by AJ Adams
“Thanks, Rex.”
“You’re the best.”
He nodded. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.” He sounded cool enough but the way his eyes burned, he was still fuming
“Wait!” The brunette was on her feet. “What about me?”
He looked her over and shrugged. “What about you?”
“Don’t you remember me? I’m Anna!”
He was pure ice. “You’re not signed up with us. You’re on your own.”
“Come on,” she wailed. “We had a good time, remember? Give me a break.”
The heavenly eyes were cold. “Think yourself lucky that you got picked up. When you’re released, get out of Bonnington. You won’t like the way we deal with unauthorised business.”
The door swung shut, and I breathed again, glad to be away from him. But Anna was less than happy. She was kicking at the wall, growling, “Fuck-fuck-fuckity-fuck.”
“Better be careful,” I pointed at the CCTV in the corner of the ceiling. “They can do you for criminal damage if you mess up their paintwork.”
“Bugger! Why the hell did I come to this bloody awful place?” But she sat down on the bunk.
I was thinking the same thing. The second they let me out, I was planning on a very rapid exit. I told myself that Rex had told me to go because he thought I was a thief. He had no clue who I was or what I knew, but even so, I thought it safest to scarper. I like a bad boy but being killed by a devil was not on my to-do list.
Anna was moaning away. “The Disciples take ten percent off the top. I was only planning to be here a couple of nights, so I thought it would be cheaper to risk it.”
“That sucks.” But I thought secretly that premium protection at ten percent was a bargain. I’d pay that get rid of Jason and I’d hand it over with a smile if it stopped him from hassling the studios I worked with. I didn’t want him messing up my business.
“Now I’ll get a fine,” my cellmate was grumbling. “I’ll have to take on extra customers to cover that.”
What with being hassled, chucked in lock-up and narrowly avoiding a stone-cold killer, I was reassessing my situation. Maybe it would be easier and cheaper all round to go and see Jason and finish the job.
I could go on my own because I’d left Mia with my half-sister, Rachel. Mia loved being with her aunt, and she was safe there, playing with Sue and Rose, her little cousins. If I helped with the bills, Rachel would let Mia stay.
Mind you, I’d hire a chaperone. A big strapping bloke who’d keep Jason from nastily venting his temper after I posed for him. It would cost a bomb, and I would probably not see a penny in wages, but I’d suck it up if he would let me be after.
And if Jason was sulky, or the deadline for the job had passed, I’d hire a lawyer. That would cost even more, but an injunction might keep Jason off my back and stop him from hassling my clients.
While I was making plans, my cellmate was still gabbing. “I work in London, usually. But with the festival, I thought it would be worth coming up for a few days.”
“Festival?”
“The Bonnington Music Fest. At Perdition? Surely you’ve heard of it?”
I had, but as Jason had been stalking me, making life hell, I’d not paid a lot of attention. Now, though, I was putting things together. “Perdition? I just assumed it was a pub. Wait, is that the fancy estate just up the road?”
“Yeah, that belongs to Rex.”
That didn’t ring a bell; it rang a whole fucking orchestra. “Jesus, Rex is Rex Winslow? He’s got a title, too, right? Lord Ravenshurst?”
“That’s him.”
“He’s a Disciple? You’re fucking kidding me!”
Anna gave me an old-fashioned look. “The Winslows have always been a bad lot. They’re nicknamed the Wicked Barons in the village.”
“The newspapers hint he’s wild, but this is just unbelievable.”
“He’s a bastard, that’s what he is,” Anna grumbled. “It wouldn’t have hurt him to spring me. I could easily have paid him back. The Bonnington Music Fest is so big this year that he can’t possibly cope with all the extra trade. Also, he’s got this private party for the Disciples tonight, the All Night Rock Blast.”
Now it all made sense. The Disciples had morphed from a crazy band of bikers into a well-organized gang with business interests that ran from drug running to horse racing. Rumours whispered in clubs and pubs hinted the MC was more powerful than the Mafia.
“Having an aristocrat on the team must give the Disciples a real edge,” I mused. “I mean, he has tea at Buckingham Palace!”
