The Vanishing Girl (21 page)

Chapter 33

I moved down
the hall without really seeing my surroundings. My hands shook. I was in shock, but even now, it was melting way, replaced by a fear that was eating me from the inside out.

I was a dead woman walking.

“Ember!” Caden called from behind me. He must’ve waited outside the office. I hadn’t even noticed.

I pinched my eyes shut. All I wanted was to be alone.

He grabbed my upper arm and spun me around to face him. “What is it?”

I pulled my arm away from his grip and kept walking. God, I didn’t want to tell him.

I wouldn’t look at him. I didn’t want to see whatever lay in his eyes.

“Fuck, Ember,” he said, “what the hell did you two talk about?”

I shook my head and headed for the doors leading outside.

Once outside, I began to run, pushing my legs hard uphill until the physical pain drowned out my thoughts and my rising fear. Caden ran next to me, still not speaking. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw his brows furrow, but he didn’t stop me. He knew that if he wanted to hear anything I had to say, we’d have to get out of earshot. To be honest, I didn’t know if even that was good enough.

I welcomed the icy air that burned down my lungs and the wild smell of the forest. If there was ever a time I wanted to be one with the earth, now was it.

We ran several minutes in silence until I’d worked off my adrenaline and my pace began to slow. I’d burned off my mood with sheer exertion. I slowed to a stop somewhere in the middle of the woods and leaned on my knees.

Caden stopped next to me. “Ember you’re scaring the shit out of me. Please, tell me what’s going on.”

I took a deep breath. “Richards knows that I know Adrian.” 

Caden’s eyes widened, wary. “And?” he said. “That doesn’t prove anything in and of itself.”

I breathed in, the cool evening air sharp against my lungs. “I lied to him. I told him I didn’t know who Adrian was. Only then did Dane reveal the webpages I’d looked at
—
pages I’d looked at
before
the mission.”

Caden cursed.

“Also, I broke into a room in this facility, read files I wasn’t supposed to read, and took two of them back to my room. They have footage of me doing so.”

Caden’s eyebrows inched up. “You did all that? Why didn’t you tell me?”

I gave him a look. “I didn’t want to involve you.”
And you wouldn’t approve.

His jaw tightened and his eyes looked angry. “Ember, I’m putting my entire life on the line for you. This only works if it goes both ways.”

I swallowed. This was how I loved others. If I kept them uninformed, then the cyclone that was my life might not touch them. To let Caden in on my plans to commit treason would make him just as guilty as me. I wanted to make his life better, not worse.

He watched my expression flicker, and the blood drained from his face. “You stole two files … What
—
what are you planning, Ember?” His voice shook. I didn’t know how he did that; how he sometimes saw past everything I put out into the world.

“Nothing.”

He stepped in close. “Don’t lie to me Ember.” This close to me, I could see all the colors in Caden’s eyes
—
blue, green, yellow, and gray. He had the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen, and they looked so pained as they watched me.

I blinked back the moisture from my own. “I’m not
—
at the moment there is nothing to plan.” All my grand plans had crumbled now that I was being watched. I needed to be on my best behavior if I wanted to survive. But even that might not be enough.

Caden closed the space between us and cupped the sides of my face with his hands. The look he gave me was deep and loving.

My throat worked and I glanced away. He hadn’t figured it out. That I might disappear. And I wasn’t sure I had the heart to voice this very real concern of mine.

Gently he tilted my head so that I was forced to look at him. I knew what he’d see in my eyes. Worry. Guilt. Weakness. Vulnerability.

Without taking his gaze off of me, his slid his hand down my arm. Once his fingers touched my palm, he brought my hand to his heart. Beneath the thin fabric of his shirt I felt the strong beat of it.

“This is yours,” he said, pressing my hand more tightly to his chest. “And I don’t give it lightly.”

The look he gave bared his soul. “I love all of you Ember
—
the ferocious, beautiful girl I first laid eyes on, the fiery girl who punched me in the face when I threw off her sheets, the penitent girl I found curled up in the shower, the curious girl who questioned a wanted man’s guilt, the brave girl who pushed me down when she saw a gun, and the secretive girl who thinks she needs to carry the world on her shoulders.

“Ember, the bad comes in with the good. And I want all of it
—
I want your secrets, your worry, your pain. I love you
—
you’re not alone in this life.”

