“The nurses are dutiful and efficient.” He maintained a somber demeanor. “But I think the lady in 3B might have taken a shine to me. She pinched my bottom.”
“It was an accident.” The lady in 3B, Edith to her friends, zoomed from behind a tall potted plant. She screeched her wheelchair to a halt inches from Autumn. The cosmetology school must have just left because Edith had her hair done, and she wore full makeup. “If I wanted to make a pass at you, I’d ask you to dinner.”
As Autumn watched, Edith pinched Lorne’s bottom. He winked at her.
“Yoga starts in three minutes.” Edith patted her lap. “Want a ride?”
Lorne sat down, and the pair took off. Autumn smiled as she navigated the maze of hallways that took her to the Vegetable Patch, as they affectionately and unofficially termed the ward housing long-term coma patients. She paused in the kitchen long enough to give Sonny and Cher a washing—who knew where they’d been?—and when she made it to Summer’s room, she found that her sister had a visitor already.
“Julianne, I didn’t know you were coming today.” Autumn hugged her sister’s best friend and the woman who’d helped her get a job. A real job, not one where she had to have an entrance and exit strategy ready ahead of time—and a contingency plan in case things went sideways.
The plucky redhead grinned, her hazel eyes green in the soft light. “You’re twenty minutes late.”
“For me, that’s early.” Autumn had a problem with being on time for anything legal. If she were to focus on the positives, she was punctual when it really mattered.
“True. The nurse said she woke up today.”
Ever since the accident, Summer would wake up for a couple of minutes every few weeks. Sometimes she spoke, but most of the time she stared at her surroundings, lost and bewildered. Autumn liked to be around when that happened to help soothe her sister. She hated to think of the stress Summer suffered when she wasn’t around. She peered closer at Summer, hoping lightning would strike twice in the same day. “When?”
“Ten twenty-seven this morning. She was up for ninety seconds. I already reamed them for not calling.”
Autumn sighed. She understood the staff’s reluctance—she and Julianne dropped everything to rush here every time it happened only to find that Summer had slipped back into the coma before they could make it. However, it was their job to make that call immediately. She grasped her sister’s hand. “Summer, I’m so sorry I wasn’t here. I hope you weren’t too scared. It’s the same room as last time, and I have your favorite things on the dresser where you can see them.”
People thought she was crazy, talking to Summer the way she did, but Autumn paid them no mind. Her sister was trapped in there, and there was no way Autumn was going to leave her alone.
“I was telling her about my date last night,” Julianne said. “It was pretty bad. The guy, Brad, told me he wasn’t a smoker, but every time he came back from the bathroom—how many times do you need to pee during dinner?—he smelled like cigar smoke. Seriously, how can people stand those things? They smell like unwashed ass.”
Julianne’s father and grandfather had died from lung cancer, and so she’d sworn never to kiss a smoker. Autumn didn’t comment. She sometimes sneaked a cigarette every now and again to calm her nerves. The smell reminded her of her father. “Was that it, or did he do other gross stuff like pick his nose or lean to the side to make it easier to fart?”
“You laugh, but I wasn’t exaggerating about those guys.” Julianne sighed. “I suck at finding men to date. Every one of them is somehow a loser. You know what I need?”
“Someone to vet your dates before you go out with them?” Autumn was a great judge of character. The moment she met Julianne, she knew that Summer had made a true friend. All these years later, Julianne was the only one who visited Summer.
“Yeah. I’m not going to go on another date that you don’t meet first and approve.” Julianne frowned. “I have a date Friday night. What are you doing after work?”
Autumn had a meeting with a friend to whom she owed a favor. “I have a little time. When and where?”
“My favorite coffee shop at five-thirty?”
Autumn put the details into the calendar on her phone so that she wouldn’t forget.
Later, after Julianne left, Autumn dimmed the lights and closed the door. She never told Summer everything just in case the nursing staff was listening, but she told her enough. Her sister would understand the oblique references.
