“Where’s Julia?” she asked after glancing around at both familiar and unfamiliar faces.
“She’s already dressed. She went to get a bottle of water.” Eternity leaned closer. “I tell you, I think this is all going to her head. She was asking me how to get invited to a special. There’s one Friday night and she thinks she wants to go. I told her oh, no, she did not, but…” Eternity shrugged.
Amanda would tell her oh, no, she did not, and she’d bring Rick in for backup if she had to. Julia must be euphoric, reveling in her first real taste of feminine power. The trick was not letting it go to her head.
Amanda dressed in a thong, a flirty little side-split skirt, a bra and a sheer button-down blouse, all in black. Her shoes were black open-toe pumps with a wide rhinestone strap that circled each ankle. They were conservative enough for stripper shoes that, without the platforms, she would have been able to wear them to class in January. Oh, yeah, she thought with a smile as she admired them. Walking across campus and teaching class all day on seven-inch heels. Not only would it be hard on her feet and back, but it wasn’t going to make it easy for the staff to forget her background.
There was no way to keep her background hidden from some people. If things got serious with Rick she would eventually have to meet his family and Robbie the moron couldn’t be counted on keeping his mouth shut, no matter how many ways Rick told him to.
Well, she wasn’t sleeping with Robbie, was she? Spending her time with him. Falling in love with him. Wanting a future with him.
Hearing the L word, even in her head, made her wince. She leaned close to the mirror to fix a smudge on her eyeliner and redo her lipstick, then straightened and pulled out the band that held her hair back. Curls tumbled around her shoulders, a wild coppery mass.
When she was a kid, her mother had found her hair too big a hassle, so she’d always kept it cut short. Rick liked it long. Liked running his fingers through it, watching the strands curl around. He liked stroking it when they lay quietly and he especially liked it when it tickled across his ribs and down his abdomen when she took him in her mouth. He tangled his hands in it then, arching, groaning harsh endearments.
Her face flushed so deeply that Eternity noticed. “You’d better get a cold drink before you go out on the floor. You look like you’re going to burst into flames.”
A cold drink. From the bar. “That’s a good idea. You want anything?”
“No, thanks.”
Amanda left the crowded dressing room behind and headed for the stage door. She’d been down this hall and halls just like it thousands of times. In the part of her that believed everything in her past combined to make her the woman she was today, she was going to miss them. Who knew where she’d be if she’d stuck to her original intention to make the dancing just a summer job? Would she have her degree and her upcoming job? Would she be living in the little house she adored? Would she be in love with someone totally different from Rick?
Probably not. She was beginning to think that Rick just might be her destiny. No matter what path she’d taken, it would have led her to him.
It was quiet in the bar, the only music coming from a small radio plugged in behind the bar. Chad was kicked back in a chair in the darkest corner, nursing a beer and waiting for seven o’clock to roll around. There was no sign of Vincent, who was tending bar with Rick tonight, and Rick and Julia were huddled close together at one end, their heads practically touching. If their expressions and hushed voices were anything to judge by, their conversation was intense.
Her and Rick’s affair was so new that Amanda couldn’t help but wonder if their discussion had anything to do with her. Had they decided they wanted to give each other another shot? Was Julia angry that he’d slept with someone else just days after they’d broken up? Were they discussing the best way for him to dump Amanda?
She would have given in to insecurity and backed through the door into the corridor again if Rick hadn’t looked up and seen her. He didn’t look as if he was planning to dump her. In her experience, that look was discomfort or guilt. He looked pissed.
Toothpick between his teeth, he jerked his head for her to join them. With a rush of relief, Amanda did so, stopping at the end of the bar where they leaned. He didn’t kiss her, but his left hand slid from the bar and brushed her hip before settling at her waist. “Will you talk to her?”
Julia looked pissed, too. “I’m thirty-three years old. I don’t need ‘talking to.’”
“That’s not what Eternity says,” Amanda quietly disagreed.
