“I could and I’m willing to do that as long as I have a means to an end. I’m not foolish enough not to see the danger I’m in. But I can’t do it indefinitely, Luke. When I say I need a real means to an end, I mean it. I have only me to count on.”
That punched him in the gut and then right in the heart. “You have me and I thought we just moved somewhere towards you knowing that.”
“I…We did. We did. But Luke, I have bills to think about.”
“I’ll help you if I need to.”
“No. I’m not taking your money. To get to that point would mean the career I have worked night and day was lost. If you think that’s where I’m letting this go, I’m not. I can’t. And the children’s charity is counting on me. I’ll lay low. I’ll skip work, but I won’t skip that.”
“Julie–”
“This is bigger than me or you,” she said, going to her knees. “Stop playing my protector and think about this rationally. I’m scared. I’m scared to death, but people, children, are dying from tainted drugs this bastard is selling them.”
“I’ll find another way to stop him.”
“We both know that the task force you talked about would have found a way in if they could. I can get you inside the operation, or I hope you’re right and I can.”
“No,” he said, pushing to his feet.
“No?” she demanded.
“That’s right. No.”
She stood up. “I’m going to get dressed and leave.”
He shot to his feet. “So now you’re going to be irrational and go home and get killed?”
“No,” she said. “I’m going to go to Royce and Lauren’s apartment where I’ll be safe and you can think.”
“I don’t need to think.”
“Yes,” she insisted, “you do. You need to think about waking up and reading about another dead child and knowing you could have saved that child’s life by taking down this cartel.” She stormed off and Luke stood there, tension curled in stomach, prickling every nerve ending he owned.
Damn it, he loved Julie. He loved her in this moment more than he’d ever loved her. She was gorgeous, and sexy, and successful because she was smart and she worked hard. But even more than that, she was scared and yet she was still brave, still willing to sacrifice for others.
He ran a hand over his face and tracked after her to the bedroom, where he found her setting her bag on the bed, to begin packing. “You aren’t going to back off of this, are you?” he asked, leaning on the door frame.
She abandoned the bag again and turned to him. “I can’t abandon this.”
“Then you do exactly what I say, how I say it, and when I say it.”
She walked to him and wrapped her arms around him, tilting her chin up to look at him. “I have no problem with that. Like I said, I’m not foolish, or without fear. A whole lot of fear actually.”
“If you don’t, I swear I will kidnap you and hold you hostage somewhere until I know you’re safe.”
Her expression softened. “I don’t want to lose you either.”
It was the closest thing to really admitting her feelings to him that she’d come, and he slid his hand behind her neck and pulled her mouth to his. “I’m not going to lose you.”
“Good,” she whispered before he kissed her and took her to bed, where he was going to do his best to convince her to stay until after Tuesday night, and the charity event with Judge Moore, was over.
***
At exactly noon on Tuesday, Gina walked into the lobby – if you could call it that – of the dingy El Toronto Hotel, unable to suppress the apprehension in her stomach. A long lunch spent reliving the past wasn’t appealing. Not that she was ashamed of being a sexual person, but doing it for pleasure, and doing it with a bunch of disgusting men to pay her bills was a totally different picture. She’d been good at it too. She knew just how to make those bastards come back for more, even when part of her prayed they wouldn’t.
Glancing around her surroundings she felt the sickening feeling of deja vu. One thing about New York, it did extreme well. The high end was glitzy, the low end absolute scum city. This was about as low as you could get.
Dingy brown walls, scraped up and scuffed floors, with two cheap, torn chairs as the only furnishings. She could smell the musty scent of sex, drugs, and filth as if it were a part of the very lining of the walls. Clearly, the judge was trying to make a point, to tell her just how low he believed she was, and how low those in the firm she now worked would as well.
She’d worked hard to get her life back on track and he wasn’t taking that from her. Gina headed down a hallway, and up the stairs. As she reached the third floor, she flipped the record button on her cell phone, making sure every bit of this encounter was recorded. She fully intended to turn the power upside down.
She found the room she needed and knocked, no hesitation, no reason to wait. The door flew open and Judge Moore waved her in, still fully dressed in a dress shirt, tie and slacks, but the sly smile on his face told her he didn’t intend to stay that way.
The door slammed behind her.
“Lock it,” he ordered.
She did as he said, flipping the latch.
He stopped at the edge of the bed. She stopped at the edge of the hallway leading into the room. “Take your coat off,” he said. “I’d hate for you to get hot.”
She set her purse down, leaving the folds open to allow the recorder the best reception. Her coat followed but she tossed it on the bed, making sure not to cover her purse.
His gaze raked over the white lace blouse she’d changed into before arriving. It dipped low to reveal her ample cleavage and she’d paired with an equally seductive slim figure-hugging black skirt. The blatantly lustful look on his face let her know, that despite his almost ex-wife being barely in the ground, he intended to fuck her. She knew that already. Only one question remained: what else did he want?
“Like what you see, Judge?” she asked.
“Don’t most men?”
“I didn’t ask about most men. I asked about you.”
