Broken Falcon, page 27
Her gaze met his, and she bolted to her feet. “Chase!”
The room went silent. Or maybe his hearing cut out, because all his brain could take in was Eden, dwarfed by her fuzzy blue robe. He crossed to her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and lifted her to his chest.
Her arms circled his neck as her body draped against his. He turned and marched down the hall. His hearing returned, and he heard Agent Seong say, “Five minutes, Johnston, then we need to talk.”
That she was letting them have a few minutes alone was a good sign.
He kicked Eden’s bedroom door closed behind him and settled on the bed with her in his arms, snuggled on his lap as he leaned against the headboard.
Her body shook as she quietly sobbed. Finally, she met his gaze, her cheeks damp with flowing tears. “I’m so sorry I read her letter.”
He ran his thumbs over her cheeks, wiping away tears only to have more take their place. “Shhh. I know they forced you. It’s not your fault. I didn’t listen past the first line anyway.”
“But it is my fault. I let them in. Jesus. I was so stupid.”
“They had my phone. That was my fault. If I hadn’t played right into their hands, none of this would have happened. I’m so sorry, Eden. My stupid meltdown caused you trauma and could have killed you.” Now his own tears fell. “I’m so sorry I ran out on you.”
She cupped his cheek, taking a swipe at his tear with a thumb. “Your reaction was perfectly understandable given what happened to you. I know you hate me for it, but I do have a degree in psychology and enough graduate classes to understand. You were doing the best you could in the moment. I accept that.”
“I could never hate anything about you, Eden.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. “I meant it when I said I was falling in love with you. That didn’t change when I found out about your studies, I just couldn’t cope in the moment. It stirred every irrational fear I have.”
“I think given what happened to you, your fear is completely rational.” She brushed her lips over his. “And I love you too.”
A tiny bubble of joy filled his chest, but popped as he realized what he needed to tell her. “I remembered something this morning. Before you went live.”
“What is it?”
“Mothman told me you met Isabel last night.”
She nodded. “She was only slightly happier to hear about my studies than you were.”
“Did she tell you what Parks did—about infrasound and the implant?”
“A little. She also said there was a lot she wouldn’t say, that it was for you to decide if you wanted to tell me.” She rubbed his chin, her fingers stroking the bristles along his jawline. “She cares about you a lot and is quite protective.”
“She’s the big sister I never had.” He smiled thinking about how much he’d needed Isabel’s support this last year. “Did she tell you how the memory shit Parks did works? Memories of infrasound events are never truly erased, but they can be buried?”
“She did.”
“Well, this morning a memory came back to me, and I discovered why I reacted so strongly the first time I visited your room at CamDames. I saw you when I was under the influence of both infrasound and I think some hypnotic suggestion and possibly even a drug cocktail she cooked up to keep me compliant. The combination was how she managed to get away with raping me one weekend a month for two years. The hypnotic suggestions were how she kept control of me when she wasn’t around.”
“So you think…hypnosis, drugs, and infrasound frequencies…are the whole reason you’re attracted to me? That she planted me in your brain?” Eden pulled back, wrapping her arms around herself. As if she was afraid to touch him now.
“Honestly, I don’t know. It’s entirely possible knowing her. And it horrified me at first, this idea that I can’t even have this—you—without her vile touch being on it.”
Eden’s face crumpled, and the tears that had stopped flowing now overflowed again. “You think…this thing between us isn’t real?”
She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them tight, completely cutting herself off from him.
He gently took her hand and brought it to his lips. “No. I love you, Eden, and even though it fucks with my head to know she’s insinuated herself between us, it doesn’t change the fact that you’re the only person who’s made me feel since my long nightmare began.”
She unfurled from the ball she’d made herself into and reached for him, hugging him again. “Oh thank God. Because I need you, Chase.”
“I need you too, sweetheart.”
She tucked herself on his lap again. Her soft dark hair tickled his chin. He was in heaven with her in his arms, it was that simple. “When you appeared on the computer screen, my reaction to you was instantaneous. And by reaction, I mean erection. And it made Parks jealous. Which was satisfying in that I liked anything that pissed her off or upset her. She wanted to believe I was really her lover and not a guy she had to use stimulants with so she could use my body. Make no mistake, her raping me had the same power and control dynamic that occurs when the victim is not a cis male. Her desire to believe I wanted her was just another layer.”
“Well, I’m glad I gave you a moment of satisfaction in what must have been a horrifying time.”
“Honey, you gave me hope. It was the first natural reaction I had to anything when she controlled my body. My mind. My whole world. It was you, Eden. And it might have only been your body at first, but it was also your light and energy. I connected with that when I needed light. And later I found you on my own and it was the same feeling. You were the light I needed in my life. The light I still need.”
“I need you so much, it’s scary,” she whispered. “Like, I don’t even know where this feeling is coming from because I’ve never needed anyone. Not since I ran away from my so-called husband when I was fifteen.”
His heart surged at the idea her feelings were as intense as his, that a woman as amazing as Eden O’Keeffe could love him back.
There was a knock on the door. “We need to talk, Johnston,” Seong shouted through the door.