Quiet tears trickled down my face, and then I pulled him to me.

His cheek rubbed against mine. “Promise me you won’t forget that,” he whispered against my skin.

I cried harder at his words. He was turning the knife in my heart further. I wasn’t worried about being alone; I was worried about getting killed and leaving the man in front of me alone.

“Promise,” he repeated.

I brushed a kiss across his cheek. My salty tears mingled with the taste of his skin. “I promise.”

I felt a part of me break as I spoke the words. Yet something had also been lifted from my shoulders. Caden loved all of me
—
every screwed up, scarred piece of me. And in that realization was its own kind of freedom.

The next evening
I went over the mission with Caden. Well, correction: Caden sat at his desk, going over the mission. I lay on the floor of his room, flipping through my weaponry book.

When I woke up in bed this morning, still alive and healthy, I wondered if my talk with Dane Richards wasn’t as bad as I assumed it was. My day went exactly like all others
—
classes and training. Nothing unusual had happened, and the project was still sending me on this mission.

I glanced over at Caden, whose eyes moved across his laptop screen. He still had no idea how precariously I clung to my life here. Why worry him unnecessarily?

“We’re going in at the same time, but in separate locations,” Caden said, flipping through his email message on the mission.

This was part two of our drug lord distract-and-extract mission. Only tonight, instead of showing up at a museum in Mexico City, I was going to Emilio Santoro’s estate in Columbia, where I’d distract him once more.

“Unfortunately, unless the evening gets violent, I’ll only be placing a mike on him,” Caden said. He actually looked bummed that he wouldn’t get to pound anyone’s face in to extract information. “And I’m sure you’ll do more than enough to distract him from that,
Angela
.”

I cringed. My fake identity. I’d spent all week memorizing it. If I went over it one more time I knew I’d confuse my facts. Which was precisely why I was distracting myself with my weaponry textbook instead of cramming.

“You’ll be careful, right?” Caden’s voice was gruff.

I looked up from my work. Caden’s troubled expression made my own heart rate increase.

I closed my book and set it aside. “Of course I’ll be careful
—
I promise.”

He nodded to himself, his eyes unfocusing. “The thought of losing you …” He trailed off.

His eyes refocused, honing in on me. “I thought having a partner would be the best thing in the world,” he said, leaning back against his chair. “Someone you were close with, someone who had your back and you had theirs
—
that’s pretty appealing to a boy whose family abandoned him.”

I swallowed, not sure where he was going with this.

“Then this happened,” he moved his hand between the two of us, “and it was better than the sweetest dream.” His smile was wistful, but it faded quickly.

“I never listened to those who told me about the dark side of loving your pair. The jealousy you feel when you see another man touch them. The sheer terror that locks up your limbs every single time you know they’re in a dangerous situation. The anguish you feel every time you see that haunted look in their eyes, and the dread that it will only get worse with time.

“But all of that pales in comparison to my ultimate worry,” he said, shaking his head. “So many people
—
” His voice caught and he cleared his throat. “So many people have died doing this.”

I couldn’t look at him, not now that he’d come so close to voicing my own fears. “I know,” I whispered, staring blankly at the book in front of me.

He stood from his chair and knelt in front of me. He cupped my cheek and his mouth pressed against mine.

I kissed him urgently and felt the hot rush of passion rise within me. Nothing was guaranteed but the present.

His hands caressed the sides of my torso, warming my flesh wherever they touched. I grabbed the edges of his shirt and pulled it over his head while he tugged off my jeans.

His thumb stroked the skin of my stomach as I removed his pants. His hands dipped under my shirt and he pushed the thin cotton tank top up my torso and over my head.

Frantically we stripped off the rest of our clothes. I wrapped my legs around Caden as he picked me up and moved us to his bed.

I wound my arms around his neck and blinked away the wetness in my eyes as my body shook. This felt too much like a goodbye. The unfairness of it all choked me up; I’d only just gotten a taste of being in love. I hadn’t even considered telling Caden the scariest secret of all: that he’d become my everything.

Chapter 34

My heart pounded
the next evening as I was escorted to one of the many hospital beds.

“You all know your roles; you’ve done this before,” Dane Richards said, pacing around the front of the sterilized room. “Now it’s time to wrap this up.”

My eyes slid to Caden. He gave me the thumbs up as the crook of his arm was swabbed.

