P I Honeytrap

by Kristal Baird

  Hayley would have to think very hard before she decided just how much she would tell either one of them. The client had hired her to find out about Tony’s activities behind closed doors and she had done it. And then some. Although she couldn’t help feeling she had crossed a line. What the hell was this job doing to her?

  It almost seemed a shame to blow the whistle on Tony but rules were rules, she told herself. And a job was a job.

  ‘I’ll look forward to you coming again, Joy,’ Tony said cryptically, letting them out at the front door. She snorted.

  The man was an animal.

  Hayley couldn’t resist playing her personal copy of the full unedited version over and over for several days. It still had the ability to excite her enough to need to masturbate as she watched her wild, orgasmic experience from the other side of the camera. The intense delights were relived in her mind as well as her body. Despite reaching for her own vibrator, she could not bear to go for the burn again once she had come. She would need to be tied up, unable to escape, and forced to continue in order to repeat that experiment.

  Hayley edited out what she thought of as her private moments in the back office after everyone had gone home. Cheryl only really needed to see Tony’s attempt to coerce her into meeting him on a regular basis through blackmail and the start and end of his bondage session, with her best bits, as she liked to think of them, removed. His partner-swapping rule-breaking was established and it was up to Cheryl to decide where she took it from there. Another job in the can.

  Hayley chalked the rest up to a unique experience. One she didn’t imagine she would be repeating any day soon. She played through the edited version one last time to ensure it was exactly what Cheryl required and no more, before the handover of evidence.

  Suddenly, Hayley became aware of someone in the darkened outer office and froze. Reuben’s shadowed silhouette filled the doorway.

  ‘The last one to leave forgot to lock your door,’ he said, tonelessly.

  He was talking too slowly, like his mind was still processing information. He’d been listening to the tape and the sounds of her sexual encounter and still was. The muted sounds of her first orgasm with Tony now filled the empty space between them. She slammed down the lid of her laptop.

  ‘You’re watching porn?’ he whispered, searching her face as if he could find some other explanation there.

  Neither of them believed it. He knew the sounds she made when she came, only too well.

  ‘What are you doing here, Reuben?’ Her tone made her sound irritated and mad. But she was feeling so much more than that. Embarrassed. Caught out. Deviant.

  Hayley rushed from behind the desk and shoved him back into the general office with the flat of her hand planted squarely in the centre of his broad chest. She slammed the door closed behind them.

  ‘What do you want, Reuben?’

  He ignored her questions. She could almost see his mind trying to process what he had heard, loud and clear, on her computer.

  ‘You film yourself getting fucked by other men?’ He’d come to his conclusion.

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong.’ She went instantly into PI mode. Sound confident. Deny everything.

  He sounded more wounded than accusatory. ‘I know your voice, Hayley. You were asking a guy named Tony to fuck you. He was obliging you. And you were getting off on it. And still are by the looks of things.’

  She knew her face would be flushed in sexual arousal, her eyes dilated. Hell, if he hadn’t come into the office just then, she might have even been indulging in a little direct stimulation of her own.

  Reuben looked as shocked by this confrontation as she did. This was exactly what she had been trying to avoid. What boyfriend could possibly understand his woman earning her living the way she did? She had known what she had with Reuben had to end. It was the reason she had kept him at arm’s length. Part of the reason why. She didn’t know why any more.

  ‘It’s none of your business, Reuben.’ Hayley stuck to her default position. What the hell else was she going to say that would go anywhere near to explaining this crazy set-up?

  ‘I heard you coming as he fucked you, Hayley. You think I don’t know what you sound like when you’re sexually aroused? When you orgasm? It’s fixed in my head. I hear it in my dreams.’ He tapped his temple hard with his fingers. ‘I think that makes it my business.’

  Anger burst from her, all mixed up with mortification. Getting caught out. By Reuben. She was even angrier at herself that she cared about him knowing. About him seeing what she’d tried to keep hidden. The real Hayley.

