“The life,” she repeated. Wayne had to be talking about sex trafficking. Was he trying to clean it up for her benefit? Or his own? “Is that how you refer to it?”
His response was accompanied with a grin. “Sounds a lot better than flesh peddling and sex trafficking, doesn’t it?”
It didn’t matter what he called it, it still was what it was, she thought fiercely. By any name, kidnapping young girls and forcing them or coaxing them into a life of sexual servitude was not only wrong, it was downright evil.
“A rose by any other name still has thorns,” she told him.
He inclined his head as if giving her version its due. “Nice twist—and also true. But I’m not interested in wearing a hair shirt and meditating on sin—unless, of course, that sin turns out to be entertaining,” he quipped, looking pointedly at her.
His answer was less than comforting. Maybe, just maybe, she couldn’t help thinking, she’d gotten in over her head and she was going to have to stay alert the whole time she was here.
Leaving briefly crossed her mind, but she had to admit that this man was still her best bet to work her way into the organization and find out where her sister was being kept.
Much as Tiana hated to admit it, right now she needed this man.
“I suppose it’s all in the way you view the word entertainment,” she replied.
He seemed to decrease the space between them without actually taking a step. It was his manner that did it. He could make all this sound very personal with just a look. Too personal, actually.
“How do you view it?” he asked her in a low voice that, though she hated to admit it to herself, seemed to undulate along her skin.
She knew she had to say something, but it really didn’t need to make that much sense. “That, lucky for you, is none of your concern.”
This time he did cut the space between them and stood right over her. “Try me.”
He was standing way too close, invading her space and she didn’t like that she could feel the heat rising from his body, reaching out to her. She liked even less that it was disarming her. How could she possibly be attracted to a man like this?
And, on the flip side, Tiana knew she couldn’t possibly have any allure for him—other than the fact that if he felt he couldn’t have something, like a spoiled child, that was the one thing he wanted.
Right now she was that one thing.
Tiana raised her chin. “I’ll pass.”
“Not interested?” Brennan asked, his tone somewhat amused. Ordinarily, the women he saw socially, when he had the opportunity to be himself, were around her age as well as her general description—although he had to admit he’d never gone out with a redhead.
He told himself to get his mind back on business.
“I said I’ll pass,” she pointed out. “Nothing was said about being ‘interested’ one way or another. Now, I think we’re both tired and we need to get some sleep. I’m willing to take the couch.” She nodded toward the piece of furniture that, all things considered, looked to be comfortable.
He was not going to go roundabout with her. There was a very practical reason for his decision. One he was not about to tell her.
“You’ll take the bed and that’s the end of it. I’m not chivalrous very often, so make the most of it.” He glanced toward the bathroom. “Since there’s only one shower, we’ll work out a schedule as to ‘who gets ready when’ in the morning.”
“I can hardly wait,” she deadpanned.
The smile on his face went straight to her nerve center, systematically destroying anything and everything it came in contact with.
And that was on a glass of water, Tiana realized. She was damn grateful she hadn’t had anything strong to drink, because God only knew what might happen in the next few hours if her guard was down and her inhibitions had gone off on a holiday.
“Me, too,” he concurred, commenting on her last crack.
She had to stop letting him affect her like that, she silently lectured. “I’ll get ready for bed first,” she told him. “Unless you have any objections.”
He shook his head, looking more endearingly charming than any man—especially given his profession—had a right to be. “Not a one.”
She slipped her weapon out of her purse and tucked it into her waistband. It was done purely as a warning. “By the way, in case you’re wondering, I’m taking my gun with me.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” he agreed with a straight face. “Careful not to get it waterlogged.”
He was making fun of her, she thought. The next moment, she upbraided herself for reacting in any fashion. It didn’t matter what he said. He could say whatever he wanted to as long as in the end he was instrumental in leading her to Janie. At that point, everything else would be balanced out.
Tiana was never one to take a long time getting ready for bed. There was no long, drawn-out ritual she undertook to make certain that wrinkles remained a word used on the side of enhancement bottles and didn’t set up residence on her skin.
Tonight she got ready probably faster than she ever had before. Eight minutes after she went into the bathroom, she came out again and was about to announce, “It’s all yours,” when she stopped dead in her tracks, stunned.
Wayne’s back was to her and she had emerged from the bathroom without making a sound. Years of moving around, trying not to wake her father who’d fallen asleep at the table after emptying a bottle of whiskey, had taught her how to be incredibly quiet. Consequently, the man called Wayne hadn’t heard her when she came out.
She couldn’t believe what it appeared he was doing. Oh, she knew exactly what it looked like, knew what he was most likely doing, but she heard herself asking, anyway, on the outside chance that maybe she was wrong. Maybe he could actually come up with a plausible explanation for going through her purse.
Although she highly doubted it.
