The Stripper and the SEAL

by Jenna Bennett

  “But they offered it to you, and you made good money, so you accepted.”

  They turned into his peaceful neighborhood, and he slowed the truck down to follow the winding road of the old suburb. It was the middle of the night, and everything was quiet. There were blue flickers of TVs behind a few curtains, and the occasional yellow square of a lighted window, but for the most part it was dark and empty.

  “I made more from that single dance than I could make in a whole night of serving drinks, Max.”

  She shook her head. “I know it isn’t a job that nice women do. But I could do it on my own terms. And it was better than prostitution.”

  No arguing with that. His little ranch-style home came up on the right, and he slowed down. There was no sign of life. No unfamiliar cars. Nothing anywhere that didn’t belong.

  He pulled into the driveway and cut the engine. “Let’s just get this over with before we go inside.”

  “There isn’t a lot more to tell,” Gabrielle said. “I spent three years as a stripper. Then, one night, Trent Engelhart came in.”

  “To a strip club?” The straight-laced, married senator from Idaho?

  She nodded. “Special guest of the management. Show him a good time, Gabby.”

  She slanted a look his way, in time to see the wince that crossed his face. “I didn’t sleep with him. Not then. It was more like a private show. Take it all off plus a few free drinks for the senator.”

  Her voice was cynical, even while it managed to stay small and ashamed, and Max wasn’t sure which part of her to believe. Which part was the real Gabrielle.

  Maybe both.

  “A couple of days later my boss called me into his office to tell me that Senator Engelhart had requested my company for a private function. I thought maybe he was having a party, and wanted entertainment. But that wasn’t it.”

  No. Max could imagine.

  “Alex told me I could say no. But I got the very distinct feeling that if I did, I’d lose my job. And by then I’d gotten used to the money. I lived in a nice place I wouldn’t be able to afford if I stopped dancing, and I had a car payment and a credit card and all kinds of nice things. I couldn’t go back to what I’d been doing before. I wouldn’t be able to afford any of my stuff. And anyway, who’d hire me for any kind of decent work after I’d been a stripper for three years?”

  Not many people, Max imagined.

  “So I went to Trent Engelhart’s function. It turned out to be a romantic dinner for two. With dessert in bed.” She grimaced.

  “Did you know he was married?”

  “He had a picture of his wife on the bedside table,” Gabrielle said. “If I hadn’t already guessed, I would have known then.”

  “Did you know she was ill?”

  She shook her head. “She wasn’t. Not then. Or if she was, it wasn’t common knowledge. I didn’t hear about it for a while.”

  Max nodded. At least he couldn’t hold that against her. Not that there wasn’t plenty of other things to hold against her already.

  “Now you hate me.” She was rubbing her hands together in her lap, like they were dirty.

  “I don’t hate you.” He didn’t know her well enough to either love or hate her, at this point. It was—Christ—just a day and a half since he’d first laid eyes on her.

  “You’re disappointed.”

  He wasn’t sure he knew her well enough for that, either. Although they could agree on one thing. “It wasn’t a nice thing to do.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not going to make excuses. I did it. I could have said no and dealt with the consequences. I guess my job and the money I was making was more important than the Engelharts’ marriage. And my morals.”

  She hesitated a second before she added, softly, “I guess maybe I felt I had compromised those enough already, that that last step wasn’t such a big deal.”

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  “So how did you go from there,” Max asked, “sleeping with Engelhart, living high in DC, to waiting tables in a dive in Little Creek?”

  She took a breath. “Things went on like that for a while. I heard about Trent’s wife and the cancer, but by then it was too late. I was already invested, and it was hard to get out.”

  “You cared about him?”

  She gave him a look. “No. I mean... no.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t in love with him or anything like that. I guess I liked him well enough, for a liar and a cheat. I didn’t fool myself into thinking that our relationship was anything but what it was. Sex. But I felt bad for his wife. He explained to me that she was too sick to meet his needs—I really hate it when men talk about their needs like that, like their needs can’t just be denied, you know?—so he had to get his needs met elsewhere. I guess it didn’t occur to him to just keep his pants zipped while his wife was going through chemo...”

  She ran out of breath and outrage at the same time, it seemed, because she slumped.

  “Anyway,” she added, after a pause, “I didn’t feel bad for him. Not because his wife was too ill to have sex with him. But he really was upset about her dying. They’d been married a long time. And I think that being with me, he could pretend that he was young and virile again, and that something like cancer couldn’t touch him. He loves her, probably as much as he’s capable of loving someone other than himself. He just doesn’t love her enough to keep his dick in his pants. Because he has those needs, you know.”

  Max made a mental note never to mention his needs again, to her or anyone else.

  “So what happened?” he asked. “I’m still trying to figure out where the Russian mob fits into this.”

  “Oh,” Gabrielle said. She sounded surprised. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that’s what you wanted to know. You should have told me.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to hear the rest of it.” No matter how angry and uncomfortable it made him. “But surely the Brotherhood isn’t after you because you dumped Engelhart’s wrinkled ass?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not wrinkled, by the way. He’s only fifty-two. And he works out.”

