False front, p.16
False Front, page 16
“Emily, I’ve never brought a woman here.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it. My brothers have brought their wives here—oh, and my mom has come.” He turned her to face him. “Only you, Emily.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Trust me, I get it. You may not have the same level of experience, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to kill every guy who eye-fucks you when you walk into a room. I feel the same need to claim you.”
“You’re not going to pee on me, are you?”
He nearly spat his beer into her hair. “God, that mouth.”
“Hit me over the head and drag me back to your cave? Kill a rival in a duel?”
“Trust me, Emily. I have every intention of marking my territory.”
“Soon?” She wiggled closer into the space between his legs.
“Patience. I have a whole seduction planned for you.”
“Oh, God, that sounds elaborate.”
“I think so, but I’ll let you be the judge.”
“Now?”
“Right now, Emily.”
He pulled her up and led her into the house.
Elaborate was not the right word, Emily decided. Sinful, she thought as he fed her a strawberry. Illicit popped into her head as he secured her hands to the bedposts and put his head between her thighs. Wanton crossed her mind as she straddled his narrow hips. Dirty was the descriptor when he put her on all fours and slammed into her. Kinky flitted in her brain as he dripped candle wax on a taut nipple. Romantic, she sighed as he moved above her, and euphoric as the pleasure crashed over them. And when they finally collapsed in a tangled mess in the knotted sheets, and she felt the echoes of their passion between her sore legs, she thought he had succeeded. She was marked.
“I don’t like this any more than you, but when you climb the stairs, you get the belt.”
The leather lashed across her small bottom through the tattered nightgown. Her face was mashed up tight into a ball when the door flew open.
“What do you think you’re doing? You idiot!”
“She went up the stairs.”
“Who cares? Drop the belt, or I will put a bullet in your brain.”
The belt hit the floor with a thud.
“She has to mind.”
“She can’t be marked, you fool!! You bit her! You want to keep her from going to the stairs? Watch.”
The man who had come in grabbed her under her arms and picked her up. With a monogrammed handkerchief, he wiped her nose and eyes.
“There, there, Little One. You must stay away from the stairs, all right?”
She sniffled and nodded. He spoke with a soft voice.
“We have to keep this little one perfect. Because that’s what you are; you are perfect.”
He sighed, resigned.
“Little girls who go up the stairs get the box.”
“Okay,” she said, not quite understanding.
He walked a few steps with her in his arms and bent down. He tugged on a rope handle and a planked door in the floor pulled open, revealing a squared-off hole. Without a word or a glance, he dropped her in, and as the door closed above her, everything went black.
Emily shot up in bed, soaked in sweat, the scream lodged in her throat. Finally, it broke through as she covered her face with her hands and grabbed at her throat. Nathan was up in an instant. He switched on the small bedside lamp and squared her shoulders. He shook her gently.
“Emily, what is it? A nightmare?”
She clutched her throat with one hand and put her other flat on his chest, feeling his racing heart.
“Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe,” she choked.
Nathan scooped her up and moved like a jungle cat through the house with Emily in his arms. He grabbed a bottled water he had left on the kitchen island and pushed open the French doors out to the patio. Then in long strides, he carried her down to the beach. The wind was fierce and nearly blew the air into her lungs. Nathan set her down and stepped back to let her breathe. She was on her hands and knees like a marathoner collapsed at the finish line. She was torn between the need for space and the need to touch him. One look at his concern, and the battle was over. She crawled the short distance to him as he fell to his knees. Her face nearly collided with his chest as she breathed him in. He was her air. Her hands went around his bare waist, and her cheek rested on his sternum. He knew what had happened, so he simply held her and waited.
When she moved them to sit, he scooped up a towel she hadn’t seen him grab from the patio and spread it on the sand. Then he sat behind her, enveloping her with arms and legs. Her claustrophobia didn’t re-emerge though. With the dark ocean in front of her and his warm body behind, Emily breathed out a sigh.
“I was there, in the house.” She could feel Nathan stiffen, but he didn’t speak. “A man was hitting me with a belt. I had walked up some stairs, gotten about halfway, I think, when he grabbed me and pulled me back down.” Emily could hear the detachment in her own voice as she recounted the dream. Nathan stroked her arms rhythmically from shoulder to elbow and back. “Another man came in. The man who called me Little One and scolded the man for beating me. He said I shouldn’t have marks.” Nathan continued his hypnotic soothing as she told him the rest. She took a deep breath. When she told him about the hole in the floor, he felt her body shake, muttered a curse, and wrapped his arms more tightly around her, pulling her back into his body.
“Sky and sea, everything is wide open,” he soothed.
She nuzzled into his neck.
“You doing okay?”
She nodded without moving from her spot.
“Can I ask some questions?”
She nodded again, feeling his smile.
“Could you see anything else?”
