Midnight Rescue: A Killer Instincts Novel (22 page)

Bahar leaned back, his thin lips pursed. “Perhaps. If, of course, such merchandise was available.”

“And let’s say it is,” Trevor pressed. “How would a transaction of that nature come about?”

“Hypothetically speaking—”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

“—it would happen in a secure location. The buyers would be taken to private rooms and be provided with a catalog showcasing the merchandise. If buyers request a closer look, the item would be brought to them for further examination.”

Trevor felt sick. Fortunately, their waiter returned holding a tray of drinks, providing a brief respite from the revolting course this discussion had suddenly taken.

Thanking the waiter, he handed Isabel her martini glass. She took a delicate sip and smiled impishly. “Salty,” she purred. “Just the way I like it.”

Bahar coughed. He recovered quickly, downing half the wine in his glass. “As I was saying…”

“Yes,” Trevor prompted. “The transaction.”

“More of a silent auction, I would call it.”

Bingo.

“After the merchandise has been examined, the buyers place their bids, funds exchange hands, and the merchandise is released to the successful bidders.”

Isabel looked curious. “And the items that don’t get sold? What would happen to them?” She smiled prettily. “Hypothetically, of course.”

“The items would be shipped to Asia. We—” Bahar quickly corrected his slipup. “A
person
with such merchandise on hand would most likely have a standing business arrangement with Asia. They seem to enjoy these particular types of goods.”

Disgust circled Trevor’s gut like a hungry vulture. Jesus. These people were sick fucks. He couldn’t believe he and Isabel were sitting here with this man, listening to
his hypothetical bullshit, discussing the sale of human beings as if it were an everyday occurrence.

“Of course,” Bahar continued, “an attendance fee would be required, in the event that the items aren’t to the bidders’ liking.”

“Like I said, money isn’t a problem.”

“Yes, you did say that, didn’t you?” Bahar tipped his head pensively. “What business are you in, Mr. Martin? You neglected to mention it.”

“I dabble, do a little bit of everything. Most of my funds came from an inheritance, but I’ve invested wisely over the years. I own several businesses, including a very lucrative gentlemen’s lounge in Rio.”
Gentlemen’s lounge
was just a fancy way to say whorehouse, but Bahar obviously got the drift.

“I see,” Bahar said absently.

Trevor forced himself to maintain a relaxed posture. Bahar wasn’t taking the bait. He was still wary of them. Guarded.

Prepared to launch into another pitch, Trevor opened his mouth, then snapped it shut when Isabel’s manicured hand suddenly snaked into his lap, bloodred fingernails scraping against his zipper. Unlike the way she’d crotch-handled him in front of Esposito, she didn’t hold back this time. He knew what she was doing. Bahar needed a show, needed to believe Julian Martin and his feisty Paloma were all about debauchery. A hand job in public would be no biggie for them. They wanted to buy a real-life sex toy, for Pete’s sake.

Trevor smothered a wild groan. Jesus. Her hand rubbed his groin, which started to harden, to his dismay. Why couldn’t his body remember he was dead inside? It
wasn’t supposed to come to life when Isabel Roma touched him.

“Have you ever been to Rio?” Isabel asked Bahar in a conversational tone, all the while continuing to stroke Trevor’s growing erection.

Disapproval and arousal warred in the man’s dark eyes. “Several times. It’s a lovely city.”

“Yes, very lovely,” she agreed.

Trevor’s mouth felt like someone had shoved a handful of sand in it. He couldn’t get a word out. The traitorous heat of desire surged through his veins, combining with a dose of self-hatred that made him want to push Isabel away.

He hadn’t thought about sex since Gina’s death. That part of his life had ceased to exist once he’d lost the only woman he’d ever wanted in his bed.

He nearly fell off the chair when Isabel cupped his cock over his pants. He released a ragged breath and noticed Bahar’s knowing gaze. Despite the long tablecloth covering Trevor’s lap, it was hard to miss the movement of Isabel’s hand.

Clearing his throat, Blanco’s attorney put down his wineglass. “I’m afraid I must get going,” he announced, smoothing the front of his gray wool blazer. “I’ll pass along the details of this meeting to Mr. Blanco, and, if he’s interested, we will contact you.”

“Thank you again for taking the time to see us.” Trevor didn’t stand for a handshake. He simply leaned forward and extended his hand, forcing Bahar to step over and shake it. No way was he getting up in his condition. He probably wouldn’t be able to walk with that rock between his legs.

