© Carey MacLean, 2012

Chapter 24

Not knowing what state Xavier was going to end up being in, Connor had refused the alcoholic beverage.  It only encouraged his best friend to drink his first drink faster and pop the top of the second one within the first five minutes.

Needless to say, Connor was relieved when the second one lasted his friend for nearly an hour and he hadn’t gone to fetch another.  He had never pegged Xavier for that much of a drinker and after so many years of hanging around with the man, he was glad that on one of Xavier’s worst days, he hadn’t proven him wrong of that old observation.

“She’s stopped moving,” Xavier motioned to his screen.

Connor triangulated the area her beacons had stopped at and used his program to locate the exact address.

“It’s a house,” he told Xavier.

“I know.”

With a knot in her chest and her stomach churning, Mika gathered up the last remnants of her nerves and pushed the rage she had been feeling throughout the length of her drive to the forefront.  She grabbed her purse and a couple of bags from the passenger seat, locked up the car and walked up to the front steps.  There were a few things she had to take care of as soon as possible and she hoped that she’d be able to pull them off.

When her foot landed on the top step, the door opened and there stood the man of the hour, all smiles and a sinister look in his eyes.

Please don’t let this all be a mistake, she prayed and pushed the chill that threatened to give her fear away back down.

“I see you’ve reached a decision and one that pleases me at that,” Makey told her allowing her entrance to the house.

He attempted to kiss her cheek but she recoiled.  Taking her few bags and setting them down after closing the door, he grabbed her waist and pulled her to him.

“Let’s try that again, shall we?”  He leaned in for her lips this time and at the last minute, she turned her head and he got her cheek.

She heard him grumble but he never pushed for more.  Instead, he nodded toward her bags.

“Is that all you have?”

“The rest is in the car.”

“I’ll help you out with that after I get back from work.  There seems to be an emergency I have to handle.  I expect you to stay inside the house and be here when I get back.  The phones and computers have been password protected so don’t you think about pulling anything my little minx,” he rambled on.  “I should be back in time for lunch and then I’m all yours Baby.”

She shuddered internally at the not so subtle innuendo of his last statement.

“Now, give me your cellphone,” he stated and held his hand out.

“What?  No!”

“Mika,” he warned with a stern and dark tone.

“It’s my work phone.  If the hospital calls, I need to be able to answer,” she protested.

“That’s fine.  I’ll hand it to my assistant.  She can take the calls and call you right away on this,” he presented her with a new phone.  “It only works for incoming calls in case you’re wondering.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No Sweetheart.  I’m not kidding you.  You’re mine and until you realize it, I’m not taking any chances,” he stated, bent over to grab her purse and rummaged through it to grab the device.  She was glad she had packed away the tracker and other treasures in her bags and not her purse.  “Now, kiss me and see me off like the good woman I know you will be.”

She shook her head in refusal.  He took the few steps toward her and made sure to cup her face forcefully so she couldn’t escape his grip.  Still, she fought but it was futile.  He kissed her lips and when she had enough of his caveman antics to overpower her, instead of retching, she bit his lip hard.

Peter backed away with a yowl and slapped her face, giving her an instant headache as her head snapped uncomfortably to the side.  He touched his bitten lip and pulled his fingers away to check for blood.  There wasn’t any but she sure had left her mark.  She looked at him with a self-satisfied smirk.

“You might want to think about doing that again Mika.  I expect cooperation or have you forgotten what family I come from?  You have no clue what means I have at my disposal to make your life a living hell.  That includes the lives of those you know, Love,” with a shake of his head and a final look over his shoulder, he let himself out.

She waited until she heard his car’s engine fade away in the distance.  Locking the front door, she paced around, feeling like a caged animal within the first fifteen minutes of her arrival.

Fuck!  Xavier thought to himself and slammed his hand down on the coffee table where their laptops lay open for their continuous monitoring.

“The phone’s moving but her other beacons are still at the house,” he told Connor.  “There goes one way of tracking her.”

“We knew that was most likely going to happen,” Connor told him.

“Yeah.”

Come on Mika!  What’s taking you so long?

As he thought that, Connor’s laptop made a pinging sound.

“Bingo!”  The man exclaimed.  “We’ve got eyes.  Well, one eye.  Look.”

Xavier didn’t have to be told to look, he already was.  There might not be sound but there was his beautiful fiancée, blowing him a kiss before setting the rather tiny and virtually invisible camera down.

He watched as she shut what must have been the grill cover to an air intake duct.  Their visual was still intact.  As she turned to get down, Detective Ryans saw the discernible hand print on the right side of her face.

“I’ll kill the son of a bitch!”  He growled.

