The windows had fogged up, obliterating the view outside. Drake was in the driver's seat of Share's beat-up car, fiddling with controls that cleared the windows.
Drake had insisted on taking the keys away from her, claiming she was too tipsy to drive.
She didn't mind. She liked a man who took charge.
And take-charge Drake had. Right from the get go.
He'd removed the drink from her hand, placed it on the ledge of the machine and still holding her fingers in his, he'd led her from the casino to her car.
There they stayed.
Kissing.
Moaning.
And sucking.
Share felt like a high school nobody with the captain of the football team. Glancing between herself and Drake, she blew out a breath, doubt flooding in like the humid air from the vent.
Why would someone like Drake, so handsome and young, be interested in her?
Drake cupped a hand around her jaw, caressing his thumb along her thin bottom lip, answering Share's unasked question in the next breath. He leaned in to nuzzle her neck, carefully avoiding the spot underneath her right ear where a shiny red patch of eczema wept a crusty pus.
"I've wanted you for so long, Share. Ever since I saw you at that conference." Drake placed a warm hand on her bony thigh, moving in close for more sweet kisses. They did the trick of melting the last of her token resistance.
"I didn't dare hope you felt the same," Drake said, nibbling at her earlobe.
Share whimpered.
Drake moved his mouth to her bare shoulderânipping and sucking.
She moaned.
He lifted his head and looked deep into her eyes. "When I saw you tonight... looking so angelic ...I had to have you."
"I've wanted you too, Drake. Ever since I met you." Share still couldn't remember meeting him before, but what did that matter, anyway?
Drake's eyes lingered on her chest to rise, ever so slowly, to her face. "Let's get you home and into... bed."
Share didn't hesitate. Her head bobbed an enthusiastic "yes."
Drake smiled, curving his apple cheeks, his deep dimples showing.
Sinking back into her seat, Share let the images of the pleasurable evening ahead, run through her mind.
Jeannie fluttered her eyes. Her body weighed a ton and her brain had trouble telling her limbs how to function. The knockout drug wasn't entirely out of her system it seemed.
"Jeannie! Jeannie! Are you awake?"
"Shon?"
She remembered someone had drugged her, but Shon as well? What was going on?
"Jeannie, where are we?"
What a strange question.
She was in her bed, wasn't she?
Jeannie rose. The room spun. She clutched her head to stop the pounding of the giant's feet inside her skull.
"Your headache will pass soon. Just lie back down. There isn't much to see."
Jeannie took Shon's advice and laid her head on the thin pillow, closing her eyes. She waited for him to speak again, but he didn't. The only sound were of his shoes, scuffling across the floor.
Why is he pacing?
She couldn't form the words to ask. She was too tired.
If I could just sleep a little while longer, everything would make sense.
When Jeannie woke for the second time, she felt better. Her earlier headache was close to the surface, but it was tolerable.
Jeannie swung her legs over the side of the bed. When her bare feet touched the cold stone ground, she let out a yelp of surprise and yanked them back under the covers.
"Your shoes are by the bed," Shon said.
Jeannie's eyes gravitated to his voice. Shon stood in a glass cage with a small two-way vent at the top. A cot, covered by a neon-green blanket, rested in one corner. What she assumed to be a chemical toilet, with a folded screen next to it, in the other. The rest of the 10â²x 10â² box was bare as were the two empty boxes after Shon's.
Four cages lined up in a row.
Who were the other two for?
She forced herself to sit up again. The headache had come back with force, pounding behind her temples like a dinner gong.
She squeezed her eyes shut to fight through the pain.
"Why are you here, Shon?" she murmured. her voice barely above a strained whisper.
"I don't know. I-I spent the night with Carmen and in the morning... she drugged me." Shon dropped his gaze from Jeannie's livid expression. He assumed Jeannie judged him for being with Carmen. "I'm sorry, Jeannie. I liked her, I really did, and last night... well, one thing led to another. Please don't be angry at me."
"I'm not mad at you for being with Carmen, Shon. I'm angry at the fact she betrayed us both."
Jeannie put her shoes on as Shon stumbled over his explanation of what went down, "Jeannie, I didn't know she wouldâ"
A metallic-sounding scrape echoed in the room, cutting off Shon's words. He moved away from their shared wall to retreat to the back of his cell.
As a door opened near Jeannie's cage, she judged there were a good ten feet that separated her from the person coming to meet them. The first thing she saw of him were his shiny black shoes before rest of him emerged.
It was Demetri.
