by Claire Marta
Mendez shouted to get to the door.
A hand grabbed Casey’s wrist. Training kicking in, she brought her free hand around, punching her attacker in the nose. Another swift blow to the solar plexus and he went down. Pushing her way frantically through the throng, she was in time to see her partner vanishing through the doorway to freedom. To her right, she caught sight of Ryan and Fitzgerald being hauled out by a couple of Hell’s Fury bikers.
Someone was going to take the fall for this shitstorm.
Casey prayed she wasn’t one of the agents in the line of fire when it came.
CHAPTER THREE
Casey wasn’t allowed to leave Vegas until Monday. The debriefing that the team suffered through had left them all in a sour mood. They were told that the auction had been moved before they’d arrived. The Vegas ATF office had caught whispers that someone had given away their undercover operation. It was still unknown who was responsible for the leak.
Packing up Sunday, most of them had drowned their sorrows at the hotel bar. Casey had spent the time researching the Hell’s Fury MC. She didn’t understand why they’d helped them out. Perhaps it was to piss off the rival gang. Maybe there was a deeper motive.
Hell’s Fury had a compound outside the city, but not much was known about them. She was no closer to answers when she flew back on Monday than she had been at the start.
Landing ten minutes ahead of schedule, she retrieved her car from long-term parking. Her mind shifted to home.
She hadn’t forgotten that two annoying thorns in her side had been left in charge of the apartment. Men she’d rather not have in her personal space.
Casey wasn’t sure what it was about them that made her feel violent. They were forever polite and courteous. Maybe it was the gaggle of fangirls who’d started stalking them, fighting over who brought them coffee. She was pretty sure they offered to warm them up in other ways.
Driving straight to Morgan’s workplace, she parked on the street and strolled toward the front. An earlier text from her best friend reminded her that she’d have to pick up the new set of keys for the apartment door that had been replaced.
She still wasn’t a hundred percent clear on what had happened to warrant its destruction, but she was determined to get some answers.
A flash of red caught Casey’s eye. Turning her head while she walked, she found Iosefa and Malik watching her from across the street.
Christ on a cracker.
She couldn’t catch a fucking break.
Iosefa was dressed in a trench coat and swathed in that trademark red knit cowl thing he wore. His nose ring stood out from the Samoan’s golden-brown skin. Some of his long, black hair had worked free of his ponytail and fell forward, partly hiding the other side of his face. His dark-eyed gaze was fastened on her, watching her intently.
Malik aka Sidepiece was dressed in a trench coat and a black felt fedora to protect him from the cold. Where Iosefa always looked intense or lost in his music, Malik’s hazel-brown eyes were lit with unexpected humor. Which was good. At six feet, four inches, the Egyptian could be intimidating if he wanted.
Iosefa was an inch shorter but still towered over Casey’s five-feet, eight-inch frame. Her height gave her an advantage in hand-to-hand combat, but her speed was her greatest asset. Unless impaired by alcohol, her reflexes were lightning-quick—something that could be problematic if she reacted without thinking.
She didn’t want to think about how they’d been in the apartment that she shared with Morgan. Unsupervised. Alone with their things…
Alone with her stuff.
Balling her hands into fists, she headed into the building, a woman on a mission, hoping like hell this one went better than the last one she’d been on.
The staff knew her from the times she visited before. After Casey explained why she was here, the receptionist buzzed her in. Taking off her coat, she went to the records room and found Morgan bent over a file, her red hair falling around her face, green eyes narrowed in concentration.
Standing by her desk, Casey stared at her friend, waiting for awareness to hit her.
Morgan jumped. Her head snapped up. “Jesus, you scared me! You're back!”
Casey nodded, slightly amused that her friend was so oblivious to the world around her. “I just flew in and I’m locked out until I get the keys.”
Apprehension pinched her friend’s expression. Reaching for her bag, she rifled through it until she found what she was looking for. Shiny new keys dangled from a B-52’s keychain featuring Casey’s favorite alternative rock group. “Here you go. Oh, and we’ll need to get groceries. I haven’t been home all weekend.”
