“I guess that means Mr. Bennington never mentioned being a member of a special club, then.” She was stopped, one hip cocked in a fuck me stance. At least, that was the message he was picking up.
“No, he didn’t. You’re being deliberately vague, Sergeant.”
She quirked her lips. “Yes, I suppose I am.” She walked toward him and placed her hands on the back of her chair. “Let me be blunt. Was your friend into the BDSM scene?”
“BDSM, as in bondage, discipline and sadomasochism?”
“That’s right. Particularly, did Mr. Bennington enjoy being dominated and punished by women?”
Kyle laughed. He couldn’t help it. The idea was so absurd he threw back his head and laughed out loud. The sound was almost a hysterical one given the raw emotions bubbling inside him. He managed to control himself, however, before it degenerated into a fit.
“Sorry, Sergeant, but you don’t know how ridiculous your question is. Jazz was a brilliant litigator who tore his adversaries to shreds. He was ambitious and thrived on the kind of stress that would send most people screaming down the street. He was a born leader, too, and the type of guy who frankly always looked for women who needed to be taken care of. He liked being the strong one in a relationship. It was part of what broke up his marriage. He was overbearing. You’re way off base with that idea.”
“Mmm,” was her reply. “Well, the other victim was described in much the same way. He was a banker, a little younger, and not as well established, yet very much cut from the same cloth. However, on his lunch breaks, at night, and on weekends, he frequented a club and went to private parties he found on the internet where he would strip down and let a woman first tie him up, then beat him up. Nothing too heavy, of course. The law frowns on this sort of thing even when it’s consensual, at least with respect to the club. What happens in private is harder to track.”
Outraged, Kyle shot to his feet, all concerns about his attraction gone, along with his nascent hard-on. Something had finally overridden his desire. “You are way out of line, here.” His voice was hard and loud, and he didn’t care. He had stood in horror, looking at his battered and bloody dead friend. He wasn’t going to stand by while some cop implied that Jazz had asked for it.
“Calm down, please, Mr. Ramsey. I know this is hard to hear, but I need information in order to find the killer.”
“You won’t find him by thinking Jazz wanted to be tortured.”
“Her,” she corrected in a stern voice. “And I’m not saying Mr. Bennington agreed to what was done to him. To the contrary, I’m saying he may have had a need to be dominated by women, which was exploited by the killer. I’m not making any personal judgments about your friend’s sex life.”
“The hell you aren’t.” He took two steps around the table so he was mere inches from her. He tried to ignore the pull of her eyes and the smell of her heat. He really did try, and his failure stoked his temper. “I’m a lawyer, Sergeant, and as such I’m warning you to be very careful about the accusations you make about my friend.”
She snorted contemptuously before gathering up her things. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Ramsey. This interview is now over, and you are free to go.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes, thank you,” she said with emphasis. “We’ll be in touch if we have any further questions.” She turned and walked away.
“Wait a minute,” he called after her.
She stopped and looked at him from over her shoulder. “What?”
“You’re wrong about Jazz. He wasn’t like that other guy, and if you pursue that angle thinking he was, you’ll never find Jazz’s killer.”
“I appreciate your concern, Mr. Ramsey, but this is my job. I’m actually quite good at it.”
“Not this time, Sergeant Malloy,” he couldn’t help saying. “And I won’t stand idly by while my friend’s killer runs free.”
That got her attention. With a hard look, she said, “If you’re suggesting you’re going to involve yourself with this investigation, I would strongly advise against it.”
Kyle folded his arms across his chest. With a sense of growing purpose, he felt stronger than he had since finding Jazz. “You know, Sergeant, you’ll find I’m much like Jazz was. I don’t take orders very well, and I don’t take shit from anyone.”
A teasing smile played across her lips. “Neither do I, Mr. Ramsey. Stay out of my case, or you’ll discover just how little shit I do take and what I do to those who try to give it to me.”
