Petrovich should’ve known I’d come for Regan anyway since Nick was kind of a friend and Regan was his girl’s best friend but instead he gave me two pieces of information. I’m supposed to be looking for some hacker that Vasily wants called the Emperor, but his little task will be put on the back burner until I find my sister.

Wary of me, Regan walks a half step behind. Or rather, I let that distance between us exist. She’s more afraid of bogeymen jumping out of the houses or back alleys than she is of me right now, but that could change at any moment. Fear is a good thing. It makes you sharp and aware. Complacency makes you dead.

“How do you know my name?” she repeats.

“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,” I quip.

She curls her lip at me, telegraphing disdain for my humor. But I’m not telling her anything. Who knows what she will tell the folks at the U.S. Consulate? If she’s smart, she’ll tell them everything—including how a tall guy with a black suit and big black guns killed two Brazilians in the slums—and then I can add U.S. military to the number of people who want to see me captured or dead. The list is long and varied, but I’m still alive and most who’ve encountered me are not.

Fighting the urge to stare at her is more challenging than I expected. As we walk down the hill, several boys make hooting calls that cause her to flinch and drive her closer to me. I take her in surreptitiously. Only the lights from the homes and the occasional street light illuminate our path. The dirt and poverty looks more like quaintness than squalor. And Regan Porter looks like the shiniest rock in the diamond mine. I can’t fucking take my eyes off her.

Maybe she’s been sent to me as karmic punishment. You can look but don’t touch. Or worse, you shouldn’t even be looking.

Despite all that she’s gone through, Regan is magnetic. Her blonde hair has dried in a cloud around her face, and neither the dirt nor the trauma can disguise the oval perfection, high cheekbones and full lips. My hand rises of its own volition to tuck a few strands of hair behind her pretty pale little ear. She jerks back from me, wide eyed, nostrils flaring like a scared wild Mustang I’ve brought in to tame.

And then my dick takes over and my thoughts go on an inappropriate detour thinking about all that pale pinkness riding me and that long blonde hair brushing my bare chest. And those plump lips making a perfect circle for my—oh fuck. I am such a fucking asshole. Clenching my hand, I force myself to back off. Time and place, Daniel, time and fucking place.

“Hurry the fuck up,” I bark out. She flinches, and that helps to suppress my ill-conceived desires. I’m not into chicks who don’t want me and particularly not those who are scared of me.

But I’m not the only one drawn to her. I should’ve asked for a paper bag to place over her head, but you’d still see those long legs, the sexy indent of her waist and the thrust of her tits against the tissue thin coat. It’s a good thing the night air is warm because between the swimsuit and the napkin that we’re calling a coat, she doesn’t have much protection from the elements. I can’t even take off my suit coat because I have a brace of guns underneath, but I can do something about her lack of shoes.

Her feet are dirty from both Gomes’ place and the unpaved roads. I hadn’t expected her to run through the favela. I figured I’d hustle her into the taxi, drop her off at the Embassy, and be done with it.

But now we’re walking in the back alleys, drawing all kind of unwanted attention, and I can’t stop thinking about those tender feet being eaten up by the dirt and stones. Stopping abruptly, I swing around to face her. She makes a small sound, like wounded animal. I wonder what she thinks I’m going to do out here, throw her down and mount her? Heaving a frustrated sigh, I kneel down to unlace one shoe and pull off my silk dress sock. Shoving my foot back into the rich leather of my shoes, I repeat the action on the other side. Raising one knee, I gesture for her to lift her foot up. “I’m going to brush the bottom of your foot off, okay?” I ask, patting my knee so she knows to rest her foot against my leg. Peering up at her, I can see her big green eyes wide with wonder. Or suspicion. “Look, doll face, I don’t have some weird sock fetish."

Her lips are trembling and her eyes are beginning to water. Oh shit. She’s going to start crying, and I don’t need that. Holy fuck do I not need that. So I pull out the asshole because I sense that she’ll snarl back at the asshole but weep at a nice guy. “I’m tired of hearing you snivel while we walk, but if you’re going to sit there and cry, I can put it back on.”

Just as I suspect, the steel rod returns and she’s rigid again. She lifts her foot, pressing two fingers against my suited shoulder. And despite the suit coat, dress shirt and beater underneath I can still feel the heat and it’s burning a path from the shoulder right down to my groin. I hate myself. I really fucking hate myself.