“What are you doing?” she asked in a low, steely voice, pointing her gun at him.
The sound of her voice—he’d thought she was still in the bathroom—startled him, but he’d gotten years of practice at not reacting and he didn’t this time. Instead, he smoothly answered, “Looking for a cell phone charger.”
Well, that was certainly an imaginative response. “In my purse?” she challenged.
He nonchalantly closed her purse and put it on the coffee table in front of him. “Seemed like a logical place to start. I misplaced mine,” he explained with a shrug.
“That’s the best you’ve got?” she asked him incredulously.
“The truth is never fancy.”
He was good, oh, he was good, she thought. Not with the answers he came up with, but he did deliver them in an unflappable manner. However, unflappable or not, she wasn’t buying it.
She kept her weapon trained on him.
“The truth is also not anywhere close to what’s coming out of your mouth. Now, why are you riffling through my purse?” she demanded. She knew she should have taken it in with her, but she thought he’d use the time to look through her suitcase rather than her purse since there were more compartments for her to hide something—which was exactly why she didn’t keep anything incriminating in there.
If being caught in the act made him uncomfortable, the man staring down the business end of her weapon didn’t show it in the slightest. “I wanted to see if you were on the level.”
The man was very cool under fire, she had to give him that. “My word’s not good enough, I take it.”
“Not until I know you better.”
“What about all this I-got-your-back stuff?” she challenged.
“That’s what it is for now, ‘stuff.’ When and if I get to know you better, then our alliance might actually fall into the I’ve-got-your-back category.” He paused, knowing he was takin
g a chance and really pushing his luck, but his gut told him it would turn out all right. “Who’s the girl in your wallet?” he asked. “Is she the reason you’re looking for strawberry blondes?”
Tiana froze. The photo he was referring to was the one she’d been showing to people as she searched for Janie. There was another photograph in her wallet, as well. It was of the two of them, taken right after her sister’s graduation from high school. Someone she’d shown it to back in San Francisco had commented that he could see a strong family resemblance in that photograph.
Back then, it had been just her and Janie. Wayne hadn’t entered the picture yet.
She should have sheltered her sister more. But she’d done just the opposite, she’d loosened the strict, confining rules her father had imposed on Janie, letting her sister experience freedom of choice. She’d done it because she wanted Janie to feel independent, to make her own decisions.
Maybe if she had closed ranks, protected Janie a little better, all of this, including facing down a cocky flesh peddler, would never have had to happen.
Tiana bit her lip, trying to think. What did she do with Wayne now that he was onto her? She’d just started to trust him a little, too.
And that had been a big mistake, she realized.
The next minute, she raised her gun higher, as if to take direct aim at his chest.
“I’m really sorry you had to see that,” she said. “If you’d just left things alone...”
“Who is she?” Brennan asked again.
Oh, what the hell did it matter if he knew? Her cover, at least with him, was blown. Which meant he had to be eliminated as a threat. But how? She couldn’t just shoot him. She needed to have him locked up somewhere where he couldn’t get in her way or expose her.
“She’s my sister,” Tiana told him.
“And you’re looking for her.” It wasn’t a guess, it was a statement.
A sarcastic smile curved her mouth. “Give the man a prize.”
“Well, if you feel that way about it,” he quipped, turning on his charm, “you could start by lowering your gun.”
Instead, she cocked the hammer. “Think again,” she suggested.
His eyes never left her face. “You don’t want to shoot me.”
Her laugh was harsh and without any humor at all. “I repeat, think again.”
“If you discharge that weapon, the sound will bring security running. You won’t be able to get away.”
Just how naive did he think she was? “Ever hear of using a pillow as a silencer?”
He continued looking into her eyes. “You’re not a killer.”
“Well, there you’re wrong,” she told him, fishing out her cell phone. “Everyone’s a killer given the right set of circumstances.”
“These are not those circumstances,” he told her.
Unbelievable, she thought. The man had to have better nerves than she did. “You’re awfully cocky for a man with a gun pointed at him.”
“Remember what I said about needing to look into a person’s eyes when I talk to her?” he asked her. He didn’t wait for her to acknowledge the conversation. “Yours tell me you’re not a killer.”
Lucky guess, she thought as she opened her phone. “Mine aren’t saying anything to you. But for the record, I’m not going to kill you. But I am going to turn you over to the local police and let them deal with you.” To her surprise and no small annoyance, the man facing the business end of her weapon started to laugh. “What’s so funny?” she demanded.
He sobered slightly. “You’ll find out,” he promised. “The chief of detectives is a man named Brian Cavanaugh. You might ask to be connected directly to him,” he suggested. “It’ll save time.”
She was in no hurry to do anything he might have suggested. “Why? Is he in your back pocket?” Tiana accused. She couldn’t see any other reason why Wayne would tell her the name of someone in the police department to contact unless he had that man on his personal payroll.
