Elemental Pleasure Read online

  “I’m doing the job. You said a friend found out what was going on. Well, this must be the friend.” The short man motioned to her and Carly flinched.

  “So you kidnapped her? What were you thinking? This was supposed to be simple. Get the evidence and get the fuck out.”

  “No, this was supposed to solve your problem.”

  “You’ve made it a bigger problem. We could go to prison for this.”

  “You were going to prison anyway if I hadn’t helped you.”

  “No, I wasn’t going to jail. And if I had, it would have been a nice white-collar prison. Kidnapping is a one-way ticket to the state penitentiary.”

  Carly’s mind raced. Based on what they were saying, they weren’t random muggers who’d decided to kidnap her. They had gone to the condo for something…or someone…specifically.

  Preston.

  The taller man mentioned white-collar prison. White-collar crimes were things like art theft, bribery…and embezzlement.

  Could this be about what Lance had discovered last night? If so, they either worked for Preston’s company or had been hired by someone who did. But how could they know that Preston was on to them?

  Either way, it sounded like all they’d really wanted was his laptop. What would they do when they realized they had the wrong computer? And why was she so stupid to have tried to get it back? Critical pieces of Nexus Six projects were on that laptop, but it wasn’t worth risking her life for.

  “What are we going to do with her?” The tall man ran his hand through his hair.

  “I have a friend. He’ll hold her until we decide. You need to get back so you can do that computer thing.”

  “Okay. We’ll do that.”

  The short man grabbed Carly’s arm. She tried to pull away, not wanting to go anywhere with him, but he jerked her arm. She fell, but the man didn’t let go. Instead he dragged her, her bare knees and ankles scraping over the concrete until she managed to get her feet under her again.

  He pushed her toward a gold compact parked nearby. He popped the trunk and Carly panicked. She did not want to go in there. Carly kicked the man hard enough that he released her.

  Turning, she ran for her life, sprinting toward the ramp that led to the next level of the parking lot. Midway down, she was hit hard from behind, the shorter man’s weight landing on her. Her cheek hit the ground and, for a moment, everything went dark. Pain radiated through her, stealing her breath, causing her teeth to clench. She waited endless moments for the pain to abate. When she opened her eyes, the world was spinning. She felt nauseous, dizzy, disoriented. Her head fell back, and she stared at the parked cars as she was carried—black, silver, gold, red.

  There was a click and then she was lying some place cool. She closed her eyes as the light disappeared, giving in, at last, to the glorious respite from pain that came with the dark.

  *****

  “The police just left and I called Nexus Six.” Preston walked into the office where Lance had set up his computer. The normally put together man looked rumpled and worried. “There’s a tracking system on her laptop, but it has to be on for it to function. They’re going to work directly with the police. I talked to the COO and she said that Carly had the working prototype for some new coding. That’s probably why she wouldn’t let the computer go.”

  Lance didn’t look up from the screen of his own laptop.

  “I should have grabbed her. I should have been able to stop this.” Lance didn’t dignify Preston’s worried rant with a response.

  That same worry clawed at Lance. It was a familiar feeling—fear churned in his gut—but unlike when he was in a warzone, Lance had at least some control, some resources. He’d find her, no matter what it took.

  “What did the police say?” he asked.

  “They said it might have been random, that the guys might have been high on something and when they spotted me and my fancy car, they saw an opportunity.” Preston ran his hands through his hair. “I could tell they didn’t believe it, like you don’t. The COO at Nexus Six wonders if they kidnapped her for ransom. The detective is headed over to their offices now, waiting to see if they call.”

  “Unlikely. They didn’t target her. She just got in their way.”

  “I said that.”

  “Did you tell them about your thing, the embezzling?”

  “No. Because if you’re right, Zeesh, the company president, is involved, and having detectives go there would only make it worse.”

  “Were there any sightings of the vehicle?”

  “They saw it on Market, but lost it there. You were right, it’s a rental, and they’re still trying to determine who rented it.”

  Lance nodded. His computer dinged.

  “What are you doing?” Preston took a seat on the couch.

  “Calling in a few favors.” He opened and decrypted the message that was running through several protected servers on three continents for security. “Do you know a man named David Momens?”

  “Yes. He’s the head of IT. Why?”

  “Because he’s been monitoring your email.” Lance turned the screen toward Preston so he could point to the lines of code as he explained. “I ran a trace program on your email. That’s why I asked you to log in. Every message you send is going to the server, then to this account, then finally to the designated recipient. That account belongs to David Momens. The account itself is anonymous, but the IP address that’s using it is at an account registered to David.”

  “Wait.” Preston ran his hands through his hair. “David has been screening all my emails?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” Preston held up a hand. Lance didn’t answer. He could see Preston had put two and two together. “Because he’d need to know when, and if, we figured it out. I can’t believe this. David has been with the company since the beginning. He’s about to retire. I think his son even works for us.”

  “Brian Momens.” Lance pulled up a picture of the younger man from a social networking site.

  “Yeah. I don’t really know him very well.”

  “We’ll check him. Maybe his father is hiding the money in the son’s accounts.”

