The Deception

by Kat Martin

  “Did he do the eagle on your biceps?”

  “Yeah. I got it after I got out of the service.”

  “Marines, right?”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t say he was a special operator. A lot of women were impressed by that, but he wanted Kate to like the man he was now, not the guy he was back then. Though there were times it was hard to tell the difference.

  “I want to go with you,” Kate said.

  He nodded. “All right.” So far they were just asking questions, gathering information. The danger revved when they started getting answers. They checked the contact info Tina’s Facebook page and found the same phone number, then Jase traded places with Kate and sat down in front of the screen.

  He typed in Craigslist Personals, looking for any ads that might link to Tina’s webpage.

  “Are you kidding me?” Kate said, shock clear in her voice. “Twenty-five hundred pages of advertisements for different kinds of kinky sex?”

  “Sex sells, darlin’. Always has.” He scrolled backward by date, going to the days before Chrissy was killed. They both studied the ads, but nothing jumped out.

  He typed in Erotic Services Dallas, and dozens of sites popped up—links to erotic escorts, strip clubs, exotic massage, sex shops. He followed a few of them. He didn’t think Tina would be linked to any kind of escort service. She was too ravaged by the drugs she was using.

  “Look at this one,” Kate said. “‘Don’t pay for services. Date a married woman instead.’” She looked up at him. “I didn’t know this kind of stuff existed.”

  Jase felt a trace of pity. “Still not too late to change your mind.”

  She just shook her head.

  He returned to the Craigslist pages.

  “You think Tina Galen could be listed in one of those ads?” Kate asked.

  “It’s a good place to look but with this many listings, we’re going to need some help.” He closed down the screen. “It’s getting late.” He rose from the chair. “We can work on it again tomorrow.”

  Kate led him back to the front door. She looked tired and beautiful, and he wanted to lean down and kiss her, sink into those plump pink lips. But they had a deal. He wouldn’t break it.

  “I’ll pick you up at ten,” he said. “Black Spider Ink should be open by then.”

  “Black Spider Ink. I’ve seen the sign. It’s next door to the place I went with my friend Cece.”

  “You got a tattoo?”

  Her face flushed. “Cece dared me. It was after Andrew and I broke up.”

  Jase’s mind slid straight into the gutter. He hadn’t noticed a tat in the parking lot when he’d stripped off her top, but it was dark in the Yukon. Maybe it was someplace even more intriguing. “You gonna show me?”

  She shook her head. “No way. Seeing my tat isn’t part of the deal.”

  The corner of his mouth kicked up. “Yeah, well, we may have to renegotiate. I’ll pick you up at ten.” Trying not to imagine Kate Gallagher’s tattoo—or where he might find it—Jase left the apartment.

  Forcing his mind back to business, he mentally went over the info they had so far and what they could do to add to it.

  Tomorrow night, he would hit the streets of Old East Dallas, see what he could find out about Tina Galen. He’d make a stop at Mean Jack’s, see if he could find a connection between the bar and the body that had been dumped in the alley behind it.

  In the meantime, he’d try not to remember how good Kate looked in a pair of tight-fitting jeans.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Kate awoke at the first gray light of dawn. As she tossed back the covers, she realized the sheets were damp, her body hot and tingling all over. She wasn’t sure what she’d been dreaming about, but she had a hunch it had something to do with Jason Maddox.

  The man was sex personified, from the top of his thick dark hair, cut not-quite military short, to the soles of his size thirteen cowboy boots. She would never forget the look on Andrew’s face when Jason had walked through the door.

  She owed Maddox for the favor, even though he had clearly enjoyed every moment of Andrew’s discomfort. Counting the night in the parking lot when she had cried on his shoulder, it was the second time he had come to her aide.

  She sighed as she rolled out of bed. If they didn’t have a business relationship, she might consider sleeping with him, just see if it was as good as she imagined. She’d never been interested in one-night hookups. If it hadn’t been for Chrissy’s murder, she wouldn’t have come close that night at the Sagebrush Saloon.

