by Becky McGraw
One corner of her full, swollen lips kicked up. “Get busy then, Poindexter.” Grace laughed, and his eyes fixed on those lips. Memories of them wrapped around his shaft just earlier sent blood rushing there. With a growl, he yanked her to him for a quick, but deep kiss then pushed her away and strode out of the bathroom before he changed his mind.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
With a deep sigh of the moisture-laden bathroom air, Grace dressed in the tight yoga pants and equally snug t-shirt Brennan had found for her. She wrapped a towel around her wet hair, then walked into the living room to find him busy at work on his laptop.
“How’s it going?” she asked as she passed him to make sure the tub was off, and evidence of their hot tub love was gone before she slid the balcony door shut.
“I got through the firewall on the first try and thankfully,” he said intently focused on his screen. “They opened the email with the keylogger virus I sent, so I got right into their server and can access everything.” He sighed, clicked a few keys then frowned. “The issue is there is so much information on here, it will take forever to sort through it.”
“What kind of information?” Grace asked, going to the table to pull out a chair and sit beside him.
“Well, it appears the server is a one-stop storage cache for all of their entities. That will save time having to hack—” He looked at her then back at the computer. “Um—access four different servers, but it also creates another problem of having to weed through tons of files. If they had it all partitioned, it would be easier, but they don’t.”
“Wow,” Grace said, watching him scroll through files quicker than she could read them.
She didn’t have more time. Swallowing hard, she faced the fact she might have been hasty in deciding she couldn’t go back to the resort. Now that she had people watching her back, maybe she would feel safer—would be safer.
“Would it be quicker for me to go back and apologize to Master Tim to get inside and find Marcy?” she asked, hoping he said no. The prospect of doing that was reasonable, but terrifying to her, and rightly so.
Brennan’s eyes shot back to her, and he pushed his glasses up on his nose. “You are never going back there, do you understand?” he grated, and a delicious shiver skated down her spine.
She nodded, and noticed Brennan looked so different with his glasses on. “Why don’t you wear your glasses all the time anymore?”
He leaned in closer to the computer and double-tapped the mouse. “Because I had eye surgery after I left MIT. My eyesight was too bad to join the military, which I was determined to do back then.”
That was something she didn’t know about him. He had never mentioned a desire to join the service after college. She knew his father and older brother did stints, but Brennan just didn’t seem the type for it, at least back then.
Now, she might not come to that same conclusion. The glasses weren’t the only thing that had changed about him.
“Why were you so determined to join the military?” she asked, and didn’t miss his eye roll. But those eyes didn’t turn to her, they stayed on his computer screen.
He sighed. “To please my family…my father mostly. Every male Lowell since the Revolutionary War has served, except me.”
“Is that where the muscles came from too?” The delicious washboard abs which she’d tested and tasted with her tongue a few minutes ago. Of its own accord, her hand reached out to wrap around his rock-hard bicep and squeeze. His muscle flexed against her palm and he sighed.
Sitting back in his chair, he looked at her. “Grace, we have two hours now before Logan gets back. We’ll have to catch up later, okay? Why don’t you go take a nap or something?”
His words made her feel as useless as she was in this situation. She pushed back her chair and stood. “I’m going into the bedroom to call the police to see if they can help me get my things back from the Silver Chains.”
“Great idea,” he replied, sounding relieved as he tapped his mouse again.
Grace strode to his bedroom and went inside, then located the phone on the nightstand beside the queen-sized bed. She sat down and picked up the phone, but waited to dial the operator.
Since telling the police that Brennan had been defending her in the process of the kidnapping resulted in them dropping the kidnapping and unlawful restraint charges against him, it made her wonder if she could do more. He was still facing assault and grand theft charges, and those were still very serious.
Tim had assaulted her in the limo without a contract signed, and unlawfully restrained and assaulted her again in the hotel room with a contract signed under duress. Whether it was guised as BDSM foreplay or not, the bruises and abrasions on her backside, which she’d seen in the bathroom mirror, were irrefutable proof of his assault.
The signature on that contract he ‘helped’ her sign in the hotel room couldn’t be valid. Not only was it nowhere near her normal signature, it was also signed with coercion.
It would be embarrassing to admit all that she’d allowed him to do to her to the police, to show them those bruises, but she would do that for Brennan. Maybe with the leverage of charges against him, Tim would drop the remainder of his against Brennan.
Grace stabbed the 0 button with purpose and waited for the operator to answer.
Thirty minutes later, she walked back into the living room smiling, but Brennan didn’t look up from his computer. His nose was almost pressed to his laptop screen, as he played a concerto on his keyboard. Memories of those talented fingers playing a concerto on her body caused a shiver to rack her as she stopped at the table to sit down.
Grace wanted an encore, but it was obvious Brennan was now in his geek zone. And she was thankful for his focus so he could help her find her sister. Which was, after all, why she was in Vegas. God, she needed to remember that, but it was damned difficult when she couldn’t stop watching the play of his muscles under his tight skin as he typed.
“The police are on the way here to take me to get my things,” she said, and earned a grunt. Even that sound raised the hair on her arms, because it was also one of the sounds he made while they made love.
