Caballo Security Box Set

by Camilla Blake

  “I’m only getting shadows. Open the coat.”

  She opened the jacket again and I got a quick glimpse of the windshield and dashboard in front of her, then she closed it again. I grunted but didn’t argue with her. The camera was clearly working.

  “All right. Do you want to test the earpiece?”

  “I’m sure it’s working.”

  I reached over and touched her arm, but she jerked away, holding her arm like I’d hit her or something, the dirty look on her face a perfect match to the movement. I held up my hand to show I had no intention of hurting her.

  “We need to go. Don’t want the party to start winding down before you’ve made your first appearance.”

  She made a slight movement with her head and got out of the SUV. I followed, locking the thing up with a flick of my thumb against the fob, then hurried to catch up with her. She was walking like a storm trooper despite the heels that turned her ankles into something delicate and graceful. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her ankles before today. She stumbled once, but caught herself on a parked car, moving on before I could catch up to help.

  “Try letting your thighs get to know each other,” I suggested when I moved up behind her, bending down slightly so that I was speaking close to her ear. “It’s a little sexier.”

  “My thighs like being strangers.”

  She continued on, speeding up a little. I watched, amused by her bowlegged sort of walk. She had her legs spread in a way that suggested her brain thought she was wearing the same old combat boots rather than those heels. She handled them all right—she just looked like a little girl shuffling around in her mommy’s shoes.

  We turned a corner and were confronted by a dozen or so hopeful partygoers. These were the outsiders, people who learned about the party by word of mouth and showed up with hopes of getting in, but didn’t realize they didn’t fit a specific ideal. Wallflowers, the entire group of them.

  I grabbed James’s shoulder and pulled her back, pressing her against the wall just out of sight of that long line of people.

  “What?”

  “You need to take off that trench coat.”

  She looked down at herself like she’d forgotten she was even wearing it. “Why?”

  “Why? Because you look like you’re Columbo’s little sister or something! They need to see the sexy you, not this private-detective wannabe.”

  “You’re a real ass, you know that?”

  “So you tell me on a regular basis.” I held out my hand. “Give me the coat.”

  She glared up at me. “You say one word, and I swear this is over! I’ll be back at the office with my resignation in hand faster than you can say boo!”

  “I won’t say a word.”

  She sighed heavily before pushing off the wall and turning slightly, her back to me. She untied the thick belt on the coat and let the heavy material slip slowly off her shoulders. Bare shoulders. Had I ever seen her shoulders? She almost always wore snug black T-shirts and black cargo pants. We joked that it was her uniform, a self-appointed work uniform. A few of the operatives back at Caballo even suggested that she had a similar outfit that she wore to bed—and in the shower because a woman like her could never get naked, right? I’d never seen her naked shoulders, never saw more than the curves hinted at by her T-shirts. She’d adjusted her wardrobe since we’d started this assignment, but even the linen slacks had high waists and the silk blouses had sleeves and collars. Shoulders… that was completely new.

  There was more.

  The dress she wore was black, like her T-shirts, but it was snug, holding every inch of her in a bear hug like I suspected nothing else had ever done. But what really got my attention was the fact that this material, this dress, was backless, dipping so low down from the wide strap around her neck that I could almost see the dimples at the tops of her perfect ass. Every inch of her long, lovely spine was exposed, revealing inches and inches of creamy, pale skin.

  And then there were the cutouts.

  The dress had big circles cut out of the sides of it, revealing the creamy skin along her ribs and her hips, all the way down to her thighs. There was a tattoo on her ribs that was clearly revealed, a delicate heart that had been transplanted onto a rose’s stem. I reached out to touch it, stopping myself in the last second, grabbing for the coat she held out to me instead.

  And then she turned.

  Fuck! How much was one man supposed to take?

  “Don’t you say a word!” she demanded, shoving a finger toward my chest. “I swear, I can’t do this if you do!”

  I couldn’t have said anything if I’d wanted to.

  This dress… Man, the way it held her perfect breasts—and it didn’t help that her nipples were sticking up like they were saluting or something—and the cutouts that were so much bigger on the front. Her belly button was barely covered! And the way it hugged everything, it was quite evident that this woman who was so used to being completely covered in her masculine-styled uniform was not wearing underwear.

  So beautiful! I was not going to get this sight out of my thoughts anytime soon!

  “Damn, Duncan! You have this thing in the fucking bag!”

  Her eyebrows rose. “You think so?”

  “Just walk around that corner. That’s all you’re going to have to do.”

  She glanced toward the edge of the building, nervousness making her hands shake a little. She rubbed them against the front of the dress, pulling that already tight material further down against her perfect breasts. I grabbed her wrists and jerked her toward me, more to make her stop than anything else.

  “You’re going to do fine. Just remember to keep your legs together. And sway your hips just a little, not too much.”

  She nodded, looking from me to the edge of the building. “You’ll rescue me if it gets out of hand?”

  “Just give me the signal.”

  She nodded, taking a deep breath before pulling away. She moved away a few feet, her movements a bit more graceful than they’d been before.