“Rex is their money man,” Anna informed me. “He makes them a fortune with his events, and he launders their cash for them too.”
All kinds of things I’d heard in the last year were now adding up into a dark and very dangerous picture. Yes, I definitely had to get away from Bonnington. Lean and mean Rex wouldn’t let me live a day if he ever found out what I had on him.
“For God’s sake be careful,” I urged her. “If you cross them, you’ll be lucky to get away with a beating.”
“Maybe,” she sighed. “I’d better talk to Rex. He’s got a filthy temper, but if I crawl, he’ll let me sign up.”
“You said you had some good times with him,” I said carefully. “You were an item?”
She grinned at me. “You don’t know Rex. He’s strictly a one night stand man.”
“A commitment-phobe?”
“That’s understating it. He says wedding rings are the world’s smallest handcuffs.”
I had to know. “What’s he like in bed?”
“A cock the size of a cricket bat and he knows how to use it,” she said simply.
“Really?”
“Best bang in the country. If he were taking on trade, I’d pay to have him.”
A lean, mean fucking machine. Yum yum yum. The crazy part of me that went wild for danger was drooling.
She knew what I was thinking. “He’s cold as ice, though. He’s got no heart.”
“Right, the kind of man you stay clear of. If you’re sensible.”
Anna wasn’t fooled; she knew I was lusting over him. “I guess it’s true what they say,” she giggled. “Treat them mean to keep them keen. Everyone wants a piece of Rex.”
“He sounds worth queuing up for.” We were grinning at each other, both enjoying a little bad-boy lechery.
She smiled at me. “You’re Lacy, huh? I’m Anna.” Then she took in my favourite summer dress, blue with white polka dots, and decided I was not one of the sisterhood. “What did they get you for? Theft?”
“It’s a mistake.”
Anna gave me an old-fashioned look. “Right.” But she was staring at me, her brain ticking over. “Lacy. That sounds familiar. But we haven’t met, have we?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But I’ve seen you before.”
Hmmm. A fan, possibly. Or just an enthusiastic surfer of Internet porn. “Do you subscribe to Spank or Twisted?”
At the name of two of my best website clients, the penny dropped. “You’re Lacy Desire!”
“That’s my working name. It’s Lacy Redwood, actually.”
Anna frowned. “That’s not what they said.”
Oh hell. “Who?”
“There were two of them. They didn’t say who they were.”
Shit. “Where did you meet them?”
“Two nights ago, at Velvet in Soho.”
I knew the club well. It was a hot favourite with the kink crowd, so I went whenever I was in the city, both to find out what was trending and to schmooze with photographers and editors. When you’re a model, keeping in the public eye is part of the job.
“They were showing photos of you, asking if anyone had seen you.” Anna was frowning. “They said you’d skipped out on a loan, and they were out to collect.”
“I don’t owe anyone money.”
“They said you cost someone called Jason a fortune.”
Oh hell. “I do have a
contract issue.”
“You’d better be careful,” Anna frowned. “They’re rent-a-thugs, Lacy. The kind you hire to break bones. You know, to send a message.”
For a second my heart stopped. Then it was trying to jump out of my chest, aiming to go right through my ribs. Jason’s words echoed in my mind, You’re dead, and you don’t know it. I’d thought it a wild threat. I’d been wrong.
Oh dear hell. As if one nutcase after me wasn’t enough, he’d paid some thugs to do me over. I’m no stranger to trouble, but the thought of professional heavies being after me gave me the shivers.
But I’m good at pretending to be cool, so I didn’t let on. “Thanks, I’ll watch my back.”
“They were wearing leathers,” Anna frowned.
“Not surprising. I mean, Velvet is full of leather boys.”
“Yes, I was a bit pissed at the time, so I wasn’t tracking. But now I think of it, they looked like bikers.”
It shouldn’t have surprised me. Jason had decided to teach me a lesson, and with him being a typical bad boy with a penchant for Harleys, he’d gone moaning to some biker buds.
