Max had been convinced from the moment we met that I had a thing for him. Just because he had the most incredible gray eyes I’d ever seen, and thick hair that tended toward curls when he let it grow out long enough—like now… it was cut sort of like mine, super short on the sides, but long on top, so wavy I could almost feel the curls wrapping around my fingers—that was so black it was almost blue. He had that sort of coloring that made his skin seem really pale around his five o’clock shadow, but he was really kind of olive-skinned, always subtly tan and so healthy-looking. Tall—so damn tall!—with limbs that seemed to move and fold in strange ways because they were so long, but also with a grace no man should possess. And muscles… some of the guys I’d served with in the military were not as toned as Max Lucas was.
Damn, he was hot! And he was the only man I’d never been able to stand up to quite the way I wanted to.
I hated him!
“Skylar says Ox has a case for me,” he said.
I crossed my arms over my chest, determined not to enter into a conversation with him.
“Said it involves some sort of disappearance. Sounds interesting.”
“Good for you.”
“Wonder what they want you up there for? Skylar said I’d have to have a partner, someone who would attract the attention of sex traffickers. We both know you don’t fit that bill.”
I blushed, hard. I hated blushing.
That’s what I got for encouraging him.
“Not that you aren’t interesting-looking,” he continued, perhaps trying to clarify his statement. “For an adolescent boy.”
“You’re an ass, Max!”
“Yeah?” He pressed his hand to the wall in front of me and leaned forward, his lips not far from my ear. “I bet you’d love to see my ass. I bet you’d love to see more than just my ass. I see the way you look at me from time to time. I think you’d love to see everything God gave me, find out what I can do with it all.”
“You think every woman you’ve ever met is dying to sleep with you!”
“Well, of course! Haven’t you seen me? Or do you need glasses?”
I thrust my elbow backward, slamming it hard into his ribs. He backed up, coughing a little.
“You’d better learn your place, Max Lucas!”
The elevator doors opened, and I stormed off, pounding down the hall to Ox’s office. Skylar, back from Washington State and looking as beautiful and unique as ever in pigtails and a bright-red sweater, stood to greet me. Her eyebrows rose as Max appeared a moment later, his hand on his ribs, moaning like a two-year-old who’d just bumped his head on a pillow.
“Ox is waiting for the two of you,” she said, her speech a little halted as she continued to watch Max’s little show. “You okay?” she asked him.
“Oh, sure. I just got an elbow in the ribs, but I think I might live.”
“Quit being a baby,” I said, slapping his arm before marching into Ox’s office.
“See how she treats me?” I could hear Max saying behind me, followed by the mumble of Skylar’s reply.
“James,” Ox said, coming around his massive desk to greet me. A middle-aged man in a quality suit stood at the same time, gesturing to the woman beside him to join him. They both looked absolutely miserable, the woman’s eyes red and puffy, obviously from crying. Ox drew me closer with a hand on the middle of my back and gestured to the couple. “This is Mr. and Mrs. Charles Porter. They’ve asked to hire us to find their missing son.”
“I’m sorry for your troubles,” I said as I shook both their hands.
Max marched up beside me and just as politely shook their hands, muttering some nice sentiment. Skylar closed the door and we all moved to the small sitting area off to the side of the office, the couple holding each other as Ox began to explain the situation.
“Mr. and Mrs. Porter’s son, Charles Jr., was out with a group of friends Friday night when he failed to come home. The Porters called all of Charles Jr.’s friends, but all they could ascertain from them was that Charles Jr. was at a rave when he wandered off with a couple of guys he’d just met. No one has seen him since.”
“Chaz,” the woman said. “They call him Chaz.” She began to cry. The husband slipped his arm around her, pulling her closer to him as he added, “We think he thought he’d just made new friends, but they kidnapped him, or something worse… and the police claim their hands are tied because Chaz is eighteen. They think he just ran away, but Chaz wouldn’t do something like that, not to his mother.”
Ox nodded, his face a mask of sympathy. “They have the address where the rave took place but, of course, there’s no sign there was ever a party there, let alone any information as to who ran it.”
“Do you know how Chaz found out about the party?” I asked as gently as I could. “Was it something he heard about at school? Something his friends heard about? Do they have an email address, a hashtag, a nickname? Anything we might be able to go on?”
The father shook his head. “We’ve talked to his friends half a dozen times over the last two days, but they swear they don’t know anything. They said they went to the party because someone texted them about it.”
“Do they have a number?”
“The number was blocked, or so they claim.”
“Do we have the names of these friends?”
Ox nodded. “I’ve already had Skylar send them down to Cheryl.”
“Does your son have a cell phone?” I asked.
The mother nodded. “I’ve been texting him since early Saturday morning, but there’s been nothing. And we tried tracking his location through the provider website, but he must have turned it off because there’s nothing when we punch in all the information.”
The mother began crying again, real sobs this time. Max moved in front of her, kneeling on one knee like a man about to propose. He took her hand and rubbed it softly. “We will do the best we can to find your son, Mrs. Porter,” he told her with all the sincerity of a saint.
