Page 26 of The Society (Spy Girl 3)
I fling his hand off of me and take an offensive position, ready to strike. "I don't want to hurt you," I tell him as I make a lighting-fast maneuver that relieves him of his handgun.
"Huntley," he says, holding his hands up in the air, "you have a good disguise on, but the fewer people who see you the better. It's imperative that we get you out of here before the cops come. They will ask a lot of questions. They will find out who you are. They will blow your cover all to hell. Is that what you want?"
"I don't care."
"I called my people, didn't you hear me? They are sending in a team to help the girls. They will get them out of here, I promise. But you have to let me get you out of here now. The sirens are getting closer."
I look deep into his eyes. "Do you really promise? Not only will they get out, but they will be taken care of, given therapy, help, and guidance, not just put back on the streets? And your team, will they go back and arrest every single man at the auction today? And will they find the other girls who are living like this? And will they make sure Ana, the girl who was just killed, has a proper burial? I'll pay for it myself."
"I absolutely promise," he says.
I hand him back his gun and let him lead me out the door. He takes his jacket off and wraps it around my scantily clad body.
"Keep your head down," he says then we run through the alley and out to the street where the crappy car we drove to the auction sits waiting.
He opens the door and shoves me inside. Then he runs to the other side, gets in, and takes off.
I pull my knees to my chest, put my head down, and rock back and forth in the seat until the car stops.
I don't know where he's taken me. I don't even care. He helps me out of the car but when I stumble forward, he just picks me up and carries me into the house.
"I have to go back," I say.
He sets me down in a utility room of a different house than the one we were in earlier.
"I cut off his penis," I say.
"I know. I saw it on the floor. Stand here, and don't move," he says.
I glance around the room we're in. The floor is shiny and has a drain in the middle of it. There is a shower head on one wall. Probably so he can hose himself down after a mission.
Intrepid takes a crystal decanter and two tumblers out of a cabinet. He pours a glass and hands it to me. "Drink this."
My hands shake as I bring the glass to my lips. The alcohol has a strong smell and burns going down, but I quickly swallow it.
"Is this your house?" I ask him.
"It's a safe house."
"Do all of them have rooms like this?"
"Sometimes, death clings to you," he says seriously. He pours himself a drink and shoots it back. Then he grabs a large black piece of plastic from the cabinet and spreads it across the floor. "Step into the middle of it," he instructs.
He sets his glass down on the counter and then gently slides his suit jacket off my shoulders and arms, letting it fall onto the plastic. He removes his gun and the steak knife I used from his pocket and sets them down on the plastic, too.
Now that his coat is off me, I look down at my body, and realize that I'm covered in blood and gore.
Intrepid sees the look of horror on my face. "You did what you had to do."
"But why did I have to do it?"
He doesn't reply. Instead, he gets down on one knee and removes my combat boots and my socks. Then he stands in front of me, tugs on the hem of my tank top, and pulls it off over my head.
Now, I have nothing on but a pair of white underwear. I look down and see that they are not pure white anymore but rather splotched with crimson. He strips them off me, too.
"The next part is probably gonna hurt."
He pours us each another drink and then clinks my glass but doesn't say a word. He doesn't have to. His eyes tell me everything. He knows what it feels like to have another man's blood on your skin, and he's seen horrors that he wishes he could forget.
After we gulp down our drinks, he puts on a pair of reading glasses, picks a bit of the shoulder tattoo off my skin, and then quickly pulls it off. It hurts, causing tears to form in my eyes. It feels like what I suspect a full-body wax must feel like.
One by one, he pulls the strips off with a loud ripping sound, taking my hair with it. He starts with my shoulder, moves to my hip, does my arms, and then finishes with the small ones on my feet, letting each piece fall onto the plastic.
In some ways, it feels like I'm being stripped of my dignity, but at the same time, the plastic coverings kept some of the grossness off my skin.
Finally, he leans around me and turns on the shower. Once he's determined the water is the right temperature, he motions for me to move closer to it. All I can see is the vision of Ana being brutally hosed off.
I back away from it.
"It's okay," he says. "You need to get yourself rinsed off."
