Crazed: A Blood Money Novel (24 page)

But he shook his head, the sun glinting off the short dark hair he’d let grow out a bit over the past few weeks. “I’ve got demons, baby. I don’t know if they were always there and I just ignored them, or if they popped up after I thought you’d died, but they fucked me up.” His hands turned to fists at his sides. “Hell, they still fuck me up, even knowing you’re here. So I decided to be honest with the shrink for once during our quarterly a couple weeks ago.” Meeting her eyes, he shifted closer, and a delicious thrill raced through her limbs. “Because I can’t do my job if I’m at the mercy of a chemistry imbalance. Just like I can’t be the best father possible, or the best...the best husband possible.”

Pressure on her chest made it hard to breathe. “It takes a strong man to put his health first.”

The corner of his mouth twitched, as though he wanted to smile but couldn’t bring himself to do so. “Is that another way of calling me selfish?”

Her hands fluttered over her skirt. “Oh, no, I—”

“I’m selfish, Ilda. That’s another thing I’ve learned, talking to the doc.” Again, he inched forward, and she realized that he was maneuvering her. Caging her. “You told me I was back in Medellín, and you’re right.” Another inch, his hands coming to rest on the stone railing, on either side of her hips. “I love you
selfishly
. I love you for making me burn, for making me ache. I love you for how you touch me, and how you let me touch you. I love you for the laughter and excitement and adventure and secrecy of our courtship, and I love you—” he leaned in until his mouth hovered over hers “—for our daughter. Selfishly is the only way I know how to love you.”

“Casí.” Her palms lifted to rest on the muscled planes of his pectorals. Touching him. She was touching him.

“But the flip side,
amor
, is that I’ll give you anything, everything.” His lips brushed hers in a ghost of a kiss, and it felt good, so damn good. “You and Arlo, you make me self
less
. Every piece of me, every inch, belongs to you.” And then he aligned every last one of those inches with all of hers, leaving them both shuddering. “You own me.”

Ilda lost control. Her hands fisted in his shirt, closing the final centimeters between them and stealing the kiss she’d been dying to take for weeks. She licked her way into his mouth, drowning in the rich, familiar taste of his lips. Nothing compared to the sweet need he inspired with each flick of his tongue, nip of his teeth, slide of his lips.

Her arms looped around his neck. “I told you,
marido
. You’re the other half of my soul.”

“Fénix.”

“Casí—”

“Sorry, sorry.” He kissed a path across her cheek, hands going to the unconstrained wildness of her curly hair, fisting and tugging to reveal the column of her throat to his lips. “I know you don’t want me to call you that anymore.”

“No, I do. I-I missed it.” Her nails raked over his scalp as she urged him on, lashes fluttering down. “I missed
you
, every day for four years, and I loved you for every one of those days. I loved you for every day we were together in Colombia, and for every night we’ve been apart since landing in Chicago. I love you,
marido
.” Hopping atop the balustrade, she wrapped her legs around his waist, feeling the delightful hard length of his erection nestle into the apex of her thighs. “Being apart feels like a punishment.”

“Then let’s stop punishing ourselves.” Lifting his head, he reached beneath the collar of his shirt to withdraw a chain. “You know our marriage isn’t legal, but I’m your husband. I have been ever since you gave me this.” His palm opened to reveal the moonstone ring she’d placed in his palm four years ago in the chapel—a placeholder for the wedding band she had always intended to purchase for him. “Let me give it back to you now with the promise to do it right this time.” With a yank, the chain released, and he slid the ring free, shoving the chain into his pocket as he reached for her left hand. “I want us out in the open for everyone to see. Dates, dinners, dancing. I want us to have everything we didn’t the first time around, and do this properly.” Slowly, purposefully, he slipped the ring onto her third finger. “And then, when you’re ready to take on my selfish heart forever, we’ll make it official. How does that sound,
fénix
?”

It sounded just about perfect to her. “Does doing this ‘properly’ involve you touching me?” Her thighs clenched around his hips, and she gifted him with her best seductive smile, relishing the weight of her new-old ring on her finger as she ran her hands over his big shoulders. “I feel like a beggar for you, after so long without.”

“Then it’s a good thing my version of ‘proper’ involves me fucking you senseless whenever you need it, baby.” His cock surged aggressively between them, rough palms falling to her knees and shoving up beneath her sundress. “And I hope you need it bad, because I feel like I’m gonna die if I don’t get inside you.”

She moaned when his tongue found the pulse beneath her ear. “I do. I do need it bad.”

“Good girl. Now spread those pretty legs a little wider for me—Yes, that’s it.” He loosed a pleased growl as he shoved aside the soaked gusset of her panties. “Ah, fuck, baby. Why do you always have to feel like this?” Two masculine fingertips found her clit, petting with quick, sure flicks designed to push her past the edge of reason.