Casey was pretty certain she knew where Morgan had been. It was suspicious enough all this had happened while Casey was away. If she hadn’t been in Vegas, no guard dogs would have been needed. She’d have been there to see that Morgan stayed safe. She’d have kept her from freaking out. More importantly, she’d have kept the girl’s ass at home.
Instead, Morgan had likely spent the weekend with Zac and Aiden. Granted, there was a chance one vulnerable woman and two smoking hot men had kept things platonic, but the color on Morgan’s face was shades beyond guilt over a door.
“Hmmm.” Casey arched an eyebrow and nailed her with a speculative look.
Morgan squirmed and flushed even more.
Casey smirked and checked her watch. “What time do you finish?”
Her roommate avoided her gaze, shuffling the files in an obvious attempt to cover her agitation. “I have a few hours to go. I get off at seven.”
“That gives me time to do some shopping. I’ll be back to pick you up and drive you home.”
They had plenty to catch up on. Casey wanted every detail. Morgan might preach client/counselor privileges when she was giving sessions at the Citadel but this was out of that realm. She’d stayed over. Spent the night. This was different and Morgan fucking knew it.
Rising from her seat, her roommate rounded the desk. “Come on. I’ll walk you out.”
Casey moved stiffly, annoyance radiating off her. She didn’t like that strangers had been in their space. Even worse, Zac and Aiden had used the incident to lure Morgan away and keep her for the weekend. They should have been the ones who stayed, not Malik and Iosefa.
Were they using Morgan for easy sex? Taking advantage of her generous nature?
Christ.
Casey needed a drink. She’d been forced to abstain on the plane with no food to buffer the effects. The flight was supposed to have lunch available but they’d run out of meals before they reached third fucking class where Casey was sitting, sandwiched between Ryan and Mendez who acted like misogynistic assholes, remarking on the flight attendants, the female passengers, and every showgirl they’d ever seen on The Strip.
More than alcohol, she needed food.
What sounded good?
“We could get pizza,” Casey suggested, still distracted by the thoughts tumbling in her head, from the clusterfuck in Vegas to the clusterfuck here.
Morgan made a face and shook her head vehemently. “Urgh, no. Anything but that, please. How about Chinese?”
Casey halted just outside the center’s waiting room door and put on her coat to keep out the winter chill. “Fine. We can pick something up on our way home. We can eat and have a nice... long... chat….”
The sound of footsteps interrupted her from saying more. Sauntering along the hallway appeared two drop-dead gorgeous men. Zac was dark, Aiden was blond. Her roommate’s clients whom she’d spent the weekend with.
Casey narrowed her eyes at the delicate color washing into Morgan’s cheeks, the way her gaze softened when she saw them. Christ on a cracker. It was worse than she thought. At least on her friend’s side, genuine feelings were involved.
Zac tore his gaze away from Morgan long enough to acknowledge her. “Casey.”
Aiden nodded.
“Boys.” Yeah, right. They were hardly boys, but Casey wasn’t about to encourage them.
“Casey’s just leaving,” Morgan blurted, nervous energy radiating off her in waves. “We’re having Chinese tonight.”
“Or Peruvian,” Casey hummed. “We’ll decide later. We’ve got all night to catch up, right? I mean, you don’t have a session you have to hurry off to that lasts longer than expected?” She rolled her eyes at the guys. “Overtime charges are a bitch, right?”
It was a catty comment but she wanted to goad them. See if she could stir things up a little. Neither male seemed to get it though, which Casey found a little frustrating.
“If you say so,” Zac replied. “Morgan, we will see you tomorrow. Be safe going home and enjoy your dinner. Casey, may we see you to your car?”
Um. That would be a hell, no.
Glancing out the window, Casey glared at Malik and Iosefa. They’d better not have touched anything in her room or she was going to hold all three of them accountable—Morgan included. Fuck, add Zac and Aiden to the list.
