by Cynthia Eden
Zoe wrapped her arms around her body.
“And the dead hitman? You got a name on him, too? You figure out why he was so familiar?”
Michelle needs you. Get the hell out of here.
She forced her legs to move as she hurried toward the door.
But Victor just moved to the side, blocking her path.
“Thanks for the intel, Russell. I’ll call you later and we’ll talk more.” He shoved the phone back into his pocket. “Your former lover—the guy who wanted to marry you—”
“I already told you about Tom.”
“You didn’t tell me he was still working for Luther.”
Shock ripped through her. “That’s because I didn’t think he was! The agreement—it was supposed to be a package deal. Luther told us that.” Bitterness rose, threatening to choke her.
“Well, then I guess your father lied.”
As if it would be the first time.
“Russell says that Luther’s new lawyer—Xavier Thomas Winters—has been visiting him an awful lot in the last few months.”
Chill bumps rose on her arms. “I need to start searching for Michelle.” Once more, she tried to move around him, but he just side-stepped, going with her.
“He’s here, Zoe.”
She blinked.
“Russell said Tom is in town. He’s in Vegas. You’re in Vegas. Isn’t that one hell of a coincidence?”
Uh, yes, it was. Only his voice was hard and his eyes were cold. “What are you implying?”
“We’d taken you off the radar. We’d made you vanish. Then you convince me to break all the rules and get you back to Vegas. When he’s here. A guy working with your father and—”
Wild laughter escaped her. “You think I’m setting you up? That this is some—some what? Some game? Some big ruse so that I could come out of hiding and go away with Tom?”
His eyes glittered.
“No!” She was pretty much yelling and she didn’t care. “No, I’m not lying to you. I’m not betraying you. I haven’t seen Tom since that day—the day I said he could have me and we could walk away from Luther, together. He could have me. But I wasn’t enough.” Humiliation burned through her at that stark confession. “He didn’t want me. He just wanted power.” She swiped her hand over her cheek. “Now get the hell out of my way. Because I have a job to do.”
She didn’t think he was moving. She was about to push that guy out of her way—
“There’s something else you need to know.” He hesitated. Still in my way. “The hitman has been ID’d. He’s a guy who used to be on your father’s payroll.”
“What?”
“Russell thinks the fellow went freelance after Bates went to prison.”
Okay, yes, she could buy that.
“Or…or maybe…”
She stiffened. Maybe he’s still working for Luther? “You said Luther wanted you to keep me safe. So it doesn’t make any sense that he’d hire someone to kill me.” Zoe shook her head. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone turned on Luther. Not the first time, not the last.”
“Zoe—”
“Michelle.” She nearly shouted the name at him. “She’s what I have to focus on right now, got it?” She already felt like she was ripping apart. “I can’t—I can’t do anything else. I can’t think about Luther or the hitman or anything else. I need to find her. Now either get out of my way or come with me.”
Without another word, Victor turned away from her. He opened the door. Held that door while she marched out.
He didn’t speak to her again, not until they were inside the elevator and heading down to the lobby. Then Victor said, “Tom was a damn fool.”
Her breath left her in a fast gasp.
“Any man in his right mind would have chosen you…You are enough. You are more than enough.” His hands fisted at his sides. “He should have known you were everything.”
The ache in her chest eased, just a little bit. The ache eased, but the fear—her new companion—stayed.
***
Getting into Michelle Lane’s apartment wasn’t hard. It also wasn’t exactly a legal entrance or search, but Victor figured desperate times…
Desperate times mean I break more rules for Zoe.
When they’d been in Drake’s hotel and tears had glistened in Zoe’s eyes as she’d said that she hadn’t been enough, when he’d heard the pain in her voice…I wanted to hunt down Xavier Thomas Winters and beat the guy’s ass.
Only Victor was supposed to be the good guy. The guy who didn’t use his fists to get some much needed vengeance for Zoe.
