Obsession 2.5: Loving An Alpha Male Read online

  “Well, let’s just say it would get very messy and the blame would be all on you and the agency. Now, I know you don’t want that, do you? Congressional hearings, people breaking apart all of the hard work you guys have done over the years. This will make the debacle of 9/11 look like child’s play.”

  Emily decided to pull over once the silence on her phone dragged on longer than usual. She waited outside of a neighborhood school for an answer. If the agency wasn’t willing to play ball with her, she’d have to think of another way to execute her plan. She’d also add the fall of the agency as part of her plan. The CIA knew what she was capable of doing. And she had no problem taking them down for the sake of her own agenda.

  Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, she heard Santini say, his voice grave with a bit of anger in it, “How do we know we can trust you? I mean, what assurances do we have that you can deliver?”

  Emily smiled and pulled away from the curb of the school. “Well, Deputy Director, I am one of Cupid’s top assassins and his most trusted employee. If anyone could locate him and bring him down, it would be me. Wouldn't you say?”

  Luther Santini, the DDCI, was in complete shock. He looked around the conference room table at his most trusted advisors as well as the DCI. He had called them to this room the moment he got confirmation that Emily Parsons was calling the switch board only used by Clandestine Operators.

  He wasn’t sure why she was asking to be brought in, but he didn’t think it would be this.

  He put Emily on hold and looked at his boss, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. “Well, what do you want to do?”

  “We can’t trust her. You know that, Lu,” chimed the assistant director of the Directorate of Operations, Steve Tibbs, who was also in the room. He had also been Emily Parsons’ boss before she disappeared and became one of America’s most highly sought-after targets.

  Santini looked at the AD. “Yes, Steve, I know that. But, what choice do we have? You know personally what she is capable of because she used to work for you. We can’t take her threat as idle chit-chat. Her warnings are real and best believe it will be a blow to this agency that we probably won’t survive.”

  Santini then looked again at his boss. “It’s up to you, sir.”

  The DCI nodded and stood. “Bring her in, Lu, but understand she’s your responsibility. If she fucks us, consider your career over. You’ll go down with her before this agency goes down. Understood?”

  Luther wanted to protest, but instead, he simply nodded once. They needed this case as an agency and for bragging rights. If they could bring down Cupid, the world would be in the CIA’s debt and that meant more than his career.

  Santini took Emily off speaker and said, “Welcome home.”

  1

  Kenya

  Yup, once again, I was in trouble.

  How did this happen, again? How did I manage to put myself in yet another life-threatening situation? Answer? Because I was an idiot.

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry out.

  I had thought I was past all of this. I had thought I was free and yet here I was, again, being threatened by none other than Noah Baxter.

  I wanted to cry out for Davies, the head security guard that was in the interrogation room with me, but I couldn’t see him through the darkness or hear him over the loud alarm.

  The chain that was around my neck began to tighten and I desperately clawed at the cold metal against my neck. It was no use. No matter how hard I tried to pull the chains away from my neck, Noah only tightened his hold.

  Feeling my body giving up, I started thinking about Josh. He was going to be so disappointed in me and hurt. He wouldn’t understand why I was here and that would eat at him forever.

  I began thinking about my little boy and how he would grow up never knowing me. My mind then shifted to the rest of my family: Lili, Misty, Shane, Malcolm, Curtis, Mama Joe and Pops. Despair started climbing up my back, making its way into my heart.

  Noah began backing up quickly, pulling me with him, and all I could do was hold on to his arm to stop myself from falling. I could faintly hear Davies’ voice now yelling something into the blackness of the room. His voice was faint and distant. The incessant ringing of some damn alarm as well as the throbbing in my ear was drowning the man out.

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Noah whispered close to my ear. I struggled against his grip, a sudden rush of desperation flowing through me, trying to get in a smidgen of air into my now starved lungs. “You think you are so cleaver, so smart. You thought you were discreet, but they are always watching. Do you hear me, you stupid bitch? They are always watching.”

