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dakota
“Here,” Trent says to me in the small room, sliding in close as he hands me a drink he poured from a bottle on the table. “After that chaos, you need it.”
My heart thumps hard. I don’t know where I am, other than in Queens, at some old, abandoned hotel.
But the name makes me want to shake.
Hotel Arizona Sunset.
“I-I thought we were going somewhere. You got your jet ready and put in a flight path.”
“Good God, Dakota.” He comes up and winds his hand in my hair as he motions me to follow from the office marked Manager. We’re back in the scuffed and empty foyer. The windows are boarded, too. “What would I want in that sad state?”
“Sunshine?”
He laughs. His hand wanders down to my ass and I have to fight every single urge in my body not to slap it away. “I own a lot of properties there. Tax write-offs. But I hardly go.”
“So why did you send your jet?” I’m not drinking whatever this is. He didn’t get one for himself, so there has to be drugs in the bottle.
He locked the door when we entered the boarded-up, graffiti-covered, abandoned-looking building. And now he’s asking me to drink up. I might be paranoid, but given the history with these people and drugging drinks, I’m not taking chances.
I force a smile and pretend to take a drink. Gin and salted lemon this time, I think. I’m beginning to think this drink, the botanicals of the gin, the perfume of the citrus, and the salty sweet bitterness of the mixer all work to hide whatever else might be in it.
“You sent the jet to Arizona. Are you picking someone up?” I try to sound vacuous and chirpy. A dumb blonde. He’s always been condescending toward people.
Harley’s said he’s that, as well as creepy, with me, but I didn’t see it before.
She’s definitely savvier, and I’m glad she’s not here. I just hate that she knows more of what’s going on, and if I don’t survive—I definitely intend to survive, but if I don’t—I hope it doesn’t put her in danger.
“You’re nice like that,” I add.
He only smiles. “I’m not, Dakota. That man who was arrested?”
“J-Jaxson?”
“I don’t trust him not to wriggle out of it all.” He slides two fingers over my lips. “He could have people ready to snatch you again.”
“But he’s been arrested.”
“He’s a billionaire involved in shady things. Governmental and terrorist organizations.”
I gasp. “Even if he got free, how would he know I’m with you?”
“He knows we know each other. He stole you from under me, so I’m creating a false trail.”
Oh. Fuck.
I’m more than on my own. Because I don’t think they’re following me or him. They’re watching for his private jet and any new flight plans for Arizona.
My stupid-thinks-she’s-smarter-than-she-is self did this. I told them the state of Arizona because he mentioned it.
Only he wasn’t talking about Arizona, USA, he was talking about Hotel Arizona Sunset.
I thought I was scared. I thought I understood terror. But I don’t. Or didn’t.
Until this moment.
Knowledge adds to terror. I know what he does, what the Collectors do. The fact that powerful, rich, dangerous men like Orion, Smith, Malone, Mercer, and this Jones guy have been searching for Trent, the maestro, means that the things he’s done to others must make what happened on the boat and in that basement seem like a picnic.