Carmen set Fifi's cage inside Jeannie's apartment. It wasn't safe to be there, but she'd no other choice. She couldn't go back to her place. A man sat on her couch, flipping through the TV channels as waited for her to arrive. His gun, silencer attached, laid like a sleeping dog in his lap.
Carmen turned off the video feed of her apartment to call Thorne for the millionth time. Either he wasn't answering, or someone was blocking her calls. She suspected the latter.
It was unfortunate that at this stage Carmen's playing the fence had caught up with her. There was no fooling Demetri. As soon as he'd asked her to sleep with Shon, his ice-blue eyes drilling a hole into her heart and brain, she'd begun to sweat. He'd seen through her double agent act, judging rightly that it was a sham.
Requesting her to entice Shon and then drug him in the morning had been so spur of the moment, even she hadn't seen it coming. Demetri had waited until Shon and Jeannie were together, and during a vulnerable moment when Thorne was out of the picture, he'd made his move.
Demetri hadn't filled Carmen in on why he wanted Shon or Jeannie. He only told her to get Shon to come to the funeral, and after that, her assignment was over. He would no longer threaten to dispose of her for her cyber crimes or harm her family.
Poor Shon. What must he think of me now?
She liked Shon and deceiving him, and Jeannie had gone against everything she was beginning to love. If she'd refused, Demetri would have shot her on the spot, and he would leave no one to warn Thorne and the guys. She had to follow through and help rescue them later. It was the only logical choice.
Now, Demetri wanted to get rid of her because she knew too much. The man waiting for her on her couch was probably sent to her home to make her death look like an accident. And no one would be the wiser.
Well, she wasn't going down without a fight.
She took out her 'baby' from her backpackâa hack-free laptop no one knew she had. When Demetri had first threatened her, she started to gather information on him from the top tier people at the Istochnik.
From what she learned about him, Demetri was viewed as a wild card by the Istochnik and they were tired of dealing with his eccentricities.
He is unstable, said the Deputy Director during a top-tier meeting.
He is a menace, wrote the Secretary of the Federation in a secret memo.
Carmen had to do something. Alone, she couldn't take out Demetri and the goons who worked for him. She needed help.
She opened an encrypted video channel for the Istochnik, and once she got a commander on the line, she began to talk.
Drake grabbed the keys to Share's home from her shaky fingers. As drunk as she was, she was still coherent enough to run her chapped hands all over his body.
He opened the door and helped the extremely inebriated woman inside, depositing Share on the air mattress in the bedroom down the hall.
Drake didn't spare a glance at the austere surroundings. He focused on keeping Share safe. Only then would he get his revenge on the big blond.
Drake took out a syringe from his back pocket. When Share rose to beckon him closer with a twist of her hand, Drake stuck the needle into her bony bicep.
Share let out a squawk and twitched, her eyes wide. When the jerks subsided, her mouth grew slack and her gaze became unfocused.
Drake looked at Share for a moment before flickering his gaze to the two agents who had come into the room. He'd assigned them to watch over Share while Drake dealt with a loose end.
"Can you hear me, Share?"
Dr. Longborn scratched at the drug's injection site. She dropped her arm to her side when the truth serum took hold as it coursed through her veins.
"Yes," she said. "I can hear you."
"Tell me everything you know about the white-haired man and who he works with."
Share's face scrunched in remembrance. "The man that gave me the money to gamble?"
"Yes, him."
Share told Drake all that she knew. He left her apartment after draping a stained quilt over her passed out form, and giving instructions to the guards to not let her out of your sight.
As soon as he stepped outside, his phone rang.
It was H778, Thorne's mother.
Lovers with Tatiana for over a year, he still had refused to help Thorne when she had asked him for help. Only her revelation that he was her son, changed his mind. He had always wondered why she'd coddled the big blond agent over the years, giving him preferential treatment and easy assignments. Now, he knew.
"Do you have the information on Demetri?" she asked.
"No, but I know who does. I'm heading over there now. The GPS I put on her car has her heading toward Jeannie's apartment. I'll be there soon after she arrives."
"Stay safe."
"I will."
He ended the call, put the phone in his pocket, and dashed to his car, ignoring the pain in his knee. His leg had given him trouble ever since Thorne had beat him down three years ago. With Tatiana in charge, he wouldn't be able to touch the boy...yet.
But soon, he'd get his sweet revenge.
It was all too perfect really. Now that he knew Tatiana was Thorne's mother, he'd stand by her side when Thorne learned the truth. Smiling at the blond's astonishment when he finally learned that H778, was his mother and that she'd assigned her son to watch over Jeannie because of a debt she owed her mother.
Drake chuckled into the late afternoon air as he imagined the look on Thorne's face when he realized that his mother was in fact his boss.