The Lost Tycoon Read online

  Misty stopped only one more time. A few hours later, she pulled into a rest stop, used the bathroom, picked up another cup of coffee, and then jumped back onto the freeway.

  “Please give me a little bit longer,” she begged her car, and the old thing must have listened, because just as the sun was starting to sink down in the sky, she entered Seattle — her new home. For a while.

  This was a city she could get lost in; this was a place he wouldn’t be able to find her — not when there were three and a half million people in the Seattle metropolitan area. It wasn’t like Montana, where Billings was the largest city, with just over a hundred thousand people.

  She wasn’t thrilled at the idea of living in a big city, but she was excited to escape Jesse, excited to begin her life at the age of twenty-eight. It should have begun a very long time ago, but she wouldn’t dwell on that — she would focus on the here and now.

  She’d escaped.

  After checking into a cheap motel, Misty got to work. She took the contents from the bag she’d had stored in her trunk and began her transformation. A couple of hours later, when she looked at herself in the mirror, she was almost unable to recognize the woman gazing back at her. Black hair hung straight down her back, makeup covered the bruises that would finally have time to heal before new wounds were inflicted, and contacts changed her green eyes to brown.

  With a new name, she wouldn’t be found. With a new life, she wouldn’t be afraid. This was truly a new start.

  Chapter Two

  “It took a long time to find you, Ms. Elton.”

  Oh, no. Oh, no. Misty looked up into the steady gray gaze of the giant of a man standing in front of her. No! She was safe. It had been a year. A full year. It was only a few months ago that she had let down her guard, had decided it was safe to live again, had gone back to her natural brown color.

  Jesse had moved on, surely. He wouldn’t have stayed single this long. He had to have a woman to boss around — to beat up on — by now. He would still hate her, still want her dead, but he wouldn’t still be searching for her. There was just no possible way.

  “I…uh…I don’t know who you’re referring to,” she gasped, and she crept toward the door to the back room. She was working a crappy job at a fast-food joint. The place was nondescript, a bit seedy, in fact, and they hadn’t blinked when she’d given them her false name, her poorly done fake ID. She sure as heck wouldn’t eat the food there, not with their lax views on hygiene. They hadn’t even made her get a food handlers card. But the job was working for her for now, allowing her to save up for her next move — though she wasn’t saving much.

  If she could just get through the door, get to her locker, then she’d be able to grab her Taser. She’d started leaving it in her purse just a few months ago. Up until that point, she’d carried it on her, keeping the small, but hopefully effective, device in her pocket, just in reach of her shaking fingers.

  This was what happened when you grew careless. This would be what killed her.

  “Please don’t be afraid. I’m here to help you.”

  “I don’t need help. You have the wrong person,” she said, her voice more steady. He was watching her move toward the door, but he wasn’t taking a menacing step toward her — wasn’t reaching for the gun she knew he had to have on him.

  She was close, so close. Inching a bit closer to the door, she kept her eyes on his hands. Those would tell her his next move. She’d become an expert at reading Jesse through his hands. The second they clenched she’d known she was in trouble.

  This man’s hands were sitting idly at his hips, just sort of hanging there. “Can I please sit down with you for a few minutes of your time? I won’t ask you to go anywhere alone with me.” His voice, she was sure, was supposed to convey trustworthiness.

  That made her more suspicious.

  “Sorry. I have to get something from the back room.” She took her chances and darted through the door, not looking back as she made her way to her locker. Thankfully, it was open, since the only other person on shift was a nice kid whom she actually trusted. She quickly reached into her purse.

  When her fingers curled around the small Taser, she felt her fear dwindle. The device wasn’t deadly, but it would knock a large man down long enough for her to get away.

  “Ms. Elton, please…”

  He’d followed her. And he was grabbing her arm.

  Misty didn’t hesitate. She turned back to face him and pushed the button on her weapon. His eyes widened with shock —literally! —followed by a shot of pain as thousands of volts of electricity traveled through his skin into his stomach.

