Filthy Wicked Games (6 page)

E
verything happened in slow motion
.

Harley watched her fingers curling around the heavy rock in half time, lived the moment it took for her to swing the lichen-covered stone over her head for a hundred frantic beats of her heart, and felt the clench of her gut as she reversed direction—slamming her makeshift weapon down at a slight angle—for so long it felt like her abdominal muscles were going to pinch in two and squeeze the life out of her.

And then the rock hit Clay’s head, a gush of blood burst from the pierced skin at the base of his skull, and time jerked back to normal speed.

Harley cried out as he collapsed, splashing into the pool just ahead of her. Water sprayed into her face and the waves caused by his collapse rocked against her thighs, but Clay didn’t jump back to his feet, prepared to take his revenge. He remained facedown in the water, his long arms trailing down to brush the smooth pebbles beneath the surface, his torso rocking gently as the pool rediscovered peace, clearly not overly disturbed by a murder being committed near its banks.

“Shit,” Harley whispered, the stone splashing back into the water as her hands began to shake. “Shit!”

He was going to drown. He was going to drown and die. He might still die—she hadn’t intended to kill him, just knock him out, but clearly she’d hit him harder than she’d intended—but unless she got him out of the water, death was a foregone conclusion.

She probably shouldn’t care that the man who’d tortured her for two weeks was about to die, but his taste was still in her mouth and her body still ached desperately for his touch, and she did care.

Damn her, she did. She didn’t want to be a killer and she especially didn’t want to kill Clay.

She’d already lived with his blood on her hands for years. No matter how demented a bastard he’d become, she didn’t want to live that way anymore.

Bending down, she flipped Clay over onto his back, heart jerking when he coughed and water streamed from his nose and mouth. She froze, ready to drop him and run, but after the coughing had stopped, his eyes remained closed, and after a moment, his breath grew slow and even. Pulse still thready from a dizzying mixture of fear and adrenaline, Harley quickly towed him to the edge of the pool. As the water grew shallow, moving him grew harder, but she managed to hook her arms beneath his armpits and drag his heavy body over the stones and onto the grass at the edge of the pool.

She deposited him as gently as she could and stood staring down at his naked, unconscious form for a shock-numbed moment. And then she turned and ran like hell.

She stopped to scoop her tee shirt and Clay’s boxers off of the ground, but she didn’t bother with the misery-inducing boots or take the time to dress. Now that she’d made sure Clay wasn’t going to drown, she couldn’t afford to waste a second.

Terror fueling her weary muscles, she sprinted back down the hill, away from the cliffs, her bare feet slapping against the hard-packed dirt. At the base of the incline, where the path split in two, she skidded to a stop, keeping one panicked eye on the trail behind her as she shrugged on her shirt and yanked the boxers up and over her hips. The forest was still empty, but she swore she could feel Clay coming for her, rapidly eliminating her head start.

You knocked him unconscious. He’s not going to be able to recover from that quickly. He’ll be slow and unsteady if he’s on his feet at all.

But her thoughts offered no comfort. Clay was out of his mind, stubborn as hell, and in incredible shape. It was a combination that could work miracles—she should know.

After everything she’d been through, most people wouldn’t have the strength left to jog five miles. Harley didn’t jog; she sprinted, flying through the woods, leaping over rocks and tree limbs and other obstacles in her path. Her breath burned in her lungs and her legs cramped, but she didn’t slow her pace or waste another second looking over her shoulder. She ran like the devil was chasing her out of hell, arms pumping at her sides, her thoughts an endless mantra of
hold on, hold on, hold on.

She was on her way to Jasper. She just had to hold together long enough to get off this island and everything would be okay. She had a plan in place for emergencies like these. She had passports under three different aliases stored in three different post office boxes throughout Europe, along with enough cash to get her to Prague and Jasper.

She would get to him before Marlowe and then she would figure out what came next. She just had to hold on.

Hold on.

Hold on.

She burst from the woods into the clearing near the cottages and veered left, headed toward the ocean. She hadn’t seen anything but the officer cottages and the main building, but this was a military installation. There had to be a dock nearby.

A dock, and hopefully, a boat.

Please let there be a boat and please let it be easy to hotwire and please let there be water and food on board.

For a split second, she considered turning back toward the brown and white building where she’d been held prisoner, knowing there was water, food, and other supplies stored inside, but then she saw the dock—and the fishing boat rocking gently in one of the five slips—and kept running.

