Cease and Desist (The IMA Book 4) (19 page)

Christina

Whatever Adrian said had spooked Michael. He looked…haunted, like he'd looked on Target Island, back when we were both certain we would die.

What did he tell you?
I looked at him hard when our eyes met.
Is he going to kill us?

“Stop staring at me.”

His voice was as hoarse as if he'd downed half a bottle of whiskey. I actually checked the fridge to make sure he hadn't. He was acting so strange.

I wasn't sure what I could do about him, though, because he wouldn't talk to me about it.

He never did.

So I did what I always did when Michael pushed me away: I threw myself into my research. Despite Michael's reservations, we were all alone in this boat. Those phone calls he'd made with the other members of AMI had effectively severed the last of our lifelines.

If we were going to go through with this, I had to show Michael that this was a sure thing. I researched Albanian hot spots in Los Angeles, and determined, first with superficial Google searches and then, later, with Darknet, which were sketchy enough to be involved with criminal activity —

And then I found it.

Mystique.

Mystique was a night club in the bad part of town that attracted an unsavory element: an unsavory element that went way beyond the discomfort of a sketchy dive bar. It was
bad.

Women had disappeared there. Young women. Foreign women. Desperate women. Women who'd been forced into having no other choice.

Women like Suraya
.

Michael
leaning forward as he looked through a folder with his forearms braced against his thighs. He looked up as I entered, and I saw dark circles under his red-rimmed eyes. If I hadn't known better, I'd have thought he was crying.

“Hey,” he said, “you're up.”

“Been up,” I said. “I found something.”

Now I had his attention. “What?”

I showed him my computer — a cheap thing I'd picked up, used, from a guy who'd tried to charge me $20 more than it was actually worth. I didn't want to take it to Kinko's and risk having someone else see the files. The page for Mystique was on the screen.

His face didn't change as his eyes flicked over the screen, but he said, “This looks promising.”

Pride surged through me. “Yeah?”

“I'll follow up on this.
We'll
follow up on this.”

We
. I tried to hide my pleasure at that word, at the fact that I'd managed to reach him through the gloom surrounding him like an impenetrable forest.

“I read some interesting things about this place through Darknet. It's the kind of place people go to when they're looking for a good time, no holds barred.” I frowned. “Matters of consent aside.”

A muscle in his jaw tightened at the word
consent
.

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No to what you're thinking.” He set the folder aside. “I don't want you selling yourself to these men. It's too dangerous — they'll be looking for you now.”

“I know I'll be safe.” I held up the necklace so the opalescent planet caught the light. His eyes went to it automatically, as I'd known they would. “I'll have you there to protect me.”

Michael dug his knuckles into his forehead. “He said he'd hurt you.”

“He has hurt me. And if we don't stop him, he'll hurt other people, too!”

He let out an explosive breath. “Fuck.”

“Michael — ”

“
Fuck
.” He leaned back against the bed with a loud sigh. “I don't want to see you get hurt. Don't you get that, darlin?  It would destroy
me.”

He hadn't wanted me to go, either.

“You mean the world to me.”

“I know,” I said, still clutching the pendant.

“I don't think you do.” I stared into his eyes, the green of his irises intensified by the inflamed whiteness that surrounded them. “Christina.”

I'd known that he cared, of course, but knowing it
and
hearing it — that made me feel brave.

“If we stop him, you can relax. Not a lot, maybe, but enough to make a difference. Enough to feel like you won't have to spend your whole life looking back over your shoulder. You never used to be afraid of taking risks,” I added. “Not if it meant you had a fighting chance.”

“I'd give up all the chances in the world for revenge if it meant sparing you as a casualty.” He laughed, bitterly. “This isn't a zero-sum game.”

“What did he say to you to scare you like this?”

Michael sat up so quickly that I heard something in his body snap. “You really want to do this?”

“Yes, I want to know what Adrian said — ”

“Fine,” he said, tricking me for a moment into thinking that he meant, fine, I'll tell you. I should have known better. He grabbed his wallet, sticking it into his back pocket. “I'll be right back.”

“Wait, where are you going?”

“If we're going to do this — we'll need disguises.” He paused. “Good ones.”

Chapter Fifteen

Disguise

Christina

I took one look at Michael and stumbled away from him, startled and — yes, a little afraid. His golden locks were jet black. He was sporting a mustache and goatee that looked real, even though I knew for a fact that they were not. The bottle of fake tanner had turned his golden skin a light brown.

I stared into his newly black eyes and shuddered. I knew that they were tinted contact lenses, but it was as if he were a completely different person.

A
stranger
.

“My God,” I whispered. “You look so — ”

Different. Exotic. Strange.

His expression didn't change as he looked back at me, which told me nothing because I had no way of interpreting the one on his face right now. All the cues and subtle nuances had been wiped clean away, leaving only an alien landscape: a tabula rasa.

Who are you?
I wanted to whisper, but that would have sounded too foolish spoken aloud.

