There was a slight pause and she started to bend over again, ready to mess with the controls in case she'd lost reception. She'd barely touched the knob to clear out interference when Mario began talking again. This time, a row of red lights began dancing as they matched the levels of his vocal inflection.
"I know. He should stick to doing what he does best, capturing punks who miss court dates. The only way you get a court date is to get caught, which won't happen to me." Mario had the kind of laugh that sent icy chills down a person's spine. "Why? Because I'm better than those assholes!" he shouted, his accent thickening as he bellowed what appeared to him to be the obvious truth.
"Your persuasive skills are definitely not your best asset, sweetheart. There is one thing you forget. King couldn't destroy the game when he killed your husband. Now the asshole has made the mistake of entering my town and thinking he can learn my operation. He'll be dead before we make our first attack." Mario's laughter in her ear was so wicked and dripping with hatred it made Angela's blood run cold. "Don't worry, my dear. I think I can still cut you in for a piece of the action. You shouldn't believe everything you hear. I'm not completely heartless. In fact, if you want, I'll even allow you to kill King for me. Although my sweet little puttana has taken a liking to ending people's lives."
Angela studied the instruction booklet another minute until she figured out how to put the conversation on speaker. Once she was sure it was still recording, she stood, suddenly antsy and impatient. She pulled the curtains back from the sliding glass doors and stared out at Lake Michigan. It was one hell of a breathtaking view but not one she appreciated at the moment. Mario also knew Jake was here. How did he know? Did Mario have eyes in the lobby? It wouldn't surprise her a bit if he did. Was Jake the only one in Chicago, or had his entire family come out here? Either way, there was a mark on his head.
Angela turned away from the panoramic view out her window and stared at the small black box. Mario had said the private investigator went to California and hired King to take him down. Was he talking about her father?
"Dad," she whispered, hurrying to her purse and pulling out her personal cell phone. The track phone she'd bought to use while undercover was next to it in her purse. She checked her personal cell, noting the missed call from her father and that he'd tried calling over an hour ago. Angela had her phone on Silent, which her father knew. They'd also agreed, until the case was over he wouldn't leave voice-mail messages. She cleared the missed call and put in a call to her father.
Staying close to the black box on the table, she studied it as she listened to her father's phone ring. Even though the conversations would be recorded, Angela wanted to know immediately if crucial information was revealed. When the call went to voice mail she hung up and put her phone on her bed next to her purse.
Mario wasn't talking at the moment and Angela rewound the recorded conversation and hit Play.
He did say the private investigator went to California and hired King. Mario hadn't said "a private investigator" but "that fucking private investigator." And he didn't say "Kings," or "the King family." He'd said "King," as in one person.
The image of Jake standing in the lobby, staring at her and offering her a final salute, appeared in her mind again. Immediately her insides tightened. As much as she was dying to know if her father had hired Jake and brought him out here to help her, at the same time Angela wasn't sure she wanted to talk to her father about Jake. Possibly it was leaving her mom when she was sixteen and moving in with her father, all of her teenage rebellion already focused on her mother, that had allowed Angela to build such a strong friendship and alliance with her dad. For whatever reasons, she and her dad were very close. She couldn't remember him ever yelling at her the way her mother had or treating Angela like a child. The bond she and her father had was based on love, respect, and sheer enjoyment of each other's company.
A year ago Angela hadn't given a thought when she'd shared the events of her evening with Jake with her father. They'd been in the middle of a case, hot on the pursuit of Marty Byrd. When she'd told her dad how she'd shared some crucial information with Jake, her father had immediately accused Angela of being infatuated with the man. Other daughters might have disputed such a charge, but Angela and her father had discussed her feelings, Jake's character, and the kind of man that would make Angela the happiest. The conversation was quickly forgotten the next day when they learned what Jake did with the information Angela gave him.