  “You can do that?”

  Lance paused. “Legally?”

  “Forget I asked.”

  There was a moment of silence, then Lance frowned. “Brian Momens has a brokerage account with over nine hundred thousand dollars in it and two Swiss bank accounts.”

  “Holy shit. I don’t pay him that much. He’s the embezzler?”

  “Him or his father.”

  “Someday, after we have Carly back, you’re going to explain how you tracked all this faster than the police and without warrants. But right now I want to know how we find her.”

  “There were two men this morning, so we need to look at David and Brian Momens’ friends. Right now my money is on the son. Based on this picture, he could be the man who was driving the car.”

  “His face was covered.”

  “But the build is right. If they discovered you were onto something, they would have needed to move fast, meaning the second man is someone they know.”

  “How do we find out who their acquaintances are? Neither man has a police record. We wouldn’t let them work for us if they did.”

  Lance grunted. “Facebook.”

  Five minutes later they discovered Brian’s cousin had recently been released from prison where he’d served time for an attempted bank robbery. After a few minutes spent breaking too many security protocols to count, they got their first good look at cousin Felix.

  “That’s him.” Preston said.

  Lance felt a wave of relief that they’d identified the kidnappers, followed by a wave of anger. “Those fuckers are going to pay.”

  “Yes, they are.” Preston’s simple agreement was almost frightening. The man had been overwrought all morning, but the old Preston was emerging, calmer, and with a deadly look in his eyes that made Lance glad they were on the same side.

&n
bsp; An email to his contact at Homeland Security gave them Felix’s address from the parole record.

  “Now what do we do?” Preston asked.

  Lance’s muscles bunched with the need to go get her himself, but the Marine Corps Officer in him knew better. You didn’t run off with Intel, you reported it. “We call the cops.”

  Preston tensed. “But if they’ve got her…”

  “We lay it out for the police. And you need to tell someone else at the company what’s going on.”

  “I’ll call Zeesh.” Preston rose. “Do you think she’s okay?”

  Lance’s jaw clenched. He was fine as long as he didn’t think about her, about what she might be going through. “I don’t know.”

  Preston left the room. Lance swiveled back to his computer. Maybe it was time to stop being methodical. At best, Carly was just scared. At worst, she was injured and being hurt more with each moment the assholes had her.

  Felix looked like the second man. Though Preston seemed sure, Lance himself couldn’t say. He’d gotten only a brief glimpse of the men, and then he’d focused on the car. Even so, it was close enough to be plausible. Problem was there were a million other possibilities. He’d made leaps, based on instinct, while ignoring other paths of investigation. What if he was wrong?

  Thinking about that would paralyze him. He needed to act. He needed to find Carly.

  A quick email to a friend told him Felix didn’t have a cell phone contract. That didn’t mean he didn’t have a phone, just that he didn’t have a contract. Without a phone number, there was no way to trace him, so Lance turned to what he knew best.

  With quick strokes, he adapted a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm. After adding links to major databases, he compiled the program and let it run. A few minutes later, the program started generating results. He pulled those and ran a principal component’s analysis on the data, focusing on San Francisco. A minute later, he had a name and an address with ninety percent probability of being the correct one. Jotting it down, he raced out of the spare room. Preston was in the kitchen. As Lance entered the room, Preston hung up the phone.

  “I have to go. I’m meeting the detective at the Nexus Six offices. Carly’s laptop is off so they couldn’t trace it, but I told the COO what we thought. She said—”

  “I think I know where she is.”

  Preston looked up, his gaze sharp. “I’ll call the cops on the way.”

  Lance smiled grimly. “I’ll drive.”

  *****

  “She’s pretty.”

  “I know.”

  “Why do you have her again?”

  “My stupid cousin was embezzling from his job. She figured it out. Her boyfriend is one of the owners or something.”

  “That doesn’t tell me why you’ve got her in my basement.”

  “Brian thought if he could get the papers back, and the guy’s computer, he could do a better job covering his tracks. When he realized the dude had a hard copy, he hoped he could just steal it, make it look like a mugging. Then the rich guy would be so freaked out, he wouldn’t think about the theft until Brian had a chance to cover everything up, make it look like an accounting error or something.”

  “And you grabbed the girl because she figured it out?”

  “The dumb bitch attacked me, tried to get the computer back.”

  “Felix, you dumbass. You made it worse.”

  “Fuck you.”

  There was the sound of footsteps. Carly lay silent, listening to the men’s conversation. She opened her eyes just enough to see a pair of legs in jeans standing beside her. She had a vague memory of being taken from the trunk and carried inside. Now she was lying on a very hard, cold floor. The musty, stale air reminded her of the basement in the house where she grew up.

  The voices continued.

  “You took her, making this a kidnapping, not just a mugging.”

  “Fuck, man, I saw an opportunity and I took it.”

  “What are you going to do with her?”

  There was silence, punctuated by thumps. She glanced around the room until she saw the short man—Felix—rocking on his heels. “Well, I can’t let her go.”

