Re/Leased
Doms of the FBI #5
Michele Zurlo
www.michelezurloauthor.com
Doms of the FBI: Re/Leased
Copyright © June 2016 by Michele Zurlo
ISBN: 978-1-942414-19-3
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission from the copyright owner and Lost Goddess Publishing LLC. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Editor: Suzanne L. Spellicy
Cover Artist: Anne Kay
Published by
Lost Goddess Publishing LLC
www.michelezurloauthor.com
This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. It is not meant for underage readers.
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DISCLAIMER: Education and training are necessary in order to learn safe BDSM practices. Lost Goddess Publishing LLC is not responsible for any loss, harm, injury or death resulting from use of the information contained in any of its titles. This is a work of fiction, and license has been taken with regard to BDSM practices.
Reading Order
Re/Bound
Re/Paired
Re/Claimed
Re/Defined
Re/Leased
Coming Soon: Re/Viewed
And keep an eye out for SAFE Security—a new BDSM series from Michele Zurlo launching in 2017
Acknowledgements:
This novel would not exist without help from some key people. First I’d like to thank my editor/wife, who listened to me prattle on about David and Autumn for as long as I needed to talk and who helped me troubleshoot solutions to the many problems that came up.
I’d also like to thank Lea Ann Patton, the fan who won the chance to name the main characters of this novel. They fit the characters perfectly.
Chapter One
“CalderCo is hurting badly, David. There’s nobody else I trust to straighten it out.”
The message ended, leaving David staring at his phone. So many thoughts and fierce feelings pummeled his brain that he couldn’t quite sort them out. Thirteen years had passed since he’d walked out on his father. Harsh words hadn’t needed to flow between them because they’d already been said—whispered vehemently and shouted at the tops of their lungs—from the time David was old enough to rebel against the way his father insisted on controlling every aspect of his life.
His mother’s death had sealed the deal. He’d packed his bags before the funeral, and he had been gone before his father had arrived home from the wake. Eighteen and freshly graduated, the world had been his for the taking. Eschewing his father’s money and connections, he’d forged his own path just fine.
“You don’t have to go.” Dean Alloway pulled David from the darkness of his bitter memories.
David had met Dean in the Marines, and the duo had become fast friends. They’d saved each other’s asses more times than either could count. He sighed heavily. “Yes, I do. I promised my mother on her deathbed that I’d come when he called—but only once.” The feud between David and his father had been going on for as long as he could remember. His mother used to run interference. When she was around, David could breathe. He could be himself and not have to worry about the fallout. Once she fell ill, he and his father had taken steps to hide their hatred for one another.
But, of course, she hadn’t been fooled. “One day, your father is going to need you, David,” she’d said, her voice raspy and weak. “Be there for him. Do this for me. I love you.” She’d been too spent to say more, and she’d slipped away within the hour.
“Fine.” Dean folded his hands on the table. He was a bigger guy than he seemed. The sweaters, vests, and dress pants went a long way toward disguising the bulky muscles earned during years of heavy physical labor, and the metrosexual haircut completed the image. Dean was all about understated power and surprising the enemy. And manicures. David had never met another man who got weekly manicures, yet could also neutralize a target with one well-placed blow. “Tell me what you need. Frankie, Jesse, and I are here for you, man. You’re not alone. We’d never leave you hanging.”
“I know you wouldn’t, but this is something I have to do on my own.”
“No, you don’t.” Frankie Sikara sauntered in, a wet towel draped over her shoulder. She kissed the top of his head before flopping down on the chair next to him. “Sell that bullshit elsewhere.”
David hadn’t known Frankie was in the building. From the black leggings and sports bra, he deduced that she’d spent the morning in the gym. “Jesse in the shower?”
“Yep. I kicked his ass, and now I’m leaving him alone to cry it out.” She winked to let them know that Jesse didn’t need medical attention. Frankie Sikara was one tough woman. Trained in six different martial arts, she was deadlier than any of them. “I heard part of the message. Let’s hear the whole thing.”
“We’ll wait for Jesse,” Dean countered. “You can go ahead and grab a shower.”
They had one locker room in the facility, which wasn’t the issue outsiders thought it would be. Once you’d been through hell and back with someone, little things like that ceased to matter. She was one of the guys. Frankie glared at Dean. “I already did, genius.”
Dean frowned, which made him look all kinds of menacing and foreboding. Well, as foreboding as someone in a designer sweater could get. “You’re not wearing a shirt.”
“Another point for Captain Obvious.” Frankie’s dark eyes flashed, and David found himself smiling. The dress code was an ongoing point of contention between these two. “I’m waiting for my hair to dry so it doesn’t get my shirt wet. If the sight of my bra offends you, I can take it off.” Crossing her arms, she grasped the elastic band on the lower part of her sports bra.
Dean’s expression didn’t change, and that was a challenge Frankie wouldn’t ignore.