“Fuck me,” she begged, panting. Her sex clamped around nothing, the emptiness leaving her shivering to be filled.

With his non-busy hand anchored now at the base of her spine, he angled her deeper into the green growth at her back, switching up the angle so that his trouser-covered erection rubbed perfectly over her center. He withdrew his hand from between her legs, sucking his fingers deep into his mouth and licking, licking with that devious tongue, before shoving them beneath her skirt and thrusting them into her, deep and without warning.

His mouth caught her scream of pleasure.

And then he
was
fucking her, with fingers instead of cock, but she was filled and that was enough for now. “Oh, God, Casí.” She kissed him with abandon, growing mindless with each pump of his hand, the grinding of his hips adding perfect pressure until she knew there was no avoiding her approaching orgasm. Not when she was starved for it. For him. “Casí,
marido
.”

“That’s right, baby. Your man’s gonna make you come.” His whispered words fell harsh against her lips. “Your husband. So go ahead, get my hand all messy. When you’re done, I’m gonna lick you from my skin. Taste you there for hours.”

The heel of his palm raked over her clit, and that was all it took. Whimpering, writhing, she let the stars explode behind her closed eyelids, satiated lust rippling over her exposed skin like a brand she dare not hide, not when she wanted to remain marked by Casey and what he did to her body, her heart, forever.

Then he proceeded to pull his hand free and make good on his threat, licking the evidence of her orgasm from his fingers and sending a whole new round of sticky shivers through her bloodstream. “I think you had better come over for supper this evening.” She met his gaze, smiled at the surprised longing she saw reflected there. “I also think you had better spend the night, too.”

Arms banding about her waist, he dropped his forehead to hers. “Ilda.
Te amo
.”

Of course he loved her, and she loved him. “Come home with us, Casey Faraday.”

“Always.” And he kissed her, stark and pure, and hers. “Always.”

Epilogue

Faraday
Labs
San Diego

Forty-six days. It had been forty-six days since Adam was kidnapped, and it killed Gillian that they hadn’t yet rescued him.

It didn’t make sense that they couldn’t find him. They were Faradays, for Christ’s sake; there was
nothing
their family, their company couldn’t do. Except, apparently, retrieve one of their own.

Her eyes burned behind the lenses of her glasses, but not from tears or emotion. No, it was from staring at this damn computer screen well into the night, and now it was past time for her to head back to her apartment, which meant she was bunking at the Labs. Again.

It wasn’t so bad, really, staying in the tricked-out studio attached to her office and private lab, the lab in which she now sat. It was just that she’d made a New Year’s Resolution to spend more nights in her two-bedroom apartment than she did at her workplace, and six months into the year, Gillian would really like to be able to start honoring that resolution. Like, anytime now.

Still, she struggled to justify a peaceful night’s sleep in the comfort of her own bed while Adam was God knows where in the world, and Faraday Industries hadn’t yet uncovered the mole within their ranks. So even though she had closed out the day’s work—a schematic for the subfloor cooling and electrical systems in her new “passenger drone” project—Gillian continued to pore over clues leading nowhere.

Satellite footage from the Kabul Girls’ School Bombing.

Flight manifests between Afghanistan and Russia for the weeks before and after the bombing.

The helicopter. Always that damn helicopter.

They needed to locate it, but Gavin’s memory of its actual location was hazy. She’d started by tracking down as many of the late Karlin Kedrov’s properties as possible, but Gillian had never been the whiz-kid Adam was with the internet. Where nothing online remained sacred or locked from him, unless Gillian had a set key sequence or word search or instructions provided to her, her Google Fu was no more or less Fu-ish than your average nineties kid’s.

Gavin had said the helicopter had been burned out, but if he’d been able to open up the secret compartment and get at those hidden Faraday guns, that meant the chopper might be salvageable. Not that she wanted to save it—she wanted to get at its black box.

So when the Kedrov property search grew frustrating, Gillian had switched tactics to tracking and inventorying every Faraday helicopter that had been retrofitted with the secret in-floor storage compartment. Turns out, there were a lot of helicopters out there meeting that criteria. She’d started with the choppers requisitioned by the US military, since it seemed far more likely that one of those had fallen off the radar and into enemy hands, but now, more than halfway through the list, none so far were missing.

Gillian didn’t want there to be a mole in Faraday Industries. Logic dictated otherwise, with the targeting of her siblings—because it was targeting, no two ways about it, and it had to stop. It
had
to.

Shortly after Beth’s ordeal, Gillian had Skyped with her younger sister, taking in the visible evidence of Beth’s brutalization and wishing with everything in her that she was in their family home, too. Or that she’d visited Beth at her old condo in Chicago, in the year before this nightmare occurred. But Gillian hadn’t been in physical proximity with her siblings in a long time. Only once in two years, to be precise.

