Hot for His Hostage (40 page)

She blinked. “Oh.”

“Yeah.
Oh
.”

“And…?”

Within a second, she saw they’d come to the hardest part of the conversation for Caspar.
He studied the condensation on his water glass for a long moment. “I know you love
him,” he finally murmured. “And that’s why I’m going to give this shit to you straight.”

“I appreciate that,” Zoe returned. “I…think.”

The man planted both his elbows on the table. “You know how you thought it would be
bad for him?”

Damn.

“
Sí
,” she whispered.

“Well…it’s been bad.”

“
Mierda
.”

“As you know, Shay negotiated some things into his surrender to Adler. One of those
things was the release of all the other Big Idea subjects into his mother’s care forever…so
Shay’s been ‘it’ in terms of test subjects for the man.”

“
Ay Dios mio.
” She locked her own fist to her mouth but the sorrow welled and spilled, anyway.
“That
higueputa
doesn’t deserve to be pissed on by a rabid gutter rat.”

“I can’t do any better than that so I won’t try.” Caspar waited a second before reaching
to grab one of her hands. “But Zoe, we also have firsthand accounts that he’s been
heavily sedated through most of it. I know that’s not much help, but stop and take
a breath. At least he’s been out of it. They’ve kept him in a nearly vegetative state
a great deal of the time. I don’t think Adler wanted to risk another escape attempt,
despite the presence of Stock’s guards on a round-the clock basis.”

“It does help, Caspar. Thank you.” She wasn’t lying. The knowledge that Shay wasn’t
cognitive of his torture made the news a little easier to bear. A
very
little.

“Wait.” Caspar winced. “I’m afraid the rollercoaster’s just starting.”

“Of course.” She drenched it in grim sarcasm.

“Giving him the sedation for so long has been like keeping a drug addict on a constant
fix. They’re not sure what it’s done…to his short-term memory.”

Zoe yanked her hand back. The entire center of her chest felt rammed by an I-beam.
She was so stunned, even her tear ducts refused to function. “H-how short term?”

“Like I said, they’re not sure. And we won’t be sure, either…until we get him out
of there.” He waited through the moment it took Zoe to wrench her head up. Then spike
him with a don’t-bullshit-me stare. “Yeah. We’re going in as soon as we can get the
mission together, including the undercover operatives for it.”

Zoe nodded. Correction, swung her head like a spastic bobble head. “Oh. Okay. Good.
Good.”

But she glanced away, biting her lips.
Who’s really the bullshitter of the night, girlfriend
? Did she truly believe this was “good?” What would she do if they broke Shay out
again but he had no recollection of who she was or what they’d shared? “Short-term
memory” sounded like a damn accurate description of a few shared days of passion before
he went back under Adler’s knife…

Caspar’s grip, now wrapped around both her hands, yanked her back to the rollercoaster.
The agent gave as good as he promised. This was a premium ticket ride, for sure.

“Zoe. I’m telling you all this…because we want you on the op, too.”

One upgrade to the
super
premium ride, please
.

“Me?” Her echo sounded as foggy as she felt. “Wh-what? How? Why?”

She corrected herself about thinking Caspar at his most stressed a minute ago. As
the agent closed the cover on his smart pad then folded his white-knuckled hands on
the table, Zoe could’ve sworn she saw red start to bleed up his neck. “The conditions
of Shay’s surrender…how much did Tait really tell you about them?”

The fog in her brain thickened. Or maybe it couldn’t escape past the tribe of heathens
pounding a strange refrain through her heart. She shook her head, unable to understand
the feeling. She should be jumping up and hugging Caspar. He was offering her the
chance to be there when they rescued Shay. Hell, she’d hold open the car door if that’s
what they needed.

Even if he doesn’t recognize you? Or remember what he shared with you
?

“Why would Tait leave anything out?” she finally challenged. “I don’t under—”

“What did he tell you, Zoe?” The question was gentle but Caspar’s face was raw demand.

“Everything, I guess. I wasn’t exactly in the best emotional state when we talked,
you know?”

“Good. So you know about Adler’s plans for the breeding.”

The air left the room. Which then tilted and swam behind the field of fuzz that conquered
her vision. “The—the—”

She swallowed, battling to focus on the act to ground her senses again. No use.

Breeding
.

Had she heard the word wrong?
Right
. Because this anguish was exactly what her imagination would have thrown together
as the bomb she wanted Caspar to drop. Because she was so keen to remember the weeks
that followed Tait’s visit, telling her about the ambush at the mining camp and all
its horrible fallout. Two of Melody’s nurses, dead from the explosion. John Franzen
with a bullet in his leg and Ethan with a rough graze on the shoulder. Dan Colton
in an intensive care burn unit.

And Shay…gone.

She’d waited, counting the days, praying her body had already started to grow a part
of him. But like clockwork, on the twenty-eighth day of her cycle, her period had
started. It had been the day before Thanksgiving.

It had been a really shitty Thanksgiving.

Ry had forced her out of the house for the day-after sales, helping her redecorate
the bathroom she’d obliterated in her grief.

“Okay.” Caspar laced his fingers as he gritted his teeth. “So Tait didn’t tell you
everything.”

She gulped again. “Guess not.” Caspar’s answering silence was a gift—not easily given.
She could feel the urgency in his energy, sensing they were scrambling the mission
fast, but he allowed her a long minute to push through her tumult of shock and pain.
“So, Adler plans on using him as a stud horse? That’s the deal?”

“You have a pretty good grasp of words.”

“I also have a good grasp of not being okay with this.”

Caspar meshed his fingers tighter. “But you might have to be, Zoe. At least for one
day.”

“
Caramba. En tus sueños. Beso mi culo
!”

