What did Trinity run into, when she stopped by? “I will.”
He nodded at a sketch pad, sitting on the island dividing the kitchenette from the rest of the room. “Creativity. As requested, mistress.”
Mistress. That should bother her more than it did. Maybe she didn’t mind because he didn’t deliver the words with condescension? She stepped up to the counter to study the work.
“It’s beautiful.” Abstract curves and sensuality. She struggled to find the right words for it. Water or flames or a flower, flowing into each other, perhaps. And under it all, the subtle shape of a woman’s body.
Beautiful didn’t do the work justice. The sketch was also drastically different from any of his other pieces she’d seen. “It really is stunning.” She’d already said that. “Did T—Eight stop by?”
“Mini-you?” He didn’t call her on the near use of a real name.
She suspected he’d heard it, though. Mini-her? Trinity had the same brown hair and eyes a similar color as Lisa’s, but she was a few inches shorter. Sawyer used to tell Lisa they looked like sisters, but she suspected Dexter noticed every difference. “That’s her. I asked her to let you know I’d be late.”
“Yeah. I may have been a bit gruff with her. Oops. I was engrossed.” He nodded at the sketch again. “She said something I probably didn’t hear.”
Trinity wouldn’t have an issue with gruff. That explained her brief message.
“Did you try to bolt on me?” Dexter settled onto a stool, a teasing smile tugging up the corners of his mouth. “Is that what earned you the personal escort back here?”
This conversation didn’t require her full focus. The drugs had worn off, and she was instinctually private. There were protocols in place, so most things operated without her interference, but she hadn’t planned on being seated by someone’s side twenty-four-seven. None of Sawyer’s other contacts had required this level of attention from her.
“There was a taxi driver shot. I was in his cab when it happened. Whisk fetched me from the police station.”
“Oh God. Are you okay?” Dexter sounded genuinely concerned.
Right. Normal people didn’t brush off someone next to them being shot. Fortunately, Lisa didn’t have to fake that part of her personality. “Alive. Unhurt. I mourn for the man’s family. I’m concerned I may have been the target.”
Dexter stared at her, brow furrowed, and shook his head. “Sure. I’m glad you made it back safe.”
“Thanks.” She was going to have to ask if she could work here. And figure out how to not distract him, and at the same time not give him any information that could shut down her operation. “Whisk was upset I’d left your side to begin with.”
“Does he expect you to sit by me all day, every day?” Dexter grabbed two glasses from the cupboard, filled them with orange Gatorade, and handed her one.
She gave him a polite smile and took a sip. The cold liquid hit her tongue, and the reality of how thirsty she was sank in. Lisa downed the glass in one long gulp, and he refilled it quickly. She finished half the second glass almost as fast, before going him a genuine, “Thank you. And yes, that seems to be exactly what he expects.”
“You strike me more as a hands-on kind of woman, rather than one who gets off on watching.” He winked.
Lisa’s smile slipped out without her permission. “Observation has its benefits, but I do prefer to have my fingers in things.” Not what she meant. Oops.
His smirk said he hadn’t missed it. “Maybe next time you can slip a finger or two in me.”
“Only if you behave.” She couldn’t help but tease back.
“I might learn, for you,” Dexter said. “The place isn’t really made for two people to sleep in, but you can take the bed, and we’ll figure the rest out.”
She shook her head. “This is your place, and my purpose for being here is to keep you creating, not make you uncomfortable. I’ve slept worse places than an apartment floor. And it’s only temporary. When Whisk eases up, I’ll give you some space.”
“And take some for yourself, to get real work done?”
She raised an eyebrow.
Dexter shrugged. “No one has the kind of time that allows them to set aside their lives for a few days, to sit on a stranger’s floor. And you’re Queen of Hearts. You must have better things to do.”
She did. A mile-long list. “You’re my top priority.”
“Sure. But just in case, I work with earphones in most of the time, so if you need to make a few calls, it’s unlikely I’ll hear you.”
