A basket of pretzel bread arrived, and Meg didn’t waste a moment dissecting a piece right along with the sparse info the Greers had shared. “Persuade the players to get chatty with me. That’s what you’re asking, hmm?”
“That’s right,” Joan confirmed. “The championship win was a high in and of itself. While we expected our men to celebrate, some of them have a false sense of security and invulnerability. Staff adjustments and trades have made things hectic, but J.T. and I aren’t out of touch. As Salvinski told you, someone’s in deep. Take a closer look at our kicker, Omar Beckham.”
Meg had heard the athlete’s name on sports TV and radio often enough for one league violation or another. He was a risk to any team that took him on, but the Greers had acquired that risk because the man could win games. “Is he friends with Waverly? Why haven’t you asked her to monitor things or have a heart-to-heart with him?”
“The dynamic of her friendship with him is why we’re not involving her in this process. She’s protective of him. Her judgment’s compromised,” Joan said. “Now, then. Beckham may not be the only user, but if we need to make an example that no man is indispensable, then we will. We need the identities of the users and the suppliers.”
“That kind of admission won’t come from a ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ chat.”
“Precisely why it’s vital that you build a rapport. Gaining trust is key. Camp starts this month, after the rookie symposium. We’ll need you to stay out of the way during practice but be near. Find out who goes where when they’re off the field and go with them. Get yourself on the right guest lists. Make them believe you’re kosher.”
“Meaning act as if I talk the drug-free game but secretly I’m down with using?”
Joan shrugged a slim shoulder and drummed her fingers across the bejeweled neckline of her white silk crepe dress. “You’ll know what measures to take when an opportunity presents itself. Just do what’s necessary to collect the information we require. And do it with your clothes on.”
“Had to add that, didn’t you?”
Joan sighed. “All right, I apologize.”
“What’s your endgame? A clean roster?”
“Think of it more as cleaning the roster. The NFL has a substance abuse policy in place, which we intend to enforce. But we’d prefer to avoid PR disasters this season, so the sooner and quieter we can nip this problem in the bud, the better.”
So this went beyond helping drug abusers break free of a dangerous threat that might cost them careers, families and perhaps their lives. “You want me to coax the users out of hiding just so you can cut them from the team? Do you care whether or not they get help? And suppose someone else picks them up—don’t those teams deserve the courtesy of knowing what demons come with these men?”
“Our role,” J.T. said, folding his massive hands on the table in front of him, “is to protect the Las Vegas Villains franchise. We will accept nothing short of excellence. We won’t have our championship pissed on by a damn addict. Do what you have to do to get the information we need, then put it in our hands. It’s simple.”
“Actually, no, it’s not. What makes you believe it’d be simple? The team put your daughter through one hell of a rite of passage last year. I have neither the time nor the interest in experiencing that just for kicks.”
The man pulled a note from his billfold, scribbled something with a heavy hand then pushed it across the table to her. Meg’s mouth dropped open and a piece of pretzel bread tumbled out.
“God help us, she’s an Eliza Dolittle,” Joan murmured woefully, but Meg was too shaken by the figure scrawled in front of her to react to the insult.
“That kind of money isn’t for a just for kicks job,” J.T. said. “As a thank-you and a gesture of goodwill, we’ve arranged for a substantial donation to the city as well as the Good Samaritans of Nevada. That’s the certified prevention and treatment agency assisting us. Everything is aboveboard.”
“Then why would I be compensated?”
Ozzie said, “You’re taking an unpaid leave of absence from ODC while you’re working the Villains job. Your income’s got to come from someplace.”
They’d thought of everything, as though the decision had been made but consulting her was a pesky formality.
“And if I say no?”
J.T. and Joan’s expressions dimmed, and Ozzie stood. “Come with me to the bar, Meg. I want a different drink and ain’t keen on drinking alone.”
“So you’re going to have peanuts with it?” she quipped, though she was pushing back her chair and reaching for the walking stick.