  “You’ve got this.”

  She nodded again. She wiped her hands on the dress one more time, then began to walk away, her head held high. She nearly twisted her ankle as she stepped onto the asphalt in front of the massive warehouse where the party was being held, but she corrected herself without too much trouble. I waited a heartbeat, then followed, choosing a place away from the crowd to lean back and watch. Despite everything, she looked like a natural, the way she walked up to the head of the line. I couldn’t see what expression she had on her face, but it didn’t matter. The bouncer let her in without saying a word.

  “You’ve got it,” I said in a low whisper that I knew the earpiece I’d inserted back at the apartment would pick up and transmit to her ear. “You own the whole thing now.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she hissed back.

  Chapter 4

  James

  The warehouse was dark, the music so loud that I could feel it in my chest. I paused just inside the door to allow my eyes to adjust, my heart pounding as much out of fear as anything else. There were bodies everywhere, people dancing and laughing and sharing drinks and talking. I’d never been to a party like this, never stepped foot inside a club. I did all my partying in small roadhouses, country music blaring and pool balls clicking. This was about as far from my comfort zone as anything could get.

  The smell of dust and abandonment filled the space, along with a distant smell of rot and chemicals. I wondered what the warehouse had been used for before it went out of business. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  As my eyes adjusted and I found it easier to see around me, I made my way to the makeshift bar at the far side of the room. The idea of softening the edges with a tumbler of scotch was a welcome one, but I knew I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t throw away three years of sobriety over one case.

  “Hello, beautiful!”

  I didn’t turn, a part of me hoping that Max had changed his mind and followed me inside. B
ut I knew, logically, it wasn’t him. I knew his voice as well as… well, I knew it pretty well. This wasn’t him.

  “May I buy you a drink?”

  “That’s very polite of you.”

  “What can I say? My momma taught me well.”

  I turned, forcing a smile as I looked up into the somewhat attractive face of a guy who couldn’t be more than a year or so out of high school. He still had pimples.

  “I would like something cold, but I was thinking more along the lines of a Coke.”

  “Yeah? I can do that.” He gestured for me to lead the rest of the way to the bar. We elbowed our way through the crowd, sliding between several other couples to reach the raw-wood bar. “Two jack and Cokes!”

  “No, I just…”

  My words were drowned in the noise all around us. Before I could even attempt to get it all out, the drinks had arrived, and my new companion was shoving one in my hand. He took my other hand and pulled me out toward the massive dance floor. Grateful for a heavy beat to move my hips to, I followed, knocking into another woman and spilling my drink before I was expected to take a single sip. My companion laughed, pulling me closer to him as we found a spot on the floor where we could enjoy the music.

  “Is this your first time at one of these things?” he asked, pressing his lips very close to my ear. I was intensely grateful the earpiece I was wearing was nearly invisible in this dim light.

  “Do I look like a first-timer?”

  “I come to a lot of these, and I’ve never seen you.”

  “I just moved to the area and overheard some people talking about it on campus… Thought it might be fun.”

  “Glad you came.”

  He tugged me against him and we danced for a bit, the music drilling through my brain like a jackhammer. He still had his drink and from time to time lifted it over my head to drink from it. When he was done, he simply tossed it onto the floor, allowing dancers around us to crush it.

  Another man came over, slightly taller, definitely older. They whispered to each other for a moment, then the older man took my hand.

  “Want to dance?”

  I shrugged. “I’m up to whatever you are.”

  He smiled, grabbing my hips and tugging me close to him. I swear I felt things that I never wanted to feel again as he ground his body against mine. I shifted slightly, turning so that he wasn’t touching any of my favorite body parts.

  “Let him get a feel,” a warm, rich voice in my ear said. “He’s checking out the merchandise.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  The man looked down at me. “Know what?”

  I shook my head, smiling softly. “Just thinking aloud.”

  He frowned, but he didn’t walk away. In fact, he jerked me closer to him, once again feeling me up more than dancing with me.

  I was tossed around to several men, most of them between the ages of thirty and forty, most of them too old to be at a rave like this one. I thought that maybe Max was right, that this was the audition, but I wasn’t quite sure until I saw this man in a very expensive Italian suit watching from a balcony above the dance floor.

  “Hey, sweetie,” I said to the overweight man who was currently trying to get a handful of my ass, “I need to go visit the ladies’ room. Can you tell me where it is?”

  He immediately stepped back. “That way,” he said, pointing to a dark corridor at the back of the building.

  I walked off, trying to remember to walk like a woman rather than a soldier. It wasn’t an easy thing to remember and my damn ankles kept wanting to roll on me. But I managed, bursting around the corner just to find a line ten-deep hanging outside the women’s bathroom.

  “Hell! Why is it always the girls’ room?”

  The girl in front of me in line laughed. “You’re right, you know. The boys’ room never has a line.”

  This girl couldn’t have been more than fifteen. She was slightly taller than me and wore makeup that was heavily applied, but there was still an innocence about her that suggested she was much younger than she was trying to pretend she was.

  “Why is that, do you suppose? The guys out there are drinking just as much as we are.”

