Bet Me

by Catherine Mann

  “You bought your way into the party? The FBI must be backing you with one heck of a budget for this trip.” She had to admit she would appreciate having him with her in a room full of horny men who thought they could buy sex. Still, that wouldn’t even be as bad as men who thought they could force women into sex, which could very well be the case if the party was a front for the more sinister crimes taking place in Las Vegas.

  “The city is raising holy hell about the bad press. You know nothing loosens bureaucratic purse strings like political pressure.”

  She knew all about the political pressures since her police captain had been working eighteen-hour days for the past two weeks as a result of it. As much as Dorian wanted to help clean up Vegas for personal reasons, she also needed to come through for Captain Pearson, who was working himself into the ground.

  “Does that mean maybe we’ll get some extra backup?” Something about the private party context made her uneasy. The event would be tough to police.

  “I think the LVMPD will have to provide the backup resources since my department is strapped, working on the overseas efforts to get those other women back.” He stopped suddenly. “Are you okay?”

  She hadn’t realized he was watching her, but his sudden question made her start. Some of her emotions about this case—about those women suffering abroad—must have shown on her face.

  He pushed out of his chair before she could respond.

  “I—” She waved him off, choked up by stupid old stuff and afraid he might see more vulnerability in her eyes. “It’s nothing. Just the kind of case that gets under your skin, you know?”

  She couldn’t quite look him in the eye, training her gaze out the window at the lights on the Strip as the sun sank low on the horizon.

  “I know all about those kinds of assignments.”

  His words surprised her, as did his movement to stand beside her at the window. He gazed out at the view with her instead of forcing her to meet his eyes. To reveal secrets she wasn’t ready to relinquish.

  “You do?” She’d always thought of Simon as an expert at not taking his work too seriously. “I thought the Wildcard was always game for anything.”

  “You remember that night we hooked up?”

  She blinked to follow his line of conversation, surprised he’d bring it up now.

  “I remember it, all right.” What started out as a painful day in her professional life turned out to be the most memorable night of her personal life. Right up until Simon pulled the morning-after vanishing act.

  “I was knee-deep in a case gone to hell, and you hadn’t seen me in a while because I’d been on extended assignment to L.A.” He turned to face her now, his expression shadowed in the growing twilight.

  Had that been the case that had been rough for him? Maybe he’d been as off his game that night as her. The thought chinked away at the barriers she’d put up against him.

  “I didn’t know anything about your caseload.” But she had noticed he’d been out of town a lot. Somewhere during Simon’s full-throttle courtship, she’d started volunteering for any jobs that might bring her in contact with Bureau guys. Simon had worked hard to win her over and, damn it, he had.

  That caring had made it suck all the more when she’d woken up to an empty bed.

  Simon drew in a breath and blew it out slowly.

  “I was only back in town to meet a contact who never showed. When he didn’t arrive, I figured I was free for just that evening, but I had to jet the next morning because—technically speaking—I was working undercover that night.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  SIMON HAD NEVER BEEN the intuitive type when it came to understanding women. But then, it didn’t take much sense to interpret the dawning horror in Dorian’s eyes.

  “Going home with me was part of your cover?” Her cheeks flushed deep pink like the blush that he’d once seen steal over her whole incredible body.

  Except this time, that rosy color wasn’t a good thing. She looked ready to throttle him.

  “No. Yes. That is, I’d wanted to be with you for a long time, but I wouldn’t have approached you that night if it didn’t fit with my…er, character’s reputation.”

  This was going to be tougher than he thought, but he couldn’t continue to work with Dorian if they couldn’t get past what had happened between them. They had to trust each other this weekend or the consequences could be deadly.

  “Let me guess. You were a player.”

  “Among other things.” He’d thrown himself deeper into that role than any cover he’d ever taken. “I was trying to gain the trust of a handful of L.A. business partners who seemed to be hiding a hell of a lot of income behind some investment properties and a struggling casino out here.”

  “Since when do casinos struggle?”

  “The FBI’s question exactly. All the business partners had ties to organized crime, and we thought I might be able to connect the dots for some arrests.” He shook his head, remembering the fiasco and hoping his experience might help Dorian feel better about whatever was biting her in the butt about their current investigation.

  There had to be more to it than just their one-night stand for a dedicated cop like her to be so upset about him working the pimp angle, or checking out on him mentally when they were following up on a good lead. He’d worked with her on homicide cases in the past where she’d spent two minutes hurling in the ladies’ room and then thirty-six hours straight chasing down leads and hauling in suspects.

  If he didn’t know better, he would swear she was holding back on this one.

  “I’m going to ignore the fact that you slept with me to make yourself look good to your criminal friends and concentrate instead on why it all got under your skin.”

