Bump & Grind (Brewed Moon Book 1)

by J. Margot Critch

  “Guys, move out,” Mitch ordered and they took their formation, splitting up and conducting the search in the way that they’d planned using a blueprint of the layout of the club.

  Peter and Mitch took the long hallway that they knew led to Dylan O’Connell’s office, figuring if there was anything incriminating to find, it would be there. They came to the closed door, and stood outside.

  “This is the office,” Mitch whispered. “Cover me.”

  Peter nodded and raised his gun, ready for anyone who might be inside, protecting the inner business sanctum of the mob boss.

  Mitch counted from three, and he kicked open the door, he entered the room and Peter entered just after him, gun drawn.

  Where they had expected Irish mob enforcers, looking for a fight, or shredding documents, they found a woman sitting alone at the desk. Not just any woman though, Peter realized. It was the last person he would have expected to see there. Erica.

  He stood frozen, his gun still raised and aimed squarely at her chest.

  “Peter?” her voice quaked, shaking him from his stance. Knowing she wasn’t a threat, he and Mitch both lowered their guns.

  “Erica.”

  “What are you – what is this?” she stood, her head cocked to the side as she took in his gun, bulletproof vest and the police badge that dangled from a chain around his neck. “You’re a cop? What’s going on?”

  Peter opened his mouth to speak. But seeing her there, in Dylan O’Connell’s office had stunned him. She stalked closer to him, and Mitch raised his gun. Peter knew that his brother was covering him, protecting him, but seeing the gun trained on Erica disturbed him.

  “Peter, what is going on?” she ask again.

  “Mitch, drop your gun,” he ordered, before turning back to her. “Maybe you can tell me. What are you doing here?”

  “I came to talk to the owner. But you still haven’t answered my question.”

  It finally hit him. Erica was here to see Dylan O’Connell. For whatever reason, they had business together. He needed to get her away from the club - from O’Connell – to find out what it was. He moved quickly and found himself behind her. He took her hands and clasped her wrists in his handcuffs, binding them behind her back. “Erica,” Peter said, his voice thick. “You’re under arrest.”

  Chapter 18

  Peter watched Erica from behind the two-way mirror. She sat at the small metal table, looking around as she brought her red fingernails to her mouth. She nibbled, nervously. She looked afraid, vulnerable. Her eyes darted about the room, cagey. During the three hours she’d been there, neither the coffee cup nor the bottle of water she had been given had been touched.

  Peter was conflicted. On one hand, she might be in bed with the O’Connell’s, and he was expected to do his job. But on the other hand, he had been in bed with her and felt a basic need to protect her. He wanted nothing more than to scoop her up and take her away from all of it. Even though he might have been the one to arrest her, he yearned to reach out to her, to comfort her. She hadn’t said anything to him since he had read her her rights and put her in the back of a patrol car. Not that he could blame her. Peter heard the door open behind him and Mitch, Steve and Joe walked in. They met him at the window and they all watched her silently for several seconds.

  Steve was the first to speak. “Boy, is she pissed at you,” he remarked, Peter could hear the smile on his lips without looking at him. He had been the one to escort her to the room where she currently waited.

  “Did she say anything?”

  “Not a word, but I could tell that she wants you dead.”

  “Yeah, I now,” Peter sighed. “This isn’t going to be pretty.”

  “So why exactly, did you arrest her?” Steve asked.

  “It felt like my only option,” he answered, not taking his eyes from her. “She was in the office. She had to be there for some reason. I figured that if we got her away from there under the guise of an arrest, then she could tell us what we need to know. Arresting her would throw her off balance, scare her. I don’t know, man.”

  “What are you going to say to her?” Joe asked him.

  What was he going to say? “I don’t know. How about I tell her that I’m just doing my job?”

  Mitch laughed, and patted Peter on the shoulder. “Yeah, let me know how that works out for you.”

  “Do you mind if I go in there alone first?” Peter asked, turning to Mitch. “I need to talk to her.”