  “It’s wrinkled in my mind, OK? So’s his dick. It’s also tiny. No more than a stub. Moving along.” Before she could tell him that in addition to being unwrinkled, Engelhart was hung like a horse.

  She nodded. “The club where I danced was called Sasha’s. Sasha is short for—”

  “Aleksandr.” He gave it the Russian pronunciation.

  “My boss’s name was Alex. He was Russian.”

  And affiliated with the Brotherhood. Of course. They had a finger in a lot of pies, the sex trade being one of them. They were also fond of businesses they could use to launder money. A strip club fit that bill nicely.

  “And the politics angle?”

  She sighed. “This is where it gets complicated. And ugly.”

  “Maybe we should take it inside.” They’d been sitting in the truck for a long time. And he might have been a little too preoccupied with the story to have kept a close eye on their surroundings.

  Granted, he was well enough trained to keep watch automatically. But he was aware that there were times during her story that he’d been more interested in that, in her, than in what had been going on outside the windshield.

  “There isn’t much more to go,” she said. “I’d rather just get it out.”

  Then far be it from him to stop her.

  “Trent has aspirations. There’s talk about a federal court nomination for the state of Idaho.”

  Federal court? “Are there any openings on the federal court for Idaho?”

  Gabrielle shook her head. “But if someone happened to drop dead, Trent would be first in line.”

  “As long as no one figured out he’d been sleeping with you, I guess?”

  “I’m sure that wouldn’t improve his chances,” Gabrielle said.

  No. A federal court nominee who’d been sleeping with someone he wasn’t married to would have a hard enough time, even if the lady was
as respectable as a nun. A federal court nominee who’d been sleeping with a stripper while his wife underwent chemo could whistle after his chances. He probably wouldn’t be nominated in the first place.

  He tilted his head to look at her. “So is that why they’re trying to get rid of you? Because you slept with Trent and if he happens to get a nomination for the federal court, you can fuck it up for him?”

  She sighed. “There’s a little bit more to it than that.”

  The Russian angle, of course. A federal court nominee who’d been sleeping with a stripper while his wife was undergoing chemo, when said stripper was working at a gentleman’s club owned and operated by the Russian mob, probably as a front for laundering money...

  “This is just getting better and better. I guess Alex and his associates have a reason for wanting Trent on the court?”

  “There’s a case coming up sometime later this year,” Gabrielle said. “I don’t know a whole lot about it, but I know it’s a big deal. At least to Alex. And I know it can go either way. They want Trent there so he can swing the vote in their favor.”

  Manipulating a federal court. Nice.

  As long as nobody died and left an opening for Trent Engelhart, it was all moot, though.

  The thought hung there in the silence, twitching like a trout.

  “Oh, shit,” Max said. “You’re gonna tell me they’re planning to take out a federal judge, aren’t you?”

  Her voice was very small. “That’s what they were talking about.”

  “Who?” He had to let someone know.

  “I don’t know. I only caught part of the conversation. And at this point, that particular issue has probably been put on the back burner, anyway. They have something they have to deal with first.”

  “You.”

  She nodded. “The man you talked to yesterday? The Russian? His name is Sergei. He works for Alex. And if he’s here in Virginia looking for me, it isn’t to give me my severance package and wish me well. He wants to kill me, Max. Before I can tell anyone about this.”

  After a second she added, “Now that I’ve told you, he’ll probably try to kill you, too.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Max said. “That explains why you’re here. And why they’re looking for you.”

  She nodded.

  “What would happen if we went to the police?”

  “In DC? Nothing. It’s my word against theirs, and then there’s the prostitution.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t a prostitute.”

  “I’m not,” Gabrielle said. “But I’m sure Alex could come up with any number of men to say differently. Not to mention Trent.”

  Whom she had been sleeping with. And who had probably given her gifts, and maybe money, too.

  Yes, that could get sticky.

  “Besides,” she added, “I’m not sure they don’t have some friends in law enforcement. It’s hard to run a criminal empire without a cop or two in your pocket.”

  No question about it.

  “Does Trent know that they’re planning to take out a federal judge to make room for him on the bench?”

  Gabrielle nodded. “That’s the conversation I overheard.”

  So not only was Trent Engelhart a philanderer and a bastard, but he was an accessory to murder before the fact, too.

  But Gabrielle was right. She was the person in the hot spot right now. They wouldn’t go after and eliminate a judge while they knew she was out here and knew about it. They’d eliminate her first—and nobody was likely to make a big deal out of it, since there were any number of ways they could spin Gabrielle’s life to make it work for them. She’d been running from an abusive ex-boyfriend who caught up with her. Or she’d been running from a stalker who’d seen her strip in DC and who had followed her to Virginia. Or she’d gotten unlucky with a customer she’d picked up for some extra cash while she was on the run, and ended up dead.

  Hell, they could just kill her and stuff her in the trunk of the car, and drive a few hours to the Okefenokee swamp in Georgia, where they could feed her to the alligators. By the time anyone found her, there wouldn’t be enough left to identify, let alone make a guess as to manner of death.

  He swallowed the nausea that thought provoked and tried to think. “Do you have any family?”