  Maybe finishing what she had started that night would get Maddox out of her system. Maybe. But until the man who had murdered Chrissy was behind bars, that wasn’t going to happen. She needed to focus and so did he.

  Which meant she shouldn’t continue to let him call her honey or darlin’ or anything else. Wasn’t there some kind of feminist taboo about that? Then again, Maddox didn’t seem like the kind of guy who gave a rat’s behind about taboos.

  And the truth was she kind of liked it. Andrew had never used endearments. He thought they were demeaning. She wouldn’t like it in a work environment, but when Jason used those terms, it made her feel feminine.

  Blocking any more thoughts of him, Kate went into the kitchen and brewed herself a cup of coffee, then showered and dressed for her visit to Black Spider Ink, choosing black skinny jeans, knee-high, mid-heeled black boots, and a silky white wrap-top that showed a little cleavage. Hey, she was going with Hawk Maddox. There was no rule that said she couldn’t look good.

  She walked into her home office and sat down at her computer. Thinking of the websites they had visited last night, she was glad she had first-rate virus protection. She cleared her search history so she wouldn’t have pornographic websites popping up all over the computer, then typed Jason Maddox into the Google search bar—as she had meant to do last night before Andrew had showed up.

  Maddox had a Facebook page, but there wasn’t much on it beyond a basic profile. He was thirty-three years old, born in Lubbock, went to community college before joining the marines. Currently he worked at Maximum Security as a licensed investigator and bail enforcement agent.

  Clearly he didn’t use Facebook for social purposes. She figured it was a tool to gain access to other pages where he searched for information on the people he hunted.

  Curiosity kept her digging. She followed links on Google to articles about him, captures he’d made and the bounties he had collected, which were often surprisingly large.

  There was an article in the Houston Chronicle about a serial killer he had arrested called the Alpha Man who had escaped from a police vehicle on its way to his sentencing hearing. Maddox had tracked him through a connection to a half brother unknown to authorities. The arrest had earned him a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar reward.

  In the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, she found a photo of Jason in marine dress blues, so handsome it made her toes curl. The article mentioned he’d been an honor student at South Plains College in Lubbock, graduating a year early to join the marines, where he’d been honorably discharged from special operations after being wounded in action. He’d received a silver star and a purple heart.

  Wow, she thought, and leaned back in her chair. An honor student. Which made sense. You had to be tough to get into special ops, but you also had to be smart. Her friend Cece’s uncle was a navy SEAL. He spoke five languages and was an expert in communications, everything from Morse code to satellite systems.

  Apparently Jason Maddox was a lot smarter than the muscled-up cowboy Andrew had dismissed him as. Kate found herself grinning.

  She glanced at the clock, grabbed her cell and phoned her office. Her assistant, Laura Delgado, picked up the phone.

  “Hi, Laura. Everything under control?”

  “Bruce got that consulting job with Mission Textile he’s been after. He’ll be sta
rting tomorrow.” Bruce Bernstein was one of the two consultants who worked for her. Robin Murdock was the other.

  “That’s great news. I’ll call and congratulate him later.”

  “Other than that, it’s business as usual,” Laura said. “I’ll let you know if anything important comes up. In the meantime, you don’t have to worry about coming back until you’re ready.”

  She thought of Chrissy lying dead on a slab in the morgue, the reason she was taking time off, and tears burned her eyes.

  “Thanks, Laura.” Kate ended the call and blinked back the wetness.

  They would be continuing the search again today. If she was going to succeed, she couldn’t start crying every time she thought of what had happened. If she wanted to find Chrissy’s killer, she needed to keep her emotions out of the equation or she would be a hindrance to Maddox’s investigation instead of a help.

  She was getting ready leave when the intercom buzzed. She checked the time, ten o’clock, and her stomach floated up. Maddox was in the lobby.