Isabel rose, though, her heels snapping as she moved
toward Bahar. She bent down to kiss both of the man’s cheeks, her voice practically purring as she said, “It was wonderful meeting you.”

Bahar’s dark eyes went a little glazed. He glanced down at Isabel’s breasts, then said, “The pleasure was all mine.”

With a nod, the small man left the patio, his strides surprisingly long and smooth despite his height. Isabel watched him go, then took the seat Bahar had occupied, putting much-needed distance between the two of them.

“What do you think?” she asked, sounding pensive.

Trevor finally found his voice. His erection, thankfully, had begun to subside the moment Isabel quit stroking it. “I’m sixty-forty on this one,” he said roughly. “I think we piqued his interest.”

A slow smile spread over her pretty face. “Yeah, I think we did.”

He wanted to berate her for the borderline sex show she’d put on, but bit back the resentful words. She’d played her part perfectly, done precisely what she’d needed to do to ease some of Bahar’s concerns.

Her small, delicate hand reached for the menu. “Should we stay and have some dinner?”

“No,” he blurted out.

His abruptness caused her eyebrows to rise. “No need to snap at me, Callaghan.”

Rather than apologizing, he stood up, his knees unusually wobbly. Fuck. This wasn’t good. The need to get away from this woman came hard and fast. Why had she done that to him? How could she make him betray Gina like that?

“Let’s go back to the hotel,” he muttered. “I have some phone calls to make.”

Luke whistled as Abby approached the edge of the pond to test the water with her big toe. She’d changed into a skimpy green bikini that left so little to the imagination she may as well have been naked, and Kane was valiantly trying not to leer at her like a horny teenager. The creamy expanse of her cleavage, her firm ass, the graceful curve of her spine, her long, shapely legs. He finally decided to focus on something that
wouldn’t
give him a boner—her injuries. Some of the red welts on her stomach were beginning to fade, as were the bruises on her face, and she didn’t seem to be struggling with breathing anymore either, a sign that her ribs were starting to heal. But damn, looking at her rib cage naturally lured his gaze to her breasts again, and he clenched his teeth to quell his rising desire. He couldn’t look away. Neither could Luke and Ethan, which annoyed him.

“I can see why Blanco trusted her so easily,” Luke remarked. “She does exude a certain charm.”

She exuded a helluva lot more than charm. Sex appeal oozed out of her, which was ironic seeing as how she was completely indifferent to sex.

But she hadn’t been indifferent yesterday…

He still couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Walking back to his room last night had been somewhat of a struggle, considering how hard he’d been. His pulse had raced like a thoroughbred around a track and the heat flooding his stiff body made it difficult to breathe. He definitely hadn’t been expecting it to be like that. He’d wanted to tease her a little, give her a taste of what he had to offer, and instead he was the one who felt teased. He was the one who wanted another taste.

He couldn’t remember the last time a woman’s release
had turned him on so intensely. He’d been primed and hot and so ready to bury himself inside her he’d almost keeled over from the need.

And now she was standing five feet away, practically naked, and it was just as difficult to shake the fog of arousal from his brain. He couldn’t stop picturing the way her face had looked last night. Taut with desire. Blue eyes smoky with passion. The soft moan slipping out of her throat as she toppled over the edge.

He inhaled, then released his breath slowly, trying to erase the image of Abby’s flushed, aroused face from his mind. But then she turned her head toward him, and the breath he was in the process of releasing came out as a hiss. Her eyes. The pale blue he’d become accustomed to was now dark yellow, the color of warm honey. Surrounded by thick, dark lashes, her eyes seemed to glow in her face. Holy shit, they were incredible.

Abby caught his expression, and, with a dry smile, walked toward him, her bare feet padding across the grass that ringed the pond. “Noelle only brought enough contact solution to last a few days,” she explained.

Luke’s jaw went slack. “Is that actually your real eye color?”

“Afraid so.”

“Don’t look apologetic about it,” Luke replied seriously. “It’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Which is why I wear contacts on the job.” She shrugged. “The real thing is too unforgettable.”

She got that right.
Unforgettable
was definitely the word Kane would use to describe her eyes, not to mention last night’s tryst. To his embarrassment, he found himself getting hard, and quickly forced a barrage of mundane images involving chairs and kitchen appliances
into his brain before Luke had ammunition he could use to belittle Kane for months to come.

