Page 6 of Defending Mateo
Ally gulped as she looked around, tears blurring her eyes, as the realization sank in that nobody would notice that she was missing. Eventually her clients would wonder why she never responded, but they’d likely just write her a bad review and find a new accountant, they weren't going to worry that something had happened to her. She had zero family and no friends. The closest she had were the servers at the coffee shop, and they weren't likely to send the cops to check on her when she didn't show up again.
No one would know she was gone.
No one would care.
Never before had Ally felt as pathetic as she did in this moment.
Movement down one end of the corridor caught her attention, and she watched as a big man stepped out of a doorway down by what looked like an elevator. It wasn't dark in here, although the lighting was dull, and she could see the expression on his face. He had dark eyes that appeared almost black, jet-black hair, and pale skin. His black T-shirt stretched over a torso that looked like it had been chiseled from stone, and his black jean-clad legs were like tree trunks. He looked like some kind of handsome demon.
There was no doubt he was looking right at her, and when he arched a dark brow and smirked at her, Ally immediately shrunk in on herself. All that fight she’d been pretending to have just fizzled out, gone like a puff of smoke.
Backing away from the front of her cage, she stopped when her back hit the concrete, then she slid down it until her backside thumped into the floor. Curling her legs up to her chest, she buried her face in her knees, trying to will her surroundings to disappear.
Just like when she was a kid in high school and had been the perfect target for bullies, she was the perfect victim for these people. She was weak and pathetic, would be easily broken and molded into what they wanted her to be.
August 14th
7:55 A.M.
Following in Nathan’s footsteps was a mistake.
Before catching on to the fact that Nathan was obsessed with one of Azure’s victims, Mateo never would have guessed that the man was one of the four Prey undercover operatives currently working this assignment. Nathan had always been so calm, so confident, so unaffected by everything happening around them. The horrors, the screams, the tears, the broken pleas for mercy, none of them seemed to ruffle the man’s feathers.
Until one pretty blonde changed everything.
As Mateo pulled his SUV into the large parking garage, he realized that he appeared to the outside world to be the same. It looked like he didn't care one way or the other about these women or what happened to them, but that wasn't true.
He cared, he just didn't allow himself to emotionally engage. It was important to always keep your priorities straight.
The last thing he wanted was to turn into Nathan. So utterly terrified for the life of another person that you couldn’t think straight, that you couldn’t breathe, that it felt like you were being slowly crushed to death.
Not for him.
Breaking up with Ally was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do, but he could take comfort from the fact that it was the right thing and he’d never have to witness her turning up in a place like this.
Strolling into the kitchen, he found their cook, Ernie, about to head downstairs with the trolley filled with breakfast plates. Usually, the cook was the one to take meals down, but when Emma Beaumont had been abducted from the side of the road when she stopped to help a motorist in need, Nathan had taken over the task. Mateo knew it was because the man wanted any excuse possible to check in on Emma. He didn't have anyone to check on, yet he felt a responsibility to the other women now. With Nathan gone, there were only he and two others left here, and they still didn't have what they needed to get to the head of Azure.
“I got it, Ernie,” he said, reaching for the trolley.
The man startled. “What is it with you guys and delivering meals all of a sudden?” the cook grumbled. “First that traitor Nathan, and now you.”
“Don’t know that Nathan was a traitor,” he said. He’d mentioned a few times the idea that Nathan was just a man so obsessed with a woman he couldn’t see anything else. The last thing he wanted was Azure considering the possibility of a traitor in their midst. Either way, Nathan was dead if any of them ever spotted him, but according to Falcon, the man was tucked safely away with Emma.
“He betrayed us, left without a word, and I heard a rumor that the man who bought the blonde firecracker was killed. We know what happened. He lost his mind and went after her, killed to make her his. That’s betrayal if ever I heard it,” Ernie said.
“Azure still got paid for the girl, does it really matter if she now belongs to Nathan instead of some guy in Kenya?”
As he maneuvered the trolley into the elevator, he wondered what was going on with him. He didn't get soft. Not for anyone. Well, anyone other than his pretty little mouse. But Ally aside, he’d long since stopped letting emotions dictate the way he lived. He still had a moral compass, a sense of justice, perhaps one that had been too sharpened by the ordeal that almost killed him as a teenager.
Refusing to indulge in anything as pointless as emotions, especially for people he was already doing everything within his power to shut down the trafficking ring for, he waited for the elevator to reach the basement level, and once it did, he rolled the trolley out.
“You're here early,” Van said, sticking his head out of the guard’s room down this end of the corridor.
Didn't the man do anything but sit around in there watching videos? It seemed like no matter what hour of the day or night you came down here, Van was there. Never in his life had Mateo met a colder human being than Van. Given that he’d been a cop for half a decade, then spent over a decade working undercover, that was saying something. While Mateo had learned to shut down his emotions, focusing on very specific things, Van just seemed completely empty inside.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he said with a shrug. Completely honest, although he’d tried to sleep in his car, being so close to Ally and not being able to go to her had him edgy and unsettled in a way he hadn't been since he was fourteen years old, and he’d learnedthe hard way that when pushed to their limits, people always prioritized themselves.
“I bet,” Van said with one of his trademark smirks, but there was something underlying the man’s expression that put Mateo on edge.