Freedom was so close she could taste it. She couldn’t bear the thought of going back inside that miserable place and surely she wouldn’t die of thirst in the time it took her to get to safety. Clay had transported her here in a day or two. The south Thai islands weren’t that far apart and the boat no doubt had GPS.

She trotted out onto the dock, the sun-warmed boards hot on her bare feet, and jumped over the boat’s railing onto the deck. The small craft was spic and span, and in the cabin, beneath a storage bench, she discovered a flat of bottled water, packages of almonds, tinned meat, a locked shotgun case, and a box of shells.

Hope and gratitude flooded through her, making her hands shake as she twisted the cap off of a water bottle and tipped it up to her lips. She sat down hard on the floor beside the bench, guzzling the water as she pulled the shotgun case out onto the floor beside her. It was a simple lock, the kind likely to pop on its own if you dropped it on the ground enough times. But there were faster ways to get basic mechanisms like this to give.

She looked up, swiping water from her mouth as she scanned the rest of the tidy cabin. All she would need was a paperclip or a straw or—

A pen!

She stood, hurrying to the control console, snatching a ballpoint pen from its place beside a leather bound notebook she guessed was the captain’s log. With any luck, it would list the location and time of departure from the port Clay had left when he’d brought her here. She would look, as soon as she got the gun open and the boat started and the craft headed out into open water.

Dropping back down to the floor, she twisted the pen apart and pulled out the pressure screw, forcing it straight with slick fingers. She was still dripping sweat, her body struggling to cool her down after the long run. Salty drops streamed down her forehead and into her eyes, but she didn’t bother wiping them away. She focused on the lock, jiggling the straightened spring back and forth until the box popped open with a soft
snick
.

A moment later, she had the shotgun cocked open and slid a shell into each of the barrels. She had just snapped it closed and turned to see about opening the boat’s ignition panel when she heard footsteps on the dock.

Fast, heavy footsteps, making no effort to be silent as they pounded across the wood.

There was only one person it could be. One other person on this godforsaken island.

Clay.

H
eart leaping into her throat
, Harley spun around, cursing herself for not getting the boat started first. She might have already been pulling away from the dock right now if she’d hotwired the ignition first.

But she hadn’t. She had armed herself and she meant to use the weapon to make sure she got the hell off this island.

Clenching her jaw, she brought the gun to her shoulder, preparing for Clay to burst through the cabin door. She didn’t have to wait long. Seconds after she steadied her grip on the rifle, the door swung open, revealing a sweat-soaked Clay wearing nothing but his shorts and boots.

His bare torso glistened and water beaded on his face and neck, smearing the blood that streamed from the wound at the back of his head down over his thickly muscled shoulder. His eyes glinted with rage, but he wasn’t out of his mind with it. He still had the sense to freeze when he saw the gun, his gaze darting from Harley to the open storage bench beside her and back again.

“That loaded?” he asked, his breath coming fast.

He must have sprinted the entire way here, too, every bit as eager to recapture her as she was to escape.

“It is. And I’m an excellent shot.” She stepped her right foot back, firming up her stance, not wanting to get knocked off her feet by the recoil if she were forced to shoot him. “Even if I wasn’t, there’s no way I could miss with you this close. The only way you’re waking up to see another sunrise is if you get off this boat right now and let me go.”

“I can’t do that,” he said, taking a step closer.

Harley took a mirror step back. “I’m serious, Clay! I will shoot you. I don’t want to, but if you give me no other choice, I will. I have to get to Jasper. He’s all that matters. Now get the fuck off the boat!”

He shook his head as he slowly lifted his arms into the air in a gesture of surrender she wasn’t buying for a moment. “You’re right. Okay? You’re right. Jasper is what matters. We need to make sure he’s safe. Then we can work out the rest of the shit between us.”

She tried to laugh, but it got stuck on the way up her throat, emerging as a startled-sounding gurgle. “You know I’m not that stupid.”

“I know you’re not,” he said, edging an inch closer. The movement was so slight most people wouldn’t have noticed it. But Harley noticed and it was enough to make her cock the hammer and squeeze one eye shut, preparing to shoot a hole through Clay’s gut if he took another step.

He froze. “You’re not going to shoot me.”

“Don’t come any closer,” she warned softly.

“If you were going to kill me you would have let me drown,” he continued, holding her gaze with his big hands still held aloft, framing his seemingly earnest face. “We were all the way across the pool when you hit me over the head. There is no way I fell at the edge of the bank onto my back. You pulled me there, didn’t you? And made sure I was breathing before you ran?”