Shifting his gaze away from Abby, Luke shoved his thumb and forefinger into his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. A second later, his dog barreled through the brush and came to a stop at his master’s feet.

“Feel like a swim, buddy?” Luke asked. He pointed to the water and said, “Go on.”

Letting out an excited yip, Bear dashed across the grass and practically flung his four-legged body into the pond. His wet brown head popped out a second later and he proceeded to embark on an awkward-looking doggy paddle that made Kane laugh.

“Amateur,” Luke announced as he observed the mutt. “This is how it’s done, folks.”

When they’d first moved to the compound, Luke and Ethan had built a long wooden dock at the edge of the pond, high enough so they could impress each other with ridiculously dangerous flips. As Kane and Abby watched, Luke took off running, then executed a scary-looking double back flip before landing in the water. He surfaced with a grin and began doing a lazy backstroke.

“Ladies first,” Kane said.

“Yeah, I don’t think I’m up for flips just yet.” She moved to the water’s edge, wading in slowly.

Kane watched as she ventured deeper, until the water was lapping beneath her breasts, and then she totally submerged herself, her shapely legs kicking as she moved through the water. He followed her in, grateful for the cold sensation against his crotch. Felt like his body was always hot when Abby was around.

“We had a pond like this near the house I grew up in,” he said as he and Abby swam side by side. A few yards
away, Luke was floating on his back with his eyes closed, while Ethan had channeled his inner fish and was doing underwater laps at the other end of the pond.

“In Michigan,” she said, looking pleased that she’d remembered.

“Grand Rapids, if we’re being more specific. In high school, my friends and I would hop into our respective pickups and drive to the pond. Mostly after dark, so we could coerce the girls to go skinny-dipping.”

Abby’s eyes twinkled. “Did it work?”

“Usually.” He laughed. “Though somehow the guys wound up naked most of the time while the girls managed to keep their underwear on.”

They neared the middle of the pond, treading water for a bit. Before she could protest, Kane placed his hands on her slender waist so that they were face-to-face. To his surprise, her arms looped around his neck. She was close enough to kiss, but he didn’t dare. Not with Luke and Ethan nearby. He suspected Abby Sinclair was not a PDA sort of woman.

“God, you had such a normal life,” she commented with a wry look. “Football and skinny-dipping and pickup trucks. I bet your parents are perfect too, huh?”

He thought about his mom’s sprawling garden and the hockey rink his dad built in their backyard every winter, and had to smile. “Pretty much,” he confessed.

“I didn’t have a pond, but we did have a pool in our backyard,” she said, surprising him with her candid revelation. “Jeremy had one built, so he could train me in underwater warfare.”

Kane stared at her. “Seriously?”

A husky laugh left her mouth. “Seriously. He said I had to be prepared for anything, you know, because
sometimes holding your breath for five minutes could come in handy.”

“No way can you hold your breath for five minutes.”

“I really can.” She tilted her head. “How long can you hold yours, Mr. Navy SEAL?”

“Six,” he said arrogantly.

Another laugh. Wow, two laughs in less than a minute. He wanted to comment, but forced himself to shut up. Abby was already prickly enough. One wrong word could turn her back into the tight-lipped professional she’d been when they’d first met.

“Your Jeremy sounds really interesting,” Kane said tentatively. “How did he come into your life?”

She seemed to hesitate, as if deciding whether it was safe to tell him. Finally she said, “He was our neighbor. The Hartfords’ neighbor, that is. He wasn’t home very often, always off on some mission, but then he got shot and was in recovery for a while.” She grew hesitant again. “He could hear me screaming.” A sharp laugh. “Hell, the whole neighborhood could, but Jeremy was the only one who gave a damn. He broke into our house one night, during one of Ted’s beatings, and he saved me.”

Kane went speechless. He’d known that Thomas had adopted Abby, but her story painted a picture of a man with unbelievable honor. Not a lot of men had the balls to interfere with other people’s domestic troubles. And to rescue a teenage girl he didn’t even know, to whisk her out of an abusive foster home—that told Kane a lot about Jeremy Thomas. He suddenly felt a pang of regret as he remembered Thomas was dead. As he realized he’d never get the chance to thank the man for everything he’d done for Abby.