by Cassie Ryan
“Have you eaten today?”
“Yes, sir. But I wouldn’t mind some Dr Pepper.”
Dex nodded. “We can accommodate that.”
He picked up the phone next to him on the table and hit the button for the club’s kitchen on the floor below them. He ordered them both drinks and a tray of assorted snacks.
Club Desire’s kitchen was open twenty-four hours a day, and always kept a good assortment of both salty and sweet snacks on hand, as well as a fully stocked pantry for full meals. Only Brent, Sandra, and Jake lived on-site full time, but several of the Doms spent considerable amounts of time here. Before Dex became a full agent he had spent most of his time here as well, and still had rooms on the fourth floor just down the hall from Brent’s office. So having a full-service kitchen open around the clock was great.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted.
Dex leaned back in the comfortable rolling leather office chair. “What are you sorry for, Opal?” He had called the agents who had interrogated her before she shut down, so he knew the basics, but wanted to hear directly from her in case there was some nuance or difference in her story now that would give him more information.
She sighed and slumped in her chair as if trying to take up as little room as possible. Her sandy-blond hair looked rumpled, as if she’d been running her fingers through it impatiently, and there were dark circles under her eyes that her makeup did little to hide.
“What did the other agents tell you?”
He kept her gaze. “I’d rather hear everything directly from you.”
A soft knock sounded, and then Agent Benson cracked open the door and peeked inside.
Dex motioned him forward, and Benson stepped back to allow the man from the kitchens to bring in the rolling cart. He laid two trays along with a bucket of ice on the table between them and then quietly turned to leave.
“Jeff,” Dex said, to get the man’s attention. “Please take care of anything Agent Benson and his team would like.”
“Absolutely, Dex. You can count on me.”
Jeff had been an employee since Club Desire had opened its doors, and he took pride in his job. In turn, Brent paid him, and the rest of the staff, very well and gave them great benefits.
When the door closed again, Dex picked up a cold can of Dr Pepper and handed it to Opal. “If you’d like ice, help yourself.” He motioned to the glasses Jeff had brought along with everything else.
Opal shook her head, and instead popped the top of the soda and took a long sip. “I just need some caffeine. It’s been a long few days, and sleep has been hard to come by.”
Dex nodded as he thought about the reasons for his own lack of sleep.
Before thoughts of Kate could swamp him, he made himself a cup of coffee and took a long sip.
“I’m something of a caffeine addict myself,” he said, trying to put her at ease. “So, tell me why you wanted to speak to the FBI, and more specifically, me.”
She sucked in a breath, her gaze darting around the room as if trying to see if they were being watched. “Several reasons. Only a few of which I shared with the other agents.” She pursed her lips. “Since my actions affected you directly, I wanted to talk to you.”
He’d figured that might be the case. Especially since she had met him at The Dungeon and he’d treated her like a person, rather than just menial support staff like he’d seen others do in his very brief time there. He figured she might feel more at ease with him. Or mistakenly think he wouldn’t be as tough on her as the other agents were.
Dex had various methods, and he had a knack for getting people to talk to him, even when they didn’t want to. And regardless of his size, it usually had very little to do with intimidation. Although that was a useful tool when needed.
“What would you like to talk about?” He reached out and took a cracker topped with what looked like either tuna or ham salad, and popped it into his mouth as he let Opal decide where to start.
After a long moment, a soft sob broke from her throat. “I’m so sorry,” she said as her voice cracked. “It’s all my fault.”
He laid his hand over hers. “What’s your fault?”
She swallowed hard, a few tears slipping down her cheeks. “All those injuries, and Mark’s death, and the other man’s. They’re all my fault.”
Dex frowned. This definitely hadn’t been what she had told the other agents.
“What did you do that makes you think you caused all of that?”
She cleared her throat softly. “I didn’t mention this to the other agents, but I was hired as a PI to watch Kate Fretwell.”
Dex frowned, remembering Kate’s relief that he wasn’t a PI. “Who hired you, and what were you looking for?”
She sighed. “Her father hired me. He had heard from one of his business associates that she was a sub at The Dungeon, and that she had dozens of Doms who passed her around. He apparently has a rocky relationship with her, and he knew she would only dig in deeper if he tried to tell her to get out of the lifestyle.” She sucked in a shuddering breath through her tears. “So he asked me to find out the truth, and keep tabs on her.”
Dex clenched his teeth. Kate had had a handful of Doms over the past few years, but it was far from dozens. He wondered briefly if the business associate had been Balkins. He half hoped it was so he could have the man picked up for interrogation. But he had just found a reason to have a talk with Richard Fretwell.
Opal sniffed and took another drink from the soda can. “Fretwell figured that if I got a job here and acted like I was looking for a sugar daddy to sponsor me for membership, I would blend in better than if he paid my membership and found someone to vouch for me to Ed Ralston.”
Dex nodded, trying to appear patient as he waited for her to continue.
“Every week I would call him with reports and he would pay me through his company’s payroll, listing me as an executive assistant.”