Soon enough, Mika disappeared from view and within the next fifteen minutes, a second camera was up; this time, in another bedroom.

“Ah!  Our dear Mika has clearly refused to bed with the man,” Connor chuckled.  “I wonder how long that’ll last.”

“He better keep his fucking hands off of her,” Xavier grumbled.

“Why would he?  To him, he thinks she’s all his now,” his best friend reminded him.

He’s right.  Fuck!  He made a promise to himself to rip the man to shreds later when they apprehended him.

If the man of the house thought that she was going to be bedding down with him at night, he had another thing coming for him.  She made haste with her belongings and set them up in the visitor’s suite.  If he wanted her with him, he’d have to force her.  Something in her gut told her he wouldn’t have a problem with that and that conclusion was a little more than unsettling for her.

Looking down at her watch, it was twelve thirty – Peter would be back soon.  She decided to be good for the time being and pocketed one of the last three mini cameras along with the last tracker.  She still had yet to put the tracker on Peter’s car and if given the opportunity for a good viewing point, she might just find a placement for that third camera.

Heading downstairs to the den, she picked up a magazine from the coffee table and sat down with a slight sense of satisfaction in performing her recon tasks.  She might not have been done yet but she sure as hell was going to try and get this whole operation done and over with as quick and hopefully as painless as possible.

He couldn’t believe the little bitch had bitten him.  She definitely was quite the feisty number he had figured she’d be.  After handing Mika’s cellphone to his assistant and instructing her to never let the thing out of her sight and to report each incoming message or call directly to him with the exception of those from the hospital.

“Hospital notices to this number and all others to you.  Got it Sir,” she smiled sweetly at him.

“Thank you Darla.”

When the proverbial office fire was put out and all parties were content with their temporary resolution, Peter finally headed home.  He hoped that his little minx, as he’d now dubbed her, was in a more cooperative mood.  Happy with how his plan had finally taken shape, he drove slightly faster than he normally would have to get home to his woman.

Finally!

The door opened and what followed shortly thereafter were his footsteps.  He came to a stop and found her in the den.  The magazine on her lap, she refused to acknowledge his presence with a look and continued leafing through the pages, not really paying attention to the articles or the photographs for that matter.

“Get your purse,” he commanded in a calm voice, “we’re going out for lunch.”

“But I was enjoying my reading,” she snickered back.

“Pick your battles wisely, Love.  This isn’t up for debate,” he warned and she cringed at his term of endearment.

Perfect time for the tracker, she reminded herself and the reminder fed her with enough resolve to agree to his demands.

Mika set the magazine down back where she had taken it from and gave Peter the old stink-eye as she marched past him.

“While we’re out, I expect you to be cordial to anyone we might encounter.  If you let on to what’s going on or you try to run, well…”

“I’m well aware Peter,” she said in a tone void of emotion.

Grabbing her compact and lip gloss, she hurried out the front door while she quickly applied the product.  She dropped the mirror in her purse but kept the tube in her hand.

“Get in the damn car!”  He huffed exasperatedly.

“Who knew chivalry was dead?”  She chuckled at her own remark and feigned dropping her gloss onto the ground as she opened the car door.  He scoffed at her clumsiness.

Letting the door slam back shut, she quickly reached into her pant pocket and took out the tracker.  Quickly making sure it was still on, she managed to kneel down and stick its magnetized side onto the frame of the vehicle before Peter made his way to her side.

“Here,” he said flatly as she looked up from her kneeling position in the driveway to see him straightening up from picking the tube.

She got up and brushed herself off, throwing an exaggerated self-scolding huff at the small oil spot on her knee.

“Maybe I should change,” she said, “I feel so underdressed and now my jeans are stained.”

Adding a pout to the whole thing, the idiot fell for it.

“Fine.  Five minutes,” he told her and let her in the house while he waited in the entrance.

“We have movement!”  Xavier called out to Connor who was in the kitchen, fixing them some lunch.

The man came walking out of the kitchen with two plates topped with a hearty sandwich from the left-over meat from the previous night’s dinner he and Mika had barely touched.  Xavier accepted the meal and nodded his head in thanks.

“What’s going on?”

“Mika’s positioned the third tracker,” Detective Ryans announced.

“Good girl.”

“She’s in the car with him.”

“They’re probably heading out for some lunch.  Now eat yours!”  Connor told him with a slight note of command to his words.

“I was thinking about something just now,” Xavier said as he chewed his lunch.

“Hmm?”

“You think we could get someone to put a tap on his phones?”

“We could try but we’d have to keep it on the down since technically we should have a court order for those,” Connor replied but then smirked and Xavier knew his partner must have thought of something.  “Say, don’t you still have that laptop?”

It might be time to play dirty.

                                          *************************************

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