Caballo Security Box Set

by Camilla Blake

  “No, thanks,” I said even as I palmed a small envelope of pills. “I like to keep my wits about me.”

  “Is that right?”

  I turned into the guy, anxious to keep him from growing suspicious of my motives. He was studying me, clearly on edge because of my refusal. I doubted he saw that often. I rested my hand on his upper arm, moving my body close enough to his that my chest brushed his ribs.

  “I like to remember all the pleasure I experience.”

  “Sometimes chemicals can make those pleasures even more intense.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve never had to worry about that. My inhibitions are nonexistent.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ve been known to cause my lovers to beg for mercy.”

  He was clearly interested now, his hands moving around my waist to explore my bare back. “I don’t think I’ve ever been with a woman who’s driven me quite that far. Especially not with a little help.”

  “But I know things other women don’t know.”

  “Like what?”

  “My best friend was raised in one of those hippy cults—you know, the ones where everyone walks around naked and sex is believed to be a source of spiritual enlightenment?—and she learned how to do things they didn’t write about in the Kama Sutra. She taught me everything she knows.”

  He groaned, his lips moving close to the side of my head. “Is that right?” he asked just before his lips brushed my jaw. “What did she teach you?”

  “Hey!” the bathroom-line girl cried. “I thought I was your girl, Collin!”

  Collin didn’t even look at her. He made some sort of gesture behind my back and she was just gone, silence falling around us despite the party taking place just yards away. I glanced that way and saw that someone had pulled a sort of curtain around us, heavy cardboard stands that blocked us off from the rest of the warehouse.

  “You’re not the only one with interesting friends, Jane,” he said near my ear as he continued to brush his lips against my jaw. “I have some friends who could change your life.”

  “How’s that?”

  “They can take you out of here and give you a life like you’ve never imagined. Money. Big homes. Yachts. European trips. You could live like a queen!”

  “What do I have to do to have that?”

  His hand slipped under the back of my dress and he groaned heavily as he realized I wasn’t wearing underwear. “Just what you’re doing right now.”

  I moved closer to him even as the voice in my ear began warning me.

  “Not too close, James. You’ve got to be careful. These guys… violence is a way of life with them.”

  I kissed Collin’s neck, running my lips slowly over his Adam’s apple and up along his jawline to the bottom edge of his ear. I nibbled at his earlobe, making him groan again.

  “I’d love to hear more about your friends, but I have homework waiting for my attention.”

  “You’re not leaving,” he protested before I even made a move to step away.

  “It’s been real.” I nibbled at his ear one last time. “But I’ve worked hard to get into school. I can’t let one party ruin all that.”

  “Just another hour,” he protested, his hand squeezing my bare ass. “I’ll show you a damn good time, darlin’!”

  “I’m sure you would. But I’m the kind of girl who prefers a bed and hours and hours and hours to do what comes naturally.”

  He groaned again, pressing his hips into mine, his arousal undeniable. “You can’t leave a man in this state!”

  “We’ll run into each other again.”

  “There’s another of these parties tomorrow night. Over in Universal City.”

  “Text me the address.” I slipped a slim burner phone out of my dress—it’d been hiding under my breast—that I’d been given specifically for this situation. “Call your phone so I know it’s you. And then you’ll have my number, too.”

  “Brilliant,” he said with a smile.

  I stepped back and watched him access my phone, aware that there was information for the stealing right under his fingertips. That was the point. We wanted him to have access to Jane’s social media accounts, wanted him to have her phone number, email, and anything else he might want to track her down and do a little research on her. This was the first step in giving these fools enough rope to hang themselves.

  He took his time, but after a few minutes his pocket began buzzing.

  “There you go.” He smiled big and bright as he handed me the phone back. “Maybe tomorrow night we can find a nice big bed to use.”

  “You never know, baby,” I said, leaning close to offer him a soft peck. He turned his head at the last moment and stole a bigger kiss, pressing his hand to the back of my head to force me close against him. His tongue was big and thick, disgusting. But I gave back as good as I got, playing the part I’d been given.

  “Till tomorrow,” he said, slapping my ass as I walked away.

  I walked out of there with my head as I high as I could get it, my cell phone in one hand, the packet of pills in the other. The asshole hadn’t even noticed the missing pills.

  Step one complete. On to step two.

  Chapter 5

  Max

  No one had even suggested that I’d have to watch James make out with some drug-pushing prick on this assignment. What the hell was she doing? There had to have been a better way to get out of there without locking lips with the guy. Why hadn’t she—

  “Get me the hell out of here,” she hissed as she marched past me.

  I waited several beats for her to go before I followed. It wouldn’t be wise for anyone to see us together now that she’d made a bit of a splash inside. No one would remember seeing me with her earlier. But now? There were lots of eyes on her, probably more than just the ones I could see.

