OWEN STARED, trying to wrap his mind around the horror he had just been told. He looked down at Mia, who was now lying between Bailey’s legs and using the dog’s paw as a pillow. He couldn’t imagine. He thought…. Owen swallowed with difficulty and tried to articulate what he was feeling. “Then more than ever, we should go.”
“The Marshals are monitoring your bank accounts.”
Owen blinked. That wasn’t what he was expecting Lucas to say. “And you know because…?”
“I thought it was odd at the time. In the hospital, O’Connor said they were monitoring your ‘accounts,’” he said, using finger quotes. “I just remember thinking, wow, you have more than one.”
Owen sighed. “I have another account. It’s just getting to it.”
“Look, I don’t know, obviously, but these guys are used to finding people. They have the ability to look at everything like this. So unless we’re talking about some off-shore fund in the Cayman Islands—”
Owen wanted to laugh, but with what Lucas had just told him, he stopped himself. “It’s Bank of America,” he said, honestly not trying to be funny. “I have ten thousand dollars under another name.”
“I thought models made a ton of money.” Owen could hear the teasing in Lucas’s voice.
“Not ones who don’t think they have to worry about the future,” Owen whispered. “It’s money my grandad left me, but I couldn’t access it until I was twenty-one. I never dared try to get it when I was with Damien because I didn’t want him to know about it.”
Lucas arched his eyebrows. “That’s a hell of a good start, but not a solution. They’ll find you the first time you try to get any money out. Stay, while I talk to Jacko.”
Owen searched Lucas’s face. This man had been through hell.
Lucas gestured to the floor. “Besides which, I think you’ve just acquired a dog.”
Owen looked down and rolled his eyes. Mia was sitting again on the rug between Bailey’s legs, playing with his ear. Bailey had a paw gently resting on her leg, looking for all the world like he was comforting her. “I don’t know what to do,” he admitted.
“How about taking it one day at a time? You’re safe here today. I can’t see the marshals coming here now that we’ve talked and my explanations checked out. I genuinely think Jacko is our best chance of getting help.” He took a breath and glanced back at the floor. “You’re both exhausted, and you need to recharge. But we have to talk to someone.”
Owen didn’t respond.
“You do know you can’t run your way out of this. Not unless you are thinking of giving her up.”
“Absolutely not,” Owen said indignantly. “How can you even suggest that?”
“I wasn’t,” Lucas replied evenly. “I’d be the last person to try and separate you.” He turned before Owen could answer him and pulled the sandwiches he had made from the fridge. “Ham and cheese,” he explained.
Owen took a breath. “Then if we’re staying, there’s something you need to know.”
Lucas raised his eyebrows.
“I’m a vegetarian.”
Lucas smiled. “Do you eat cheese?”
Owen nodded. “But not parmesan.”
Lucas didn’t even blink. “No pizza, then?”
“There’s plenty of other cheeses that don’t contain rennet,” Owen explained. Lucas tilted his head and amazingly didn’t look bored. “My father took me elk hunting when I was thirteen. That year, he also got a tag for black bears. I saw him shoot a mom.” He paused. “And laugh.” He would never ever forget it. He hadn’t eaten meat since, even when his parents threatened to starve him. If it hadn’t been for Miss Elsie, their old housekeeper who’d snuck him food, he would have. The school nurse had even made some comment about his sudden weight loss, and he’d been hurried to the doctor.
“I thought it was illegal to hunt a sow accompanied by cubs?” Lucas asked.
“He didn’t care,” Owen said bitterly. “They thought it was funny.” Him and his buddies. She hadn’t run or even charged because she was protecting her babies. And she died because of it.
“After that, my mom and dad got into local politics and were happy to forget about me. I kept in the background until I graduated. Then pictures of me appeared online, much to my father’s disgust.”
“Why?” Lucas asked. “You rob a bank or something?”
“They wished I had,” Owen drawled and cut up some banana for Mia to suck on. “I went to a foam party.” Lucas looked blankly at him. “I’m gay,” he added. Maybe I should have started with that.
Lucas still looked blank.
“Not that it was a requirement or anything,” Owen continued.
“What’s a foam party?” Lucas interrupted.
“It’s where the dance floor is covered in suds, usually pumped out by a machine.”
