Dirty Ex-Mas

by Denise Wells

  Early Praise for Dirty Ex-Mas

  If you are looking for a fluffy Hallmark type Christmas book this isn’t it. While the setting is around Christmas time its more Die Hard mixed with Charlies Angels.

  Cranky - The Book Curmudgeon

  I love a good romantic suspense and this book delivered. It’s filled with great characters and a story that sucked me in from the start.

  Christina, Goodreads

  This story had me hooked and wanting more from the beginning.

  Tammy, Goodreads

  Dirty Ex-Mas

  A Dirty Darlings Novella

  Denise Wells

  Dirty Ex-Mas

  Copyright © 2019 by Denise Wells

  www.DeniseWells.com

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a piece of fiction. Any names, characters, businesses, places, or events are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, events or locations, is purely coincidental.

  Editing: Missy Borucki

  Proofreading: Rachel Malignano

  Public Relations: Foreword PR

  For Danielle Norman - who changed everything for me without even realizing it.

  Throw me to the wolves, and I’ll return leading the pack.

  Anonymous (Badass Chick)

  Contents

  Note from Denise

  Prologue

  1. Reed

  2. Quinn

  3. Mack

  4. Daria

  5. Reed

  6. Mack

  7. Quinn

  8. Daria

  9. Reed

  10. Quinn

  11. Mack

  12. Reed

  13. Mack

  14. Quinn

  15. Daria

  16. Reed

  17. Mack

  18. Quinn

  19. Daria

  Acknowledgments and a note

  About the Author

  Also by Denise Wells

  Sneak Peek - How to Ruin Your Ex’s Wedding

  Note from Denise

  Dirty Ex-Mas, and the entire Dirty Darlings collection to follow, are works of fiction. Meant to entertain and provide an escape into a story. As such, I’ve taken certain liberties with law enforcement, criminal activity, and information gathering. So please keep the fiction aspect in mind when reading.

  I hope you enjoy. Thank you for reading!

  XOXO,

  Denise

  Prologue

  Quinn

  The instructions had been clear, broken down into steps for me to follow. What should have been fool-proof, I messed up somehow. In my defense, I’m not a professional assassin. Tonight, I was supposed to break my contract-killer cherry. Instead, I’d proven to Daria, my best friend and now boss, that I had the attention span of a gnat on speed in a room full of light bulbs.

  Step One - Dress the part.

  The invitation to the fancy party called for black tie attire. Wearing a dark green, sheath-style, floor-length, strapless Armani knock-off gown with a slit up to my chin, my fierce three-inch, closed-toe, suede heels matched perfectly. Platform, so I could run if I needed to. I styled my hair half up half down all curled and elegant-like. Minimal makeup and dark red lipstick—non-smudge of course—finished my look.

  Step Two - Don’t be late.

  I’d arrived on time to the venue—a crazy huge mansion on the hill, complete with valet parking and a thirty-foot, fully decorated Christmas tree outside. Made it into the party with ease, grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing waiter so I would blend in, then checked and double checked my surroundings. Still with plenty of time to spare. Piece of cake.

  Step Three - Blend in.

  That was a cinch. I’m good in a crowd: social and seen or aloof and unnoticed. I’d gone with the latter tonight and had been way ahead of the curve, if I say so myself. I held a glass of champagne just like everyone else—which I wasn’t drinking so I could keep a clear head just like Daria cautioned—and I’d been quietly mingling. Playing the part of a holiday engagement party goer.

  Nothing to see here, folks. Just another ordinary girl at an everyday party.

  Step Four - Identify your mark.

  According to the instructions, I’d know my mark once the speeches started. He would be the first one up, starting out by thanking everyone for coming. Since the speeches hadn’t started yet, I’d felt safe skipping to the next step for the time being.

  Looking back, I realize this was probably where things started to get a little dicey for me, I just didn’t know it. I mean, I don’t want to get ahead of myself here, but I should have known to abort mission right then. But, I didn’t.

  Instead, I’d moved on.

  Step Five - Get into position.

  To me step five was presumptuous and based entirely on step four. If I hadn’t found my mark yet, no way was I going to know where to be in position. Right?

  So, I’d skipped it.

  Step Six - Double check your weapon.

  Obviously, I’m not a pro. Not like Daria and the rest of her girls. Tonight was the trial run for me. A chance to prove to Daria that I was up to doing some of her dirtier work. So, for me, checking my weapon meant finding a corner somewhere, turning my back to the party, and making sure the gun was still in my clutch. It was. I’d turned the safety off, made sure the silencer was in place, pulled it out of my bag, kept my hand firm on the grip, and my finger away from the trigger. Then hid my hand, holding the gun behind my clutch and turned back around to face the party.

  And saw him.

