Aghast, Darcy cries, “Atheist! Hush, you silly child, God will hear!”
Juanita turns to look at Tabby. “Is it worth it?” she asks.
“Nope.”
Juanita shrugs and flips her hair over her shoulder. She looks at Mariana and sticks out her hand. They shake solemnly, an ocean of unspoken words between them.
I can’t wait to find out what their little exchange in Spanish was all about.
Darcy, Kai, and Juanita take their leave. Connor lowers his bulk to the big captain’s chair behind his desk. Tabby perches on a corner of the desk and folds her hands over a knee, and Mariana and I sit in the two leather guest chairs opposite them. For a moment, we all simply look at one another.
“I hope I didn’t ruin your honeymoon,” Mariana says quietly.
“Are you kidding?” laughs Tabby. “You were a highlight!”
Connor swivels his head slowly to look at her, his dark brows climbing his forehead.
Tabby smiles tenderly at him. “Not the highlight, honey.”
“Don’t need to hear any details about the other highlights!” I interrupt before Connor forces Tabby to make a list of all his talents in the sack. I know I’ve got an ego on me, but Connor’s got an egosaurus. If he gets a burr under his saddle, we’ll be here all day trying to calm that bucking bronco down. “Connor, you wanna start?”
For a moment, he drums his fingers on the desktop, thinking. Then he looks up at Mariana. “Yeah. Let’s start with Vincent Moreno.”
She stiffens. I reach over and touch her arm. She clutches my hand, threading her fingers through mine and squeezing. The whole time, Connor watches us with unblinking intensity. I can see the wheels turning behind his eyes.
“What do you want to know?” Mariana asks.
“When Ryan told us your situation, we made some inquiries,” Connor says, referring to himself and Tabby.
“Inquiries?” Mariana repeats cautiously.
It’s Tabby who answers this time. “As I told you before, I work for the government. Specifically the NSA. Freelance, but at the highest clearance. We’ve also got contacts in the FBI and the CIA, and the international security and law enforcement communities. All this adds up to a very powerful network of information.”
Mariana sits perfectly still, listening, a look of intense concentration on her face. A faint tremor runs through her hand.
Her voice lower, Tabby continues. “This man you work for… He’s very dangerous.”
“No,” Mariana says without a second’s pause. “Ebola is dangerous. Sharks are dangerous. Live electrical wires are dangerous. Vincent Moreno is pure evil.”
“Yet you’re on his payroll,” Connor says curtly.
Mariana’s eyes slice through him like a hot knife through butter. A vein throbs on the side of her neck. “When the Devil tells you to jump, the only question you ask is how high.”
I resist the hot, crackling urge to come to Mariana’s defense only because I already know Connor and Tabby are on our side, and I know this is a conversation that has to be had. But fuck, seeing Mariana upset touches nerves I didn’t even know I had.
Maybe my feelings for her are making me grow new ones.
“I understand that,” Tabby says. “I know something about psychopaths myself.”
“Then you know that they can’t be reasoned with, or easily fooled.”
“Yes.”
“So when Ryan tells me he’s going to return the Hope Diamond and set Capo up with a sting, you’ll understand my opinion that not only is that a particularly stupid plan, it’s also destined to fail.”
To my horror, Tabby replies, “Yes. I happen to agree with you completely.”
“Tabby! What the fuck?” I shout.
“Save your outrage for the end, brother,” Connor says wearily. “It gets worse.”
Before I can protest further, Tabby continues. “There’s no way a man like Vincent Moreno is going to accept a meet with a stranger, especially when all he has to do to find out who you are, Ryan, is dig a little. Then he discovers your identity, easily guesses what you’re up to, and puts out a hit. You’re dead before dawn. So is Mariana.”
“He wouldn’t kill me right away,” Mariana says, looking at her hands. “There are things he wants from me much more than my death.”
That sucks the air right out of the room. We all stare at her in silence, until Tabby finally breaks it.
“Submission?”
Mariana shakes her head, closing her eyes. “More than that. More like surrender. I’ve been defying him for years. But mostly he just wants my pain.”
