Cavanaugh Undercover

“Picky,” he said.

“Thorough,” she countered.

“That, too,” he agreed. “Also very cool.”

Her suspicions were immediately raised. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t think I know many women—or many men for that matter—who could remain so calm around a recently murdered victim.” He was studying her. “But you act as if this is an everyday occurrence in your world.”

Tiana supposed that she did come off somewhat insensitive—not that she cared what this man ultimately thought of her unless it helped her find Janie—but she was far more concerned about the living. About her sister and other girls who undoubtedly had been stolen from their homes, from their parents who had to be as worried sick about them as she was about Janie.

As for her disregard of the lifeless body on the bed, well, to her way of thinking, Wayne had just gotten what he had coming to him. He’d stolen her sister, quite possibly stolen Janie’s innocence, as well, and maybe even more than that. She had absolutely no tears to shed for the likes of someone like Wayne.

“I’m not interested in the dead,” she told the tall stranger with the intense eyes. “My only interest is in the living. Now, can you help me or at least give me the name of someone who can? Because if you can’t, then get the hell out of my way.”

“All business, huh?”

She had the feeling he was baiting her, seeing how she reacted in a given situation. Why, she didn’t know. Maybe it was some sort of a test. All she knew was that she wanted to wipe that smirk off his face. Badly.

“I left my warm, fuzzy center in my other outfit,” she told him coldly.

“The one with the whip?” he asked with a straight face. Only his eyes showed any trace of humor.

“You’ve seen it,” she deadpanned.

“Only in my dreams—” He hesitated for a moment. “So, what do I call you, anyway?”

If he was asking that, then maybe she’d passed whatever stupid test he was giving her. She never hesitated. “Aphrodite.”

“The goddess of love,” he acknowledged.

“You know your Greek mythology.” She hadn’t expected any of the people on the lower rungs of this organization to be educated. Maybe this man wasn’t low man on the totem pole. Maybe he went up higher than that.

“I know a lot of things,” he replied.

“Such as where the merchandise is being kept?” she asked, trying to sound vaguely bored as well as impatient. She fervently hoped her pounding heart wasn’t going to give her away.

“Such as that, yes,” Brennan said. Truth be told, he had just managed to breach the outer ring of the organization in this past week. He’d come to the traffickers, thanks to an informant who had since disappeared, only a few days ago, posing as a wealthy representative of a club that catered to depraved men who craved being serviced by females who were definitely below the legal voting age.

Because nothing was accepted at face value, his background—the background that had been created for him by Brenda Cavanaugh, the chief of Ds’ daughter-in-law who ran the tech support division—was being checked out by unknown people even as he stood here, talking to this madam-in-search-of-an-extended-stable. He only hoped that Brenda was as good as everyone said she was. His life could very well depend on it.

“Then take me there,” she challenged, moving in close to him.

“Whoa, hold your horses, honey,” he warned. “Nobody sets foot in ‘the candy store’ without being checked out first.”

“Like him?” she asked contemptuously, nodding her head at the dead college senior on the bed.

“I think it’s pretty clear that he didn’t make the grade,” Brennan told her matter-of-factly.

“Was that why he was eliminated?” she asked, wondering why Wayne had been killed now rather than later. Knowing might help her find Janie. Every piece of information might very well be crucial—or not. It was like trying to navigate a moving van in a dense fog. She had no idea if she was going in the right direction, or completely off the road. She couldn’t remember a time when she had been more frustrated.

“Part of the reason,” Brennan allowed vaguely.

“Hold it,” Tiana ordered as something dawned on her.

“If you knew he was already dead, why did you accuse me of killing him?” she demanded.

For a second he seemed flustered before quickly gaining his composure. “Simple,” he said after a beat. “I wanted to see how fast you thought on your feet.”

Incensed, because for a moment he’d had her thinking she was going to have to kill him in order to survive, Tiana gave in to her temper. She swung and made contact with his cheek—hard. The target of her wrath rubbed his cheek but refrained from saying anything or retaliating.

