In a Bad Way

by Karin Tabke

  His disdain for women like the ones his father brought home went deep. How the hell he’d gotten tangled up with one was beyond his comprehension. He could only blame it on one thing: lust.

  He’d been celibate for months, working a task force that didn’t give him time to sleep, much less socialize. He was overdue for a healthy romp. Let’s face it, Pink had caught all their eyes. Flynn saw the way the single guys in the room watched her. He knew damn well the same thoughts and images that had thundered through his mind straight to his groin had thundered through theirs, too.

  Flynn slammed his hands against the steering wheel. He winced at the pain that shot through his left hand. “Why the hell does she have to show off her tits?” he yelled at the dashboard.

  Part of him knew he was being unfair.

  Izzy wasn’t a stripper, she was a cocktail waitress at a bikini strip club. Nothing like the women his father had fucked. Not typical of the breed at all. Not even close. She had a Marilyn Monroe naïveté about her. Hell, she even looked like her. Big doe eyes, little nose, cupid’s bow lips, skin as smooth as silk. Knockout curves. Pink was just a younger, more contemporary, spicy version of the icon. That breathless voice and ethereal innocence drew him to her like a moth to an open flame. That she did that to him drove him nuts. The insanity controlled him, not the other way around.

  That loss of control compelled him to keep reminding himself—she was working the floor at a strip club, strutting around in a barely there scrap of a uniform leaving nothing to the imagination. And she had attempted to drug him and make a damn sex video! He got it, it was for her sister, but where was he supposed to draw the line on how far he could go with it?

  It was his lust that had him seeing more in her.

  So why did he pound the shit out of that guy at the restaurant? He’d never fought over a woman or for one.

  His hand throbbed each time he clenched the steering wheel. The pain was worth breaking that bastard’s nose. He’d do it again. The wounded animal sound that came from Pink when she realized what was happening to her cut him in half. Didn’t matter that she should expect that type of thing to happen; the pain in her eyes had been too much for him to ignore. Dude had to pay.

  Flynn roared down his street and into his driveway, coming to a screeching stop at the garage door. Rigidly, he sat there in his car, the engine rumbling beneath him, not ready to call it a night. Neither was Flynn. He’d toss and turn until the sun came up, unable to get the smell of bubble gum out of his head.

  “Fuck it all to hell.”

  He shifted into reverse, backed out of the driveway, then downshifted and headed downtown.

  Simon’s text earlier in the day had given him some cursory info on Sorlov, with the promise of more intel to come. Flynn wanted more now.

  A pot of coffee and hours later Flynn sat glued to his computer screen in his office at the FBI Field Office in Oakland. Pink was in way over her pink and blond head.

  Boris Sorlov aka Vladimir Chermensky, a Ukrainian-born terrorist, was not only on the FBI’s radar, but there was a task force in place, comprised of men Flynn had worked with, some of whom had gone deep and infiltrated the terrorist’s infrastructure. Surf’s Up was just one of Chermensky’s numerous enterprises.

  The Ukrainian’s criminal tentacles were many and far-reaching: Predominantly human trafficking, arms, drugs, classified information gathered and sold to the highest bidder, in most cases the Chinese. And Pink was smack dab in the middle of it. Had her sister stumbled onto something that got her into trouble? Had Chermensky made sure she would never speak of it? More curious to Flynn was the question of why the hell hadn’t the senator reported his daughter missing. Flynn had double-checked the state and national data banks. Nothing. He checked Alexandra Chastain’s last known address. Her parents’ Piedmont address. Didn’t make sense.

  Flynn sprawled back in his chair, and locking his hands behind his head, he stared up at the ceiling and said out loud, “Okay, if I was a senator up for reelection next year and my only child was stripping at a club in San Francisco’s notorious Tenderloin and suddenly went missing, why wouldn’t I report her missing?” Flynn popped up in his chair. “Because once her disappearance was public, so too would be her last place of employment.”

  Bastard was keeping it quiet, just like he’d kept his parentage of Pink quiet. Flynn shook his head in disgust. And he’d voted for the guy!