  He released her arm, and Misty took a step toward the door, she was planning to get the hell away — far away from him and this place. It was time to find a new city. She’d stayed too long, far longer than she had originally planned, but her car had died, and she hadn’t saved enough to move again yet. Almost but not quite. The heck with it now, though. She’d jump onto a bus and live in a shelter for a while.

  She wouldn’t be returned to Jesse. Never again.

  When the man’s hand snaked out and grabbed her leg, tripping her, Misty let out a gasp of dismay. She got ready to use the stun gun again, longer this time. If at first you don’t succeed…

  “I don’t think so,” he growled between clenched teeth. He smacked the gun from her hand and pinned her under his huge body.

  “Let me go,” she screamed, struggling beneath him.

  “Give me a second,” he moaned, not letting her up as he worked on catching his breath.

  Yeah, that was going to happen. Sure, she was going to wait until he was back to full strength before she tried to escape.

  “You won’t get away with this.” She was trying to sound more confident than she actually was. This was bringing back the nightmares of the way Jesse had tortured her. Her struggles against the stranger increased as she got a hand free and punched him in the face.

  Her hand throbbed from the hit, but it didn’t seem to faze him in the least.

  “If you hadn’t used a damn stun gun on me, we wouldn’t be rolling around on this filthy floor. Who in the hell told you it was an effective weapon? The things only stun your attacker for a brief moment, and certainly not me. Not someone with training! Now hold on; my damn stomach is rolling.”

  “Yeah, right, I’ll just wait for you to get all better, because I have a death wish!” She managed to lift her knee and slam it against his groin, though it wasn’t a direct hit — his thigh took the brunt of the impact.

  “Dammit!” Bryson yelled as his entire body stiffened.

  No, he didn’t release her. He wrenched her two hands above her head and held her legs down with one of his own as he breathed heavily against her neck.

  “Am I interrupting?”

  Bryson Winchester groaned again, this time in utter embarrassment, as he turned to see his partner standing in the doorway with a grin on his face.

  “Can you give me a hand here?” Bryson growled.

  “Yeah, that five-foot-nothing girl looks like a real handful,” Axel said with a laugh.

  “Who are you people?” Misty fired off. Their attitudes confused her. Jesse had never acted that way — almost offhand — when he was about to beat her. Deadly, yes, offhand, no. The man staring at the human pretzel that she and the giant were making on the floor looked amused, not deadly.

  “I knew I should have brought some popcorn,” the guy said, not even trying to hide his enjoyment at his partner’s struggle.

  “Would you shut the hell up and give me a hand, Axel?” Bryson snapped, then turned back to glare at her. “I was trying to tell you who I am before you did your best to inflict permanent damage on certain body parts.” He was finally starting to catch his breath again, but just as the pain began to dwindle, he found he was starting to have another problem.

  Oh, this was so not good. How in the hell could he even think of getting aroused? His groin was throbbing, his stomach still rolling fr
om the Taser, and she was still fighting him.

  There had to be something immensely wrong with him if he could get even the slightest bit turned on in this situation.

  But he’d been so busy trying to defend himself from this shockingly strong woman that he was just now realizing that the two of them were lying flush against each other, and though she might be petite, she carried some killer curves. Yeah, great self-defense, bozo!

  Bryson would absolutely never hear the end of this if he stood up with an erection. Breathe! he commanded himself. Think of mom, grandma, the damn Yankees. Yeah, that would deflate him.

  “Help!” Misty screamed, and Bryson could now add a splitting headache to his list of injuries. Her voice could have shattered glass, and it was aimed right into his ear.

  “That’s it,” he snapped, and he moved off her so quickly that she was stunned into immobility.

  He didn’t wait for round two. He jerked her body up and twisted her arms behind her back. He slapped a pair of handcuffs on her.

  “See, you got it under control,” Axel said. He was laughing again.