She knew Beth missed her, had maybe even
needed
her while she healed. But Gillian hadn’t been there, because the Labs were her priority. Normally, her conscience wouldn’t twinge one bit; this wasn’t simply a job, but her life’s work, and what she did in the Labs was the foundation on which Faraday Industries earned not only its money but its reputation. Still...

Frowning at her primary monitor, Gillian settled her glasses higher on the bridge of her nose. Everyone thought Tobias was the loner of the family, but her quiet older brother had never let more than a few weeks pass without checking in on the rest of them, usually in person, though he’d respected Beth’s need for solitude when she first quit the business. It was Gillian who played the hermit. If she was away from her work space too long, she grew twitchy, and even though she loved her siblings, she didn’t have the patience for other people, not for extended periods of time.

And besides, Tobias wasn’t alone anymore. He had Chandler. During their Circle of Trust confab, Gillian had seen how he touched her, how she leaned into him—how they were a unit. Envy jabbed at Gillian’s midsection. She might not be a people person, but there was a part of her that wondered what it would be like to be a one-person person.

To a certain extent she already was. Sure, there were a few hundred employees on the sprawling Labs campus most days of the week, and
technically
Gillian was their boss, and
yes
, she had meetings all the damn time with various managers who did most of the actual oversight, but she only had one friend.

Except Theo Rochon wasn’t really a friend. He was her handler, the man whom the FBI had assigned as her twenty-four-seven watchdog as soon as the invisible drone she’d developed was shopped to the Department of Defense two years ago. Ever since, Theo had been her shadow, an enemy who’d morphed over time into someone who, when she didn’t see him, she...missed.

He hadn’t yet swung by to say goodnight. Any minute now, though. She shifted in her ergonomic rolling chair, one bare foot tucked under her leg, and leaned closer to the computer screen as she started minimizing windows and sending the helicopters she’d flagged for follow-up into a separate desktop folder. Theo didn’t know about Adam’s disappearance, and he certainly couldn’t know about the helicopter. His loyalties were to the government, after all, not her.

He wasn’t part of the Circle. And that sucked.

Tweet-tweet
.

Gillian froze, hand hovering over the wireless mouse. No. She’d misheard. That sound hadn’t occurred in forty-six days—the last time Adam had sent her a message through their encrypted thread housed on the private family-only server.

Granted, his last message had been a single link to something called “cat-bounce dot com,” subject line
Make It Rain
. Because her little brother hadn’t bothered to mature past age twelve.

Swallowing hard, she drew the cursor to the shrimp-emoji icon in the lower left-hand corner of her screen, and paused. What if she clicked on it and there
wasn’t
a new message waiting for her? What if she just wanted to hear from Adam so badly, to know he was okay, that her fatigued brain had manufactured the birdlike notification sound?

“Stop being a pussy,” she whispered to herself, and double-clicked the shrimp.

NEW MESSAGE FROM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ.

Yup. Twelve-year-old.

Heart racing, she opened the message, subject line
GoPro: Desert Edition
, scarcely believing Adam had made contact. Her lungs ceased to function when the video popped up to fill her entire screen.

“Heya, Gilly-Bean.” Adam’s scruffy, dirty face smiled at her through the camera—the camera someone else was holding. “Bet you didn’t think you’d hear from me, but I gotta admit, it’s not really
me
doing the talking, okay?” He nodded toward whomever held the camera, overlong brown hair falling into his tired gray eyes. “I’ve got a list of demands from my pals here, and you’re the only one who can fulfill those demands.”

A voice from behind the camera murmured something that caused Adam to glare, and Gillian hated—not for the first time—that she’d never learned Arabic, as Casey and Adam had. Even Tobias and Beth had a basic proficiency in their mother’s native tongue, but Gillian didn’t have a head for languages. “So, yeah, these dudes—whose names I’m not allowed to share—have a contract with Faraday Industries. Seems crazy, I know, but that’s what they tell me. Apparently, we reneged, and now they’re pissed.” One hand lifted to indicate his bruised jaw and split lip, and revealed bloody knuckles and what looked like a broken index finger. “Which explains why I’m here, I guess? Anyway, this ‘contract’ promised them first rights to your invisible drones, and when that left the beta stage and went live in the US, we were evidently in breach with these guys. Now they’re demanding your new project.”

Shit.

