She stood where she was. “Gage, I’m sorry, but I can’t do this,” she said.
As I turned around, I saw her start to walk out of the garage. I hurried to her and put my arm around her waist to pull her back inside with me.
“Let go of me,” she fussed, kicking her feet and hitting my arm with her little balled up fists as I drug her back into the garage. I felt her body against mine as she struggled with me. Underneath her prim little sweater and her pencil skirt, she was all curves. I found myself wishing again that I hadn’t hired her to work on Dimitri for me. Instead, I wanted to see what I felt under her clothes.
“You’re not going anywhere,” I told her. “I hired you, I’ve paid you, and now you have a job to do.”
She twisted her body and pulled away from me. “You can have your money back,” she snapped. “I don’t want anything to do with violent criminals like you and your motorcycle gang.”
“I completely understand.” I held my hands up and took a step towards her. “You’re not here to do anything but talk to this guy for me. I need you to get some information out of him for me, and after that, you’re free to go,” I explained to her as I closed the distance between us. She had no idea I was about to grab her again and drag her into the basement with me.
“I don’t know if I want any part of what you’re doing,” she repeated. “I don’t want to know what you’re doing to this man, what you want to know, or why you’re questioning him in the first place.”
I grabbed her arm and pulled her to me as I stepped around behind her. “I’m not going to take no for an answer, Dr. Danvers,” I told her. “You’re free to leave once you do what I’ve paid you to do. You’re not going to have to hurt anyone. You just have to ask a few questions, get some answers for me, and then everyone gets to go home.” I spoke in a low, calm voice into her ear. I could feel her body tensing up while I talked, turning me on even further.
She didn’t say anything as I walked her to the stairs leading down from the bay to the basement. I held onto her arms as we descended the stairs and walked through the open doorway into the pit area underneath the bay. The thick metal door to the enclosed basement stood across the room from us.
“Is that where you’re taking me?” she asked.
“Yes, it is,” I whispered in her ear. “That’s where your new friend, Dimitri, is. You’re going to go in there with me and follow my cues. You’re going to say what I tell you to say and ask what I tell you to ask. You’re not going to improvise in any way. Do you understand?”
She nodded, closing her eyes to fight back the tears I could see welling up.
“There’s no reason to get upset, Julia. I’ve been told that you are the nation’s foremost Russian expert. Isn’t that so?”
She nodded again. “Yes.”
I loosened my grip on her arms. “All you need to do is convince him to answer my questions so that we don’t have to rough him up. I want to get the information I need from him quickly and painlessly. Then we can send you both away, and everyone can go about their lives like nothing happened here.”
I was trying to tell her what I thought she wanted to hear. I was going to have Dimitri roughed up either way, and he had been already. I just wanted to get the information first, before we had our fun and taught him a lesson. Dr. Julia Danvers didn’t need to know that.
“I’m just asking questions,” she repeated, as if she was just trying to make sure.
“Right, just asking questions,” I confirmed.
“What do you need to know?” she asked.
“No. Not until we get in there. I will let you know what to ask once we’re in the room with him.”
She pulled away from me gently, taking a step forward as I squared my shoulders to block the doorway back to the stairs.
Julia turned and looked at me with stony green eyes. “I’ll do it,” she said resolutely. “I’ll talk to him for you and try to get the information you need. As long as you agree that we’re not going in there to rough anyone up or torture him for information.”
“We’re just going in there to talk to him. I hired you to talk to him and translate anything he says for me,” I assured her.
She turned back around to face the steel door and concrete wall holding Dimitri in his solitary interrogation room. We’d poured the thick concrete ourselves when we bought the property for the Kings of Hell HQ. Originally, the pit was open from one end to the other, but we needed a room where we could take people for situations like these.