“I had a job today, which means I can pay for this month’s PT. Yay! Anyway, I got you something.” She pulled the dolls out of her bag and held them up for Summer to see. “Cher is wearing a Bob Mackie original, and Sonny is dressed to match her, but not to outdo her. She was always the star of the show. Remember when you spent a month sewing all those sequins onto your nightgown? She’s wearing silver sequins. I’m going to put these on the dresser so you can see them when you wake up.”
She chattered on for a while longer, and by the time the nurse came by to tell her that visiting hours were over, she’d finished reading a few chapters of Huck Finn aloud.
Chapter Two
“Autumn Sullivan didn’t exist before six years ago. She was born with a credit score, checking account, birth certificate, and Facebook page full of kitten memes, but nothing I’ve been able to find is more than six years old.” Jesse pressed another button on the remote, and an image of Autumn Sullivan came up.
Brilliant green eyes shone with hidden laughter, and dark brown hair framed a perfect, oval face. Freckles dotted the bridge of her nose, cute little spots on her sun-kissed skin. The other images showed parts of her face, but never a full-on frontal shot. “She’s beautiful.” David hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but he did, and with this group, there was no covering that up. “She probably uses that to distract people while she’s up to no good.”
Frankie chuckled. “You’re presuming guilt?”
“My dad had to have a good reason for singling her out.”
“He said he wasn’t sure, that something about it wasn’t right,” she reminded him.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Something isn’t right about a thirty-year-old person who didn’t exist until six years ago.”
“If she’s in witness protection, her history would look like this,” Dean suggested. “Frankie, what did you find out from your friends in the FBI?”
“Brandy Lockmeyer said she wasn’t in their database. However, CalderCo is on their watchlist. They’re suspected of money laundering, which is what David thought they were doing.” She gestured to Jesse to advance to the next slide. “They also suspect insider trading and fraud, but they don’t have proof. If CalderCo is doing anything illegal, they’re doing a great job of keeping it under wraps. The Feds don’t have anything approaching a reason to get a warrant. There is no active investigation at this time.”
Documents flashed across the screen, quarterly reports juxtaposed with pictures of empty warehouses. David wasn’t surprised to hear these things about his father’s company. Bill Calder had been secretive about his work and controlling when it came to his family. He’d shut David out of the business right up until he decided it was time for David to learn the ropes. By that time, David had discerned enough to know he didn’t want to follow that path in life, and he for damn sure didn’t want his father to have a say in anything he did. “Are they going to get in my way?”
“No, but they won’t turn their noses up at your findings if you chose to share them.”
Jesse clicked the next slide, and an image of a man with shoulder-length dark hair and black eyes came up. He looked sinister and forbidding, exactly the kind of man his father would hire as a bodyguard. “This is SSA Jordan Monaghan. You’ll recognize him as the man Frankie and I were called in to help. We guarded his girlfriend while he worked with a team to catch the perp.”
“Who turned out to be the ASAC of the Detroit field office.” Dean’s dry tone communicated his lack of surprise. �
�I don’t know Lockmeyer or Monaghan like Frankie and Jesse do, so I’m not as inclined to blindly trust her or her agents.”
“I’ve arranged a meet-and-greet with Monaghan at a play party.” Frankie sneaked that gem into the debrief.
“What? Why?” David hadn’t been to a play party in years.
“It’s time for you to get back on the wagon.” Frankie patted his hand. “You’ve played the moody, pouty, heartbroken slob long enough.”
David hadn’t played anything. His last relationship had disintegrated. After four years of bliss, she’d left him for another man. He could still hear her impatient response to his request for an explanation. She’d tossed it over her shoulder as she carried her suitcases out the door. It just wasn’t meant to be, okay? You’re married to your work, and I’m tired of having a Master only when you have free time. That had been three years ago. He’d moved on emotionally, and he’d abandoned the D/s lifestyle. Vanilla dating and casual encounters were much easier to walk away from. “I’m not any of those things. To begin with, I’m impeccably dressed.”