To the Greers, Ozzie asked, “Are you sure you want this one? She’s got an attitude that’ll raise your blood pressure. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it.”
Joining him in the lounge, Meg weakly cuffed her supervisor on the arm. “Your high blood pressure has more to do with sports super-fandom and a salt-heavy diet than it does with me, Ozzie.”
“Eh, you’re probably right.” He signaled to the bartender and ordered them each a custom cocktail. “But so what, Meg? Take the assignment.”
“Are you eager to be rid of me for a while?”
“That’s a bullshit thing to say. You’re competent. More than that, to be honest. That synthetic drug case we just wrapped up—your research was brilliant. You came to us with impeccable credentials, stellar recommendations—”
“And three legs,” she added, raising the stick.
“The sooner you stop thinking of it that way, the happier you’ll be. Guarantee it. Until then, you need a new challenge, something away from the desk. What the Greers want you to do for them, that’s a taste of what you’re used to. Going undercover, breathing in all that risk and action.”
“Deceiving people,” she whispered, finding his amber eyes sympathetic. Could she truly convey to anyone that a career in DEA had been both heaven and hell? “Lying about who I am. Earning trust in order to twist it into a weapon.”
“It was all to serve a greater good.”
The relationships she’d severed, the victims she couldn’t save, the men she’d come to for sex but had hurt eventually—and the man who’d devastated her—they’d all been casualties. On the other side of that was all the destruction she’d helped prevent and the frail comfort of knowing she was true to her duty to the law and fulfilled an allegiance to a country that depended on the loyalty of its soldiers.
Years of protecting and serving America, empty days highlighted by the immeasurable sacrifices she’d made to hunt criminals, had brought her here—vulnerable and relying on a stick.
“What’s the greater good in this situation?” She pushed her cocktail toward Ozzie and let him knock it back. It’d take another half dozen to jiggle loose his sobriety. The man’s tipping point was legendary. “The Greers extract a couple of drug abusers from their team. Men lose their jobs and may not get the kind of aid they need to turn things around.”
“Chances are the dealers are operating in wider markets. Getting illicit drugs to kids, even. So we do what we need to do to shut ’em down. But look, Meg, nobody’s asking you to be a superhero. That’s not what DEA’s about, and not what this job with the Villains is about.”
“Then tell me, Ozzie, what’s the greater good?”
“Could be there isn’t a clear one,” he said bluntly. “At the end of all this, though, if you can stop feeling like a victim, then it’s worth it.” He stood, left a few bills for the bartender and pointed to her stick. “It’s a cane, Meg. That’s all it is. And with the money the Greers are throwing at you, you can feed that fancy shoe fetish of yours. Get over the ego trip. Consider the opportunity.”
She sat at the bar among a gathering of people she didn’t know, as music beat in her ears and her thoughts competed for priority. On contract with the Villains, she’d be wading into a high-profile world she knew only through her friendship with Waverly.
Having a friend on the training staff might cer
tainly help Meg become acclimated with the team. But Waverly wouldn’t know the full truth behind Meg’s contract. Their friendship would be shaded with lies, shadowed under a layer of deceit.
Not ideal circumstances, but what if in the end the franchise and the Greer family could be on a real path toward recovery? What if a little bit of lying on her part could secure their chance for a fresh start in the wake of a tumultuous year?
Returning to the table, she announced, “I made a decision.”
They watched her in expectant silence.
“I’m accepting the gig. And I want dessert.”
Chapter Two
“You’re a tough woman to pin down.”
The echoing voice stabbed into the quiet gymnasium training room, throwing off Meg’s hand-eye coordination and causing her uppercut to miss the punching dummy’s jaw. Off balance, she stumbled forward, and her left hip started to throb.
She swore, clinging to the six-foot mannequin’s shoulders, and grinded her teeth against the pain. “¡Ay, Dios mio! Waverly, I’m stressed, carb-deprived, and jonesing to hit something. I wouldn’t want to be near me right now.”