As amusing as it was, David held up a hand. “How about you two parking lot the issue?”
“Dress code again?” Jesse Foraker came in, also missing a shirt. As he kept his hair high and tight, he didn’t have Frankie’s reason for going topless. “If you want us to wear shirts, then maybe you should stop stealing them from our lockers?”
The frown on Dean’s face melted. He shrugged. “I left replacements.”
“I’m not wearing that fucking shirt. It looks like I should be chugging a beer in a bowling alley.” Jesse inclined his head toward the lone phone on the table. “What’s going on?”
“David’s dad called.”
Jesse lifted a brow. “Damn. How long has it been?”
“Thirteen years.” David hadn’t thought about his father in so long that he’d stopped measuring the time. “I don’t know how he got my number.”
“I’m going to blame the Internet,” Frankie said. “It’s not like you’re hiding.”
“No, but I changed my name.” He’d taken his mother’s maiden name, Eastridge, when he’d cut ties. Accepting that his friends weren’t going to let him handle this alone,
David played the message again.
Three million dollars is missing from the company. This is going to break us if I can’t find it, or at least find out who’s responsible. I’m at a loss, David. The best guess I got is a woman, an employee named Autumn Sullivan. Something isn’t right about her, and not just because she’s into all that whips and chains crap. Anyway, I don’t have hard evidence. CalderCo is hurting badly, David. There’s nobody else I trust to straighten it out.
Jesse frowned. “Why doesn’t he conduct an audit? He can turn the findings over to the FBI, and they’ll prosecute. Insurance should cover the loss.”
This was another point of contention between David and his father. “My dad’s business is like an iceberg. Some stuff is above board, but there’s a lot hidden under the water. There’s no way he’ll want law enforcement looking through his books.”
Dean pressed his fingertips together. “How dirty are we talking? Mob connections?”
“Possibly. I’ve long suspected that he launders money. It could explain his desperation. If he’s lost money belonging to the mob, they’re not going to be patient while he goes looking for it.” David had turned his back on the family business from a young age. It would only have given his father control over that part of his life too. “I’d love to see what the FBI has on him.”
Frankie stood. “On it.” She nailed Dean with a hard look. “I have extra shirts, but I would appreciate having back the one you took.”
“It’s in your office.” Dean pointed to Jesse. “So is yours.”
“Great. I’ll dig up the dirt on Autumn Sullivan.” Jesse followed Frankie out the door.
Left alone with Dean, David waited for his buddy to deliver his opinion. “You’re not going in there alone. We’ll research, do some recon, and then develop a plan.”
These people were his family—always there to support him. Now they were going to help him honor his mother’s memory. Before he choked on his emotions, David agreed to the plan. “Thanks.”
_______________
“Hurry up. I hear the elevator.” Chris Alcoa sputtered another vehement plea/threat, which Autumn ignored.
She listened carefully as she concentrated on moving the catches into the correct position. At last, her patience was rewarded with a soft click as the door unlocked. She turned the knob, grabbed her kit, and followed Chris into the room. This job would be a hell of a lot easier if he’d just given her the passwords and trusted her to do the job. But trust was at a premium between them. Autumn didn’t take it personally. She didn’t trust his ass either. This was a limited liability temporary partnership where neither was beholden to the other.
She tucked her tools into the soft leather holder and rolled it up. Her father had given her the kit for her seventh birthday, and she still took the top-of-the-line lock pick set everywhere. Now that he was gone, it was like having a piece of him always with her.
Chris settled into the office chair in front of the older-model desktop and booted up the machine. While she waited, Autumn scanned the office, looking for anything interesting. Given the fact that the computer wasn’t even networked—it had slots for two different kinds of floppy disks—she didn’t hold out much hope. Still, it was better to be safe than sorry. Listening and recording equipment could be networked elsewhere in the building.
Her search turned up nothing. She picked up a paperweight and sighed. This wasn’t the life she’d envisioned for herself, especially not after the accident. Pissing off powerful people never led anywhere good—as her father had proved once and for all. Autumn considered that last incident an unintentional farewell gift, and the scar on her shoulder functioned as a constant reminder.
“Don’t touch anything.” Chris hissed again. He really was a snake. Either that, or he’d sprung a leak.
“You’re the idiot not wearing gloves.” From an early age, Autumn had mastered the art of speaking clearly at a low volume—another lesson from Dad.
Ignoring Chris, she studied the picture frames, looking for likely candidates. She didn’t know what he was after, and she couldn’t resist looking to see what other kinds of secrets were hiding in the office. The owner of this place didn’t seem innovative, so she figured the safe was probably behind a framed piece of art. However, the one over the bookshelf only concealed the bad paint job behind.
“What are you doing? Stop touching stuff.” Now he sounded worried.
Autumn smiled. Amateur. “Sixteen minutes until the security comes by. We have plenty of time.” It might have been a two-man job, but that was only because a series of locked doors and an antiquated security system stymied the original man. Enter Autumn, the mistress of breaking and entering, skills she hired out when she needed extra cash.
