“I mean it, Jimmy,” I said again, this time pounding on the door. “Do you hear me?”
“Everybody can hear you,” Kate said from her office a couple of doors down. “Jimmy’s out on a job, so your wrath can’t be appreciated properly.” She looked down at her watch. “Get in here. Agent Savage will be here in a few minutes, and I want to give him the appearance that this is a legitimate place of business.”
I nodded as Kate went back inside her office, but I’d already thought of the perfect revenge for Jimmy. He’d made the mistake of leaving a little piece of chalk in the holder, and I was going to take full advantage of it.
I dug around in my purse until I came out with a tissue, and I erased Jimmy’s idea of a joke, replacing it with one of my own. Jimmy would probably be pissed, because he seemed like the kind of guy who liked to dish it out but couldn’t really take it when the joke was at his expense. But I didn’t care. Jimmy deserved to have his manhood taken into question.
I dusted my hands off and stood back to examine my handiwork. If luck was on my side, I’d be out of the building before Jimmy got back. I headed into Kate’s office and saw Nick lounged on the leather couch in the sitting area she used to make clients feel more comfortable. He looked perfectly relaxed, but I could see his body was tightly coiled, ready to spring into action if needed. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Nick completely relaxed.
“I recognize that look,” Kate said. “You always get that little smile whenever you’ve just done something you shouldn’t have. What gives? It makes me nervous for you to have that smile in my office building.”
I rolled my eyes and looked back and forth between the empty spot on the couch next to Nick and the small chair on his other side. He arched a challenging brow at me, knowing the debate going on in my mind. If I sat next to Nick on the couch, there was no way I was going to be able to concentrate on anything anyone was saying. And heaven forbid we accidentally touched thighs or something. It had been so long since I’d had an orgasm I was afraid I might spontaneously combust.
I wisely took the chair next to the couch, and Nick whispered, “Coward,” out of the corner of his mouth. I would’ve thought of something clever to say, but Agent Savage picked that moment to walk into Kate’s office and I lost all train of thought. At least I assumed he was Agent Savage. He certainly looked like he could live up to the name.
He was a couple of inches taller than Nick, making him close to 6’5”, and he was broad and muscled. Everywhere. He looked like the love child of The Rock and Pocahontas. He took up every bit of space in the doorway, and not even his conservative black suit could hide the power beneath. His skin was the color of copper and his hair was black as coal and cut stylishly. His face was like a work of art, sharp angles to make it interesting, and full lips that brought nothing to mind but sin. His dark eyes were framed by lashes that I’d have paid good money for.
Even Kate was rattled by the sheer magnetism of the man, and Kate was never rattled about anything. I snuck a look at Nick and saw his eyes were narrowed menacingly at the new arrival. I could already feel the tension crackling in the air, and I was pretty sure it was the testosterone. Two men like Nick and Agent Savage couldn’t be in the same room without there being cataclysmic results. They probably shouldn’t have been inhabiting the same planet.
“Agent Savage,” Kate finally managed to say, extending her hand to shake his. “It’s good to meet you in person. I’m Kate McClean.”
“Nice to meet you. Your agency has a great reputation. I’ve heard it’s the best,” he said diplomatically.
Savage’s voice was even and deep, betraying no accent or inflection that would give me a clue about him. He couldn’t have been from Georgia. It was hard for anyone to get rid of the southern drawl once you’d been here long enough. I was guessing Yankee, but mostly because he had that formal politeness that belong to people who live on the northern side of the Mason-Dixon Line.
“We work hard to keep it that way,” Kate said. “Let me introduce you around.”
She walked over to us and Nick and I both came to our feet. I wasn’t going to lie, Agent Savage was a beautiful piece of man, but there was something about him that scared the bejeezus out of me. He wasn’t the kind of man I’d ever be truly comfortable around, and there was something in the black pits of his eyes that made me think he could pull the trigger of that giant gun he had hidden under his suit jacket and never bat an eye.
He also looked like the kind of man who could pleasure a woman for hours, and I snuck a glance at the thigh muscles bulging against his suit pants. I had the sudden urge to fan myself, being surrounded by all that hot male glory, but then I caught a glimpse of his eyes again and the fantasy disappeared. Nope, I could appreciate from afar because I wasn’t dead, but that was about it.
“This is Detective Nick Dempsey,” Kate said, motioning to Nick.
I watched as Nick and Agent Savage shook hands, their grips tight enough to have veins popping out on the back of their forearms and their smiles brittle with tension as they sized each other up. I wouldn’t know who to put money on if they ever came to blows, but damned if this macho display wasn’t entertaining.
“Thanks for being here, Detective,” Savage finally said, releasing Nick’s hand. “I understand you’re the lead investigator on Sasha Malikov’s murder. You’re running a tight investigation.”