  I took an indirect path to the SUV, unlocking the doors as I passed from across the street so that she could wait inside. I waited until I was sure no one was watching before I doubled back and climbed behind the wheel, starting the vehicle and getting us out of there with a quick U-turn as fast as I could.

  “What the hell?” I asked once we’d put a mile or two behind us.

  “I got a packet of pills,” she said, gesturing to the packet sitting in the console between us. She was huddled under the trench coat I’d tossed at her when I got into the SUV, looking for all the world like a child suffering a chill after a long session on the ice rink. “And I gave him a good look at the cell phone. He should have all the information he could possibly ever want on Jane Widdowes.”

  “Good for you. But you didn’t have to make out with him to get all that.”

  “Oh? I suppose you have a better way of distracting a guy?”

  “You could have simply flirted with him. No reason to lead him on. He could have decided not to let you go—you know that.”

  “I know that. But I also know that a promise of consensual sex is often a good deterrent to that sort of thing, at least with guys who don’t get off on violence.”

  “How did you know he wasn’t one of those? These traffickers love to make women do things they don’t want to do. That’s kind of the whole point to the practice.”

  “But they don’t want to damage the merchandise before they can profit off of it.”

  She had a point, but I wasn’t ready to concede that fact.

  “He could have done serious damage before I got in there. And if I’d had to run in there and rescue you, it would have burned the whole operation. They would have gone underground and the Porters would never see their son again.”

  “We both know they probably won’t anyway.”

  I glanced at her. “No, we don’t know that. There’s hope until there isn’t.”

  She grunted. “Since when are you an optimist?”

  “Shows how little you know about me.”

  She didn’t seem to think that required an answer. We drove in silence the rest of the way to the apartment
building, me lost in thought. I wasn’t sure what was keeping her silent.

  Why did it bother me so much that she’d been making out with some fool? If she wanted to drop herself in danger, what difference did it make to me? If she blew the case out of the water, that was on her, not me.

  But it did bother me. The whole thing bothered me.

  Akker had chosen a downtown apartment building that had an underground parking garage that could only be accessed by cards given to the tenants. Not naïve enough to believe this would keep the garage secure, I knew this was probably the only time we could use it without fearing someone would see us together. The idea was for these traffickers to think James was completely on her own. Having a big guy driving her around, keeping a close eye on her, would be suspicious and we wouldn’t get the evidence we needed. But I was taking full advantage of the situation tonight.

  I walked around to the far side of the SUV and took her arm, refusing to allow her to shrug me off. She was a little more unsteady on her heels than she’d been before, but managed to walk beside me to the private elevators. I kept my hand on her until we stepped out of the elevator and made our way to her apartment door around the corner, tucked off to one side across from two apartments that were currently unoccupied.

  The fewer eyes on our activity up here, the better.

  I used the key I’d been given to open her door. She didn’t comment.

  James kicked off her shoes and marched straight to the bathroom where I could hear her running water. I followed, leaning against the doorjamb as I watched her scrub her teeth with her toothbrush.

  “Was it that bad, or do you sterilize your mouth every time a man kisses you?”

  She didn’t answer, just kept scrubbing at her teeth. When she was finally satisfied that she’d eradicated the taste and feel of that man in her mouth, she rinsed, then scrubbed the makeup from her face. The James I knew reappeared when she straightened up to study her face in the mirror. A little wet, and some dark eyeliner still darkening her eyelids, but the natural beauty was returning. She glanced at me, then brushed past as she shrugged away the trench coat and went to a dresser that doubled as the stand for the bedroom’s small television. She extracted a plain T-shirt and a pair of shorts, slipping the shirt on over the dress before removing it with some complicated movements under the cover of the thin, white material. I watched the dress slide down her thighs, unable to tear my eyes away, that little peek I got at her bare ass worth all the venom she might spew at me for impinging on her privacy.

  But she didn’t say a word. She slipped on the shorts, then kicked the dress away before bursting past me again to head into the kitchen.

  “You want a shower, too? I could scrub your back.”

  She spun around, a water bottle halfway to her mouth. “Why are you still here?”

  “It’s my job to make sure you survive this case.”

  “I’m alive and well.” She threw her arms up so that I could see every inch of her lovely body. “You can go now.”

  “I think I’d rather stick around, make sure no one suddenly shows up at your door.”

  “Not going to happen. Besides, won’t it screw everything up if you’re sitting on my couch when they do?”

  “I used to be an ace at hide and seek. I think I could find a place to disappear if necessary.”

  She turned away, setting the water bottle down on the counter. She gripped the front edge of the sink and leaned her head down, acting for all the world like a woman who needed to give up the booze on her stomach. Only I knew she hadn’t had a single drink all night. I moved up behind her and rested my hands on her shoulders, rubbing them a little. I could feel the tension there.

  “I know it can be difficult to get involved in these sorts of cases. If you want to talk about it—”

  She shrugged her shoulders hard. “I’m going to bed. Why don’t you make yourself scarce!”