Honestly, I got a bit of a downer as I realised the mess I’d gotten myself into. It had been a mistake, falling for the lure of money and fame. I should have stuck to my regular studios. Now I was deep in the shit, and the only way to fix it would be to go to Jason, cap in hand, and beg him to forgive me.
I’m excellent at begging, but as Jason had lost it, it might not work. I’d probably have to appease his biker buds too. That gave me the chills. With three of them, it would be very, very ugly. I could afford to hire a chaperone, but not bunches of them and not for days at a time, never mind weeks.
For a moment I thought of talking to Harding, but that thought died a swift death. Coppers and lawyers wouldn’t help me. Nutcase bikers would laugh at the idea of the establishment trying to threaten them.
“They said to call if we saw you,” Anna said. “A Lincoln number.”
“Yeah, it’s where Jason lives.”
“I used to work there.” Then she eyed me again. “Wait a minute. Weren’t you one of Intel Reynolds’ girls?”
Funny, but I hadn’t thought about Reynolds for years, and now suddenly, that whole bloody nightmare was rushing back. “I did some work for him a couple of years ago.”
Reynolds managed a chain of pole dancing and sex clubs for a crime family called the Alistairs. Nicknamed Intel because he had a processor instead of a heart, he’d hired me to model for a series of adverts.
“Hot,” he’d said. “But not too kinky. We need to heat up the punters, get the blood going.”
The bastard.
“I never liked that Reynolds,” Anna sniffed. “How did you get involved with him?”
I didn’t want to talk about him, but as the girl had been kind enough to give me a heads-up on Jason and his mates, I felt I had to be open with her. “I did a shoot for him.” Just sticking to the bare bones truth made me feel sick. “A bit of basic kink. Bondage shots.”
“That’s where I’ve seen you!” Anna said. “I used to see your picture up on the walls at Thrills, the pole club in Lincoln.”
“Yeah, that was me.”
It had all seemed so businesslike. Reynolds had set up the shoot at Goxhill an abandoned airfield halfway between Lincoln and Bonnington. “We want a dystopian theme, love,” he’d told me. “Goxhill is stuffed with atmosphere.”
Like an idiot, I’d gone along with it. Reynolds was ordinary looking, in his forties, business-like, and calm. He looked like the kind of bloke who’d sell you insurance. The meeting in his Lincoln office had included several other people, including a PR woman and a lawyer. It seemed entirely on the up and up.
We’d done the makeup and costume in a studio underneath his office, and then he’d given me a lift, “Goxhill is hell to find, and I don’t want you getting lost and delaying the shoot.”
As the makeup and costume girls were getting into a van parked behind us, I thought they were coming along. But they vanished in the traffic, and when we got to Goxhill, it was just the two of us.
“Hey, listen, Mr. Reynolds, I’m not comfortable with one on one shoots.”
“What? I’m old enough to be your father, for God’s sake!”
“I’m just saying -”
“I’ve daughters older than you!”
He acted so outraged that I was convinced it was legit. “Yeah, sorry. I get a bit paranoid.” Then, my big mouth was motoring on, “You know the business is rife with dirty old men.”
He smiled. “Quite right. But cross my heart, I’m not one of them.”
By the time he’d spent an hour setting up, I thought it was all above board. That’s when it went wrong. Like we’d agreed, Reynolds took straightforward bondage shots, the ones Anna had seen plastered all over the Alistair clubs.
Except that after I’d been photographed cuffed and hanging from an overhead beam, he’d raped me. That was pretty bad, but he gave me a beating as well. “Little uppity bitch, calling me a dirty old man.” It left me with broken ribs and purple bruises the size of soup plates.
“Bad time?” Anna knew the signs. Being a pro, she’d probably been through it herself. Tarts are open season for rapists because nobody takes their complaints seriously. Once you take money for a shag, you lose all your rights. Every single fucking one of them.
Adult models like me are lumped in with them, so I know what I’m talking about. “A bit.”
“Reynolds was a nasty bastard,” Anna growled. “He raped you.”
“Yeah. But the fucker is dead.”
Just saying it gave me a lovely glow because I saw him get his just deserts.