“Eternity should keep her mouth shut. So should Rick. And so—” Julia bit off the insult before it finished. She started to run her fingers through her hair. “I’m an adult. I’m self-supporting. I don’t need anyone’s permission to volunteer for additional work.”
“That additional work is prostitution, Julia,” Amanda said flatly. “Having sex with men you’ve never seen before. And you don’t even get to keep all the money. You want to do that? You want to let Harry sell your body to the highest bidder and pocket most of the cash?”
Julia stared mutinously at the bar, her mouth thinned.
“Have you ever even had sex with a stranger?”
“No. I missed out on a lot of experiences you had because I’m not as pretty or as popular as you. But I’ve had sex. I understand the mechanics. Whether for love or money, it’s the same act.”
“You’re not doing it,” Rick gritted out through clenched teeth.
Julia gave him a look only a few degrees kinder than a snarl. “You are not the boss of me. Not any longer. Not after the mistakes you’ve made.”
Amanda looked from Rick to Julia. What mistakes? she wanted to ask. Had the breakup not been as mutual as Julia had said? But it must have been. She’d started trying to set up Amanda with Rick the same night.
“My mistakes are my own and I’ll take responsibility for them,” Rick said harshly. “But you are not doing any specials. Even if I have to handcuff you to that pole.”
Julia looked at the pole on the main stage, then smiled sarcastically. “Ooh, Rick’s gotten kinky since he started sleeping with strippers.”
Amanda’s entire body flushed. She couldn’t decide whether to move closer to Rick or put distance between them, but he settled the question by drawing her to his side, moving his arm from her waist to around her shoulder. “Don’t get bitchy, Julia, especially about Amanda. You wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for her.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry, Amanda. It’s just…” Julia swiped at her eyes and her fingers came away damp. “Did you know there was a special last night?”
Amanda shook her head.
“I didn’t, either. Apparently they filled it with girls from the other clubs except for one. Rica. She went and she’s not coming back. Harry just told us she got a better offer.”
Amanda’s stomach clenched as Rick’s arm tightened around her, then she swallowed hard. “She’s just a kid. She’s got a kid of her own. She’s been saving money to move her daughter and her mother here from Augusta so they can live together as a family.”
Across the room came a scrape of chair legs as Chad stood, stretched his arms high above his head, then started their way. Rick nudged Amanda and fixed his gaze on Julia. “Hey, I don’t critique routines. Besides, when have you ever taken my advice about anything? I told you to buy a Mustang. You bought a Hyundai. I told you to give up cooking and you ruined every pan in my kitchen. You want advice from a man’s point of view, honey, you’re gonna have to find another man.”
Chad set the empty bottle on the bar a few feet away, then leered at Julia from top to bottom. “Hey, sugar, I’d be glad to help you work on your routine. All you gotta do is ask.”
Julia managed a more-than-believable smile. “I’ll keep that in mind, sugar.”
Chad sauntered down the hall that led to the bathrooms. A moment later came the brush of the men’s room door swinging shut.
“We cannot just let Rica
disappear,” Julia said in a hushed, urgent voice.
“The next special’s nearly a week away,” Amanda pointed out. “If something’s happened…it’ll be too late. Maybe—maybe she just decided to go home. Augusta’s got strip clubs, too.”
“I called her mother. She hasn’t talked to her since Thursday and Rica hadn’t mentioned any plans or changes to her.”
Julia had called Rica’s mother. Amanda had worked with the girl for two years and she didn’t even know her real name. And yet Julia had known enough information to call Rica’s mother. That was just…
“Rick, you have to do something. You have to call someone,” Julia went on. “We can find out where the party was. Aren’t they always held at one of a few places? We can send someone over there to look, to check it out, to talk to people in the area.”
Rick looked at Amanda and swallowed a sigh. Julia was too emotional, talking too much, being too careless. In all the years they’d worked together, he’d never seen her as anything more than functional, competent, cool. She’d never been personally involved in a case, had never, ever talked in front of a civilian.