  “I think it’s because we’re more concerned with how we look, so we clog the place up trying to look in the mirrors. And we have more clothing to move around than they do.”

  I looked down at myself.

  “Nope, not you,” that rich voice said in my ear.

  “I think you’re right,” I said to the girl, purposely ignoring that voice. “We just care more how we present ourselves to the world.”

  “I know I do.” The girl tugged at her super-short skirt, pulling it just down enough to cover her bottom. “I wouldn’t go out there unless I was perfect, you know?”

  “Oh, yeah. Can’t catch some rich sugar daddy without the right brand of honey.”

  The girl nodded, quite serious in her response. “You do get it.”

  No, I didn’t. Not really.

  What would drive a girl like this one to seek out some sort of sugar daddy? Where were her parents? Her friends? Didn’t she have any self-respect? Was it really that hard to think she could manage on her own without having to depend on some guy to take care of her? It made me sick, to be honest. When I was her age, my biggest worry was passing my trig class. I never thought about money because my pops made sure that wasn’t something I needed to worry about.

  Parents today. It was either too much or too little. Did no one understand moderation in anything they did anymore?

  The line moved painfully slowly. I wanted a second alone to tell Max about the man on the balcony, but the longer I stood in that line, the more I seriously had to go. Some of the girls were dancing in place as they got closer to the end of the line. I was afraid I was going to have to join them.

  Finally, alone in a stall, I sat down with a heavy sigh.

  “You do realize I can still hear you, right?”

  “Shut up! Don’t remind me!”

  Max laughed, the sound like a waterfall on a hot, summer afternoon. I closed my eyes, imagining him out in the SUV, listening to me pee in this crowded warehouse bathroom that was dirtier than some compounds we’d come across in Afghanistan. And those were pretty nasty.

  “I don’t think these guys dancing with me are the top dog.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you catch that man on the balcony? I couldn’t tell if the camera was angled right to get him.”

  “No, I didn’t see a balcony.”

  “It’s over the back side of the room. I guess there used to be offices up there or something. I saw a man watching the party from the railing and he wasn’t exactly dressed like the rest of the pervs down on the floor.”

  “What’d he look like?”

  Someone knocked hard on the stall door. “Hurry up, bitch! I need to piss like a fucking racehorse!”

  “I’ll try to get a good angle when I go back out there.”

  “All right. Another hour, then I want you out. You’ve done good for the first night.”

  “Thanks, boss.”

  I got up and left the stall, pausing at the crowded sinks to wash my hands. No one else was actually washing up. They all had their heads as close to the foggy mirrors as possible to fix their lipstick and add a little more flare to their eyeliner. Didn’t they believe in hygiene? I shuddered a little, thinking about their unwashed hands near their eyes, or worse, other girls’ eyes.

  The warehouse was still overflowing with bodies when I made my way back down the corridor. I was standing just outside of the massive room when my line buddy came up behind me.

  “Hey, you want some blow?” she asked as people divided and marched around us.

  I glanced around, moving closer to her as I wondered what made her so brave. Wasn’t she worried the wrong person would hear her offering me illegal drugs?

  “There’s a whole table of it in the back,” she informed me. “This guy I danced with, he took
me back there and let me have a hit. I bet he’d let you have some, too.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Sure! They have pills, too, if that’s more your speed.”

  “Go for it, James,” the voice in my ear said.

  I bit my bottom lip, pretending to think about it a minute. “Okay,” I said, smiling politely.

  I followed her back into the crowded warehouse, turning slightly with the hope of catching a frame or two of the guy on the balcony, only he wasn’t there anymore. The girl grabbed my hand and pulled me through the crowd. People parted for us, like they knew she was someone who wasn’t supposed to be messed with. I stayed close, feeling claustrophobic the more people we had crowding around us.

  And then the crowd just opened up like a flower blooming in spring.

  “This is Collin,” the girl said, gesturing to a blond man lounging in a Lazy Boy chair that had been tucked into a corner beside a large card table.

  “Well, hello,” the man said, pushing down the footrest to climb to his feet. He was tall and thin—painfully thin—with blond hair and a goatee that was well groomed. He took my hand and bowed over it, kissing my fingertips. “To what do I owe a visit from such a gorgeous woman?”

  “I met her in line for the bathroom,” the girl announced.

  The man never took his eyes from me. “What’s your name, beautiful?”

  I tilted my head the way Max had told me to do, pushing my lips out in a slight pout. I felt like a complete idiot.

  “Jane,” I said in a soft, almost giddy voice. That was my attempt at breathless. I missed the mark.

  “Jane? What a beautiful name for such a beautiful woman.” The man smiled widely, gesturing toward the round card table. “Why don’t you help yourself to some of our goodies, Jane? We have just about anything a beautiful woman like you might desire.”

  I turned to the table, the cop’s daughter inside of me shocked at how brazen they were, laying their drugs out like none of them were illegal. It was a buffet of oblivion, each pill and powder designed to allow a person to let go of their problems, their stress, their inhibitions, and become something bigger and lighter. Something much more entertaining.