Kyle watched her walk away, down the hall toward the bedroom. His teeth clenched over her high-handed orders, and his hands curled into fists. He was determined to look into Jazz’s death himself, because he was not intimidated in the least by Sergeant Malloy’s threat. But he was something else. He was excited by it and that fact just made him angrier.
****
Less than an hour later, Kyle stormed into his condo, flung his keys on the counter, then stopped dead in his tracks. Overwhelming emotion, grief and anger, froze him to the spot. His body shook with the effort it took to keep himself under control before he realized he didn’t have to anymore. Here in the safety of his private world, he could let go.
He hated living alone, apart from his daughters, his marriage broken beyond repair. But at that moment, he was glad no one was here to see him break down into the kind of tears he’d learned to suppress in early childhood. He bent at the waist and pressed the heels of his hands against his watery eyes. A sob ripped past his lips, and again, he was grateful to be alone in his misery.
Losing people he loved through old age, accident, and even illness was always hard. This was different. Murder was a kind of violation he’d never expected to deal with. Wrapping his head around the fact, accepting that Jazz was gone for good because someone chose to rob him of the rest of his life was impossible.
As Kyle stood, rocking with his grief, he fought to regain some semblance of rational thought. He wouldn’t do Jazz any good falling apart. He told himself all of this, and yet the tears insisted on having their time to spill out and wring him dry.
Long minutes later, he was finally done. With shaky steps, he headed for the wet bar and poured a couple of fingers of scotch. He downed that quickly and refilled the glass before stumbling to the couch. He slouched bonelessly into the cushions, sipping the second drink even though he wanted to knock it back, too. Hollowed out as he felt from his crying jag, getting shitfaced and being hung-over the next day at work wasn’t going to help his friend.
Neither would focusing on his residual anger at the cop in charge of the investigation. The woman had been infuriating, believing Jazz had conducted a kinky sex life that had led to his death. How dare she suggest such a thing? The pull of attraction he’d felt in her presence only served to add to his ire. She was flat out wrong in the direction she was heading, and he was an idiot for wanting her on any level.
With his head pressed against the back of the sofa, he pictured the last time he’d been with Jazz in this very room. They’d tied one on months ago when they had nothing better to do on a Saturday night. The evening had devolved into a bitch session, no other word for it, about their ex-wives, how much divorce sucked, and the difficulty of finding women to date or even just fuck given their heavy workload. Or, at least Kyle had complained about his dry spell. He’d also confessed to his best friend that the stress of the divorce and work was getting to him in a way it hadn’t ever before.
Jazz had suddenly fished around his pants’ pocket and handed him a business card. “I’ve got just the thing for you, my friend.”
Kyle had reached for the card and narrowed his eyes to focus on the tiny writing in stark black against a snow white background. There was simply a name, an address, and a phone number. He raised his eyebrows.
“Club Nemesis? That’s the goddess of divine retribution. So, what is this? A strip club or something? Not my style since college, you know that.”
“Not a strip club. It’s different,” his
friend had claimed with a sly, drunken grin. “When you get tired of being the big shot litigator, stop by. You’ll sleep like a baby afterward, I promise.”
Kyle had tossed the card aside dismissively when Jazz wouldn’t divulge more. The memory of that night jarred him out of his miserable stupor. What had he done with the card? Reaching over to the side table, he yanked open the drawer. The card lay inside, slightly crinkled. Snatching it up, he studied it again with his more sober eyes. There still wasn’t anything to indicate what the club was like or what relevance it might have. Yet a feeling grew in the pit of his stomach that this piece of information might be critical to solving Jazz’s murder.
He should call the cop, Sergeant Malloy. Of course he should, but first he’d look into the club himself. He was a man who got things done, and at that moment, finding who killed his friend was paramount.
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Rory McNeil shows up at Wright Place to celebrate a buddy's new job far away from the swamps of New Orleans. He never expects to catch the eye of a sleek city girl hot for excitement. Stolen kisses lead to an erotic fantasy that leaves them both breathless and Rory searching for a way to meld his simple life with Amanda's complicated one.
Romance turns to danger when shots are fired, and their night of passion becomes a race for safety and a quest for the truth.
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