Gray Wolf Security: Back Home

by Glenna Sinclair

  But this expression of shock and concern suddenly filled his eyes.

  “Fuck, Joss! You’re bleeding.”

  My first thought was that something was wrong with the pregnancy. Was I losing the baby? But then he touched my back and pulled his fingers away, blood bright red on his fingertips.

  “You must have popped a stitch or two.”

  He climbed off the bed and strode naked to the bathroom, his middle-aged body still strong, muscular, despite a few of time’s cruelties tugging at his pale skin. He came back with a wet rag and pressed it to my back. Pain suddenly flared, burning through me and washing away the lingering pleasure of our coupling.

  “Why didn’t someone call me when it happened? Why wasn’t I there with you at the hospital?”

  “I told them not to call you.”

  “There’s nothing on the news, no one here said anything…”

  “I asked them to keep it under wraps. I didn’t want to frighten the girls.”

  “You were stabbed, Joss. How were you planning on explaining that?”

  “I wasn’t.” I reached back and brushed his hand away, holding the cloth on my back myself as I climbed off the bed. “They don’t need to know every damn detail of what’s going on!”

  “They’re going to figure it out when the next assassin comes. And what if he’s successful? What if Mahoney manages to kill one or both of us? What happens to the girls then?”

  “I’m not going to let that happen.”

  “You can’t control everything.”

  “I can try.”

  I marched past him into the bathroom, twisting in front of the mirror to get a look at the stitches. Blood oozed from the bottom half of the wound, dark and thick, obscuring the stitches themselves.

  “You could have died.”

  I snorted. “He was careful not to hit any vital organs.”

  “Well, wasn’t that kind of him?”

  I glanced at Carrington in the mirror. “This isn’t about you. It’s not about last year.”

  “Isn’t it, though?”

  I shook my head, wishing I could remember where I’d put the pain meds the doctor had prescribed for me. Pain was suddenly overwhelming, making it hard to think straight.

  “I should have been notified. I’m still your husband.”

  “I didn’t want to worry you.”

  He chuckled, a frustrated sound that burst from his lips suddenly and explosively. “You were stabbed! How am I not supposed to worry about that?”

  I sank down onto the lid of the toilet and looked up at him. “I’m sorry.”

  “Was he there?”

  My heart sank. I didn’t answer, but I didn’t need to.

  “He was. You called Mike Spencer, but you didn’t call me.” He chuckled again. “If that doesn’t speak volumes, what does?”

  “He’s an FBI agent. He’s the reason it didn’t hit the news!”

  “And he spent the whole night at the scene, right? Never went to the hospital, didn’t take you back to the hotel to get your things?”

  Of course, he’d taken me to the hotel. There was no one else I wanted to pull out of bed in the middle of the night, no one I trusted enough to keep me safe. No one else who could keep the press at bay and help me re-vet my employees, help me find the leak that allowed those men to find me in the first place.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say, Carrington. He’s my colleague.”

  “He’s in love with you.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t control the way he feels. But our relationship is strictly professional.”

  “Bullshit!”

  I jumped to my feet, pain shooting through me again. “Do you really think of me that way? You really think I could lay with you the way we just did if I was sleeping with someone else?”

  “I didn’t say you were sleeping with him. But your relationship is more than professional.”

  “Carrington—”

  He turned away, began snatching up his clothes and pulling them on, ripping a corner of his shirt in his anger. I watched, not sure what else there was to do.

  “You called him when you were stabbed. I bet he was the first phone call you made.” He glanced at me, snorting when he saw something in my face that he felt corroborated his claim. “I used to be your first phone call.”

  “I’m trying to protect you, Carrington! You and the girls—”

  “But what’s the point in protecting us if you're tearing our family apart?” He shook his head, looking at me like I was a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe. “Me cheating, you cheating, Mahoney…none of that is tearing us apart as quickly as you cutting us out of everything, of you keeping secrets and telling lies.” He shoved a finger into the air between us. “You’re walking away from us, Joss. You’re doing this, not me, not him. It’s all about you.”

  He shook his head, still looking at me with that overwhelming expression of disgust. Then he walked away, leaving me alone, naked on the toilet, blood still oozing from the wound in my back.

  How perfect was that? How perfectly symbolic of where my life was going?

  Chapter 6

  Kari

  I walked into the diner, my ankles wobbling in the heels I was wearing. How long had it been since I’d worn a pair of heels? Or worn my hair down around my face the way it was now? My fingers itched to push it away, to pull it back into a quick braid or a knot. And then there was the short skirt and the tight blouse that made it nearly impossible to breath. Oh, and don’t get me started on the layers of makeup smeared over my face that made me feel like a painted clown.

  How did I get myself talked into this?

  She was sitting in a booth toward the back, an iPad on a stand in front of her and earbuds falling along her jaw to the front of her white sweater. She was wearing jeans and a shirt with the logo of the community college splashed across her ample chest, which was drawing stares from a group of teens sitting a few booths over from hers. She didn’t seem to notice them even though they were being pretty obvious. Whatever she was watching on her iPad must have been fascinating as all hell.