He shifted in his chair and took another sip of coffee, willing himself to slowly and calmly draw Opal out. “But even doing PI work for Richard Fretwell doesn’t mean everything that happened is your fault.”
She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, and Dex handed her a cloth napkin from the tray Jeff had brought. “A few months after I got here, I started having a clandestine affair with Ed Ralston. He insisted it be kept secret, but I ended up having full access to all the behind-the-scenes operations, including Ralston’s office. I know I should’ve steered clear, but I allowed myself to believe my heart instead of my head.” She shrugged.
“Anyway, once the reports on Kate became more predictable, Mr. Fretwell asked me to stay put and only alert him if there was something of interest going on.” She swallowed hard. “Nothing did for several months. Then you showed up.” She cowered in her chair and wouldn’t look at him, telling Dex they were coming to the part she feared telling him the most.
“Fretwell was still paying me, and I was fully entrenched at The Dungeon, although my role was that of a waitress who was at best treated as invisible.” She fell silent for a long moment, and then stared past him at the large picture window that looked out over the twinkling lights of Paradise Valley, which was beautiful at night. “Anyway, that wasn’t an excuse, but it’s all I can think of to explain why I took an offer from someone else to gather information and report back to them. They paid me triple what Fretwell did and I gave them information on anyone in the dungeon I could.” She shrugged. “For example, Ed Ralston uses The Dungeon as a major money-laundering operation for militia and neo-Nazi groups. He doesn’t know I know that, but it was a tidbit I passed along, and got a huge bonus for.”
Dex would definitely pass that information on to his team. And since Opal was in FBI custody now, they could find out details straight from the source.
“Who was this second party who was paying you for information?”
She looked embarrassed. “I’m not quite sure. But when all the talk of terrorists started, I began to have suspicions
that they could be terrorists, or at least dissidents. They’re certainly well funded. I passed information by pay phone. The one at Century Park.” She shook her head. “They had to be watching me because whenever I would go there, the phone would ring and it would be them. A male voice, but obviously synthesized in some way.” She sucked in a breath. “The last report I gave them was about you being FBI, and then that night, all the attacks happened.” Her soft sobs began again and Dex resisted the urge to reach out and comfort her. Opal’s actions had caused at least one death, and injuries to several other people. And had also put several people in danger. He was glad she had come forward. The information she provided would give them lots of great evidence, but Opal would be prosecuted for her part in these events.
Tanner had put her in protective custody with no offer of immunity as soon as he found out she had blown Dex’s cover. Opal had known the details of that agreement going in. Whoever instigated all the hits last night could be coming after her next, so protection was the best place for her right now. And if she was involved with terrorists or dissidents, being prosecuted was the least of her worries, whether she knew it or not.
Dex ran his hand over his jaw. “So you called Fretwell to report on everything you learned? Minus Ralston’s extracurricular activities and your suspicions around the attacks on The Dungeon members?”
She nodded. “He didn’t think too much of your arrival, and left me with the same instructions. But after the incident with Kate and Mark Stanton, I sent Mr. Fretwell the pictures, and…”
Dex jerked in his chair. “You took those pictures?” He remembered the flash of a camera and scanning the crowd to try to see who had taken it.
Her brow furrowed and a few fresh sobs broke through. “I wanted to get him something more concrete so he would keep me on his payroll. It wasn’t even about the money at that point. I liked knowing everything that was going on behind the scenes. It was addictive.” She dropped her gaze to the can in her hand. “I sent the pictures of Stanton to him, and he seemed happy with the progress of the case and asked me to find out more information about you.”
Dex’s stomach clenched. The same pictures that were found scattered around Mark Stanton’s body. “So you passed them to Fretwell. How did you send them to him?”
She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, as if to help her continue to calm herself. “He didn’t want any email trails, so he asked me to drop them in the mail, first class, but not high priority or next day since those are tracked.”
Dex filed the information away to add to the growing puzzle. Fretwell was smart. Email or uploading to digital cloud storage could be easily tracked. “So you don’t know for sure if he ever actually received them?”
She shook her head. “He said he did. He said he was upset about Kate doing something like that in front of a crowd, but he sounded oddly proud of her, especially once he heard why she’d done it.” She swallowed and licked her lips. “But he still pushed me to find out more about you. He said something about you showing up when you did and capturing Kate’s interest so completely didn’t ring true.”
Dex thought about those pictures. If Fretwell had hard copies, then either someone had taken them and copied them to scatter around Stanton’s body or Fretwell had done it. Or, the originals were still with Fretwell, and someone had gotten them off of Opal’s phone. He would leave that last part to his analyst team. He knew they would be checking her backups and any cloud storage, as well as any unauthorized access to her device.
“So what information did you find out about me?” The other agents had already filled him in on the fact that Opal overheard he was FBI and had shared that information. But she wouldn’t tell them who she’d shared it with.
That’s when she had asked to speak to Dex.