  He’d seen that direct stare of hers before, usually when she wanted to wrangle information from a reluctant suspect. Her brown eyes were tinged with gold and yellow, cat’s eyes that were beautiful and also a little unnerving when she watched you so steadily.

  Pivoting on his heel, he retrieved a couple of energy drinks from the minibar. He handed her one before cracking open the top on his.

  He dropped into a sofa angled toward the window and rapped the cushion beside him in invitation. They sat side by side in the dark, the neon colors of Las Vegas reflected around the suite in a carnival glow. Dorian took a sip of her drink, her soft scent filling his nostrils as she folded her legs underneath her. He diverted his eyes from the way the movement hitched up her skirt, knowing he couldn’t afford that kind of distraction now.

  “I slipped so deep in that cover some of the guys at the Bureau said I wasn’t ever going to come out.” Those rumors had stung when he’d found out about them afterward, his reputation as a loose canon cemented after that case. “It wasn’t true, but I did form a connection with the crew I sold out—so much so that I lost a lot of sleep over the ethics of the whole thing.”

  “What kind of connection? You liked those guys?” She sounded surprised but not judgmental as she settled an arm along the back of the couch.

  “It’s different when you stay undercover longer.” He knew she’d done short stints for a day or a weekend before, but FBI work lent itself to longer, more specialized operations. “You have to find legitimate ways to relate to your suspects or you’ll never gain their trust. No one is a hundred percent evil. They have kids. Families. They like baseball or their pet dog, and you find a way to connect to that. Then, well, you’ve created a solid relationship with a criminal. It tends to mess with your mind.”

  He quieted the guilty niggle of his conscience that reminded him he was working hard to regain Dorian’s trust. To make a connection. Did his expertise in that area give him unfair advantage?

  “So you form false friendships to leverage information.” She nodded. Understanding but not understanding. “The more they trust you, the more you unearth for the good of the investigation.”

  “That’s how it began.” He remembered all too well the feeling of trium
ph that he’d won his way into the innermost circles. “The problem was I got off on the job a little too much. There’s a sense of loyalty among people who’ve committed dark deeds together, and the guys I fell in with—they’d do anything for each other. That kind of brotherhood is rare and I started to understand how gangs can recruit so effectively. It becomes the family you never had.”

  “You genuinely liked the crooks?”

  He couldn’t tell if censure lurked beneath her surprise.

  Shrugging, he tried to lighten the implications of the admission.

  “They operated with a code in place. No violence toward women and kids. The worst thing I ever saw those guys do was take out a kiddie-porn trader, and I had to admit, my morals weren’t all that offended.” Although God knows, he’d questioned himself about his ethics after that one. “Bottom line, I made the busts when the time came, but I know how some investigations venture a little too close for comfort.”

  He leaned back on the couch and waited for her response, hoping she’d own up to whatever was bugging her on the prostitution assignment.

  “You can’t beat yourself up for being effective at your job.”

  “Quite a credit to my character, isn’t it?”

  “You are a character, that’s for sure.” She shook her head as if he was a lost cause, but she smiled, too.

  The attraction to her still kicked him hard. He couldn’t be around her and not notice the magnetic draw of her strength, her commitment to the job. He admired her for that selfless hard work to a job with little glory and a paycheck that would never make her rich.

  He should have let her in on his case last year before he’d bolted from her bed.

  “Dorian?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, perhaps sensing the direction of his thoughts, or maybe to clear up her misgivings about their case. But before she could say anything, his computer chimed with the sound of incoming mail.

  Damn.

  “You think that could be a hit on Tex?”

  “I don’t know, but I’d better take a look. Whatever it is it came to my work e-mail.”

  She was too much of a pro to hang over his shoulder while he checked, but she rose from the couch to straighten her short skirt and smooth her hair. No doubt, she was readying herself for her next appearance as a hooker.

  And no matter how much he appreciated her commitment to the job, he still hated the fact that she’d taken on such a dangerous assignment this time. He’d read the file on the missing women around town. Whoever was behind the suspected flesh trade quietly growing around Vegas, they were doing a damn good job of stealing women without a trace.

  “Looks like we’ve got news,” Simon warned her as he clicked open the e-mail with positive ID in the header.

  On the other side of the room, Dorian went still.

  “Tex is actually a Mississippi boy with one prior for soliciting a prostitute. His name is Matthew Hollins and he’s a poker champ on tour with a group playing in Vegas for two weeks.”

  “Doesn’t sound like the kind of guy exporting women to foreign hellholes.” Dorian thumped her fist on the marble kitchen counter. “We need to get back out there and dig for more information before this weekend slips away. We don’t want to miss a kidnapping because we’re looking in the wrong direction.”