The chief of detectives, no less—this man certainly didn’t believe in wasting time dealing with underlings.
“I promise you, Brian Cavanaugh is in nobody’s pocket, back or front,” Brennan told her.
She was not about to be lulled into complacency, or walk into a trap for that matter. “If you don’t mind, I’ll do it my way.”
He spread his hands innocently, then raised them again when she looked as if she was taking aim at his chest a second time. “Don’t mind at all.”
Wayne was being way too cooperative, Tiana couldn’t help thinking. Did that mean he intended to get the jump on her, overpower her at some point and then turn the tables by eliminating her?
She no longer knew what to think.
Brennan decided to try one last time to talk her down. “Look, you seem to be a decent enough person and I don’t want you to embarrass yourself by bringing me in—”
She was immediately suspicious—even more than she already was. “And just how would I embarrass myself doing that, ‘Wayne’?” she asked.
“Well, to start with,” he began, “my name isn’t Bruce Wayne.”
As if that hadn’t been hopelessly transparent. “Big surprise,” she taunted.
He disregarded her tone and continued talking. “My name’s Brennan and I’m working undercover to bring the ring down. The same ring you think has your sister,” he elaborated.
This man was really quick on his feet, she thought grudgingly. He wasn’t even breaking a sweat. She had a feeling, though, that if he’d been a character in a fairy tale, his nose would already be a mile long. “Of course you are.”
Brennan knew it was futile, but he told her, “It’s the truth.”
Now, there was a joke. “I don’t think you’d know the truth if it sat up and bit you,” she responded with contempt.
Tiana decided not to bother calling the station but just bring him in. She cuffed him with handcuffs she’d had hidden in the lining of her purse. To avoid attracting undue attention, she cuffed his hands in front of him and draped a jacket over the cuffs.
“Now we’re going to walk out of this hotel nice and slow and then I’m going to drive us to the police station, where they can throw you into a cell and you can rot for all I care.” The smile on her lips was forced. “Do I make myself clear?”
He supposed there was no other way to go about this. He wasn’t planning on overpowering her—although the thought had its tempting merits. But guns were not exactly a stable factor in this kind of a mix. They’d been known to discharge when two people wrestled for possession, and he didn’t want to take that chance. Besides, being handcuffed did put him at a slight disadvantage. Going along with her on this seemed like the best way that neither one of them would get hurt. And now he knew what she was doing there—and that she had to be exceptionally resourceful to have put together all the pieces and made it to this plateau in such a short amount of time.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” he agreed.
Red flags were going off all over the place. Something was off. “I can’t figure out if you’re being very cooperative or very stupid.”
“I’d go along with both if I were you. That way you hedge your bets and win either way. Ready to go any time you are,” he told her cheerfully.
He was being way too cheerful. Something was wrong, but she didn’t have the time to try to figure out what. Let the Aurora police department sort it out once she handed him over. Because then he officially became their problem.
“Better stay really close to me in the lobby,” he advised. “You don’t want me to make a break for it, do you?”
In response, she took hold of his upper arm, holding on to it as tightly as she could. He was rather surprised at the amount of strength she had. The woman had a lot of impressive things going for her.
“I’m glad you think this is such a joke,” she bit off.
“No joke,” he corrected. “Just being helpful.”
She ushered him into the elevator, keeping her weapon out of sight but nonetheless ready. “This doesn’t feel right,” she said aloud.
“What?”
“This,” she bit off. “You. Being so cooperative. It just doesn’t feel right.” She felt herself growing edgier. She had no idea what to be braced for.
“Maybe I’ve seen the error of my ways,” he said as they reached the ground floor.
“And maybe the moon is made of green cheese,” she retorted, ushering him through the lobby and out through the entrance.
“Maybe,” he agreed.
“Stop talking,” she ordered, hustling him over toward her vehicle.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied obediently. But as she pushed him into the passenger seat, then quickly hurried to the other side and got in behind the steering wheel, he broke his so-called silence by telling her, “You’ll want to take Jamboree Boulevard to Harvard. Can’t miss the building. It’s right smack in the middle between Jamboree and Main.”
This was getting to be very weird. She knew where the local police station was, having looked it up as a point of reference when she came to Aurora so she knew his directions were accurate. But that still didn’t answer her question.
Why was he giving her directions? Accurate directions? Did he have some kind of backup plan in case he was captured?
Was she walking into some sort of trap?
No one had followed them from Roland’s hotel; she’d paid strict attention to that.
Just what was this man’s game?
By the time she reached the police station, a short distance away, her nerves were all but peeled down to the core.
Chapter 9
“Okay, let’s go,” Tiana said, motioning her prisoner out of the vehicle once she had opened the passenger-side door.
Cavanaugh Undercover Page 10