Jake had messed up her plan for attack a year ago. The second she had let him know where Marty Bird was, Jake and his family had hurried down there and blown up the damn mansion. All chances of learning anything about the game had been shot to hell. Her father knew how Jake screwed everything up for them. Would her dad seek Jake out again, in spite of what Angela had told him, to help Angela and be her backup?
"Damn it," she hissed, and dragged her fingers through her hair, tangling it and encouraging herself to take that shower now.
Mario wasn't talking anymore, but she thought she heard the engine running, which meant he was still in the limo. That or Tomas was driving somewhere without Mario.
Angela looked at the remaining bugs. Two more black thin pads, no larger than the size of a dime, remained in the box. She pulled them out, keeping them in their wrapping. When she got inside Mario's house tonight, she would bug it, too.
"One for the inside of your house, and one for the outside," she said out loud, holding the small packages up in the air and studying the flat, round disks. Once she peeled off the small paper on the back side of each disk, there was a sticky substance that would allow her to leave it anywhere and keep it secure. "I'm going to know every time you take a shit, motherfucker."
The words were barely out of her mouth when a loud explosion rattled the small speaker on the black box.
"Holy crap!" Another booming sound came through the speaker. Angela swore it shook the box. "Somebody talk! What the hell just happened?"
Angela slid a flash drive into a USB port in the side of the black box where the file would be saved once the conversation ended. She actually loved her new toy. The little box enabled her to listen, record, then would automatically save the conversation and allow her to play it back at her leisure.
"Come on; come on," she muttered. "You don't explode like that without giving me some kind of doable explanation."
It sounded as if a car door opened and closed, then the engine roared, accelerating quickly. Angela wondered if a police scanner might be a good addition to her setup here. If Mario just blew something up, it would be nice to know if someone had witnessed it and if police were on their way. She couldn't set up too permanent a headquarters in her suite. This arrangement was temporary. Not that Mario would ever set foot inside her suite. All he needed to know was she stayed at the Drake hotel because she was a spoiled rich girl who'd rather live on the edge than with her annoying parents.
She forced her thoughts to quit meandering throughout her brain when there was a noticeable rustling sound. Angela leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table, and stared at the black box. Her insides constricted painfully when she heard laughter. The sound was demonic, almost bordering on insane.
"That was quite the show," Mario said, sounding incredibly happy. His voice was as clear as if he stood in the room with her. "It was almost as good as watching my sweet puttana tell those two dumb fucks to drive into the side of a building. God, that was classic. The stupid little bitch never batted an eye. No remorse or fear or concern. Nothing."
"You're so easily entertained," a woman said, laughing along with him. "Did you expect anything other than perfection out of my drug?"
"Your slave juice?"
"'Juice' is such an inaccurate term, but it will work for the nonscientific brain," she said, sounding rather full of herself. "Get your board pieces warmed up on the stuff and, darling, they'll do absolutely anything you want them to do."
"Just like you?" Mario asked, his baritone
a soft growl. "Or do I need to give you the drug, too?"
"You know, if you're very good I might show you how to make your army respond to your command with a remote control. You won't need to be anywhere near them."
Angela forced herself to breathe, realizing just then she gripped a ballpoint pen in her hand so tight her knuckles were white. She began scribbling notes on the margin of the instruction manual.
Need attack locations. Where are kidnapped victims? She tapped her pen on the paper, creating small dots around what she'd just written. Being artistic was never one of her strong points, but with a few more clues she would easily connect the dots. Does slave juice have lasting side effects? Angela wasn't sure what compelled her to write the question, but if she was to free the people Mario had kidnapped, understanding as much as possible about slave juice would be helpful.
Correction--when she freed the people Mario had kidnapped.
"I have a better idea." Mario's accent had thickened. "You show me how good you are and maybe I'll consider letting you play with my army."
"Is your army all you want me to play with?"