“Yes. In the dream, it was a basement. Part of it was carpeted, part was wood. The stairs went up. At the top of the stairs, there was a bare bulb in the ceiling.” She described the Baltimore house where they found her to a T. “Oh, I was holding a stuffed animal—a bunny maybe? That’s how the FBI made the connection. Something about a neighbor seeing grown men with stuffed animals. I remember clutching it when I was being whipped.”
Nathan made a pained sound, almost a growl.
“I don’t remember the pain. I just remember the sound.”
“That’s normal. Your body doesn’t remember pain.”
“Wait. Something about me is normal?” She leaned back and looked into his glowing eyes.
“Nothing about you is normal, Emily Webster. Nothing ever has been. I would never insult you by calling you normal.” He leaned in to kiss her and tugged her bottom lip with his teeth.
“It goes a way toward explaining why I hate the word perfect.”
“That’s okay; I have a long list of adjectives I can use instead.”
“Do you now?”
“I do.”
“And what’s at the top of your list?”
“Mine.”
“I love you, Nathan.”
He sighed.
“Emily, I need you to listen to me.” She turned on the towel to face him and pushed her shins into the space under his bent legs. “I don’t say those words. Ever. I have my reasons, but please understand that I just . . . can’t.” He scrubbed his face with his palm and seemed to rethink. “My father,” he hesitated, then plowed ahead, “he had this ritual on Sunday nights when I was a child. He would call me into his study and review my behavior of the past week. Then he would strike me with a switch. The number of hits depended upon my behavior.”
“Oh, Nathan.”
“The bothersome part for me was after the whipping, I had to stand at the door of his office and thank him and tell him I loved him.”
Emily sat still and silent and rubbed his arm as he had done for her.
“It was like vomiting nails getting those words out. In my mind, I changed the definition. To me, they mean the exact opposite of what they mean to everyone else. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel what you feel—exactly. In fact, even if I weren’t fucked up about it, I’m not sure ‘love’ is the word I would use for you. I have loved in my life. I love my mom and my brothers. I loved my dog.” He stopped to run the backs of his knuckles down her face. “But you . . . it’s like ‘love’ isn’t a big enough word for what I feel. Like they need to invent some new word for it because what I feel for you makes love seem very small.”
She touched her lips to his. He kissed her tears. They both turned to the ocean, only the white caps visible against an endless starry night.
“I sky you, Nathan.”
He smiled and met her violet gaze.
“I sky you, Emily. And I may be shit at telling you, but I’m fucking great at showing you.” And with that Nathan lowered her onto the beach towel peeled her camisole over her head and her boy shorts down her legs. She wrapped her legs around his hips and urged him toward her. He groaned into her neck.
“Someone’s getting the hang of it.”
“I’m getting the hang of you.” He pushed inside her, stretching her, filling her.
“You always did.”
The jolt of the plane hitting the runway startled Emily awake. She had been dreaming of the weekend, of their walk on the beach, their failed attempt at breakfast that morning when Nathan’s sudden need to eat her had resulted in burnt pancakes and the relentless beeping of the smoke detector. Emily was a restless sleeper, so the fact that she had passed out against Nathan’s arm spoke volumes. He kissed her the rest of the way awake, and she smiled into his mouth.
“Thank you. For the trip. For everything really.”
“First of many, Emily. I want us to go every chance we get.”
“Sounds perfect.”
Nathan reached into his pocket and withdrew his phone. He prepared to power it on, and she did the same.
“Ready for the real world?” He gave a tired smile.
“As I’ll ever be.”
It was as if an alarm had sounded at a firehouse. Dozens of email alerts, texts, and missed calls. Emily quickly scrolled through for a message from her father, worried that something had happened to him. Even Caroline had tried to call from LA Then she saw it. Caroline had sent the link in her first text. She set the phone on her lap and stared at the screen with her hands hanging limply at her sides. She was slipping away mentally as she read the New York Post headline:
Emily Webster “The Vanished Baby” Found Alive in New York City
The child abduction that broke the heart of a nation has a surprise happy ending this week as the breathtaking child of privilege, Emily Webster, was discovered rescued and living a quiet, anonymous life working for a news blog in upper Manhattan.
Emily just stared at the screen. She could see the words, but it was like they had no meaning, like she was reading a foreign language. It took her a moment to notice the two strong hands on her thighs, and for the echo of Nathan’s voice to grow clearer.
“Emily, look at me.”
Her neutral gaze met his.
“I’ve been outed.”
“So it would seem.”
“Okay, I should call my father.”
“Emily.”
“He has a plan in place for this.”
“Emily.”
“It means going dark. Again. But we knew this was a possibility.”
Nathan stopped her by putting both hands on her cheeks and squaring her face to his as he kneeled before her.
“Emily, come back to me.”
“I will. You know I will find a way to contact you.”
“No. Now. Come back to me right now.”
She stared at him for a long moment, but slowly she reengaged. She kept her eyes locked with his and braced herself as a wave of anguish washed over her. She slid to her knees in front of him and buried her head in his lap.
“I hate myself like this.”
“Are you kidding? I’m crazy about you like this. Anything is preferable to that emotional disappearing act.”
