by Cindy Dees
Not fast enough.
Big, strong hands grabbed her upper arms. Yanked her around.
Pepper spray. She still had the pepper spray in her left hand. She lifted the small canister and mashed down the button.
“Oww. Bloody hell!” her attacker grunted.
He ducked away from the worst of the spray, barreled into her, and propelled both her and himself against her door. His weight knocked the breath out of her for a moment, during which he released her with one hand, just long enough to turn the doorknob. Which, of course, she’d managed to unlock right before he jumped her.
She opened her mouth to scream, but her attacker shoved her inside and slammed the door shut behind them before she could let it rip.
“Jeez, Hank. It’s me. Ashe.”
Her scream cut off just as it got started. “Ashe? What the heck?” She flipped on the light switch and stared at him in disbelief.
“Christ. Where’s a sink? I gotta rinse that pepper spray out of my eyes.” His eyes were, indeed, watering copiously, and he took a half-blind step toward her kitchenette.
“Are you going to attack me?” she asked suspiciously, backing away from him.
“Hell, no. I just took out the bastard who was about to jump you.”
Her jaw dropped. “Who was he?”
“No idea. Sink?”
“Oh. Over here.” Taking him by the arm, she guided him to her kitchen sink and turned on the spigot. It coughed then began to emit a sluggish stream of smelly New Orleans tap water.
He splashed great handfuls of it over his face again and again, rinsing away the pepper spray from around his eyes. His back muscles flexed under his taut T-shirt as he bent over the sink. Yowza. The guy was ripped. She hovered nearby, feeling helpless and guilty that she was the cause of his hissing breaths of pain and watering eyes. Eventually he stood upright. He was easily six foot two. And freaking built like an Olympic athlete.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand to forestall her. “Stay here.” She watched as he cautiously opened her front door. Stepped out onto the landing. Looked around. Came back inside and announced, “He’s gone.” She sagged in relief and realized abruptly that her knees felt weak.
Meanwhile, Ashe pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number.
She eavesdropped shamelessly as he asked, “Is Bastien LeBlanc by any chance on duty tonight...? Perfect. Could you ask him to cruise by Malouf’s Oriental Rug Shop in the Warehouse District when he gets a chance? There was a minor scuffle in the alley beside the store, and a black-and-white drive-by would help ensure that no more trouble flares up. Tell him Asher Konig will owe him one...thanks.”
“What was that all about?” she demanded. “Who’s Bastien LeBlanc?”
“NOPD patrol officer. And an old friend. He’ll cruise by and make sure your would-be assailant doesn’t stick around for seconds.”
Wow. It must be nice to have one’s very own cop on call to do favors. If only she had the same. Maybe then she would know where her brother was by now. “You should have told me who you were instead of chasing me up the stairs,” she said accusingly.
“I didn’t know if I had knocked the bastard out fully or not,” he retorted. “Unlike on television, people can pop up pretty fast after getting walloped in the head. I needed to get you behind cover and in a defensible position before I bothered with niceties.”
“Oh.” A pause. “Sorry I nailed you with my pepper spray.”
“Don’t apologize to me. You didn’t realize who I was.”
Did he have to be so nice about it? Now she felt even guiltier than before. “Let me get you a towel. You’re soaked.”
She retreated to her bathroom, grabbed the cleaner of her two towels off the rack and hurried back to the main room. Sheesh. What was wrong with her? Was she afraid he was going to bolt from her place before she got a chance to flirt with him or something?
Oh, my. As she stepped into the living room, she was just in time to see him grab the back of his T-shirt and haul the wet garment over his head.
Oh, my. Acres of bulging pecs and rippling abs came into sight as he straightened. Top-tier male models had nothing on this guy’s physique.
“Wow,” she breathed. “You’re pretty without a shirt.”
He glanced up and smiled wryly. “Thanks. And thanks for the towel.” He lifted it gently out of her nerveless fingers and began toweling off his muscular acreage...while she stood there and basically drooled at him.