  Kate took a deep breath, grabbed her purse and headed for the door.

  * * *

  Jase parked the Yukon in front of Black Spider Ink on Main in Deep Ellum. He and Kate both walked up on the sidewalk in front of a window with a big black widow etched into the glass.

  “I hate spiders,” Kate said, shuddering. “Just looking at a picture of one gives me the creeps.”

  “I’ve seen some as big as dinner plates,” Jase said.

  “When you were in the marines?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where were you?”

  “West Africa.” He didn’t say which country. He didn’t talk about his deployments except in generalities. “Mostly I was in Afghanistan.” He pulled open the door and waited for Kate to walk inside. She was wearing a pair of black skinny jeans tucked into tall black boots, her golden hair loose around her shoulders. She looked good. Damned good.

  He noticed a couple of bikers watching her. He hoped the fat guy leaning against the wall didn’t say what his lewd expression said he was thinking. Jase didn’t want an excuse to smash a fist into the guy’s ugly face.

  “Keep going,” he said. “Will’s in the back.” The place was clean, not cluttered like a lot of tattoo parlors, but the walls were covered floor-to-ceiling with framed photos of tattoos done by the ink artists who worked there.

  Jase paused to look over the designs, but didn’t see any red lipstick kisses like the one behind Chrissy Gallagher’s left ear. He flicked a glance at a bearded biker waiting for his turn in one of the chairs and set a hand at Kate’s waist, urging her toward the booth at the back of the parlor.

  The owner, Will Rizzoli, was a skinny guy with a zillion tattoos, prematurely silver-gray hair and a long pointed nose that fit his narrow face.

  “Hey, Hawk! Dude, it’s good to see you!”

  “You, too, man.” They did a handgrip, leaned in and brushed shoulders. “Kate, this is Will Rizzoli. He’s a good friend and a true artist.”

  Kate smiled. “It’s nice to meet you, Will.” Her glance went to the sleeve of tattoos on each of Will’s long arms, mostly landscape scenes of waterfalls and ocean waves crashing up on the beach. “Your work is amazing.”

  Will smiled shyly. “Thanks.” His gaze went over Kate in a professional scan of her body. “You’ve got nice skin. I could design something special for you, anything you wanted.”

  “Thanks. I’ll...um...give it some thought.”

  Jase figured she would pass—one tat was probably enough for Kate. He’d caught a glimpse of her wild side at the Sagebrush, but the woman who owned Gallagher and Company and dressed in business suits had a conservative side, as well. He was a little surprised to find both sides appealing.

  “So what can I do for you?” Will asked him. “You ready for something new?”

  “I need information, Will.” He took out the photo of the tattoo he had taken at the morgue, and held it up for his friend to see. “Look familiar?”

  “Is that a...body?”

  “Yeah. The girl was murdered. We’re trying to find the guy who killed her. We were hoping the tattoo behind her ear might give us a lead.”

  Will looked down at the picture on Jase’s iPhone. “The kiss tattoo isn’t that uncommon. Lot of women have them. But I’ve never seen one placed behind an ear.”

  Jase pocketed the phone. “Any idea who might have done the work?”

  “Like I said, it’s a fairly common tat. Could have been anyone. No real skill required to put it there.”

  “You said the location is unusual,” Kate said. “Maybe that could turn out to be something?”

  “Could be. I guess investigating a crime, you never know what’s gonna be useful.” Will smiled at Kate. “If you change your mind about that tat, I’ll give you a good deal. Any friend of Hawk’s and all that.”

  Kate smiled back. “I’ll remember that.”

  Jase led her outside and they climbed into the Yukon.

  “What’s next?” Kate asked.

  He cranked the key and fired the engine. “I’ve got a friend. She’s a genius at digging up info. I called her this morning. She’s expecting us.”

  Tabitha Love, The Max’s computer whiz, lived in Richardson, not far from the university. He could have phoned but he preferred to stop by, reinforce personal connections whenever he could.

