And it was a chance to watch Annie in action. When she left my company at the end of our contract, she'd be looking for a lot of new things in her life, I expected. If the engagement to Mark Tomlin made it through her "treatment" and, unknown to him, her sexual slavery, he'd find a far different woman coming home to him.
He was probably used to that. I expect her undercover assignments changed her every time. Personally, I thought Mark Tomlin sounded like a shit, but that wasn't my business. Once Annie Knox walked away from our contract at the end of our year and a day, she was no longer my concern. Like selling one of my favorite cars. I might enjoy it while I had it and I might put it through its paces and expect the most out of the high performance toy. But once sold, she was somebody else's baby. But I thought when she returned to what she thought of as her life – as if time spent with me was somehow outside her actual life, a detour she wasn't actually living – she'd find herself making changes she couldn't foresee.
Watching Annie now was a joy, though. Here, while we were working, she was dressed in a white button-down shirt and black slacks. The pants had straight legs, not tapered or pegged, not loose and flowing. She'd been very specific about what she wanted and my seamstress had custom created them for her. The pants needed to hide the Smith & Wesson at her ankle and allow her to get to it quickly. She wore ankle height black boots with flat soles with great traction. At her waist she wore a Glock in a holster and that wasn't hidden. Whatever official paperwork had to be filed for Annie to open carry in Rio, it had either been done or the right people bought off. I didn't know or care because when it came down to You're not supposed to be carrying that gun, I thought the person actually carrying it had the upper hand. Violation of laws is something that I can afford to take care of.
"Let's go over the day's schedule again." That was Matt Branch on speaker phone from the hotel. He was in the loop but he wasn't present, and I thought the instant she got him off the phone, Annie would change things.
She didn't not trust Matt. But she wanted him out of the loop for the meetings because she wanted full control.
That was something I could very much understand.
The meetings took two days. Two days of my limited Portuguese put to the test. Annie spoke Spanish, which was marginally helpful, though it would be more useful for ordering drinks and food than understanding the meetings.
Mostly she watched. Silent, respectful. Doing her job and as far as I was concerned, doing it well.
There would be rewards in her future.
13
Annie
It was nice to be working.
I'd done a few freelance moonlighting jobs in security. Nothing this big. Planning it had been like putting together an undercover operation. Hiring the right people had pissed off the existing people at the same time I saw acceptance in their eyes. They understood why I was doing it. They could even respect it and my handling of it.
They just didn't like me. That was all right. I'd already determined that Cole's people were loyal. It wasn't just the money. It was something about Cole.
I was the least loyal of his people because it was hard to swear loyalty to a man who laddered your legs and ass with cane marks, or made you wet just thinking of that.
But I was loyal to the job. And it was nice, having the guns on me, being hyper aware, moving through scenarios every second, what would I do if this happened?
And it was nice to be on an amazingly beautiful beach with Cole, his body beautiful in swim trunks and my bathing suit laughably tiny, cut to show more of my ass than I'd ever contemplated sharing with the world, and yet the runs and weight training and even the damned yoga combined with the martial arts I was still doing meant I could move with confidence in those scraps of material and spend my time on the beaches gazing at the beauty.
Not admitting one of the most beautiful things there was Cole St. Martin.
I enjoyed knowing I was impressing him, too. He'd seen me at my lowest, vomiting and going through withdrawal, sneaking Advil by the handfuls, sobbing under his cane or his whip or his hand.
It was nice to move into a room ahead of him, one gun on my hip, one gun in my boot, and a job to do.
It was nice that he respected the job. I slept in a room adjacent to his. There was no sex, no propositions, no beatings.
It was nice.
And I'd be happy when it was over, too. When the stress of hoping every instant that there were no tests, either designed by Cole or designed by the stranger holding and selling. Or that none of the people he was meeting with would turn out to be a problem I had to meet with lethal force.
It would be nice when the stress of the assignment faded into the past.
Which wasn't to say I didn't appreciate the present of the beaches. And the fact that there were other things on the menu besides fish.
In the end, over three days Cole met with eight people. Two of them were from rural areas and probably involved in slash burning or whatever it was called. They were the least dangerous of any of the people he met with and I couldn't convince myself of anything else. I watched, just as on alert, but wasn't surprised when nothing came of it.
The other five included at least one man I figured was part of some cartel or another, three nondescript men, one of whom brought a blond who was pretending her IQ was in single digits and who was probably smarter than all of us. She had a look in her eye. She didn't count as one of the people he met with.
Women didn't. Plus she was the only one.
The eighth man was angry before he even walked into the room. Maybe he'd been sitting in the lobby watching how many other people came and went, though he couldn't have known where they were going in the gleaming building and it turned out Cole had only paid for the top three floors.
Number eight was just angry. He came in blustering and when I asked him to please calm himself and take a seat, he rounded on me and started what I assumed was a volley of swearing. I don't speak any Portuguese.
The guard who had seen him to the door had retreated into the outer office, the way he was supposed to. The office Cole and I were in was a secondary office – the offices on this floor were like Russian nesting offices – it took a while to move past the bigger shells to the actual office, though it had two outer walls, both of them largely glass. We could see the ocean.
The desk was set with its back to the door which I'd thought stupid from the start, but when Cole had security and me it was fine. If he'd been intending to keep the office, that would have changed or I would have walked.
I mean, if I had the ability to walk away from the job.
I was on the far side of the desk, where someone visiting the person whose office it was would sit, mostly so I could have my back to the corner between the two outer walls, covering the door that was almost straight across from there. It also put me directly beside and a little behind the two seats where Cole's guests would sit.
Cole was standing slightly behind the desk where he sat. All he had to do was take a step to his right, shake hands, and go back to sit behind the desk, which was roughly an acre of highly polished cherry wood with gleaming brass drawer pulls.
Number Eight entered looking like a puffed-up alley cat, already angry and intent on making himself look bigger. He was already big enough, and he was spitting in his fury, his words tiny showers no one wanted. But where I stood, facing him and prepared and armed, I wasn't in any danger.