“You okay...?”
Wait. What? He’d asked her something. She replayed the garbled syllables and blurted belatedly, “Yeah, sure. I’m fine.”
“Let me see your hand.”
Huh?
Before she could figure out what he was talking about, he’d moved swiftly to her side and lifted her hand in his, palm up. Oh, hey. Look. There were three angry red scratches running the length of her hand and culminating in big gouges.
“Tweezers,” he bit out.
“Medicine cabinet.”
He turned and strode swiftly into the bathroom. Oh, God. A half dozen skimpy thongs and lacy bras were draped over the shower rod, drying. Too late to stop him.
Sure enough, he was smirking a little as he emerged from her postage-stamp-sized bathroom. But then he picked up her hand and started digging around.
“Youch!” She tried to yank her hand away but might as well have had it lodged in a block of concrete for all it moved.
“Splinters,” he muttered. “Stay still.”
Obediently she stopped squirming and leaned closer to watch as he deftly extracted several splinters from her hand. He was actually really good at it. His fingers were steady and swift. Exquisitely gentle. Then suddenly, he glanced up at her and asked, “You holding up okay?”
“Uh-huh.”
“One more to go. You’re being very brave.”
This from a man who’d cracked heads twice in the same evening without breaking a sweat. The last splinter surrendered to him, and he rubbed the pad of his thumb across her palm, soothing it tenderly.
“I think the patient is going to live,” he murmured.
“Thank you. For everything.”
He looked up from her hand, and their gazes met—or rather, tangled together in a sexually charged dance of intense awareness of one another. Of hot, undeniable attraction, of hunger and need...
Yowza. The man sure knew how to, well, look at a woman.
Some sort of bright light flashed outside her window. “That would be Bastien,” Ashe said. “He’s shining his spotlight down the alley.”
“Wow. That was fast.”
“We’re good friends. Used to work together. He knows I wouldn’t bother him unless it was important.”
He took a careful step back from her and glided over beside the window like James Bond, peering furtively past the blinds at an oblique angle that spoke of cloaks and daggers. What was up with that? Her other window onto the street got the same treatment.
A text came in on his phone, and as soon as he read it, the tense set of his shoulders relaxed. “Bastien says the alley’s clear. He drove around the block a couple times, too. Your attacker has left the area.”
She was more relieved than she liked to admit. Thank God Ashe had been there to save her. And that he knew a cop who would come scope out the area so quickly and thoroughly.
Ashe moved away from the windows and settled on the lurid red velveteen sofa, part of the furnishings that came with the dive.
She had never thought of her apartment as particularly small, but he filled the space with his large frame and even larger presence. His silver-blue gaze honed in on her again, but this time it was filled with questions. Speculation. Determination to find answers. And more of that disconcerting heat.
“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a nasty joint like that?”
How did he manage to fill such a straightforward question with so much loaded innuendo? Her heart fluttered—actually fluttered—in res
ponse. Belatedly she mumbled, “You mean the bar?”
A frown pleated his dark brow. “You and I both know the Who Do Voodoo is a lot more than a bar.”
Caution stilled her entire being. She knew it because she’d been working there for months. But how did he know after only a few hours spent sipping booze in the corner? Who was this guy? Surely he didn’t work for Vitaly’s bosses. “Are you a cop?” she blurted.
“No.” His answer was prompt and without hesitation.
“FBI or something?”
“Nope.”
“Why do you care if I work at the Voodoo, then?” she asked. “It’s a steady paycheck.”
“It’s not worth the money. That place is trouble.”
“I’ll work where I want,” she snapped. “It’s my life.”
He leaned back, stretching an arm along the back of her sofa. Deeply tanned, it was wreathed from wrist to shoulder in corded muscle and bulging veins that spoke of ridiculous strength. And she was alone in her isolated apartment with this total stranger who could overpower her without even exerting himself. She really ought to be scared silly of him. But she couldn’t work up anything but a sense of complete trust in this man. Clearly, she’d lost her mind.