  It seemed his grip grew even tighter, something I didn’t believe was possible. And I felt something wet and spongy slide along my cheek. Eww, I swear, if he wasn’t choking me to death, I would have thrown up all over this room.

  I could smell his acrid breath, feel the heat of his mouth against my now moistened cheek.

  “I should kill you right now. Save you and your baby from getting tortured by him. And best believe he is far worse than anything you have ever experienced. Far worse than me.”

  Noah switched to my other ear. “But, best believe he will stop at nothing to get to your family. Don’t think you can hide from him. He will find you. He will kill all of you. on’t worry, if he doesn’t, as soon as I get out of here, best believe I’ll do the job myself. I will kill that piece-of-coward-shit husband of yours and your son too. Yeah, you didn’t think I knew? Oh, I know everything.”

  His laughter rang in my ear as he continued to back up, pulling me with him by my neck. I closed my eyes, knowing this was my end and I couldn’t do anything about it.

  Then suddenly the chain around my neck loosened just a bit. I took that moment to inhale as much air into my lungs as the hold could allow. I didn’t say a word as Noah held me close to him. I didn’t want him to know he didn’t have a tight hold on me anymore and tighten it again. Plus, I was trying to figure out how to get out of this situation alive.

  This was bad. This was so bad.

  Where in the hell was Davies? I couldn’t hear him or see him. Was he even in the room with me? Why wasn’t he trying to find me? Was he trying to find me?

  Something suddenly occurred to me. If Noah killed me now, it wouldn’t be just me losing my life. It would be my baby girl too. No, I couldn’t let that happen. I had to protect her. He was not going to kill my baby. I had to do something.

  As Noah spoke, raging on about what he was going to do to Josh, I started thinking about how I was going to survive this. I started thinking about Misty. I thought about what she had taught me. She’d be pissed as hell if she found my body dead, strangled by this son of a bitch and I hadn’t fought back. I was pregnant, not paralyzed. I could still move. I could fight back. It wasn't ideal, but I had to try.

  With determination filling my body instead of defeat, I opened my eyes, turned my body slightly, and fought back. I felt around for what I needed then filled my hands with all of Noah’s special parts. I mean I gripped him by the balls so tight that I could feel the tension all through my body. My hand then twisted, and I pulled with all of my might. The material of his pants made it easy to grip and it didn’t hurt the fact that he wasn’t wearing any underwear.

  He screamed and I felt the pressure around my neck drift away instantly. I gasped, allowing as much air into my lungs as I could, thankful for my life filling me again. Yet I did not let go of Noah’s genitals.

  I couldn’t tell you where I found all of this energy that had suddenly come over me, but I completely twisted out of the grip Noah had around my neck. The man was going down, his knees giving out from all of the pain I was inflicting, but I wasn’t done. Before he dropped, I grabbed Noah’s nappy fro with both my hands and pulled his head down to meet a very angry knee to the face.

  It was then that the alarm cut off and the lights came back on.

  I backed up quickly and blinked a few
times. I only had a split second to see where he was positioned before I was temporarily blinded by the glare. I opened my eyes and still couldn’t see very well, though it didn’t matter. I backed away from a screaming heap of man at my feet.

  Rage boiled inside me. This son of a bitch had tried to kill me. He’d tried to kill my baby. As I created space between us, trying to get my bearings, I ran into the interrogation table. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the chair I had once occupied. I couldn’t explain what came over me after that. Maybe it was hidden rage or I just needed therapy. Whatever it was caused me to grab the chair and proceed to beat the ever-loving shit out of Noah “fucking” Baxter.

  I didn’t care that he was down. This bastard had tried to kill me again! Fuck that!

  He was screaming like a girl, begging for me to stop, and pleading for someone to help him. I ignored him and took out all of my frustration on him. Someone wrenched the chair from my grasp on an upward swing. No matter, I walked over to him and kicked him in the face.