She sashayed to him, letting her hips do a sultry dance, stopping in front of him, letting him know she wasn’t about to wilt under this threats. “What are we doing here, Judge? Or should I say, Master?” She glanced around the room. “I would have thought you’d have chosen a nicer place.”
“Isn’t this the kind of place you prefer?”
“I moved up from this years ago, honey,” she said. “I like my hotels plush and my men loaded. I hope you have lots of cash. I’m expensive.”
He laughed. “So you don’t mind if I pass your card out to your employers? There are eleven men and Julie, aren’t there? I bet we could get you a promotion.”
Her lips twitched as her gaze dropped to the bulge in his pants. “What is it you want besides the obvious, Judge?”
“It’s simple enough,” he said. “I want information on your boss and anyone she comes in contact with. Passwords to her private files, records of her calls, anything with my name on it, as a top priority.”
She clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth, seeing her chance for a turnabout. “Sounds like a big order. What will I get in return?”
He looked down at her breasts. “What we do,” he said, tearing his gaze from her cleavage, ”which I intend for us to do often, will be our little secret. Just as what you’ve done in the past will be as well.” He reached out and shoved her blouse and her bra down to expose her nipples, teasing them with his fingers. And damn, if her body didn’t respond, as it always did, even when she hated the bastard like she did this one.
“There is one condition,” he said with a raspy voice.
She quirked a brow, trying to ignore the way his fingers were arousing her. “Which is?”
He ignored her question. “Unbutton your blouse,” he ordered.
She didn’t hesitate. Her fingers worked the buttons quickly. His lust was her power. She went down on her knees in front of him, her hand striki
ng his zipper. “I’ll give you what you want, all of it – pleasure and satisfaction. For fifty thousand dollars I’ll even get you your dead wife’s journal.” It was a mistake. He had her up and shoved against the wall in two seconds flat. “What journal?”
Her heart thundered in her ears but she recovered from the initial surprise of his attack. It wasn’t the first time she’d been roughed up. “I told you for fifty-”
He shoved a hand to her throat. “You have no idea what you are into, bitch. What journal?”
Gina grabbed at his hands, gasping for air. “Let go,” she squeaked. “Let…go.”
“You going to tell me what I want to know?”
“Yes. Yes.”
He loosed his hold on her neck but didn’t let go. “I heard Julie talking to someone named Diana about a dead person’s journal. I did some research and figured out that’s Elizabeth’s sister.”
“Where is it?”
“She and that Walker brother have it,” she hissed.
“You’re going to get it for me and you can forget the fifty-fucking thousand dollars. The only one who’ll be paying anything is you if I don’t get it. That price will be your life. The people I work with will bleed you dry to get what they want and then make you disappear.”
***
Judge Moore sat on the edge of the lumpy mattress and dropped his head into his hands. “Shit,” he mumbled letting the word echo through the empty room.
He had gotten himself into a hell of a mess. If Arel found out he had done him wrong he would be a dead man. Just hearing his wife had caused more trouble would be enough to make Arel mad enough to draw blood. If Arel ever found out he and Dragonfly had double-crossed him, they’d be digging their own graves.
He picked up the hotel phone, knowing the call wouldn’t be traced because no one would ever know he had been there. The line rang three times before he heard a clipped hello.
“We have problems,” he said without any greeting.
“Damn you, I told you to never call me at work.”
“Unless you want Arel to know his trusted man Dragonfly did him wrong, you’d better listen.”
Silence greeted him for several long moments in which he could tell the other man was walking, probably to privacy. Finally, he said, ”Go on.”
“My wife had a journal which she gave to her sister. I doubt it exposes us to the police, but she saw you with me several times. We need that journal so Arel can’t get to it.”
A series of muffled curses rumbled across the line. “So I’ll do the sister and get the journal.”
“She gave it to Julie Harrison and if you kill either of them, you know damn well it’s going to bring attention on me.”
“No bodies, not murder. Believe me, I know how to make people disappear.”
“And if you bring me down, I’ll take you with me.”
More silence. “What do you propose we do then? Sit on our fucking hands?”
“I have someone close to Julie who’s going to get me the journal. Once we know what’s inside, we can decide what to do about anyone who’s read it.”
“When will you have it?”
“Soon.”
“Get it and get it now, because if you don’t make me feel as warm and fuzzy as a school girl in pink quickly, I’ll deal with this my way.”
The line went dead.
Chapter Sixteen
Tuesday flew by for Julie. She stood in Luke’s bathroom, dressed in an emerald silk knee-length gown, applying her lipstick, and wondering where he’d gotten to. They’d spent the afternoon at the gallery readying it for tonight, and Luke had used the excuse of helping her to plant some surveillance equipment. The charity event included a live band and the dancing began at seven. Fortunately there were volunteers the door, so she didn’t have to be there any longer than she had to be without Luke. Her nerves were jumping all over the place, but worrying about him was making her crazy. He and one of his men were going to break into the judge’s house while he was at the event and look for the safe Elizabeth mentioned in the journal. And while she knew Luke was an ex-SEAL, she also knew exactly what she’d told him back at the airport. SEALs could die, too.