  “No. No way. You’re my friend, but I’m not helping you kill some chick.”

  Carly whimpered in fear.

  “Hey, she’s awake.”

  Carly opened her eyes; aware it was pointless to pretend she was still unconscious.

  The other man backed away from her. “I’m not kidding, Felix, you need to take her and leave.”

  “Let’s have a bit of fun with her. I’ll wait for the search to die down before I move her again.”

  “I don’t want my DNA all over her when they find her body.” The other man sounded regretful. Her breathing accelerated as true fear took over.

  She tested her arms and legs. Her legs were free, but they both hurt. Her arms were still tied behind her and her hands and wrists were numb, her shoulders aching from being bound so long. She tried to curl her fingers to bring life back into her hands. At the same time, she flexed the muscles in her legs without moving. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself. Maybe she could be ready to move, to fight, when they came for her.

  She wasn’t.

  Before she could react, Felix grabbed her arm, pulling her up.

  She screamed through the gag as she was dragged to a ratty couch and thrown onto it. The cushions were worn and ragged, but it was still a relief after lying on the hard ground. Her head ached, but she tossed her hair back, getting her first good look around the room.

  She was in a tiny, cramped basement. There were boxes and crates all around her. A small area had been carved out of the clutter. A couch sat against the wall with a battered TV and VCR across from it, set on an overturned plastic crate.

  Felix was standing beside the couch, hands in his pockets. Though it was cold in the basement, he’d taken off his jacket, leaving his tattooed chest bare. The other man was standing at the foot of the stairs, his face in shadow.

  “Blindfold her,” he said. “I don’t want her to see me.”

  “Do you have something I can use?”

  “Yeah. Wait a minute. I’ll get something.”

  Carly watched as he walked slowly up the stairs. She caught a glimpse of him as he opened the door. He was heavy with a smooth face and limp, pale brown hair.

  Felix squatted beside her. His lecherous gaze roamed over her body. Carly pressed her knees together, painfully aware of how little she was wearing. Tears filled her eyes. Tears of anger, of fear, of helplessness.

  She was totally powerless. Though her legs were free, her whole body throbbed. Her legs were scratched, blood caked and smeared around her knees, feet and ankles. Any movement caused pain to shoot through her, and though her left eye was open, it was hard to see out of it.

  “Even beat to hell, you’re pretty,” he said.

  She turned her head away, tears streaming down her face as he unbuttoned her shirt and pushed it open. She was completely naked underneath.

  “Nice tits.” He pinched her nipples. She cried out into the gag and he slapped her breasts. “Shut up, bitch.”

  Footsteps pounded down the stairs. “Felix, you’re all over the news, man. All over it. Do you know who she is?”

  Felix’s lips pressed together. His gaze raked her again. Grabbing her knees, he forced her legs apart. Carly screamed into the gag and kicked out. Her struggles were ineffective. Felix planted an elbow on her thigh, pinning it down to the couch cushions while forcing the other leg against the back. She felt cold air against her sex and knew a vulnerability she’d never felt before.

  “Felix, are you listening to me? It’s on the news—every fucking channel—that she’s been kidnapped. She invented Nexus Six. She owns the whole damn company.”

  Felix frowned and turned toward the other man. “What?”

  “Nexus Six. It’s the biggest thing since World of Warcraft. She invented it, owns the company. She’s worth, like, tens of millio
ns.”

  Felix’s gaze snapped back to her. Carly knew she should leverage their knowledge of who she was to her advantage, but she was so scared she couldn’t think.

  “We could ransom her, get enough money to leave the country, so it wouldn’t matter if she knew who I was.”

  “What about your cousin?”

  “Fuck him. He only got like nine hundred G’s. I’m going to get a lot more for her.”

  “I want in. I want a cut.”

  At that, Felix rose, spinning to face his friend. “I thought you wanted me gone.”

  “I did. When you were going to fucking kill her. There wasn’t anything in that for me, but prison. Now…”

  Felix walked away from her and started up the steps. “If you want in, you have to help.”

  “I will, I will.”

  Together, they headed out of the basement. Carly drew in a ragged breath, sobbing with relief. They weren’t going to kill her.

  And they wouldn’t rape her. Yet.

  Her shoulder hurt, so she sat up. Now that the immediate threat of death was gone, she could think. The biggest problem was her arms. The pain from having them bound for so long, and then lying on them, was unbearable. Slowly, she stood up, trying to ignore the burning in her knees from the cuts. Bending, she pushed her hands down over her hips and ass. Gingerly, she lowered her butt onto the couch, then pulled her legs through the loop of her arms. The pain as her blood started flowing again was sharp and immediate. Her fingers were a terrifying purple color and cold where they rested against her knee.

  She had just enough control to hook one shaking finger into the gag and pull it down. The knot in the nylons was tight, but after a few minutes of pulling with her teeth, she loosened it enough that the blood returned to her hands. She sobbed quietly as the pain overtook her. She pressed her hands against her belly, fighting against the urge to throw up. Her fingers were stiff, making it hard to work the buttons of the shirt. It took several moments before she managed to cover herself up.