“You’re kidding me?” Lucas grinned. “Fuck, I feel old.”
How old are you? Owen wanted to ask so badly, but instead, he said, “You don’t look that old.”
Lucas sent him a skeptical look. “I’m thirty-four.”
“I’m twenty-three in another month,” Owen replied. He was glad he hadn’t had to ask, and he risked some more. “I hadn’t come out to my parents. They would have had hysterics. The plan was to keep a low profile until I went to college in the fall.”
“But the party happened,” Lucas said.
“It was my friend’s birthday, Henry Laughton the Third. He wasn’t out either. The club had under-twenty-one nights—no liquor—but my friends bribed the doorman and snuck some vodka in.” He sighed. “I was trashed and acting really stupid. My dad was a city councilman, and my friend’s dad was the principal of the large private school we had all just graduated from.” He winced. “The pictures of me dancing half-naked with one of the waiters were bad. We think one of the bartenders sold them to the local press.”
Lucas got up to grab a towel, rinsed it, and absently started trying to wipe banana from Mia’s cheek. Her face looked so tiny next to Lucas’s large, capable hand that touched her so gently. Lucas looked up at him when Owen fell silent, and Owen had to scramble to remember what he had been saying. “Anyway, the pictures were online at 7:00 a.m. My dad woke me at nine when he found out, and I was out of the house by eleven.”
Lucas stilled. “You left?”
“They threw me out,” Owen said. He held up a hand. “Actually, no. Not at first. I was given a choice. A tutor. Online classes. A beard. Going away for college was officially off the table.”
“Something tells me you don’t mean facial hair.” Lucas poured a few puffs of cereal in a plastic bowl and put them in front of Mia.
Owen shook his head. “I told them I wasn’t interested in that sort of life. Dad let me pack what I could carry and gave me two hundred bucks.” And Mom had sobbed. His shirt had been soaked where she had thrown herself at him, but she would never go against his dad. His dad had dragged her off him in the end.
“What did you do?”
“Hitched a ride to Denver. My friend was grounded. I rang another couple, but Dad had already called around. Everyone had been forbidden to get involved.”
“But they were eighteen. How does that happen?”
“College funds, expensive lifestyles. All my friends moved in the same social circle I did, and they had too much to lose.”
Lucas scoffed. “They don’t sound like friends to me.”
Owen shrugged and scooped Mia off the floor. Her yawn was huge. “I got into the city and found odd jobs where I could.”
“That was lucky, but what about somewhere to live?”
“I took what was offered.” Owen bent his head and kissed Mia’s curls, waiting for the question. After a second when Lucas didn’t say anything, he looked up. Lucas was regarding him steadily, not one ounce of judgment in his face.
Mia shuffled in his lap and closed her eyes.
Owen met Lucas’s eyes challengingly. “After I left home, I got a motel on nights one and two. Night three was a shelter. Night four, I roughed it outside and my case was stolen. Night five, I was out of money and hungry. Night six was when I caved and went to the cash machine.” He huffed. “It only took me six nights to lose my pride and use the account my parents had transferred my allowance into. I was so righteous, up to that point. So convinced that just because I thought I was in the right, that everything would work out. I was a fool.” Owen shrugged. A naive fool. “Anyway, I caved and used the cash machine. Those guys saw me, and Mary saved my life.”
“Do you think they would have hurt you?”
Owen shook his head. “No. I meant that Mary kind of adopted me. She was a runaway. She said her folks were dead and she had been made to go live with her grandad, but they didn’t get along.” Which was probably a huge understatement. Mary had been a wild child and certainly wouldn’t fit the role her grandad wanted for her. “She never went into details, just that he was rich and stuffy. And spending his money came with too many conditions. So she had left.”
“How long were you homeless?”
Owen met Lucas’s understanding gaze. “About four months, but I was lucky. I crashed wherever Mary was. She taught me where to get food. Where to find occasional cash jobs. And to avoid the dealers,” Owen added quietly.
They were silent for a minute, and Owen appreciated the pause. “Mary heard about a new club that was auditioning. I had a good body, and I could dance. Benny, the club manager, wasn’t above charging extra for customers to get private dances. If you had the money, there were back rooms for private entertainment.