However, when the so-called madam began to swing again, he caught her wrist and held on to it just tightly enough to get his point across.

“The first one’s free, on the house, so to speak,” he told her. There was the hint of a smile on his lips, but his eyes were deadly serious. “Anything after that has consequences,” he warned. His eyes narrowed as he looked into hers. “Understood?”

“Understood,” she ground out grudgingly between clenched teeth. Okay, she thought. Now I know how far I can push you.

She dropped her hand to her side when he released it.

Chapter 3

It did surprise Tiana that the good-looking stranger was making no effort to leave the room. Most people wouldn’t have wanted to share space with a corpse, yet he didn’t look the least flustered. Since he appeared to be her only possible link to Janie, she couldn’t leave until he did. She needed to have him take her to whoever he was associated with—and hope that whoever that was had a link to her sister.

“So now what happens?” she asked him.

“That all depends,” he answered. He was still trying to figure her out. He’d already decided that the woman was a spitfire, but what else was she? Was she telling the truth about why she’d come to see the dead man, or was there something else going on? And just how was that going to affect the ultimate outcome of his assignment?

Like everything else he’d dealt with in the secret lives he’d had to undertake, Brennan decided to play it by ear.

“On what?” she asked.

“On who you’re asking about. If you’re referring to our friend here—” he nodded toward the dead man “—he stays right where he is. The motel maid will undoubtedly find him sooner or later and then he becomes the motel manager’s problem.”

“You’re leaving him here?”

“Why not? He can’t be traced back to anyone of consequence and since he can’t hold up his end of the conversation, I don’t see any point in taking him with me. Dead bodies are really a pain to get rid of,” he told her.

The first second when no one else was around, he intended to call in and tell the chief of Ds about this latest casualty of the sex trafficking ring they were looking to take down. From everything he’d managed to put together, the man on the bed was nothing more than a would-be gofer for the organization. Someone who’d traded on his looks to get girls to follow him into the trap that was set for them. More than likely, he’d probably gotten an inflated sense of self and had asked for a bigger share of the profits. The answer to his demands was undoubtedly why his person was now sporting a bullet hole.

“If you’re asking about me, I go back to where I came from. As for you,” he began as he looked down at her—and then paused.

The woman sounded a little impatient. “Yes?”

“Are you really on the level about looking for fresh talent?” he asked. His first instinct had been to cut her loose. His second was to keep her close. Maybe he could incorporate a little soul-saving into this assignment he was on.

She raised her chin again, appearing ready to go at it with him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

He laughed shortly. “You really want me to go into that?”

“That depends on how wild your imagination is.”

His eyes met hers. If she really was a madam, he wondered what she’d been like, working her way up within the ranks. He knew better than to get involved, but it cost nothing to let his imagination go for a moment or two.

His mouth curved as his eyes swept over the length of her. “Pretty wild.”

“Then no,” she answered almost primly. “But I am on the level,” she informed him. “Girls wear out fast in this line of work. And if they don’t, they have an unfortunate habit of outgrowing it. My clients like them young and dewy fresh. The bloom only stays so long on the rose before it fades away.”

Brennan nodded. “Your clients are fickle,” he concluded.

“My clients are discerning,” Tiana corrected him pointedly.

“Potato-po-tah-to,” Brennan replied, waffling his hand in front of her as if to say that he saw right through her protest.

He couldn’t help wondering again what someone like her was doing mixed up in something like this. She looked too clean, too refined for the kind of lowlife this sort of a trade usually attracted. They might have more money and have positions of importance in the everyday world, but her clients were still scum, just well-kept scum.

With no effort at all he could see this woman who’d given him such a phony name being a teacher or a shop owner, not someone who dealt in the misery of young women as she peddled their flesh to the highest bidder.

He wasn’t here to get personally involved, Brennan reminded himself. Or to save a so-called fallen woman. The only people he was supposed to be concerning himself with were the young women who had been kidnapped or pressed into this life by being lied to. He was here to save them, not to get mixed up with a woman with electric blue eyes and hair that made him think of an out-of-control forest fire.

