He nodded. “I called every last one of them and told them that he’s getting out. I’ve been on the phone for three days, contacting all of them and walking them through their options. I offered them police protection, but that’s damn near useless and they know it. Most of them cussed me out. Some cried. The social contract failed them. Most are leaving the state, which means that if we ever do manage to build a case against this guy again, those witnesses are gone.”
She rubbed his back. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I. God, so am I.”
A bad thought formed in her head. “Are you in any danger?”
Theo shrugged. “He’s got a long list of people who are actually a threat to him and a business to rebuild. I imagine I’m pretty low on his list. I’m just a failed assistant county attorney.”
Lizzy leaned and wrapped her arms around him. Theo was a far cry from the joking guy at the party. Her unrequited lust problem with The Dom faded to pastel colors.
Lizzy should attack this like a philosophy problem. “So if that was the best option, what were the other options?”
He shrugged. “Go to trial with tainted evidence. If his lawyers had figured it out, and they would have, the judge would have declared a mistrial. His lawyers would have seen how our case was put together. A later trial would have been harder. The witnesses who testified at the mistrial would still be in danger, plus they would have already testified so he would know exactly what they were going to say and how important it would be to get rid of them. Plus, I might have gotten disbarred, and then I couldn’t put him or other bad guys in jail. In the worst case, the judge might have dismissed it in such a way that we couldn’t prosecute him again.”
With prejudice, Lizzy thought and rubbed her hand down his spine. “That sounds even more fucked up. Any other options?”
His voice dropped, as if the security cam didn’t have damn good mic on it. He growled, “Kill him myself.”
“I’m going to veto that one,” Lizzy said. “He’s not worth your soul.”
“They sucked out my soul, and what’s the life of one scumbag versus the lives of maybe a dozen innocent witnesses?”
“Then you would go to jail, and then you wouldn’t be able to put more bad guys in jail.”
“But the social contract failed these people,” Theo said. “They were supposed to be safe. The villain was supposed to go to prison. I know this is hopelessly idealistic, but those people shouldn’t be killed because they were victims of crimes and then were going to do the right thing and stand up in court. That’s worse.”
“If this guy is as much of an asshole as you say, and I assume he is, there’s other evidence out there. You haven’t burned the other evidence. Double jeopardy shouldn’t apply. You can build a new case against him.”
Theo glanced at her with a ghost of a smile. “Double jeopardy?”
She shrugged. “We debate in class. I watch TV.”
Theo nodded. “I still want to punch something.”
“Not me,” Lizzy said. She glanced at the security camera. The red light blinked at her like one of the winking security guys.
“Oh, hell, no.” Theo frowned at her like she had said something particularly insipid. “I need a heavy bag and some gloves. Going to the gym will settle me down. If you wanted to come along and hold the bag for me, that would be cool.”
Oh. “You box?”
He nodded.
Boxing would explain all those tight muscles that she kept feeling under his clothes. Those weren’t gym muscles. Those were functional muscles.
Theo’s wild gold eyes had calmed down a lot. Maybe he had just needed to get all that out of his system. Lizzy had one client, Dr. Gliniecki, an oncologist, who spent his hour sobbing while she held him.
Theo’s day did sound truly horrific. She paused, thinking. “I know something that’ll settle you down.”
Her fingers trailed down his back and slipped under his belt in back. Muscle rounded both sides of his spine.
He untangled her arms from his body and leaned back in his chair. “That would just get me more keyed up.”
“Really? Most guys roll over and go to sleep afterward.”
His mouth curved just a little, another attempt at a smile. His hazel eyes softened. “Look, I’m not being coy and I’m not leading you on, but let’s not rush. If, say, we did like each other,—”
She liked him.
“—we’ll never get this time back.” He swooped in and kissed her.
His mouth was gentle on hers, just brushing her skin. She opened, and his lips parted, too. The malty scent of the beer swirled in her mouth, but she could taste him, a clean, male taste, on her tongue.