  ‘I can have sex with whomever I damn well please and I don’t have to answer to you about it.’

  ‘And film yourself doing it? So you can enjoy it over again later?’ He continued building on her discomfort as his own disbelief and hurt etched deeper into his features. ‘I heard you telling him he excites you. More than me, Hayley?’ Reuben grasped her upper arms. ‘More than I did?’

  ‘Let go, Reuben. You’re out of line.’ She struggled ineffectively against his hold. She’d never seen him this way before.

  ‘You told him you liked it when a man fucks you hard. I heard every word. You said what he was doing to you made you want to come.’ His voice was choked, cracked.

  ‘Well, maybe that’s the sort of information you get when you come sneaking around, spying on women.’ Little point denying it now. He’d heard every word. She hit out in verbal defence, in an attempt to stop herself bursting into tears. She might have needed to end things with Reuben, but not like this. She’d wanted to end things to avoid this very scenario happening. And because she was afraid of feeling like this. She mustn’t think about it.

  ‘I wasn’t spying on you, Hayley.’ His voice sounded soft. Deflated. Hurt.

  Hers got louder, more strident and disturbed. More guilty. ‘Then what the hell were you doing creeping around my office, in the middle of the night?’

  ‘It’s not that late. You’ve come over to me later than this before now. I came to –’ Whatever he was about to say, he caught himself. Changed his mind. ‘I knocked but you didn’t hear me.’ Now his anger started to rise. ‘Too caught up reliving your sexual experiences with other men, while you keep me hanging around, waiting. And what for?’ He shook her gently as if she was unconscious and he was desperately trying to make her wake up. ‘What for? Do you get a kick out of making men want you? Making them wait for you in case you can’t get a better offer?’

  Oh God, she didn’t want this. Didn’t want him to feel this way. Didn’t want to feel anything herself, at all. ‘I told you we were through. If you didn’t believe me, it was your own ego taking over.’ Hayley shook his hands from her arms and began shoving him again, all the way off her premises.

  ‘Did you film you and me, Hayley?’ Suddenly, it seemed, all sorts of possibilities were starting to reveal themselves in his mind.

  ‘No! It isn’t like that.’

  ‘Then tell me what it is like to fuck men and film yourself doing it. Is this –’ his arm swept around her office ‘– just a cover-up?’

  God, he thought she was a prostitute, damn him. ‘Get out! Out!’ Hayley shoved Reuben with two hands through the front doors. She couldn’t begin to explain it. Had he thought she found lost kittens for a living?

  She knew he could have stopped her ejecting him if he had wanted to, but this was going to be the bad ending she had tried to avoid. He didn’t want to stop her. He wanted to go. She just wanted to slam the door on him before she embarrassed herself any further than she already had, by crying in front of him. She suddenly knew what she had lost.

  Hayley bounced the door closed in his face and watched through the glass as he stared back at her, like one of them was a caged animal and the other free to run but neither could work out which one was which.

  He turned away, shoulders slumped, head down. The look in his eyes haunted her. ‘Lock the door. Next time it might not be a man who cares about you coming through it
,’ he whispered over his shoulder, then reeled away.

  Those words did it. Hayley rammed the security bolt home, locking him from her life. Her eyes welled and angry tears of disappointment and loss rolled down her face.

  She had just lost the only man who ever did care about her, she knew it. The one she had allowed to care. Perhaps cared about too? And there was no point even thinking about that now, after tonight.

  Tonight, it wasn’t her doing the walking away. She sank to her knees and cried.

  Reuben wandered in a daze. He looked up and found he was halfway down the alleyway behind his gym and heading for the brick wall that closed off the end of the passage. A dead end. Just like his life.

  He had gone over to Hayley’s office with one purpose in mind. To tell her that he loved her. His heart had soared when he’d found the lights on and her working alone. It had been just the opportunity he had wanted, to take her in his arms, kiss her, and tell her that he knew she had trouble committing to a relationship but that he would wait with her, for as long as it took. Because he truly loved her.