“So what’s the deal with the club?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I’d bet my next paycheck there’s a whorehouse upstairs. Given how young the dancers looked, I’m guessing it’s a sex trafficking outfit. You may be too scared to call the FBI, but I’m not.” He tilted up on one hip to fish his cell phone out of a back pocket of his jeans.
“You can’t call them!” she exclaimed.
He froze. Eased back down to the sofa slowly, phone still in pocket. “Why not?” Something dark and dangerous vibrated in his voice. It wasn’t menace exactly, but it was a reminder to tread lightly around this man.
“You’ll ruin everything!”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to be more specific than that. What ‘everything’ do you mean, exactly?”
She huffed. She didn’t want to tell him anything, let alone involve him in her secret investigation. But if the FBI raided the bar and shut it down, her only lead to Max would be lost.
After weeks of frantic searching and the police seeming to ignore her, she couldn’t take the constant panic anymore and had walked into the Voodoo bar to demand answers. It was the last place her brother had been seen going into the day he disappeared. And given that it wasn’t the kind of joint he would normally have been caught dead in, logic suggested the place had something to do with his disappearance.
When she’d barged into the club, Vitaly had mistaken her for someone applying for the waitress job advertised in the window. He’d offered her the position on the spot, and in a combination of instinct and impulse, she’d taken it.
For the past two months, she’d been watching and listening and learning. But the mob bosses who employed Vitaly were extremely cautious. They rarely showed their faces, and they never did anything to hint at illegal activity—not counting the whorehouse upstairs.
She occasionally served drinks in the back lounge where the lap dances happened, but she’d never waited on the mob bosses where she could get a chance to eavesdrop on their conversation.
She had also never set foot above the ground floor of the bar and didn’t intend to, either. In all honesty, she was scared to death of getting sucked into the inescapable downward spiral that was the sex trafficking industry.
“You haven’t given me a good reason not to call the feds...yet,” Ashe said, jarring her from her thoughts. “And I happen to believe trafficking in underage girls is about the worst form of exploitation there is. I have zero sympathy for anyone engaged in it.”
“Neither do I,” she muttered.
“Well, then?”
He hadn’t moved a muscle, but a promise rolled off him to have answers out of her tonight, come hell or high water. She studied him closely. He’d shown genuine concern for her in the club and had even subjected himself to bodily harm to save her from that thug. Plus, he seemed prepared to listen to her. So heck...maybe she should take him up on his offer. Because thus far, she’d had zero success on her own finding out anything about Max.
Decision made, she released a long, slow breath that made her entire being feel as if it had deflated. It seemed as if she’d been holding that breath for months. Had she really been living under so much tension and stress? As good as it felt to trust him at least a little, she wasn’t prepared to give up all her secrets to this man she barely knew. So she chose her words carefully. “Someone I know used to hang out at the Voodoo, and then we lost touch. I’m trying to figure out what happened.”
“A girl?” he asked quickly.
Oh, God. He thought she knew one of the trafficked girls from Eastern Europe who were virtual prisoners upstairs without identification documents or knowledge of the English language or American laws. Not to mention many of the girls were drug addicts who were paid for sex with heroin or crack.
“No, no. Nothing like that. A guy. I’m hoping I’ll run across someone who knew him and may know something about why he was there and where he went.”
“Ahh.” Ashe’s expression shuttered abruptly, and he leaned forward to reach for his wet shirt.
Good grief. He thought Max was her boyfriend. Cripes. He must think she was a weirdo stalker chick working at the Voodoo to chase down some poor guy who’d fled from her and intentionally left no contact information.
She winced as she bit the inside of her lip to stop herself from correcting Ashe’s mistaken impression. It was for the best. As hot as he might be, she had no time in her life for a dalliance that might distract her from finding her big brother.
Her gut howled at her that Max was in trouble and until that internal scream was silenced, she was off the market for men.