  “I’ll remember this,” Bryson grumbled at his partner while leading the woman out of the back room.

  “Stop! I’m calling the police,” said a pimply-faced teenage boy who stood frozen in all his bravery by the front counter.

  “Took you long enough to check on your co-worker, son,” said Axel, his hazel eyes twinkling.

  “I was cleaning the bathroom,” the kid replied. Then he realized he was making excuses for himself to the men kidnapping his co-worker. He was obviously terrified, but Bryson had to give it to him — he wasn’t backing down.

  “Call the CIA,” Misty shouted. There was no way she trusted the cops. She didn’t know whether a person even could call the CIA, though.

  “Uh, shouldn’t I just call 911?” William asked as he wavered at the counter.

  “No!” Misty cried.

  That one word revealed more to Bryson than anything else she’d done — and in the span of about five minutes, she’d done plenty.

  “I’ll…uh…call the CIA,” her co-worker said with doubt.

  “It’s OK, kid. We’re the FBI,” Bryson told him. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his badge.

  “No, they aren’t, Will,” Misty broke in. “Those are fake badges.”

  The young man’s head snapped over to her. “Okay.” He’d only just turned eighteen, and he had no idea what to believe. Nothing like this was supposed to happen to him.

  Axel spoke next. “Trust me, kid. We’re the real deal.” He also pulled out his badge, and, approaching Will cautiously, he handed him his card with the phone number of headquarters on it. “Look at it. And you can call this number to verify.”

  Will took the card and walked to the phone, keeping an eye on all three of them. Bryson had a difficult time not laughing. He’d humor the kid. He didn’t want to admit it, but his groin area was still throbbing, and he was grateful to be able to just stand there a couple of extra minutes. The last thing he wanted to do was limp to the damn SUV.

  Will dialed the number, and Bryson knew when the call was connected, because the kid’s eyes bugged out. Yeah, that tended to happen the first time a person reached FBI headquarters. Bryson still remembered when all that had impressed him.

  Axel grabbed Bryson’s badge and shoved it over so the kid could ask whether both of them were agents. When Will was satisfied, he hung up the phone and faced them. “It’s legit, Marcy,” he said, his eyes shining with sudden hero worship.

  At least he was using the fake name she’d come up with, one close enough to her own name that she wouldn’t confuse herself.

  But Misty knew she was sunk anyway. “Thanks for trying, Will,” she said, more sad than anything else. This was the end. They were now going to take her to their car and drive her out into the woods, and then her body would never be found. “I really liked working with you.”

  Bryson was confused by the change in her tone, but he didn’t focus on it. He just started leading her outside after telling Axel to collect her belongings. The fight had left her, and she didn’t wrestle against him as he moved to the vehicle and opened the back door.

  “Watch your head,” he warned her, and she slid inside.

  When he climbed in with her, she looked straight ahead. One tear slid down her cheek, but other than that, not a sound or reaction.

  “Now, Ms. Elton, can we speak?” he asked.

  “Why not?” she said, her voice defeated.

  “If I take off the handcuffs, do you promise not to attempt to hit me again?”

  “What good would it do? The Taser didn’t even faze you,” she replied.

  “Oh, it fazed me. I may not work properly for a while,” he said, a mocking grin lighting up his face.

  “I won’t struggle anymore. Just get this done, please. I’m tired of being afraid, anyway.”

  “Good. We believe you are a witness to the activities of Jesse Marcus. We would like any information you can give us.”

  Yep. This was it. They wanted to see what she knew, whom she’d told, and whether there was anyone else they had to kill. And then they’d off her.

  “I haven’t told anyone anything,” she said, a tiny but unquenched hope in her chest making her plead for her life, no matter how useless it was.

  “I believe you, Ms. Elton. I promise you, I’m not working for Mr. Marcus. On the contrary. I’m going to make sure the bastard doesn’t hurt anyone ever again.”