  Reed Roberts. The man I’d been in love with most of my adult life. Well, really the past year or so, but it felt like much longer.

  In a tuxedo.

  It was one of those be still my heart moments. I’ll take a man in a tux any day, I tell you, but Reed in a tux is something else altogether. I think I got knocked up just looking at him. I mean, I could have leaned forward and licked him if I’d wanted to. It was just me and him, sharing the same airspace, at the same exclusive party.

  Was that mistletoe he was standing under?

  Now I realize that’s how I made mistake number one.

  Because it didn’t even occur to me to wonder why Reed was at the party. So caught up in the magic of seeing him in formalwear was I, all common sense flew right out the window. I’d maneuvered myself around and tried to see who Reed was talking to, hopping in place to get a clearer view only resulted in spilling my champagne. So, I’d made my way over to the giant fireplace to stand tiptoe atop the hearth, steadying myself with the branches of the decorated Christmas tree nearby. One of the many decorated trees inside the house. But it gave me those few extra inches in height I so desperately needed to—

  Holy crap, what was he doing here?

  Reed was talking to David Tremblay.

  My ex.

  The same one who was responsible for friend-zoning me with Reed to begin with. I mean, sure they’re friends, the best of friends, so it made sense that they’d talk when they saw each other. But I definitely did not have room in my plan for David tonight. Not to mention, David was bound to remind Reed that David and I had once been a couple, brief though our interlude may have been. Which would then remind him (Reed) I was persona non grata in his world. After which he wouldn’t want anything to do with me.

  Like normal.

  I’ll admit seeing David threw me off my game a bit. I hadn’t been expecting to see anyone I knew at this party. Then, boom, the secret love of my life and my
ex. So, yeah, I was shook. You could say that moment was the beginning of the end for me. In retrospect, I don’t think I handled the next few minutes quite as stealthily as I could have.

  I scooted around the perimeter of the room, away from the fireplace toward the front facing windows. The room was enormous, and filled with guests, so slowly making my way around the perimeter was the smartest way to move about without drawing attention to myself. I held my back toward the wall, and kept moving, trying to find a spot from where I could see Reed more clearly without the throng of people blocking my view.

  The way I saw it was, if I could see him then he could see me, at which point I would bowl him over by my beauty and he would profess his undying love. Because I was dressed to kill and there was no way he’d be able to resist me.

  Which was why, instead of checking for Step Seven and confirming the prior six steps, I fantasized about getting Reed alone in a room upstairs.

  Mistake number two.

  It was a good fantasy too—his hand slipping in the slit of my dress, right at the upper thigh, curving around to grab my bare ass cheek, because in fantasies I go commando, then leaning in and kissing that sensitive spot behind my ear while my hands grip at the huge muscles of his—

  “—you all for coming tonight.”

  I’d heard that voice and all I could think was, holy shit, the speeches!

  Not to mention, who was my mark?

  And, fuck, where was my position?

  I’d tried to review the steps in my mind but I couldn’t remember what step I was on.

  So, you know: Shit. Shit. Shit.

  I regrouped.

  Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

  Review the steps.

  Step Four - Identify the mark.

  Step Five - Get into position.

  Squeezing through a group of people to a small clearing, I stood tiptoe, but saw nothing.

  “Excuse me.” I’d pushed past another group, all of whom had been standing way too close together to be normal, which finally afforded me a clear shot to the front of the room. No pun intended.

  And then everything really went to hell in a handbasket.

  I realized I knew who the speaker (and my mark) was at the same time a deep, sexy voice whispered in my ear, “What in the hell are you doing here?”

  Startling me.

  Except the more accurate description, instead of startled, would have been: made me jump and shriek with my hands flying in the air sending my clutch in one direction and my gun in the other. Disarming and dis-positioning me in one move.

  Which about brings me to now. . .

  1

  Reed

  ONE WEEK BEFORE

  “Roberts, you and Murphy track this down, see if it has any bite to it.”

  The FBI director drops a file on my desk, a huge “Confidential” stamped in red letters on the front. I flip open the front cover and skim the overview and the pages that follow.

  Human trafficking, otherwise known as HT.

  Makes me sick.

  These fucks who have little to no value for human life. And will profit off whatever they can. I’d kill them all if I could. Slowly, while extracting great pain.

  Mack Murphy, my partner, a cup of fresh coffee in each hand, takes a seat across from me, his chair groaning in protest. Our desks butt up against one another so we are facing each other as we work. In theory, we take turns getting coffee refills, but damn if Mack doesn’t make a helluva good cup of joe. I don’t know how he does it. I mean, the little single-serving cup goes in the machine the same way for everyone, but his always tastes better. And he agrees with my assessment, so it’s not like I’m blowing smoke up his ass just to get him to fetch me coffee.