“It looks as if she hasn’t been here in weeks,” Zoe said, spinning around in the middle of the little den. “There’s dust everywhere. Michelle is a neat freak. Like, obsessively neat. No way would she be letting the place get this way if she’d been here recently.”
Not a surprise. They’d already known the woman had vanished from the radar, but Victor had wanted to search Michelle’s place just in case there might have been some clues there. Signs of a struggle. Notes about travel plans…clothes that were packed indicating she’d left willingly.
But…
There’s nothing. No broken furniture. No overturned chairs. All of her clothes are still hanging in the closet, precisely in place.
In fact, other than the dust, the whole place was…perfect. Too perfect.
He slowly turned around, studying all the walls. No photos. He opened a few drawers. Some were bare. Some had only the fewest of items—a screwdriver, matches. “Your friend…” he murmured. “She’s not exactly the sentimental type, is she?”
“What do you mean?”
He shut the drawer he’d opened. “No family pics. No mementos from trips.”
Zoe glanced at the walls. The empty walls. Then back at him. She rubbed her forehead. “I guess I never noticed. Is that…odd? That she doesn’t have things like that?”
It was certainly interesting.
“I never had them,” she murmured, rubbing her head a bit harder. “After my mom…died, it wasn’t like I wanted to put up pictures of Luther. And I don’t have any other family members.”
Fuck, yeah, baby, you do. Guilt twisted in his gut.
“I guess I never noticed Michelle didn’t have pictures because I didn’t, either. Seemed normal to me.” Her hand fell to her side. “She didn’t talk about her family to me, either. She didn’t ask me about mine and I didn’t ask about hers. I was just—glad to not have to lie to someone new, I guess.” She swallowed. “I should have asked. If I’d known more about her family, I could have contacted them. Could have found out if—”
“No next of kin was listed on her rental application.”
“What?”
He rolled his shoulders back. “I did some digging a while back when you first went looking for her. I got access to her rental application.” He’d pulled—or rather, yanked hard—on some strings he had. “She didn’t have a next of kin listed. It seems that her parents died when she was younger.”
“So we’re the only ones looking for her?”
Maybe…
He headed toward the refrigerator. He opened it, expecting to have the scent of old milk hit him. Food gone bad. But—
The fridge was empty.
His head tilted. Michelle’s clothes were still in her closet, her apartment—other than the dust—was completely clean. He shut the fridge door and strode toward her garbage can.
Empty. Very interesting. “She left willingly.”
“What?” Zoe’s voice rose, almost breaking. “How do you know that?”
He faced her. “Because your neat freak friend didn’t want the food going bad in her fridge. She took it all out. Didn’t just toss it in her garbage but probably walked it down to the dumpster.”
Her gaze darted to the fridge. “Maybe someone else did that…maybe the person who took her—”
“Damn unlikely. The abductor would just be focused on cleaning up any obvious signs of a struggle.
He wouldn’t give a shit about milk congealing in the fridge.”
Excitement flashed on her face. “Michelle would care about that. It would drive her crazy.”
“That’s why she got rid of it. She knew she wasn’t coming back here for a while. She ditched the food, emptied out her garbage, and just left the things that didn’t matter.”
Now Zoe surged toward him. “Her clothes are here. Are you really saying those don’t matter?”
Actually…maybe.
“There are other places we need to visit.” She nodded decisively. “A club off the strip. A quiet place with lots of dark corners. Michelle and I met up there plenty of times because it was a place where we could both vanish.”
Victor was getting a real bad feeling about Michelle Lane. He’d sent a few agents to look for her before but the guys had turned up nothing, fast.
How do you vanish so completely?
Maybe the question wasn’t how, though. Maybe it was…
Why?
Sometimes people vanished when they needed to hide their sins. In his line of work, he sure knew one hell of a lot about that.
***
Most tourists would miss Dice. The little club wasn’t flashy like the places on the strip. It didn’t have big, neon signs. It was tucked far away from the traffic, a small place with dark brick and tinted windows. A bouncer waited at the door, sitting on a bar stool, but he wasn’t exactly stopping people from entering the place.