  “That’s not exactly by the book,” Mitch told him, alluding to the proper protocol in an interrogation.

  “Since when do we go by the books?”

  “Good point,” Mitch conceded. His voice turned firm. “I’m trusting you not to fuck this up. Don’t do anything stupid. We’ll go see if the techs have anything yet. You’ve got ten minutes with her.”

  Peter opened the door to the interrogation room and he walked inside. Erica’s head turned sharply and when she saw him, her eyebrows pinched together and she glared. He could pinpoint the exact moment when all of her nervousness was replaced by cold hatred.

  Peter went to the corner where the camera was placed to record interrogations. He reached over his head and unplugged it.

  “What are you doing?”

  Peter didn’t answer her. Instead he crossed the small room to the pane of two-way glass, and he lowered the blinds so no one in the next room could watch them. He felt her eyes on him as he moved, and he took the seat across from her at the small, metal table.

  For several moments, they watched each other, not speaking until she soon broke the silence. “Who are you?” she asked Peter, her voice low.

  “I’m exactly who I told you I was. I didn’t lie to you about that.”

  “You said you were in security. I guess you weren’t wrong.” She shook her head. “You’re also the one who slapped the cuffs on me.” She held out her wrists and he could see bruises forming where he had regrettably affixed the cuffs too tightly. “So tell me, Peter, who are you really?”

  “You’re going to be questioned about the O’Connell family.”

  “Who? The O’Connell’s? Do you mean Dylan, at the club? I don’t know anything about him. Peter, I haven’t done anything wrong,” she leaned closer to him over the table. “I’m a dancer. I pour coffee. Why can’t you tell me what’s going on?” she pleaded with him, and he saw the sheen of frustrated tears, as they clouded her eyes. “Why won’t you tell me anything?”

  Peter took a deep breath. He had to tell her something. He’d spent his entire career learning to tell when someone was lying, acting. But looking at Erica, he knew then that she was genuine. She was a good person and whether he wanted to or not, she was the woman he loved. He left his seat and came around to her side of the table and he crouched beside her. He reached out to touch her jaw, but she flinched away from his fingertips.

  “Okay,” he nodded. “I lied to you.”

  She raised one eyebrow. “Well, there’s a newsflash.”

  “I’m a cop.”

  “Yeah, I gathered that. So why did you arrest me, of all people?”

  “Technically, you’re not under arrest. You haven’t been booked or charged. We just want to ask you some questions. I told you that you were under arrest, but really, I just wanted to get you away from that club. Separate you from O’Connell.”

  “You were trying to scare me so I would comply. That is shady as fuck.”

  “It kind of was.”

  “But why?”

  Peter paused again. “I shouldn’t be telling you any of this. But, as you may have gathered, we’re investigating Dylan O’Connell for his ties to organized crime.”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  Peter rose and sat on the corner of the table. He told her about seeing the Irishmen at Brewed Moon. “We saw you taking money from him, you dance at his club. There were too many coincidences, too many connections between you and O’Connell. And I needed to get closer to you. We thought that
maybe we could use you to take him down.”

  “You needed to get closer to me?” She leaned back, and looked up at him with disgust. She couldn’t believe what he was saying to her. Understanding then cleared her face. “Is that why you were sleeping with me? For an investigation?” She laughed without humor. “Taking ‘undercover’ a bit too literally, don’t you think?”

  “It’s not like that, Erica-”

  “Wait a minute. How do you know about the money? Were you following me?”

  “We weren’t following you. Mitch was tailing O’Connell when he approached you. We’ve got photos of you accepting cash from him. It doesn’t look good for you.”

  “Photos,” she muttered to herself. She raised her head and looked at him. “What else?”

  “What?”

  “Was there anything else? Any other gross violations of my privacy.”

  “I don’t feel good about any of this.” He closed his eyes. He knew that it would be ugly, but he needed to be honest with her. “But, I wore a wire,” he admitted. “And there’s a recording device in your apartment. I also went through your things when you were sleeping.”

