by Skye Warren
He looked up. “Keep her away from me, or you won’t like what happens.”
“What did you do?”
His frown deepened. “Why do you assume I did something?”
I answered him by sinking into one of the armchairs by the cold fireplace and leaning my head back on the plush leather.
He sighed. “She came on to me.”
“On to you,” I said dumbly. She freaked out when a guy looked at her wrong. She had been nervous as hell about Philip. “You’re mistaken.”
His look was droll. “I realize your own opinion of my allure may be low, considering I paid for your attentions, but I assure you, I know when I’m getting hit on. Particularly when the girl in question strips in my office.”
My mouth fell open. Philip was a handsome man, but this was ridiculous. “She doesn’t even like men. She hates them. She hates you.”
“She does now, because I told her to stop embarrassing herself. It had the intended effect.”
A mixture of shock and shame flushed through me. “Even if you’re right, then she’s confused. It was a rough night. There was no reason to be mean. I told her she’d be safe here.”
“Well, I didn’t beat her,” he said. “Would you have preferred I did?”
Philip’s tastes were extreme, perverted, violent—and strictly consensual. That was my cue. I got up and strolled over, resting my hip against his desk. “I’m sure I can stand in, if that’s what you want. You know I can keep you satisfied.”
“We’re not doing that.”
I paused. “Not now.”
“Not ever.” His face was set into a mask of implacability.
“Is this about what happened with Ella? I’ll talk to her. She won’t bother you again.”
“And neither will you.”
“Philip—”
Abruptly, he slammed his fist on the desk, and I jumped.
“How many ways do I have to say it? I don’t want her. I don’t want your desperation or your fucking gratitude.”
I stared at his fist where it pressed against the mahogany. “Then what do you want?”
Slowly, his hand unfurled, and he leaned back. “Nothing. You can stay here as long as you need. No one will fuck anyone.”
“Hmm.” He didn’t sound sure about that. “Where’s my phone?”
“We couldn’t risk it being tracked,” he answered smoothly. “I’d get you a temporary, but you don’t need one anyway while you’re here.”
There was my answer. I had lived in this house once as a pampered pet. Now it seemed the leash had tightened.
“Those charges are nothing but smoke and mirrors. I’ve already sent out some inquiries,” he said. “This will all be fixed soon enough.”
I watched his gaze flicker away for just long enough to let me know he was bluffing.
Chapter Eleven
I tracked Ella to the kitchen, which came as something of a surprise unless she was there to steal the silverware. Only the appliances gleamed gray, the flat-brushed metal nestled among swirled granite and knotted-wood cabinetry. The room was beautiful, warm, and complex—Adrian’s domain.
Ella sipped from a steaming mug as Adrian set a plate of biscotti down in front of her. He frowned when he saw me but without the usual mixture of distrust and anger in his eyes.
“Would you like some coffee?” he asked, and it sounded like What the fuck did Philip do?
Seemed I wasn’t the only one adopting pets.
“I’m good. Can you give us a minute?”
Adrian left us, shooting daggers at me with his gaze that I interpreted as a warning to play nice. Obviously he wasn’t as familiar with Ella’s right hook as I was.
Ella stared fiercely at her coffee, stirring it with a piece of biscotti.
I pulled up a chair to the hand-scraped oak table. “Wanna tell me about it?”
“About what?”
“Any of it, sweetheart. What happened with Philip. Why you were working for Henri. What your damn name is. You’re killing me here.”
“I thought if I could… I didn’t want…” She dropped the soggy biscotti into the mug with a weak splash. “Like you said, if I had just done what I was supposed to do, you wouldn’t be in this mess. I didn’t want you to have to…have sex with Philip because of me.”
A too-full emotion welled in my chest. I looked away. “It’s not so bad.”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said drily. “Apparently even when I want to seduce someone, I do it wrong.”
“Well, you don’t have to do that. Neither of us does.” I tried to infuse an optimism I didn’t quite feel into my voice. “We’re his guests.”
