Tiana knew she had no choice. If she protested, he’d just leave her here. Possibly in the same condition as Wayne was in. For that matter, she still wasn’t a hundred percent convinced that this so-called Bruce Wayne wasn’t the one who’d killed Wayne in the first place. The latter had always struck her as being almost too stupid to live, but discovering she was right was of no great consolation to her. He could have at least remained alive long enough to tell her where Janie was.
She struggled to contain her impatience and concern. “All right, have it your way, ‘Bruce,’” she said.
Brennan flashed a quick smile in her direction. “I usually do.” He said it without bragging or bravado. It was just a stated fact. “My car’s right outside,” he told her, finally leading the way out of the room. He paused to look around, as if to make certain that the area was still deserted. It was.
The sunlight seemed extra bright as she walked out of the dingy, dimly illuminated motel room, and she squinted for a moment, trying to acclimate her eyes to the pronounced change. In doing so, she didn’t see the rock right in front of her. Stubbing the toe of her shoe on it, she tripped.
Instinct had Brennan reacting to the faint, telltale noises. He turned around just in time to catch her and keep the supple handful from making direct contact with the ground.
It all happened very fast, less than two beats of an old-fashioned clock, but even so, he was exceptionally aware of the softness of her body as it made contact with his.
As was she. He could tell by the very startled look in her eyes—which had flown wide-open.
“You make more headway if you keep your eyes open,” he told her, amused.
“So they tell me,” Tiana snapped, brushing herself off.
Since he’d caught her before she’d actually had a chance to hit the ground, he could only guess that she was attempting to symbolically brush away any trace of contact with him.
Was the lady protesting too much? he wondered. Or did she find him as compelling and intriguing as he found her?
“Car’s right here,” he pointed out.
Raising his hand, he pressed the security release on his car key. The silver BMW that had been recruited especially for this part he was undertaking softly whispered that its doors were now unlocked.
He waited until she opened the passenger-side door and got in before he followed suit himself on the driver’s side.
She slid onto a seat that would have made butter seem unusually hard and brittle. Without thinking, she feathered her fingertips along the side of the seat appreciatively. “Business is good for you, too, I see.”
The implication wasn’t wasted on him. She was telling him that she was doing well in her chosen field.
“Can’t complain,” he said. He started the car with another press of a button.
“A person can always complain,” she countered.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “But nobody likes to hear complaints. Makes them unreceptive to the person. Me, I always believed in counting my blessings.”
She looked at him in disbelief. Was this man for real? She couldn’t decide one way or another. Her immediate gut feeling would have been to say no, but there was something about his tone of voice that told her she was being made privy to the truth, strange as it might sound.
“An optimistic pimp,” she marveled as they left the parking lot behind them. “I don’t think I’ve ever encountered one before.”
“Then you need to broaden your social circles,” he quipped.
Tiana pretended to think it over before she inclined her head. “Maybe,” she allowed.
“And for the record,” he told her matter-of-factly, “I’m not a pimp.”
“A procurer?” she suggested. When he made no answer, she said, “Okay, what would you call yourself if you were filling out a résumé?” she asked loftily. “A matchmaker?” She laughed.
“A businessman,” he corrected in all seriousness. “A pimp is someone who deals with the dregs of society, pushing them into the arms of their destruction for a hefty cut of their earnings.”
She’d never heard it described that way. “You really are into philosophy, aren’t you?” she marveled. “Either that, or you’ve learned just the right way to appease your conscience.”
“Conscience has nothing to do with it,” he assured her. Then, out of the blue, he asked her, “How about you?” When she looked at him quizzically, he elaborated on his question. “How did you get into this line of...work?” he finally said when the right word seemed to be eluding him.
“Quite by accident, actually,” she answered.
“Explain,” he urged.
“It’s a long story for another day,” she told him. When I can come up with the story. Out loud, she said, “When I know you better.”
“We can take care of that little detail any time you say so,” he assured her, his meaning made crystal clear by the smile on his face.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she answered. And I’ll keep you at a distance. It’ll be much safer that way, she added silently, although she had a feeling that “safe,” much less “safer,” was not going to be something she would feel until she and Janie were as far away from here as possible.
And as far away from this man as possible, she added as an afterthought.
Chapter 4
The Aries Hotel with its understated opulence and its refined ambience was the complete opposite of the dingy motel where she’d tracked down Wayne. Tiana was confident that the average price of one room in the hotel was more than the combined sum gathered from all the rooms at the motel.
“What are we doing here?” Tiana asked, addressing the question to the back of “Bruce Wayne’s” head as she followed him through the hotel’s revolving door.
“You said you wanted to meet the man I’ve been dealing with,” Brennan reminded her as he waited for her to join him.
“He’s staying here?” she asked, scanning the immediate vicinity.