  They say that it’s wrong to kick a man when he’s down. I think that saying is up for interpretation, don’t you think?

  Let’s think about the heap of whimpering useless trash lying on the ground. There was never a time that he held up the principles of what and who a man should be. In light of that fact, in my eyes of course, he wasn’t what I would call a man. Therefore, the saying didn’t apply.

  I held my stomach protectively and kicked him again in the face. I stomped the hell out of his balls, for good measure too. The heap of crying mess at my feet balled up in a fetal position to try and protect himself from my rage. I didn’t care. I wanted to make him hurt. I wanted to make him pay for everything he’d done to me and then some. I went in for another kick, but I felt someone grabbed me from behind.

  “That’s enough, Kenya. You got him down!” I heard someone shout. I disagreed of course and tried my best to get to Noah.

  I didn’t want to get him down. I wanted him no longer breathing.

  I suddenly heard a coarse, ear-bleeding scream that kind of snapped me back to reality. It was coming from somewhere inside the room and it took me a second to realize the screams were actually coming from me. My body went limp.

  I looked back at the person holding me and found Davies’ frightened, dark eyes baring into mine. I let Davies walk me away from the unmoving, unconscious Noah to another part of the room. Three guards barreled their way into the room past us and went to Noah.

  Davies put both hands on my shoulders, bent down to my level, and looked in my eyes. “Are you okay?”

  I reflexively went to my throat. It was very sore and I literally felt the bruise forming along my neck underneath my skin.

  The look on Davies’ face added to the fear saturating me. It caused the enormity of what had just happened to hit me all at once. I began to feel lightheaded as my breathing started to pick up. Shit…

  “Mrs. Cooper?”

  I leaned over, placing my hands on my knees, and attempted to take in a huge gulp of air. However, I wasn’t getting enough. It felt as if my lungs were being squeezed, allowing nothing to pass through. Panic began to seize my entire body. I needed to get it together or I was going to pass out. That couldn’t happen.

  I closed my eyes and tried to focus. I blindly patted my body, searching for my inhaler, then remembered that it was in my bag inside my car. Great place for it to be. On the other hand, I hadn’t had to use it for close to a year. There wasn’t a reason to keep it on me.

  Okay, you have to do this on your own, Kenya.

  I turned away from Davies and put my hands out to touch the cool surface of the wall in front of me. My head dropped between my arms and I let everything around me fall away. I focused on nothing but taking slow, deep breaths. I imagined Josh was here with me, telling me to breathe deeply. In… and out. In… and out.

  My heart was still pounding out of control and I could feel my whole body shaking. Nonetheless, I concentrated on inflating and deflating my lungs slowly. Finally, after a few minutes of this, I slowly started to feel my lungs expanding more and I was able to pull more air into them. I opened my eyes and turned, placing my back against the wall. I rubbed my belly, trying to feel for my baby, pushing on my belly to get her to push back. When I felt her, I breathed out a sigh of relief.

  Davies and another man were standing in front of me with concern and a bit of panic engraved on their dark faces. Davies was speaking to me. I could see his lips moving. The problem was that I couldn’t make out a word he was saying.

  I searched around for Noah and saw he was being placed on a stretcher, still not moving. I swallowed, which was a chore that had become very painful to do. I brought my hand to my throat and fell back into the memory of Noah choking the life out of me again.

  God, Kenya, you are so stupid.

  My eyes began to water and my body shuddered. I could smell Noah’s scent all around me and it seemed to have thrown me back into memories I had longed buried. I closed my eyes, letting the memories resurface when I felt someone grip my shoulders. My eyes shot open and Davies’ face was a couple of inches from mine.

  “Mrs. Cooper, let me take you to a doctor,” he said and that brought some sense back into me. No way was I going to let that happen. It meant Josh would have to be called and I didn’t want that at all.