It gets worse when she lifts her high arched foot to place it gently on the edge of my knee. My finger itches to trace the curve and fondle the delicate skin behind her ankle bone. My whole body feels on fire. I deserve her disgust because her back isn’t the only thing that is turning stiff as a steel rod. There are so many things I like doing on my knees between a pretty girl’s thighs. Things I haven’t done in a long, long time.

Carefully I brush off the dirt and pebbles from her foot. I take the time to run a finger, a quick one, between each toe. This ankle has no marks around it but I do a quick once over around her lower legs before pulling the socks on. From my pocket I pull out a zip tie that I normally would use for restraints and pull it around her calf to hold the sock up. Above me I hear a gasp of breath, and her fingers press into my shoulder. For a moment, I think she’s going to take flight, but I don’t look up. Not once. Because if I do, I’ll have to look at her soft thighs, the hidden vee between her legs, her breasts, and by the time I get to her face she’ll see the lust in my gaze and have a good reason to run away. So I keep my gaze on her feet.

“Just a way to tighten the socks around your ankles,” I explain. When she doesn’t move I take this as assent and tighten the zip tie.

She switches feet without me prompting her. This ankle has the scab marks. I inspect the wound. It looks old, sore but not infected. Regan’s pretty lucky. From my position I notice handprints on her thighs and any arousal I once felt dies off quick. This girl’s been so abused, and what little humanity I have left aches for her. I’m going to kill the man who put those marks on her. Before I leave Rio, I’m hunting him down and cutting off his dick and feeding it to him, one inch at a time. I’ll take pictures and send them to Regan.

I hurry up with my cleaning of her foot and slip on the sock, securing it with another zip tie. I sneak a look at her and she’s looking half pissed off and half ashamed. I want it to be all pissed. She’s got nothing to be ashamed of. “You’ve got a pretty rocking body, Regan.”

“Fuck you,” she says. “I’ll kill you with your own gun before you get to lay a finger on me.”

We both know that she’d never be able to disarm me, but I nod as if her threat has real teeth. “I’ll never touch you unless you give me the okay.” It’s not something I’m making up for her sake. Eighteen months in and out of brothels like Gomes’ have made me never want to have sex outside of a relationship where I could be certain that the person I’m having sex with wants it a hundred percent. And given that the last eighteen months has been spent hunting and rescuing and killing people…well, the only relief my dick has seen is Rosie Palm. Maybe that’s why I’ve got hard dick disease around Regan.

“Likely story,” she scoffs, and the ease at which she insults me tells me that she’s more comfortable with me than she knows or may be willing to acknowledge. It tells me she’ll follow me without much hesitation so we head off, me in my shoes and Regan wearing my socks. It’s not ideal, but my shoes would be boats on her and I don’t think she’s ready to be carried.

“You ever been to Rio before?” I ask as we wend our way down the hill. I figure from the increasing noise that we can find a taxi soon.

“No.” Then after a short pause she asks with incredulity, “Are you trying to make small talk with me?”

“Would you rather tell me how long you were with Gomes?”

She’s silent, so I take that as a no. When we arrive on a main drag, I’m able to hail a taxi and hold the door open for Regan. She hesitates and looks around, weighing her chances of survival in the favela. I shift slightly and pull back my jacket so she can see the butt of one of my guns. She closes her eyes in resignation and climbs in. Smart girl. She’s going to be one of those who make it. Many don’t. Their time in captivity fucks them up so bad that they fall back into the trade either because their families won’t take them in, they need to fund their newly acquired drug habit, or they don’t have any other place to go. That’s another shitty lesson I learned early on. I’m going to hold tight to this memory so that I can pull the gun away from my head the next time I see one of my failures.

“U.S. Embassy,” I bark at the driver and then settle back, resting one hand on the butt of my gun, scanning the streets for trouble as we take off. There isn’t anyone behind us, but the sense of wrongness is still dogging me.

A hand grabs at my arm and I twist around to look at Regan who’s only inches from my body. Oh shit. The closeness is generating some warm feelings in my lower body. I wish my conscience had more control over my goddamn body. I clear my throat. “What is it?”