You Are Mine (8 page)

His face … she'd never forgotten it since it was always the last face she saw before the blindfold was put on. And everything else began.

Something lodged in her throat, the familiar ice sitting in a cold, hard lump in her stomach.

Abruptly she pushed back her chair and got up, walking restlessly over to the windows, pacing to the door, to the desk, then back to the windows. She shoved her hands into her pockets as she walked, biting her lip, her brain starting to do its mouse-wheel thing again.

Reflexively she pulled her phone out of her pocket, keying in a quick text to Zac.
I've found him. We need to move on it.

There was no response.

She scowled at the phone. He always responded pretty much straightaway. Always.

Okay, so maybe he was out doing something. Or in the shower. Or something else. There were probably good reasons for his nonresponse.

She did another circuit of the room, nibbling on her already chewed fingernails, the cold in her stomach not budging an inch. Memory began to creep up on her, of the sinking feeling in her gut and the crawling sensation over her skin that she always got the moment the big black car drew up outside the house.

Jesus, where was Zac? He would have texted her by now, surely?

But her phone remained resolutely silent, the screen blank. Goddammit.

Her fingers moved across the keypad.
Where are you? This is important.

Once again, no response.

Impatient and feeling a little bit sick, Eva hit the call button. Bastard, he'd better pick up, otherwise she'd be seriously pissed with him. Not that she wasn't pissed already.

There was a click in her ear. “Hey,” she said immediately. “What's up? Why didn't you answer?”

A long silence followed. Then a sigh. “I told you that you were on your own, angel. If you remember.”

Eva came to a stop in front of the windows and blinked at the gray day outside. “Yeah, but—”

“You think I didn't mean it?”

Weren't you only just thinking he wasn't a man to make idle threats?

“No,” she said curtly, starting to get angry now. At herself and her reflexive need to tell him everything. And at him for the ultimatum he'd given her. “But I thought you'd want to know.”

“So now I know.”

She looked down at her nails, at the short, bitten ends. “I need to go and talk to him.”

“Excellent plan.”

“And you're not going to help me because I wouldn't obey some stupid commands?”

He said nothing.

She tried again. “I thought friendship didn't have a price.”

“I'm a mercenary, Eva. Everything has a price.”

“But you're not a mercenary anymore.”

“I'm a businessman. It's the same thing, only I'm not carrying a gun.”

Frustration and anger curdled inside her, betrayal adding spice to the mix. “Prick.”

“So you've already said.”

“It's emotional blackmail. You're using our friendship to get me to do what you want.”

“But we don't have a friendship, angel. What we have is codependency.”

The words caught her unexpectedly, a sharp ache in her side. “That's not true!”

“Friendships are based on trust. And trust is the one thing we don't have.”

She didn't know what to say to that since he was, of course, right. “Yeah, well, it's not like I'm the only one with trust issues. You're hardly an open book yourself.”

He ignored that. “You know the price for my help, Eva,” he said calmly, in that impeccable British accent of his. “If you want it, you'll have to pay.”

Oh, but he didn't understand. She couldn't pay because there was no more trust to give. It had shattered the day her mother left, the pieces systematically crushed by her father and his junkie friends, the last remains of it burned to ashes while she'd been in the house.

She had none left. Not for anyone.

Eva swallowed, the heavy, thick thing in her throat making it difficult to breathe. “So that's it. You're not going to help at all?”

“The others perhaps. Not you.”

No, she refused to be upset about it.
Refused.

“Fine. I don't need your help anyway,” she said recklessly.

“I'm glad to hear it. Good luck.”

She gritted her teeth. “So … when do you want to catch up again then?”

A long silence.

“Never,” Zac said, his tone completely expressionless. “We will never catch up again.”

The statement was a punch to the chest, all the air rushing out of her. “What? What do you mean ‘never'?”

“I told you I can't go on like this.” His voice was insufferably, maddeningly gentle. “Being at your beck and call, and getting nothing back. I've already put up with it longer from you than I'd put up with it from anyone else. I'm not helping you and I'm not helping myself. I need to cut loose, angel. And that means for good.”

There were fingers squeezing around her middle, an inexorable pressure. If they squeezed too hard, she would shatter. “So you're … leaving? Just like that? What about Alex and Gabe? What about the club?”

“I feel sure they'll understand.”

Bastard. Asshole. Prick.

If he wanted to fucking leave, then let him fucking leave. She was getting sick of him and his protective bullshit anyway. She didn't need it, didn't want it.

Yet a small, frightened part of her, the part she never acknowledged, shivered in distress.

You can't let him go. You can't let him leave you.

Eva crushed the thought flat. It was his choice. If he wanted to go, then she'd let him. And that was his damn fault if he didn't end up liking it.

An insidious grief wound through her, but she ignored that too.

Right now she had to be strong, not give in to any weaker feelings.

“Fantastic,” she said, hoping she sounded bright and unaffected. “Well, I guess I'll see you around. I'll let you know if we catch the murderer and smash the human trafficking ring, huh? Or maybe I won't since you don't seem to give a shit.”

“Eva—”

She hit the disconnect button. Probably with more force than strictly necessary but what the hell. Her hand was shaking. Fuck it.

Furious, she dialed Alex. “Hey,” she said when he answered. “I've got our guy. The one in your video. Want to come along and help me interrogate him?”

There was a silence—clearly Alex needed time to process this. Then at last he said, “Well, obviously. But don't you usually take Zac with you?”

She didn't want to talk about Zac and his stupid ultimatum. Or about the fact that he'd up and left. In fact, let him be the one to tell Alex and Gabe he'd left them all high and dry. She wasn't going to do his dirty work for him.

“He's busy,” she said shortly. “I thought you might like to come along as backup.”