“I wouldn’t look down my nose at anyone if I were you,” she informed him. “It’s not exactly as if you’re without reproach here.”

Brennan spread his hands in an exaggerated show of innocence. The smile on his face was positively wicked. “Never said I was.”

“You haven’t really said very much of anything, have you?” she accused.

Brennan didn’t bother denying it. “Better that way. I make it a rule never to hand over the nails to my coffin to anyone. Never know when someone could use it against me,” he told her.

“Well, not that I don’t enjoy debating philosophy with you, mister...” She paused for a moment before asking, “What did you say your name was?”

Boy, was he enjoying this. “I didn’t.”

“Well, say it now,” she ordered.

“Wayne,” he said, drawling out the surname. “Bruce Wayne.”

He had to be kidding. “Bruce Wayne,” she repeated. “As in Batman?”

He heard the disbelief in her voice. He’d meant it as joke, but decided to stick to the name. For one thing, it was easier to remember. “My father had a sense of humor.”

Her eyes took measure of him, from his head right down to the tips of his shoes. Okay, let him have his little joke. Maybe if she went along with it, Tiana thought, she could get closer to him. She needed some sort of a way in, and now that Wayne was permanently out of the running, this man was going to have to be it.

“Obviously,” she agreed.

Not that she believed it for a minute. But it didn’t matter what his name was. He could call himself Peter Rabbit for all she cared. As long as he provided her with a way to get to her sister, she’d call him any name he wanted.

“Not that I’m not enjoying this meaningless exchange,” she went on to say, trying to light a fire under him and finally get out of this motel room, “but I’m kind of in a hurry.”

“Don’t be.”

Was he putting her on some kind of notice? Or was there some other hidden meaning behind his words? She had no patience with riddles and puzzles, not when the stakes were so high.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“It means that the man you’re going to be dealing with holds people in a hurry suspect. You need to be laid-back.”

That didn’t make any sense to her. “Why?”

Roland, the man he’d dealt with, the one who had sent him out on what turned out to be a fool’s errand, was nothing if not paranoid. “He might just think you’re trying to set him up and are looking to put some distance between you before the trap goes off.”

This Wayneman was getting too close to the truth. A lucky guess on his part? Or was she somehow transparent in her concern? Back in San Francisco she was a lab rat. She was damn good at her job but still a lab rat. Fieldwork wasn’t exactly her specialty. She was winging this as she went along.

“I’m not trying to set anyone up,” Tiana protested. “I just want to see if he has the kind of girls my clients prefer.”

He raised his shoulders in a dismissive, disinterested shrug. “Just your word against his suspicions. You’re better off acting like you have all the time in the world,” he advised. “It sets off fewer alarms that way.”

“But I don’t have all the time in the world,” she protested, getting further into her role. If Janie was being held captive by this sex trafficking ring, then she had no idea how much time she actually had before her sister was shipped off for parts unknown. The second Janie left the area, the chances of finding her fell abysmally. “I’ve got clients who’ll take their business somewhere else if I don’t bring them the kind of selection they’re looking for.”

“Somebody breathing’s not enough, huh?” he asked her with a grin that she found hugely unsettling. It wasn’t that it was creepy. What worried her was that it wasn’t. Moreover, it got to her—which was totally unacceptable.

“Not even close,” she told him. “They have very definite requirements.” When he didn’t say anything in response for a couple of minutes, just looked her over, she found it difficult not to shift uncomfortably. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Making a judgment call.”

He was judging her? Tiana squared her shoulders combatively. “And?” she challenged.

His expression was easygoing—quite the opposite of what she felt. “You pass.”

“Good to know,” she said in a bored voice. “Now will you take me to talk to someone in authority?” It was more of a demand than a request.

The amused, cocky grin widened. “What makes you think I’m not someone in authority?”