And she’d already said way too much to make Amanda suspicious.
“Julia.” He snapped his fingers in front of her face. “I want to talk to you outside. Now. And—” he turned to Amanda and like that, his voice changed from stern to teasing “—since I’m guessing you didn’t miss me that much in so short a time, I bet this is what you came up for.” He produced a bottle of water from the bar refrigerator, twisted off the cap and handed it to Amanda. He circled the bar, took her arm in one hand, Julia’s in the other, and guided them both to the back hallway.
Though she clearly would rather have gone with them, Amanda turned into the dressing room. Julia pulled her arm free and shoved the rear door open hard enough to make it bounce back. She stalked across the parking lot to her car, as competent in those ridiculous heels as the other dancers were, then spun around to face him. Before she could say anything, though, he did.
“Are you crazy, talking like that in front of someone else?”
“Are you crazy, sleeping with a woman that you don’t trust to know who you are?” She thumped him on the chest, then threw both hands up with a growl.
“I trust Amanda.”
“But you’re not telling her the truth.”
“Because I can’t. You know that’s not how these things work. You don’t go around telling people that you’re an undercover cop. It’s a good way to get dead.”
“You don’t go around falling in love with people who are involved in your case, either, even on the periphery.”
Rick couldn’t argue with her, not about the impropriety of his actions or her assessment of his feelings. He was falling in love with Amanda. She was the best thing in his life.
But the timing sucked.
“Julia, I know you’re worried about this kid. So am I. But we can’t kick up a fuss right now. We’ve got nothing but suspicions and theories. If we do anything now, we’ll blow this case.”
“We’ve got four missing girls, and Angelita Moran is going to grow up wondering what happened to her mama if we don’t do something.”
Damn it, she was right. If Rica was still alive, wasn’t keeping her that way worth blowing their investigation into the other girls’ disappearances? “What do you want to do?”
“Amanda was right—the next party’s too far off. Let me approach Harry. Tell him I need cash right away. I’m desperate. I’ll do anything.”
“And what if he asks you to prove it?”
She blanched, then stiffened her spine. “I’ll deal with it.”
“You can’t deal with it, Julia. You can’t do anything with these guys. You can’t blow ’em, you can’t have sex with ’em. Any case would be thrown out and you’d lose your job.”
“That’s okay. As long as we find Rica alive.”
He stared at her. One time, after a particularly stressful day, she’d told him that her goal was management—the very top. And now she was talking about tossing away her career to save a stripper she’d known less than a week who might not even be in need of saving.
Before this case, apparently, she’d never known real stress.
She paced to the edge of the parking lot, then spun around, eyes alight. “How about this? I tell Harry that Rica told me she was working the special. She was a little worried because she’d heard rumors about girls disappearing after them. She told me if she didn’t come to work tonight, I should call the police. I’m worried. If I could just talk to her and know she’s all right…”
Rick was sure there were a dozen flaws with her plan, but it beat the hell out of her waltzing into Harry’s office and offering to have sex with everyone who stood between her and Rica.
“What if he claims not to know anything?”
“He may claim ignorance, but he’s not going to let me call the police. No strip-club manager wants the cops coming around, especially one who works for Rosey Hines.”
“Instead of coming up with Rica, he could just make you disappear.”
“Hard to do with this.” Julia fingered a heart-shaped rhinestone clip in the center of her bra. “GPS. A gift from Carnie.”
Rick had noticed the heart every time she’d performed, but hadn’t thought anything of it. A lot of the girls added bits of glimmery jewelry to their outfits or chose a particular one for a statement. Eternity’s was a quarter moon, and DinaBeth, the one who’d dotted her i with a star, had always worn shooting stars.
“The lab tech built a GPS unit into a pin for you?”