I do as he says, backing under the warm water and watching the pink-colors swirl down the drain. When I look up, I notice that Intrepid is undressing himself. He takes off his shoes, his pants, and his shirt, which are covered in the same grossness in the spots where he hugged me. He drops it all on the plastic, rolls the sheet up into a ball, puts it in a trash bag, and zip-ties it shut.
Then he steps into the shower with me. He's still wearing a pair of boxer shorts, and I can't help but notice how perfect his skin is, save for a few pale freckles. It's an odd thing to notice when you are in the shower, naked and with a man, but it's what I focus on.
When he turns around, I get a glimpse of a long, thin scar on the back of his right arm along with two circular-shaped scars puckered at the edges high on his left shoulder. There is no matching scar on his front, but based on the placement, more than likely, the bullets hit bone and never went clean through.
He puts a strong-smelling antibacterial soap into his hand and then rubs it across his body, cleaning himself. Next, he does the same to me, taking extra time with my hair. Once we are clean, he lets the water run down the drain for quite some time. Then he turns off the shower, takes my hand, and leads me through a doorway, shutting the door and leaving the business side of things behind us.
The house is ornately decorated and a contrast to the stark utilitarian room we were just in. I follow him through a parlor to a grand front entry with an elaborately carved staircase, and then we go up it and down a hall.
He opens the door to a large room with a four-poster bed and a marble fireplace, leading me through the room to a pristine white-and-gray marble bathroom. The shower is much more luxurious than the one downstairs and has multiple jets, dual shower heads, and an optional rainforest shower overhead.
He turns the shower on from a panel on the wall, sets the temperature, and then hands me a fluffy white towel.
I wrap it around myself, thankful to not have to be naked in front of him anymore. Even though I was in the shower with him, it never felt remotely sexual.
"Do we need another shower?"
"Yes," he says. "The first was simply utilitarian. To get off the--"
"You don't need to say it." I step into the shower with the towel still wrapped around me. I close my eyes, running my hands through my hair and pushing it back off my face, but I still feel unsettled. "I never expected to see what I did today," I say, keeping my eyes closed. "It might have been different if I had known what I would find at his house. I knew he bought girls, but I didn't know he kept them in cages or allowed them to be tortured and killed by his guards when he was done with them."
I feel Intrepid get closer to me.
I slowly open my eyes, water falling through my lashes as I look up at him. He grabs a bottle of body wash and flips it over. I hold my hand beneath it, catching the Bvlgari-scented wash in my hand.
We lock eyes.
"Sometimes, you are caught off guard in our business. You see things you'll wish you could forget," he says. "But you handled it perfectly. You did what you set out to do."
"No, I
didn't. I did what I did out of pure rage. There was nothing remotely professional about it. From cutting it off to spraying him with sixty rounds when a single shot would have sufficed."
He pours soap in his hands and then uses it to massage my bare shoulders. I always thought, if I were ever lucky enough to be in a shower with my spy crush, the great Intrepid, we would be together sexually, not talking shop. But then he starts washing my hair.
And it feels good. Like something my mother did when I was upset, almost therapeutic. He's trying to help me. Heal me with shampoo. But some things can't be washed away, no matter how much soap you use. Some things, you will always carry with you.
The thing is, I won't ever think about the disgustingness of what I did to the money man again, but I'll never forget the way those girls looked. Like the vision of my mother's death, I'll keep those girls with me, driving me until I get revenge on the people behind all of this.
I'm going to unravel this plot piece by piece.
"What are you thinking about?" Intrepid asks.
"Retribution," I state.
When he nods in agreement, I realize he's done washing my hair.
I get out of the shower, grab another towel, hand one to him, and then cover myself with a dry towel before dropping the wet one to the floor.
I watch as he wraps the towel around himself and slips off his boxers.
"I have a confession," I tell him as he hands me a pale blue velour robe with the British royal crest. "You steal this from Buckingham Palace?"
He laughs. "Hey, it's not every day you get invited to stay there. You gotta take something to remember it by. What's your confession?"
"I knew who you were in Montrovia. I knew your code name was Intrepid. In fact, I'd studied all your cases for my senior dissertation."
He chuckles. "I'm not retired even though that's the rumor. Is that why you knocked me out?"
"Well, I had heard the rumor and wasn't sure whose side you were on."
"What did your gut tell you?" he asks.
