Girl Undercover 4 & 5: Ariel & Financial Devil

by Julia Derek

  GIRL UNDERCOVER

  Part Four—Ariel

  Julia Derek

  Published by Adrenaline Books

  Copyright © 2015 by Julia Derek

  This is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Published as an e-book May 2015 by Adrenaline Books.

  To find out more about the author and to sign up for her new books release, visit JuliaDerek.com

  Cover design by Luly Blazek at Kalosys Art.

  MORE JULIA DEREK BOOKS

  THE SMILEY KILLER SERIAL (Young Adult)

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  THE LOVING A KILLER SERIAL (Dark Psychological Thriller)

  The Diary--Part One

  The Other Woman--Part Two

  Guilty--Part Three

  THE L.A. GIRLS ROMANCE SERIES (New Adult)

  Trigger

  Love Cursed

  Undercover Lovers

  Lovely Revenge

  The Girl Undercover Serial is dedicated to Brad Slaight, a great friend and tireless critic/supporter of all my writing.

  Chapter 1

  “Did you call her yet?” I asked Ian as he finished his set of twenty pushups on a mat at Nikkei. I was referring to Ariel, but there was no need to spell that out; he knew exactly who I had in mind.

  He popped up to his feet like he had just lain there leisurely reading a book, not pumped the length of his long, lean body up and down at a rapid pace. He ran a hand through his blond mop of hair that remained in desperate need of a haircut, then looked at me, amused.

  “Why do you care?” he asked.

  “Because I want to make sure you do the right thing.”

  “And that would be?” He arched a brow at me, having placed his fists against his hips.

  “You calling and asking her out on a proper date.”

  He smiled. “Well, it’s not like you gave me much choice, is it?” The pleased grin on his face told me he wasn’t at all mad at me for having done so, though.

  “So you did call her then?”

  “Yep. We’re going out tonight actually.”

  I ignored the sudden stab of pain that assaulted my stomach at this revelation. “Oh, really? That’s good. What are you gonna do? Dinner?”

  “Yeah, I’m taking her to a small Italian restaurant on Amsterdam. It’s called Gennaro. Very intimate.”

  “That sounds nice.” I pointed to a squat rack close to where we were. “Let’s go do some pull-ups.”

  We walked over to the rack and Ian immediately jumped up and grabbed one of the bars above his head.

  “How many do you want me to do?” he asked.

  “Fifteen.”

  As I watched him pull himself up and then lower himself back down repeatedly, I thought about his upcoming date with Ariel, annoyed with myself that I wasn’t happier about it. I had no reason to be bothered in any way, yet that would be the only way to describe how I was currently feeling—bothered.

  Ian landed on the floor next to me, forcing me to stop mulling over it.

  “What do I do now?” he asked, radiating energy.

  I pointed to the roman chair, a tall piece of exercise equipment to work your abs by bringing your legs up while hanging from your arms. “Let’s do some ab work.”

  We walked over to the other end of the big weight room where the high chair was.

  “Are you going to show her some of your family’s jewels?” I asked, expecting him to say that he didn’t really have any jewels to show her.

  But he just shrugged his shoulders and replied, “Probably not tonight. That would be too early.”

  I stared at him, surprised. “You’re already planning on seeing her again? What if the date doesn’t go well?”

  “How can it not go well? She’s a little hottie. I’m sure it’ll go just fine.” He gave me a playful wink.

  “If you say so,” I said and stopped next to the roman chair. I wasn’t in the mood to keep talking about him and Ariel. Lowering my voice, I said, “I got another text.”

  His face darkening, he froze right as he was about to climb up the chair. “From the same number? What did it say this time?”

  I leaned closer to him to be sure no one could hear me. “It said, ‘I’m still watching you. Get out while you can.’”

  He clenched his teeth. “It’s them.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “First they tried intimidating you by pretending to be the rapist. But since that didn’t work, they’re choosing to be more direct instead.”

  I smiled, feeling much older and wiser than Ian. “Um, okay, so you don’t really know then. You’re just trying to fit your vision with these texts. I agree it could be them”—if they actually existed , I thought but didn’t say—“but it could also easily be some whacko who likes to fuck with my head. I really should look into the people I’ve given my phone number to in the last couple of weeks. It’s not that many.” I paused, making a mental note of doing this later. “And it could also be from someone attached to Nick’s murder.” I bit my lip as I pondered this some more and then nodded to myself. “That’s what I’m thinking—Nick’s killers are harassing me. I might be closer to finding them than I’m realizing.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Ian said. “You are very close to finding out who they are—the only piece missing is you believing it yourself.” He leaned closer to me, his lips ending next to my ear, and whispered, “I already told you, Adler and their government cohorts are behind his death. The sooner you accept this fact, the better off you are.”

  I sighed and rolled my eyes at him. “No, I wasn’t talking about them—I was talking about someone attached to Cardoza.”

  “They may very well be attached to Cardoza. I have yet to determine how big their reach is, though I’m convinced it reaches all around the globe. Into most major industries.”