  She disappeared behind the slamming bedroom door. I stood there a long moment, a part of me pissed as hell. I’d just been trying to help! But there was this bigger part of me that was worried there was something going on here that I didn’t know about, something that could be worse than this case blowing up around us. I knew James, but I didn’t really know her. I’d heard rumors about her military service, knew that she’d received some pretty impressive commendations, but I didn’t know details. I’d also heard a rumor that she had a reputation around town for some decidedly violent behavior in the months just after she’d returned from her last tour. I didn’t know how true it was. What I’d seen in her was contrary to some of those reports, but people had a way of hiding certain aspects of their personality until something set them off.

  Was this case a trigger for her? Was my partner about to implode and cover us both in something that didn’t easily clean up?

  I left because it was what she wanted. The apartment next door was set up identically to hers with everything reversed. My bedroom shared a wall with hers, and that was where I’d chosen to set up the computer system that was hooked into all the cameras in and around her apartment. I sat heavily there now, studying the big, blank wall, thinking about her on the other side. I could see her thanks to the camera that was positioned high on the wall in one corner, but I didn’t look. Not right away.

  I’d been in the military, too. I’d served ten years, leaving only because my knee got messed up on patrol one day and the medics said I would need a knee replacement if I went back. Medical discharge. It felt like a damn copout.

  I was a marine, joined fresh out of ROTC in high school. Trained at Pendleton, spent six months in Japan. And then there was Afghanistan. I did eight tours. Would have done more if they’d allowed it. Seven months in-country, seven months home. I preferred being in-country. The corps was my family—I had nothing waiting for me outside of the marines.

  Was that how it was for James? She talked about her father, but never mentioned a mother or siblings. Was the army the family she didn’t have here? Did she thrive over there in-country while others failed because of homesickness or whatever? Did she still have dreams about it, about all the men she’d failed one way or another?

  I did.

  I dragged my hands over my head, smacking myself a little to pull my attention back to the job at hand. I had four hours’ worth of video on my phone from the party. I needed to download it onto my computer, isolate the faces of the men who’d danced with her—and anyone else who looked like a lead—and forward it to Cheryl. If we could identify these men now, it would make the process easier later.

  I worked quietly, glancing from time to time at the feeds coming from the cameras in and around James’s apartment. I could see her sprawled on her bed. She wasn’t sleeping; she’d given up on that almost immediately. She was curled up on the bed, a pillow wrapped in her arms, the television flickering from some program that she didn’t seem to be paying a whole lot of attention to. But she was there, and she was safe.

  I was just finishing with the photo extractions when I noticed a movement on a camera that was stationed outside the front door of the apartment building. Rather than hang our own cameras outside, Cheryl’s team had hacked into the existing security system. It was late, nearly four in the morning, traffic and pedestrians almost nonexistent now. However, some guy was jogging slowly past the building. What caught my attention was the fact that he doubled back after his first pass and he jogged in place in front of the door, checking out the lobby through the glass doors. He had a cell phone in his hands. I was pretty sure he was snapping pics.

  I used the computer to refocus the camera and tighten up on his face. If I wasn’t mistaken, this was one of the guys James had danced with at the party. He moved away from the front doors and walked around the building, reappearing as each camera picked him up. He tried to enter the building three times, once through the front door, once through the back, and once through a low basement window. He had no luck, though I was sure he was expecting that. He finally walked over to the
underground garage entrance and snapped pictures of the security gate that only opened with a swipe of a tenant’s card. The boy knew how to do his homework. He left after a good thirty minutes, ready to report to his bosses.

  It was beginning.

  Chapter 6

  James

  It wasn’t a warehouse this time, but a set of abandoned storefronts, like one of those strip malls where my pops used to get his hair cut. Someone had begun renovations, tearing down most of the internal walls, but then they must have run out of money or something because nothing much else had been done. In months at least.

  I was wearing red tonight, a tight number with fewer cutouts than the dress last night, but with a plunging neckline that made me feel as though I was walking around naked. I kept tugging at the sides of the dress, trying to pull them together.

  “Quit!” Max hissed in my ear. “You’re moving the camera around too much. I can’t focus on anything.”

  It’d only been twenty-four hours, so Cheryl hadn’t come up with much information on the men I’d run into at last night’s rave. We had two or three names, nothing more. And none of those were attached to the sex-trafficking ring. They were just local professionals who thought they were still young enough to party with the eighteen-to-twenty crowd.

  I was getting a little better about walking in heels. I just told myself they were combat boots with exceptionally disproportionate soles. Remembering to keep my legs together wasn’t that hard, either, since this dress was so tight I couldn’t spread my legs if I wanted to.

  Thanks, Skylar!

  “Go to the bar,” Max said. “Let him come find you.”

  The bar was the last place I wanted to be, but I did as commanded, always a good soldier. The bartender smiled as he watched me approach, shooing away several other customers in order to make space for me.