Desire sparked through her.
Lizzy was used to that. It meant nothing. The zaps never went anywhere. It was all just static arcing between storm clouds for her. The electricity never condensed and became that bolt that shattered her.
Except that one time.
But with Theo, the buzzing of electricity seemed stronger, but it was probably just her imagination.
As Theo backed up, his breath had turned ragged, but his eyes had begun to shine with amusement again. His hands were still around her face, and he rubbed her lower lip with his thumb like he would like to still be kissing her. “So let’s not rush.”
Lizzy considered throwing her arms around him, dragging him down to the soft carpeting, and rushing things. “Yeah, it’s not like life is short or anything.”
He blinked, and his eyebrows flinched downward like a bright light had flashed in his face, but he sucked in a deep breath instead of saying something. “So, about tomorrow.”
Tomorrow was Friday.
Lizzy relented. “Yeah. I’ll text you where Georgie and I are going to be.”
“I was hoping that I could take you out, maybe for supper.”
“My roomie has insisted that we go dancing tomorrow night.”
His smile grew, and she could have sworn that his dark gold eyes actually deepened a few shades. “Dancing.”
“Yeah. Dancing.” She really wanted to dance with him again. “You gonna show up?”
His sweet smile melted her heart a little, and she wondered if she should believe him when he said, “Of course. I love to dance.”
The Dom-Date: 2
That night, after Lizzy spent an hour giggling and exclaiming in wonder at Bruce’s katas—and he really had come a long way from that awkward geek who had booked one of her first appointments two years ago,—she strode through the corridors of The Devilhouse toward the ladies’ locker room to change out of her bright-blue beaded cocktail dress. Bruce was a sweet guy. She had accepted his invitation to watch his brown belt test, watching his eyes to make sure that he understood that she was there for moral support and in friendship.
Bruce was also a smart guy and understood the limitations of a Devilhouse relationship.
Lizzy pried her high, high heels off her sore feet and held them by the heels. The bones in her feet groaned as they settled, adjusting to standing flat-footed on the cool carpeting in the hallway. Old breaks in her toes protested, and Lizzy rolled her ankle, loosening the ligaments.
Down the corridor, The Dom turned the corner and walked toward her. He was so tall that he looked lanky, even though she had seen how ripped his forearms were and how broad his shoulders were under that suit jacket.
Lizzy’s heart hopped under her ribs. She grinned a bright, sunny smile, refusing to look morose.
One side of his mouth smiled at her, and his eyes softened upon seeing tiny little Lizzy standing there, massaging her own foot. “Are you finished for the day?”
“Yep. Gotta study for a few hours before I can crash.”
His smile warmed just a little, maybe with a tiny bit of fondness. “Are you all right to drive home?”
The Dom called the car service if he so much as suspected anyone was impaired.
“Oh, yeah. I’m fine. The whole night, I’ve had like half a flute of c
hampagne. I’m driving Georgie home, though. She had a drinking game scheduled. I’ll pour her into bed.”
His solemn smile didn’t change. “You’re a good friend, Lizbeth.”
Lizbeth. “Thanks.”
He nodded as a farewell and strolled down the corridor toward his office, which was off one of the dead-end hallways way back behind the office.
Lizbeth, not Elizaveta.
~~~~~
Weeks before, in the echoing expanse of the empty Devilhouse main stage, The Dom’s deep voice whispered out of the darkness. “Why are you here, Elizaveta?”
Her breath stuttered in her chest. “You always call me Lizbeth.”
“Not tonight. Not here.” The Dom said, and she almost didn’t understand because he had switched languages on her and was speaking Russian. “You speak Russian, don’t you?”
She hadn’t spoken it aloud for years. Russian was her first language, spoken at home. Her first giggles and cries had been in Russian and had been answered with Russian. Her grandmother had never learned English, so she moaned her osteoporosis pain in Russian. A small part in the back of Lizzy’s brain still translated everything into Russian, so that her soul might understand it.