She looked doubtful.
“Philip and I will take care of Henri,” I said with more false assurance. “So you just stay put. Let me know if you need anything. I’m sure we can order you some clothes so you’re not stuck wearing my hand-me-downs. Right, Adrian?”
“Right,” came the muffled answer from the hallway.
“Um…” Ella’s gaze darted to the closed kitchen door.
“Adrian’s a terrible gossip,” I explained.
Muttering drifted through the thick, knotted oak.
“We love him anyway,” I said. “Couldn’t live without him.”
“Damn straight.” Adrian bustled back into the kitchen, armed with a laptop. “As if I needed to eavesdrop. You can be sure, I have more advanced surveillance methods if I were even interested in what you were saying.”
He flipped the laptop open on the table and pulled up the Web site for Nordstrom. Ella’s wardrobe would probably be better than mine, as retribution.
I suppressed my smile. “You two have fun.”
Philip was a bit of a Luddite. I used to call him a sixty-year-old man trapped in a thirty-year-old body. He retaliated by fucking me silly. But there were laptops and tablets sprinkled throughout the house if you knew where to look. I found one in one of the cozier sitting rooms. In my mind, I had dubbed it the library for its cushy chairs and dark paneling, even though there weren’t any books.
I pulled up my cell phone’s Web site to check my call logs.
Shortly after we left the party, I had received the first call from Henri. A series of calls from him after that, where I guessed he was trying to figure out what had happened. And then nothing, which I supposed was when he’d ordered the hit on the men in the hotel suite, and thus on me and Ella by proxy. If those men had spilled their story, Henri’s elite escort business would have suffered. Normally he would have compensated them with girls, but considering Ella’s complete unsuitability, maybe he was low on them too.
Henri wouldn’t have been happy about our desertion, and even less so once he found out we’d taken some of their money on the way out. But what had happened after, the murder and our framing, had been both brutal and quick. The message was clear. Return to him or be hunted down. Assassination by cop. It was one of his finer ideas, really.
In the minutes after we had left his apartment, Luke had called. Then again, ten more times. Well, sure, he had just promised to produce the lead suspect in a murder investigation. Naturally he would be concerned after finding us gone.
I should delete the handful of messages from him without listening. I couldn’t.
The first one was frantic, out of breath: “Damn it, Shelly, where did you go? Come back.”
The second was more thoughtful, pleading: “I know you saw the news. It looks bad, but we can fix this. Whatever happened at the hotel, we can fix it. Just come back. Call me.”
By the third, he had realized his error: “Did you hear me on the phone? Is that why you left? I had to keep them from sending guys out. They’re going crazy at the station, trying to find you, but they haven’t yet. They’re keeping me out of the search after…but I know that much. I’m not going to help them. You know that, don’t you? I wouldn’t. You know me. Right?”
Then the last:
“I don’t—you don’t have to come back. I just want to kno
w you got somewhere safe. If you can, let me know you’re safe.”
The message clicked off, and I closed my eyes, letting the silence and the sorrow envelop me. I couldn’t trust Luke, but I still wanted to throw myself at his feet. The pendulum of my indecision was never ending where he was concerned, but Ella was my new and trusty lodestone. Her safety trumped my quasi-suicidal desire for malachite eyes and gold-spun hair.
A commotion erupted outside, and with selfish relief, I heard my best friend’s voice demanding, “Where is she? I swear, if you’ve hurt her…”
I slipped into the hallway, only to be caught in a crushing hug. I sagged against her for a brief minute, basking in the ache of contact, until she reluctantly released me.
“There you are. Damn it!” Allie swiped at her eyes. “What happened? I’ll kill him.”
I laughed, surprised to find myself a little watery as well. “Kill who?”
“The guy who hurt you. God, I know you’ve already taken care of him, but I don’t care. I’ll kill him again.”