  She slanted him a look. “Thinking about who you’ll have to notify after I’m dead?”

  Since that was exactly what he’d been thinking about—sort of—Max didn’t have a good answer to that.

  She shook her head. “No. My mother had me when she was very young. She died of an overdose when I was just a baby. I grew up with my grandmother. She died when I was fifteen. I went into and out of a couple of foster homes and group homes after that. Until I ran away. I’ve been on my own since I was seventeen.”

  So no next of kin. Just the two of them against the world, pretty much.

  There was something almost poetic about it. Two lonely people finding each other in the midst of tragedy.

  Or it would be poetic if not for the involvement of the Bratva and the murders they were planning, anyway. Gabrielle, and some unnamed judge in Idaho.

  Murders it would now be up to him to prevent.

  “I won’t let them get to you,” he told her. “If they kill you, it’ll be over my dead body.”

  She smiled. “That’s sweet.”

  Not really. He’d like it better if neither of them were in danger of dying. But it wasn’t likely that Sergei and his friends would give up as long as Gabrielle was out here. There was too much at stake for them to just let it go. So he’d have to figure out a way to keep her safe.

  It was his turn to sigh. “Let’s get inside and get some sleep. It’ll be morning soon.”

  And that meant more PT and training, plus a meeting with brass about the Tansy Leighton op that he’d just as soon not deal with, especially since Commander Baker was sure to ask about JB, and Max didn’t want to have to lie.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a bad time for a couple of bad guys to come after him, after all.

  He opened his door. “Stay there. I’ll come get you.”

  “There’s nobody around,” Gabrielle protested, but she did stay in her seat while he got out of the truck and slammed his door. And it was a good thing, because no sooner had he done that, than a car came rolling slowly down the street in their direction.

  Or the direction of the cul-de-sac at the end of the street, Max reminded himself. Or one of the neighbors’ houses. Not necessarily his house and them.

  Whatever. There was a vehicle coming down the street. Slowly. He ducked behind the front of the truck so they wouldn’t see him standing there, just in case.

  And on his way down, he motioned for Gabrielle to do the same. She crouched on the seat.

  The car rolled slowly by. Max held his breath, waiting for bullets to start spraying, but nothing happened. The car went by and kept going.

  As soon as it was out of sight, he was on his feet and headed for Gabrielle’s door. She already had it open.

  “C’mon.” He grabbed her arm and dragged her behind him. Not toward the house, but into the vegetation bordering the property.

  “Was it them?”

  She was out of breath, but it was hard to say whether it was from the way he was hauling her behind him, or fear. Maybe a little of both.

  “Dunno. Couldn’t see past the truck. The car was dark, so it could have been.” And its lights had been off, which was suspicious in and of itself.

  He stopped and looked around. “This is probably OK. Far enough away that they can’t see us, but if they come back, we’ll be able to see them.”

  She nodded.

  He dropped to his knees in the dirt, and pulled her down next to him. “There’s a cul-de-sac at the end of the street. Unless they’re headed to a property down there, they’ll have to come back this way. There’s no other way out of the neighborhood.”

  She nodded. He could feel her shivering, and put his arm around h
er. “I told you. I won’t let them get you.”

  “Over your dead body.”

  He nodded. “That’s right.”

  “If they’re willing to kill me and a federal judge, they’ll be willing to kill you, too.”

  “I’m not that easy to kill,” he told her. “Now hush. They’re coming back.”

  They were. The sleek, black car was making its way back up the street, just as slowly as it had driven down. When it got even with them, it pulled to a stop on the other side of the road.

  “Oh, no,” Gabrielle whispered, fear both in her voice, and in the way her body tensed.

  “Shhh.” He held her close and tried to comfort her with his presence, as the door opened. The man he’d seen before stepped out.

  “Sergei,” Gabrielle breathed.

  Max nodded. “I recognize him. Now be quiet. Sound carries a long way at night.”

  They watched as Sergei walked up the driveway toward the truck. He pulled out a light from his pocket and shone it into the cab. Obviously satisfied that the vehicle was empty, he put his hand on the hood for a second and nodded. And turned to wave at the sedan.

  Another man got out from the passenger side and went around to the trunk. The trunk opened, and he reached in. A second later, he came toward the house with something in his hand. Something square, with a spout.

  It looked like...

  “Shit,” Max said. “This isn’t good.”

  Gabrielle glanced at him. “What?”

  “If he starts splashing that around, I’m gonna have to shoot him.”

  “What?”

  “Gasoline. They’re planning to set us on fire.”

  For a second she didn’t say anything. Then— “Don’t you think they’ll go inside first? To make sure we’re there?”

  “That would defeat the purpose. That would result in bodies with bullets in them.”

  He shook his head. “They touched the hood of the truck, so they know it’s just been used. They’re assuming we’re inside, and asleep.”

  Or maybe doing something else that would preclude them from noticing what was going on outside. If he ever got Gabrielle naked, he had a feeling it would take an earthquake before he noticed anything else. A couple of Russians sneaking around with a can of gas wouldn’t even register on his radar. “They’ll probably do something to block the doors. And then they’ll burn us alive.”