by Barker, Kira
My gaze was involuntarily drawn to Adam, who had listened to the proceedings with his shoulders hunched, his fingers drumming nervously on his knee. What would happen to him if I flipped? After all, what little freedom he had right now was all because of my willingness to cooperate. Would Agent Smith follow through with the threat of making him disappear, or at the very least throw him into prison? Or did Brigitte have a point and he was, either way, too valuable an asset to lose? Until my return to the city, I hadn’t contemplated that there was another option for me besides becoming Agent Smith’s pawn, even if she let me have the illusions of me setting out on my own. Adam’s fate was a tighter leash than any threats she could have uttered against me personally. But in the meantime, things had changed. I hadn’t expected Darren not to come after me. I hadn’t anticipated my own reaction to him once we got a moment on our own. And Adam himself had—if jokingly—admitted once that he wasn’t sure if the case against him hadn’t been manipulated. I doubted Darren would get him out of the hole he was sitting in out of the goodness of his heart, but maybe, just maybe I could use myself as the ultimate bargaining chip to resolve this situation in another way. What was one more case he could let any of his associates handle in favor of my willing cooperation?
It only took me a moment to shake the temptation to consider this, but it was an option, if only one I would take if everything else failed. I had no illusions about how that would end for me—or in what manner. Maybe it was a testament to my own spitefulness that I considered giving up my life rather than let Agent Smith have her way. Then again, I was sure that my plan would work—yet if I was wrong, I didn’t doubt that heads would roll, and as she’d just told me to my face that if that happened, she’d have my ass, it was the logical consequence.
She made me explain my exact plan three more times—and offered quite the slew of objections still—until she let me return to Brigitte and the meeting with the girls.
It was only on the way out that I realized that at no time did she express concern about anyone except Daliah—except for who to blame. Me, I could understand—she had made it plain that if I got myself killed, she wouldn’t consider my blood to be on her hands. But she’d also seemed perfectly unconcerned about the male escort in question—who, if Hunter actually lashed out, might become collateral damage. After all, he’d pretty much confirmed to me that if Adam and I’d had sex, he would have come after him eventually. I wasn’t sure exactly where that line ran, but if Daliah let herself be seduced, the escort could be in danger.
I was still mulling this over as I stepped into Brigitte’s boudoir, ready to prep the girls who, to everyone but Brigitte and me, were utterly expendable.
If I’d ever needed a reminder of the stakes at hand, that thought certainly served the purpose well.
Chapter 12
It was easy to forget that I’d been back in the city for less than a month—but the following days felt like weeks, or even years. When Alison had handed me the copy of Darren’s schedule, I’d thought I’d have my game plan pretty much made for me. If my plan hadn’t changed, I would have found opportunities aplenty to lie in wait and drag him into the next available nook—or, considering how most of our encounters had turned out, getting cornered by him. But finding the opportunity to turn Ricardo—the male escort Brigitte’s friend had referred me to—loose on Daliah while also getting the chance to make Darren jealous as hell?
That soon proved to be quite impossible.
It wasn’t like they weren’t attending their share of events—but half of those were either invitation only, or set up in a way that wouldn’t let me play my cards right. Sure, I could have waltzed into that fundraiser for children in need easily, but the dinner arrangements were small tables, very intimate, and not the occasion where Daliah would just wander off and be the perfect target. Others, like the mayor’s award ceremony for courageous citizen acts, might have been perfect as it screamed of networking where, sooner or later, Daliah would have been unattended, but that was invitation only, and with way too many people around who thought it pertinent to follow the letter of the law rather than what made sense—ergo not the event any whore dared set foot in. I even considered the country club, but wouldn’t you know it, the following Sunday I found myself alone there, without the other Jaguar making an appearance. I could take a guess whose fault that was—and that Daliah had so much power over Darren, even if he was just obliging her to string me along, grated. A lot.
Two weeks in, I was almost ready to throw in the towel and consider a different plan—or maybe host an event myself; it wasn’t like I didn’t have access to assemble quite the guest list—when I got a call from Alison. It was barely after six in the morning, my hair still wet after washing the chlorine from swimming laps out, and not the time I normally conducted business at. Then again, Alison had already proven to be quite the early bird, and I doubted that she considered being considerate of someone else’s schedule a prerogative.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?” I asked as I picked up, pitching my voice that fake kind of sultry that I knew would make her laugh. It did, which was strangely satisfying.
“Strictly business, I’m afraid,” she stated. “I think it’s about time I call on that arrangement of ours.”
“What do you have in mind? Or give me a number and I’ll take it from there,” I promised.
“It’s not quite that simple,” Alison said, giving a derisive chuff. “One of my current clients would do good to stop flirting with me, lest I not get actually annoyed with him and decide that my court record is less important to me than my dignity. I think he just needs encouragement, you know? If he were to find himself in the right kind of company, I’m certain he would focus on someone else than me.”
“Any preferences you think your client might have?”