  While Chastain wouldn’t win any Father of the Year awards, Flynn assumed that the old man would have hired a private investigator to find his daughter and quietly bring her home. Maybe he had. Once he had more information from the task force, he’d see about paying the senator and his wife a visit.

  The irony of this was that Pink, who had been shunned by her cowardly father and sister, was the brave one making the sacrifices. While Flynn was sure Pink didn’t know she was working for a terrorist, who ran girls from the city overseas for Christ’s sake, she knew enough to know he was a sleazebag. It hadn’t stopped her from searching for the sister who hadn’t given Pink the time of day until she needed help.

  Shaking his head, Flynn tried to understand why anyone would do that. He knew he wouldn’t. If his father came crawling to him begging for even a minute of Flynn’s time, Flynn would walk away without giving it a second thought.

  Isadora Fuentes was proving to be quite a puzzle. One, he told himself, he should leave alone.

  Forcing himself to do just that, Flynn turned all his energy back to researching the information the taskforce had compiled over the years. Three hours later he glanced at his watch. Almost seven in the morning, the troops would be showing up soon. When they did, armed with the information Pink had given him and what he’d read of the files, Flynn was going to request permission to join the task force and get Pink the hell out of that rat trap of a club.

  Before he could start the next pot of coffee and get on it, his cell phone rang. Damn it, his gut hitched, thinking it might be Pink. It was Simon.

  “Hey, what’s up,” Flynn answered glumly. Then he literally shook himself. He needed to get over it and focus.

  “What, no ‘good morning’? No, how was your weekend? No, are you a dad yet?”

  “Sorry, man, I’m a little preoccupied. Are you a dad yet?”

  “No, asshole, Kat’s not due for another three months.”

  “Then why’d you say—” Flynn shook his head. “Never mind.”

  Simon laughed. “How’d it go with the little drug-slipping stripper?”

  Flynn clenched his jaw. “I called her out, she apologized, I let her go.”

  “Really?” Simon asked, surprised. “That’s it?”

  Flynn was a by-the-book guy. He should have arrested her; had he, he wouldn’t be moping around like a lovelorn sap and she’d be safe in jail.

  “The way you were tripping all over your hard-on for her, I thought you might’ve dipped your toe into that pond of bodaciousness.” Simon laughed, enjoying his ribbing. “I’ll let the boys know she’s available, then. They were howling like dogs for her after you absconded with her.”

  Flynn’s jaw nearly cracked from the pressure of his anger. “She’s not available.” Yeah, he just said that.

  “Anybody I know?” Simon asked, humor hanging on each word. Simon was one of the most intelligent investigators Flynn had ever worked with. His case closure percentage was somewhere in the ninetieth percentile. Flynn might be lying to himself, but Simon wasn’t buying it.

  “No,” Flynn bit off.

  “Well, son, you need to let her and her boyfriend know that she’s in with unfriendlies. After I texted you yesterday, I did some digging. Boris Sorlov is an alias and he’s not who he purports to be. Dude is bad news. Even if Wild Style didn’t pique your interest, she needs to get out of there or she’s going to end up as some Russian crime czar’s play toy. Sorlov has been moving girls out of Surf’s Up for years.”

  “I’ve been working it on my end all night. Evidently there’s a task force
in place.”

  “Hit up Justin, he’s the SFPD liaison and working it hard. He can bring you up to speed.”

  “Thanks, man,” Flynn said.

  “Any time, and Ryker?”

  “Yeah?”

  “As an expert on the opposite sex, and a trained observer, I think I can say with some accuracy that your little stripper wasn’t like the rest of them. Not even close. Hell, she tried drugging you.” He laughed. “If she copped to it and you didn’t arrest her, I’m thinking she was put up to it.”

  “She was. By the club manager. She did it to get information on her sister, who disappeared from the club a few months ago.”

  There was a lengthy pause on Simon’s end. Finally he said, “You have a problem with the 'she’s a stripper’ part?”

  “You were there, she took her top off in front of all the guys,” Flynn bit out.