“I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.” She fought the tears pressing at her eyes as he shifted another inch her way, ignoring her order, bringing the moment when she would have to kill him to get to her son a second closer. “Please! I just want to leave. Don’t make me do this!”

“I’m not going to make you do anything. Not anymore,” he said in a deep voice that would have been soothing if she didn’t know that he was preparing to pounce at any moment. “You
have
changed. You’ve proven that. Now give me a chance to prove that I’m not out of my mind. And that I can put Jasper’s welfare first. There will be plenty of time for us to fight once we know that he’s as safe as we can possibly make him.”

He eased another micro-step closer. “I had time to think while I was running back here, hoping like hell that I’d get to the boat before you made it off the island. I get it now, okay. I get that I’ve been fighting a losing game and that I shouldn’t have been playing games in the first place. The second I knew that Jasper was in danger, I should have done whatever it took to keep him safe, even if that meant calling a truce between us.”

“You’re lying,” she said, lips pressing together.

“I’m not,” he said. “I swear I’m not, Harley. I swear on my life. On Jasper’s life.”

Harley swallowed against the salt and fire taste rising in her mouth. She tried to clear her head and think rationally, but the moment was too fraught. All she could think about was the gun in her hand and the man who had imprisoned her and tortured her and used her sick desire for him against her—turning her own body into a traitor that couldn’t be trusted—standing in front of her, ready to drag her back to hell.

“I can’t go back into that cage,” she whispered. “I can’t. It will kill me.”

“No, it wouldn’t.” His lips tilted up one side. “You’re made of tougher stuff than that. You’ve proven that, too.”

“Don’t look at me like that.” Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t try to trick me. You don’t admire me, and you don’t want to work together. You just want me to put the gun down.”

“Yes, I would like for you to put the gun down,” he agreed, shoulders shrugging as his hands began to drift back to his sides. “But I don’t—”

He lunged the last few feet separating them, wrenching the shotgun from her hands before she could fire. Her finger hadn’t been on the trigger, but even if it had, she couldn’t have pulled it. She wasn’t capable of killing one of the few people she had truly loved, even if she hated the devil he’d become.

She stumbled back until her bottom hit the control console, and stood, heart pounding, bracing herself for whatever Clay would do next.

Would he shoot her, beat her, or simply fist his hand in her hair and force her back to his torture chamber?

Instead, he opened the gun, shook the shells out onto the floor, and stood staring at her over the evidence of what looked like an attempt at a real truce.

T
here was no other way
. This was his last shot.

What he’d said to her was true—he did believe that she had changed. The old Harley wouldn’t have hesitated to destroy anyone who got in her way. She would have left him to drown at the falls and never looked back.

Or maybe not. Maybe you were more than a means to an end, even back then.

Maybe she did love you, in her way.

It was a dangerous, pointless thought.

It didn’t matter whether their love had been true or false, the enmity between them now was very real and if he couldn’t find a way to defuse it, Harley was never going to take him to Jasper. And that’s what would need to happen. She was never going to tell him where his son was hidden. The only way he was getting to Jasper was by taking Harley with him and then only if she trusted him enough to agree to work together.

There was only one thing he could think to do, one way to earn the trust he’d proven he didn’t deserve.

“I have footage of you in the sensory deprivation cell,” he said, his voice soft and careful in the combustible silence. “We can go back to the installation and you can film my confession that I was the one who put you in there—without orders or the knowledge of my superiors.”

Her head turned, but her wary eyes remained focused on his face.

He took a step back, increasing the distance between them before he continued. “Then you can upload the confession and the footage from the cell to the cloud so you’ll have it in case you need to use it against me.”

“I won’t be able to use it against you if I’m dead,” she said, pushing on before he could respond. “But if you’d wanted me dead you could have shot me just now. You need me alive, at least until I take you to Jasper.” Her lips trembled but fell short of a smile. “I imagine then all bets will be off.”

“That’s not true,” he said, not surprised that she had worked through the logic of that possible scenario so quickly. “But I realize you have no reason to trust me. That’s why you’ll have the confession, evidence to prove that I kidnapped you, treated you terribly, and did it all pretending to be on orders from the US government.”

Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t respond. She simply watched him as if waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“You could destroy me with even a fraction of that evidence,” he continued. “If I try to trick you or take Jasper away, you leak the video and I’ll be on a most wanted list within twenty-four hours.”

