Wicked Release (19 page)

31

D
inner ended rather uneventfully not long after Jess and Elliot returned from the bathroom. But Sam never came back.

Elliot had the valet bring his car back around and once they were locked safely inside, Jess spun to face him. “Did you see how mad Epoly was? She was shooting you daggers from her eyes. She was picturing your face on a dartboard.”

“Not my problem. It's not my job to babysit her subs. And if she treated them better, they would likely stay till dessert.”

“You and I both know that Sam is anything but a sub.”

He ignored that, turning the ignition on. From inside his coat pocket, he pulled out an item wrapped in a cloth napkin, holding it out for her.

“What's this?” Jess asked, taking it carefully from his palm.

“Open it,” he said, his eyes glistening with humor.

Jess pulled the napkin back slowly. As realization hit her, she threw her head back against the car seat, laughing.

“A cookie.”

“For a job well done,” he said. “Now, we just need to get those bags unpacked.”

When they reached the docks, Elliot pulled into a reserved parking spot and he led her to his personal yacht, docked and waiting for them. They climbed on the boat, loading the various suitcases stuffed with pills as well as Jess's personal bags on board.

“Before I take us back to my house,” Elliot said, “let me show you around.” The yacht had three levels and from the top deck, he led her down a set of stairs. The first door on the left and right were guest rooms. He opened the second door. “The master bedroom.”

She glanced inside, noting the dark wood and subtle nautical decorations. “You travel by boat a lot?”

“Not as much as I'd like,” he said, entering and pulling the suitcases behind him. He set them beside a large dresser. “So, for the masquerade tomorrow, I'll get the yacht across the border and into Canadian waters. By the time we're out of the country, it should be very late and most of the partygoers will likely be drunk by then. You and I should be able to slip away unnoticed and go down to the lowest deck and dump the suitcases overboard.”

“What if someone sees us?”

“We'll be masked. Wear a simple black dress, something nondescript that's hard to pick out. And we won't open the suitcases at all. We'll just dump them overboard and get the yacht quickly back into the United States.”

It was a good plan—or as good of a plan as they were going to get. “And the money?”

“I moved it into the safe in this room. If these guys threatening you are on board, we can give them their money at the party.”

They walked back up to the helm that was just off the highest deck. “You think this is going to work?” Jess asked, nerves jumping around her belly.

“I think it's your best shot. Are you leaving town after the party tomorrow like I said?”

She hadn't planned on it. She knew she should and yet she couldn't bring herself to leave Sam and Matt and everyone else in the thick of things.

“Dammit, Jessica,” Elliot cursed. “I'm not telling you to leave for good. Just get out of town for a long weekend. An act of good faith to show them you're wiping your hands of everything.”

Again, she couldn't bring herself to answer him—to lie. Because she had no intention of leaving. She never did, if she was being honest with herself. “I'll lie low after. I promise.”

“Okay,” he said, backing the yacht away from the dock. “Look, I know this isn't ideal. Any of it, not even having to stay at my home tonight. But after a dinner party like the one at Hugo's? People would be expecting you to come home with me. And who knows how and if they are watching.”

“I know,” she said, watching as they drew farther away from Portland's glittering city lights.

Afterward, back at the house, Jess was set up in his guest room. She had hung up the few clothes she'd brought with her and now she sat on the most comfy bed in the universe, surrounded by her sister's paperwork.

Various invoices for pharmaceuticals, e-mails, receipts, labs, and studies of medicines surrounded her. The medical jargon was like a different language. She opened a particular file labeled with the name of the drug she had stacked in her closet—most of which was now piled on Elliot's boat.

Jess read on, doing her best to make sense of her sister's scribbled notes.

 

 

She flipped to the next page, then cringed, nearly dropping the file on the bed. The next page was all images of human organs. Air pushed up from her stomach, bringing with it a dry heave. She photographed corpses for a living, but it still caught her off guard. She looked down at the photos again and this time her business side took over. Of course, when she photographed bodies, you typically didn't see all the organs and guts—
usually
. There was the occasional body mutilation case.

One picture showed a heart, twenty-four hours postmortem, a dull mauve color, bordering on gray. Another photo was a healthy heart directly postmortem, just before it was ready to transplant. It was plump and red. The third image was of a brighter, cherry red heart, the muscle tissue slightly more swollen than the picture of the nonmedicated heart. The color was incredible; almost unreal. The sort of red you saw in movies. The caption next to it showed that it was a heart that had been affected by Biophuterol.

The research went on and on for pages. Whatever this drug was, Cass was passionate about it. There were formal letters to her boss, pleading to begin trials in the US for Biophuterol. All of which were stamped
Denied
.

Jess moved the stack of papers to the side as Dr. Brown's business card fluttered out of the shuffle, drifting down into her lap like a feather. She turned it over in her hands. On the back was scribbled
Call me
with his personal cell phone number. Not that that was anything new. Zooey had confirmed that even though she had been dating Dr. Brown, he was a ladies' man and had his eyes on Cass.