“Jesus,” I finished.

“Not quite,” he said. “Your turn.”

I let him lead me into the bathroom.

The chemicals he put into my hair smelled awful and made my scalp burn. I stared straight ahead, eyes watering, my nostrils stinging a little from the scent of Michael's new cologne as it commingled with the acrid hair dye; it conjured up images of cheap leather and expensive bars.

My neck was cramping from leaning back into the tub. I struggled to sit up, my head far heavier than normal from being so laden with water. “Am I done?”

“With the hair, yes. Everything else — no.”

Without warning, I found myself with a memory of
Mamá
in our bathroom back home as she colored her hair with henna. She had started to go gray when she was still quite young and mail-ordered organic henna from a website based in India. The entire kitchen used to smell of coffee, because she used the ground beans to seal in the color when she mixed it herself. It was the
only
thing
Mamá
ever prepared herself in that kitchen; she was so vain, she hadn't even wanted our housekeeper to know that she was human. Everything had to be perfect.

I choked back a sob.

Michael mistook it for a cry of pain. He got up and pulled the cheap straight-backed chair from the bedroom into the bathroom. The legs screeched against the tile loudly, making me jump. “Sit down.”

I sat, still dripping, and he knelt down in front of me so that his newly altered face was now below mine. His knees brushed against my legs as he leaned in, frowning.
Don't you cry, Christina. Don't you dare.

“Close your eyes.”

There was a charged intensity to him; the phone call had precipitated a dangerous mood change that lingered in every gesture, every facial tic. I was afraid it would cause him to do something, well,
reckless
.

“I said close your eyes.”

I closed them, but I couldn't help jerking when I felt the touch of a brush against my eyelids.

Oh,
I thought.
I see
.

“Don't move,” he snapped, and I sat still once more as the brush swirled over my skin in light, tickling motions. Whatever he'd put on it was cold.

It shouldn't have shocked me that Michael was able to apply makeup considering how he had altered his own appearance, but it did. This ability of his was just one item on a long sweeping list of things I didn't know about him. I could fill a book with all the things I didn't know. Things like this.

He's better at this than I was at sixteen.

I laughed nervously, in spite of the tightness of my chest and the unshed tears that threatened to scald my eyes, and he said, irately, “What?”

I held back another giggle. “If we're doing each other's makeup, does this mean we're going to have sleepovers and tell each other secrets?”

“It means you're going to shut your mouth so I can finish,” he said, and I heard a quiet pop before he began filling in my lips with a tube of something that smelled very much like clay. “I need to concentrate.”

I was constantly learning new things about him in small, incremental amounts, which I hoarded like the miser I was. If I collected enough fragments of information, maybe, just maybe, they would create a whole with which I could familiarize myself. That whole — that Gestalt — would be the real Michael. If there was a real Michael. Perhaps beneath his chameleon surface, there was nothing but air.

“There,” he said, sounding satisfied. “I'm done. Want to take a look?”

I opened my eyes and stood, turning around to face the mirror. I gasped, and leaned in, gripping the counter with its visible grout as I stared in horror.

He had turned my hair a dark blonde that closely approximated the shade that his had used to be. It was at odds with my dark brows, especially with the lighter streaks that were almost white. It looked cheap, the way the girls who did it themselves with store-bought kits looked.

My eyes were heavily lined, and he had filled in my brows to make them look thicker than they were. The red lipstick sealed against my lips like a brand. I pressed them together, hiding the color, and looked at Michael. He put a hand on my shoulder, and I had to try hard not to flinch.

“What do you think?” he asked, watching my face in the mirror.

“I hate it,” I said, because I did. “You changed everything. My eyes — my…my
face
.” I ran my fingers over bone structures that didn't seem to belong to me. “How did you change my face?”

“I used contouring.”

That explained how he'd managed to make his own cheekbones look so angular and gaunt. I had seen tutorial videos of contouring online, although I had never tried it myself. Too much time and effort.

I ran my fingers down my cheek, following the lines he had emphasized. I couldn't feel anything, just skin. “I don't even look like me anymore.”

“That's the point.” He flung a bundle of fabric at me in a loose underhand. “Put this on.”

The material was sheer. When I rubbed it between my fingers, I could see right through the shiny fabric. “This looks like a nightgown.”

“You said you wanted to have a sleepover.”

He was humoring me, after all. Then I realized his words could be interpreted another way. My smile disappeared. “You're going to prostitute me?”

“Fuck, no. I thought I made it quite clear that that wasn't even an option.”

Not an option.
The words were reassuring. Until I realized something else. He'd put too much work into this for it to be a mere demonstration and he was dressed. “Are we going out now?”

“Yes,” he said, “so you better get changed.”

“Why now?”

“Because if we don't go now I'm going to spend all night drinking myself halfway into the grave, and then I'll be in no shape to do anything.”

I stared at him, too shocked to speak.