  After a thirty-minute drive, he pulled up in front of an older redbrick single-story house. They got out of the car and walked up on the porch, and Tabby opened the door.

  “Hey, Hawk. Come on in.”

  Jase looked at Kate. “Tabitha Love, meet Kate Gallagher.”

  Tabby smiled. “Nice to meet you, Kate.” Both women stood around five-nine. While Kate’s hair was long and golden blond, Tabby’s was black, cut short, sheered on the sides and moussed on top. A silver hoop glittered in one dark eyebrow, and a row of tiny hoops circled the side of one ear. When she smiled, a tongue stud flickered.

  “Nice to meet you, too,” Kate said.

  Tabby was unique in every way, and one of the smartest people he had ever known. They followed her into a living room that needed another window, decorated in a thrift shop version of chic. Tabby kept walking, leading them across the brown shag carpet down the hall to her bedroom office, which was exactly the opposite of the rest of the house, ultramodern, with the best computers and high-tech equipment money could buy.

  “Welcome to my humble abode,” Tabby said to Kate. “Jase told me about your sister. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you.”

  He didn’t generally reveal a client’s personal information, in this case that the dead girl was Kate’s sister. But Tabby was practically family, someone he trusted.

  She turned to Jase. “What can I do to help?”

  “We know Chrissy Gallagher was using the name Tina Galen. The cops never found her phone, but we got her contact number off her website. Detective Benson said the number belonged to a burner. He said they tried to ping the last location, but it bounced around Russia and a bunch of other countries and they wound up with zip.”

  “Give me the number. It might take a while, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks.” Jase handed her a slip of paper with Tina’s cell number written on it. “Also, her body was found in an alley behind a bar called Mean Jack’s in Old East Dallas. Cause of death was blunt force trauma. I need the names of men with arrest records for assaulting prostitutes, preferably in that area.”

  “I can do that. Anything else?”

  He showed her the photo of the tat on his phone. “This was behind her left ear...in case you run across a connection.”

  Tabby nodded. “I’ll call or text as soon as I come up with something useful.”

  “Sounds good. Thanks, Tab.” They made their way back out of the hou
se into the bright sunlight. It was only the first week of May, but the temperature had already reached the low nineties. After the stifling heat in Afghanistan, it seemed downright cool.

  “You think she can help us?” Kate asked as they climbed into the Yukon.

  “If anyone can, it’s Tabby. Like I said, she’s a genius.”

  His cell phone rang just as he pulled away from the curb. Jase checked his screen and recognized Tommy Dieter’s number. He put the call on speaker as he pulled into traffic. “Tommy, what’s up?”

  “Hey, Hawk, I got something for you on Harding. When can we meet?”

  It was already past noon. “Where are you now?”

  “I’m at the Mustang.” A dive bar downtown.

  “I can be there in an hour. That work for you?”

  “That’s great. I’ll see you then.”

  Jase ended the call, signaled and pulled out to pass a slow car in front of him. “That was one of my informants. He’s got info I need on another case I’m working.”

  One of Kate’s eyebrows hiked up. “What do you mean another case? You’re supposed to be working for me.”

  “There’s nothing more I can do for you until tonight. I’m heading down to Old East Dallas. I’ll stop in at Mean Jack’s, see what I can find out. In the meantime, Dieter has a lead on Randy Harding. He’s a bail skip lowlife I’m hunting. Beat his girlfriend and strangled her to death, missed his court date and went on the run. I tracked him to Houston, but he’d already left town. I need to find him before he hurts someone else.”

  Some of the stiffness went out of her shoulders. “I’m sorry. Of course you have other cases besides mine.”

  He checked the rearview mirror as he reached over and squeezed her hand. “You don’t have to worry, Kate. Finding Chrissy’s killer is my first priority. But working a case takes patience. We’ve talked to Will and Tabby. We’re putting feelers out. We’ll keep doing that until we turn up something that points us in the right direction.”