  The words sounded hollow in his head. As hollow as the sounds of her coming in another man’s arms. He couldn’t block those noises as they ripped through him like a jagged blade.

  He wasn’t mistaken. For a few seconds he thought he must be. Hoped he was. But Hayley’s reaction told him he had really heard what he thought he’d heard. She’d been having sex with another man. Not unwillingly, but enthusiastically. The way she had with him.

  No. Not the way she had with him. He would never believe that. With him she was tender and giving. With that other guy? It was primal. Animalistic. Raw need. He couldn’t get the sounds of her voice as she shattered for that guy out of his head.

  He lashed out and punched the brick wall. Once. Twice. It bust up all his knuckles. But that didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as the twisted pain in his gut, the devastation of her betrayal in his head, and the hollow sensation of the loss of Hayley that lodged in his heart. His lover was gone.

  He turned and started to run. He needed to deaden the pain the only way he knew how. By exhausting himself beyond thought, beyond reason. Beyond hope.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The holiday weekend turned out warm and sunny. The blue, cloudless sky mocked Hayley’s dark, lonely mood. With no surveillance work pending, as even cheating husbands were spending time at home with their families, Hayley had given the team a deserved holiday. She was better off by herself. The guys had started to wonder why she was so moody. She’d tried to hide it but they knew her too well, cared about her too much. Nothing made her feel worse than their concern.

  Alice sweetly invited Hayley to spend the day with Marty and herself. They were making a picnic lunch and going boating on the town park lake. It sounded romantic, and three was a crowd, so Hayley made her excuses with a little white lie. Paolo would be doing whatever college boys did on family weekends. No doubt including plenty of friends, alcohol, and pretty college girls.

  Hayley looked up and down the deserted street. All the local businesses were shut down for the weekend, including Reuben’s Gym. Why she thought his would be any different, she didn’t know, but she swung between relief and a disappointment she had no right to feel.

  To divert her dark thoughts she tried to picture Marty rowing Alice across the water, but saw an image of Reuben on the rowing machine, muscles bulging, instead. It had been nearly a week since she’d last seen him, and she hastily blocked the memory of his haunted eyes staring at her through the glass door. He had looked at her as if he had just caught her cheating on him and it had killed him inside.

  Well, it wasn’t cheating. It wasn’t as though she and Reuben were anything special to each other either. Even as she thought it, Hayley knew that was a white lie too. Everything in her life was a lie.

  She gave up on trying to relax at home and returned to work instead. What else was she going to do today? Mope around thinking about things she didn’t want to think about? People? It would be a good opportunity to clear out old files, catalogue recent assignments, and prepare for a fresh start next week. All her past had taught her to do was to move on.

  Her first task was to put a pot of coffee on to brew. Sleep had eluded her this past week and she was only half awake even now, despite it being well past ten in the morning. The others had started to notice, to comment on how tired she looked. She had to let go of what was past, clean up her messy life, and start over.

  The thought of cleaning up everything appealed. The office certainly needed a thorough clear-out. She didn’t employ any local cleaning staff as they could be a security issue so the whole team took turns to tidy up, but she had to admit, looking around her, that none of their hearts were really into doing it. It needed some hard work. And someone who needed nothing more than to graft their way into complete physical exhaustion.

  Hayley returned to her car, left parked on the empty main street, to fetch some cleaning equipment brought from home, while the coffee machine burbled away in the background, sending up a reviving aroma. She staggered through the front door, elbowing it open in front of her, laden with buckets, mops, half a store’s worth of cleaning solutions and a lightweight vacuum cleaner which she dumped in a heap on the main office floor.

  ‘So this is where you plan all your mischief?’

  Hayley whirled around to see an unknown guy who had crept into the office right behind her.

  ‘It’s closed here for the weekend,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’ Her voice radiated a confidence she wasn’t really feeling. Clients were largely female and the stranger’s accusation rang alarm bells loudly.