“I know you've been watching me,” he said. “You tied strands of hair around the bottles in the fridge to mark the levels of the liquid. Did you think I wouldn't notice? I'm not fucking stupid, you know.”

Not fucking stupid, maybe. Just out of control.

I looked down, quickly, at the fabric in my arms. Stalling. “This isn't something I would ever wear.”

“You might not wear it, but Cherry Kane would.”

“Cherry
Kane
?”

“That's the name you'll be using.”

“It sounds like the name of a stripper.”

He lifted a black eyebrow. “Close.”

I started to turn my back on him, but changed my mind, and remained facing him as I stepped into the short, short skirt. The halter top was so tight that nothing could have possibly fit beneath it; it squeezed my breasts uncomfortably close together, creating a sense of pressure that I wasn't used to.

“Well, this defeats the purpose of wearing anything at all.” I started to fold my arms, but that meant looking defensive, self-conscious. It also meant pushing up my already considerably enhanced cleavage, and I didn't want him to accuse me of trying to manipulate him with sex — again. “Why didn't you just have me go topless?”

“There has to be some mystery.”

I gestured at myself. “
What
mystery?”

“I could get you some pasties, if you're shy.”

Now I folded my arms, and I saw his eyes go to my chest and I had the sinking idea that he was punishing me for something, although I wasn't sure what it could possibly be. “How about a jacket?”

“That would be like hanging curtains in front of a shop window.”

“I thought you said you weren't selling me.” I took a step towards him, letting my arms fall to my sides, clenching my hands into fists. “I didn't realize I'd be taking over
exactly
where Suraya left off.”

It was a low blow — I'd wanted to hurt him because
he
was hurting
me
— but I hadn't anticipated how he would recoil as if I'd shoved the barrel of a gun into his chest and pulled the trigger myself. How bad this would make me feel. How…cheap.

“No.” His face lost some of its color beneath that fake tan that looked so much faker under the fluorescent lights; I wondered again what Adrian had said to him, why he was lashing out at me this way. “Suraya is dead. I won't let that happen to you.”

“Are you saying that you let that happen to her?”

Michael dug his fingers into my shoulders. I could feel his anger radiating from his body just like the heat from a fire. “Listen to me. It is a terrible fucking thing that happened to Suraya.  But she knew the risks when she took the job.”

“She didn't have a choice.”

“There is always a choice,” he said, releasing me with a speediness that felt like dismissal. “We just tend to discount our other options because they're too horrible to consider.” He smiled; it was sharp, devastating. “How badly do you want to live?”

“I don't want to die, if that's what you're asking.”

“Then he has to.” Michael spoke as if it was as simple as that. Maybe for him it was. “Either you die, or he does. Those are your only choices.”

Somehow, I didn't think so.

There had been a third option.

We tend to discount our other options because they're too horrible to consider
.

Adrian had threatened him with something.

What other choice did he offer you, Michael?

Why do I have the sneaking suspicion it involves
me
?

He held out his hand to me, opening his fingers to reveal a pair of gold hoop earrings.

I took them, brushing against his hand.

It was shaking.

Michael

Christina had done the background research. Her files were almost as thorough as Angelica's. With a little extra pull, I was able to confirm that a local crime syndicate frequented a club called Mystique — and many members of the syndicate were Albanian.

The club owner was a pudgy man in his late-thirties named Valon Bajramovic. My sources had seen him consorting with some very unsavory characters. Not Callaghan — that would have been too convenient — but men known to be involved with drugs, prostitution, guns. At least one of Valon's hands was dirty, and not just the one he used to diddle himself. I was positive that he was linked in some way to the men who ran the brothel where Suraya had been tortured and killed.

I've got you now, you motherfucker.

I sauntered up to the club with Christina in tow, adrenaline and alcohol sparking in my veins like flame to gasoline.
If this goes wrong —

I quashed that unwelcome thought. I'd never used to doubt myself. Things didn't use to go wrong.

Until, suddenly, they did. All at once.

All the time.

I'd been branded as a failure, a cautionary tale. Once I had been one of the most feared men in the world. My name alone could make a man shit his pants. Now I was a laughing-stock.

There was a bouncer. I slipped him fifty bucks and he let us through. Money talks, and it talks loudly and very, very persuasively.

“Remember,” I said under my breath, “don't say a goddamned word.”

“I remember.” Her voice sounded small. I didn't let myself think about that.

“Good.” I'd just spotted Valon across the room, surrounded by a crush of sycophants. Mostly men, although there were a few women. All of them had gigantic breasts and frosted blonde hair.

“Hello,” I said to Valon, in the placating tones of a lowly grunt looking to better himself. Not too lowly, though. I wanted him to pay attention.

“What do you want? Can't you see I'm busy?”

“I wonder if I could speak with you privately.”

I was banking on the fact that he had so many men in his employ, he wouldn't be able to tell one face from another. The fact that he went away with me confirmed that he had allowed his confidence in his own security to make him stupid.