The woman, still sobbing, nodded before burying her face against her husband’s chest.
“Skylar,” Ox said, nodding his head, “why don’t you show Mr. and Mrs. Porter out.”
She was already on her feet, gesturing for the couple to follow her.
“That’s tough,” Max said, throwing himself down onto the loveseat the couple had just vacated, looking at his nails like he was worrying about his next mani-pedi. “Could have been kinder to them, James.”
“What? I was just getting information on the case!”
“They just lost their son. They don’t want to play twenty questions.”
“How are we supposed to find the boy if we don’t have all the information?”
“I’m sure Ox already has all the information he needs to get us started. Right, boss?”
Ox studied the two of us for a moment, sighing as though he was a father trying to decide if he should punish his children for a borderline infraction. “Do you think the two of you could get along long enough to work this case?”
“That’s up to her,” Max said, gesturing to me with a jerk of his head. “She’s the one who makes everything into some sort of competition.”
“Me? Who was just criticizing my questioning of the client?”
“Who can’t stop arguing with everything that comes out of my mouth?”
“What? I don’t—”
“Stop!” Ox shook his head. “What is wrong with the two of you? This is a business, not a playground!”
Max sat up a little straighter, bowing his head slightly. “Sorry, boss.”
Ox looked from him to me. “Can I count on the two of you to work together properly on this?”
“Yes,” I said, resisting the desire to shoot Max a dirty look. He responded in the positive, too.
“All right.” Ox stood slowly, running a hand over the top of his head with the weariness of a much older man. There was tension in every cell of his body, his face appearing strangely haggard as though he had the weight of t
he world on his shoulders. I’d noticed this change in him while we were in Washington State to help Skylar, but I’d thought it was because he was worried about his assistant. But it was still there, making me wonder if there was more going on in his life than he’d mentioned to anyone.
Skylar reentered the room, offering Ox a slight nod to confirm that the clients had found their way out of the building safely.
“Max, would you mind stepping out for a few minutes? I’d like to talk to James alone.”
Max glanced at me, this look like that of a jealous child on his face. But he stood, slapping Ox on the shoulder. “No problem, boss.”
Skylar escorted Max out, shooting me a look that I couldn’t quite interpret. It made me wonder if I was about to get a lecture about something I didn’t remember doing wrong. Ox crossed the room and grabbed a water bottle from his bar, turning to offer me one before drinking half his down in a single gulp. He gestured for me to join him by his desk, leaning himself against the front of it as he finished the bottle before taking a long look at me.
“I have a tentative plan for this case, but I need to get your consent before we can go forward with it.”
“Okay,” I said, my curiosity definitely piqued since he’d never done anything like this before.
“The missing boy was very young and very… effeminate.” He reached behind him and picked up a picture that he handed to me. The photograph was of a teenager who could have passed as a boy or a girl. A thin face, shoulder-length hair, a pale pink T-shirt. I thought there must be eyeliner defining the eyes, but no other signs of makeup on the pale but attractive face. I could see similarities between this person and the woman who’d just left the office in tears, so I knew this must be the missing boy, Chaz Porter. He was definitely a good-looking kid, and he was also clearly gender-fluid.
“A quick check shows there have been other disappearances around town in the past six months. Most have been of women—but there have been several young men—between the ages of fourteen and twenty, most happening in association with these raves, but some have taken place near some of the clubs down by the River Walk. Most are very young-looking, most are thin and boyish in their body type.”
I lowered my head slightly. “These people have a type they’re looking for.”
“I think it might be some sort of sex-trafficking deal. Someone looking for a specific type for his… clients, or whatever.” Ox shivered a little, clearly disgusted by the idea. “And I think you might fit their ideal.”
“Me?” I glanced down at myself and then at the photograph I was still holding. “No offense, Ox, but I have a few more curves than this boy!”
“You do. And you dress a little… well, not quite like these missing women did. But that’s easy to change.”
“You want me to change the way I dress?”
“We want you to go undercover in some of these clubs and at these raves, see if you can catch the attention of the people taking these kids.”
I shook my head. “First off, I’m too old. I’m twenty-eight. I’ve seen more life than most of these kids have lived!”
“But you have a very youthful appearance. You could easily pass for eighteen.”
“And I’m not a very good actor. We’ve tried this sort of thing before, and it never went very well.”
“Skylar can give you a few tips to help with that.”
“Skylar? Why not just send her in?”
“Because she’s not an operative.” Ox pushed away from his desk and moved around me, pacing a little in the space behind the chair where I sat. “It’s not like we’re asking you to do much more than we’ve ever asked before. We dress you up and send you into a party where you’ll talk to the other kids, flirt with a few of the adults hanging around. Hopefully, you’ll hear enough through gossip and whatever to help us figure out who is responsible for these disappearances.”
I stood and put the picture back on Ox’s desk. “Maybe we should come up with a different plan.”