  Simon laughed again. “It’s just skin man, you need to—”

  “I don’t need anyone who’s seen her tits to tell me that it doesn’t matter.”

  “What is it with you feds and your egos?”

  Flynn snapped. “So if Kat did a lap dance for me and rubbed her tits in my face, you’d be able to overlook that?”

  There was a long pause before Simon said, very slowly, “I’d get over it because she mattered to me. She’d deserve that from the man who loved her.”

  “I just met Pink, I don’t love her!” He didn’t love anyone.

  “I’m not saying you do, what I’m saying is that if she matters, at all, she deserves to be valued for who she is, not what she does. That said, if that had been Kat, I’d knock your teeth out if you ever mentioned the lap dance or her tits to me, her, or anyone we mutually associated with.”

  “So you’d live with the elephant in the room?”

  “There’s only an elephant in the room, brother, if you put it there.”

  Could have knocked Flynn over with a feather. Simon West was the most possessive, protective man Flynn had met. If anyone looked at his wife wrong, Simon took care of business. How could a man like that accept his wife’s tits being on blast?

  “It’s not relevant. There’s nothing between us.”

  “If you say so. But just in case there is, give Justin a call, and he’ll bring you up to speed on Sorlov.” Simon hung up.

  Flynn stood staring at the phone. His friend’s words echoed in his head.

  There’s only an elephant in the room, brother, if you put it there.

  There wasn’t an elephant in the room, there was the lusty vision of Pink’s breasts and her air-humping his coworkers in the room!

  Flynn jammed the phone into his back jeans pocket and rummaged through his bottom desk drawer, taking out the spare shaving kit and clean button-down shirt and tie still in the package from the dry cleaners. He kept the items on hand for when he pulled an all-nighter.

  As he made his way to the men’s room, the support staff and agents began to arrive. None of them seemed surprised to see him. Indeed, he’d spent many a night here. He gave his SAC, Rod Mills, a nod in the hallway as he pushed the men’s room door open.

  Twenty minutes later, clean-shaven, teeth brushed, hair combed, and wearing a fresh shirt and tie, Flynn strode from the restroom as Mills marched toward him.

  Boss man didn’t look happy.

  “Ryker, tell me what the hell happened at La Costanera last night.”

  Flynn stopped in his tracks. That was the restaurant where he’d taken Pink. The same restaurant where he punched the guy who’d bothered Pink. Someone must have caught his plate. Even though it was registered classified, the locals had the database to track him down.

  “I punched an asshole’s lights out.”

  “You broke that asshole’s nose.”

  “He deserved it.”

  His SAC raged on, “That asshole happens to be Allen Stiles, CEO of Leye, a little tech company in Silicon Valley that grossed a half a billion dollars last year! He wants a personal apology or he’s going over my head to get it.”

  Damn if Flynn would apologize to that ass--hat. “He’ll get an apology from me after he apologizes to—Pin—my girl.” The minute the words “my girl” came out of his mouth, Flynn’s stomach did a hard roll. WTF?

  “Come again?” Mills asked.

  Flynn clarified. “He disrespected my—date. He was belligerent, and used words likely to evoke an immediate and violent response. Here in California, I think it’s section four-fifteen of the Penal Code.”

  “And that caused you to break his nose?”

  “All I did was use necessary force to overcome his resistance to stopping what he was doing.”

  Mills smirked. “Are you serious? I suppose you started yelling, stop resisting, stop resisting, too.”

  Straight-faced, Flynn answered. “No, sir, my necessary force ended the entire unpleasant encounter. I’m guessing the CEO of Leye doesn’t want his face splashed all over the front page of the Chronicle for drunk and disorderly. In fact, I’m sure his stockholders don’t.”

  Mills shook his head and said, “I’m not doubting you, Ryker, but I’m going to need the whole story from the beginning. My office.”

  Izzy woke up puffy-eyed and exhausted. She’d spent the night getting drunk with Charlie as she wistfully and tearfully recanted the best twenty-four hours of her life, leaving out the part where she tried to drug Flynn and the my-real-last-name-is-Chastain part.