  “No,” I managed to croak out of my bruised throat. I cleared my airway once and then twice and repeated my protest with a bit more confidence in my voice. “No, Lieutenant. I’m fine,” I then added, my voice scratchy and shaky. “You could tell me what happened in here, though.”

  I met his troubling gaze, gaining more confidence as the seconds ticked by. I looked from Davies to the new stranger and then back to Davies.

  “How in the hell did the lights go out inside this super-secret, super-secure facility? And how in the hell did Baxter get free? I thought he was chained to the floor and table?”

  Just as I said the last bit, Davies’ eyes grew the size of his large fists. He mumbled “Fuck” as he queued his mic.

  “Micky, Red, check in?”

  I looked at Davies while he repeated the names and again no sudden movements from him indicated to me that his call was unanswered.

  “What’s going on, Lieutenant?” the man next to him asked.

  Davies looked at him. “Kary, grab four guys and go look for Crasse. The second you find that son of a bitch, you bring him to me. Is that understood?”

  The man’s jaw dropped and he didn’t move right away. “Victor Crasse, sir?”

  Davies grabbed the man by his collar and brought him as close to his frowned-up face as humanly possible. “Did you hear what the fuck I said? You find him and make sure you’re strapped when you do. I want him alive, but if he makes that difficult for you, I won’t lose sleep if you take him down.”

  Davies pushed the younger man away from him and looked back at me. He grabbed another one of the men in the room and sent him to the security room to check on Mickey and Red. Finally, after he gave the necessary orders to the rest of his men, he looked at me.

  “Listen,” he said in a calming voice. “Let’s get you out of here and in a more comfortable room until your husband gets here. You probably could use some water and a more comfortable place to sit down.”

  I started to protest again, but the look he gave me told me there was no room for debate.

  I followed Davies down the hall to an office door with his name on it. He opened the door with a key he’d pulled out of his front pocket and stepped back to let me through.

  “Mrs. Cooper, I’m going to leave you here. Don’t worry, keep the door locked and you’ll be safe trust me.”

  Panicked, I asked, “What about Crasse? He clearly had something to do with Noah being free. I’m also pretty sure he had something to do with the lights going out and the alarms too. What if—”

  “Now, now…” Davies placed a comforting hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Just stay calm. We won’t kno
w anything until we look at all the facts. But, don’t worry about him. I’m sure if he’s behind this, he is long gone. He wouldn’t wait around, especially since he knows it would be me coming after him.”

  I didn’t reply. Instead, I started thinking about the layout of this place. There was no way I was going to sit here and wait around for Josh to get here. I needed to get out of here and fast.

  I promised Davies with my fingers crossed behind my back that I would stay here and wait. He showed me a small refrigerator stocked with bottled water and passed me one before he left the room. I decided to give it a few minutes before I made my escape.

  Guaranteed there would be an investigation on everything that happened today and my hide would be toast whenever Josh found out I was here. Hopefully, with what had happened here, the obvious security breach and obvious traitor implications, he would be too busy to deal with little ole me. I had time to figure out a story that wouldn't end with him wanting to kill me. Right now, I needed to focus on getting out of here. No telling what information guy could have given to any of the DIA’s enemies. For all I knew, this place could be compromised.

  That thought alone sent chills all through my body. I needed to get out of here now. What if this place was about to be hit? The hell with that!

  I stood abruptly and moved to the door, crossing my fingers that I could remember where the secret exit was to get out of here. With my plan mapped out in my head, I took a deep breath, unlocked the door, and pulled it open.

  Standing in front of me, her arms crossed, brow furrowed, and jaw tensed, was the one person I didn’t expect to see.

  Misty…

  “Where in the hell do you think you’re going?” she challenged, looking me up and down before settling her irate eyes on my shocked ones.

  The moment her eyes fell to my neck however, they softened but only slightly.

  “Sweets, you’re not going anywhere until you tell me what in the hell happened and what you’re doing here alone. Start talking.”