“Hello, we’re working a case where strippers are disappearing. I’m a stripper. I’m a little more at risk here than you are.” She shivered, more from the night chill, Rick suspected, than fear. After all, she wasn’t exactly dressed for the weather.
Hell, she wasn’t exactly dressed at all.
He unlocked his car door and grabbed a sweat jacket from the backseat. She put it on and gratefully tugged the edges together.
“Let’s lay out what we know,” she said. “Each of the girls apparently disappeared after doing a party for Harry. Tasha’s and DinaBeth’s cars turned up at one of Rosey’s chop shops. Lisa didn’t have a car. Call in and have them put out a broadcast on Rica’s car.”
Pulling his cell from his pocket, Rick dialed their supervisory agent’s number and did just that.
“There’s no reason to believe the girls are dead,” Julia said when she had his attention again.
“Beyond the fact that no one’s seen or heard from them?”
“They were all reliable. Good moneymakers. Popular girls. Why would Harry or Rosey suddenly decide to kill them and lose that steady income?”
“Dancers are a dime a dozen,” Rick pointed out.
“Good dancers? Who stick around, who show when they’re supposed to, who love their job?” Julia shook her head. “You should hear the bitching in the dressing room. The missing girls were dream workers. Like Amanda and Eternity. They were happy here. There was no reason to kill them.”
Killing your moneymakers was bad business, and if there was one thing Rosey wasn’t, it was a bad businessman. “That rules out snuff films, too,” Rick said. “You could grab a twenty-dollar prostitute off the street for that. And using them to pay off a debt. Again, you don’t sacrifice your talent when a new girl would do just as well.”
Julia scowled at him. “Hey, I made four hundred seventy-five bucks last night.”
“And GBI thanks you.” He leaned against the hood of his car. If he’d finished the paint job, he would smack anyone who did that, but there wasn’t much he could do to mar primer. “Which means the likeliest theory is that Rosey’s involved in some sort of sex ring. Either he’s selling the women directly or he’s providing them to a middleman.”
“And that means they’re probably going out of the country,” Julia said. “To minimize the chances that they could escape or contact their families or get recognized by someon
e. And it would probably take a day or two to ship them out of the country.” She paused, huddled inside the gray jacket. “Can I talk to Harry?”
The back door swung open with a thud and Vincent stepped onto the stoop. “Get your ass in here, Calloway. You’re already freakin’ late. I ain’t working for both you and me.”
“As if you could,” Rick muttered, then called, “I’ll be right there.” To Julia, he said, “Call the SAC. Run it by him. If he says okay…”
He would. Rick knew it and Julia knew it. It was in the glimmer of excitement that shone in her eyes. She’d done a number of undercover cases, but none that put her in direct danger. She was getting off on the adrenaline rush.
It was giving Rick indigestion.
“Want my pistol?”
She scoffed. “Oh, yeah, where am I going to put it? But I’ll take your cell phone.”
He handed it over as Vincent bellowed again. “Be careful.”
He crossed the parking lot with long strides, took the steps two at a time and smirked at Vincent as he pushed past. “What’s the problem, buddy? Afraid you might actually have to work if I’m not there?”
“You know, I could get you fired.”
“Maybe. How about if I hang out in the dressing room while you try?” Upon a unanimous vote of the dancers, Vincent wasn’t allowed in the dressing room. If he wasn’t related to Rosey, he wouldn’t even be allowed in the building.
“Get to the bar and start doing your freakin’ job.”
Rick stayed busy, though he managed to keep an eye on both doors that led to the rear and on Amanda when she came onstage. She was removing her see-through blouse, taking it one button at a time, when Julia finally came onto the floor. She smiled at a few patrons as she passed, but didn’t slow to talk to any of them.
At the bar, she handed his cell to him. “He said to play it by ear.”
“We got a receiver to track that thing?”
“Carnie’s taking care of it. I’m going to see Harry now.”
“Don’t be accusing. You’re worried, not suspicious.”
She rolled her eyes and walked away from the bar.
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