First Philip believed I’d committed murder in retaliation for some imagined offense, now Allie. Did I really come across so bloodthirsty? “I didn’t kill anyone, sweetie. And no one hurt me.”
She glanced pointedly at my eye, her disbelief clear. “You can tell me the truth. I already know, and I don’t judge you. Seriously, it’s about time. The only thing I’m surprised about is that you didn’t start with this one.”
She nodded at Philip, and I realized we had an audience. Philip was stone-faced, as he tended to be around Allie; exuberance made him nervous. Standing behind Allie was her fiancé, Colin. Though he filled the hallway, his stillness and stoicism caused him to blend into the background. I had always liked that about him. He was the blackness behind Allie’s bright star, each one vital to the other.
“Oh hey, Colin. Where’s pip-squeak?” I asked about Allie’s little girl. Bailey wasn’t Colin’s real daughter, but that didn’t stop him from doting on her.
“At preschool,” Allie said. “She goes two days a week now, which you’d know if you came by anymore. Nope, you’re not going to distract me. Tell me what happened and how we can help. Here, let’s go someplace private, where the guys aren’t glaring at each other.”
Colin also happened to be Philip’s brother, and last I heard, the two siblings weren’t speaking. They’d had a little falling-out last year when Philip had tried to kill Allie. I was surprised he’d even come, except that Allie probably insisted on seeing me, and Colin wouldn’t have let her come here alone—just in case.
“Allie,” Colin warned, apparently still concerned.
“The testosterone is suffocating.” She patted his chest, the gesture infused with both obstinacy and affection. “We need to have girl talk. You two try not to kill each other.”
Most likely Philip would be cordial, but just to make sure, I kissed him on the cheek to placate him before Allie and I shut ourselves into the library. I sank into the plush armchair, relieved to be away from the tension.
As soon as the heavy doors clicked shut, Allie whirled on me. “What the hell is going on?”
I explained what had happened, from Henri’s visit to the party. I omitted the part about Luke, knowing Allie would take the fact that I had run to him as a sign that we were an item. Behind all her bluster, she was constantly watching me. She knew something was there, and she thought Luke would be a good influence on me. If I told her what I’d overheard, she would defend him. Odd that she trusted him better than me.
“I wish you would have called me,” she said quietly.
“You know why I didn’t.” I would never let anything happen to Allie or her daughter. I had made that silent promise years ago, when a hurting Allie held a positive pregnancy test in her trembling hand. No matter what happened now, I could never regret my time with Henri, because it had given us all the security she and Bailey had needed.
She stood at the window. “One of these days, you’re going to have to rely on someone.”
A repeat of earlier? No, thank you. I much preferred my precarious position with Philip. Our relationship was like a stream, shimmering and shallow with no chance of drowning.
“How did you know to find me here?” I asked.
She flopped into an armchair beside mine. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“Do you guys have Philip under surveillance?”
She laughed. “No, but I like the way your mind works. I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to do anything stupid. Like leaving this very safe fortress to wander around the shittiest part of town. That counts as stupid, just so we’re clear.”
Excitement ran through me. This was a lead. “Jade called you,” I guessed.
Jade was a small-time madam with a few brothels in a seedy part of Chicago. She had been in the game a long time—an eternity, it seemed—and she knew everything that went down, everyone who went down. If she was contacting me, then she had information.
Allie scowled. “She showed up with a couple of muscle guys. Colin practically shit a brick to see those bozos come around the corner of the house. Apparently she doesn’t believe in phones. There is something wrong with that woman. And don’t say cultural differences. She’s not right in the head.”
I shrugged. “What did she say?”
“She claimed to have something important to tell you, that you have to visit her. She knew you were here, but she couldn’t come—”
“Without Henri finding out,” I finished. And since Colin was related to Philip, he could visit without arousing suspicion, like the childhood game of Telephone.
Allie continued. “I told her absolutely not. But at the time, I was going out of my mind trying to find you, wondering if you were hurt or… You know, and she made a deal to tell me where you were as long as I delivered the message. So, message delivered, and you’re not going anywhere.”
