“I don’t like thinking that I’ll never hear about Callie’s childhood from her. The few times I tried to probe about her past—before I knew who she was, of course—she was either closemouthed or sarcastic.”
Sean shot him a speculative look. “I’m surprised you didn’t beat her ass for it.”
“I was tempted.”
The fed grunted. “So, Callie was twenty-one when she came to Dominion? What was she like?”
“She had a chip on her shoulder that warned everyone away for months. The girl only spoke to me because she had to. I’ll never forget . . . I found her crying on the back patio after she’d been there a few weeks. Callie judiciously avoided anything remotely personal with everyone. But those tears . . .” Thorpe shook his head. “I watched her for a few minutes, then I couldn’t stand it. I tried to help.”
“She rebuffed you.”
“Instantly,” Thorpe confirmed. “If I wanted to talk about BDSM or work, she was all ears. The second I asked anything personal, she clammed up.”
“When did she finally let you close?”
“I found the first chink in her armor at Christmas. God, Callie loves it. Decorates everything in sight. I praised her wildly, and she started softening.”
“I didn’t see anything in her file about that.”
Thorpe shrugged. “I only have sketchy details about a sliver of her time before she came to Dominion, but it was obvious to me that Callie enjoys Christmas because it’s a holiday for family.”
“I’m guessing that since she doesn’t have any, she adopted everyone at the club as her own.” Sean closed his eyes. “See, this is why I could never picture her as a hardened criminal. Even if she planned to run off with that Holden prick, Callie wanted a sense of belonging. A woman like that would never kill her loved ones.”
“Precisely. I was shocked that first holiday season with Callie. She fancied the place up, organized a party, made everything run like a well-oiled machine . . . then stood in the corner and watched like a little girl with her nose pressed to the glass.”
Frowning, Sean shook his head. “Then she has come a long way. Callie teases most everyone at Dominion now. I guess I have you to thank for the change. I hate to admit it, but you’ve taken good care of her.”
With the sun glaring through the back window, Thorpe flipped his wrist up to stare at his watch, uncomfortable with the man’s praise. How much more could he have healed Callie if he was capable of actually fucking trying?
“How long does it take to fly from New Orleans to Vegas?” Thorpe spit out. “Three hours? Four? Shouldn’t she be there by now?”
“I’d ask the bureau to track the flight, but . . .” He looked vaguely uneasy.
The truth hit Thorpe. “You’re doing this under the radar, aren’t you?”
“I’ve said enough.”
“Look, we’re not best pals, but we both have a vested interest in finding Callie. We’ve got hours of driving ahead of us and we’re in this shit together. So you better be honest with me or I’ll leave you on the side of this damn road and find her without you.”
Spreading his knees and staring out the window, Sean sighed. “As my grandfather would have said, some of the higher-ups are a dodgy lot. They’ve always acted a bit evasive about this case, but over the past few weeks, something’s changed. I can’t put my finger on it. I just have this gut feeling that if I gave them any indication Callie has fled, it would open up a can of worms I might not be able to close. I think they’d start a full-fledged manhunt. They might even insist that I arrest her. I can’t do that.”
And if Sean couldn’t arrest her, Thorpe didn’t think he’d turn her in, even for a two-million-dollar bounty. He might be wrong . . . but he didn’t think so.
“Shit!” Thorpe didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Can you lean on them, find out anything?”
“I’ve tried. Often, agents are at the bottom of the information totem pole. Politics are always on a need-to-know basis, and they think I don’t need to know.”
“Are you fucking with me?”
“Right now, I don’t have the energy. I just want Callie back, a decent meal, and a good night’s sleep—in that order.”
Thorpe wanted that, too, along with a passionate, grinding slide into Callie’s undoubtedly tight pussy so he could hear her cry out in his ear while she dug her little nails into his back, just as she’d done to Sean. He didn’t like another man fucking her, but he liked the fact that he’d never had the pleasure of feeling her himself even less.
Listen to him whine . . . He wasn’t in her best interest. Whatever Mackenzie’s flaws or agenda, the fed loved her—enough to risk his job for her. Thorpe couldn’t fault Sean for that.
“So, about the ex-wife, Melissa . . .” Mackenzie began.
Thorpe choked, then took a swig of cold coffee to recover. “Nothing to say about her.”
“She left, so you’re bitter? Or gun shy?” Sean probed.
“Where the fuck do you get off questioning me? We’re talking about Callie.”
“I’m trying to understand you. Your bad experience with the lousy ex is the reason you kept Callie at arm’s length all these years, right?”
No, but he wasn’t spilling all his demons for Sean. “There’s a significant age gap, too.”
“Which is more your hang-up than hers, I’d bet. What else?”
Thorpe glanced at his crappy burner phone, wondering where Logan’s call was that Callie had reached Vegas all right. If Logan didn’t call in five, he’d ring the former SEAL. But whatever he did, he wasn’t replying to Sean.
“So it’s mostly your own fear.” The fed supplied his own answer. “I guess that makes sense in a chicken shit sort of way. But one thing has me stumped. Why decide to get possessive after I entered the picture? You’re off relationships because of the ex, so you tell yourself that you don’t want Callie. But you don’t want anyone else to have her, either. You’ve got your head up your ass, Thorpe. It’s not fair to her.”
Sean’s words echoed Lance’s and rang a little too true. Damn it if he didn’t want to punch the man. “None of this is any of your fucking business.”
“It is if you want to know anything else in Callie’s file.” Sean gave him an expectant smile.
Thorpe rubbed his broad forehead, wishing he could massage away the beginnings of his headache. He really wanted to toss Mackenzie from the vehicle, but that wasn’t in Callie’s best interest. She had to be priority number one. “At first, she’d barely talk to me. After she’d been at Dominion a few months, I used her for a teaching demo. Of course I was attracted to her from the beginning, but Callie was a pure novice. I didn’t know if she was truly submissive or was pretending because she needed a job. I found out quickly that she was. Our chemistry was . . . not like anything I’d ever experienced. It shocked me.”
“So you backed away?”
“No. I should have, but Callie was far more submissive than I’d dared to hope, not to mention addicting. It wasn’t long before I used her for every demo. It was the only excuse I would give myself to touch her. She still kept her distance more often than not, but damn, the way she responded to me . . . I was very seriously considering breaking my own rule about never taking an exclusive sub.
“Then I was watching some silly news program one day. They showed a picture of Callie at sixteen, the same one you have on your phone. It all clicked. I hoped I was wrong, so I invented a new excuse to touch her and see if she had a scar on her hip where that bullet got her.”
“And when you found it, you cut off all but the most professional contact.” Sean didn’t phrase it like a question. He knew the answer.
Though Thorpe didn’t like being transparent, he supposed his motives weren’t that hard to deduce.