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"You," Kie said. The one word fell into the room.
A shiver. The group of billionaires into which I'd fallen, the strange charity fundraising group of sadists who raised money to fight trafficking by beating each other's women and fucking them, the very group that had allowed Kie to start this horror story – all of it was wrapped around sexual encounters, around sex so strange I hadn't known it existed when Cole first had me brought here.
If that's what Kie meant? That she wanted me in one more game of pain and desire? That was almost impossible to believe and I looked around at each of the guards, trying to judge my chances. How far would I get trying to free Cole and find out what had happened to his own guards? Nowhere.
I couldn't allow Kie to ever touch me again.
And if she meant something else?
"I'm right here," I said. Daring her. Pushing her. Waiting to see what would happen.
The blade rattled on the floor where she'd thrown it. She moved across the room like rage wrapped up in a tiny Asian girl, the cuts on her face glowing red like stigmata. "You think you're so tough. So you used to be a cop."
Up in my face now, her breath somehow rank. She was terrifying, all the more so because waves of insanity rolled off her. I had been wrong back in Paris when I thought we were both survivors of Vincent Geddes.
Kie hadn't survived at all.
She was away from Cole. That was important. She no longer held the razor. That was important too.
After that, I wasn't sure I cared. Mark and I were finished; he just didn't know it yet and I hadn't had the time to tell him. Being locked in a mental hospital does that.
My father was – wasn't – I didn't know – he was no longer the man I'd thought he was. How about that? I was confused and hurt and angry. All my life my mother and my three sisters had been at odds. I was the girl who couldn't be made girly.
If any of them had done something like this to me, I would have understood. I wouldn't even have panicked. I would have just found my way back, out of the hospital and confronted them. The fact that it was my father, the man I loved growing up. The man who always took my side?
My life had turned upside down. I'd come to crave the security of the compound. No longer trying to escape. Actually, before Kie had come back from the dead like some zombie bitch, I'd been working on healing mentally and physically along with kicking the addiction.
With Cole's help.
With Cole.
I shoved her hard away from me and heard the rifles make a muttered clack as they were brought to bear on me again. Or more to bear. The attention of the guns had really never left me.
"Whatever you have in mind, let's get to it." So many years since any undercover mission had made me this afraid. Maybe confronting Kie was good for me in some way.
Or maybe, not on the positive side, I now cared more than I had in years.
"You and me, right here, right now." Kie's voice shook but I thought it was with anger and not fear.
I shook my head. "You and me it won't end up being." I didn't waste my breath asking about Cole's guards. They were incapacitated or dead. I just said, "You're the one with the armed guards."
Kie shrugged, not bothering to look at them. "I can send them outside."
"They'll still be monitoring," I said.
She'd recovered her balance and threw herself back into my face. "I don't need them. They won't interfere unless I demand it."
"Which you'll do when I win."
"You won't win. But no, I won't." Her gaze was direct and steady and insane. I thought she'd keep her word. I also didn't think I'd get a much better offer.
So what were the rules going to be? Swords? Pistols?
But Kie was across the living room taking her shoes off, neatly putting them aside with her socks.
That was crazy.
We were going to fight.
