Polar Opposites (In Aeternum Book 4) (12 page)

And the talk continued. Bailey held her position for two hours as they talked things out. She took notice of everything, when they wrote things down instead of talking. Blue Shirt was still unsure about the space she was in and she knew tomorrow wasn’t going to be easy. Finally, the men left and she waited even longer before she slowly unfurled from her place.

Working out the kinks in her neck, she finished setting up for tomorrow then crept out to look at the papers where they’d written things on. Running a pencil over the sheet, she smiled when she could finally read the indentations.

Theodore would be in room eight, not five, and he would be arriving at the same time for his three women to be there. Bailey crept down to room eight and slipped inside. She ignored the people on the bed—she wasn’t here to be a voyeur, she was here to get a job accomplished. It didn’t take her long to get set up in there, hiding where she needed to be, in the snug closet where the extra sheets were kept, and ensuring she’d not be discovered. Resting against the wall, she closed her eyes and did her best to tune out the voices coming from the bed.
It’s going to be a long night.

Chapter Nine

The incessant ringing of his phone woke him. Ivan rolled over with a frustrated groan. He didn’t want to be disturbed. He wanted to be left alone so he could go back to the remarkably vivid dream of him and Bailey.

“Hello?” he barked into his phone once he’d managed to locate it.

“Did I wake you?”

“Yes.” His brain didn’t comprehend who was on the other end. “Ruined a perfect dream.”

“A woman?”

Bailey.
“Yes. Who is this?”

“McNeal.”

Ivan pushed up and ran a hand down his face. “What do you want?” He blinked against the sunlight streaming in through his bedroom window, bathing him in its glow.

“You at work. When can you get here?”

He looked at his clock and flopped back with a grunt. “Can’t I take a sick day?”

“No. I already told Howland you were going to be late but I can’t stay all day. One hour.”
Click.
He was gone.

Ivan dropped his phone. “Sure,” he muttered. “I live to serve your every whim.” He lay there and listened to his breathing. This sucked. His dream with Bailey had been so realistic.

I smelled her skin, could taste it beneath my tongue as I licked along her toned muscled. Starting at the collarbone, I worked my way down as she squirmed beneath me, trying to get me inside her. The rasp of her nails along my back, biting deep when I ignored her pleas.

“Do I get to continue that? No, of course not. I get to talk to a man that I could do just fine without speaking to.” He pushed up on his elbows and scanned his room. His sheet covered him but there was no denying the tent caused by his hard cock.

“What you do to me, Bailey Hyde. What you do to me.”

With a final grunt of frustration, he climbed from the bed and headed to his shower. Once he stood under the warm spray, he finally turned his attention to his relentless hard-on. It wasn’t going anywhere without a little assistance.

He grasped himself and began to stroke. This wasn’t about prolonging his release, or building it up for a more intense ending. He wanted to come—his dream had been potent enough to leave him lingering over the precipice long enough.

Ivan tightened his grip as he worked his penis. He tugged on his balls with his other hand and alternated the pressure on his cock. Eyes closed, he conjured up the image of Bailey. Their first time. Against the wall. Hard and fast. It hadn’t been making love. It had been fucking, plain and simple. Raw. Pure. Honest.

The echoes of her cries filled his head. The way she’d clenched her pussy around him as he’d thrust within her. The way she’d reacted to his touch. All of it combined.

Ivan growled low as he came hard. Thick streams of his cum shot from him as he leaned upon the tile. “Bailey,” he said, struggling for breath.

He allowed the water to stream over him for a few moments until he had regained his breath. There was just something about that woman that he couldn’t explain. He wanted to see her again. Hold her. Fuck her. Kiss her. Fuck her. Go to sleep with her in his arms then wake that same way.

“Christ,” he muttered, washing his body. “I’m turning into a sentimental old fucker.” He shook his head. “I just never realized after Jaydee that anyone would be even close to getting under my skin.”

Leaving off his commentary, he finished getting ready for work then grabbed something to eat on his way out of the door. He checked in at work before making his way to his office. Opening the door, he frowned at the sight. Kevin had made himself at home behind his desk.