Rat bastards.
Morgan had told her they needed food, but Casey had no idea what was left, what was old, and what was lacking. Back at the apartment, she parked in her reserved spot and looked across the street to see two fresh faces watching her.
Their “guardians” must have had a shift change.
Ignoring them, she shouldered her purse and headed to their building, pulling her wheeled carry-on behind her and steeling herself for what she’d find when she got inside.
The exterior door was new but the old security code worked to unlock it. Their apartment door was a vast improvement over the old one, with extra deadbolts installed. Opening it, she stepped into the living room and breathed deeply, scenting the air like a bloodhound on the trail of a convict.
What. The. Fuck.
The place smelled better than new, like a cleaning service had been in. No trace of food. No hint of wine. No smell of something tossed in the trash and left to go rancid. Everything was perfectly in place. Not a speck of dust. Not a piece of lint on the carpet.
Funny, she didn’t remember it being quite this color.
It was… brighter. Fresher. Like new, except she knew that it wasn’t. No one would buy this shit and have it installed twice.
It was economy rental gray, not beige. Try matching a cheery decor to that.
Actually, they’d done pretty well, considering.
It was like Mary Poppins had waved a fucking wand and magically whipped everything back into shape. The place had been wiped clean, erasing every trace that anything had happened to scare the living daylights out of her friend.
A mob clean-up crew couldn’t have done better.
The thought was disturbing. What did Morgan really know about those men from the Citadel? They could be fucking Mafia. Or a cartel. Or or or…
Jesus. She’d spent too much time thinking about how to nail the Bratva. It was their fucking fault she’d gone to Vegas. If she wanted the chance to go deep undercover here, she needed to be seen there.
And her fucking boss had jumped at a chance to dress her like a slut.
He didn’t like her but they both knew that having a vagina gave her the advantage they needed.
Casey wheeled her carry-on into her room and opened it on the bed. At a glance, everything around her looked normal. She tossed her laundry in her hamper and began emptying her toiletry bag. Her deodorant went back on the shelf. Her entire makeup bag did, too. But when she went to put her hairbrush in the drawer, her brown covered rubber bands were on top of her black ones and not the other way around, which is how she always kept them.
Oh. No.
No no no no no.
She checked the trash can for used condoms. She wouldn’t put it past them to get off on some sort of sick power trip, being in command of her space without her here to object. Too bad she couldn’t do what her vengeful mind wanted without ending her career in law enforcement and landing behind bars.
One dresser drawer was imperfectly aligned. It was an old thing and the track was worn. You had to push it up from the drawer underneath to get it to fully close.
The cocksuckers hadn’t figured it out. Finding it like this was all she needed to prove that they’d been in her drawers. Malik and Iosefa had touched her things. She knew it! God damn them! She was going to have their balls for this! Twisted and crushed in a grip that could press fifty pounds. She’d teach them a lesson that they’d never fucking forget.
Casey was almost scared to open her dresser, afraid of what she’d find. They’d taken care to put everything back, but she could fucking tell.
She was already livid when she remembered that they were here overnight. If they’d slept in her goddamn bed…
She pulled back her burgundy duvet and bent over her pillow, sniffing the air and looking for clues.
Fuck. Her pillow smelled good.
Wait. Dammit. That’s not what she meant.
It had to be those oils of theirs. They’d bought Morgan’s soul with them, a sacrificial lamb for a vial of one of their special blends. This one was different. Decidedly masculine. A single, long black hair told her that Iosefa had been here. Malik’s hair was shorter. Curlier. He wore scruff, not a beard like Iosefa. Well, crap. The other pillow had a hair to match the Egyptian’s.
What the fuck? They’d both slept in her bed. Together.
Please, don’t tell me you fuckers were dancing in my sheets.