Realizing that the man who was essentially her guide for the moment had kept on walking, she hurried to catch up with him.
She managed to reach him just as “Wayne” reached a bank of elevators located at the far end of the floor, a few feet beyond the registration desk.
Brennan nodded. “He has a suite near the top floor.”
“And you?” she asked, not really sure what had prompted her to ask, other than she was attempting to live up to the image of a madam she was creating. “What do you have?”
An elevator car’s door slid soundlessly open in front of them.
Brennan looked at her pointedly as they walked into the empty elevator car. He pressed number 30. “An itch I can’t scratch—yet.”
Was he actually putting her on notice, she wondered, stunned. “Saving yourself for Miss Right?” Tiana deadpanned.
The spontaneous laugh was deep and rich and all-encompassing within the small space. And, if she allowed it, it was also hypnotic in its own compelling way. Tiana did what she could to block the effects. Beyond his being good-looking, she knew nothing about the man. He could be a homicidal maniac for all she knew, even though her gut told her that he most likely wasn’t.
“There’s no such thing as ‘Miss Right,’” Brennan told her.
“How do you know?” she asked, deciding to give him a hard time. “Just because you haven’t encountered her yet doesn’t mean she’s not just around the next corner.” As far as she was concerned, there were a great many “Miss Rights” out there. The main problem was that there were no “Mr. Rights” to receive them.
Numbers flashed by as they passed each floor. Brennan stared at his companion as if she’d lost her mind. “Never met a madam who was into fairy tales. How long did you say you were in this business?”
“It feels like all my life,”
she responded, infusing just the right amount of weariness into her voice.
They got out and he led the way down a winding hallway to a recessed door that appeared to be removed from the other rooms. This was clearly a suite among suites. Whoever this man was, Tiana thought, he certainly knew how to enjoy the fruits of his labors.
“Any word of advice?” she heard herself asking the tall man beside her.
She had to be crazy, but there was just the tiniest part of her that trusted this man—which on the face of it was nothing if not a foolhardy move on her part. Other than not really knowing this man from Adam, she realized again that she could very well be allying herself with a stone-cold killer. She had no way of knowing who or what he was. Why she should feel that she could trust him was a concept that was completely beyond her.
Since when had she turned into a trusting soul where men were concerned? a small voice in her head asked. She had no answer.
“Yeah,” Brennan told her after a beat during which time he appeared to be weighing the pros and cons of answering her question at all, much less truthfully. She might, after all, be trying to trap him. For all he knew, she was allied with Roland and had been sent to test him.
Maybe he was crazy, but he decided to take his chances—up to a point.
“Don’t let your guard down around Roland for a second. He’s a narcissist, but he’s the type who wouldn’t think twice about slitting your throat if he thinks you’re lying to him—or if he believes that you went against him.”
“Doesn’t sound like he’s going to be winning any Mister Nice Guy awards anytime soon,” she quipped drolly.
“That’s not his bottom line, no,” Brennan agreed. He knocked on the door and it opened immediately.
A veritable giant of a man was standing in the doorway, blocking any access to the suite. She guessed he had to be about six foot six at the very least and he looked as though he weighed more than the two of them combined—perhaps even with Janie thrown into the mix. The seams on the suit he was wearing appeared to be stretched to the limit.
“Bodyguard?” she asked Brennan.
“More like all-around everything guard,” he answered, never taking his eyes off the man.
The giant with the close-cropped blond hair regarded her through slits where his eyes should have been. The extra fat he was carrying in his face had all but crowded out his eyes, giving him a permanent squint that made the man’s face look more ominous and menacing than it already did.
Recognition was evident in his eyes when he looked at her companion and he allowed the man to pass, but as she began to follow, he placed one hand against her upper torso, holding her back.
“Just him,” he rumbled, his face unsmiling.
Brennan didn’t attempt to remove the bodyguard’s hand because it would be like trying to move a tree trunk. There was no pitting his strength against the giant’s outright.
Instead, he looked at the man authoritatively and said, “She’s with me. It’s okay.”
The bodyguard appeared to roll the matter over in his head; then he dropped his hand and inclined his head, as if to say she was allowed to pass. This time.
Swallowing the heart that had climbed up to her throat, Tiana glared at the bodyguard and told him in a voice filled with barely suppressed fury, “Don’t you ever lay a hand on me again without an invitation.”
Both men looked surprised at the bravado erupting from such a small, compact source. Brennan allowed a smile to slip over his lips.
“Pretty gutsy of you,” he commented as they moved farther into the suite. “You do realize that he could easily have broken you in half like a twig without even half trying.”
“I realize,” she answered, her voice giving away nothing. She was silently relieved that it didn’t crack and give her away.
The suite, she thought as she got a better look at it, was huge. Bigger than some houses. Definitely larger than the house where she and Janie had grown up. Business had to be very good.