“I went in, tried out, and got offered a job. I was just trying to fudge the address when the owner came in. His manager wanted to throw me out, but Damien laughed and asked to see how good I was.”
“Your ex-boyfriend?”
“Damien Malvetti.” Owen waited for a reaction, but he didn’t get one.
“Never heard of him,” Lucas said, clearly guessing by Owen’s hesitation that he was expecting some sort of recognition.
“I was sick of not knowing where I was going to sleep at night, and despite Mary being so much against drugs, one of the local dealers had offered me a gig,” Owen said, not sure why he was pushing. Lucas didn’t need to know all this. He was baring his life. Baring my soul. “I said that I would only take the job at the club if Mary got one. It was a ridiculous demand—I thought Damien’s manager was going to explode. They had her audition, and she could dance a little, but he offered her a server job, and she was happier.”
But he’d seen something in Damien. Or rather, Damien had seen something in him. Owen had turned on every bit of charm he could, and by the time the dance was finished, he’d seen the bulge in Damien’s pants he didn’t try to hide. Owen knew Damien wanted him. “We shared an apartment—that Damien provided—with the other dancers. Mary waitressed. I didn’t see him that much, to be honest. And then one day, Mary came home all excited that a modeling agency was coming to the area. She said we should all go and get the free head shots they were offering.” And they had, standing in line for a ridiculous three hours until there was only him and Mary left. The photographer had asked him to stay after the shoot but told Mary she could go. “He didn’t want Mary, even though she was pretty, but he wanted me. I was ready to go back to the club, but Mary told me it wasn’t like when I had auditioned for the club, that I shouldn’t turn my back on opportunity just because the guy didn’t want my friend.” Owen’s voice cracked, and he swallowed down the regret, the shame.
“I was signed practically on the spot, and I never returned to work at the club. Time flew past, and by my twentieth birthday, I was sleeping in a penthouse.” And he had never looked back. He’d tried to contact Mary so many times, but when he finally got hold of the manager, he said she had gone. “Mary left the club. I called to arrange to send her money at first. Then I wanted her to come and live with me or get her own place, but I couldn’t find her.” Owen looked at Lucas. “I was always worried that Damien had fired her because I left, but he swore she had told his manager she’d only stayed because of me.” It would have been exactly the sort of thing Mary would have done, so all he could do was make sure the agency knew that if she got in contact, to tell him immediately.
Some nights, when he was back in Denver, he’d get a cab and drive around the city on the miniscule possibility he would see her, but he never had, not then anyway. “About a year later, I was on a shoot in the Cayman Islands, and I was partying in the bar afterward, and Damien came in. He recognized me right away, and I guess I wanted to show off. I had way too many drinks and ended up giving him a private show. In my head, I was showing him what he couldn’t buy, not anymore, and he was charming and attentive, and… I was such a fool.”
“No, you were young,” Lucas countered.
Owen met an understanding gaze, and the self-recrimination eased. Then he remembered he didn’t deserve to have it lessen at all. He’d thought he was in love, thought he had been loved, and had soaked every drop up until he had nearly drowned. He’d seamlessly gone back to the nice cars and the fancy restaurants. He’d vacationed in Nice and every other hot spot you could name. For the first six months, it had been fabulous. Then he missed his first shoot because they had partied too hard the night before, which Owen never did before work. “My agency would have dropped me in the end if I hadn’t retired because I became too unreliable, and I never made it big enough to get named contracts. It got so Damien and I were arguing every time I needed to go to work because he wanted to do something else. I never drank the night before a shoot, not after that first time. But after one particular argument, I woke up with the world’s biggest hangover and no memory of getting trashed.”
Lucas frowned. “Drugs?”
“Not voluntarily. That was an absolute rule—that Damien never pushed any on me, even though I’d seen him do coke a few times.”
“So you think it was deliberate?”
“Now I do, but I still trusted him then. Damien was loving and attentive. And the next morning, he surprised me once again.”
“With?”
“A proposal.” Owen sighed. “I didn’t accept, and it angered him. I was unwell for the next couple of weeks and had to cancel all my appointments. Damien flew in doctors who all agreed I was on the edge of nervous exhaustion and needed rest.” He rubbed his suddenly chilly arms. “Overnight, it was like I had undergone a personality transplant—agreeing to everything Damien said, convinced he was right. It seemed like all I could do was sleep.”