She ripped off the duvet and stripped her bedclothes. Tossing them in the hamper, she pulled one of her two spare sets of sheets from the shelf and remade the bed. As an afterthought, she checked her closet. Her gaze fell on a cardboard banker’s box at the bottom, the kind where you’d keep papers and receipts—anything worth saving but not worth taking space in the fireproof safe where she kept her service revolver.
Except this banker’s box held fetishwear—the kind of garments required for admittance to The Secret Garden Club. The private BDSM club was in a stately turn-of-the-century mansion on a residential street that bordered MacArthur Park. It was a place where she let off steam. Where she could unwind without the interference of the outside world. Everyone was masked. Anonymity for members was one of the reasons Casey had joined The Secret Garden Club. She’d played with plenty of partners but she hadn’t yet found a permanent Dominant. Although one of them came close to giving her what she needed, he was more than a little intimidating.
Parting the cardboard flaps, she felt her stomach tighten in anxious knots. Someone had moved her membership card. Usually tucked in the left spiked high heel, it was now peeking from the right.
Christ on a cracker.
They knew.
Her deepest, darkest secret and they knew.
Her need for kink was something private and intimate. They had no fucking right to invade her space. Invade her privacy. She’d never felt so violated. In her eyes, it was unforgivable.
CHAPTER FOUR
Casey picked up Morgan as planned. Dinner consisted of Thai food and unsatisfactory answers to her questions. It frustrated her that Morgan was putting her future at risk, getting involved with her clients. If anyone found out that she’d spent the night with Zac and Aiden, heads would roll.
Two of the guys from the Citadel followed them home and took up their station across the street. Not Malik and Iosefa, thank fuck. The way that she was feeling, she’d have gone ballistic on them. No, these men looked like the tea drinkers, Theo and Emmett.
“You put the food away,” she told Morgan. “I’m going to stash my gun.” Casey left her concealed-carry purse on the kitchen table and took her sidearm to her bedroom. Toeing off her shoes, she crossed to the bed, knelt on the floor, and reached underneath it, expecting to feel her fireproof safe… only what she found bore no resemblance to textured metal.
It felt like…
What the fuck?
She pulled out a garbage bag and opened it wide, her stomach balling into a hard knot when she saw what they’d done. The bastards had broken her brother’s baseball
bat—the one that could have landed him in the minor leagues except he’d been driven to serve his country, first as a Navy SEAL, then as a Special Agent with the ATF.
Nearly two years after his death, she was still looking for his killer.
She mourned his loss every day. It was always there. A constant shroud of sadness. her motivation Ben had been her everything growing up. Casey’s best friend as well as her older sibling. He was the reason she’d joined the ATF. His murder was her motivation, the driving force that propelled her on her path. She’d sworn to bring the one responsible to justice, whatever it took.
Tears stung her eyes as she held the broken shards of wood. Anger taking over, she stormed into the kitchen and held them out to show Morgan.
Her roommate turned from the refrigerator. Her large green eyes went wide with shock. “Oh, God.”
“I will kill them,” Casey grated through clenched teeth, her fingers tightening around the pieces in her hands. “Not really,” she added when she heard Morgan gasp. “I’ll kick them in their nuts and make them wish they were dead.”
A look of guilt washed over her friend’s features. “It wasn’t them. It was me. Jesus. I’m so sorry, Casey. I was already scared when I heard someone coming. I grabbed the bat like you taught me and hit them when they came through the door. I broke it on Aiden’s stomach.”
“Christ.” Casey stared at her. There’s no way that Aiden would escape some kind of bruising, yet he’d looked fine when she’d seen him. There was no sign of limping or wincing when he’d moved. She gave her roommate a pointed look that demanded answers. “How many ribs did you break?” she asked, sounding slightly facetious. “He was walking okay today. Must have a helluva level for pain tolerance.”
“Or abs of steel,” Morgan muttered. “How was your trip? Did you stay on the Strip?”
“The Strip?” Casey questioned, feeling a pinch in her stomach. She had a very bad feeling about this.
