Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 144571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 723(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 482(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 723(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 482(@300wpm)
“You were acting as a bodyguard?”
Kala nodded. “Yes, but you should understand I didn’t leave my charge without protection. She was with Tristan the whole time.”
“And you were in the bar.” Lena managed to put a lot of judgment into those words.
Kala sighed. “Yes, and that is where Tasha and Zach found me. Carys joined me while Tasha and Zach went up to the hotel room to deal with the comms units. We talked for a while, and then I realized the drink I’d been watching the bartender pour was somehow drugged. I watched him open it, so he must have had the sedative already in the bottle.”
“All right. I won’t go into why you shouldn’t be drinking on the job.”
“It could have been water,” Kala argued. “I wasn’t drunk, and let me say if you want spies to not drink… Well, you’re not going to have any spies.”
Lena’s lips actually quirked up. “Truth. So the bartender drugged your drink and you and Carys were taken to Toronto.”
They’d been taken to hell. Absolute fucking hell.
She thought she’d gotten over what that asshole Dimitry had—or hadn’t—done to her. Well, she thought she’d come to terms with it. If she’d gotten over it, maybe she wouldn’t be a twenty-seven-year-old… She couldn’t even think the word. It was pathetic. It was easier when she could convince herself she wasn’t a sexual being. Not everyone was.
“Yes. I woke up bound to an exam table,” she said, her tone bland. “Dr. Huisman was there. He intended to use Carys to get Tristan to tell him where he could find the bombmaker he’s been looking for.”
“And he brought you along for the ride?”
“The idiots he hired mistook me for Tasha. All they’d been told was to pick up Carys and Tasha. I was with her. They thought I was her.” She kept telling herself she was lucky because if they hadn’t thought she was Tash, she would likely be dead.
But she could still remember what happened next, and there had been moments during that time with Huisman that death would have been acceptable.
“Why would they want Tasha?” Lena asked.
“Because Huisman knew Zach worked with Tristan on The Jester project. Tristan had been working a long-range undercover project. He took over the identity of an arms dealer known as The Jester. Zach worked with him. The rumor on the Dark Web was that The Jester knew how to contact the bombmaker Huisman wants to work with. I don’t know why the dude doesn’t like give out cards or have an Etsy shop or something. He’s not a great businessman. He doesn’t know how important discoverability is.”
“So why Tasha?”
Her humor was utterly lost on this woman. “Because somehow he knew Zach had feelings for her once. He thought he would have Tristan’s girlfriend and Zach’s one true love.”
Luckily the fucker hadn’t been completely up to date since Zach had made a serious connection with her cousin Devi Taggart before he’d decided to go AWOL.
Or he’d played her. He hadn’t been able to get close to one Taggart so he found another.
She hated the suspicions playing through her head. She’d trusted Zach. She’d gotten close to him. Zach had been the one to coax her to join him and Cooper many times. The last few Devi had joined in on, and it had felt like…like a stupid double date. Like they were all normal people having fun with their significant others and their friends and family.
It was one more lie the world told her.
Lena nodded as though pleased with the answer. Probably because everyone had given her the same one. “Did you talk to Dr. Huisman?”
“Yes. He monologued like a motherfucker. I mean it. That dude likes to listen to the sound of his own voice.”
“Was this before or after he tortured you?”
She hadn’t been able to move. She’d woken up on the table and been in the exact same place she’d been when she was fifteen. Wondering what had been done to her body while she’d been completely helpless. She’d sought out knowledge, trying to figure out where she ached, and she hadn’t been able to move at all. “He used an experimental paralytic on me. I believe the guys in R&D got my blood work from the hospital later on. They were hoping there would be traces of the drugs he used on me.”
“Drugs? You’re referring to the sedative and the paralytic?”
“I’m talking about the torture drug,” Kala said, keeping her tone as no-nonsense as possible. “He told me it’s supposed to make it feel like my body was on fire from the inside out. The paralytic meant I couldn’t fight, and he didn’t need to hold me down.”
“And did it?”
Kala shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”
She’d screamed and screamed until one of the assholes gagged her, and then she’d screamed but it was a useless, futile thing. She’d burned from the inside out and prayed it would be over. At some point she’d lost consciousness.