Owen would set me out of his house if he knew. So I did what I’d been trained to do my whole life—I stayed quiet. I didn’t touch things that didn’t belong to me—which meant I touched nothing because I had nothing. I didn’t look around his house. I didn’t make myself comfortable even though he’d told me to.
I certainly didn’t tell him I was terrified every waking moment of every single day.
I didn’t tell Owen that my nightmares weren’t nocturnal figments of my imagination but very real things I’d seen.
I didn’t tell him he was the first man who was not related to me by blood who hadn’t looked at me like I was what my uncle called me, available pussy.
I didn’t tell him my tale of woe to protect myself; I stayed silent to protect him.
Even though I wanted to believe, I was constantly reminded I had no choice.
My life had been predetermined.
I was owned. My life was not mine and it never would be.
Those were my thoughts as I sat on the floor in the corner of Owen’s bedroom staring at an envelope with my uncle’s address embossed on the left corner, my name neatly printed a little off-center mid-height, and a postage stamp on the right.
He’d found me.
My hands shook as I held the envelope, trembled so badly it took me two tries to engage the cell phone Owen had given me, and even longer before I was able to tap on his name.
It rang once before his deep voice came over the line.
“Hey.”
“He found me,” I told him.
“Who found you?” Owen asked.
Gone was the smooth baritone that never failed to soothe me and in its place was a rumble of concern.
“My uncle,” I whispered as if saying his name would magically make him appear. The man was like the Boogeyman, Bloody Mary, and Freddy Krueger all wrapped up into one demonic nightmare. Only I lived my nightmare.
Wilco Pollaski was a living, breathing, walking demon.
“Is he there?”
Through the phone I heard something scrape, then footsteps.
He was coming. Owen would come.
“No. I checked the mail. There was an envelope with my name on it. Posted from Chicago.”
I was so stupid. Owen normally checked the mail; it was his house after all. But Eva told me she ordered me a bottle of nail polish and it was being shipped to the house. Months ago, Eva Brown sort of saved my life—actually there was no ‘sort of’ about it. Eva was a pilot who’d been kidnapped by a man who wanted to use her skills to run drugs into Canada. I was supposed to be on the flight, too. But Eva was strong and brave and fought. I had not. I begged her to let me die. It was my last chance—death was my only chance to be free. That was the first time Owen had shown up to save me. He and his team swooped in to rescue Eva.
My rescue had been accidental. Then he didn’t know what to do with me. I refused to tell him my name or where I’d come from. So Owen brought me home—to his home and promised me a safe place to heal.
Anyway, back to the mailbox. I’d checked the mail instead of waiting for Owen for a stupid bottle of nail polish. Something so trivial but I that wanted desperately. That was what my life had come to, a bottle of polish so I could have something pretty.
“The house locked up? Alarm on?” His words came out in fast pants.
He was running. I closed my eyes and answered, “Yeah.”
“Where are you?”
The only place in the world that makes me feel safe when you’re not home.
I didn’t tell him that. Instead, I said, “In your room.”
“Stay there. I’ll be home in ten minutes.”
I screwed my eyelids tighter in an effort not to cry. I hardly ever cried, and only twice over something I loved. The first time, I was maybe eight or nine when my cat died. I’d been devastated; Peaches was the only thing I loved, the only thing that kept me company. I cried and cried until my father backhanded me and told me Pollaskis didn’t show weakness and they never cried. I’d never wanted to be a Pollaski but right then, holding my dead cat with my father’s mark on my face, I’d wished I was never born.
I didn’t want to think about the second time I’d cried. It was worse, and not that long ago.
“Thank you, Owen.”
“Ten minutes, honey. Sit tight.”
Then the line went dead.
I sat tight. I didn’t move a muscle.
Owen wasn’t home in ten.
He was there in five.
Which made the only decision I’d ever made for myself harder than I ever thought.
Chapter 1
He found me.
Christ, I couldn’t get the sound of Natasha’s terrified voice out of my head.
I checked my rearview mirror. My team leader Myles was in his beat-up Bronco and behind him my teammate Gabe was in his flashy, yellow Lexus with Kevin in the passenger seat. That was all the reminder I needed I wasn’t alone.
My team had my back. They always did. Not that there was much they could do. Nat wasn’t talking. Hadn’t talked since I’d found her in Alaska, and after the last attempt on her life she’d shut down. Not that I blamed her. There weren’t a lot of people who could say they survived being sold into the sex trade, and were rescued from that living nightmare only to be kidnapped by someone who they thought was a childhood friend, beaten to shit, almost shot, and witnessed their so-called friend killed in front of them.
But even with all of that, Nat hadn’t broken—she’d just clammed up. She’d cried when she saw Ashaki die in front of her, but not a single goddamn tear shed after that. The woman was stone cold.
I pulled into my driveway, heard the screeching of tires as both Myles and Gabe slammed on their brakes at the curb.
The drive from Z Corps’ headquarters to my house had been ten miles of pure hell. I was no less calm now that I was unlocking my front door than I was when I got Nat’s call. No less scared at what I would find. I was halfway through the living room when one of the guys unarmed the alarm and the beeping stopped. I was in front of my bedroom door when I heard the front door close. I paused just long enough to regain a minute bit of control so I didn’t scare the shit out of an already terrified woman.
I slowly opened the door and found her immediately. Ass on the carpet, knees bent, arms wrapped around her legs, her chin resting on her knees, and her eyes on the door. She didn’t move, not a muscle, not even to blink. Stone cold dead eyes stared at me.
And that was when I vowed to kill Wilco Pollaski.
She wasn’t faking her fear. There was no faking that kind of fear, it rolled off her and filled the room.
“Nat?”
“Sarah,” she corrected.
It had been months since I’d learned her real name was Sarah. For months before that, I knew her as Natasha. The name she’d given me when I found her in Alaska. I’d never stopped calling her Natasha and she’d never before corrected me.
“He’s given me twenty-four hours to come home.”
I didn’t bother asking her who because I knew.
“You are home,” I told her.
“No, Owen,” she whispered. Her big green eyes finally lifted and our gazes locked. “This isn’t my home.”
My mind seized on a memory; one that all these months later still plagued my thoughts and made my heart clench. The first time I’d looked into those soulful eyes. She’d been scared stiff as I cleaned the gash on her forehead. At the time, I’d been running on adrenaline and relief after the team and I had successfully rescued Max Brown’s woman Eva. Natasha was an unknown, she wasn’t even supposed to be there. I didn’t know why she was there. But the fear couldn’t be missed. It shone in her eyes. It was in the rigid set of her shoulders. But if I tried real hard—and I did, frequently—I could still hear her soft voice telling me she had no home. And the deadened tone when she’d told me she was from nowhere.