She sighed and leaned back in her chair. “One of the janitor’s closets sits next to Ralston’s office and shares a wall with his private bathroom. It’s always locked, but several weeks ago, I lifted his key ring and had duplicates made of several of the keys. I found out that if I edged behind the storeroom shelves and listened near the mop sink, I could hear into his office. Even when the bathroom door was shut, sound carried easily.” Dex smiled as another puzzle piece fell into place. He remembered being in Ralston’s office and thinking someone might be listening.
“What did you overhear?”
She took a drink of Dr. Pepper before answering. “All kinds of things, but most of them of no interest to Mr. Fretwell or my other client. But then I saw Balkins and Stanton going into his office and figured something interesting might be going on.”
She pursed her lips. “That’s when I heard him tell them both that he couldn’t kick you out of the club because you were FBI, here on a case. They had gone to Ralston to demand you be stripped of your membership, or they would leave The Dungeon and take with them most of the members, who would demand refunds.”
Dex thought of his last meeting in Ralston’s office. “Did you send copies of those pictures to Stanton?”
She paled, and Dex let the heavy silence sit until she started to fidget.
“Yes. I sent them. But only to scare him. He found out Ralston and I were seeing each other. He also somehow found out I was a PI.”
She took another can of Dr Pepper off the tray and popped the top before chugging half of it. “Stanton was going to tell the members that Ralston was paying me to spy on them so files could be built on each of them, in case he needed any leverage in the future. It would’ve ruined him.” She made a chopping motion with her hand. “And there were a lot of very powerful people who could’ve made my life a living hell. Stanton started blackmailing me, but when the incident with Kate happened and I snapped the picture, he decided to turn the tables.”
“What was he blackmailing you for? What did he want?”
She shook her head. “Small investigation jobs to check up on his subs and other members of The Dungeon, and then he started asking me to have sex with his associates. Billing me as a kinky sub who could take anything they could dish out.”
“Wow.” Dex was surprised she would admit to that, since it gave her a very large motive for Stanton’s murder.
As if she’d read his mind, she added, “Look, Stanton was a scumbag. The world is a better place without him. What he did to me was innocent compared to what he has done to others. If you ever catch who bashed his head in, there will most likely be a line to buy them a drink.”
Not exactly a statement of innocence. “So you weren’t the one who did the honors?”
She laughed. “No such luck. Look, me telling Fretwell and a few others that you were FBI probably started the night with all the injuries and the death, and I’m no saint. But I’m not a murderer.” She huffed out a breath. “You were nice to me, even when you thought I was a gold-digging waitress, and I felt bad about blowing your cover. But I don’t have much other information to tell you.” She swallowed hard and met his gaze squarely. “Can I go now?”
Dex pinned her with a stern gaze. “I’ll call Benson to come get you and take you back to your safe house while things play out.” He laid a hand over hers. “Thank you for coming forward. You passing on information caused some bad things, but you sharing now could save lives, including your own.”
Chapter 20
Kate glanced up through the Lexus’s front windshield and gasped.
A building straight out of a Gothic novel looked like it had erupted from the top of Camelback Mountain. She knew Paradise Valley was a nice suburb of Phoenix, but she hadn’t seen many Gothic castles erupting out of nearby mountains, so this one stood out.
Full dark had just fallen, which gave the building an eerie feel. Especially with the sprinkling of stars that had begun to blanket the sky in the background.
Kate steered the car into the parking garage, as fresh excitement churned inside her stomach.
There were only a few other people in the garage, and she did a double take when she saw a skinny sandy-blond-hair
ed woman stepping into a black sedan. She looked a lot like the waitress from The Dungeon, but the odds of that were pretty remote, so Kate shrugged and looked for a parking space.
She hadn’t called ahead to find out if they were seeing applicants tonight. She was just going to show up at the front door and see what happened.
It felt right. And maybe a new dungeon and a new Dom would help her forget about Dex.
Just the thought of his name was enough to bring back the deep ache inside her chest. She shoved all thoughts of Dex away, took a deep breath, and stepped out of the car. This was a big step toward her new future, and she didn’t need Dex or anyone else to build it for her.
She adjusted her top and short skirt over the same green cami and thong she’d worn for her first scene with Dex, and cursed. It was her favorite. That’s why she had worn it.
It had been her favorite long before she’d met Dex. She wasn’t going to throw the set out and never wear it again just because it held new memories for her.
A strong tug of longing followed by sadness made her sigh.
She sternly reminded herself Dex was just a blip in her journey toward her new life. She would stop thinking about him, and aching for his firm, expert touch soon.
She hoped.
She walked out of the parking garage and headed up the long, curving path toward the entrance to Club Desire.
This place seemed to exist in another universe from The Dungeon, and everything she’d left behind in L.A.
As she got closer, she saw large double doors edged in wrought iron. A beautiful blond woman in a stunning blue dress stood just outside, making Kate think of a princess from a nearby kingdom, pressed into service for the evil overlord within.
She laughed at her overactive imagination and returned the woman’s bright smile as Kate stepped into the semicircle of light from the Gothic-style sconce mounted above the door.
The woman laughed and gestured Kate forward. “From your expression, I’ll bet this is your first visit to Club Desire.”