“Do you want to get Shay out of that place or not?”

She pushed up from the table, unable to sit still with rage roiling like this. While
refilling her water, she rebutted, “Why me? You planning on sneaking
me
in as his fuck buddy? If that’s the case—”

“She’s already been selected.” The red inched further up Caspar’s neck. Zoe would’ve
called out the shit and enjoyed embarrassing the crap out of him if it weren’t for
the more pressing matter at hand: the concept of Shay with his cock inside anyone
but her.

“Of course she has.” She took a long drink of water. That was supposed to help in
the whole composure recovery thing, right? “And let me guess. She’s as tall as an
Amazon with legs to her neck, breasts like a pin-up, and big, brown Bambi eyes. Wait.
Her name
is
Bambi.”

“Her name is Buffy.”

She snapped her fingers. “Damn. So close.”

“And yeah, she’s blonde. And actually, a pretty nice girl…for a high-end hooker.”

Screw the water. Zoe jerked the fridge open and reached for the Chardonnay. “This
just gets better and better. So what’s my role in this whole ‘op,’ Agent Menken? Do
I get to hold the bimbo’s purse and makeup kit while she mounts the man I love?”

She watched Caspar debate his answer to that. He even glanced to the front door, obviously
considering the choice of accepting her version of
no fucking way
and leaving. At this point, Zoe verged on agreeing with that decision.
Undercover operatives
. She’d be there in the pretense of someone else, having to conceal her feelings.
She wasn’t certain she’d be capable of success.

In the end, Caspar stayed put and continued on. “They won’t let the woman be alone
in the room with him. They want an impartial observer to accompany Buffy, to ensure
that full consummation happens.”

That did it for Caspar’s blush. As the red rose to his forehead, Zoe repeated, “Full
consummation? You mean…they want somebody to report back that Shay…”

“Performed his duty. In—a matter of speaking.”

Zoe downed the whole glass of wine. Then poured another. “And you want me to be this—watcher—person?
Why?”

Caspar reopened his smart pad. Zoe suspected the motions were just for something to
do, but how could she fault him? This was one hell of a strange conversation. “When
the breeding takes place, they have to pull Shay off of many of his sedatives. We’re
not sure how he’s going to respond to the change. He’ll be close to fully alert for
the first time in months. If he gets agitated, he may resist our efforts at extracting
him, and we won’t have a lot of time to pull this thing off. We need him to be as
calm and cooperative as possible.”

“So you think I can somehow calm his beast?”

“If it comes to that, yes.”

“Even if he doesn’t remember me?”

“He’ll know the idea of you, Zoe. Though your face and name may not be familiar, he’ll
recognize your scent, your voice, your touch. Tait informs me that he’s never seen
his brother more connected to a woman. Though I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing
you and Shay together, I’m inclined to believe that.” The ends of the man’s lips kicked
up again. “You love him. I saw it, felt it, knew it from the moment you walked into
my office. If Shay returns even half of what you feel for him, then you
are
the best ‘operative’ for this gig.”

While the assertion warmed her with joy, it was still a lot to take in. Zoe paced
to the patio slider and opened it. Twilight was already beginning, bringing with it
the colors in the sky that matched Shay’s gaze the most. How many times had she stood
here in the last four months right at this time, to raise a hand and reach for the
breathtaking mix of amber and gold and copper?

But it was impossible to touch the sky. Bringing Shay back had always been an equal
impossibility…until now.

All she had to do was watch him “breed” with another woman.

“Okay, Caspar.”

She heard the agent turn in his seat. “Okay? You—you mean you’ll do it?”

“
Sí
. But only on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“If Buffy comes out of this with an accidental black eye, you all look the other way.”

* * * * *

Buffy was going to get her black eye sooner than later.

As the woman giggled again at one of Homer Adler’s lame jokes, Zoe gripped her clipboard
tighter and readjusted her glasses with another girl growl. Oh yes, the woman was
an Amazon—to the point that she wondered if Adler, Stock, and Newport had really found
her in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest.

At least they were finally walking down the dingy gray hall in the warehouse now,
making their way to Shay’s room. It had taken almost three hours to get here. After
four security checkpoints, they’d taken an hour for lunch then another hour for she
and Buffy to fill out so much paperwork, she wondered if she was actually helping
draft a Congressional bill. If that was the case, then she’d just done so as Helena
Troy—a cover name even two hours of pleading to Caspar hadn’t changed. The agent assured
her that nobody in Adler’s offices would blink at the name after they looked at her
disguise, a point Zoe had to agree with now. After a prosthetic nose, inch-thick glasses,
and an outfit they literally bought for five bucks in a Salvation Army rejects bin,
she looked like a cross between Emily Litella and the scarier side of Joan Crawford.

Just the look she wanted for seeing the man of her soul after four months.

Finally, Homer called the medical team to confirm Shay was “ready to shoot.” He and
Buffy had enjoyed a really good guffaw at that one. Zoe survived the moment by imagining
her fist in the bimbo’s left eye socket.

Just a few more steps, girlfriend
.

She focused on the joyful certainty of it. Timing it to her steps helped, as well.
Her heart certainly wasn’t going to cooperate with the effort. If it were capable
of bursting out of her chest, it would’ve do so—then torn down the hall, escaped up
the stairs they planned on using for Shay’s escape, and run around the block five
times.

Buffy let out an especially loud titter. “Oh, my God!” she cried at Homer. The final
word lasted at least ten seconds, making Zoe wonder if the Buff-ster was secretly
a mutant, too. On the strength of that bray, she guessed a touch of donkey mixed with
a bit of goat.

Wishful thinking.

“So what
did
the monkey say?” Buffy grabbed Homer’s arm like the fate of nations rested on the
joke’s punchline.