  “But this Matt could be a field soldier in a bigger operation. We could pick him up. Question him.”

  She shook her head, unsatisfied. “He’s more use to us as our ticket into that party tomorrow night. I don’t know about you, but I don’t plan to settle for a few low-level arrests. When we nail the bastards, we’re going to end this.”

  An ambitious goal. One he supported, but it wouldn’t be easy. He wanted to refine their plans, to hammer out the best way to flush out their bigger targets.

  Too bad Dorian was already on her way to the door.

  “I’m going to see who else comes my way if I make a few laps around the casino. I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “Wait.” He rose from the computer, shutting the laptop.

  The door closed behind her, leaving a yawning silence in her wake.

  OBVIOUSLY SHE HADN’T thrown herself fully into her role last time, or she wouldn’t have come up empty-handed for suspects. Dressed like she was, why wouldn’t a black-market sex slave trader at least take a closer look at her?

  Swinging her hips with every ounce of remembered feminine wile she never indulged, Dorian turned it up a notch, determined this weekend would yield the arrests this town needed.

  As she turned into the main casino, a throng of young guys passed her, their hands all clutching beers and plastic cups full of slot machine tokens. The cat calls were the deafening homage of the inebriated, bringing her attention from all over the casino floor.

  Why hadn’t she been able to tell Simon why this cover hurt so much for her? She couldn’t deny she’d leaped at the chance to flee his suite, embarrassed by the past she hadn’t come to terms with.

  “Hey, beautiful.” A soft masculine voice reached her ears from beside the roulette wheel, a vaguely foreign accent twisting the words into a musical sound.

  She blinked to help her focus again, her gaze landing on an expensively dressed man who might have been European. His dark hair and darker eyes suggested Greek or Italian, but she was no expert on accents.

  Forcing herself back into work mode, Dorian concentrated on her job. Approaching the man with a siren’s walk and what she hoped passed for a seductive smile, she steeled herself against distracting emotions.

  “Hi. Need some company?” Her heart slammed against her ribs, nervous and hoping she wasn’t wasting valuable man-hours on some run-of-the-mill guy searching for a good time. She needed to find the key players, the power behind the throne.

  Tex sure as hell wasn’t the right man.

  “I’ve been waiting for company.” He set a drink down on top of a slot machine and stepped toward her, his intense stare starting to freak her out. “Let us go to my room.”

  “Don’t you want to hear more about the full range of my services first?” She needed to stall a little longer, talk to him. She’d worry about how to extricate herself from a trip to his room later.

  “Money is no issue.” He wrapped an arm possessively around her waist. Gooseflesh born of revulsion mottled her skin. She was torn between the impulse to knee him in the groin and the need to wrest information from this scumbag.

  The job won out.

  “Are you from around here?” She sucked in her gut to buy herself an inch of freedom from his hand where it rested above her hip.

  “No. I grew up in Cyprus but my business takes me around the globe. Do you like to travel?”

  The international connection fit the profile for the group they’d been targeting. Dorian exclaimed over how much she loved the West Coast before turning the conversation back to him in the hope of figuring out if he could be one of the key figures in their case.

  “But tell me all about you. Where do you travel most often?” She tried not to tense her fingers into a fist while her hand rested on his back as they walked the endless maze of casino that separated them from the hotel rooms.

  “Indonesia. Singapore. Hong Kong. Where would you like me to take you?” He steered them past a long hallway full of Roman columns that led to the spa. A waitress wearing a short toga hurried by with a tray full of drinks.

  “Me?” Her heart thumped all the louder at his offer. Could he be one of their guys? “I could never afford to travel to those exotic places. I’ve been saving my pennies for a road trip to Tahoe.”

  Better that she sound desperate if she wanted to make herself a target.

  The man turned his head toward her and whispered in her ear.

  “Then stick with me, love.”

  They arrived at the elevator banks just as a car chimed its arrival. They nearly ran right into Simon, looking harried and more than a little annoyed.

  Dorian caught his eye for only a second befo
re she risked a quick search over her shoulder for her companion. She couldn’t afford to tip off her best lead yet that she wasn’t what she seemed.

  “Damn.” Simon’s voice loomed closer as she stepped into the car with her next would-be customer.

  Simon was two steps behind them, smiling apologetically.

  “Left my car keys in my room,” he explained, checking his watch. “Looks like I’m going to be late after all.”

  Dorian didn’t know whether to be grateful or worried that her partner for the weekend had decided to follow them, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Would Simon be too quick to take chances and break cover at the first hint of danger? She was certain he wouldn’t do that for any other officer. This case had him as off balance as her.