  Her mouth dropped, and she stood to face him. If she were any other person in the interrogation room, he might have slammed them back down in their chair. But he couldn’t do that to Erica. He’d already done enough to her. “You,” she sputtered. “You wore a wire? You recorded us when we- when we-”

  He shook his head, as if he could say anything to make the situation better. “I always turned it off when we were intimate,” he assured her, but he knew the platitude would not quell her anger.

  “How thoughtful of you,” she bit out, rolling her eyes. “So what exactly did you record?”

  “Not much, just a couple of conversations”

  “Just a couple of conversations?” Her expression was outraged as she drew back her hand, and before he could connect it with his cheek, he caught her by wrist.

  With his hard tight on her wrist, she looked at him, her eyes filled with moisture, and she blinked back the angry, confused tears that threatened to fall.

  They looked at each other, breathing deeply, adrenaline from their fight rushing through their systems. Peter pulled her to him, and surprisingly, she let him. His mouth slammed down on to hers, and his hands encircled her waist while hers wrapped around his neck. He pulled back and quickly turned her so that her back was to his chest. He lowered his head and she sighed when he moved her hair away from her neck and kissed and nipped at the sweet spot. She instinctively moaned, at the feeling of his lips on her, and with an arch of her back, she pushed her ass into his crotch, and his growing erection, and she moved torturously from side to side, rubbing against him.

  With one hand on her waist, he pushed her shoulder, and she willingly bent over the table in front of her.

  “Peter,” she gasped between rapid breaths, wriggling beneath him. She felt him pull her skirt over her hips, and she felt the moan which rumbled throughout his body when he saw that she had skipped wearing panties that day.

  “Jesus, Erica,” he muttered.

  In response, she pressed her beautifully bare ass into his groin and wriggled. He unzipped his jeans and lowered them down his hips in response. She turned to look at him, over her shoulder. “I didn’t want to risk any panty-lines in this skirt.”

  Peter took a deep breath, and the other thing that he knew at the moment was the all-consuming need to be inside of her. Without considering the need for protection or the fact that they were inside an interrogation room, he unzipped his pants and pushed roughly inside of her.

  “Peter. Yes!” Erica cried out and her internal muscles gripped him tightly. Their connection was frantic and desperate. He moved in and out of her, pumping his hips quickly as he held himself aloft her with one hand planted on the table and the other roughly gripping Erica’s hip. They both came quickly, together, and she arched her back into him, and he lightly placed a hand at the base of her throat and he placed his lips to her temple.

  They disengaged and Erica squirmed away from him, not looking at him, as she attempted to catch her breath, while they both cleaned up and adjusted their clothing.

  “Erica?”

  “Get away from me.”

  Peter dragged his hand through his hair. “Erica, I know that I fucked up. But I was only doing my job.”

  “Doing me was your job?” She turned away from him.

  “I never meant for any of this to happen.” He walked closer to her and she edged away. “I didn’t mean to fall in love with you.”

  “You don’t get to say that to me. Don’t touch me.”

  “Okay.” Peter checked his watch. “Erica, one more thing. My brother will be coming soon to question you. He won’t let me be present during your interrogation. Tell him the truth, but don’t tell him anything that will incriminate yourself, okay?”

  She nodded.

  “And after that, unless it turns out that you are guilty of some crime, we’ll let you go back home.”

  Erica didn’t react to what he’d said. “None of this makes sense,” she whispered.

  Peter knew exactly what she was feeling. It didn’t make sense. “I know,” he said emphatically, before returning to the camera, plugging it in, and heading out the door.

  Peter met Mitch in the hallway. “She’s ready,” he told his brother and headed in the opposite direction to the war room.

  Chapter 19

  When Mitch returned to the war room following his interrogation of Erica, Peter was still in a foul mood. “How’d it go?”

  Mitch shook his head and sat down at his desk.