  “Thanks, man.” I nod at him, then toss the file over so he can look.

  “What have we got?”

  “HT. Looks like all women.”

  He sighs and leans back in his chair, propping his biker boot clad feet up on his desk. Coffee in one hand, he opens the file now resting on his thighs and begins skimming the contents the same way I did. “Jesus, they’re using a dating app?”

  “Not just one app, it looks like all the apps. And the profiles are one and done. Profile goes up, the guy gets a date, profile comes down, moving on. Another date, another app, another girl, another dollar.”

  Mack rubs the back of his neck while he peruses the file. I’ve figured out it’s his tell when he’s stressed; he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. Murmurs of disgust escape him as he turns the pages. It’s a new file and there’s not a lot to go on yet, but what’s there is disturbing.

  “So, it could be anyone, anywhere anytime. Fuck me.” He closes the file and brings his feet back to the floor with a thud. His massive forearms come to a rest on his desk, torso spanning the entire width. “I hate these fucking cases. How did we get this intel?”

  “Girl woke up in a room full of drugged, tied up women and escaped the house before they got to her. She ran, doesn’t remember which direction or how far, and doesn’t know where she was or who took her. Just that she met the guy on an app.”

  “Shit. Not a lot to go on, is there?”

  “No,” I agree. “Even if we got a couple undercover agents posing as dates, what’re the chances we’d get one of the people involved? We don’t know how many there are or when they strike, if there’s a type of girl they prefer, nothing.”

  “We need to start cross referencing with missing persons.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking too. I’ll draft a CRRFSR now.” A cross reference record filing system request (CRRFSR) is the easiest way for us to get information from multiple databases at the same time to show trends and or commonalities in current and past cases. We just list the parameters we’re looking for. The form itself is simple, the acronym not so much. “Single, actively dating, lives alone or with multiple housemates—”

  “Under thirty,” Mack adds.

  I raise a brow in question.

  “Stronger likelihood of finding someone with no kids and younger brings ‘em a bigger bang for their buck. No pun intended.”

  I snicker at him, even though it’s not funny. Maybe morbidly funny. I never thought my sense of humor would develop to where I’d find such thing humorous. Yet here it is, rearing its ugly head again. File it under the things we do to cope with the ugliness we see day in and day out.

  “Do you think they’re going underage?” I ask.

  He thinks on it for a minute. “I say no for now. If we don’t get a hit in the eighteen to thirty range, we can always expand to under eighteen.”

  I feel a small amount of relief at the thought of not having minors involved even though it’s uncertain. Modern day slavery situations are bad enough, but somehow it chips away at my soul more when kids’ lives are at stake.

  We spitball a few more ideas, adding income, education, and religion to our CRRFSR. Basing that information on profiles from other HT cases in the past and what seems to be the most plausible. I send it off to research and records, then settle in to read the file again, this time in greater detail. Meanwhile, Mack peruses other cases to see if they used dating apps in the past to lure women into trafficking traps and what we might be able to glean from them.

  Situations like this, we rarely have a lot to go on considering we only get data on cases when we catch the traffickers and/or rescue the women. There are thousands of women that go missing every year and whose abductions never return valuable prevention intel. Once these girls go missing, it’s doubtful we’ll ever find them.

  One of the last pages in the file is an artist’s rendering of what the suspect may have looked like. Since his profile disappeared off the dating app’s site, the girl had nothing else to go back on aside from memory. I’ll have to requisition warrants to search the archives for the dating site they used and hope for remnants of the deleted profile. I make a few copies of the artist’s depiction and slide one over to Mack.

  “You know this looks li
ke your friend, the one that’s getting married.”

  “David?” I look at the sketch. “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Man, it absolutely does. If you couldn’t vouch for him as your best friend, I’d bring him in based on this alone.”

  Mack looks like he’s all brawn, but the man is scary intelligent. Reminiscent of the actor Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) in his physique and appearance, except with hair on his face and head. He’s rarely wrong when he has a hunch, so I look at the sketch from a few different angles, trying to see what he does in it, but I can’t.

  “I don’t see it. Sorry.”

  He pulls up a random picture of David online and flips his screen around so I can see it. The resemblance is uncanny. In my mind, there were zero similarities between the man in the sketch and David. But seeing them side-by-side in print, I can’t deny it.

  Could be a coincidence. I just need to prove it. Which gives me an idea I should have thought of before now.

  “I’ll bring this over to research and records and see if they can run facial recognition on the sketch and match it to anything in any of the databases.”

  “Good idea. Tell Jenny I said hi. After that I say we go talk to the girl, review her story one more time.”

  Jenny works the intake desk in research and records, and she has a bit of a crush on Mack. Most women do. He shamelessly feeds into it with every single one of them, even though he’s not interested. And they eat it up.