At the bottom of the file there was a stack of mail that had come to the house over the last week. Mail that Jess hadn't been able to bring herself to open yet. Even though it mostly looked like bank statements and bills, they were addressed to Cass. Addressed to a woman who was no longer breathing. Jess flipped through the sealed envelopes: a bank statement, a cable bill, a flier for home security. Jess pinched the flier between two fingers and ripped the thing in half, throwing it to the floor.
Too little, too late, Holden Watch Security System.
She was about to toss the next envelope to the side as well but she paused. It was a large envelope with a Mercy Hospital return address. It could just be more bills, something work-related. But instinct told Jess otherwise. She began tearing it open when a small knock sounded on her door.

She dropped the envelope from Mercy Hospital on top of the pile before saying “Come in.”

Elliot poked his head in the room. “What are you doing?” He looked at the envelope beside her on the bed before entering the room. He wore navy-and-red plaid pajamas low on his lean hips, along with a thin, white T-shirt.

“Just catching up on some of Cass's mail. Bills and stuff.”

“Well, I just wanted to make sure you were comfortable.”

“Very.”

“So . . . the yacht party tomorrow . . .”

“. . . Yes?”

“I just thought that maybe we should have a chat about what's expected.”

Jess looked down at the slinky tank top and shorts that she always slept in and resisted the urge to cover her exposed skin. “Now?”

“Or later. I just fear we'll both get too busy. I don't want you to be caught off guard by how big this event is.”

“Why? What's going to happen?”

He chuckled, crossing his arms, his hip against the doorframe. “You mean other than us both risking our lives to dump thousands of dollars' worth of drugs into the ocean? Other than us trying to return the drug money back to the original owners?”

“Yep, other than that.” Jess stood, grabbing a robe from the hook of the adjoining bathroom door and flinging it around her shoulders in a show of modesty.

“Well, you've been to a smaller-scale version of this party before,” he said. “You've seen what people do there. There are hookups, fucking, all over the place. This one will not be an exception.”

Jess's throat went dry and her mind immediately went to this man's relationship with her sister. “And what's your point?”

“Well, I'm just warning you that we'll have to be . . . affectionate. If we're not, it will look suspicious.”

“Affectionate. I can handle it. It'll be like an acting job. I'll consider myself back in high school, when I played Chorus Girl Number Four in
Oklahoma!
”

“
You
were in
Oklahoma!
?”

“Cass was trying to get me into more wholesome activities.”

“She did always seem very concerned about you. Even when you were living far away.”

Jess cleared her throat, staring at the fluffy, cream-colored carpet beneath her bare feet. She spread her toes, imagining it was sand and that she was on a peaceful beach somewhere.

Elliot turned a card over in his hands, running his fingers along the edge. “I received this toward the end of the dinner.”

She reached for the note, recognizing Sam's handwriting immediately. The sight of it launched her back to being fourteen and the two of them sharing notes from their World History class. “They're not buying us? Who's not buying us?”

“My guess would be Epoly,” Elliot answered. “That's who he would have talked with the most at dinner.”

Jess handed the note back to Elliot. “So? We need to step up our game. Affection. Got it. We'll cuddle, hold hands, you can even squeeze my ass.” Elliot took a step forward and flutters danced in her chest.

Why was he moving closer to her? She backed away as he kept advancing. His steps were quiet, with the grace of a wildcat, and the look in his eyes was just as primal. “That's all well and good. But I have one concern left.”

He was nearly on top of her now and Jess reached behind her, placing her hands on the wall. She didn't want to be backed into the corner like some scared little chipmunk. She could be a wildcat, too. She could be strong and raw and all those things that dominants possessed. His hand came down on her hip, slipping inside of the robe so that his warm, fleshy palm was flush against the strip of skin between her tank top and the band of her shorts. Her skin flared and she could feel herself flush from her stomach up to her breasts, her skin reddening at her cleavage.
Oh, God.
She hated that her body reacted like this even though her mind objected. It didn't feel bad, his hands being on her. Just like the spanking earlier wasn't painful enough to warrant her tears. It was the embarrassment of it. The humiliation that had brought about that burning sensation to the back of her eyes. If things had worked out differently, if Cass hadn't died, this man before her could have been her brother-in-law. He could have been family.

His other hand cupped her jaw, fingers tracing the line of her chin to her ear and down her neck. Her breath staggered and she was momentarily at a loss for words until Sam's face suddenly popped into her mind.

“You better remove those hands or be willing to lose them,” she said. She didn't know much about self-defense and she was pretty damn sure that this man with all his money had some of the best black-belt training New England could offer. But that didn't mean that a kick to the balls wouldn't still hurt like hell.

He chuckled. “Don't worry, Jessica. I can't do anything with you. Not like what you're thinking.” There was an underlying sadness to him that had been present since the first time Jess had laid eyes on this man, back in the elevator when she only knew him as his title, “Master.”