Grace squirmed in the chair, thankful that the soak in the hot tub seemed to have relieved the soreness in her rear. But the thought of the hot tub brought on another kind of torture. That had been the single most significant sexual experience in her life. She was thankful it had been with the man who had been her only sexual partner. The thought of doing, or repeating what she’d done with him in that hot tub with someone else just didn’t excite her. She didn’t know if she’d have the courage to do it with someone else.
Letting go of the inhibitions drilled into her by her mother was something Grace had difficulty doing. So was giving up control of herself to her baser instincts. With Brennan, she felt safe to do both.
“Wait until Logan and Susan get back,” he said.
“The police wait for no one. I’m on their schedule and they said they’d be here in forty-five minutes,” she replied.
His eyes glittered as they finally swung to her and narrowed. “Well, you need to insist they wait, because I don’t want you going back to that place alone.”
This new macho man persona of his was titillating to say the least. In college, he’d been a lot more laid back and passive, definitely not the protective type. Passive enough to let her dictate the terms of their relationship. But he seemed on board with the friends-with-benefits arrangement back then too.
God, why had she been so stupid years ago? He’d probably have agreed to a different type of relationship with her if she’d asked. Now there were too many barriers between them, and too much time had passed. They were different people with different goals and distractions.
“I’ll have protection and will be fine. It will give you time—” she argued.
“No!!” he grated, shoving back his chair to stand and glare at her, sending a delicious thrill zipping through her body. “I have to focus here, Grace, and I can’
t do that if I’m worried about you!”
He was worried about her? Her lips tingled as her eyes locked on his mouth and what ifs ran through her mind. To worry about someone meant you had to care about them, right?
“And stop looking at me like you could eat me up! It’s not helping me focus here,” he shouted, shoving a hand through his thick hair, causing hanks to stick up in every direction.
“I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not,” Grace replied with a grin and a waggle of her eyebrows. Her hand moved to the corner of her mouth to feel that grin. How long had it been since she’d felt like this? Eight years, she answered to herself, moving her hand back to her lap. “See? The best thing I can do for you right now is get out of your hair for a couple of hours.”
“I’ll text my brother to go with you, then,” he grumbled, sitting back down to pull out his cell phone. His thumbs moved swiftly over the screen, then he threw the phone back onto the table and rested his hands on his keyboard again. “He’ll be here in forty-five minutes too and hopefully I’ll have some answers by the time you get back.”
The frustration in his voice made her feel guilty. Here he was trying to help her, trying to focus, and she was doing everything in her power to distract him. Like he’d done to her during college. Now, she knew how he felt back then.
“Okay, I’m going to sit over there and wait,” she announced, as she stood to point at the sofa. The sofa where their last round of lovemaking had ended. With a sigh, she walked there, and picked up a tourist magazine from the coffee table.
It was tough, but Dex somehow managed to ignore Grace’s soft humming from the sofa until Patton picked her up. After she left, it became much easier for him to focus on the main employee list for the corporation that he’d found, a list which he believed might lead to discovering where Marcy Wentworth might be at the moment.
That list was only one of many he had to look at however, because it appeared the Silver Chains Corporation had four entities: the resort, which also appeared to house the escort service, the adult film studio where the phone sex line was also operated, and a warehouse location which he assumed housed the sex toys and BDSM paraphernalia they sold on their website, which could be managed there.
Dex skimmed quickly, because he only had a short amount of time. He’d go back to dig deeper if anything caught his eye. Even at the speed he was scrolling, though, one thing became clear. The resort must assign aliases to their ‘employees’ because Barbie, Kitty, Sugar, Desire and Sexy weren’t normal first names. Once that realization hit, he started over again to focus on the last names, but still didn’t find Wentworth among the names.
Frustration built as he opened the equally lengthy main termination list, which was probably his last hope of finding Marcy easily. If her name wasn’t there, he’d have to stop for an hour and write a search script for the million other assorted lists, which he would’ve done first, if he hadn’t been distracted for two hours.
But he couldn’t make himself regret spending those two amazing hours with Grace. It had been time well spent and he felt like a million bucks—better than he’d felt in a long time. Dex planned on spending even more time with her, in the same manner, before he left Vegas.
But that was dependent on finding her sister quickly.
If he found Marcy’s name on the termination list, it would be great news for him. It would mean she was no longer inside the organization, so he could stop looking for her there. The revelation might not be so good for Grace, though, because it would mean her sister wasn’t missing—she was on the lam if she hadn’t returned home, and might never be found.
Should that be the situation, Dex would put their resident investigator, Mac Mackenzie, on the case, because, to him, there were no missing persons—just people waiting to be found.
The door of the suite opened, and Logan followed Susan inside. She was smiling, but he wasn’t, as she handed him a shopping bag, before she walked toward the table.
“How’s it going?” she asked, stopping beside him. Logan strode directly to the bedroom without a word.
“Y’all go shopping?” Dex asked, giving her a brief glance. That would be an oddity indeed, because he knew how badly she hated shopping.