Voices carried from the other room and she grabbed her small cocktail purse from the bed and went looking for Luke. She found him and Blake both in all black, and there were two other, also very good looking, men – one with a short, military cut, the other with longish blonde hair that curled at the ends.
Good lord, she thought. Their mothers must have taken some sort of hormone to breed hot men. There was so much testosterone in the place she was afraid the apartment might go up in flames.
Luke pulled her under his arm, his big body warm and wonderful, and she clung to him. She didn’t want him to die.
“I told you about the task force that’s in on tonight. They’ll be nearby watching, but we have our own team in place, and they are the only ones you are to trust, ever. I don’t care who shows you a badge, the people in this room are the people you listen to.”
“Okay,” Julie said. “Do we think there’s a problem with the task force?”
“We have a judge involved and the Dragonfly who has yet to be identified. We aren’t taking any chances.” He motioned to the dark haired man. “This is Jesse. He’s going to be driving the cab that is taking you to the gallery.”
“He’s a former NYPD detective,” Blake said, leaning against a counter, arms folded. “We couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t be recognized at the event so he’ll stay out of sight. He’ll be nearby if you need him though.”
Jesse gave her a two-finger salute. “Your chauffeur awaits, madam.”
Julie tried to smile but failed and Luke tightened his grip on her, as if he sensed how tense she was. She didn’t want him to go tonight, and it was all she could not to turn to him and beg him not to.
Luke motioned to the other man, the blond. “And this is Kyle. He’s our tech expert and if there is a safe in the house, he can get in.”
“He also removed the snake from Lauren’s apartment when she had that crazy man stalking her a while back,” Blake mentioned, referencing the hell that Lauren had gone through that had led to her leaving the District Attorney’s office.
“That would be me,” Kyle said, and lifted the lid to a small steel case on the counter before flipping it around for her to see what looked like some sort of tiny chip. “This will be your mic. Blake will be on the other end until I take over for him, at which time, you’ll have Luke back with you as well.
“You so much as need an escort to the bathroom you just say the word and I’ll be there.” Blake added.
Julie nodded. “Thank you, Blake.”
“And he was serious about saying a word,” Blake added. ”I need ‘a word’. Something you can say discreetly that lets me know you need me.”
For an attorney known to think on her feet, Julie’s mind was utterly blank. “I don’t know.”
“Apple,” Blake said. “Orange. Oh what a beautiful day it is. A spoon full of sugar.”
Julie actually laughed at that. “A spoonful of sugar?”
“It makes the medicine go down,” he said, with a nod.
Julie shook her head and glanced at Luke. “You have a very strange brother.”
“Yes,” Luke said. “I know.”
“We all know,” Jesse agreed.
“Pride myself on it,” Blake said, “and I still need that word or even a phrase that tells me you’re in trouble. I’ll have limited visual.”
Julie thought a moment about what would be easily used in the mixed company she’d be in. “How about ‘I have a headache’?”
The men all laughed. Julie’s brows furrowed. “What’s so funny about that?”
“Almost every woman given this question comes up with that answer,” Blake supplied. “It’s like all females are born with that excuse in their psyche.”
“That’s your discreet ‘help’ call,” Luke said. “If you feel like the situatio
n merits Kyle and Jesse coming with guns drawn, you say ‘I think I’m getting a migraine.”
Her stomach knotted. He was about to leave. “Okay.”
Luke slapped the cover down on the mic and picked it up, then twined the fingers of his one free hands with hers. “Let’s go get you wired.”
She nodded because suddenly her throat was too tight to form words. A few minutes later they stood in the bedroom by the bed, and Luke used some sort of adhesive to stick the device on the inside of her bra.
His fingers skimmed her neck. “Don’t leave the building and stay in the highly populated areas of the function until I get to you. It’s killing me to leave you.”
“Then don’t,” she said, her hand grasping his wrist. “Please don’t go to the judge’s house. He’ll have moved anything of importance after Elizabeth’s threat.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But we have to try, and tonight when his main collection is on display will make it easier to see what is left behind.”
“Just come to the party with me, Luke, please. I have a bad feeling about all of this.”
“If I didn’t think my experience was critical to doing this, I’d send someone else, but I know how to get us in and out unnoticed. And Blake would die to protect you or I’d never even consider this.”
“I don’t care about me. I care about you. Just don’t do this at all.”
His expression softened. “I care about you and you said you wanted a means to an end. And as much as I want to lock you away someplace safe, I know it’s not realistic. That means I have to find answers and end this. I have to a look in the judge’s house and his safe.”
“It’s my fault you’re even in this.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “And anywhere you are, I want to be, including at the party. So I’m going to go get this over with so I can join you.”
***
Julie spent the first thirty minutes inside the Manhattan Museum of Art checking on every detail to make sure the event was going well. More than anything, she didn’t want to think about what could be happening to Luke. That meant staying busy, which also allowed her to avoid the judge, and, for that matter, anyone who might want to kill her.
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