“Caroline calls it ‘robot mode.’ I can’t control it.”
“I know.”
“What now?” she asked on a deep inhale.
“Emily, I think this is my fault.”
“What do you mean?”
“When my people told me you had some red flags in your background before I knew the whole truth, I wasn’t as careful with that information as I should have been. I assumed you had falsified your identity to get to me, not to protect yourself. I was selfish and careless.”
She listened to him scold himself as the guilt washed over him, and she felt the strangest sense of calm. She could hear Caroline’s voice: You’re Emily Webster, you always have been. Her father’s voice: He’s a good man, truth be told I trust him too. And for quite possibly the first time, her own voice. Loud and clear.
“Nathan, stop.”
“God, I’m so sorry.”
“No. Don’t.” She grinned.
“What’s got you so cheery suddenly? I can’t let you disappear again, Emily. I won’t.”
“I won’t.”
“Then what?”
“I’ve been outed. So, I’m coming out.”
“What do you mean exactly?”
“I mean if someone wants to try to take me after all this time, bring it on. I have my father and JT. I have Caroline and all of her work resources.” She got nose to nose with him. “I have you. That’s really all I need.”
“And I have an army, literally.”
“Nathan, you are an army.”
“I’m ready to fight if you are.”
She needed to make something perfectly clear.
“I don’t mean I’m ready to face this because you have an arsenal of weapons or a team of Navy SEALS, Nathan. I’m ready to face this because you have this.” She took his hand and placed it on her chest over the swell of her breast. “You have my heart. And that makes me feel like I can handle anything.”
“I’m going to take such good care of it, Emily. You have no idea.” He took her hand and placed it on his chest mirroring her actions. “And I expect you to do the same.”
She leaned down and placed a kiss where her hand had been. She stared up into his wide, brimming eyes. They didn’t need words. They were making a commitment, a silent pledge. Nathan reached up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear as the pilot popped his head out of the cockpit.
“Nathan, I just got a call from the terminal building. The paps are gathered in droves. Someone tipped them off.”
“Fuck,” Nathan muttered. “Let me call Chat.”
“He’s on the tarmac. In a rented sedan. The Range Rover is out front as a decoy. He knew your phone would be flooded so he sent me the info. We’ve cleared an exit for you out a service road. You’ll be back home before the photographers realize you’ve taxied.”
“Thanks, Will.”
“You never need to thank me.”
“I know, but thanks anyway.”
The pilot just shook his head good-naturedly and disappeared back into the cabin.
“Well, you’re officially famous. For fifteen minutes anyway.”
She laughed.
“That’s fifteen minutes too long.”
“Ready to make your escape?”
“Are we going to your place?”
“Emily, if I had my way, you’d never leave my side. I just don’t want to scare you.”
“I’m not scared.” Wow. That felt good to say, and mean, for once.
“Good. Let’s go. When we get home, we need to talk a bit more.”
Emily was still a little gaga over his use of the word “home” when she replied, “Hmm?”
He chuckled softly. “Time for you to know my secrets as well.”
Nathan dropped their bags in his front hall and went straight to the bar. He poured a hefty glug of fifty-year-old Macallan, downing what Emily estimated to be several hundred dollars’ worth of scotch in one swallow. She sat on the small loveseat; Nathan remained standing.
“I could downplay your influence on my path, Emily, but once you hear the story, I think you’ll see the impact you had.”
She remained silent, giving him the same focus he had afforded her.
“I was haunted by your abduction. But I will say that somewhere in my mind I felt that maybe you were safe. Mainly it was a feeling, but it was also your dad. He may not have even known he was doing it, but something about the wording of his emails, little things that an untrained reader wouldn’t see, planted a seed of hope.
“The SEALs I worked with went out on a lot of rescue missions. Other missions became rescue missions by default. We once discovered a captured Marine nobody knew was being held. Twice in Eastern Europe, we discovered groups of women preparing to be trafficked.” He walked up to where she sat then and fell to his knees with such a look of despair, she had to bite back tears. “I know it made no sense, but I looked at each woman, each face with such dread, praying it wouldn’t be you. Praying you had died rather than ended up like that.” He dropped his face into her lap and was quiet for a long moment. When his emotions were under control he stood and began to pace.
“When I resigned my commission and came to work at K-B, I tried to push all that stuff out of my head. A fresh start, a new life. About six months in, my friend Tox, who runs my security division, came to me. His friend had been abducted from a gas station in his hometown. She’d only been missing about ten hours, and because she was twenty, the police wouldn’t do much. It was a total no-brainer. We grabbed the guys from the old team who were close, five guys, three of whom work for me and two others, Finn and JJ, who both went to work for the CIA.”
“The Giant works for you?”
“Hmm?”
“There was a guy who interrupted one of our interview sessions, I nicknamed The Giant. Bald. Enormous.”
He chuckled. “That’s Tox. You know Chat. There’s also Twitch, she’s the little redhead who runs cybersecurity, and Ren, who’s sort of a utility player.”