“Let’s call it a hunch,” she told him.

He inclined his head. She’d played that hand well. Whatever she was up to—and he was fairly certain she was up to something, something she was keeping to herself right now—she had guts. “Not bad. All right, I’ll take you with me and introduce you to Roland.”

“The man in charge?” she asked.

Brennan laughed shortly. There was very little humor in the sound. “He thinks he is.”

Her eyes never left Wayne’s face. She was looking for a chink in his armor, a tell she could use in her favor. There was nothing. “Is he right?” she asked.

Isaac Roland was far from in charge, although no one who worked directly for him would ever have had the nerve to tell him that to his face. The man in charge had yet to be identified, a fact that kept Brennan playing this charade. They needed a name in order to shut everything down and make their arrests.

“He’s two rungs up the ladder,” Brennan told her.

“What about you?” she asked. How did the man who called himself Wayne actually figure into all this? Was he the cleanup man, the guard at the door of an exclusive club who decided who gained access and who was turned away?

Or—?

“I’m the guy leaning against the ladder,” he told her. The grin on his face made it impossible for her to gauge if he was telling her the truth or pulling her leg. And just what did he mean by that line, anyway? Was he saying that he wasn’t part of the operation but just an interested spectator?

Or was he deliberately belittling his role in all this to gain her confidence and get her to talk to him? If so, to what end?

It was too much of a puzzle for her to solve now. As long as he didn’t pose any sort of an immediate threat—and she remained on her guard—she didn’t care what he was in the scheme of things. Or who he thought he was.

On the surface, she seemed to be winning his trust—as far as it went—and right now that was good enough for her.

“If you’re going back to him, I’ll follow you in my car,” she told him, about to leave the room. The dead man was making her feel claustrophobic.

Brennan caught her by the arm and she looked at him quizzically. She also spared a look at his fingers that were wrapped around her upper arm, her indication clear. The words Let go practically vibrated between them.

But he ignored the silent message and continued holding her forearm for a moment longer. “I think Roland would prefer it if we both used my car. He’s very big on green energy and cutting down on pollution,” he told her, his expression unreadable.

This “Roland” was also big on cutting back on avenues of escape, Tiana couldn’t help thinking. But there was absolutely no way she could allude to that without raising all sorts of suspicions on the part of this man.

First she had to find Janie, then she could plan their escape, she told herself. The idea that, since Wayne was dead, Janie also might be dead, fleetingly visited her thoughts, but Tiana refused to allow it to take root. Janie was alive and she was here. Tiana refused to allow her mind to entertain any other possibility. To believe that her sister might be dead would render her completely inert. She’d be no good to Janie or herself that way.

Still, she knew she couldn’t just docilely allow herself to be led away like some overgrown, directionally challenged lemming.

“What about my car?” she asked. “I can’t just leave it here.”

“Sure you can,” he said. “I’ll bring you back for it after you meet Roland and state the nature of your business to him.”

Tiana knew she had no choice. If she protested, he’d just leave her here. Possibly in the same condition as Wayne was in. For that matter, she still wasn’t a hundred percent convinced that this so-called Bruce Wayne wasn’t the one who’d killed Wayne in the first place. The latter had always struck her as being almost too stupid to live, but discovering she was right was of no great consolation to her. He could have at least remained alive long enough to tell her where Janie was.

She struggled to contain her impatience and concern. “All right, have it your way, ‘Bruce,’” she said.

Brennan flashed a quick smile in her direction. “I usually do.” He said it without bragging or bravado. It was just a stated fact. “My car’s right outside,” he told her, finally leading the way out of the room. He paused to look around, as if to make certain that the area was still deserted. It was.

The sunlight seemed extra bright as she walked out of the dingy, dimly illuminated motel room, and she squinted for a moment, trying to acclimate her eyes to the pronounced change. In doing so, she didn’t see the rock right in front of her. Stubbing the toe of her shoe on it, she tripped.

