didn’t want to be in his arms again, didn’t want to feel that sense of rightness and that feeling that she never wanted to move again.

He lifted her into his arms and carried her into the bedroom. He threw back the covers on the bed with one hand and then set her down in the middle of the bed. He settled over her. He lowered his head, slowly licking at the tracks of her tears down her face. She closed her eyes, but that only intensified the feeling of Kirk. His chest against her breasts, his groin against hers, his legs twined with hers.

“Open your eyes, baby,” he said.

And she wasn’t going to open her eyes. Not now when she felt so raw and stripped bare of everything. How come he was the man who’d made her feel like this?

She opened her eyes and met his serious grayeyed gaze. He had that ability to completely focus on one thing, as she’d seen tonight, and right now he was bringing that concentration to her.

She looked up at him and tried to find the words to tell him that she no longer felt like Olivia Pontuf but now felt like a hollowed-out shell of that woman, who had no idea how she was going to survive.

And survival was the important lesson she’d carried with her from tonight.

Of course, she could trust Kirk. He was a solid man.
A good man.
“You’re a good man, Kirk. And you know who you are, but I’m floundering here. I’m scared and a liability.”

He lowered his mouth over hers, kissed her with so much tenderness that she wrenched her head to the side, breaking the kiss. She didn’t want a tender lover. She didn’t want Kirk to touch her with caring in his eyes. She didn’t want him to make love to her. She’d have sex with him, so she could forget her fear.

“I’m a complete coward. I was so scared the entire time. I wanted to just start screaming and never stop.”

“But you didn’t.”

How did he see that? “I don’t feel like that right now.”

“You are tired.”

“I’m used up inside,” she said quietly, being as honest as she could be with him.

He rolled to his side, pulling her into his arms, cradling her.
Cherishing her
. She didn’t know where the thought came from, but when he pulled her into his arms she always felt cherished in a way that Ray had never made her feel. In fact, no man had ever made her feel like this before. Only Kirk.

She heard the steady beat of his heart under her ear. It soothed the scared part of her. His arms were muscled and strong and his shoulders wide enough to carry any burden.

She pushed against his chest, trying to get up, but he held her securely in his arms. “I’m sorry for breaking down like that. Don’t you have to go back downstairs?”

“No, not now. I only have to take care of you,” he said.