  I took a seat at the counter and ordered some cheese fries, my hands shaking as I watched the teens. They were laughing and making comments that weren’t appropriate in a bar, let alone this family-friendly diner. There was a little girl who couldn’t have been more than five or six sitting just a few yards from them, her father turning red as he glared at the foul-mouthed fools.

  “I’d so love to have fifteen minutes with that,” one boy said as I approached their table.

  “In your dreams,” another said, laughing when the first tried to punch him in the arm and he managed to duck out of the way.

  “Hey, boys,” I said, smiling sweetly, my hands balled into fists at my sides, “think you might tone it down?”

  A boy who’d been relatively quiet until then let his eyes move slowly over me, a soft groan slipping through his lips.

  “You want to join us?”

  “You want to stop harassing that girl?”

  “We haven’t touched her.”

  “You don’t have to touch her to hurt her.”

  The boy’s eyes raked over me again. “Why don’t you join us and we’ll leave that girl alone. You look like more fun, anyway.”

  I leaned down, making sure he got a good view of my cleavage as I did, looking him in the eye. “You can’t handle fun with me, sweetheart.”

  “Can’t I?”

  I reached down and ran my hand along the inside of his thigh. He spread his legs, a knowing smile slipping over his lips. I knew this kind of guy. I’d gone to school with dozens of them. His parents were rich and always given him anything he wanted. That gave him the idea he could have anything he wanted, and that he could just take anything what wasn’t offered. Until someone taught him otherwise.

  “You want to fuck me?” I asked softly to the cheers of his buddies.

  “Definitely.”

  “You think you can h
andle me?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ll make you scream like you’ve never done before.”

  I couldn’t help the little satisfied smile that jumped to my lips because, the thing was, I was about to make him scream.

  I slid my hand over his crotch, not surprised to find that he was hard as a rock. Then I grabbed his balls and twisted, squeezing as hard as I could at that awkward angle. The smile left his lips first, then the excitement in his eyes. His color drained and then his cheeks turned a bright, painful red. And then this little sound, something that might be a scream when it grew up, slipped from his lips.

  “Women are not objects. We are human beings who deserve respect. You will speak to us with the same regard you would show your mother or your sister.” I twisted a little harder. “You will not speak of the things you think you might want to do to a woman. Intimacy is a mutual thing. You do things with a woman, not to her. Understand?”

  The boy nodded, his face so red I was pretty sure he was about to pass out.

  I glanced at his friends. “You understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am!” they said in unison, inching away from my reach.

  “Good.”

  I let him go and stepped back. The teens all piled out of the booth and rushed for the door. Applause went up from the other patrons in the diner. I executed a little curtsey and resumed my seat at the counter.

  “Thanks,” a soft female voice said behind me.

  I turned to find my target watching me, the earbud pulled from one of her ears. I shrugged. “I can’t stand that sort of behavior.”

  “Yeah.” She sat up a little straighter in the booth, taking the other bud out of her ear. “Just the same, can I buy you a drink or something?”

  “I’d like that.”

  I got up and moved into the booth across from her. She was pretty, a bottle blond with dark eyebrows and deep brown eyes. She was shapely, the kind of girl who attracted all kinds, not just the assholes I’d scared away. In fact, I could see the father a few booths away stealing a few glances at her. She must have made good money working for those criminals down the street.

  “Do you mind if I ask what you’re watching?”

  She blushed a little, moving the iPad into her small backpack. “I take classes over the internet. College courses.”

  “Really? What’s your major?”

  “Psychology.”

  “Cool.” I’d studied psychology in college myself, though not as my major. But it probably wouldn’t do to mention that to her. “I didn’t even finish high school.”

  “Neither did I. Took my GED a few years ago.”

  “I thought about doing that, but it’s kind of expensive.”

  “Not really. Not if you just get a book and avoid all the pretest stuff.”

  I tilted my head slightly, trying to look like I was surviving on minimum wage instead of sitting on a pretty decent savings account thanks to the United States Marine Corp.

  “A little too expensive for me, I’m afraid. I don’t make much and I have a three-year-old at home…I’m actually looking for a new job, hoping to find something that pays better. Can’t really survive on minimum wage, you know?”

  “Oh, I know. I worked fast food for years after I went out on my own. Never could have done this then.” She studied me for a long minute. “It’s kind of a catch-22, isn’t it? You can’t get a decent job without a GED, but you can’t get a GED if you can’t get a decent job to pay for it.”

  “Exactly.” I sighed. “But you found a way.”

  “I compromised my morals.”

  “Do you sell drugs? I seriously considered it, but my kid…I couldn’t put him in that position.”

  “No.” She glanced around the diner, lowering her voice after noticing the father who was still checking her out. “I work for these guys down at the Meadow Hills Motel. They run girls.”

  “You’re a prostitute?” I asked, forcing shock into my voice.

  “Not anymore. I book the appointments now.”