Lisa gave him a grateful smile. The understanding was nice and so very suspicious. But at least it was easier to deal with than Whisk. And there was still the matter of who was shooting and why. She reached for her phone. “Now would be a good time for you to put those on.”
Chapter Seven
Lisa did her best not to fidget, while Dexter slipped in his earphones and gave his attention to a fresh canvas. He glanced in her direction a few times, but soon he seemed to be lost in whatever muse had gripped him.
Maybe this job wouldn’t be too bad, after all.
Seeing him focused wasn’t enough to make her drop security protocol, but it did ease her mind a fraction about what he might hear and how he’d interpret it.
Lisa sent a secure email to one of her—Jabberwock’s—generals. Phil was Ten. Clubs, because he could get himself into any one of them. Sawyer hadn’t always been subtle when it came to giving his people names.
Need to know if we’ve got a guest in town who’s got a high-caliber skill set. And if we do, who’s he visiting?
She called Trinity next.
“Glad you’re safe.” Trinity must be nearby, watching, despite Dexter’s brush-off.
Lisa smiled both at the extra caution and the genuine concern in Trinity’s greeting. “Same for you,” she said. “You up for meeting another new person?”
“Always.” This time Trinity’s reply wasn’t so enthusiastic.
“Hatter’s got a friend in town, who invited me to dinner.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. I can’t make it. Would you and a few Hearts keep him company on my behalf?” In other words, she wanted Trinity to meet with Ephraim, and bring a few men to scope out the area. See who else was with the guy and get a bead on what he was up to.
“Sounds lovely.”
Lisa gave her the information from Ephraim’s card. She’d rather make this trip herself, with a massive amount of backup, but this was bad timing. “And be careful.” She meant it. Until they knew who the gunman was, everything was higher risk than normal.
LISA WAS JARRED AWAKE by someone gently shaking her arm. Instinct recognized she hadn’t fallen asleep in her room, she was seated, and the surfaces around her were hard and cold.
She still had her purse nestled under her arm. In a heartbeat, she’d withdrawn her pistol, straightened in her seat, and pressed the weapon to the temple of the person next to her.
“Whoa.” Dexter held his hands up and stepped back a few feet.
Lisa shook aside the rest of the sleep and lowered her gun. “Sorry.” Her heart hammered against her ribs. She needed to dial herself back a few notches if she was staying here indefinitely.
She slid the pistol back in her purse. “What time is it?”
“Eight in the morning.” Dexter was kind “I was up all night painting. I didn’t know if you had plans today, but you made work seem important, so I thought I’d make sure”
She didn’t want to enjoy his consideration. The happy thread that wove through her was dangerous. “Show me what you’re working on.”
He rolled his eyes but gestured to the canvas.
Lisa rolled the kinks from her neck as she stood, and crossed the room. The work was in the beginning stages, but the beauty shone through. The soft flow of the colors and lines expanded on the sketch he’d shown her earlier. This was even more stunning. And much easier to get from him than Whisk led her to expect. “It looks amazing.
”
“Glad I have your approval.” Sarcasm lined his voice, but a smile tugged up the corners of his mouth.
“I’m going to have someone bring us coffee and breakfast. Any requests?” she asked as she reached for her phone.
It rang as she picked it up, and Bill Whisk flashed on the screen. Eerily convenient. “Hello.”
Chapter Eight
“Morning, sleeping beauty,” Whisk’s greeting dripped with condescension.
She rolled her eyes, but would keep her tone pleasant. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your call first thing?”
“I missed my new fixer. And I need to see you in person.”
“Tell me when and where.” She snarled at the receiver. Had she missed a camera in the apartment? Was Dexter helping Whisk keep tabs on her? Or was his timing just that good?
“Now is fine. Be here in thirty,” Whisk said.
His demand with no room for argument increased her tension. “Deal.” Lisa disconnected. She turned back to Dexter. “I’m still happy to have someone bring you breakfast and coffee.”