“I have to. Henri is after me. He’s after the girl. You know Jade always has the best information. She wouldn’t have asked me to come if it wasn’t good.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
Already my mind was spinning on how to get out of here undetected. Philip would forbid it, and Ella would insist on coming. So I wouldn’t tell them.
Allie poked violently at a wrinkle in the leather. Uh-oh. “What are you hiding?”
She scrunched her nose. “Well, if you’re going to go anyway, I might as well tell you. Jade said that her information… It’s about Luke.”
Chapter Twelve
Without much time, our plan was simple: Allie swiped their keys for me and then distracted both men while I got away. I knew Allie could hold her own, but I hoped Colin wasn’t too annoyed at her on my behalf. At least his old truck didn’t stand out so much in this neighborhood.
Jade’s house sat at the end of the street, the hinge between a poor residential neighborhood and a row of ratty strip malls. I parked in the small paved lot and climbed the creaking wooden steps. The glass in the front door had been painted black for privacy, which proclaimed the type of establishment this was as much as the neon THAI MASSAGE sign.
My eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim interior. It looked the same as when I’d first been introduced here years ago, summoned by Jade and escorted by one of Henri’s senior girls. Only later had I learned that an audience with Jade was a commodity in Chicago’s sex industry.
The city was fractured in half, the upstanding and the underworld¸ each with its own customs. The bookstore had a chatty sales girl to usher a new hire in. Jade was my guide. She ruled with a power none of us completely understood but we all respected if we were going to last in the business.
Technically she didn’t control anything outside these walls, but everyone showed her deference. Even Henri had always stepped carefully where she was concerned. I wondered about them, what bound them together, which one of them was the devil and which had struck the deal. There was something deeper there, but that was the old guard, and I was t
he new girl.
Back then, the bright red vinyl banners with gold lettering had seemed jarring over the cracked yellowed walls, the irony almost mocking. A little cat statue waved its paw, representing prosperity, next to the sign listing $75 FOR 30 MINUTES. The good-luck pendant hung over the door leading to the “massage” rooms. Over time I had come to appreciate the blending of noble tradition with harsh reality, the evidence of hope within a brothel.
I wasn’t the new girl anymore.
After ringing the small desk bell, I scooted one of the metal folding chairs away from the wall and gingerly sat down to wait. I had only seen a cockroach on the wall once, but it made me eternally grateful for the expensive hotel rooms where I usually worked.
Two men came in, squinting and laughing and stumbling. Boys, really. They sobered at the sight of me, a woman in the waiting area of a whorehouse. The one with his hair in two-inch spikes whispered to the other furiously; the other argued back.
I couldn’t make out their words, but as if channeling some animal instinct, well sharpened, I sensed their lust, their anticipation at having it soon slaked, and their terror at this taboo venture. First timers. I disliked being a man’s first paid sex experience, vicariously living their thrill and shame over less money than they’d have dropped on a nice date. Plus, invariably, first timers tipped like shit.
They leaned against the opposite corners, seemingly deciding to stay, shooting me dirty, desirous looks. Possibly they wondered if I was for hire, but of course I never would be here. It wasn’t even the prices, which were low but not offensive. There was a caste system to these things, and Jade’s house was as low as you could get and still warrant a bed.
It wasn’t usually an Asian fetish that drew men here. Like a prime-time sitcom, any escort agency offered an assortment of white girls, with a token black and Asian to round out the group. Men usually came here for the convenience—women available without an appointment, location secured.
Jade stepped out, wearing her usual uniform of a floral-patterned pajama suit cinched at the waist and cheap leather and cardboard sandals. Her hair was sleek black in a crop that would be hip on someone thirty years younger. There was an era of timelessness to her; she was ancient with smooth, pale skin, not a wrinkle or age spot to give her away. Still, no one would mistake her intensity; even the boys straightened under her hawk-like gaze.