“And what about the information you have on me?”

“That’s my leverage.” He leaned against the doorframe leading into the cabin, trying to look relaxed, knowing desperation never played well during a negotiation. “To be handed over to my superiors if you go back on our deal.”

“No.” She shook her head, sending her still-damp curls rocking around her face. “Then you can take Jasper, leak my file, and—”

“And then we both go to jail,” he cut in. “And believe me, I have no urge to spend so much as a night in prison, let alone a decade or more. I was in a coma for eight months. That’s enough life lost. I value my freedom. I’m not going to give you any excuse to leak my confession.”

Her tongue slipped out, wetting her pink lips. Her entire face was flushed. No wonder, since she’d probably broken a few speed records on her race back to the black site. The color looked good on her, making the exhausted part of him wish they could pick up where they’d left off at the falls, rewind to before he’d taken things too far and just make love in the water.

Fuck
in the water
, he amended.
Neither one of you is capable of more than fucking, and don’t you forget it.

“And what is this deal going to look like, Clay?” she asked. “Because unless it involves me in Jasper’s life for the long term, I’m not making any bargains.”

“Shared custody,” he said. “But we work it out between us, keep things out of the court system. Considering you’ve been declared legally dead and I’ve been deep undercover for years, I figure that would be for the best, don’t you?”

She frowned, her brow knitting as she shook her head. “I don’t understand. What changed between this morning, when I made this exact same suggestion, and this afternoon?”

“You,” he insisted, silently begging her to believe him. “Or my perception of you, anyway.”

He stepped away from the door, facing her over the shotgun shells rolling drunkenly back and forth on the ground between them as the boat listed on the waves. “You could have killed me, more than once, but you didn’t. The fact that you have value for human life, even the life of a man who tortured you…”

He trailed off with a sigh. “Well, that means something. It means a lot. I know that to make co-parenting a child work we’re going to have to find more common ground than that, but at least it’s a place to start.”

Silence fell between them again, but it was a more peaceful silence, the kind that might be broken by birds singing instead of a scream ripping through the jungle.

“Film the confession and help me get it uploaded to safe virtual storage,” she said with a breath deep enough to move her shoulders up and down. “After that’s finished, you let me stay online and send the man who’s guarding Jasper a message that danger could be on the way. When both of those things are done, we can talk about what the future might look like.”

“All right.” Clay knelt to catch the shells as they rolled toward him. “Just let me lock up the gun and we can head up to the main building.”

She watched him as he tucked the shells back into their box and fit the gun back into its case. “You need a better lock on that. If you’re planning to have guns in the house when Jasper is with you, you’ll need enhanced safety measures. He knows better than to play with guns, but I don’t like to take chances. Since he was born, I’ve stored every one of my weapons in a double lockbox.”

He shut the bench lid and stood with a nod. “Sounds smart.”

She nodded for a long moment before her features pinched toward the center of her face. “This feels…strange.”

“It does,” he agreed, feeling more awkward around her than he had since he’d crept up behind her with a syringe in his hand. “But we’ll get used to it. People do this kind of thing all the time.”

“You think?” She raised a wry brow. “They go from wanting to kill each other in the morning to sketching out co-parenting rules in the afternoon?”

His lips curved. “Judging by the divorces I’ve been witness to, the killing part isn’t far off, but you’re right, the swift turn around isn’t the norm. Usually, it takes a few months of screaming at each other in a room with lawyers on either side of the table before compromise starts to happen. But we’re not divorcing.”

“No, I was your prisoner and now I’m not,” she said, an incredulous note in her voice. “That’s way more fucked up than most divorces, Clay.”

“But there are fewer feelings involved.” The words felt like a lie, but they weren’t.

Yes, he felt different about Harley than he had the day she’d woken up tied to a bed, but that didn’t mean he
had feelings
for her. It just meant that he’d let go of some of the rage that had been seething inside of him, poisoning him as surely as anything Harley had ever done.

She was right, he’d been out of his mind with rage. It was only now that he’d begun to move forward in a more reasonable fashion that he was finally starting to feel like himself again, to feel like he was regaining control and ensuring the best possible future for the son he’d never met.

“I have lots of feelings,” Harley said, her eyes darkening. “So many feelings, I’m not sure what to name them all, but I do know this: if you betray me, the next time I have a clear shot at you, I won’t hesitate to take it.”