“Five more minutes,” Chase responded, not even making it a request.
“I’m setting a timer,” the FBI agent said.
“Fine.” He hadn’t been certain she’d agree, but that told him he was in a better position than he’d feared.
He turned his attention to the woman in his arms. “So my memory told me a few things we need to discuss. One, I think Penny Candi is the girl I saw—in a different memory—that set me on my quest to uncover CamDames’ trafficking of young girls. I’ve never actually seen a photo of Penny. I think it’s possible the reason Penny asked you to sub for her that first night we met was because Parks—or whoever is running the show now—suspected I was the guy who was intercepting girls, and if I saw Penny’s face, my memory barriers might fail.
“I never go into the shop when we do an extraction, but they were probably being extra cautious. And then when you called us—that made their caution worth it, but also a mistake, because Penny probably would have convinced Tony not to call.”
“Penny is a victim. Like you,” Eden said.
He nodded. “Absolutely. She probably really would have been a clueless barista that night. But she would have recognized the goons outside the window as being from her legit job at CamDames, which might be why they returned to the shop that night. They didn’t know Penny wasn’t working. They might have figured she’d answer their questions. But then they saw you and had to go all in to figure out what you knew. I have a feeling they’re in the dark about Parks and are working for someone else altogether.”
“Who are they working for? I mean, I know it’s the creepy cloaked guy with the robot voice, but who is he?”
“I was wondering if you’d put it together yet.”
She shook her head. “I’m still reeling that all this is connected to what happened to you with Parks.”
“It’s connected to you too. The memory I recovered today was an important one. We’ve long suspected Parks had a lover, but couldn’t find a trace of who it was. Now I know I met him. And he’s one of the regulars at your site.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Eden reeled at that and then wondered why it even surprised her. Of course he was a regular.
Why it hadn’t crossed her mind was the bigger question.
“Who is it?”
“I think he knows you in real life. He’s been watching you and putting you on the screen to make Parks’s jealousy spike. She was jealous of his infatuation with you, and it turned to something darker when I got an erection just looking at you. I think her lover is—or was—married, which is why they kept the relationship a secret. He said something about never screwing his wife.”
Married. Didn’t screw his wife. It clicked into place. “Hank. Mr. Roboto is Hank.”
“He’s the old guy who drops in frequently?”
She nodded, thinking of the last two years and how many times Hank had shown up when she was online. Weekly, certainly. Sometimes more. Rarely less. “He was always so sweet. In the beginning, he wanted more of the kinky private sessions.” She shook her head. “I think the first time I had to masturbate for a client was with him. I faked my orgasm to get it over with.”
She closed her eyes. Had she actually had virtual finger banging with the monster who’d held a gun to her head?
She hadn’t faked it every time with Hank, but it was close. Thankfully, since she went solo, he hadn’t paid her premium fees for private sessions very often.
She bolted from the bed, leaving Chase’s warm body, and ran to the toilet, where she lost the meager food she’d managed to eat this morning after Sling Man and Jacked Knee were arrested.
The man she’d shared her body with online multiple times was the same person who had enslaved Penny. Who worked with Parks to enslave Chase.
Done heaving, she rocked back on her heels and wiped her chin with toilet paper and dropped it in the bowl before flushing.
Chase was by her side, with her even in this. She leaned against him. “I hate everything about this. I was good at being a camgirl and had a healthy attitude about it. I am not ashamed. I will never be ashamed of enjoying full body autonomy. But now…I feel sick and dirty. He took my sense of autonomy from me. Made my job dirty. I’ve never looked at my performances as dirty—in a bad way—until just this minute. I figured I was helping people—like you, and I thought, like Hank. Giving them a safe and healthy way to explore sexuality when other avenues weren’t available.”
“I’m sorry, Eden.”
She leaned back against the wall, not ready to leave the basin just in case nausea rose again. “So what is Parks’s connection to CamDames?”
Chase leaned beside her, threading his fingers through hers. “So here’s the part where my horror and shame kick in. I think she was working with CamDames to make the girls more compliant during sex.” He shook his head as if he was erasing the last word he said from his mind. “Not sex. Rape. They wanted the girls compliant, like me.” He took a deep breath and continued, “Maybe if I’d been able to resist, Penny wouldn’t have gone through the same nightmare. I was Parks’s greatest success, and she wanted to replicate it. She no longer had her supply of undocumented immigrants, so she turned to teenage girls to keep her experiments going after she perfected her technique on me.”
Eden raised their joined hands to her lips and kissed the back of his hand. “You were a victim. You’re a survivor now, but you were a victim then and she attacked you from a direction that was impossible to resist. You could be the best ninja fighter in the world—and I’ve seen nothing that indicates that’s not a straight-up fact—but all the muscles and skills and reflexes and weapons in the world couldn’t have stopped her. She had access to your brain’s internal wiring, and nobody knew it. I’m so, so, so sorry for everything she did to you and the pain you suffered, and not a single thing was your fault. And it definitely isn’t remotely your fault that she committed similar atrocities on others.”