“I’ll be all right.” He gave her a faint smile.
At least one part of this assignment was easy. Possibly too easy, but she needed to focus on the immediate threat. Currently that was Whisk’s hyper-attentive claim on her time.
Stress gnawed at Lisa’s senses. She reached Whisk’s building with fifteen minutes to spare, and still had no idea what she was going to say when she saw him. She lingered in the shadows, back from the street, but away from the building entrance, sifting through options.
Demand Whisk give her a different job.
Tell Whisk to go fuck himself, and walk away forever.
Turn on the charm until he finally caved and fucked her, and hope he wasn’t as much of a sadist in the bedroom as he was everywhere else.
She’d dealt with shittier circumstances, but that didn’t make her look forward to this one any more.
“Mr. Whisk says if you’re going to loiter, you may as well come up.” A deep voice interrupted her musing.
She whirled, her pulse hammering painfully in her eardrums. How did the large, generic security officer sneak up on her? It didn’t matter. “All right.”
Adrenaline swam in her veins, souring in her stomach, as they rode the elevator up. She hadn’t dealt with this kind of tension since Sawyer died. Though, this may be worse. Sawyer was predictable in his obsession. She wanted to apply the same logic to Whisk, but she hadn’t spent enough time around him to act on any assumptions.
She was shown into the same office as yesterday. Had it really only been a day? Her head throbbed, and a vein in her eyelid twitched.
Whisk half-leaned, half-sat on his desk, his arms crossed. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. If Lisa didn’t know any better, she’d think he was the average guy on the street—but sexier.
She did know better. A gorgeous package didn’t change the shit that lived underneath.
“I’m starting to think this loan of Jabberwock’s isn’t going to work out for me,” Whisk said as soon as the door closed behind her.
His tone, his stance, his overwhelming arrogance, fractured something inside her. She kept it together. “You’re right. Your artist needs someone more suited to his needs.” Not that she couldn’t handle Dexter, but being there night and day, and never knowing when Whisk was going to call next, was going to make it difficult to do her own job.
“You assured me you were here for whatever I needed. That you’d fix my problems. That you were the best.”
Where the fuck was this coming from? She’d stayed where he told her to. Slept. Gotten Dexter to paint....
Lisa wanted to cram his you’re supposed to be the best down his smug throat and watch the asshole choke on it. This time, that something inside snapped. A jagged, protruding break in her mind.
She stalked across the room, and stopped inches away from him. “I’m only the best when I’m not subject to someone else’s whims. Being the best means doing things on my terms. Working with autonomy. If you don’t yank your hand out of my ass, I can’t function.”
“A control freak like Jabberwock does that? Let’s you do whatever you want?”
Where was the retort about her liking his fist up her ass? She wasn’t going to point out the missed opportunity for him to degrade her. “If Jabberwock didn’t trust me completely, he wouldn’t have me here.” Which was true even when he was alive. “He tells me his final goal, and lets me accomplish it by my own means.”
“All right. Complete non-hypothetical situation—the final goal is to get one more painting out of Dexter. How do you accomplish it?”
She glared. “If you have to approve my plan, that’s not autonomy. I need to stay flexible.”
“Jabberwock may trust you implicitly, but I don’t trust him, and my lack of faith translates to you.” Whisk uncrossed his arms and rested his palms on the edge of his desk. He held her gaze. “Tell me, if I let you do this your way, right now, what’s your next step? And a couple of sample scenarios based on what may go wrong. Give me something to work with besides your bravado and your boss’s name.”
Lisa’s irritation burned with white-hot anger and sobriety. It was a reasonable request. She’d demand the same in Whisk’s place. “Next step is making sure Dexter has whatever he wants in order to keep working, which I leave him to do. I check in. While I’m not there, some of my most trusted keep an eye on things from a distance. My life doesn’t disrupt his. He gets your work done and that means I do too.”