Mario laughed, and the sound faded into a groan. Angela didn't need too much of an imagination to figure out what they were doing. Running her fingers through her hair, she lowered her head, closing her eyes once again and resting her forehead on her palms. There wasn't much to listen to now, an occasional moan and shuffling sounds. She didn't want them fucking. She wanted them giving her information. No matter how many times she did undercover work, patience wasn't one of her strong points.
Although sometimes pillow talk provided very important clues, so far all the two of them were doing was grunting.
"Time for that shower," Angela muttered, having no desire to listen to the asshole fuck. Anything they said would be recorded.
Angela pulled clean clothes from the closet where she'd unpacked and arranged them the day she'd checked in. After showering she planned on finding out what Jake King was doing in her hotel. Her tummy quickened as the image of him staring at her in the lobby filled her brain. Sexual tension had shot across that lobby, and it grew stronger by the moment.
"He is going to find you," she whispered, a mixture of excitement and nervous anticipation twisting her tummy into a fierce knot, when Mario and the woman started talking again.
"So, do we have an arrangement?" the woman asked.
"Is this how you seal all of your deals?" Mario's soft tone didn't sound amused or exhausted. He sounded crisp and all business.
"Not all of them." There was a short scuffling sound.
"All you've convinced me today is you give one mean blow job and know how to fuck in the back of a car better than a lot of sluts I've been with."
"Go to hell," the woman hissed, sounding pissed. "If you're going to win this goddamn game you're going to need an army larger than--"
"Don't tell me what I need to do to win the game," Mario roared, interrupting her and pounding against something that created an annoying scraping sound. "The other players don't stand a chance."
What Angela wouldn't do to learn who the rest of the players were in the game. Her heart pounded so hard in her chest she could barely breathe. Even slow, deep breaths didn't calm her down. She was so close to learning significant information about the game. Suddenly she needed to call her father again. There was so much to fill him in on.
"God forbid I tell you how to do anything." The woman was undaunted. "What I do know is you can increase the size of your army tenfold with my drug and control them easier than you are now."
My drug?
Angela froze, her jaw dropping as her heart quit beating. The woman in the car was Evelyn Van Cooper, the inventor of slave juice.
"Well, I'll be damned," Angela muttered, reaching for her phone to try her father again.
The hotel phone next to her bed started ringing.
"What the hell?" she gasped. That phone hadn't rung once since she'd arrived at the Drake. No one knew her room number other than her father, and he would reach her on her cell, not on the room phone.
She stared at the phone sitting next to her bed, watching the small red light glow as it rang a second time. Mario and Evelyn had quit talking. Angela hadn't heard car doors open and close, but the phone ringing might have distracted her.
Angela reached for the phone before it rang a third time. "Hello?"
"Come to room two-twelve."
"What?" Angela whispered, her heart beating harder than it was a few minutes ago. "Who is this?"
"Think back a year ago and I believe you'll remember," a man's voice said.
"What will I remember?" she asked, managing a softer tone and sitting on the edge of the bed. She straightened her legs, looking at her painted toenails as a fluttering began in her stomach and quickly swelled throughout her insides.
"Maybe that you don't really live in Aldea."
Angela smiled, remembering the line she'd told Jake about where she'd lived. A year ago in Mexico seemed like a different world, a different life. Yet she remembered the evening in that nightclub as if it were yesterday. Jake had taken her out to the dance floor and shown off moves that had her imagining he'd be one hell of a good lover. He'd also been very easy to talk to. Within a couple hours she felt as if she'd known him for years. Granted, he didn't know she was a private investigator. His attentiveness and probing nature, the way he watched her and asked questions, had her suspicious more than once that he might be on to her.
It was fairly late in the evening when she'd told him what she knew about Marty Byrd being in Aldea, a small village south of Tijuana. The local girl Angela had been out with that evening, who'd had drinks with her and Jake and his brother, needed to leave shortly after that. Angela had really wanted to stay but knew if she had, she and Jake would have fucked each other. Instead, she'd taken a cab, leaving Jake behind. Jake had taken the information she'd given him and destroyed all evidence of the game and killed Marty Byrd when they had worked with the FBI and blown up Byrd's mansion.