Ivan was extremely territorial when it came to things he considered his. His desk would fall under that category. “Get out of my seat.”

“Morning to you, too, sunshine.” McNeal thumped the pencil eraser on the top a few times before he slowly left the leather chair.

Ivan walked to his seat and sat down. “Something you needed, McNeal?”

“How are things going here for you?”

He rocked back. “That’s why you called me in? That’s something you could have asked me over the phone. I am hard pressed to believe you have the unmitigated gall to wake me, call me in just to ask me something like that. So let’s cut the spy agency shit, all the smoke and mirrors, and get to the crux of what it is you truly want.”

Kevin sat across from him. “Wake up on the wrong side of bed?”

“Late night and no sex.”

His lips twitched. “Sorry to hear that.”

“What do you want? Since you called me in, I do have things I could be doing.”

“I want to know how things are going here for you. Truly. No, before you get pissy, that’s not all I wanted to know but it is one of the questions I had for you.”

“Things are fine.”
Be better if Bailey were here.
“I get to let my imagination run wild. Why?”

“What do you think about Howland?”

Ivan hesitated. “Howland’s my boss. I don’t think about her any more than that. What’s going on?”

McNeal’s expression sobered and he leaned forward. “We’ve been worried about a mole within this department.”

“I’m assuming you don’t feel it’s me if you’re letting me know about this.”

“Not you. Howland.”

He controlled the shock in both expression and voice. “Wouldn’t know. Don’t interact much with her.”

“You’ve not seen anything out of the ordinary?”

“This is a brand new lab. Lots of things are out of the ordinary. We’re sitting beneath a farm that local workers come to daily. This facility goes ten stories below the ground and we’re working on things that some may label science fiction. So yes, I see lots of things which are.” Ivan shifted in his seat. “I don’t, as I stated, deal much with Howland. I don’t have time for bureaucratic crap, so I avoid it. She keeps to herself for the most part, or at least out of my way.”

“So nothing with your assistants?”

“Nope. Nothing that I would say screamed suspicious.” He lifted his shoulders. “But, again, when I’m in the lab or looking over files, I’m in my own world. I missed seven calls from Howland and one from my mother last night while I was sitting here working.”

“She after you about the bracelet thingy?”

“Yes. How did—?” He shook his head. “Never mind.”

“I follow what you’re doing down here. We got you for a reason, Ivan. I told you that. And we’re glad you’re working on some of the things you had been asked to do for the other guys.”

“Right, now it’s just my conscious that is questioning why is Theta Corps better than the others?”

Kevin crossed his arms. “We aren’t terrorists.”

“No offense, but you are to some.”

“Are you having a problem working here and with what we do?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure. I love working with all this equipment and having an endless budget at my disposal. But do I truly know what you’re using this stuff for? What is the purpose of getting this dark matter to create a stable version of a wormhole? It gives power and that can be dangerous.”

“We are the good guys, you know.”

His smile wasn’t as ready as it usually came. “That’s what everyone says.”

“But does everyone mean it?”

“I’m sure they do, McNeal. People will say anything to get the results they are after.” He leaned forward. “Now, what else did you want to ask me?”

“How are things with you and Bailey?”

“What is it any business of yours?”

“Because she’s like one of my own.”

Okay, he was intrigued. “Meaning?”

Kevin McNeal cleared his throat and readjusted in his chair. “I’ve known her since she was born but she’s been in my life since she was six.”

“What about her parents?”

“Murdered before her eyes.”

Ivan drummed his fingers along the edge of the desk. “And she came to be with you, how?”

“I knew her mother.”

“She have any siblings?” Lord, he wanted to talk to her about this, not McNeal.

“Nope, an only child.” The man cracked his knuckles and leaned forward. “So, how are things between the two of you?”

“They were fine before she left. Has she said anything?”

McNeal smiled hugely. “Son, that woman don’t talk about much, surely you’ve noticed.”