  Ian was clearly not about to let go of his conspiracy theories any time soon. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Listen, it can’t be them. It just can’t be.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  I threw another glance over my shoulder to be sure there weren’t any people close by that could overhear us. We were in the clear. “Because it makes no sense. If you know so much about them and I’m close to finding out the truth, why not just kill both of us? Especially you, since they know you want to stop them from realizing their vision. That should be easy enough for them as powerful as they are, right? If they can plant an article in the Washington Post and get a whole prison to vouch for them, they could have ‘accidents’ happen to us.”

  Ian gazed out the club’s floor-to-ceiling windows, looking pensive. “That’s very true. And it’s also something I often think about, especially lately. Why don’t they just kill us?” His eyes returned to mine. “Of course, they did try to kill you with Bose, remember?”

  “We still have no idea if Bose had any ties to them.”

  He smirked. “Trust me, he did... Anyway, I wish I knew why they keep me alive. Why I’m still waking up every morning and the sun is shining in my face. I have absolutely no idea. Because you’re right—it would be so much easier to just kill me. But so far they haven’t, and they’ve known that I know what they’re up to for more than a year now. That I want to stop them. I can only conclude they have good reasons for wanting to keep me alive.” He squeezed my arm. “I sincerely hope that goes for you too.”

  ***

  Ian’s words were still going through my head as I walked back to my apartment several hours later, don
e with work at last. I refused to believe there was any truth to all his crazy theories, but I also didn’t think he was a psycho out to hurt me any longer. The guy was harmless—even if he happened to be an ex-con and former druggie who didn’t want to own up to his transgressions. The articles I’d read about him were hardly planted by an evil government faction, which meant he had been convicted of the crime he’d been accused of and sentenced for. That is, unless he had been wrongfully convicted. My hand stopped turning the key I’d stuck into my building entrance as I considered that possibility. That scenario seemed more plausible than the story being just a plant and an entire correctional facility being in on it. Of course, if that was the case, why didn’t Ian tell me that? I was more likely to believe that he was set up somehow than his other, far more outlandish claims. Even he must have realized that.

  One of these days I needed to take a closer look at Ian’s past. That should yield some explanations to what he was really all about. Maybe he did come from a family of jewelers and art dealers. But before I did that, I had to get somewhere with my own investigation.

  As poorly as that went, it was a wonder I had become a detective at all, never mind as quickly as I had.

  After I had made myself dinner and was relaxing on my couch, I decided to text the stranger who was harassing me. I had tried calling the number a few more times and, like the first time, a voice recording told me it was not in service. I didn’t think a text would result in anything, but I was feeling restless tonight and needed to do something.

  I typed “Who are you and what do you want from me?” and then pressed Send. Staring down at my phone, I willed it to light up with a response from the freak. It stared back up at me, as dark as ever. Finally I got tired of glaring down at the dead piece of metal and went to take a shower. Maybe when I was done, there would be a response. Yeah, right.

  Of course there was no response. I opened the contacts section of my phone so that I could determine to whom I’d handed out my number over the last few weeks.

  It turned out that I had only given it to eleven people—all current or potential clients, as well as Ariel and Emma. Hmm, I thought. That’s fewer than I thought. I should be able to figure out who out of those people it could be. Then I remembered that my phone number was in a folder on the fitness desk that all the trainers could access. In fact, every employee at Nikkei—even Adler—could easily access my phone number if they wanted to.

  Closing my eyes, I sank back against the couch, feeling exhausted. There were so many people who had access to my new cell number it wasn’t even funny. The person texting me could be any of them.

  I got to my feet and put on some clothes. I decided to go out for a walk. It was nice and warm out for a day in April in New York and I felt increasingly restless. Something was eating at me and I couldn’t figure out what it was. Some fresh air and light exercise would make me feel better, enable me to relax.

  As always before I went outside, I made sure my Glock was in my hip holster, safely hidden underneath the baggy sweatshirt I wore. I may not be about to go running in Central Park, but I wasn’t stupid—something bad could still happen to me on the streets of the Upper West Side, even though it was supposed to be maybe the safest neighborhood on the island. Well, at least before Spider-Man had run amuck up here.

  Exiting my building, I was pleased to discover that the weather had yet to cool down. I began walking down my block, having no particular destination in mind. I continued up Amsterdam Avenue at a brisk clip and met quite a few people out strolling. My plan was to walk twenty blocks uptown, then make a U turn and come back home. By then, I should feel better.

  After about ten minutes of walking, I spotted the sign to the restaurant—Gennaro.

  That’s the place Ian mentioned , I thought and stopped walking. What time was it? I checked my phone that I had brought in the futile hope the freak would finally respond to my text. It was twenty past nine. Ian and Ariel should still be there if they had come for dinner. Part of me wanted to check, spy on them, while the other part, a nagging voice in my head, kept telling me that this would make me a stalker. I was not a stalker.