Lucas frowned. “And did they give you anything?”
“Something to build up my immune system.” He had been so stupid, so naive. “For another month, I seemed to be in a fog most of the time.”
Lucas’s eyebrows shot up.
“It sounds so much worse now that I’m telling someone else,” Owen admitted. “Anyway, eventually I contacted my agent, who said she could recommend another agent, but that would mean relocating back to New York. We were in Fort Collins then, so I sucked it up and tried to make a go of our relationship. I had no money by this point, but I never wanted for a thing. I didn’t realize how controlling he was getting.” Owen shrugged.
He’d been genuinely thrilled that Damien had bought him nice clothes, and it seemed churlish not to agree to whatever suggestion he had for wearing them. Then there was the way he spoke. Damien hated any sort of swearing, not that Owen swore much to start with. He was already conditioned, so Damien didn’t need to encourage him that much. “I dressed how he wanted, spoke the way he wanted, behaved exactly how he wanted.” Owen glanced at Lucas, but he was just listening. “He’d gotten me a personal trainer because he said I was getting fat—”
Lucas snorted. “Sorry. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t know fat if you fell over it.” He waved a hand for him to continue, and Owen flushed.
“I’m lucky I’ve always been slim, but he was obsessed. It came to a head when his housekeeper brought in some of her daughter’s birthday cake. We were just talking over coffee, and Mariska gave me some. Next thing I knew, Damien had grabbed me by the hair. I’d never seen him so angry.” He’d thought Damien was going to kill him.
“Did he hurt you?” Lucas’s eyes seemed filled with storm clouds.
“Not physically, apart from the hair, but he fired Mariska. Her son was one of his gardeners, and he fired him too. He made it clear that if anyone encouraged me to do anything, they would be punished.
“It was like a switch had flicked in him. He told me I was his possession. He’d bought me, so I was his property.” And he had been. “I was watched, never allowed out on my own. I thought originally the chauffeured rides and the bodyguards were my way of sticking it to my mom and dad, but I guess they had the last laugh. My grand independent gesture turned into a bigger prison than they had ever put me in.” And he missed his mom. She wasn’t perfect, but then neither was he.
“I was getting desperate. Damien barely let me out of his sight, and when I was allowed out, I had to be accompanied by either Paulo or Alain. Then I was summoned to Damien’s study and told to dress first. My clothes were laid out on the bed, but I knew the routine. I walked into the study when Damien and a man I had never seen before were doing business. I apologized because Damien never talked business in front of me, but Damien made me stay.” He shook his head. “And I was curious.”
The man was older than Damien by a good twenty years, and by the looks he was getting, the words and the gestures from Damien, Owen managed to work out that the man was being shown everything that Damien had, everything that the man would never have. Including Owen.
For the first time, Owen had just sat and listened and tried not to be sick. “I listened while the man talked numbers. Talked death. And I realized how fucking ignorant I had been. They were discussing the local campus and the dealers that were hooking the latest class of students, what they would hand out at parties to reel them in. They even talked about a ‘problem’ that needed resolving.” It had taken Owen five minutes to realize, in horror, that the “problem” was a college freshman whose father was in the Denver PD and couldn’t be bought.
“It was brought home to me very forcefully how willfully blind I had been, and I had no idea what to do.” He held a sleeping Mia tight to him. “Damien started including me in things. He would let me go to put files in safety deposit boxes for him. Paulo was there because I never went anywhere on my own, but I knew the pass codes.” He shrugged. “I made them up. I don’t know whether he was desensitizing me or actually considering having me get involved in the business, but all of a sudden I would be in the office when his business associates came in. He used to have these huge poker games that half the DPP came to.”
“The cops?” Lucas asked.
“Yes, and some detectives. Even a judge. I guess it was his way of showing me I had nowhere to go. But it had the opposite effect. I knew I couldn’t ignore what was essentially going on under my nose, so I eventually started listening in case I worked out a way to escape.”
Owen closed his eyes briefly, as if it would help. “Then I got a letter from Mary, begging for help. It had taken a while to get to me through my old modeling agency. She’d gotten fired from her job because she’d refused to have sex with her boss. She wanted me to ask Damien if she could get her waitressing job back.”