No one else looked as nervous as I felt. Were they just good at hiding their nerves?

Dane discussed the mission’s objectives and each teleporter’s role. I studied him while he did so. He didn’t live at the facility, but he’d been here quite often since I arrived. Maybe he always visited this often. But perhaps this was unusual. Perhaps something else was going on.

His eyes met mine, catching me staring at him. The lines on his face deepened, and I looked away.

A woman in a lab coat came over and wiped a damp cloth across the skin of my inner arm. My nostrils flared at the antiseptic smell.

As she did so, the first set of teleporters disappeared. A short while later footage of the estate blinked up on the wall of screens. I scoured the screens until I found a figure that had to be Emilio. He stood out on the back patio of the estate talking with someone. Still as good looking as ever.

“Are you guys ready?” Richards asked those of us who were left. He gave me in particular a hard look.

They’re watching me.

I nodded like everyone else.

Call it intuition, but I couldn’t shake that awful feeling that tonight would not go as planned.

I appeared in
an empty catering van wearing a deep blue dress and silver accessories. I glanced at my bracelet. Embedded into its underside was the timer. As usual, they’d camouflaged it so well that if I hadn’t known what to look for, I never would’ve seen it.

I picked my way past empty catering trays and exited the van. Across from the van was an open door that led into Emilio’s mansion. As I walked towards the doorway, I could hear the clang of pots and pans and multiple voices yelling at each other in Spanish. I was going in through the kitchen.

I tried to be as discreet as I sauntered through the room in a peacock blue evening gown. It wasn’t that discreet. The voices died down as cooks and waiters noticed me. I smiled at them as I passed. A few smiled and nodded back. Sometimes acting normal was all it took … that, or they were about to call security on my ass as soon as I left the kitchen.

My breath caught when I entered the mansion’s living room. Emilio’s estate was perched on a hillside overlooking the Caribbean Sea, and the floor-to-ceiling walls showcased just how magnificent the view was.

Emilio’s guards somewhat ruined the scenery. They stood stationed in this room and outside along the edges of the lawn, holding automatic rifles. They scanned the crowd with their eyes.

I made my way outside, again stunned by the view. I was on the edge of the world. Out of my peripherals I saw Emilio notice me from where he still stood. Rather than approaching him, I sauntered over the edge of his estate, my blue dress suggestively clinging to every movement. I knew he’d follow.

I inhaled deeply and leaned over the railing that encircled the yard; I could smell the ocean even this high above the water.

“
Mi pirata
,” he leaned on the balcony next to me, “do you know how long it took me to find you?”

I repeated my information over in my head: I was Angela Woods, an independently wealthy associate curator at the Met who specialized in trades and acquisitions of priceless objects.

My appearance at the party where I met Emilio was to solidify a relationship with some private collectors living in Mexico, and now I was supposed to pretend that Angela Woods had finagled a trip to Columbia to look at some pre-Columbian artifacts and attend this party.

The layers of deception here were impressive.

I looked over at Santoro. “I’m glad you did find me.” I kept my voice low and gave him a whisper of a smile. “And I’m more than just a little glad to be here.”

He drank me in, a small smile on his face, and he brushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “The pleasure is all mine.” His fingers lingered on my skin.

I had to believe that the human mind is capable of great feats of intuition. That, or I was just really good at reading people. Because, despite Emilio’s beautiful features and what had to be a killer body, disgust overpowered me at his touch. All I wanted to do was slap away his hand and wipe that look from his face.

Instead I let him trickle his fingers down my neck. “I would love to get to know you better,” he said, his accent thick. His hand came to rest at the hollow of my throat. I forced myself not to jerk away.

Before I could say or do anything, his phone chirped.

Emilio cursed in Spanish. “Just a moment,” he said to me.

He put a hand in his pocket and silenced the call. “Sorry about that. Would you like a
—
” His cellphone began ringing again.

He gave me a tight-lipped smile. “I probably need to take this.”

I nodded. “Go ahead.”

He walked a little distance away from me and answered the call. Between the wind that whipped about and the Spanish he spoke, I couldn’t understand most of Emilio’s conversation.

A minute or so later, he closed the phone and came over to me. He watched me for a moment, saying nothing.

“Good call?” I finally asked when he didn’t break the silence.

“You could say that,” Emilio replied.

And then he lunged at my throat.