  Maybe it was his tone, maybe his words, but Misty slowly lifted her eyes and met his gaze. Questions stared back at him. He waited, looking at her without blinking, trying to convey to her that he was, indeed, the good guy.

  “Who are you?” she finally whispered.

  “I’m Special Agent Bryson Winchester, and this is my partner, Special Agent Axel Carlson. We’re the men who are going to lock up the man you’ve been running from.”

  He didn’t break the connection of their eyes, didn’t move as she processed his words.

  Then it was all over. Misty sagged against the back of the seat as she let herself go for the first time since she’d run from Jesse a year ago. She let go of the fear, let go of the pain, let go of it all, and cried.

  She didn’t know if she’d be able to stop — didn’t know if this was it for her. She’d gone so far holding it all in, staying strong, and now that the dam had a crack in it, maybe she would just burst apart and be like that forever.

  At some point, she found herself cradled against this stranger’s chest, her tears soaking his once pristine shirt. She didn’t even have the energy to care. She just let it all out, every single emotion she’d been bottling up for so long. He stopped talking, and just ran his hand through her hair.

  Somewhere in the middle of all of this, the SUV began moving, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t care. She just kept on crying — out of relief, out of pain, out of hope.

  Chapter Three

  Bryson paced restlessly through the suite as he waited for Misty to finish her shower. It seemed much easier to bring her back to the hotel, get her a room, and let her take some time to compose herself before they questioned her.

  It had taken over an hour to convince her that they were really from the FBI and they were there to help her. Well, if he had to be completely honest, they were there to help their case. But, by getting Jesse behind bars, they were helping Misty.

  That was important.

  She had more information stored in her brain than she realized. Jesse Marcus was the true definition of a bad cop, and Bryson was going to bust his ass. The man was mixed up in drugs, prostitution, and murder. He was going down.

  At first, Bryson had thought that Misty might be involved in it all, but after reviewing the surveillance tapes, checking into her tragic history, and basically learning everything he could about her, he knew she was innocent. Sometimes his radar was wrong, but he didn’t think so in this case.

  She’d
simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and she was now paying a high price for crossing paths with that man. Misty Elton was lucky to be alive.

  And Bryson intended to keep her that way.

  “What do you want to eat?”

  Bryson turned to find Axel leaning quietly against the door, a bored smirk on his face. This was a part of their job they both hated — babysitting.

  “Is everything secure?” he asked, ignoring the question.

  “Yep. We’re all clear outside. I had a nice stroll,” Axel said.

  “Good. I want to keep the local law enforcement out of this. She doesn’t trust them, and frankly, I understand why. We’ll never get her to talk if the men in blue show up.”

  “Yeah, it’s cases like these that make me appreciate my job more. I don’t know how men like Jesse ever pass the tests to become police officers.”

  “We both know it happens,” Bryson said with a sigh.

  “Okay, I’m starved. What should I get?” Axel asked again.

  “Burgers will be fine,” Bryson said. He had no appetite at the moment.

  “Nah. We had those the last few nights. Let’s do Chinese.”

  “Why ask my opinion, Axel, when you’re just going to get whatever you feel like?”

  “’Cause it’s always fun to annoy you.” Axel grabbed his coat and headed from the room.

  The two men had been colleagues for the past five years, had been through some less than ideal cases, and they knew each other well enough to keep alive. Axel was his best friend, his confidant, his brother-in-arms.

  The shower clicked off and Bryson tensed. He didn’t understand why this woman was getting under his skin. She was just another victim in a long line of them — just another case. There was no reason to take any of this personally. No reason to get worked up over it. It was a standard case, pretty much cut-and-dry. They get her testimony; they lock her slimy ex up.

  A doubt nagged at him. What if she was too afraid to get up in the witness box? Well, his job was to give her confidence, make sure she knew she was protected. It wasn’t an easy task, because they didn’t know how many of the policemen Jesse was working with were corrupt.