She opens her eyes and looks at each of us in turn, me last. “He wants to wring every drop of anguish from me the way you’d wring water from a towel. He’s come close a few times, but always manages to hold himself back. And if I’m being honest, I think the reason he can resist has less to do with self-control or honoring the blood oath I took than it does with heightening his anticipation. All these years, all these jobs, this noose he holds over Reynard’s head… I’ve finally realized it’s not really about repayment of a debt.”
“What’s it about?” I ask, in a raw voice, like I’ve been screaming.
She swallows then says faintly, “Foreplay.”
“That motherfucker!” I growl, hackles bristling, but before I can continue what threatens to be an epic rant, Connor thunders, “Can it, soldier!”
I whip my head around and glare at him.
“You going ballistic isn’t gonna help anything!” he snaps, meeting my blistering glare with a steely one of his own. “Now fucking can it. Your woman needs you steady, not bleeding rage outta your eyes.”
He’s right. He’s right and I know it, but that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.
I jerk out of my chair and start to pace the floor, dragging my hands through my hair and muttering. I want to kill Moreno, I want to tear him limb from limb, but if I can’t control myself, I’ve got zero chance of doing either.
So I pace and breathe and force myself not to think of the word foreplay and how it’s now ruined for me forever.
Eyeing me with surprise at my forceful reaction, Tabby turns to Mariana. “I’m sure Ryan’s already told you he’s spoken with the FBI about getting all the charges dropped against you in exchange for Moreno.”
Mariana glances at me, hesitates, then nods.
“And he’s told us that you have approximately forty-eight hours to get the diamond to Moreno before the clock runs out on your friend Reynard.”
Mariana nods again.
“Well then, I think we need to give you the diamond and get you on a plane.”
I stop dead in my tracks and stare at Tabby in complete disbelief, my rage erupting all over again. “We’re not sending her back to him! Under no circumstances is she even gonna be in his general vicinity again!”
“The rest of the plan we talked about stays the same, Ryan,” Connor interjects, his voice tight. “The FBI will have whatever meeting place we designate surrounded. Snipers on rooftops, agents ready to swarm in, you know the drill. All she’ll have to do is wear the wire like you were going to, get him to admit a few damning things on tape—”
“Absolutely not,” I say flatly, blood pulsing in my ears. “Fuck no with a capital F. Would you send Tabby in if the situation was reversed?”
“You think it would be up to him?” Tabby asks archly.
Sounding thoughtful, Mariana answers. “Capo’s never searched me before any of our meetings. He trusts me. He’d never know if I was wearing a wire.”
He trusts me. That makes my stomach roll like my breakfast might make a reappearance.
“What would I have to get him to say?”
“No, Angel,” I say, gripping the back of her chair. When she looks up at me, I shake my head to underscore my words. “No. Never. Gonna. Happen.”
The look in her eyes tells me I’ve already lost this fight.
“Reynard bought me from Capo when I was ten years old,” she says, unflinchingly holding my gaze. “Did you know that? Did you find that out in your talks with the FBI?”
The only sound I hear is the pounding of my pulse. The whole room narrows to a small tunnel of black, focused on Mariana’s face. I sink into the chair next to hers.
“What?”
“With money he’d been skimming from Capo’s operation for years,” she continues, as if I haven’t said anything. “Very small amounts, nothing that would raise suspicions. My sister Nina and I were in a group of girls being trafficked to Europe from South America in a shipping container. There was no food, only jugs of water, and no receptacles for waste. Twenty-seven of us went into that shipping container. Twelve of us survived the trip to London. We were all children. The oldest, my sister Nina, was fourteen.”
From the corner of my eye, I glimpse Tabby recoil and cover her mouth with her hand, but I can’t look away from Mariana. I can’t move. I can’t even breathe.
“Normally, girls taken from the villages in my country are smuggled to Tenancingo, Mexico, which is a hub for human trafficking and forced prostitution, but we were sold abroad because we were pretty. Pretty girls get higher prices. And Capo pays the highest prices of them all. Especially for virgins.” She waits a beat, looks at her hands. “He gets a new container every month,” she whispers.