The thought made her sick to her stomach. She wished she could take the man out right now, bring down his operation. But arresting Roland wouldn’t get her anywhere. She needed tangible evidence.
“Should I be dropping bread crumbs?” she asked the man in front of her.
They had taken a couple of twists and turns within the suite and she was trying to commit each step to memory, but she really didn’t like leaving anything to chance in case a quick getaway was necessary. The size of the place was overwhelming.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take you back,” Brennan promised in a soothing voice.
She looked at him. He was acting as if they were on some ordinary stroll through the park instead of walking through a very sick bastard’s temporary living accommodations.
“Why should I believe you?” she asked.
That was a simple enough question to answer. “Because you have no choice.”
He was right and she hated him for it. Hated the fact that once again, everything was all on her shoulders and she had no one to look to, no one to trust or share the burden with. Her sister’s life depended on what she did here.
If it’s not already too late, a small, nagging voice whispered in her head. She clenched her hands at her sides as she blocked the voice.
Instead, she made a silent pledge—not her first—to her sister. Hang in there, Janie. No matter what, hang in there. I’ll find you. I swear I’ll find you.
They entered what looked to be a sitting room. It was decorated entirely in stark white, which made the room appear twice as large. The only color in the immediate area was provided by the two men on the opposite sides of the room and the man in the middle who they were obviously paid to protect.
The deeply tanned guards appeared as if they were interchangeable, somewhat smaller versions of the guard at the front door. Both men were wearing dark navy blue suits, white shirts and dark ties. Each had a telltale bulge beneath his jacket, which Tiana assumed was caused by their not-so-concealed weapons.
The suits had to be specially tailored, she guessed, because the twin guards, like the man at the front door, were hulks in their own right.
The man in the center, looking out on the terrace with his back to them, was a great deal smaller heightwise. But he was far more imposing when he turned around to face them. While the guards were a compilation of sheer muscle and brute strength, the thin, dark-haired man had an aura of intelligent evil about him.
His eyes, as they passed over them—or accurately, over her—were flat. They were eyes that might have belonged to a dead man for all the expression that they had in them—except that she was fairly certain this man missed nothing.
Granted she spent most of her time in the lab when she was at work, but she could definitely recognize evil when she saw it. And this was the worst example of evil she had ever seen. It took effort not to shiver in its presence.
“You brought me a gift?” Roland asked Brennan. Approaching Tiana, he circled around her slowly as if she were an inanimate object, like a painting or a vase that had been given to him.
“No, she was in the motel room when I got there. He’s dead, by the way,” Brennan told Roland. “The kid you wanted me to check on. He’s dead.”
“You?” Roland asked, his implication clear.
“No,” Brennan answered, wondering if all this was part of an elaborate game. He was fairly certain that Roland had been the one to have the young man killed. “I didn’t kill him. He was already dead when I got there.”
Roland raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “You?” he asked, turning toward Tiana.
She shook her head, hoping she could keep the charade up long enough to find her sister. “No, I found him that way. Someone got to him before I could.”
“The whore has a mouth on her,” Roland announced with a nod.
It was difficult to say whether there was admiration in the man’s voice or if what they were hearing was the calm before a storm.
Not taking any chances, Brennan remained alert. He knew that things could turn on the head of a pin at any moment.
“She also isn’t a whore,” Tiana informed him with a toss of her head that seductively sent her flame red hair over her shoulder.
The appearance of amusement in Roland’s features increased. “Oh, really?”
“Really,” she confirmed in a no-nonsense tone of voice.
“You brought along your girlfriend?” the man questioned, as if he believed the woman’s disclaimer.
“Why don’t you talk to me instead of him?” Tiana proposed, making her voice sound as arrogant as the man she was speaking to. “Especially since he doesn’t speak for me because he doesn’t know me.”
“Is this true?” Roland asked, looking at Brennan. What the man was thinking was impossible to gauge.
Brennan had no choice but to tell the truth without knowing where that might lead. “I just met her in the motel room.”
“All right, who are you?” There was an unspoken threat in the man’s voice that forbade her to say anything but the truth. It went without saying that it would go badly for her if she lied.
She said the lines that she had been practicing ever since she’d asked for a leave of absence. “I go by Aphrodite Starling and I’ve come with a business proposition for you.”
The cold, dead eyes never left her face. “I’m listening.”
“I run an escort service of young ladies, emphasis on the word young,” she began. “Some of my girls have aged out, shall we say? I’m in the market for replacements. I need fresh talent. Word has it that you have fresh talent,” she told him, forcing herself not to look away. If she did, she knew he would take it as some kind of weakness—or worse. She had to win him over and do it fast.
“I might,” he said vaguely, as if they were talking about a tool she wanted to borrow from his garage.
She kept it conversational, as if he was her first stop, but not necessarily her only one.
Cavanaugh Undercover Page 5