“I know all these things on one level, but I don’t know if my soul will ever believe it.”
“I want a future with you, Chase, and I promise right now that I don’t want to be your therapist or muck around in your brain. Anything you declare is off-limits will be a hundred percent off-limits. But if there’s one thing I wish I could help you with, it’s that point—understanding that everything she did is on her and none of it is on you.”
He squeezed the hand entwined with his. “We’ll have to take that aspect one day at a time.”
“That’s a solid offer. I accept.”
He let out a soft laugh, and her heart warmed. Together, they could get through this. And it looked like together was possible.
Well, if he wasn’t arrested. “We should probably go talk to Agent Seong.”
They both rose from the floor, but before leaving the bathroom, she stepped up to the sink and dipped her head down to the faucet for a mouthful of water. She swished it around, then spit it out and followed up with a swish of mouthwash. She turned to face Chase, who leaned against the doorjamb with an unguarded smile on his lips.
She felt the same adrenaline rush—or whatever it was—she’d felt the first time she saw him. It had been wild, and she’d wanted to invite him to a hotel and explore every inch of him with her mouth.
Now she had explored him with mouth and hands, and she only wanted more. Even now, after the intensity of the morning.
Maybe especially now, to forget the intensity of the morning.
He seemed to be thinking the same thing, because he pulled her against him and kissed her slowly, nudging her mouth open with his tongue, and then he was inside and her entire body wanted to melt with the sweet, hot, tender burn of his kiss. When he released her, he whispered, “I’m counting the minutes until all this is behind us so I can take you to bed again and we can both forget everything except the feel of each other’s bodies.”
She smiled and ran her hands over his erection, sadly covered by thick denim. “I can’t wait.” She pushed back from his chest. “But first, FBI.”
“Oh, for a dollar for every time I’ve heard that line.”
She snickered.
Before leaving her room, she quickly changed into yoga pants and a tank top, pulling on a soft, light hoodie over the top. Now that Chase was here, she didn’t need the comfort of her plush robe to fight the chill that had encased her heart after the assault.
After she’d changed, they left her room, walking down her short hallway hand in hand. Every pair of eyes in the room turned to them and conversation stopped. She saw the looks of concern on people’s faces, and while she understood it all came from their care for Chase, she couldn’t help but wonder if this was a look he received all the time from the members of Falcon team.
It was wonderful to know they all cared, but still, she guessed the concern probably weighed on him.
It was Nate—aka Hawk—who broke the heavy silence. “So when Agent Seong leaves, we all want to hear the real story of how you kicked three men’s asses at once.”
“We need to check the bird drone Leah made and see if it caught video,” Sean suggested.
Chase rolled his eyes. “You don’t need video to believe it. You know I’m the best.”
That was met with grumbling laughter, in which all the grumbling was clearly fake. “They hate it that none of them can beat me when we spar,” Chase said to Eden in a stage whisper.
She laughed. And it was a real laugh, tension cut.
“You should have seen them pumping me for details on the fight in the garage,” she whispered loudly back. “It was like I was giving them a sneak peek at their favorite comic book and they wanted details about every panel.”
“Did you tell them about how I jacked the guy’s knee at the same time I got the other one in a headlock?”
“Wait,” Ian said. “That happened simultaneously?” He looked accusingly at Eden. “You didn’t say that. That’s the best part.”
Eden refrained from pointing out that was the moment the gun was pointed at her head, because that wasn’t the purpose of this conversation. They were telling Chase they respected him in a way he could hear it. They really were a lovely team. She hoped she could fit in with this part of Chase’s world.
Would his friends judge her for being a sex worker? Did they deep down believe she deserved what almost happened to her this morning? She didn’t think so, but it would take a while for her to believe it.
She didn’t expect acceptance and could understand why it wouldn’t be forthcoming. She would do her best not to judge even if people judged her. But this was one important reason why she’d never told anyone who wasn’t associated with CamDames about her other job.
“Chase told me he suspects Mr. Roboto is one of my regular clients,” she said, owning her job in a roomful of people who might not approve, but who were friends of Chase so she had to accept them even if they didn’t accept her.
“One of your regulars?” Seong asked. “Do you have a name?”
She shook her head. “His screen name was Hank, but it’s almost certainly an alias.”
“But he was a subscriber, so you’ll have financial records we can trace.”
“Odds are he paid like I did,” Chase said, owning the fact that he was a client and making her love him even more. “Untraceable prepaid Visa cards. I bought them with cash.” He gave Eden an apologetic smile. “I was concerned about my employment with Raptor—there are always people looking for weaknesses to exploit. You were mine. Unfortunately, Parks already knew about you.”
She wrapped an arm around his waist and squeezed, leaning her temple against his chest, stunned that he’d say this in front of his team. He wasn’t shying away from how they met at all. “No need to explain.”
She then straightened and nodded to Agent Seong, tilting her head toward the workroom door. She hadn’t entered the room since she’d left it after Sling Man and Jacked Knee were subdued.
She’d learned their names at some point earlier, but she’d ignored the input, preferring the names she’d given them in her head. It was less personal that way.
