A Harmless Little Plan (Harmless #3)(7)

Lending it to me.

Inhaling carefully, managing my breathing, I get my throat spasm under control. I do not throw up.

“Good girl. See? You can take orders. Last time, you were just a boring old limp noodle with holes. This time is going to be so much better,” Stellan says, running his index finger along my jaw. He must have a ragged fingernail, because the deep, abiding feeling of my skin being scratched, that searing hot feeling that comes from broken skin, pierces his movement.

I don’t move. Then I let myself blink. Drawing on every lesson in my stupid meditation classes at the Island, I make myself remove my tongue from the roof of my mouth, imagine my organs gone to liquid, drop my shoulders, remove tension. None of this changes my circumstances, but it gives me something to do.

Stellan pours water in an arc over my head, blinding me, some of it in my mouth before I can regroup. Hacking as the water trickles down my windpipe, I blink and sputter, catching his disgusted look.

“Here. Drink. We can’t have you dehydrated.” His hand passes over my cleavage, the tops of my breasts overflowing without a bra in this tight, scalloped-neck top. “You spilled some,” he says with a sneer.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Shit. I broke my first rule. Stay small. Boring. Gray rock. Don’t draw attention.

“Aren’t you the little prima donna! You think this is about you? It’s all about your dad, Lindsay. You’re just caught in the middle.”

I go numb and ice cold. “My dad?”

“You’re just a useful device.” His eyes widen as he eats up my breasts with his gaze.

“Device for what?”

“To ruin the great Senator Harwell Bosworth.”

“Shut up, Stellan,” John mutters, giving him a glare and a head shake. “Don’t tell her anything.”

I force myself not to turn and follow the sound of his voice. He’s behind me, John looking over my shoulder.

“It’s not like she’ll spill her guts to anyone.” His eyes turn darker and his nostrils flare. “Except for us.”

Before I have a chance to wonder whether he means that literally, there’s a knock at the door.

John and Stellan freeze.

“You call someone?” John hisses at Stellan.

Stellan comes over to me and puts the sole of his shoe on my neck. “Say a word, and you’ll become tile grout.”

I don’t point out that we’re on carpet.

Stellan’s body twists as he whispers to John, “No. No idea who that is.”

“Helllloooooooooo?” says a sickly sweet, high-pitched beach bunny’s voice from the other side of some door. “Hello? I can hear you in there, Drew! It’s Tiffany! I need to tell you something, sweetie.”

My heart sinks.

Drew? Sweetie?

I breathe in deeply again, the scent of the room making me reel. I get a hint of Drew’s aftershave. His scent.

Are we in Drew’s apartment?

Why would Drew let them bring me here?

What would Drew – oh, my God.

Is this one big set-up? Have I been played by Drew all along? Was he part of this from the very beginning and I was too naive to get that?

Panic rises up in my blood, rushing through my veins and arteries. No. No. This is what they want me to think. Drew must have no idea they’re here. I stop myself from touching my hand where he inserted the microchip. These bastards are observant. Everything I do is being watched. Can’t let on.

Drew will find me. He can track me, for God’s sake.

John snickers and gives me a fake pitying look. “Awww. Poor Lindsay. Looks like Drew was fucking someone.” He looks at his phone, which seems to have streaming video on it. A tall blonde is outside a front door. I assume this is surveillance video of “Tiffany.”

I roll my eyes.

“Nice. Pretend it doesn’t bother you that he’s been dipping it in that dried-up old thing. Wonder how long he’s been banging her? Four years, maybe?”

“What’s wrong, John?” I can’t help it. I say something. “Jealous?”

Stellan grabs me by the ankles and whips me out of the living room, down the hall, and rotates, shoving me backwards by the ankles under the bed. I can feel my joints snap and pop in protest, my muscles screaming, my back covered with rug rash.

“You’ll pay for that,” he rasps, lips an inch from my nose, his hot, nasty garlic breath making me sick again.

I let out a long moan, the sound a gasp at the end. It sounds erotic, even to my own ears.

John’s nasty laugh comes from behind me. “Look at that, Stel. She likes it rough.”

“Huh.” Stellan releases me. “Yeah. Never would have thought.”

“She wasn’t exactly awake last time. Remember how you had to have us hold her legs while you -- ”

Bzzzz.

John shuts up, thank God, as he answers his phone. I hear Stellan panting a few feet away. Everything in the room smells like Drew. It’s screwing with my senses, with my mind as it sorts through the truth. If I lose it, I’m dead.

If I lose faith in Drew, they win.





Drew


“You can’t even be outside the gates, Drew.” Silas meets me about a quarter mile from The Grove. He’s been expecting me. Of course he has.