“I have people on my payroll who can do everything you just said. What makes you different?”
“He’s painting again.” She didn’t try to hide her self-satisfaction. She’d drawn creativity out of him, in less than a day. “If you gave me this job to watch me fail, you’re going to be disappointed. I’ll accomplish what you asked me to, even without the motivation of spitting in your face when I’m done.”
Whisk’s smile was frighteningly seductive. He raised a hand toward her face.
She grabbed his wrist and dug her fingers in, staring him down. Was she shaking?
“So you can do more than spread your legs to get your way.” He didn’t try to pull away.
Fuck. This entire confrontation was a test. “Glad I could put your mind at ease.”
“Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, stop using your cunt as currency, and get the job done.”
Lisa let go of Bill and stepped back. Her entire body hummed. She’d been wrong. He was nothing like Sawyer. Bill Whisk was manipulative and smart, true, but he was also sane.
This was going to be harder than she thought.
Chapter Nine
Was the sniper Whisk’s too? Lisa rolled the last day through her mind as she headed back down to the street. How much of what she’d encountered was his doing, and how much was coincidence?
She’d need to up her game to get to him, or she’d end up like Sawyer. She was making too many assumptions; a bullet hole to the head would clash with most of her wardrobe.
Lisa didn’t flag down a taxi. If someone wanted to shoot her in the middle of the day, now was their chance. It wasn’t that she had a death wish, but she didn’t cower for anyone.
The summer air was hot and humid on her skin, carrying heavy accents of car exhaust and the scents from a few nearby restaurants.
What did she know? Odds were high running into Ephraim had nothing to do with Whisk. She wouldn’t put it past Whisk, but she’d done her research on Ephraim, and his moral flexibility wasn’t the same as Blake’s.
Unless he hides it.
Perhaps. But nothing could be hidden forever. Now that she had a little more free time, away from Dexter, she could return to her roots for a few hours and do some digging. Get her digital fingers dirty.
Speaking of Ephraim... She dialed Trinity.
“How’d the meeting go?” Lisa asked as a greeting.
Trinity was supposed to find Ephraim this morning. “Weird.”
Wonderful. Not. “Care to expand on that?”
“He was there alone. Nothing on him. No weapons. Electronics. Not even a phone.”
That was weird. Who traveled without a phone? If she weren’t so shocked, she might be jealous he was able to do so. Imagine, no assholes like Sawyer or Bill calling her, asking her to do their bidding because they were the men with the power.
But there had to be a catch, because Ephraim wasn’t stupid. “And...?”
“He got the drop on one of our guys.”
“Which one?”
“Two.”
Two of Clubs. As in, his fists were the clubs. Another one of Sawyer’s less than subtle names. Two was an MMA fighter from Russia. He looked big and dumb, but he had a one-forty IQ and had been Special Forces.
“And...?” Lisa repeated.
Trinity’s silence was filled with the sound of tires meeting pavement as cars drove past Lisa. “He left a message for you,” Trinity finally said. “That he wanted to see you. You don’t have to come alone, but it has to be you. And he gave you a way to reach him.”
Lisa liked this less and less. But it was the kind of problem she could pick her way through, as opposed to the labyrinth Whisk was trying to build around her. “How?”
“Call the Hilton. Ask for him by name.”
Lisa didn’t trust anyone who was so out in the open. Not that she trusted many people to begin with.
“There’s more,” Trinity said.
Lisa didn’t want more. “What?”
“A call was put out. A very general, very vague call. Everywhere.”
Meaning, all the usual sources—the deep web, certain chat rooms, and gentleman’s clubs. “Which was?”
“Cat looking for a royalty exterminator.”
Lisa’s step faltered. She had been Cheshire Cat to fuck with Sawyer and make him think he had competition on the outside. She’d picked the name because Alex’s nickname for her had been Kitten. “Keep me posted. And Trin?”
Painting the Roses Red Page 4