In fact, no one was lined up to get inside.
“You sure this is the right club?” Victor asked, as he scanned the street. To him, it sure didn’t look like the kind of bar that would attract showgirls.
“I’m sure. Michelle…she even had a thing going on with the bartender. I want to talk to him. If anyone knows where she went, it should be him.” She strode toward the bouncer. A big, muscled guy with tats on his shoulders. His dark hair was long, a little shaggy. The guy’s hard gaze swept over her and he jerked his thumb inside.
Victor followed her. When the bouncer’s gaze darted to him, assessing, the guy seemed to stiffen. For an instant, Victor hesitated. The bouncer’s stare was too aware, too intense. It didn’t go with his casual pose.
“Victor?” Zoe pushed.
Victor shoved a twenty at the bouncer and kept walking.
Inside, Dice was like a cave. Candlelight sputtered on a few of the tables. There was no music playing. Just silence. The occasional clink of glasses.
This scene is wrong. The place is wrong.
All of Victor’s instincts were on high alert. Zoe had made her way up to the bar. She put her hands on the old, scratched surface. “Excuse me,” she said.
The bartender turned around. The bartender was a male, had to be pushing seventy, with a grizzled jaw and a bald head.
“I’m looking for Roy. Is he working tonight?”
The bartender’s face hardened. “Don’t know any Roy.”
“Uh, yeah, you do,” she replied, leaning toward him. “I’ve seen you…here…with him. He worked the bar.”
The bartender’s stare slid to Victor. “Better get your girl out of here. She’s confused.”
“She is not confused,” Zoe snapped right back at him. “I’ve been in here at least a dozen times with Michelle! She was dating Roy. Roy who worked here, with you. He’s a big, blond guy. She’s a tall, slim, gorgeous African American woman with—”
“Get her out.” The bartender pointed at Victor. “And don’t let her come asking about Roy again. Roy didn’t work here. He was never here.” He turned away. Went back to clinking the glasses behind the bar.
Zoe whirled around to face Victor. “What is happening here? How is this happening? First Michelle, now Roy. They can’t both vanish.”
Yeah, they could. He caught her hand in his. “We need to go.”
“No! We need to find them—both of them! That was the deal, right? That was—”
“We’re going.” From the corner of Victor’s eye, he’d just seen the bartender pull out his cell phone. The guy was talking fast now, whispering into that phone. Oh, hell, no, this scene wasn’t good. “And we’re going fast.”
He made sure to position Zoe so that he could still easily reach for his gun. He was worried he might be needing it soon.
They hurried for the door. He could feel the rage practically pouring off Zoe. She thought he was letting her down. Going against their little plan.
Screw that. He was trying to keep her alive.
When they burst out of Dice, the bouncer was gone. “Another fucking bad sign.”
“What’s a bad sign?” Zoe whirled and put her hands on her hips as she glared at him. “What are you doing? You know that guy was lying to us! Let’s go back in there and make him tell us what’s happening—”
“We’re getting out of here.” Only there were no taxis nearby. “Come on.”
“Victor—”
“Trust me. We have to go, now.”
She kept glaring at him. He thought about picking her up and just hauling ass. The silence stretched too long. Time they didn’t have to waste. He stepped toward her. Sorry, baby, no choice here.
“Fine,” she gritted out before he reached for her. “But I am not happy about this crap.”
Then they were both rushing away—pretty much running—and they hurried toward the narrow alleyway on the right. He could see the flow of traffic on the other side of that alley. Once they got through that little space, they’d burst out on one of the main roads. They’d get a taxi. They’d get their asses to a safer place, then he could figure out exactly what had just gone down in Dice.
He could—
A man appeared in the mouth of that alley, a guy wearing a big coat, gloves, and with a thick scarf wrapped around his neck. Even before that stranger lifted his right hand, Victor knew—
Gun.
