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“Settle the fuck down, bitch,” he growled in her ear, and her breath seized.
Daniel Rey. Her partner. Known as King to these assholes.
Her muscles went limp with relief, and she sagged in his arms. Thank God. Nerves still had her insides quaking, but some of the fear had gone. Rey was here, and he’d make sure she wasn’t harmed.
All he had to say was that he believed her. Saw her tromping around like a bewildered idiot. Spotted her looking lost and stupid in the woods. He could volunteer to drop her somewhere and scare the piss out of her so she wouldn’t talk.
Then Stephanie could find out what the hell was going on and why Agent Rey had missed his last two check-ins.
He turned around with her still in his arms and trudged back the twenty feet to where Shark and the Top dude waited. Shark had the creepiest smile, making all the hair on her arms stand straight on end. She shivered despite the hot sun shining through the trees. She wanted to be gone in the worst way.
Take a breath, Stephanie. Rey won’t let them hurt you.
Right? He wouldn’t. Sure, sometimes undercover agents had to commit heinous acts to work their way into a gang, but that wouldn’t involve hurting their partner. Would it? Stephanie would make the worst undercover agent ever. She’d never be able to break the law, even in the name of good. The ends didn’t always justify the means. Her ingrained sense of right and wrong came from growing up with a strict as hell police officer single-father.
“No fucking way this bitch was just out in the woods,” King said, releasing her. Two seconds later she felt something hard press between her shoulder blades. His AR-15.
What the fuck?
What was going on? Why hadn’t he just let her outrun him? Let her escape? They’d never know. He could have feigned falling down or something.
“I say we waste her now. Bury her and get back to those bitches we left naked and needy.” As he spoke, he circled until he was standing in front of her, weapon leveled at her head. She blinked back her surprise at the sight of him. Gone was his thick head of blond hair he kept in a neat and professional style. Now, he was cue-ball bald and had a scruffy goatee. He’d bulked up, too.
What. The. Fuck.
His own wife might not recognize him.
A cold wave ran through her from the very top of her head straight to her toes. Stephanie had never worked so hard in her life as she did to keep the shock off her face and the vile words in her mouth. Could he mean it? Was there a chance he’d been swallowed up by Shark’s world?
Calm down.
King wasn’t serious. He couldn’t be. Her partner was a veteran FBI agent, for crying out loud. They didn’t just throw away everything they’d worked for, throw away their families for a life of crime. There had to be an extraction plan bouncing around in his head.
That knowledge helped her relax despite the fact one twitch of King’s finger would splatter her brains all over the Tennessee woods.
“Nah,” Shark said. “Where’s the fun in that? Let’s take her with us. A few hours hanging with the boys, and she’ll be ready to talk.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
These men were suspected of human trafficking. They’d have no qualms about raping her.
She tried with all her might to send King a mental message, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze. This was as bad for him as it was for her. They’d torture her for information, and she’d crack. His identity would be revealed, and the shit show would commence.
Everyone cracked.
Especially if they had zilch training in enduring torture. The Bureau told her it would be no big deal. Lay eyes on Agent Rey, and she’d be home in two days.
Wrong.
Why the hell wouldn’t he make eye contact?
“Who gives a fuck why she’s here? Let me kill her and be fuckin done with it,” King said.
Stephanie was in grave danger of puking all over the forest floor. As she stared at her partner of two years, the partner who taught her everything she knew about working for the FBI, the partner who teased her endlessly for her opinions on the black and white nature of the world, the nausea became unbearable.
When he’d regaled her with tales of his undercover days, King had told her working undercover would change her view of the world. That undercover agents often had to live the life of a criminal and learn to deal with living in the shadows for the sake of doing good. Even though she’d heard it before, she’d rejected the notion of living in a gray zone.
Finally, he met her gaze. His eyes were flat, emotionless, nothing like the man she knew and trusted. He winked, but it wasn’t an I-have-your-back kind of wink. It was evil. A promise of horror and pain.