During the mission she and Logan did at the fertility clinic, Susan, aka Bunny Lawrence, had to have a trophy-wife makeover and Dex thought she might kill Logan before it was over. But damn if his beautiful, tomboy boss didn’t look and act like a trophy wife when beauty queen Cherry Branch finished with her, right down to the exaggerated soft, southern accent.
Dex found it hilarious that Logan still occasionally called her Bunny to needle her.
“No, we did a little recon at the Silver Chains Resort,” she informed with an odd glance at the bedroom door. “Logan and I may go undercover there. I think that might be our best bet of getting inside that studio.”
“It would be your best bet for getting into trouble,” Dex grumbled, with worry twisting his gut. He stopped typing to pin her with his eyes. “Just ask Grace or Marcy Wentworth.” He slapped his forehead. “Oh, yeah—she disappeared inside there and Grace would’ve too if I hadn’t committed a felony to save her.” He rolled his eyes then looked back at the computer. “Just let me work my magic remotely. I know you’re excitement deprived since Junior was conceived, but trust me, you’ll find more than you bargained for at the Silver Chains Resort.”
“So have you found anything, Superman?” she asked snidely, folding her arms over her chest. “You’re doing what you do best, but still nothing, huh? As much as it might surprise you, nerd boy, sometimes there’s no replacement for shoe leather.”
“Or belt leather, as is the case at that resort,” he countered with a snort. If Susan was there and had done any kind of investigation, she would know that.
But what if she and Logan did know that and found that kind of thing titillating?
Dex stopped typing again to study her, then glanced at the bedroom door. Laughter bubbled inside him, but he stopped it by clenching his abs.
Was Logan the Dom or Sub?
It actually hurt to hold back his laughter at that thought. Both of the Logans had dominant alpha personalities, so it would be a toss-up, and would probably hilarious to watch. Or it could be a caged death match, which was almost the case with both their joint mission and marriage. Watching those two interact was his entertainment at the office.
A flash of Logan wearing the leather chaps and G-string he’d worn tickled his brain, and Dex lost his battle. Laughter shot up from deep in his belly to explode from his mouth. He held his stomach as wave after wave consumed him.
“What’s so damned funny?” Susan asked, looking confused.
Dex glanced up, but he was so weak all he could do was shake his head.
“Well, you need to get us answers if you don’t want us going back there. You have about eight hours, because we made reservations for tomorrow’s munch.” She turned toward the bedroom, but looked back. “We’ll be, ah, taking a nap. If you find something, knock.”
She went inside and shut the door and Dex sat there staring at it. He didn’t want them going back to the resort, but it might not be such a bad idea either.
Someone also needed to do recon at the studio to determine the best way to get into the place, if they had to get inside that way. Patton seemed like the prime candidate for that job, and he would put him on that as soon as he found out the location of the mysterious studio in the desert. Having more information on Master Tim wasn’t a bad idea either, and he would do some research as soon as he wrote a script to finish parsing the directories on the server.
Knowing one’s enemy well was never a bad idea.
Forty-five minutes later, Dex started the search script and grabbed Susan’s laptop to start his research. An hour later, he was scratching his head. The guy was ex-Army? A non-com officer even? Next, he’d pull up his DOD record to see if he could find more about his service record and discharge.
Another though
t hit him, and he pulled out his phone to dial Gray, their resident forensic accountant formerly of the NSA, and the closest thing he had to a best friend. They were the Deep Six Security Geek Squad, although Gray didn’t look or act the part in his high-dollar suits.
“How’s Vegas—or, ah—Geekville, as it were?” Gray asked, picking up on the first ring.
“I didn’t have a chance to find out,” Dex replied, his hand tightening on his phone. “It’s a long story, but Susan and Logan are here too.”
“Not that long of a story—I had to transfer the money for your bail, badass,” Gray said, and chuckled. “Dave wasn’t too happy, just so you know.”
“I’m well aware of that,” Dex informed. “We’ve stumbled into a mission here and I need your help.”
“Stumbled, huh? Is that the curvy redhead I heard about?” Gray teased. “I’d like to stumble into one of those missions myself.”
Dex didn’t have time for Gray’s bullshit. “I need you to find the investors in a corporation for me—the Silver Chains Corporation. Owner of record is probably Tim or Timothy Harlow. It’s located in Vegas and they have several pretty unsavory entities under that umbrella.”
“Okay, anything else?” he asked, then cleared his throat. “You need financials or accounts? Anywhere other than Vegas I should check?”
“Yeah, check Washington, Maryland and Boston too…maybe Virginia. He’s ex-military, so he probably moved around a lot. Get the financials too, just in case, because we might need that later, but for now, if you can get the investor info quickly, I’d appreciate it.”
Dex was curious more than anything about who was funding the setup. If this guy was military, where in the hell did he get all the money to create such an opulent, extensive dark empire? If it was as dark as it appeared, who kept him off the radar of the local police and the feds? Yeah, prostitution, escorts, sex lines and porno production were legal in Nevada, but this was about more than that. His spidey senses were tingling to tell him something else as going on here, something illegal, and they were never wrong.