Adam shook his head, as though he’d heard her thoughts. “I don’t know how they found out about it. I swear I don’t, but they know, and it’s my life on the line.” More muttering from the man behind the camera, and whatever he said made Adam snap something back in a distinctly unhappy tone. “Apparently, I’m rambling. The point is, they paid
someone
a huge chunk of change for the drones, and that never happened, so this contract
which I have not seen
—” that was directed to the cameraman “—defaults to your next comparable development project, which they know is...yeah. So. They’re giving you until the WeaponTek showcase in September to get it to the beta stage, which you then deliver to them in Tangier, in exchange for a still-breathing version of me. They’ve agreed to send a proof-of-life video with a verifiable time stamp every week, to keep you...motivated.”

WeaponTek was only three months away, but that meant three months of Adam’s life in the balance, based entirely on something she absolutely
could not
hand over to terrorists. Terrorists who knew about the Flying Blind project.

No more room for doubt: Faraday had a mole, and one in deep with the company.

Anger turned her hands to fists as Adam kept talking. “Look, I’m kinda attached to being alive, but hey, that could change, and you’re the only one who has the right to decide who gets your work.”

Oh, God, he’s serious
. He was telling her it was, somehow,
okay
for her to choose her technology over her brother.

She choked on a sob.

“They need an answer within two days. If you agree to their terms, you’ll need to send time-stamped photos of your work progress after every video from us. In their words,” and Adam’s voice darkened to a tone she’d never before heard from her happy-go-lucky brother, “there’s no reason this can’t be civil.”

If she didn’t agree, if she didn’t get Flying Blind to beta by the time she was supposed to go to Morocco for the conference, Gillian alone had forfeited Adam’s life. It went unsaid, but not misunderstood, that if she hadn’t agreed in two days’ time, Adam would be delivered home in a body bag—if they were lucky.

Another sob escaped, this one longer, louder, but Adam’s voice trickled through her anguish.

“It was a mistake to make the visible invisible, Gilly-Bean. I told you it was a mistake.” He smiled, wry and pained and proud—of
her
—all at the same time. “Hey, tell me something. Did my pretty little niece make it home in one p—”

The camera went dark.

Gillian shouted as the video minimized into the message, her body jerking toward the computer screen automatically. Despite logically knowing that Adam’s message was only of finite length, it was like losing him all over again when the video ended and his face disappeared mid-sentence.

Footsteps sounded in the hall outside her lab, giving her only seconds to minimize the shrimp and come up with an excuse for the tears stinging her eyes and the noise she’d made. A Phillips-head screwdriver sat in the coffee cup of pens and drawing pencils beside her keyboard, and she snatched it, raking the sharp end over the heel of her palm, tearing open her skin and instantly drawing blood.

She hissed before dropping the screwdriver back in the cup, shoving her chair back and sprawling on the floor, her bleeding hand gripping the edge of a metal filing cabinet.

The door swung open. “G?” Theo’s dark eyes found her awkward form behind the desk and rushed over, concern bunching his brow. “Are you all right?” He knelt next to her, pulling her injured hand from the cabinet, murmuring in sympathy as he examined the cut. “Did you fall asleep at your desk again,
cher
?”

It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d crashed from chair to floor and gained a few bumps and bruises in the process, all because she had passed out while working late. “Must have,” she said sheepishly, voice rusty with leftover emotion from Adam’s video. “Band-Aids—”

“—are in the top drawer. I know.” Of course he knew. Theo had been tending her clumsy wounds for a long time now. He swiped an antiseptic wipe over the cut, cleaning it, then ripped open a flexible square bandage and gently, so gently, applied it to her palm. His Louisiana drawl was equally soothing to her riled senses. “You’re wearing pajamas already. You decided to stay here tonight?”

She glanced down, taking in her white tank top and yellow fleece lounge pants with penguins on them, and blushed, though she couldn’t have said why, exactly. Theo had seen her like this a thousand times. “Yeah. Who’s on duty tonight?”

“Yuri and Paolo,” he said as he hauled her to her feet with one big, strong hand. “I’ll let them know you’re bunking here on my way out.”

“Thanks.”

Arching a brow, he looked down his nose at her from his considerable six-five height, one of the few men she’d met who actually managed to make her feel petite. “Our run’s at six tomorrow. Don’t make me wake you up.”

God, she hated running. “I’ll be ready.” She nodded toward the door. “Go home, Theo.”

He grinned, perfect white teeth flashing in the dim glow of the room as he backed away. “Go to bed,
cher
.” With one final wave and a friendly, completely platonic smile, her handler disappeared into the hall.

Gillian waited until she heard the elevator ding and the automated voice inform that the doors were closing before she moved. Lunging for her chair, she yanked it to the desk and clicked open the shrimp, breaths sawing in and out as she typed her message.

VIDEOS MUST ARRIVE ON MONDAY BY 9AM PACIFIC TIME. ONE MINUTE LATE, AND WE’RE GOING TO HAVE PROBLEMS.
Send
.

Time to get to work.