The twenty-four-hour Main Street gym was the watering hole where a number of Meg’s colleagues gathered to sweat off calories and exchange gossip. Today she was alone, taking advantage of a predawn workout. Last night at CUT she’d practically binged, and she’d skipped her first-thing-in-the-morning stretches, which explained her pelvic stiffness.
“Answer me this.” Waverly Greer, wearing a cream-colored jumper and a floral herbal fragrance, sauntered forward to stand behind the dummy and peek over its shoulder. “Is this the closest you’ve been to a man since Parker?”
“If you intend to go on about him, you can turn around and get the hell out of here. I mean that.”
Parker Brandt, an LVMPD officer with a cute kid and a grin that made her forget herself, was supposed to be a summer fling but she’d lost control of the relationship. At a crossroads, trying to figure out whether or not what they had might be love, they’d ended up taking off in different directions.
Parker had cut into her orbit again a few weeks ago. The sex had been rough with desperation neither of them wanted to acknowledge, but it was a superficial thrill, satisfaction so fragile that she’d left his bed in an emotional fog. She could no longer mourn the relationship; could no longer force herself to miss him. It was closure, yet it left her at loose ends.
She had circled back to that strange place she found herself every time she ended things with a lover, harping on the past again, stuck in old dreams of the treachery and violence and heartbreak that had stolen her capacity to move on. It’d been practically five years since the shooting, but it might as well have been five minutes.
She would never be free.
“I need to dig into this workout, all right?” She’d been at it over two hours already, stirring around endorphins, trying to burn off tension, but what did trivial details matter? “Whatever you tracked me down for, let’s talk about it later.”
Concern pulled at Waverly’s lips. “If the guy’s name can incite rage, then you need to put some things in check.”
“It’s not that.” Balancing her weight to her uninjured hip, she mopped her face with the bottom of her midriff top. It wasn’t about Parker, who’d been a diversion to keep her body sated. In DEA, diversions and one-time-only sex had been practical. After she’d packed her stuff in her Camaro and driven toward a new life in Nevada, they’d become few and far between. “We weren’t aiming for an engagement and a happily-ever-after.”
“But Parker thought you were, didn’t he?”
“He was mistaken. That’s meant for some people, like you and your fiancé. But as for me—” she shrugged, gave her best attempt at a carefree laugh “—I’m meant for something else. Good times. Flings. One-nighters.”
Waverly smiled, hooking her arm around the mannequin’s neck. A mane of blond curls bobbed about her shoulders. “Then let discretion be your friend. My parents might not react too kindly to paparazzi catching you taking walks of shame. It won’t reflect so well on the franchise, is what they’d say.”
“Spoken from experience? Who caught you sneaking out of Jeremiah Tarantino’s place with your panties in your hand?” About this time last year Waverly had struck up a naughty affair with a fellow trainer—who also happened to be the son of the team’s shady previous owner. A suspension, a resignation, and a hell of a lot of drama had ensued, but Meg tried not to linger on that.
Where her moral compass had guided her, and what she’d done in the name of friendship and for the sake of the law, still weighed on her. Somewhere in the recesses of her thoughts was a sense of dread that whispered her day of reckoning awaited her.
Maybe the unexplainable feeling that she was being followed wasn’t so crazy, after all. But she wouldn’t tell Waverly that.
“I’m J.T. and Joan Greer’s employee first and their daughter second,” Waverly said. “What’s best for the business prevails over all else.”
“That is effing depressing.”
“A fact that’s not likely to change. It’s what you can look forward to, now that you’ve joined the drug prevention initiative. But I predict Mom and Dad will be spending more time at the stadium than at camp. Let’s hope that gives you some breathing room.”
“They told you I said yes?”
“Mom did. Last night we met up with the seamstress for another gown fitting. More alterations to be done. Oh, hang on, I need to download some veil designs.” She plucked her phone from an embossed leather handbag. A couple of taps and swipes and she dropped the phone back inside. “So the reason I found you this morning is about the wedding. You never confirmed that you’d be my maid of honor.”