  “Oh, sweets, I don’t know if I should go beat him up or give him a hug,” Charlie had said, hugging her close in his bed last night. After they’d put on their PJs, popped popcorn, uncorked a few bottles of wine he had stashed, then snuggled together under the sheets like two besties, Izzy spilled her guts.

  It was cathartic, and long overdue. Charlie already knew she was a love child, but he didn’t know names or that she had a half sister. Withholding her sister’s last name, Izzy came clean about why she was working at Surf’s Up. Telling someone who cared about her that she had stripped for a room full of lusty cops—then brought one home and essentially had a one-night stand with him—without being judged for it, made her feel like the huge black cloud that had followed her for years had been blown away. It was still there, hovering on the horizon, perhaps it always would be, but for now, the sun shined through it.

  “Give him a hug? What for?” she cried. “He’s a bully, and a strippist!”

  “Strippist?”

  “Yeah.” She hiccupped. “Like a racist except he’s prejudiced against strippers.”

  “Well, sweets, from what you told me he did to you in that little bed of yours, I’d say he was a stripvert.”

  “Stripvert?”

  “A perv for strippers,” Charlie wagged his dark brows. “And not in a bad way.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. I still don’t know why you want to hug him.”

  Charlie hugged her close. “Personally, I’d love to get my hands on that hunk of burning love. But since this isn’t about me but you, I’d hug him because he broke through that ice palace you’ve built.”

  Throwing popcorn at him, she shook her head and rested back against the headboard. “I don’t have an ice palace.”

  “Oh, you are so in denial, Queen Elsa. Shall we sing 'Let It Go’ or,” Charlie burst into a fit of giggles, “'Pop Goes the Cherry’?”

  She smacked him good-naturedly, but he’d managed to make her smile, then he pulled “Let It Go” up on his iPhone and at the top of their lungs, they sang the song until one of their neighbors pounded on the back door for them to shut up before he called the cops. Then they pulled the sheet over their heads and whisper sang it.

  That was the last thing Izzy remembered until she woke to the delicious aroma of coffee. Smiling, Izzy’s first thought was of the previous morning, waking up with Flynn’s hard, erect body beside her. Moaning, she stretched and realized she was still under the sheet.

  “Wake up, Elsa,” Charlie called and yanked off the sheet. He stood smiling down at her, a steamin
g cup of coffee in his hands. He swept the cup beneath her nose and said, “If you want it, you need to stop pouting.”

  To which she pouted.

  “Oh, hell, I’d be pouting over that lost penis, too. Here.” He handed her the mug.

  The memory of Flynn thrusting deeply into her made her catch her breath.

  Charlie’s eyes narrowed and he pursed his lips. “Wow, he must have been off the hook amazing.”

  Izzy took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “He was,” she said softly. To steady her trembling body, she cupped the mug with both hands. Taking a sip, Izzy closed her eyes and savored the rich brew. She was an addict. There was only one thing she wanted more and that she couldn’t have.

  “You’re the best friend ever,” she said quietly, smiling up at him.

  “I know,” Charlie said as he plopped down beside her. Taking the mug from her, he set it on the nightstand, then took her hands into his and looked pointedly at her. “Look, I’m going to say something that’s none of my business, but well, do you even care? Because let’s be honest here, since when have I minded my own business?” He laughed, but quickly settled back into a serious mien. “I know men and how they think. Doesn’t matter if we’re gay or straight, when it comes to what we want but can’t have, we all act the same. And I’m here to tell you, sweets, that Special Agent of yours has it bad for you. It was written all over every exquisite inch of him last night. He sooo didn’t want to leave you. My straight-dar is screaming he’s been hurt before. Bad. Maybe irrevocably. Such a waste if that’s the case. He needs someone who is willing to be patient with him. Show him how to love.” Charlie shook his head. “He’s got an ego the size of California, too, and I think, my pet, he is having a huge problem dealing with the fact that his friends have seen your glorious breasticles.”

  “I can’t change the past.” Izzy straightened up. “And I don’t want to. If he can’t handle the heat, then he can do what he’s doing, get out and stay out of the kitchen.”