  “Where is she?”

  “I’ve got uni driving her home, Officer Boyle I think.” Mitch threw his files on top of the desk, and cut a look at Peter. “You are unbelievable.” Peter didn’t respond. “Don’t think I don’t know what you and Erica did in the interrogation room.”

  While he still felt Erica burned onto his skin, the taste of her on his lips, her rejection had cut him to the bone. He’d deserved it, of course. He’d lied to her, spied on her, and recorded her on a wire. She’d trusted him and he’d broken that trust.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Can we just close this case already?” He needed to get back to work. To take his mind off the woman he’d fallen in love with, who never wanted to see him again, so he sat at his desk, across from Mitch at his. They had boxes of files they’d taken from Dylan O’Connell’s club to comb through.

  “For what it’s worth,” Mitch said. “We’re done with her. We can’t tie her to O’Connell. You can see her freely now.”

  Like she would ever want to be in the same room with him again. Peter didn’t want to talk about her. His chest ached. It was too painful to think about her.

  “Where are the other guys?”

  “At the warehouse,” he said simply, referring to their storage space by the harbour. They used the warehouse when they needed extra privacy or wanted to unofficially question a suspect without the precinct knowing.

  “Oh really?”

  “Yeah,” he leaned in and whispered. “They found a couple of contracts and files in O’Connell’s office. Involving the Russians. We didn’t want to bring them here, so they’re taking a look out of them out there.”

  “Interesting.” Peter’s interest was piqued, and he tried to put Erica out of his mind. “Let’s get out there. See what they’ve got.”

  Chapter 20

  Peter and Mitch arrived at the warehouse and walked inside to see Steve and Joe poring over the documents at the small battered table they’d placed under the bare lightbulb. The warehouse was bare bones in every way, containing no luxuries like central air or comfortable furniture. It was a sunny day, so that meant that the poorly-insulated space was sweltering, cooled only slightly by an oscillating fan which did little more than circulate the already-warmed air.

  Peter got to the table first. “What do we have?”

  “A lot of Russia
n,” Steve muttered, not looking up.

  “And do you speak Russian?”

  “No,” he answered, holding up a Russian/English dictionary. “But I did pick this up.”

  “Nothing to report?”

  “From what we can gather from the files that are written in English,” Joe started. “It seems that, as we suspected, O’Connell is branching out his business. He’s entering the sexual-slavery trade, and he’s doing business with Petrova as his first big score. He’s buying women.”

  “Man, I was afraid of that,” Mitch walked over and started looking at the files before them. “We’ve got to stop this motherfucker.”

  Peter grabbed a metal folding chair from the nearby wall. He sat and grabbed a file folder that hadn’t yet been checked. He paged through the top couple of sheets until he found something that made his blood run cold.

  “Guys,” he said, putting the page down on the table. He pointed at the picture of the man provided. “This guy’s a cop.”

  “Oh, shit,” Steve stood as well, getting a closer look the photo. “Why would Dylan O’Connell have his picture?”

  Peter read from the hand-written notes scrawled on the next page. “He’s on the payroll.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Mitch whispered. “That’s the guy who drove Erica home.”

  Peter stood so quickly that his chair fell back. He pulled out his cell phone, and dialed Erica’s number. There was no answer. He tried to stop the panic that rose in his core. She might be fine, screening her calls, but that wasn’t what his gut was telling him.

  Erica sat on her couch, drinking the hefty glass of wine that she had poured for herself after the police officer had dropped her off. She was fresh from the shower, but the hot water and steam had done nothing to make her feel any better or closer to human. Her eyes burned, and her chest felt hollow. She didn’t know how she had let herself fall so deeply for him. She had known Peter only a short time. And sure, their connection had been more intense than she had ever experienced, but he’d lied to her. He’d slept with her as part of an investigation. It made her feel sleazy. He used me. She thought back to their last sexual encounter, her bent over the table in a freakin’ interrogation room.