“Da,” she said.
Even that one word felt foreign in her mouth, but The Dom’s words slipped in her ears and dove straight into the part of her brain where she never went.
He continued speaking in Russian, “You already know what your body can take. You already know how bad pain can be. Why are you here?”
The guttural grunts of the Russian language rang in her head and sounded like angry shouts, even though she could barely hear him over the hissing air conditioner. He didn’t sound British at all, anymore. His Russian had no trace of his English accent. He almost, just a little, sounded like the Russian actors pretending to speak German in those World War Two Soviet Hero movies that her father used to rent.
The Dom walked around in front of her, and he stood with his back to the one light, his face in shadows. The bright stage lights glared on his white shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
The welts on her back and legs stung, but she had competed through worse pain. Hell, she had practiced for hours and hours through far worse pain.
He was driving her down into that dark pit again. She had edged around that dark pit of pain in her mind for years, but just the sound of the Russian language was driving her toward it.
The pit might be bottomless, and she might fall forever, or it might have a bottom, it might end, and she might be able to fill it all in someday.
She replied, even though her tongue felt clumsy speaking Russian after so long, “I’m here for you.”
The dim lights shone on his bright blond hair, so she saw him shake his head.
A whip cracked out of the darkness at her.
Mannix Stalks
Deep within the anonymous business corridors of The Devilhouse, Mannix rapped on The Dom’s office door with one knuckle. The heavy door wobbled under his hand, but he didn’t push it open. “Hello?”
“Come in,” The Dom said from inside. His voice was lower in timbre than even Mannix’s, so Mannix pulled his vocal cords lower in his throat to deepen his voice.
He pushed open the door and walked in.
The Dom of The Devilhouse sat behind his big, glass desk, tapping on his phone with a stylus. He laid the phone screen-down on the desk. “Yes, Mannix. What can I do for you?”
Mannix lowered himself into one of the chairs in front of the desk, keeping his left leg straight while he sat. Sometimes that helped. “I’m in the market for a new sub.”
The Dom barely smiled with one corner of his mouth. He was about as expressive as a blank, white mannequin. “Already?”
“It’s been seven months.” Mannix didn’t feel the need to defend himself to a fellow Dom, but that wasn’t an abnormal lifespan for one of his subs.
“Has it? I’ll ask around, but I don’t know of anyone looking for a Dom at the moment.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d keep an eye out for me. I had an eye on one of your contractors at the membership party last week, the little blond. She was wearing a gold dress and black shoes. I think her name is Lizzy, or something like that.”
“She’s not interested in a D/s relationship,” The Dom stood and offered his hand across the desk. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a prior appointment to attend to.”
“Sure.” Mannix hauled himself to his feet and shook. The Dom’s hand was smooth and cool, and he almost never blinked those eyes that were the color of broken blue bottle glass. To Mannix, he looked fake, like a constructed man. “Wouldn’t want to make you late.”
The Dom’s eyebrows flickered a bit. “Yes, we wouldn’t want that.”
“Thanks.”
Even The Dom’s British accent didn’t sound quite right, like he was putting it on. He must be hiding something.
Mannix hung around The Devilhouse for another hour, watching, but Lizzy Pajari wasn’t around.
He was in the spa room sitting in the sauna, a completely redundant feature in the desert but he supposed that moist heat was a change, when his phone buzzed with a text.
Carlos texted: Need to meet. Where?
Mannix texted back: Los Dos Molinos, 6PM.
~~~~~
Los Dos Molinos was a slum house converted into a restaurant and had the hottest food in town. Eating there was a lesson in the consequences of machismo. The only warning, other than its notorious reputation, was a small note on the bottom of the menu that Green is hotter than red. Mannix ate there a couple times a week, sweating over a plate of green chile enchiladas, which scraped the inside of his mouth with fire, or the adovada ribs, which burned chemical fire all the way down his throat to his stomach.