“Yeah, that suit is a nice way to plant your nose in Dean’s ass,” Jesse chimed in. “Anyway, I’ve arranged a meeting with a mutual friend. She’ll set you up with your date. You’ll get a chance to vet Autumn Sullivan and get to know Jordan Monaghan. I’ve included a dossier in your folder that lists the likely players you’ll find at the party and members of Monaghan’s unit. Dustin Brandt and his sub are on the guest list, as is Keith Rossetti and his sub. Malcolm Legato and his wife plan to attend. She’s a masochist, so perhaps you should pack your whips, and he recently quit the FBI.”
“Spend some time with Legato,” Dean interjected. “I hear he’s good with technology. We can always use another geek, and if he’s looking to freelance, maybe we can help him out.”
“You want me to hire him to work undercover at CalderCo?” David frowned. He didn’t want law enforcement, even if it was in the past, involved at all. “I’d rather have Jesse go in undercover and spend some time in the geek tank.” At least he knew anything Jesse found would be kept confidential.
“Do what you need to do.” Dean paged through his folder. “Who is the mutual friend?”
“Beatrice DePau knows Sullivan. Two years ago, we extracted her grandson from a compound in Mexico run by a drug cartel. He had been kidnapped from a local university and held for ransom. Beatrice said she’d rather pay us to get him out and do some damage than give money to terrorists and drug dealers. We blew up the compound.” Jesse advanced three slides, stopping on an image of an elderly woman. “She runs Elite Solutions Modeling Agency.”
“Sounds like an escort service,” Dean said.
“It is.” Jesse grinned. “Autumn Sullivan occasionally works there as a Domina. Beatrice knows more about Sullivan that she’ll ever admit, but she’s not talking. However, she did guarantee that Sullivan would attend the party as David’s sub. Apparently she sometimes switches if the pay and circumstances are right. I made it worth her while. David is going to need to fly up tonight to meet with her. I’ve made the arrangements.” Jesse slid an envelope across the table. Inside, David found round-trip tickets to Michigan. “You’ll be back home by midnight.”
“What’s the plan for infiltrating CalderCo?” Dean asked. “I mean, aside from having Jesse get a job in tech support?”
David had talked to his father, treating him as a potential client instead of the man who sat on the sidelines of his Little League games yelling at him every time he missed a ball. “I’m representing a firm that does external audits. That’ll give me access to people and systems.” His father had wanted to introduce him as the prodigal son returning to take over the company, but David had nixed that, telling his father that no one could know they were related. With his Nordic coloring, David had always favored his mother’s side of the family. His father’s Mediterranean heritage only showed up in David’s rich, brown eyes.
Dean nodded. “Great idea. You’ll call if you need reinforcements? Frankie and I will be working a job, but we can drop it and pick it up later if need be.”
David nodded. “Sounds like everything is in place.” He gathered the folder of intel and the plane tickets. “I’ll debrief with Jesse tomorrow.”
Frankie followed him out the door. “I’m going to want details about the play party.”
“Anyone in particular I should look out for?” David knew Frankie too well to think she wasn’t fishing for a specific piece of information.
“Yeah. Autumn Sullivan.”
_______________
“How are you this fine evening, Mr. Eastridge?”
David studied Beatrice DePau. The elderly woman had a slight build that made her seem frail. A closer look exposed the lie. The eighty-three-year-old’s body was fit, honed through a lifetime commitment to healthy eating and tae kwon do. Her blue eyes shone with shrewdness, and her titian hair was the same color it had been for at least sixty years. Neither David nor the rest of his crew at SAFE Security had been able to find color photographs older than that.
He met her gaze and returned the friendly smile. “I’m doing fine, ma’am. Thank you for helping me on such short notice.”
She took his hands in her petite ones. “I owe you guys quite a debt after you helped with my grandson. It’s my pleasure to take care of you.”
David wondered exactly what Autumn Sullivan expected would happen at a play party. “I’m not looking for a date date. I just need an escort who knows what she’s doing.”
Patting one of his hands, she grinned, and her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Jesse explained already. You’ll like Bree.”
