Love and Let Die (Masters and Mercenaries #5)(3)

“Hello?” She felt weak, but then her body had been so close to death that no one would suspect she was alive.

Where was Ian now? Had they arrested him? She wasn’t stupid. She knew what Eli Nelson was trying to do. He wanted to “distract” a CIA operative. What better way would there be to distract him than to kill him?

The trouble was, her husband was damn hard to kill.

God, if she found out he’d been arrested and killed while in custody, she would lie back down and she wouldn’t need drugs. She would die, just fade away.

Why did Ian Taggart have to be the one man in the world for her?

Charlie took a breath, her head still groggy. She needed to get to her sister. She hadn’t seen Chelsea for months. What if their father had hurt her again? What if he’d killed her? She had to see Chelsea, make sure she was alive.

And she had to save Ian. She had to find a way.

But first she had to find the light switch.

She tried to move her good arm and felt cold metal at her fingertips. Her hands began to shake in a way that had nothing to do with the drugs she’d taken.

The lights weren’t off in the room. She wasn’t in a room.

She sent her hand out, desperate to prove her instincts wrong, to prove she wasn’t trapped in a box.

All she found was more metal. She wasn’t trapped in a box. She was trapped in a coffin.

The scream that came from her throat nearly split her ears. She was fourteen years old again and trapped in that box her father would lock her in when she rebelled. Sometimes, she wasn’t alone in the box. Sometimes a rat or a snake had managed to find its way in and Charlie had to kill it with her hands or feet. She could still remember that snake biting her over and over and over before she’d found a way to kill it. Luckily it hadn’t been venomous, but she hadn’t known that.

She smashed her hands against the walls that held her and screamed the way she had when she was a kid.

No. Not the same because now she screamed a name.

Now she screamed for her husband. The husband she’d betrayed.

She felt her whole body jerk back and then light flooded her vision.

“Shut the f*ck up, Charlotte, or you won’t see your sister again. You can’t see her if I have to kill you.”

She went utterly silent. She’d given up everything for Chelsea. Everything. Because Ian Taggart had become her everything. Tears blurred her vision as she started to be able to make out shapes. A dark figure loomed over her.

She forced herself to sit up, every muscle achy and twitching. Her stomach rolled and suddenly there was a trash can in front of her as she began to heave.

There was a long sigh. “The drugs will do that to you. An unfortunate side effect.”

Eli Nelson, the man who had promised to save her if only she would do this one little teeny tiny job for him, stood next to her in his suit designed to attract the minimum of attention. Everything about the man was calculated to make him look as bland and normal as possible. From his average height to his nondescript hair, he fit into the crowd.

She’d decided Eli Nelson was the devil.

She finished emptying her stomach and turned, her legs dangling. She looked at her left shoulder. A bandage was wrapped around her.

“Yes, dear, I rather thought I should have them take the bullet out before you woke up. I couldn’t have you unable to run. The pain must be excruciating. I congratulate you on your fortitude.”

“Who took it out? They suck.” She now had one more scar on a body full of them.

Nelson’s lips lifted in a ghastly imitation of a smile. “I took care of it. I didn’t want to leave any pesky evidence behind. I have a man on the inside here who let me in after all the formalities were over. The sutures might not be perfect, but they did the job.”

God, would she ever stop shaking? It was so cold. Had it really been hours ago that she’d been warm in Ian’s arms? Now she was here. She recognized where she was.

A morgue.

She was in a morgue because she’d died and now she was alive again. Lazarus in high heels. Her clothes were covered in blood. What the hell was she going to do now? She couldn’t think about the future. All that mattered was the answer to one question. “Where is Chelsea?”

Nelson gestured to someone behind him and the door opened.

“Charlotte.” Her kid sister shuffled in, her braces scuffing across the floor.

Chelsea was all of twenty-two years old, but she seemed so much younger. She was thin and weak because their father kept her that way. To their father, Chelsea was nothing but a tool to get Charlie to do what he wanted. Despite the fact that they were technically adults, their father still ruled them with an iron fist. After he’d found them and kidnapped them from Mama, he’d made it impossible for them to leave Russia. Until Eli Nelson had shown up with his devil’s bargain. Now Chelsea was here and they could run. They could hide.

Would he find them?

“Your father is dead,” Nelson said bluntly. “I kept up my end of the deal. MI6 will likely find his body in a couple of days and they’ll believe that everything is over. Eventually they’ll figure out that your dear papa wasn’t the one trying to buy uranium, but for now they’ll believe what I want them to believe. Thank you, dear. That little bit of chaos wouldn’t have been possible without you.”

With shaking hands, she clutched her sister, pulling her behind her body in case everything went to hell. “I don’t understand.”