None of the pictures—no paintings here—proved fruitful. She was about to give up when she noticed that a section of books were less dusty than those surrounding them. One by one, she flipped through them. The books were inconsequential, nothing more than hardcover garage sale finds. Someone had collected them in an effort to give the cheap office décor and its owner a sense of literary style. Nothing except literature. Knocking on the wood panel in the rear, however, produced a hollow sound.
“Damn it, Jenna. I didn’t hire you to sit there and read. Be the lookout.” Chris tapped the computer’s keys harder to show just how mad he was.
“Simmer down. They’ll never know I was here.” The novice, on the other hand, was leaving too many clues. Hair from his clothes—cat, most likely, mixed with shavings from his lunchtime visit to the Kwickie Cut Hut—was shedding all over the place. Her hair was tightly coiled, and her clothes were freshly cleaned. She knew how to not leave a trace. And when to use an alias.
Feeling along the back of the bookcase, she found the spring that released a panel. She’d found the safe—good thing she’d brought her state-of-the-art mini stethoscope, this one a hand-me-down from Dad. She set to work, listening for those tumblers to lock into place. It wasn’t on the cutting edge of safe technology. Judging from the location, the owner was relying on the hiding place doing most of the security work. She could crack this without graphing the clicks.
Autumn had it open inside twenty seconds. “How are you doing over there?” She wasn’t in his field of vision unless he turned around, but she could see him just fine.
“I’m downloading the files I need right now.”
“Fantastic. Right on schedule.” She didn’t give a rip about those files. Recipes for barbeque sauce bored her. There were thousands on the Internet, and millions more if you changed out some of the ingredients for things you liked better. The contents of a safe, though, that was the stuff! Cracking a safe was better than tearing off wrapping paper, and opening her first one had ruined the whole idea of getting presents that were easy to open. Her father, bless his generous and thoughtful heart, had begun hiding her gifts in increasingly difficult safes. Her eighteenth birthday present had taken seven months to open.
Her breath caught as she swung the door out. Inside, she found some of the usual items—passports, a couple hundred in cash, personal papers—and some of the unusual—a plastic container with assorted baby teeth, a worn dog collar, and a pair of dolls. Autumn had never caught the Barbie bug. She hadn’t cared one whit about the plastic blonde doll with the lifeless, painted eyes. Her sister had a small collection, and they’d mostly used them to plan heists. Of course, Summer had also spent hours dressing her dolls, fixing their hair, and imagining them in all sorts of glamorous situations.
Thinking of Summer made Autumn’s heart thump painfully. The accident three years ago that had led to six surgeries on her shoulder had put her older sister in a coma. She took one of the dolls and stared at it. The hair was super long and dark, like Autumn’s, and the outfit was unlike anything she’d seen on a children’s doll. Hand sewn with tiny silver sequins, the ostentatious dress screamed at her. She grabbed the other doll.
Fuck me. These were real Sonny and Cher dolls. Summer had been o
bsessed with watching reruns of the variety show one summer when they’d rented a cabin that had a VHS collection. They weren’t all that valuable now, not really, but Summer would have loved them. Autumn left the cash and tucked the dolls into her satchel.
“Almost ready.” Chris really needed a patch kit, one that covered his whole mouth.
She closed the safe and replaced the books. Perfect. Then she glanced at the desk. “Put everything back exactly as you found it.”
He scooted the chair closer to the desk.
Autumn rolled her eyes. The son of a bitch was going to get caught because he’d eventually brag to the wrong person. Of course, he worked for a competing firm, so the bragging might net him a promotion. She adjusted the chair lower, moved the keyboard closer to the monitor, and lined up the pencils next to the keyboard. A meticulously neat office meant the owner would notice if his pencils weren’t perfect.
In the parking garage, before they separated, Chris grabbed her arm. “Find anything good to read?”
“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” If he hadn’t noticed her robbing a safe, then she wasn’t going to say anything about also taking the book. He handed her an envelope. She thumbed through the bills to count them and make sure they were real. “Pleasure, Chris.”
With that, she left the garage. He didn’t need to see her getaway car, or Poco, as she affectionately termed the Piece-O Crap-O. She waited in the shadows until his car drove way, and then she strolled to where she’d hidden Poco. They’d made good time, and she shouldn’t be too late getting to Sunshine Acres.
“Hey there, young lady.” Lorne shuffled across the hall as soon as Autumn came into the lobby. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Lorne.”
“Hi, Lorne.” She shook his hand as she did every day. He’d lived a long and exciting life that began when he’d run away from home at sixteen to join the army during World War II. He was one of the many residents she’d come to know during her regular visits. “It’s great to meet a handsome devil like you. How are they treating you?”
Re/Leased (Doms of the FBI Book 5) Page 1