She made a noise low in her throat that I thought was a grunt. Very unladylike, and very unlike her in the frustration it held.
“There is simply no way to phrase this in a circumspect way. He’s a pig, and he likes to prove it. Just to be sure, make it three, and ones who can go a week without the means to earn anything. I will, of course, compensate them accordingly.”
My stomach knotted up at her words, but I did my best to play it light.
“Are you sure that you’re not talking about your husband?”
Now her laugh returned to more usual cadences. “Trust me, Penelope, when I tell you that compared to that man, Ray is a gentleman. My concern is that if he won’t be distracted, he will go looking for company on his own, and that would be a shame. I only just diverted a lengthy jail sentence from becoming his near and far future. I would like to keep it this way, at least until he has vacated my home turf again. Do you think you have someone suitable for this in your stable?”
Honestly, the idea of subjecting any of my girls to this made me sick, but I knew a few who were emotionally stable enough to tough it out, and the odd desperate one not to care about the consequences if the money was right. When I asked about said compensation and heard Alison’s answer, I knew just who to call.
“Perfect,” she purred when I told her so. “I’m sorry that I’m calling on such short notice, but the soiree I need to accompany him to is tonight. I will have four invitations sent to your address as soon as I’m at work.”
The printed out schedule lay on the table right next to me, and, true enough, there was something penciled in there Friday evening.
“Make that five, and we have a deal.”
“Why, are you bringing company?” Alison asked, just a hint disappointed.
“Company, yes, but not for me,” I replied, and left it at that.
“Very well. You should find the invitations at your reception in an hour or two,” she promised, then paused. “I hope you haven’t forgotten about our other arrangement?”
Now it was my turn to offer a humorless laugh. “With luck, that should be taken care of tonight also.”
“Very promisin
g,” she enthused, then hung up, our business concluded.
True to her word, Philip brought a thick, white envelope up about an hour later, and when I checked the bank account I’d given Alison, the money was already transferred. I hadn’t asked any names, and seeing how eager she was about this, I didn’t want to know. Which was a problem, really, because it was my obligation to keep my girls safe. Two calls to the right people, and I had the list of potential men narrowed down to two, thanks to this week’s court records with a cross-reference of whose cases Alison had taken on herself. Neither option sounded too conspicuous, but then it was often the quiet ones who created the biggest messes—see Darren himself case in point.
I wondered if I should have conferred with Brigitte first, but I could already see what her answer would be—and it wouldn’t be a note of sympathy. The resounding guilt I felt certainly made me realize that it probably hadn’t been that easy for Brigitte to send me on assignments similar to this one, even if she’d sounded confident, or hard when I’d tried to protest or just wanted someone to assure me that it all would be okay. In hindsight, hearing that from her would have worried me a lot more than knowing I might leave that night with bruises and the odd stay in the hospital. So when I called the girls, I acted just like she had—I informed them of what was expected of them, of what they would get for doing it, and that they better not butt heads with me. Pamela tried—as I’d expected—but shut up when I told her exactly how much money was in store for her. That made me like her even less, although I wasn’t above seeing my own hypocrisy.
Last, I called Ricardo, promising to pay him double if he dropped his already-made appointment that he probably would have a chance to attend either way, if he just postponed it an hour or so. I hung up after telling him where to meet me.
With nothing else to do until tonight, it might have been relaxing to spend the day obsessing over what to wear, but I already had the perfect gown in my wardrobe—had had so for days, in fact. Darren had always loved dark jewel tones on me, so the sapphire color was perfect. The cut was asymmetric, leaving my left shoulder free, balancing the draped design with a high slit on the right side. It was classy on the more sophisticated side, bordering on boring over sexy. It was the last dress anyone would expect a whore to wear. It was also very accessible, and could be dropped within seconds—I’d tried that out myself. Maybe I should have been ashamed of myself selecting it with that in mind, but it was mostly how I looked in it, not how fast I could get out of it, that had made me select it over more accentuated options. I knew Darren would love it. So I loved it. And that was a very bad, bad thing.
With my plan finally set in motion, I still had a handful of things to do. I had to get waxed, buffed, and perfectly coiffed. I also had to call Agent Smith to let her know who to bully so her people could gain access to the premises. Just to err on the side of caution, I called a private physician that Brigitte sometimes used and told her to be on stand-by later tonight and tomorrow morning.
Then, all I could do was wait, and hope that I hadn’t just set things rolling that would not just harm, but potentially kill, several people, and I would be the only one to blame for that.
Chapter 13
The soiree seemed the same as hundreds of such events that I’d attended over the past decade and a half. It was a private affair—that’s why the very strict invite-only code—but a lot of not very private persons were in attendance. I knew a few, but it was less from my client book than the tabloids. Some celebrity birthday or other, disguised with a fancy title to lend it legitimacy. There even was a red carpet that I avoided like the plague as I led my three girls inside through another entrance. One might have thought that affairs like this would be teeming with escorts, but that’s what the after-parties were for. Here, it was all legitimate people doing legitimate business, pretending not to.