Right, that. Waverly had asked last month and Meg was still stalling. Rejecting the honor would hurt her friend’s feelings. But accepting when all she could imagine was limping down the aisle and enduring the reception without a date to keep her company didn’t seem fair, either. So she’d held off, finding reasons to avoid the conversation.
“The wedding is next month. Jeremiah and I need to know.”
“Have you asked your sisters or any of your other friends?”
“No. I asked you. I chose you.”
“But I can’t, Waverly.”
“Why not?”
“Can you not let this go? Are you that much like your parents?”
“The Greers usually don’t give up pursuit without a good fight. I didn’t come here to fight with you, though. I’m here to tell you that you’re my friend and I want you to be my maid of honor.” She averted her eyes then edged away from the punching dummy. “Are you hesitating because of Jeremiah? Do you not approve?”
“We tabled this issue, didn’t we? Jeremiah’s fine.”
“His family’s not. His father attempted suicide a few months ago. And his godfather—” The interior doors to the gymnasium were hauled open and a cluster of people in sweats fiddling with phones and activity trackers trooped inside. “You know where I’m going with this.”
And his godfather was arrested. But Antony Grimaldi was a free man again, having been released a few short weeks after being collected in a police cruiser. Meg had followed the developments through federal contacts who knew what was happening before the media could sense it. The man’s high-roller haven casino was up for sale, a technicality had spared him an indictment on illegal gambling dealings, and charges involving his attempt to procure a murder had been vacated.
Technicality be damned. The charges should have held up. They were legit, and Meg knew because she had been the one to uncover the unregulated ring Jeremiah Tarantino’s godfather and father were running out of the Grimaldi Royal Casino.
She’d needed those charges to stick. It was more than a matter of gratifying her ego or proving that her investigative skills were top-notch. Grimaldi’s name was a chill skittering down her spine.
“I know exactly where you’re going with this, Waverly, and I wish you wouldn’t. Jeremiah’s a good man and he loves you. I pray to Mary that your marriage is a blessed one.”
“But you don’t want to be a part of the wedding.”
Meg rested her hands against the mannequin’s pectorals, leaning for support. “I can’t.”
“You won’t,” Waverly corrected. Her voice was free of accusation, gentle with compassion. “There’s a difference, Meg.”
“That’s fair. I won’t do it. I won’t embarrass you with a cane that’ll ruin the outfit.”
“You look badass with the cane.”
“Looking badass all the time gets tiring. Besides, I have a limp and…and…”
“And what?”
“And I’ll have no date. Men don’t want me because of this cane and because of this limp. When anyone looks past the damage and sees me, I tell myself ‘Oh, Meg, you’d better not be choosy. Hang on tight ’cause another man might not come around.’ This is my world, Waverly. Welcome.” Frustrated, Meg pushed against the dummy, landed her uppercut crisply against its jaw. Then came another punch paired with an angry, guttural scream. “Son of a bitch,” she sobbed, staggering back a few steps until she wound up square on her ass on the gymnasium floor. “Son of a bitch!”
“Is she going to be okay?” Meg heard someone ask as she drew up her healthy leg and hugged her knee. Through a tangle of her light brown hair she saw a gym employee hovering, his laminated ID badge swinging from a lanyard.
“She will. Thanks for checking up,” Waverly answered, kneeling down. “Okay, Meg, what time do you clock in today?”
“Nine sharp.” Don’t ask why—just send her on her way. “Why?”
“That gives us plenty of time. Get up, hit the shower, and do something with your hair. Meet me in the lobby in thirty.”
“The question bears repeating. Why?”
“I’m scheduling you for a sit-down with Willa Smart.”
“Willa Smart is…?”
“The founder and CEO of the hottest dating company in the West. Wait, have you never heard of Dating Done Smart? It’s headquartered here in Las Vegas.”
The Forgiven: The End Game Series (Book 5) Page 2