Her use of the alias Autumn used for her work as a Domina threw him off for a microsecond. He scanned the empty office. “Where is she?”
Beatrice’s expression briefly wrinkled, the closest she came to a frown. “She’s later than usual. This is her one fault. I asked her to be here by six-thirty, so it shouldn’t be long now.”
“It’s after seven.” Working in private security had taught David the art of patience, but this was different. Sullivan was under the impression that he was a client, and it was unprofessional to keep a client waiting.
“Why don’t you go ahead and have a seat?” Beatrice indicated the sofa in her office. “I can get you another model, if that’s what you want.”
“No. That’s all right. I’ll wait.”
Just then, the door burst open. Autumn Sullivan—in a pantsuit suitable for a day at the office—hurried inside. He knew she worked at CalderCo, but he’d expected her to change into something a little more appropriate for a model meeting a potential date. “Sorry I’m late. Traffic.” She kissed Beatrice’s proffered cheek before turning her attention to David. She offered her hand. “I’m Mistress Bree. You must be David.”
The same stunning green eyes regarded him with friendly firmness, and her smile brightened the room. David drank in her features, noting her almond-shaped eyes, high cheek bones, and the gentle curve of her chin. The pictures hadn’t done her justice. They lacked the palpable force of her presence. Her full, bow-shaped lips made him long for a taste. The entire time he stared, she waited with amused patience, and the moment he realized that fact, he remembered his manners.
He mustered his most charming smile and shook her hand. “David Eastridge.”
She gestured to the sofa. “Sit.” Though she said it with a smile, there was no mistaking the authority in her voice. “We have plenty of time to talk.”
Complications registered, and David frowned at Beatrice. “Beatrice, I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I need a submissive, and Bree is clearly a dominant.” Perhaps she didn’t know she was to bottom for him?
Beatrice set a glass of water and a cup of coffee on the low table in front of the sofa. “She switches occasionally.” She reached up to set a hand on Bree’s shoulder. “David is new in town, and he needs a submissive. He’s trustworthy, or else I wouldn’t have sanctioned this meeting.”
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A slight frown creased between Bree’s eyebrows, vanishing so quickly that he questioned whether it had been there at all. “It’s very nice to meet you, David.” The air of authority had left her tone, leaving it neutral. He liked that she wasn’t automatically submissive. True submission was earned, and though he didn’t need it for this, he appreciated her modulated, respectful response.
He gestured to the sofa, indicating where she should sit. “Please.”
As she sat, she flashed a quirky little grin at his stolen move and the entreaty issued as a command. He sat on the other end of the sofa, and she angled her body to face him.
Beatrice took a seat on a chair opposite them. “David, you’ll find Bree able to meet most of your requirements. For the record, please note that Solutions Elite Escort Service does not condone sexual activity. Our escorts provide companionship and conversation—nothing more. Is that understood?”
Her speech was straight from the liability disclaimer he’d signed, but her tone left no doubt that she expected them both to play by the rules. Watching the way Beatrice and Bree interacted, it was clear that Bree was special to the elderly businesswoman. David wondered if they’d known one another for more than six years.
“Yes, Ms. B.” Bree nailed David with a steady look. “I don’t sleep with clients. Ever. There will be no kissing, no contact with my breasts, ass, or private areas, and the same goes for you. My clothes will remain on my body, and your clothes will remain on yours.”
David pursed his mouth. His mind had snapped firmly into business mode, and that meant negotiation. She’d laid out some stringent hard limits. He needed to see how firm they were. “I need you to pretend to be my sometimes-girlfriend. There will need to be occasional kissing. It’s a play party. We won’t be alone.”
She didn’t look thrilled by the idea of kissing him, and that ruffled his ego feathers. “Your friends haven’t met me. It can be a first date, and not kissing on a first date is understandable.” Obviously an experienced negotiator, she neither flinched nor fidgeted, and where many women might try to appease him, she made no attempt.
Re/Leased (Doms of the FBI Book 5) Page 2