“What did you do?” Lucas stood and plugged in the coffee machine.
“I asked Damien, and even showed him the letter so he knew it was genuine.”
Lucas’s eyes narrowed, clearly hearing the self-mockery in Owen’s voice. “What happened?”
“He took a beautiful young woman whose only crime was being my friend. And he killed her.”
Owen watched as shock rolled over Lucas’s face. “He killed her?”
“Not at first. We went to the club. I was on my best behavior, dressed in exactly the clothes he had picked out. When we got there, Mary had just arrived, and she rushed over and threw her arms around me. I was so ecstatic to see her, I forgot that Damien was watching and how jealous he got. For the first time in months, I was seeing a friend.”
Lucas frowned and came and sat back down. “He was jealous?”
“It was ridiculous. She might have only been three years older than me, but she was more like my mom or my big sister.”
“And?” Lucas pressed.
“We visited, and then Mary went back to work. We left, and I heard that Mary had moved into the apartment Damien kept for the dancers. Damien was in a strange mood for a few weeks, and I didn’t know why. Anyway, it was six weeks before I could talk Damien into going to the club again.”
And it had been horrific. “I was expecting Damien to have me dance. He liked it when I’d put on a show for him and a few of his friends, but he said we were just going to watch.”
“Mary?” Lucas said, guessing correctly.
Owen’s throat tightened, but he had to keep going. “I barely recognized her. In six weeks, she had lost what looked like twenty pounds she didn’t have to spare, and she wasn’t dancing. She was stumbling all over the place because she was high. The other men thought it was amusing.”
“Had she done drugs before?”
Owen shook his head miserably. “She would never. Her mother OD’d when Mary was thirteen. She wouldn’t even take Tylenol.”
“And what?” Lucas’s hand was so warm.
A shudder ran through Owen. “Damien pulled me onto his lap and whispered, ‘That’s what happens when someone touches you without my permission.’” He’d nearly vomited. “I have never hated someone so much in my life. All I wanted to do was bring Damien down, but that meant staying where I was. I didn’t have any money, and Damien had told me Mary had gone. He had thrown her out.” He scrubbed a hand over his eyes when they stung. Lucas squeezed his fingers reassuringly before he let go.
“I started making anonymous calls to detectives when I knew there was a drug deal happening.” He paused. “Or I thought they were anonymous. I got called into Damien’s office and found a detective sitting there.” He’d commented about making something go away, and Owen had known he was talking about making someone vanish, as if that person was nothing but a minor inconvenience. He’d nearly had a heart attack on the spot. “The man laughed and stood up, shaking hands with Damien and myself before he left.” He’d taken both of Owen’s hands in his giant ones and said how pleased he was to finally meet him. “He said he hoped I knew how fortunate I was to have Damien and that I shouldn’t ever be so foolish again.” Owen was silent for a few moments, but Lucas didn’t push him.
“I thought Damien was going to kill me,” Owen whispered.
Lucas leaned forward. “Did he hurt you?”
Owen gazed at Lucas, nausea swirling in his gut. “No. What he did was a million times worse.”
Lucas frowned. “Worse?”
Owen shook his head. “Just let me get this out. If I stop, I’m not sure I can do it again.” Lucas tilted his head, looking at him, but he remained silent.
“Prostitution and sex trafficking are a large part of Damien’s business, especially sex trafficking. I’ve heard him say that girls are more profitable than drugs and there are less cops after them. And he didn’t differentiate—he sells boys too. The younger the better. He told me if I had been a couple of years younger when he saw me at the club, I would have been in a brothel or on a plane for a private customer the same day.” Owen laughed shortly, but the sound was devoid of humor. “I found out the club is where most of the deals happen, and he really likes runaways. They even ‘shop to order.’” It was disgusting.
“Go on,” Lucas encouraged gently.
“He has two main henchmen—Saul and Paulo. And before I got the chance to so much as beg for my life, Paulo dragged a woman in. She was obviously high, and I didn’t recognize her at first because she looked so… old. It was Mary, and I was stunned. I don’t think she even knew who I was, and I didn’t dare go near her for fear of what Damien might do. She was carrying a baby, a newborn. She stumbled, and I shot forward to catch the baby before she landed on the floor. Mary just laughed.