Ashe shrugged into his damp T-shirt. “How long do you need to find your...friend...before I call the feds?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been there two months and haven’t caught a lead yet.”
“And you’re sure he’s still alive?”
Her spine stiffened in denial at the notion of Max being dead. It was what the cops thought. All this time with not a hint of him, no credit card hits, no banking transactions, no sightings...
“I know he’s alive,” she declared.
“How?” Ashe asked the question evenly enough. As if he was willing to hear her reasoning.
She sighed heavily. “I feel it in my gut, okay? I know that sounds lame, but I would know if he were dead. And I’m telling you he’s not.”
He stared at her for a second and then nodded briefly. Really? He believed her? No scoffing comments about how stupid it was to rely on a gut instinct? On how the facts said she was wrong? Wow.
He spoke gruffly. “Two weeks. I’ll help you look for your boyfriend during that time, but that’s all you get. It’ll take the law that long to gather evidence, get the warrants and set up a raid. Innocent girls are suffering every day there.”
Oh, God. She’d never thought of it in those terms. In her panic to find Max, she’d had the power to save those girls and hadn’t. She was a horrible human being! In that context, giving her two weeks was frankly damned generous.
“Don’t have the cops wait on my account,” she said grimly. “When they’re ready, they should shut the place down. I’ll tell you this, though. The Voodoo is the tip of a much bigger iceberg.”
Ashe gave her a sharp look. “What do you mean by that? What iceberg?”
Chapter 3
He leaned forward, watching every nuance of Hank’s body language intently. Now they were getting somewhere. What the hell wasn’t she telling him, though? He sensed lies in her words as sure as he was sitting here.
She answered, “Vitaly, the owner of the Voodoo, has bosses. Russian mob bosses. I haven’t seen many of them around the joint, but his place is definitely a front for them.”
“What kind of front
?”
“I imagine they launder money through the place, although I haven’t seen Vitaly’s ledgers. He keeps all of those on his cell phone, and that thing never leaves his hands or his pocket.” She blew out a breath. “Believe me, I’ve tried to get a look at it. But I’ve never seen him lay his phone down once.”
“Anything else?”
She snorted. “He’s a moneymaker for his bosses. Vitaly gripes all the time about the measly cut of the Voodoo’s income that he gets. The rest is going up his chain of command.”
Ashe frowned. “The mob, be it traditional Cosa Nostra or the Russians, usually takes only a small cut of the profits as protection money.”
“Not at the Voodoo. Someone is taking the bulk of the income and giving Vitaly only a tiny piece of the pie to run the club.”
“Tell me about Vitaly.”
“His last name is Parenko. He’s tough. Smart. Mean. Organized. He actually runs a pretty tight ship.”
“Any mob ink on him?” he asked.
“He has a tattoo on his left arm, up high. It’s a globe with four compass points coming out of it. There are two flags above the globe and a submarine across it.”
Ashe’s jaw flexed. “Are the Cyrillic letters em-cheh-peh-veh on it anywhere?”
Frowning, she thought about his question. “Yes. There’s a little banner under the globe with those letters on it. And some numbers.”
“Russian Navy symbol. And he has no other Russian mob tattoos?”
“Not the traditional ones that cover the whole torso. Now and then someone spills a drink on him, and I’ve seen him change his shirt a couple of times.” She hesitated, her brow furrowing. “He’s got only one other tat. It’s on his left shoulder blade and is small. It’s a shield with a star over it and a sword going down through the star.”
“Jesus,” Ashe breathed. That was the symbol for the KGB, the Soviet Union’s equivalent of a combination FBI and CIA before it had been summarily disbanded in the mid-1990s and replaced with the FSB, the Federal Security Service of Russia. The abrupt disbanding of the KGB had stranded thousands of trained special operatives without jobs, incomes or pensions. Not surprisingly, many of them had turned their unusual skill sets to crime. In under a decade, the Russian mob had become one of the most feared criminal organizations on earth.