  The guy was big too. A mean look about the mouth. Hayley racked her brains to try and remember if he had been a previous target. She couldn’t place him. And she got really intimate with these guys, so would definitely remember if he’d ever had the pleasure.

  She was trying to keep things light, pleasant, in spite of the negative intent that radiated from him. Her instincts were usually pretty good when it came to threat and danger. And this guy was scowling. She’d allowed her guard down to get herself in this situation. It was what a confused head did to you and why she couldn’t allow herself the messy distractions of an emotional life. ‘If you want to leave a number, I’ll get them to call you first thing next week.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think you’ll need my number,’ he said, moving a step closer. ‘You’ll have my number pretty soon and I already have yours.’

  Now that was not even a thinly veiled threat, Hayley decided. It was a clear one.

  She stepped to the side of her desk nearer to the phone. Damn it. Why hadn’t she locked the door behind her? Reuben had warned her. And why was she immediately thinking about Reuben? She was on her own. She had to get herself out of this trouble. Hayley looked at the load of cleaning stuff she had been carrying. Perhaps in the fault, she wondered, lies the solution?

  Her mind appraised the bleach, the spray polish, looking for a defensive weapon.

  But this guy was nobody’s fool. He followed her line of sight and her train of thought. ‘Thinking of cleaning up on me?’

  Hayley played dumb. It was amazing how often men underestimated women, especially if they were pretty and played dumb. ‘Oh, that lot?’ She nodded towards the pile of equipment. ‘Yeah, they’ve got me in cleaning up their mess while they all take a holiday.’ She tried to sound disgruntled. If he thought she was just the cleaning lady, then whatever he had come to the agency for, she might be left out of it.

  ‘I heard you were good at cleaning up other people’s mess.’ The guy took a step closer.

  The hairs on the back of Hayley’s neck prickled. He heard? So he was acting on someone else’s behalf. Her instincts were on full alert and this guy was clearly here for no good. No point dancing around it.

  ‘Perhaps you’ve got me mistaken for someone else?’ she challenged.

  The guy laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant one. ‘But that’s how you make you
r money, isn’t it? Getting mistaken for someone else.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ She took a small shuffle nearer the phone.

  ‘Try getting mistaken for a whore, from Kat Calls.’

  Shit. Billy Solar. She wondered how much violence he’d used to get the information about her out of one of those girls.

  ‘I think you’ve definitely got me mixed up with somebody else. I’ve never heard of Kat Calls. And I run a legitimate cleaning business, I’ll have you know.’ The indignant tone rolled off her in waves. It wasn’t all play-acting. ‘Going round cleaning other people’s office space.’ It was certainly worth another try, putting doubts in his mind. It might give her enough time to run. ‘And I’m certainly not a whore, so put your money back in your pocket, mister. You won’t be getting any of that around here.’

  She tried to sound as outraged and offended as she could that anyone could mistake a good church-going girl like her for such an awful thing as someone who sold sex for a living. She was positive she’d never seen this guy before so she knew he couldn’t be absolutely certain he had the right girl in his sights. He was hesitating a little. She took another minute step towards her target.

  He pulled out a mobile phone from his pocket and hit a few numbers. ‘I’m in. She’s alone. Yeah, it’s her.’ He shoved the phone back in his pocket.

  Hayley knew now the big guy wasn’t working alone. And he wasn’t fooled either. But she had no back-up and had to act now if she was going to do anything, before his accomplice arrived. She had an emergency alarm linked directly to the police, fixed under her desk. All she had to do was get to it before he could get to her. She feinted to her left and the guy reacted, then she moved swiftly to her right, behind her desk.

  The guy didn’t hesitate. Football player, she thought. He dived straight over the top of the desk, knocking Hayley backwards into her chair. It scooted on its wheels in the direction of the wall, only prevented from toppling over due to its wide wheel base and the sheer weight of the two people currently in it. Most of it his weight, crushing Hayley beneath him.