“I stood there, holding this dirty scrap. She had sores from a filthy diaper that didn’t look like it had been changed in two days. I didn’t know much about babies, but she seemed barely more than a few days old. She was sweating, shaking, and crying.” Owen took a breath. “Damien asked me what I thought he should do. He said the baby was an addict and going through withdrawal. She was in tremendous pain, and if it was an animal, the kindest thing to do would be to put it down.”
He’d been appalled and nearly forgotten that he was in trouble. He’d clutched Mary’s baby and protested, begged. “Damien said he would bring a doctor in, but if the baby was to live, she was my responsibility. If I slipped up, he would simply kill her like her mother. I was confused. I said I thought Mary was her mother. Damien just nodded and said I was right.” Owen brushed a hand across his face and took a shaky breath. “He looked at me, and before I knew what was going to happen, Damien yanked Mary’s head back by her hair and slit her throat.”
Lucas gasped. Owen rocked Mia even though she was asleep, as if to soothe himself. To remind himself they were still alive. He hadn’t known how much blood was in a human body until he’d seen it pool under Mary’s lifeless body. She had gurgled once, and Damien had laughed and told Paulo to take out the trash.
“He told me the next time I forgot who I belonged to, he would kill me, but not before I had seen Mary’s baby die just like her mother had. I didn’t know anything about babies. The doctor came once and told me Damien wouldn’t let him give her IV fluids that she desperately needed or anything for the pain. He said I just had to keep her clean and comfortable because he didn’t think she was going to last the night anyway.”
“But she did,” Lucas said and reached over. Owen held his breath while Lucas gently ran his finger down Mia’s face.
Owen understood. He could only think about that night when she was safe in his arms. He knew how powerful the urge to touch her was. To know she was here, with him.
“I don’t know how.” And Owen still didn’t. He had been an only child, and he hadn’t had anything to do with babies growing up, nor had he especially wanted to. He’d spent four years running away from his family, not thinking about making another.
It had been the longest night of his life. For nine hours, he had held Mia, rocking her, comforting her when she cried, and crying himself when she had been silent. And somehow that night, and in the months that followed, he had lost his heart to her and turned a blind eye to Damien.
“Did you name her Mia?” Lucas asked.
“I never saw her birth certificate, if she even has one, but Damien said she was to be called Maria, after her mom. He said he hated the name Mary. It was too plain. He thought calling her Maria was amusing.”
“And calling her Mia is…?”
A “fuck you” to Damien. “I never called her Mia where Damien could hear me, but yes, I liked it.” And calling her Maria always reminded Owen of her mom’s death. He didn’t need that image in his head every time he looked at his daughter.
“What happened to make you run?” Lucas put a refilled coffee mug next to him. He hadn’t even noticed Lucas stand up.
“Thank you,” he said and carefully shifted Mia’s weight a little to free his hand. “It was Damien’s birthday, actually. Our housekeeper used to watch Mia when I was needed to be on display. After an hour, Damien was well on his way to getting drunk, so I slipped out. I caught a DEA agent upstairs posing as a guest. He said he’d heard Mia crying, so I rushed into her room. Mrs. Olivera had just gone to heat a bottle, and Mia had woken up. I lifted her out, and she quieted immediately. It was only after she stopped crying that I realized he had followed me. He admitted who he was and that he had been trying to get me alone for a while. He basically threatened that if I didn’t help put Damien away, I would lose Mia. I didn’t have official custody—it wasn’t something Damien would have allowed. He liked having a way of controlling me, and the agent promised that if I helped them, he would get us both in witness protection throughout the hearing. I had quite a good bargaining chip with the Marshals with the safety deposit box locations, so I basically promised to give them those in return for keeping Mia. Then, after Damien was imprisoned, it would be up to me if I kept the new life I was offered. But either way, Mia would be my daughter.” Owen glanced up at Lucas, who sat with a worried expression on his face. “I did say you would be safer letting me go.”
Lucas shrugged. “I run into burning buildings for a living. What I don’t get, though, is why he hasn’t been arrested for murdering Mary.”
“Because at the time it happened, according to numerous witnesses, he was hosting a charity fundraiser sixty miles away in Denver. He can buy anything he wants.”