Instinct had Brennan reacting to the faint, telltale noises. He turned around just in time to catch her and keep the supple handful from making direct contact with the ground.

It all happened very fast, less than two beats of an old-fashioned clock, but even so, he was exceptionally aware of the softness of her body as it made contact with his.

As was she. He could tell by the very startled look in her eyes—which had flown wide-open.

“You make more headway if you keep your eyes open,” he told her, amused.

“So they tell me,” Tiana snapped, brushing herself off.

Since he’d caught her before she’d actually had a chance to hit the ground, he could only guess that she was attempting to symbolically brush away any trace of contact with him.

Was the lady protesting too much? he wondered. Or did she find him as compelling and intriguing as he found her?

“Car’s right here,” he pointed out.

Raising his hand, he pressed the security release on his car key. The silver BMW that had been recruited especially for this part he was undertaking softly whispered that its doors were now unlocked.

He waited until she opened the passenger-side door and got in before he followed suit himself on the driver’s side.

She slid onto a seat that would have made butter seem unusually hard and brittle. Without thinking, she feathered her fingertips along the side of the seat appreciatively. “Business is good for you, too, I see.”

The implication wasn’t wasted on him. She was telling him that she was doing well in her chosen field.

“Can’t complain,” he said. He started the car with another press of a button.

“A person can always complain,” she countered.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But nobody likes to hear complaints. Makes them unreceptive to the person. Me, I always believed in counting my blessings.”

She looked at him in disbelief. Was this man for real? She couldn’t decide one way or another. Her immediate gut feeling would have been to say no, but there was something about his tone of voice that told her she was being made privy to the truth, strange as it might sound.

“An optimistic pimp,” she marveled as they left the parking lot behind them. “I don’t think I’ve ever encountered one before.”

“Then you need to broaden your social circles,” he quipped.

Tiana pretended to think it over before she inclined her head. “Maybe,” she allowed.

“And for the record,” he told her matter-of-factly, “I’m not a pimp.”

“A procurer?” she suggested. When he made no answer, she said, “Okay, what would you call yourself if you were filling out a résumé?” she asked loftily. “A matchmaker?” She laughed.

“A businessman,” he corrected in all seriousness. “A pimp is someone who deals with the dregs of society, pushing them into the arms of their destruction for a hefty cut of their earnings.”

She’d never heard it described that way. “You really are into philosophy, aren’t you?” she marveled. “Either that, or you’ve learned just the right way to appease your conscience.”

“Conscience has nothing to do with it,” he assured her. Then, out of the blue, he asked her, “How about you?” When she looked at him quizzically, he elaborated on his question. “How did you get into this line of...work?” he finally said when the right word seemed to be eluding him.

“Quite by accident, actually,” she answered.

“Explain,” he urged.

“It’s a long story for another day,” she told him. When I can come up with the story. Out loud, she said, “When I know you better.”

“We can take care of that little detail any time you say so,” he assured her, his meaning made crystal clear by the smile on his face.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she answered. And I’ll keep you at a distance. It’ll be much safer that way, she added silently, although she had a feeling that “safe,” much less “safer,” was not going to be something she would feel until she and Janie were as far away from here as possible.

And as far away from this man as possible, she added as an afterthought.

Chapter 4

The Aries Hotel with its understated opulence and its refined ambience was the complete opposite of the dingy motel where she’d tracked down Wayne. Tiana was confident that the average price of one room in the hotel was more than the combined sum gathered from all the rooms at the motel.

“What are we doing here?” Tiana asked, addressing the question to the back of “Bruce Wayne’s” head as she followed him through the hotel’s revolving door.

“You said you wanted to meet the man I’ve been dealing with,” Brennan reminded her as he waited for her to join him.

“He’s staying here?” she asked, scanning the immediate vicinity.

Realizing that the man who was essentially her guide for the moment had kept on walking, she hurried to catch up with him.

She managed to reach him just as “Wayne” reached a bank of elevators located at the far end of the floor, a few feet beyond the registration desk.