Her Forgotten Betrayal(44)
She was already nearly asleep, relaxing into his promises. Letting go and trusting him felt like a different way of taking control. One that would allow her to finally relax and get the rest she needed, so once she woke she could work with him to resolve whatever was going on.
She felt him slip away.
Turning into the pillows, not afraid of her dreams for the first time in a month, she sighed and allowed herself to drift.
Chapter Eleven
It was working.
The bitch had lived like a cloistered nun since she was a teenager. Now she was close to whoring herself out to Marinos again, after less than a day together.
The man smiled in satisfaction.
She’d been hell-bent for years on proving she was strong enough to run her empire and the lives of everyone associated with it. She’d cultivated the reputation of an executive who could conquer any challenge. She’d sacrificed everything for the power she’d thought she was entitled to. Then, once she’d caught a clue and realized he’d been screwing her pristine image to the wall, she’d thought she could catch him herself.
Not killing her that night had been the most rewarding decision he’d ever made. She was falling apart so predictably now. So satisfyingly. He wouldn’t have missed this for the world.
He flipped a key on the electronic panel before him, switching away from the audio sound of Shaw sleeping in the first-floor guest room, back to the view from the microscopic camera he’d installed in the kitchen’s overhead light fixture. Marinos appeared on cue, a hero without a clue, heading to the adjoining room no doubt to adjust the water heater to a pre-nuclear level.
As if that would be the end of this, since the man could at any time use his master key and the tunnels running from his location across the lake to carefully camouflaged access points not far from the Victorian, to get back inside and make even more mischief. As he had last night after Shaw ran outside. He’d incapacitated the Victorian’s security system, then he’d tweaked the hot water supply, finishing up quickly enough to catch the last of Cole and Shaw’s touching reunion in the woods.
Hidden in his secret lair deep inside the mountain now, he surveyed the array of electronics spread out before him in the abandoned-mine-turned-bunker that passed for his home. He had the most state-of-the-art intelligence-gathering equipment on the planet at his disposal. Much of it wasn’t yet available to the U.S. government—at least not to the law enforcement branches. With it, he could jam all attempts to detect his surveillance, and send command signals to the remote-controlled weapons and other fun gadgets he’d concealed about the property. Including the high-powered sniper rifle he’d used to shoot at the storage room. The remotely fired weapon was installed over a mile from the mansion, near the bunker.
Even a highly skilled agent like Cole Marinos, his country’s pride and joy, wouldn’t get far until he called in some help to dig for the very real threat behind Shaw’s string of “accidents.” The man could pump any sound he wanted into the house, play with the power and other utilities, and trigger booby traps. And no one would be the wiser. He could continue messing with Shaw’s mind indefinitely, undetected, if that’s what he wanted.
Not that merely panicking her could come close to satisfying him now. She was the evil one. She’d killed his mother. She’d gotten away with her crime her entire life. It was his responsibility, it always had been, to make sure she paid. First by destroying her business while his thrived beyond his wildest dreams. Then by destroying her mind.
His adjusted plans were playing out even better, and more quickly, than he’d hoped. Cole’s reckless determination was a delight to watch. The looming deadline of Marinos’s next report to Atlanta, a pattern that had been pathetically easy to detect by the regular timing of his cell call signals, was serving nicely.
Compromising Marinos’s integrity within his tight-knit intelligence community was a worthy goal unto itself. Sacrificing everything else for that lovely prize might just be worth it. As long as Shaw’s memories were forever silenced in the process. And as long as the cause of her death, if it came to that, fell at Cole’s feet. After all, Marinos had been nursing a nasty grudge against the Cassidy family for over a decade. The Marshals Service must have been crazy to allow an FBI loose cannon like him anywhere near a prime suspect in a felony investigation.
But would crushing Marinos’s life once again really be enough? The man felt the darkness within him building, a growing need for revenge against the other nemesis from his past who’d yet to pay for the brutal pain he still endured on a daily basis.