The restaurant’s only drawback was the undersized booths. Mannix’s long legs reached far under the table. He constantly jammed his shins on the other bench.
The offensive coordinator called Mannix’s cell phone while he ate, wanting to hash out the decision about the halfback’s groin pull because they only had a week to either to try to rehab him or to release him. Because the team’s offensive line lacked depth, rehabilitating him was the better of the choices because they didn’t want to waste a trade on a halfback.
Carlos opened the dark-tinted door and blinded half the patrons in the restaurant while Mannix was still talking. Mannix waved him over.
Carlos was a whipcord thin and tough, like a steel cable wearing jeans and a blue shirt. His Latino background showed in his tan skin and black eyes. His nose was as thin as the rest of him and came to a perfect point, but he had lost his fine line of a mustache someplace. His upper lip was a shade lighter than the rest of his face. He had the physique of a half-marathoner, a little too much gristle and muscle to be one of those anorexic marathon runners. Carlos ordered the pork carnitas with red chile from the frumpy waitress while Mannix wound up the phone call.
Mannix scooted to the inside corner of the booth so Carlos could sit diagonally across. He asked the offensive coordinator on the phone, “Do we need more Arnolds?”
Over the phone, the guy said, “No, we’re fine.”
Mannix covered the phone and told Carlos, “Yeah, we need a case.” Back on the phone, “All right, Al. I’ll call you later.” He ended the call.
The waitress slid Carlos’s plate in front of him. “Caliente.” When she warned that it was hot, she wasn’t talking about the plate.
Carlos dug into his red carnitas, using the tortilla like a spoon. “While we’re taking orders,” he said, “you need anything else?”
“Not right now.”
“Bueno!” Carlos sat back, his black eyes happy.
“Si,” Mannix replied, as if speaking Spanish were a good subterfuge in the Southwest in a Sonoran restaurant. “Que pasa?”
Carlos replied that he was fine, his wife was fine, his children were fine, and his uncles and cousins were fine. “And how’s your family?”
“All fine.” Mannix sat back in his seat and wiped his mouth, getting the last bit of grease off his lip.
“Still no lady friend?” Carlos pried, smiling.
“None to speak of.” Not at the moment, and not that he would talk about personal things to Carlos, anyway.
“And how’s your brother?” Carlos asked.
That was odd. Mannix wouldn’t have mentioned him to Carlos. They played for different teams.
He squinted at Carlos. “He’s fine.”
“Glad to hear it. He still lives in the middle of town?”
Mannix’s mind raced, putting possibilities together. “No. He bought a house down the street from me a couple months back, pretty much at the bottom of the market, the lucky bastard.”
Carlos’s grim smile sawed on Mannix’s nerves.
Mannix leaned back, unsettled.
~~~~~
Later, in the warm night, Mannix sat in his idling car, waiting for Lizzy Pajari to drive out of The Devilhouse’s parking lot. His car’s massive engine snarled behind his head. Its bass vibrations tickled his eardrums and crawled on his neck. The seat heater warmed his back and ass until he was sweating, and the air conditioner blew frigid air on his cheeks and chin.
Outside, the guest parking area was bare of other cars, and he sat alone in the dark car in a dark corner of the lot. He adjusted his shoulders in the small bucket seat. A cramp started between his shoulder blades and spread down his spine to the back of his knee.
Lizzy Pajari should leave soon. Her last appointment had been from eight to nine, and the white guy in the gi had left ten minutes ago.
Mannix listened to a new thumping rap album that one of the guys on the team had told him that he had to get, but he kept his knees and arms still. He draped on wrist over the steering wheel, and a tattooed tendril of black ink reached out of his shirt sleeve over the bones of his wrist.
A red sports car, license plate WHIZZY, scooted out of the employee’s parking lot. The overhead streetlights glinted on the blond hair of the person in the driver’s seat.
Falling Hard (Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy, #1) Page 9