Page 75 of Locked and Loaded

Three more days and she would be free.

In point of fact, she had never ever thought she would be in this position. Once Archer Gray had tried to destroy her, she’d thought she would die alone and in the cold. But then opportunity knocked one day in the form of a Russian mobster. Injured and in need of help, he’d promised her the world if she healed him.

And so it began. She plotted and told him what to do until he reached the top of the food chain, where he’d controlled one of the largest human trafficking rings run by the Russians. Then she’d made a deal with his enemy to offer him up in exchange for control of the ring. The rival had jumped at the chance, thinking he could take what he wanted afterward.

She smiled thinking about it. Of course she’d made the deal with both men. They’d killed each other, creating a vacuum which she’d stepped into.

No one had taken much notice at first. They all thought they could take it all back when they wanted, but she paid her fees, and they left her alone. She was doubling business, and they didn’t want to lose out on that easy money.

It had been child’s play after that. She made more contacts and more deals until suddenly all the men around her realized she owned the largest piece of the pie. Some immediately wanted to get rid of her, but she’d hired mercenaries to take out anyone who offered any real resistance. After enough bodies fell, most became content to accept the money she sent them. They left her alone. Eventually she stopped sending money, but by that time, no one wanted to take her on. She supplied enough girls for the bottom feeders on the food chain, and no one had the contacts and the trust of those contacts to do what she was doing for the top part of the food chain.

Once again it galled her to have to admit that Archer Gray had taught her everything she knew. And now she would tear it all down, and none of them would see it coming. Then she would slip quietly away with no one the wiser.

She just had to get through the last auction, and she was home free. Three days. Only three more days.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Lennox woke up because she was too hot.

That was new. Not. This was different though. This was dry, baking, sun-on-canvas heat that turned the tent into an oven and made the air itself feel heavy. She kicked the blanket off, but even that didn't help.

She was naked.

Right. That had happened.

She turned her head on the pillow and found Dragan still asleep beside her. His breaths came slow and even. His face relaxed in a way she'd never seen it. The hard lines around his mouth had softened. The constant alertness he carried like a second skeleton was gone. He looked younger like this. Almost peaceful.

His left arm was stretched above his head, the fresh bandage still clean and white against his skin. The stitches had held through the night. Whatever else she'd done wrong in the last twenty-four hours, at least she'd done that right.

She should get up. She was starving. Her stomach had been growling since the moment she opened her eyes, and the flatbread from last night or early this morning was a distant memory. She needed food and a shower and about a gallon of water. She needed to figure out what came next.

She didn't get up.

Instead, she lay there and watched Dragan sleep and tried to sort through the tangle of feelings in her chest that had nothing to do with hunger.

Last night had been good. So damn good. The kind of good that made her forget, for a few hours, that her life was in pieces and people were dead because of her and her sister was still out there somewhere with a monster. She'd needed that release. She'd needed him. She wasn't going to apologize for it.

But it couldn't happen again. Not until Chloe was safe.

She was clear about that. Clearer than she'd been about anything in weeks. Sleep had done something to her brain, rewired it, put the pieces back in something resembling order. She felt stronger. Focused. The exhaustion that had been dragging her down since Portugal was gone, replaced by a sharp, clean determination. She was going to find her sister. She was going to get her back. Nothing else mattered.

Nothing else could matter.

Even if Dragan was still asleep in her bed with his hair falling across his forehead and his hand resting on the pillow where her head had been. Even if the memory of his mouth on her skin was still fresh enough to make her stomach flip.

Focus. She needed to focus.

She sat up and the sheet pooled around her waist. The tent was bright, sunlight pressing through the red canvas and turning everything inside to amber and rose. The carpets glowed. The brass trays on the low table caught the light and threw it back. Through the embroidered screen she could see the bathroom, the copper basin, the promise of running water.

Shower first. Then food. Then a plan.

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and was halfway to standing when a hand closed around her wrist.

"Where are you going?"

She looked back. Dragan's eyes were open now, dark and alert and fixed on her with an expression that made her very aware of the fact that she was still naked. The controlled mask was back in place.

"Shower," she said. "I'm hot."