“It’s not that big of a deal, James. I’ll have Skylar help you figure out how to dress more… well, feminine. And then—”
“Why don’t we make Max dress sexier? Maybe that would catch a few flies!”
“James—”
“You realize that I’m a decorated military vet, right? That I’ve got a ninety percent success rate in all the cases I’ve worked on here at Caballo? That I’d do just about anything for you—short of dressing up like some floozy because you can’t think of something better?”
Ox was very still, very quiet for a long moment. He wasn’t even facing me, but turned with his back to me, but I could see by the way his shoulders bunched up under his shirt that he wasn’t pleased with my little rant.
“You’d better remember your place here, James,” he said quietly. “Remember that I gave you a job when no one else would touch you.” He turned, facing me with eyes that were blazing with anger. “You’ve had success here because I took a chance on you. But I could let you go right here, right now, and you can go out there and see if public opinion has changed in regards to your employability.”
My face burned as my hands curled into fists at my sides. “You’d fire me over this?”
“I’ve asked you to take a case, just like any other case I’ve ever offered you. If you don’t want to work within the limits I set, then you are more than welcome to walk out of here and go find someone who is more willing to cater to your desires.”
Ox had never threatened me before. And he was right. I had created a little bit of a buzz when I’d first returned from the military, when I was still dealing with the fallout of what had happened over there. The chances I’d find another security firm in this area to hire me were probably pretty slim despite my success here, especially if Ox wasn’t willing to offer a recommendation.
“Okay,” I said, dropping back into the chair I’d just abandoned. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want you in a dress. That’s all.”
That was all. But what he didn’t understand is that I’d not worn a dress a day in my life. The idea was as foreign to me as wearing a skirt might be to him.
But I nodded. “Whatever you want.”
Chapter 2
James
“I think you’d look great in an A-line style dress, but we’ll try some of these more formfitting dresses since that’s what the kids wear to these kinds of parties,” Skylar was saying as she dug through the racks. “I think green would look great on you. And reds and blues. Definitely black.”
I just stood there, watching, wishing I could disappear. Other women were moving around us, digging through the racks as eagerly as Skylar, trying to find some perfect piece of cloth to adorn their ordinary bodies. I got more than a few looks, some of these people judging my combat boots and cargo pants. Forgive me for liking lots of pockets to carry my tools in! Didn’t they know how inconvenient a purse was? Always digging inside it to find things. I knew exactly where all my things were.
“I only need one or two—right?” I asked, hoping to hurry Skylar along.
“Ox said you will probably be undercover for a week or more. You’ll need at least five or six dresses, maybe more. You don’t want to wear the same thing every night!”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s not something these girls do. It’ll make you stand out in the wrong way.”
“I still don’t understand why he couldn’t choose Mollie or Alicia for this case.”
“He doesn’t trust them the way he trusts you.”
I tilted my head slightly. “Since when does trust have anything to do with it?”
Skylar stopped searching through the clothes rack to face me. “You do realize that Ox is under a lot of pressure right now—right? He’s being sued by the original investors in the firm. They’re claiming he cut them out of their rightful share of the profits since he took over. And there’s more…” She hesitated a moment. “I think Ox is worried the case will uncover somethin
g he’s been trying to hide. I don’t know what… but he’s been really stressing about it. So, he needs things with the day-to-day workings of the firm to go smoothly. If we blow our cases—like this one—it could look bad for him in court. Do you understand?”
I shrugged. “I suppose.”
“Ox has done a lot for all of us, more than most bosses. Now’s our time to stand up and pay him back for some of that.”
I lowered my head slightly, aware of just how much Ox had done for me. He hadn’t needed to remind me back at the office, and Skylar didn’t need to remind me now.
“Could we at least find a dress that allows me to breathe?”
Skylar smiled. “Of course.”
I struggled to try on all the things she picked out for me. First, they were too big, then too small. And the way they pushed up my boobs and made them look humongous! It was ridiculous! When I thought the humiliation was over—we’d picked seven dresses that were almost acceptable—she dragged me over to the makeup counter.
“A little eyeliner, a touch of shadow…”
I hated having all these women fuss over me. Touching my skin and standing so close I felt as though I was going to suffocate, and telling me how to apply all this crap that I didn’t like and didn’t want. I felt like a stupid clown with all that makeup on my face! And then the one who suggested I get hair extensions—
“That’s where I draw the line!”
I stomped out of the store and waited for Skylar by the locked SUV we’d taken from Caballo. Of all the things I’d ever had to do as a security operative, this had to be the worst! Dressing up like a damn slut just to get the attention of a bad guy who’d taken a kid who was probably already in some Asian country being used and…
God, had I really fallen down the rabbit hole that far?
I paced beside the vehicle, reminding myself why I’d wanted to work security in the first place. The things I saw over in Afghanistan… there were children there, too. And grown men who’d wept when those kids died by their hand, wept for a life unachieved even though it had come down to the child or the soldier. We fought so those children could have a life—and here I was crying over having to wear a damn dress in an attempt to save American children from a fate worse than death.
Caballo Security Box Set Page 63