  “I don’t know if I could do that.” I sat back. “My kid…”

  “Women prostitute themselves every day. What do you think marriage is?” She smiled softly. “If I’m going to sleep with a guy so that he’ll pay for my home and my food and my car, I’d rather do it as a prostitute than a wife who can be dumped for a younger model.”

  “I suppose so. Not that the men in my life ever bother to stick around.”

  There was anger in my voice that surprised even me. I hadn’t realized Daniel’s betrayal had affected me as deeply as it had.

  Dump me two months before I left the military…!

  “The girls at the motel have regulars. And the guys running it protect them pretty well, better than working the streets.”

  “You ever do that?”

  “No. But I know girls who have.”

  “And these guys? They’re pretty fair? Pay well?”

  “They did. There’s these new guys who took over a month or so ago. But they seem okay.”

  I nodded, contemplating what she was saying. So Todd Michaels took over an existing operation? That was something Joss would probably want to know.

  “I don’t know if I could sleep with strangers for a living, even if it paid for my kid to live somewhere better than this neighborhood.”

  She was quiet for a minute, her eyes moving over me. As Shaw and Audra had predicted, her eyes hesitated when they touched my hair. I could almost see the wheels turning in her head.

  “They’re looking for a sort of hostess,” she said slowly, “a girl to escort the clients to the appropriate rooms. It’s a simple job and doesn’t pay as well as the girls get, but it pays a hell of a lot more than minimum wage.”

  “You think they’d hire me?”

  Her smile was generous and knowing this time. “Definitely. You’re the type of girl they like to have around.” But then the smile disappeared. “But these guys…it wouldn’t have been an issue with the last set of guys, but these two—well three, there’s three now—they like to sample the girls before they make hiring decisions. They’ve frightened off a few girls by insisting on it.”

  “What do you mean, sample?”

  She didn’t answer, just tilted her head and gave me a look that suggested I should understand without being told. And I did, of course.

  I dropped my eyes to the table and sighed.

  “It’s only one, though. They play this stupid game when they decide who gets to do it.” She reached across the table and touched my hand. “It’s quick, just once. And they pay really, really well. You’d be able to move your kid to one of those cottages on the beach after a couple of weeks.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Her smile came back. “I’m Emma, by the way. Emma Jones.”

  “Kari Summers,” I said, barely remembering the cover name Joss assigned me.

  “Well, Kari, if you want to go meet them, I’m sure Sam and Jorge would love to meet you.”

  I hesitated an instant, glancing over my shoulder as though I were afraid someone was watching us. Well, at least someone else. I could see the surveillance van down on the corner, aware of Shaw and Audra listening to our conversation through the mic hidden in my earring.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’d like that.”

  Here we go…

  Chapter 7

  Kari

  “They’ll take you into a room off to the side of the main desk,” Shaw said, a worried frown on her face. “That’s where they take all the girls who are there for an interview,” she moved her fingers in the air to create quotation marks as she said the last word.

  “She seemed to think it would be Sam Wilson.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. Like I said, he likes redheads.” Shaw touched my long, curly hair. “That’s why you were chosen for this particular assignment.”

  “But if it gets weird, Kari, don’t be afraid to say the safe word.”

  That was from Audra. I shook my head. “I can’t do that. This
is our best chance at getting Todd Michaels.”

  “But that’s not as important as your safety.”

  Shaw pressed the syringe she’d prepared into my hand. “Get into a muscle for the fastest response. But it’ll work in the fat, too. Just takes a minute longer.”

  “What if it doesn’t work?”

  “It will. You knock him out with this, undress him, and wait for him to come around. Like I said, he’ll be so confused, it'll be a cinch to convince him you actually had sex.”

  “Okay.”

  I took the syringe, but the idea of using it frightened me almost as much as going into a room alone with some guy who thought it was his right to have sex with me just because I wanted a job. There had to be a better way to get out of this.

  “What about what Emma told me yesterday? About there being other guys who used to run these girls before Michaels moved in? Did you hear that?”

  “We did.” Audra laid out a couple of files on the narrow desk opened to the front page so that I could see the pictures clipped to pages filled with information underneath. “These are all minor players in the Mahoney Cartel. A friend—” She said friend, but I knew she meant her boyfriend, Xavier Damico— “identified them as hired hands who move from place to place where they’re needed, but who have little to do with the overall organization. Joss’ friend in the FBI already has warrants issued for their arrest. They’ll probably be picked up within the week.”

  “Good.”

  “We’ve got this under control, Kari,” Shaw assured me. “We just need someone on the inside, someone who might be able to see something or overhear something we can’t that will reveal where Michaels is holed up or when he might make an appearance here.”

  I nodded. I knew this. But my mind was running in circles like a hamster in one of those stupid wheels, trying to find a way out of doing this thing I had to do.

  What if I couldn’t get the injection in quick enough? What if the guy became violent? What if I responded inappropriately and they figured out who I was? What if I hurt him? What if he hurt me?

  What if I was forced to have sex with this guy for one reason or another? Could I live with myself after that? Was this case really worth it?