A pounding on the door interrupts our post-coital make-out session. “Ignore it,” I say, more interested in having Regan’s tongue in my mouth than food in my belly. I figure it is room service—although I don’t remember ordering any. The thought penetrates, and I sit up abruptly. No one should know we are here. Jumping out of bed, I grab my Ruger from the nightstand. “Get under the bed,” I order in a hushed voice. She nods and slides off the bed, but not before she grabs the other gun.
“Don’t shoot me,” I say with a grin, trying to alleviate some of her fear. Standing next to the doorframe, my back against the wall, I tell the persistent knocker to go away. “We don’t need any assistance.”
“Open the door,” a deep voice commands in Russian.
Oh fuck me. Vasily Petrovich. Just what I don’t need. “Hold your horses.” I have no idea if that Western idiom translates, but I figure he’ll get the message.
Crossing the room, I crouch down beside Regan, who is kneeling beside the bed, the gun clutched between both hands. I reach over and push the safety back on.
“What language were you speaking?” She looks at me with suspicion. Cradling her cheek in my hand, I search for the right words to say but before I can get anything out, the door is kicked in.
Regan lifts her gun, disengages the safety and shoots twice.
“Motherfucker!” yells Petrovich, who dives to the side.
I knock Regan’s hands upward and wrestle the gun away. It’s then I realize we are both nude and she’s probably sticky from my attentions.
“Fuck.” I pick a struggling Regan up in my arms and hustle her into the bathroom. Reaching into the shower, I flick the hot water on and then sit down on the toilet. Her body is shaking—with fear, not desire—but she’s not crying.
“That man out there . . .” She points a trembling arm toward Petrovich, whose moans of pain have stopped.
“You must have winged him, fighter.”
I try to lift her into the shower, but she’s all limbs right now. It’s like trying to handle an octopus. I get her inside the stall, but she fights the whole way. “We don’t have time to shower,” she screams at me. “We’ve got to get out right now.” And then understanding dawns on her as she stares at me under the spray of the water. I can’t tell if there are tears mixing with the shower water, but the expression on her face is killing me.
“You know him.” Her voice is dead. Zero inflection.
“Let me explain.”
She retreats until her back hits the tile wall. Her head is shaking back and forth, as if by sheer force of will she can make this knowledge away. “No. No, you are one of them.”
Her body is taut, and she looks like she’s about to retch. “I let you touch me. I trusted you.” Her last words are a screamed at me, but it’s not the volume that makes me wince, it’s the shredded pain underlying each sound.
“Regan, please.” I drop to my knees, uncaring that water is flooding out onto the bathroom door. “I know him only because he had a lead for me. He sent me to you. To rescue you. I promise.”
“How do I know you’re not part of a whole ring? Are you going to sell me too?”
“No!” I shuffle closer, but she holds out her hands as if I’m the devil come to steal her soul. “I’m Daniel Hays. I’m a former soldier from Texas. My sister was stolen. I haven’t lied to you. Not once, I swear it.” I raise my hands in the air. Her next words kill me.
“He sold me.”
And my heart breaks. I lean down and kiss her feet.
“I’m sorry, fighter. I’m so sorry.” With my face on the cold tile and my hands on either side of her feet, I wait for her to forgive me. I need for her to forgive me.
"Where's the other guy?” She’s shaking so hard with fury that she can’t stand, and she slides down the wall until she’s seated. Her voice is low and harsh. “He raped me before he handed me over to them.”
“I killed him. Broke his neck and left him behind a gas station. I should have made it more painful, now that I know that.” I climb in beside her. The hot water from the shower head is almost cool by the time it hits our feet. When she hears that Yury is dead, she relaxes slightly and that awful, brittle look washes down the drain with the water. But my heart is breaking for her.
Gesturing toward the outer room, she asks with incredulity, “Are you really friends with him?”
“Who? Nick?”
“No, the slave trader.”
“I know him. Met him a few months ago. Knew of him longer, though.” I tell her everything. “I’ve been searching for my sister, so I got involved with some guys who make money killing bad guys.”
“Hit men?”
“Mercenaries. Hit men. I needed a way in to find Naomi. I started watching people, reaching out if I thought that they had some personal code because I felt I might be able to trust them. Nick was one of those guys. He was very careful with the jobs he took on. He researched them, and he was very good at what he did, so I reached out to him. When you and Daisy were kidnapped, I knew it was my opportunity to do him a solid, so he’d owe me.” She’s listening to me, which I take as a good sign.
“The Petrovich Bratva is a powerful mafia, but the head of it was running the organization into the ground. Vasily Petrovich approached me. Said that he will help us if we kill the head of it and make sure it can’t be traced back to him. Nick, Daisy, and I take care of Sergei Petrovich. Vasily gives me your information and then hints that there’s been a long funnel of blondes from Russia to Rio. I think maybe Naomi is here, also. You know the rest of it.” I scrub my hand across my head.
“What’s he doing here then?”
“There’s something here he wants, too.” I have my fear about what that is, but I think Regan’s had enough revelations at the time.
"I don't want to be near him.” Defiance has replaced fear as her current emotion.
“That’s fine. I’ll take him down to the beach and figure out what he wants.”
She nods.
“Are we okay?” I ask.
There’s nothing but silence, and then her hand slips over mine. “I can’t go back.”
I rise up on my knees. “I swear on my sister’s life no more harm will come to you. Not if I have to lay waste to the entire southern seaboard to keep you safe. You will never go back.”