We were a little early, so I had the perfect spying position down pat by the time Alison and her guests arrived. Ray was nowhere in sight, Darren and Daliah were also missing, but right now I had no time to waste on them. Some pertinent studying, and I recognized the man Alison needed her distraction for. The college professor rather than the banker. It was always the legitimate-seeming ones.
Brigitte’s hacker team had brought up next to nothing about him, except for two divorces that had ended in settlements—including sealed records, both of the court proceedings, but also medical files. Adam had, thanks to his wider reach, given me a few details about those, and it wasn’t pretty. It was likely for the best that the professor seemed to have switched to using prostitutes now, because that, at least, kept his students safe from him. That this was absolutely no consolidation for me or my girls didn’t help me right then. Pam, in particular, eyed him with the right amount of apprehension, but when I told them all to put their game faces on, I didn’t get a word of objection. I guessed that now officially made me a bully.
Few words were exchanged as I herded the girls over to Alison, and consequently the bright smile of the man they were here to distract. Alison scanned them shrewdly, and within moments, the dear professor and his new entourage had left the group and were heading elsewhere. There was a suite booked in a hotel that I knew was stellar about discretion, and the sooner they were out of the open, the better. I didn’t linger as Alison showed absolutely no interest in introducing me to her other guests, so I retreated to the upper floor, using a place by the open balconies to overlook the people mingling below.
As I kept waiting for Darren to make an appearance, I couldn’t help but ask myself what drew women like the professor’s previous wives to men like that. Adam hadn’t sent me pictures, but he’d recited part of the psych evals to me. Years of emotional abuse, paired with the odd but not that infrequent physical altercation. Bruises, broken bones, even a dislocated shoulder in one case. Both women had ended up pretty much as husks of their former selves, requiring outside help to finally make the jump and file for divorce.
In the light of this, how could I justify my obsession with Darren—to the world, but mostly to myself?
There was no denying what he’d done to me. More than anyone else, I knew that he hadn’t changed in the meantime, likely never would. And even if he’d turned a new leaf, that didn’t negate his actions, too atrocious to forgive.
But still. I wanted him. I needed him.
I probably hungered for him with the same twisted need and intensity that he had for me.
I could have walked away forever. Had done a good job for half a year, really. Sure, there was the guilt for not being able to give Adam what he needed that had made me agree to help Agent Smith with her crusade. Back then, I hadn’t realized it, but our talk two weeks ago had been quite sobering, making me analyze everything from different angles. I knew that she—and Adam, too, in a sense—were playing me. They knew that I had this deeply ingrained character flaw of needing to mold myself into what others wanted me to be. In that sense, they were doing the very same thing to me that Darren had, too.
Was it time to break the cycle?
Could I even pull that off, if I wanted to?
As I kept mulling all that over, I watched as Darren entered the ballroom below, Daliah on his arm. As usual, she’d tried to appease his taste, and had fallen short by miles. The shimmery dress she wore may have been filed under “classy”—if the only competition was a room full of kindergarteners. It was too tight in all the wrong places; the material looked as cheap as it probably was; the cut flattered her, but more in a bombshell kind of way, utterly inappropriate attire for tonight. From a distance, I couldn’t see her makeup well, but the vibrant red of her lipstick was easily discernible. Prom queen chic all the way. How he could stand being seen with her was beyond me.
They mingled. They danced. They chatted. Then Daliah made the mistake of excusing herself to the bathroom—presumably—which left Darren on his own. He still hadn’t spotted me as far as I could tell, but he wasn’t looking around, either. Instead, he headed right into the fray
and started that smalltalk race of his that I remembered all too well. Apparently, Daliah was excused from duty, because when she returned, he made no move to pick her up again and drag her along. Her frustration was palpable even across the room, painting a smile onto my face as I saw her head to the bar. Where, wouldn’t you know it, it took that charming young fellow who had been waiting there all of three seconds to glue himself to her side. And he was good—the perfect amount of oozing charm but not being overly obsessive. He made her blush. He made her smile. He made her forget that she’d already downed two flutes of champagne as he ordered something stronger for her. In short—she was game.
And I was a little too focused on her, I realized, when I felt myself getting pressed against the satiny fabric of the curtain I had been partly hiding behind, a strong, warm body flush with mine. That made me go still, but only until I felt Darren’s breath ghost over my bare shoulder as he glanced over it at the revelers below.
“I have to admit, I admire your tenacity at showing up where you don’t belong. It’s one of your more charming quirks.”
Looking back over my shoulder, I cocked one eyebrow at him.
“You flatter yourself. I’m actually here for work.”
The smile on his face didn’t falter. No, it widened at my statement.
“Ah. So the gamely ladies were yours? I hope you did your background check well, because that’s not a client just any escort would take on.”
“Alison is paying them well,” I let him know.
If her involvement was news to him, he didn’t show it.