  I remained in place, a few yards before the restaurant, as the two parts of me kept arguing their position. It didn’t take very long before my more depraved self won and I prepared myself to spy on Ian and Ariel. If I was being honest with myself, I had to admit that I was super curious to see how the date was going. I was still having a hard time believing Ian was actually into Ariel, having convinced myself that he had only pretended he was to annoy me. She just didn’t seem like his type.

  Well, how do you know what his type is? the nagging voice in my head asked, pissed that it had lost.

  Sadly, I didn’t. Ariel could very well be his type.

  I snuck up to the first window of the restaurant and stopped right next to it. From there, I would carefully lean forward to scope out the insides of the establishment. Slowly, slowly, I leaned toward the big, lit window, well aware that there were often tables by windows and that restaurants loved to seat good-looking couples there.

  Nick and I had been lucky enough to often get seated by windows.

  I forced the sharp pain that filled my chest at the thought of Nick to go away.

  Fortunately, Ariel and Ian did not sit right by the window, but they were still in the restaurant and seated at a table that was close enough. When I had determined this, I retracted my head and walked behind an old phone booth about five yards away from the window. I got a good view from this vantage point at the same time as I didn’t have to risk that Ian and Ariel spotted me. That would be not only embarrassing, but could also lead to problems. Ariel may not be crazy after all, but I had a feeling she was still a bit of a hothead. It was better if she didn’t catch me staring at the two of them through the window.

  It looked like they were eating dessert at the moment and having a great time the way they were laughing and talking. Especially Ariel was laughing a lot, throwing her head back every now and then. Ian must be very entertaining, I mused, wondering what exactly they could be talking about. He never made me laugh like that. God had I been wrong to think he would not like her, only find her to be a pain in the butt!

  I remained there for another ten minutes, watching them as they ate and talked, having decided to leave just as Ian paid the bill and they were both suddenly on their feet. It all went so fast that it seemed a bit odd. Maybe something had happened. I should stay and see if it seemed the jolly mood between them had changed as they left the restaurant. They were both standing up now and Ian was helping Ariel put her jacket back on. Soon they were headed away from the table.

  Having realized that the phone booth I was using as a shield provided little cover, I rushed behind an SUV parked on the street, peeking around the back of the car toward the restaurant’s exit. Any moment now, I should spot the two of them coming out. I shook off the feeling of disgust I had with myself for having turned myself into a stalker. What I was doing was so wrong, still I couldn’t help myself. I needed to know what was going on with these two, what they would do next. Their body language should tell me everything I wanted to know.

  As expected, they came out a few seconds later. They were talking, but I was too far away to be able to hear much of their conversation. They began walking along the street, Ariel crooking her arm through Ian’s in a way that told me they were very comfortable with each other.

  Even though I had no reason to be jealous, that was just how I felt as the two of them continued up the block.

  I chewed on my lip, trying to convince myself to turn around and give these two some privacy. That would be the right thing to do. But that other, nosier part of me kept urging me to go after them, see what they would do next. I was too weak to tell it to shut up. My feet started to move in their direction and soon I was following them. Knowing how Ian had seen me the first time I followed him, I was very careful, keeping my distance and hiding behind house corners, cars and bus stops,
anything big enough. The darkness of night was to my advantage, making it easier to stay unnoticed.

  Soon we were ten blocks farther down Amsterdam Avenue, close to Nikkei Sports Club where Ian and Ariel stopped in front of an apartment building. I quickly slid between two cars on the street and watched how they turned to face each other through the car windows. She was smiling at him, saying something. Holding my breath, I was waiting for Ian to lean down and kiss the petite woman, who was a lot taller than normal due to the five-inch heels on her feet.

  But instead of kissing her on the mouth, he gave her a quick peck on the cheek, said a few words, then turned around and walked away from her. She looked after him for a long moment before finally turning around herself and disappearing into the building.

  Sitting hunkered down between a Lexus and a Toyota, I watched Ian as he continued down the street. I stayed in place for several seconds after he had disappeared. It took the buzzing of my phone for me to snap out of the stupor I had entered.

  Standing up, I found the phone in my pocket and checked who had contacted me.

  Meet me on the sundeck at the club at 9 30 pm April 22nd and I will tell you everything, the text said. I didn’t need to check the number to know who it was from.

  Chapter 2

  I still checked to be one hundred percent certain it was from my text stalker. It was, of course. I typed a quick response back: Who are you?

  Staring down at the phone, I waited for it to light up with another text, but it stayed dark. Finally, I got tired of waiting, stuck the phone back into my pocket and walked back home.

  When I entered my apartment, my restlessness had gotten even worse as I kept wondering who the hell this person could be. I kept checking my phone, hoping for a reply to my most recent text, but the thing remained dead. I thought about what day it was. Friday, April 13th. He wanted us to meet in nine days then. I could only assume he’d meant the sundeck, also known as the rooftop terrace, at Nikkei when he’d said “meet me on the sundeck at the club.” I would definitely be there, armed and possibly with Ian by my side. I wasn’t sure what to do about him. Maybe it was better to go alone. If I told Ian about the text, surely he’d insist on coming along.