After Reynolds had beaten me to a pulp, he’d not said a word. He’d just uncuffed me, taken his kit, and fucked off. I lay there the rest of the day, too sore to move.
When I finally got it together, I realised that the airfield wasn’t abandoned. It was pitch black, but a little plane had turned up. As I peered out, I saw Reynolds was back. He’d brought some mates with him too. I was convinced that when he’d finished his business, he’d be over to finish me. So I hid in the bushes by the hanger and kept quiet as a mouse.
“Intel Reynolds got beaten to death,” Anna spoke softly, glancing up at the CCTV and then whispering. “They say it was a coke deal gone wrong. Russian mafia. But they never got who did it.”
I knew it wasn’t Russian mafia because I watched the whole thing go down. First, two blokes in a van had turned up. They met the plane, unloaded crates of gear and then the pilot buzzed off. When Reynolds pounced, I thought it was all over. Boy, was I wrong!
Like in a horror film, Reynolds was so busy gloating over trapping the two men, that he didn’t even notice six more coming out from undercover behind him. They took Reynolds and his team down in seconds, shooting them with tasers and then beating them with cricket bats.
Maybe I should have been afraid, but actually, I wanted to cheer. It was heaven seeing that rapist get some grief. But knowing the cricket bat team wouldn’t want an eyewitness, I lay silent in the bushes. After the moans and groans from the beating died down, snippets of their chat floated over.
“No blood splatter,” a giant of a man growled. “No time wasted, and they haven’t even gotten in a tight slap. It’s efficient.”
“It’s fucking beautiful,” his mate breathed. “Come on! I need to get back and get this booze into the cellar. It needs to rest a few days, to recover from the trip.”
One of them opened the van doors, and I saw his face in the flicker of interior lights. He was beautiful, with an angel’s face, but it was stark and cold.
“You go,” he said to the others. “Make sure you’re seen in the village in case you need alibis.”
The men buzzed off, leaving just the giant and the angel. They murmured together for a second and then knelt by Reynolds. As he twitched and moaned, they poured something into his mouth. There was a moment’s silence, and then Reynolds sh
rieked and arched. It only lasted a second, but in the echoing silence, I knew he was dead.
“Pity,” the angel said. “He should have suffered longer.”
I was so damn scared that I was frozen. Lying flat and barely breathing, I watched them get on to huge bikes and roar off. After counting a thousand, three times, I finally got to my feet. I found my clothes, got dressed and started hiking back. I must have blacked out because the next thing I remember is being dropped off in Lincoln by a trucker.
I’d not told a soul about that night. For one thing, I was grateful that Reynolds was dead. For another, I was too damn scared of the Alistairs, the gang he’d run with. If they ever found out I’d been there, they might have blamed me. Or asked me to finger the giant and the angel.
In short, I kept my trap shut. I told everyone I’d been in a car accident, took Mia to Spain for a month’s holiday, and pretended the whole thing had never happened. When we came back, the Alistairs were in dead trouble. Their clubs were burnt down, their men were beaten, and within a few months, they just vanished.
A biker gang called the Horde had filled in the vacuum, sending in their drug dealers and setting up their sex clubs. As they had taken over the Alistair turf, I’d assumed they’d killed Reynolds. Now I knew better.
I’d tried hard to forget, but now I was thinking that raking up old memories might be just the thing. When you’re at the mercy of a lunatic with professional heavies, a bigger lunatic with an even nastier mob of utter nutcases is the ideal weapon.
“Let’s not talk about bloody Reynolds,” I said to Anna. “Tell me about the hunk with the cock like a cricket bat. Does Rex live at Perdition?”
“He’ll be there for the next three days, managing the Disciples party and the music fest.” Anna rolled her eyes. “Seriously, you’re going to make a play for him?”
“Oh yeah!” I didn’t need to think it through. Rex was rich, titled, successful, and he had the MC behind him as well. He could get Jason and his biker pals off my back, and deal with Inspector Harding.
I stifled the fear that told me to stay clear. As Jason had gone insane, I’d do what was needed. Anyway, I told myself, I’d be safe from Rex because I knew how to motivate him.