He nodded. “Understood. And if you betray me, I’ll send you to prison for the rest of your life. I don’t care if Jasper ends up being raised by one of the miserable, selfish members of your family. If I’m rotting in jail because you released my confession, I’m going to make sure you rot right along with me.”

A smile stretched her pink lips. It wasn’t the sunshine through the rain smile that took his breath away, but it still transformed her sweat-streaked face into a thing of beauty.

“There, that’s the charmer I’ve come to know,” she said, her voice husky. “For a moment there, you were being way too reasonable and level headed.”

“Baby steps,” he replied, turning back to the cabin door and holding out an arm. “After you.”

Harley’s eyes narrowed, but after a moment’s hesitation, she moved past him and out onto the deck. She remained wary on their walk up to the installation and throughout the setup of the camera in the control room where he’d monitored her cell, but by the time his confession was in the bag and uploaded to her cloud drive via satellite connection, she began to relax.

She allowed him to remain in the room as she posted a blog entry about catastrophic chocolate shortages on the horizon and even laughed when he questioned the choice of topics.

“What could be more terrible than a chocolate shortage?” She stood up from the desk chair, hands on her lower back as she arched her spine. “If that doesn’t convey imminent danger, I don’t know what does.”

“Sore from the run?” he asked.

She nodded. “I don’t usually run five miles in bare feet and those boots weren’t much better.”

“Let me take you to the storage room,” he said, moving toward the door. “You can look through the women’s uniform pieces and shoes and pick something out to wear after your shower. Or you can have a bath if you’d rather. There’s a tub in the bathroom in the infirmary.”

He stopped in the hallway, turning back to see Harley standing where he’d left her, studying him with an inscrutable look.

“And what then?” she asked. “Are you going to make me dinner?”

“Dinner should happen,” he said, with a shrug. “We don’t have to eat it together, but there’s a picnic table outside the kitchen that has a nice view of the ocean. We could eat and then start packing up. If we head out tonight, we should reach Bangkok by morning. I’ve got connections there that can set you up with a passport and we should be able to book a flight to wherever Jasper is.”

“I’m not telling you where we’re going until we’re boarding the plane,” she warned as she crossed to the door. “You give me the money and I buy the tickets alone. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” he said. “But you never leave my sight, not even for a second.”

Harley blinked up at him. “This still feels so odd. It’s like you’re a stranger. I can’t tell what you’re thinking.”

“That’s not that surprising, is it?” he asked softly. “Neither of us was being ourselves before. We were playing our parts, doing whatever it took to get the upper hand and get what we wanted. It was all lies and dirty games.”

“Not all of it,” she said, sadness creeping into her tired eyes. “Some of it was real. You know that, even if you won’t admit it.”

Longing and regret swirled through his chest. Agreeing to a truce had made things more civilized between them, but it had also taken touching her off the table. And damn him, but he still wanted to touch her. Maybe even wanted it more than he had before. He wanted to learn what it would be like to fuck her without all the drama in the way, for it to be just him and her and enough pleasure to mute the pain of the past.

They would never escape the ugly legacy of the choices they’d made, but maybe they could turn down the volume. He already knew how good it would feel to have her soft and willing beneath him, wrapping her long legs around his waist and pulling him deeper, closer. He could almost hear the hungry little sounds she would make as he brought her over, smell the scent of her flooding through his head as he fought the urge to come, wanting to feel her clench around him again before he lost himself.

If he reached for her, he sensed that she would let him do all the things he was dying to do to her, but he couldn’t take a single step down that road. That road led to emotion and complications and wanting more from Harley than she could ever give, even if she wanted to.

She was who she was and there was no changing that. He could find things to admire about the person she’d become and admit that she’d proven that even monsters could become something better than they’d been before, but she was still the person who had used him to ruin his best friend’s life. She was still a woman who had lied to him, played him, and framed a man for a crime he hadn’t committed before running off to start a career as a drug smuggler.

There was no coming back from the things she’d done. Her God, if she had one, might forgive her, but he never could.

And so instead of leaning down to capture her lips and learn if she tasted different without hate simmering between them, he tilted his head toward the stock room down the hall. “Come on, let’s find you something else to wear. I’m sure it will feel good to get out of those clothes.”

She dropped her gaze to his feet with a soft laugh. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

Clay didn’t respond, he simply turned and walked away, knowing it was the best thing he could do for the both of them.