“Yes but with the two of you being so close I thought she may have said something to you about it.”

“She treats me as her boss.”

“How did you let her get into that line of work? You were there to point her in a different direction but you stood there and are okay with her killing people?”

“The world isn’t perfect and we all have to play to our advantages. Bailey is perfect for it and that’s just how it is. Most people would have been a wreck about that but not her, she never shed a single tear. When I got to her side, she just stood there, blood on her face. I looked in her eyes and I saw the fire. The burn. The need. So I gave her the opportunity to do just that.”

“You turned her into a killer.” Disgust filled his tone. “You took advantage of a young girl and molded her into what you wanted. What you needed. This had nothing to do with what she needed. She needed her parents not to be killed. And how did you manage to get to her side so fast if you weren’t watching her parents die?”

Kevin didn’t respond, just held his gaze. Ivan made a sound of frustration.

“You should be ashamed. Does she know you did this?”

A smile, unpleasant this time, crossed his face. “That’s not what I’m here to talk about.”

Ivan’s stomach churned with distaste.

* * * *

Bailey stirred slightly when the door opened again, using the noise from the hinges to mask any noise she might make. She ignored the couple who came in. Luckily for her—or maybe it wasn’t—they didn’t change the sheets often.

Since this wasn’t who she was after, she settled back. If he were on schedule—and this whore was keeping to hers—he would be the next on in the room with his three prostitutes. Doing her best to ignore the noises, she focused on what she had to do.

Big difference when I do
my
job, I only need to have an escape plan for myself. I hope this works.

Eventually the noises—faked by the female in her estimation—subsided and the woman waited, her robe around her, for the man to get dressed.

After they had departed, two more women entered. They began stripping the bed. When they came to the closet space, Bailey barely breathed. Her camouflage was exceptional and unless they bent closely to stare at the bottom shelf, she was not concerned about being discovered.

They left after they had finished their job, dirty linen in hand. Incense burned, erasing the scent of sex best it could. This time when the door opened, in came Theodore Ramsey and the whores. He had his arm around two and the third trailed behind. The age of the last one had Bailey curling her lip in disgust.
Bastard, that girl can’t be more than eleven.
Why the hell did McNeal want me to bring him back alive? He should die.

Anger grew in her gut as the man she was after instructed the women to undress. The older women snapped at the girl and when everyone’s attention was on the child, Bailey moved.

She drugged with the correct amount of the potent concoction to knock him out for a day. Then she used a lesser dose on the women before they could scream. The little girl stared at her with wide eyes. Bailey didn’t even try to break their falls—she kept her gaze on the girl and put a finger to her lips.

A slow nod finally came.

“Get dressed,” she whispered in Arabic.

The child did as ordered and Bailey got ready to go. Yet, she couldn’t help continually gazing over to the small girl. Nor could she ignore the fear in her big brown eyes.

Damn it!

No way in hell she could leave her here.
I can’t save everyone.
Perhaps she couldn’t, but she could save this girl.

She cursed McNeal again and checked her watch briefly before crouching before her. “I will take you out of here and you can have a better life. You have to do as I say and be quiet.” Another check of her watch—her precious window was closing rapidly. “Or you can stay here. Decide quickly.”

One blink. “I want to go. I cannot go home, my father will send me back here.”

Another man who deserved to die. “Very well. Stay behind me. Stay close. And be quiet.”

Eyes that were too old for the body they were in remained solemn as the girl nodded.

Bailey hefted Theodore and made it look as if she was assisting him. There wasn’t much eye contact in a place like this. A fact that made her job a bit easier. Thankfully, the bastard didn’t weigh a lot. With luck, they made it through to the office. The one man there she dispatched with a knife through the neck.

It took a while, especially with the girl, but she made it through to the laundry and the next hiding place before erasing signs of their escape through the office. The dead man she put in the office and she propped open the rear door slightly to lay a false trail. Then she returned next door.

“Stay here. I will be right back.” Reversing, she paused. “He won’t bother you. You’re safe.”