clear. They were taking absolutely no chances she might slip away.
And that was that.
When Steele took her arm to lead her away, she shot a look over her shoulder at Sterling, a pleading glance. He set his teeth and looked away.
There was nothing he could do for her. Not now. Maybe not ever.
And goddamn, it sucked.
When they were gone, Chrome shot him a smirk. “So… I hear you’re phenomenal in bed?”
And Sterling went red, right to the tips of his ears.
Chapter Six
It was a miserable night. For one thing, the cell they’d tossed her in was dismal. Three cinderblock walls and a rack of iron bars. The cot was hard and uncomfortable and the pillow intolerable. There was a toilet in the corner, but Roni couldn’t bring herself to use it because God knew who might wander by.
On top of that, she was hungry and cranky and, if she was being honest, scared.
It took a great deal of meditation, but she finally drifted off to sleep. She needed to be well rested to face whatever was to come. It was, however, a fitful sleep haunted by dreams of a beautiful man who didn’t think twice about betraying her to the enemy.
In the morning—it was probably morning, hard to tell in the bowels of the earth—someone brought her a tray with eggs, bacon and toast. And coffee. That was like ambrosia. The food was surprisingly good, for prison. After she ate, she lay back down and rested some more.
There was nothing else to do, after all. They’d confiscated her phone. Steve—or whatever his name was—still had her computer and all her stuff.
She didn’t allow herself to worry about what they might do to her, but she wasn’t a fool. If they really were a black-ops team intent on remaining a secret, they had only one option and that was to shut her up…for good.
So her mood was pretty bleak when one of the men who had interrogated her—a tall guy with short-cropped brown hair and a goatee—came to fetch her. He took her back to the room they’d used before. She had no idea why her heart leaped when she saw Steve standing there with a group of other men, all with stern expressions on their faces.
When she passed through the door, their attention snapped to her and they studied her with inflexible gazes. She, in turn, studied them.
Well, shit. Taken like this, in a herd, they were damned intimidating. They all looked hard and fierce and annoyed. All but Steve. His features softened when he spotted her. And damn. He looked worse off than she did. There were dark rings beneath his eyes and his hair was tousled. There was a pillow crease on his cheek. It shouldn’t have displeased her that he hadn’t slept much either, but it did.
“Gentlemen,” Goatee, the leader, said, gesturing to the chairs. Like toy soldiers, they all sat. He motioned to her as well and with a huff she took a seat. “This is Veronica Banks, daughter of Winnie Westmoreland. You may have heard of the family.”
“The Westmoreland Corporation?” one of the guys asked and Goatee nodded. Grunts rounded the room. Yeah. The family name was well-known, but it didn’t come with the power they might think. Her grandfather had sold out years ago and now, other than her and Annabelle, there was no one else left. They were all on their own.
“Veronica is the reporter who found us—”
“Roni.” This from Steve. Sharp and clipped. He glanced around at the curious faces. “She doesn’t like to be called Veronica, Steele.”
Ah. The leader was Steele. Yeah. The kind of name a guy like him might choose. He looked as hard as steel. Especially when his eyes pinned Steve with a sharp glare.
“Thank you, Sterling. I’ll make a note of it.” Steele’s tone was sarcastic, but Roni hardly noticed. Her attention snapped to him.
Sterling.
His name was Sterling. She had no idea why if felt so…right.
“We brought Veroni—Roni in last night. She outlined how she tracked us to Deep Ellum. What we don’t know is…where did the original tip come from? And how much does Morrow know? Ant? What did you find?” Steele turned his attention to a behemoth with shaggy dark hair and deep-blue eyes.
His face split into a grin. “Okay. First of all, this guy is a moron.”
Roni tried not to snort, but it didn’t take an elite covert team to figure that much out.
“His firewall was like cheesecake, so I backed up his hard