There was another pause. No, she was not going to say, I
need
. She didn't need him. But talking to this guy by herself would be a dumb move, especially with all the threats that had been pointed her way recently. The smart thing to do would be to not go alone. Which meant Alex, because he was a known quantity.

“Count me in then.” Alex's voice held a steel edge to it. “We'll bring Katya too. She might be useful when it comes to … interrogating.”

“Great.” Eva tried to sound bright. “I'll send you the guy's address. We should probably move on this now, so what say I meet you outside his apartment building in an hour.”

Five minutes later, the address sent to Alex and her limo ordered, Eva pulled on a black beanie and shrugged on her leather jacket, stuffing some soft woolen fingerless gloves into her pocket as she took the elevator down to her front door.

Where she halted, the familiar, crawling sensation that she always got just before she opened the door inching down her spine. Sometimes, if she was very lucky, it wouldn't be there at all. But lately it seemed that every time she went outside, she'd feel it. As if the crosshairs of a gun were targeted at her back. Normally she'd just grit her teeth and ignore the feeling, forcing herself to pretend it wasn't there.

Yet today, now, it felt like the sensation was prickling over her entire body, chilling her skin, sitting coldly in her gut like all her insides had frozen solid.

You're scared to go outside.

No, fuck that, she wasn't scared. She didn't know where this feeling had come from or why it was significantly worse today, but she'd do what she always did. Open the damn door and get on with her damn day.

She put out her hand and quickly keyed in the code that would open the door. Her security system was probably a little over the top for what she needed but Zac had installed it himself and …

“Never. We will never catch up again.”

Eva made a growling noise in her throat as the cold inside her solidified a little more. She stabbed at the buttons, gritting her teeth as the door unlocked and she was able to pull it open.

The cold March air flooded in, finding the gaps in her clothing, whispering over her skin. It was a beautiful day. A plane traced a white trail through the sky like icing over a pristine blue cake, and she was conscious of the buildings on either side of her own, reaching like hands to snatch that plane out of the sky.

She didn't look at them, keeping her gaze fixed on the long, black limo that waited at the curb. And like it always did, that gnawing, desperate tension wound around her chest like a rope pulling tight, making it difficult to breathe.

Stuffing her hands into the pockets of her jacket, Eva stamped down the stairs that led to the sidewalk, the door to her building closing and locking automatically behind her. She was conscious of the sound, conscious too of the tension pulling even tighter as it did so. A primitive part of her wailed in terror as her retreat, her place of safety, was cut off.

But she walked on regardless, heading straight toward the limo, looking neither right nor left.

It wasn't far. Only a few feet. Some days it felt like a journey of a hundred miles.

I can't do this … Watching your life get smaller and smaller while your fear gets bigger and bigger …

She bared her teeth at the sound of Zac's voice in her head. Stupid bastard. What did he know? She wasn't scared. She wasn't.

Her driver, a woman hired by Zac who answered only to the name of Temple, got out and pulled open her door. Eva gave her a short, sharp nod, heading straight for the interior of the car.

Only once she was inside, once Temple had closed the door with that reassuring, heavy “thunk,” did Eva feel the gripping tension begin to relax, the rope around her chest begin to ease, allowing her to breathe.

She settled back, reaching for the blanket she kept folded on the warm leather of the seat and pulling it over her. Temple got in and immediately adjusted the heating the way Eva liked it, which was like a sauna.

She gave Temple the address and waited a few moments for the heat to penetrate her chilled flesh.

The car pulled away from the curb and into the flow of heavy New York traffic.

Eva let out a breath. She liked her limo. It was a little bubble of safety and yet allowed her to see out at the same time, making her feel as if she was part of things. Sometimes she went out with no destination in mind, getting Temple to drive her around the city streets purely for the pleasure of watching everyone around her with things to do and lives to live.

Zac had a car, but he often took the subway. Apparently to “gauge the mood of the city” or some such crap. She couldn't imagine doing so herself, all those people pressing against her. It made her shudder to think about it.

Which meant it was probably better she
not
think about it. Or him for that matter.

Never catch up …

Just like that, the tension was back, wrapping around her so tightly she felt suffocated. She tried to breathe through it, tried to calm herself with the techniques Zac had taught her over the years, but nothing seemed to work.

He's not here. You're going to see someone who was at the house and Zac's not going to be there with you.

She stared out the window, at the buildings on either side, windows glittering in the sunlight, and concentrated on the roar of the traffic.

It would be fine. She would have Alex and Katya.

But they don't know. They won't understand. Not like he does …

Her fingers twisted in the thick, dark blue cashmere blanket on her knees as she tried to keep her thoughts from careering out of control, tried to think logically.

It was true that Alex was impatient like her, and his tendency was to enflame a situation, which wasn't exactly helpful. Zac, on the other hand, was calm, measured. And his authority was so absolute people tended to do what he told them even before they realized they were doing it. He was polite, friendly when he wanted to be, and his approach complimented her own, more impatient and fiery style. They worked well together in other words. Something she wasn't so sure would work with Alex.

It's not that. It just doesn't “feel” right without him.

She looked down at her hands, at the blanket scrunched up between her fingers.

It didn't seem to matter how logical her thoughts, how measured her thinking, she couldn't shake the terrible pressure in her chest, making her aware of how hollow she was. How awfully, awfully hollow …

No. She could do this without him. She
had
to do this without him. Because it was clear to her now that Zac thought she was some weak, frightened kind of woman. Someone he needed to protect, to coddle.

A fucking victim.

Eva lifted her gaze back to the cars passing outside, the cabs and trucks and other traffic clogging the streets. Right next to her was an RV with a couple of shell-shocked-looking tourists inside. Idiots. Did they really thing bringing something like that into Manhattan was a good idea?