He pushed Zoe to the side even as he threw his body down on top of hers. He heard the sharp blast of the gunfire, but he didn’t feel the burn of a bullet hitting him—a good thing. He’d slammed hard into Zoe, and he hoped like hell that she was all right. He grabbed for his weapon, ready to return fire.
“Ow! Fuck! Sonofabitch—let me go!”
At that scream, Victor tensed even more. He risked a quick glance around the giant garbage bin near him—his current cover—and saw that the guy in the scarf was on the ground. He was the one doing the screaming. Mostly because the big, hulking bouncer they’d seen before—the guy with tats on the side of his neck who’d been slouched with such unconcern at Dice—that fellow had his foot on the shooter’s neck. The bouncer also had a gun out and aimed at the fellow on the ground.
“Stop your screaming,” the bouncer ordered. “Or I’ll stop it.”
The guy wisely clamped his lips shut.
Victor took aim at the bouncer.
The bouncer looked up at him. “See what twenty bucks can get you?” His voice was mocking. “I’ve got to be the cheapest protection you’ve ever bought.”
Zoe was dead silent near Victor. He didn’t risk looking at her. He was afraid to take his eyes off the two men.
Were they both his enemies?
Or…
“I’m a federal agent,” Victor called out. “So you really want to lower your gun right now and let me take over this situation.”
Laughter answered him. “Right. Like you think I didn’t tag you for a fed the first time I saw you?”
“And you think I didn’t tag you?” Victor threw back. “Like I’m going to walk into a place like Dice and not realize what the hell is going on.”
“Victor…” Zoe’s voice was hushed, barely reaching his ears. “What is going on?”
As he watched, the bouncer tucked the gun into the waistband of his jeans. He lifted his hands, holding them toward Victor, palms up, but he did keep his foot firmly planted at the back of the shooter’s head.
“The bouncer is on our side,” Victor said. But a heavy weight had settled onto his chest. Yes, he’d look
ed at the bouncer and hesitated. Tagged you, too.
“Our side?” She inched closer. “What the hell does that even mean? That he’s not a hitman?”
“Not a hitman.” Not if his suspicions were right. “A cop.” Hell, and if the bouncer was a cop…if that whole place was a front, like he suspected…
Zoe is about to be in for even more betrayal.
Chapter Nine
The building was non-descript. Two-story, brick. The windows were covered. There was only one main entrance and…
The place was some kind of safe house for cops. Cops.
Zoe’s palms were sweaty as she glanced around the little room. An interrogation room, if she guessed right. With cops. She’d never gotten along so well with them. In her general ranking of law enforcement personnel to avoid, well, cops were at the top of the list.
FBI Agents were immediately ranked second beneath them.
She sat in a slightly wobbly wooden chair. A square table was in front of her. One of the cops—the bouncer, actually—had poured her a glass of water and put in on the table.
The bouncer didn’t look like a cop. He was far too dangerous for that. But he’d shown her his badge. Victor had called Russell and vetted the guy.
Cain Blair. Undercover cop extraordinaire.
Only he wasn’t the only undercover cop in the room. Her gaze slid to the left.
Roy Duncan stood there, frowning. Michelle’s Roy. Roy the missing bartender.
Only he wasn’t missing any longer.
Because when Cain had delivered her and Victor to this place, Roy had been waiting there for them. Roy, with his sun-streaked blond hair and his icy blue gaze. Roy who’d pulled out his own badge and ID when Zoe had just stared at him in shock.
He was a cop. All along. Did Michelle know?
“I’ll want the prisoner,” Victor said. He wasn’t sitting at the little table. He was pacing to the right and looking very much like some kind of angry predator.
“Sorry, not happening,” Cain told him, sounding not the least bit apologetic. “The Vegas PD has dibs on him.”
“He tried to shoot me!” Victor snarled.
“No, he tried to shoot her.” Cain pointed at Zoe. “And really, she should have known better than to come back to this town again. Seriously, what do you have, lady, a death wish?”