"Room two-twelve," he repeated.
The black box was quiet. Angela ran her fingers through her hair. There was no way she'd go see Jake without showering first.
"Give me half an hour," she said, then hung up before he could argue or, worse yet, hang up on her. Letting out a frustrated moan, Angela headed to the bathroom. Already the throbbing between her legs was growing damn hard to ignore. "Control, girl. Goddamn control or there is no way you can talk to him."
All she had to do was keep their conversation on business. There was plenty to discuss. She needed to let him know there was a mark on his head. Not to mention he was going to explain what he was doing here. They would catch up; then she'd head out for her evening date with Mario. Although the last thing she wanted to do was leave the exciting sexual tension that sizzled between her and Jake to go to a monster who would likely grope and humiliate her all evening long.
Her heart fluttered as she turned on the shower.
Chapter Three
Jake glanced up from the couch when someone knocked gently on his hotel room door. She'd said half an hour, but it had been forty-five minutes. Did Angela primp and prepare herself to come see him?
He stood, stretched, then tugged his shirt and smoothed it out as he headed to the door. Patting his gun, which he'd tucked into the back of his jeans, he leaned forward and looked through the peek hole. He stared at Angela's profile, distorted through the small circular glass. She looked both ways up and down the hallway as if the chance existed she might be followed. It was one of the negative aspects of their line of work: having to be more cautious than most.
He unlocked and turned the handle, then opened the hotel room door. Angela Huxtable stared up at him with defiant green eyes. Her long, thick black hair was damp and the light reflected in it. He breathed in a hint of roses. Angela had showered and cleaned up before coming to see him. Something tightened inside him, and not just his dick. It wasn't a familiar sensation, but he wasn't
staring at just another pretty lady. Something about Angela made her stand out, caused her beauty to be more unique and compelling, and created a radiant glow around her that worked like a magnet in drawing him to her. It also had had the strength to keep her in his thoughts for a year.
Angela entered his suite without a word, managing not to touch him as she glided past where he stood, holding the door. She paused in the middle of his room and turned to face him, not bothering to check out her surroundings but instantly snaring him with a hot and determined stare.
"Come on in," he drawled, taking his time closing the door and securing the dead bolt.
"What are you doing here, Jake?"
"Your dad didn't tell you? He hired me. I'm your backup, darling," he informed her, and enjoyed the hell out of her stunned expression. He took advantage of her shock to move closer. "Your father flew out to L.A. and personally hired me to help you out with the game," he added, lowering his voice as he studied her thick black hair.
It fell to the middle of her back, and the sleeveless pink blouse she wore helped offset its color. Her tan skin, green eyes, and slender figure with curves in all the right places made her a vision of beauty. But the hard, focused glare she gave him, beaming with intelligence and her willful nature, created an image of perfection he ached to know better--a lot better.
Angela didn't balk when he stopped close enough to reach out and grab a strand of her hair.
"My father hired you?" She didn't change her pose but continued staring at him, hands on her hips as she pressed her lips together in a thin line.
Jake let go of her hair and tried gripping her shoulders. Angela turned, walking to the window that faced the street below.
"Sit, Angela," he suggested, pulling out the chair he was going to guide her into before she slipped out of his grasp. "Bring me up to speed on what you've been doing here."
Angela wore blue-jean shorts that hugged her tight, round ass and ended just as that perfect curve met her leg. It was one of his favorite parts of a woman's body, the tender flesh on the backside and inner thighs, right at the top of her legs. They were legs he bet would squeeze the life out of a man as she came. He might have to fuck her just so he could work with her. Just standing in the same room, watching her ass in those short shorts, was proving to be one hell of a distraction.
Bounty Hunters: 03 Stay Hungry Page 5