I had no idea who Sasha Malikov was, but I was assuming he was the courier who’d been stuffed in the barrel. Nick nodded at Savage and his stance relaxed marginally. They’d come to some silent understanding, and I realized Nick’s tension was because he didn’t want the FBI to come in and take over his case.
“And this is Addison Holmes,” Kate said, directing Savage’s attention toward me.
As soon as those black eyes met mine, I had a pretty heavy premonition that things weren’t exactly what they seemed with Agent Savage. My mind flashed Danger, Danger even as my ovaries jumped up and begged for him to be a willing sperm donor.
I had no clue what was wrong with me lately. It’s like once I hit thirty all I did was scope out men to be potential sperm donors. I didn’t even want to be a mother at this point in my life, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. Almost as if my body was making the decision for me and leaving me out of the equation.
Savage’s eyes didn’t leave mine, but I had the feeling he’d somehow managed to check me out from head to toe anyway, and from the tingles in my nether regions, I was wondering if he could somehow see through to my underwear as well. One corner of his mouth tilted up in a smile and his hand reached out to take mine. His grasp was cool and dry, his palm and fingers holding interesting callouses.
“Nice to meet you Ms. Holmes. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Addison,” I told him. “And probably everything you heard has been exaggerated.”
His smile grew a little wider and it reached his eyes this time. I could practically feel Nick vibrating beside me as Savage kept hold of my hand a little longer than he should have. I pulled out of his grasp and took a step back, and he went to the other empty seat across from me as if nothing awkward had just happened.
I appreciated being scoped out as much as the next girl, but I had plenty of testosterone in my life at the moment. I didn’t need more, and there was a part of me that wondered if Savage had somehow sensed there was something going on between me and Nick and was just being overly admiring to get a rise out of a potential rival. I was pretty sure FBI agents were trained to pick up subtle clues. Men were known to get involved in pissing contests over the stupidest things. Not to mention Nick’s threat about never finding the pieces echoed in my mind.
“Can I get you a drink, Agent Savage?” Kate asked, breaking the tension.
“Coffee if you have it. Black,” Savage said. “Thank you.”
Kate brought the coffee back and we all settled back in our seats. Savage’s pants rose as he sat back and I got a glimpse of the most colorful
socks I’d ever seen. They were such a clash with his staid suit that all I could do was close my mouth before he caught me staring. They were multicolored stripes of bright blues, pinks and purples, and yellow skulls were printed right over the ankles. The socks didn’t make Agent Savage less dangerous, but they sure made him a hell of a lot more interesting.
“I assume everyone has been brought up to speed,” he said, handing out new file folders to each of us. At our nod, he took out photos of the gems that had been in the package Christian DeLuce had purchased and laid them out on the coffee table. It was hard to look at anything other than the main attraction—the Heart of Ivan was stunning, even in a photograph.
“Along with the emerald,” Savage said, “There were dozens of first quality loose diamonds that totaled more that forty-two carats. There were also assorted colored gems that bring a lesser value, but were still of good quality. I’ve given you an itemized list, and the short of it is that Christian DeLuce got a hell of a deal here.”
“Do you suspect him?” Nick asked. “I’m assuming if the gems never reappear then DeLuce won’t be out the cash?”
“You’re right,” Savage said. “And we’ve run an initial check on him, but he appears to be clean. It’ll take some time to dig deeper. Did you suspect him for the Malikov murder?”
“At first. But if he claimed the gems were stolen and collected his fee back, he’d never be able to use them in his designs. A man like Christian DeLuce isn’t one to let his creations sit unnoticed. Besides, he had a rock solid alibi. Thousands of people saw him in Salt Lake City at an international jewelry expo. We also haven’t found anything inconsistent with his financials suggesting he might have paid someone to do the deed.”
“I’ll be honest,” Savage said. “We’re leaving Malikov’s murder up to you guys. We don’t have the time or the manpower. It’s the gems we care about. This has the potential to be an international pissing contest if Russia doesn’t get that emerald back. But we’re going to have some overlapping in the investigations, so it’s probably best to work together.”
“Fine with me,” Nick said.
Savage nodded and continued. “For two weeks we’ve kept in touch with pawnshops and some private collectors who keep us informed of underground auctions, but we haven’t heard anything about the gems being sold. It’s like they never existed, which means whoever killed the courier and took them didn’t do it for money. At least not initially. They can afford to sit on them and wait until the right time to unload the product.”
Savage took another picture out of his folder and tossed it in the middle of the other pictures. I sucked in air and my fingers tightened on the edge of my seat at the sight of another body. This one was of a woman, and she hadn’t met death easy.
She’d been beautiful before her life had been taken. Her dark brown hair was long and silky, spread out like eerie tentacles on the gray carpet beneath her. She was young—really young—maybe a year or two over twenty, and her skin was smooth and flawless. Her dark eyes stared sightlessly and were filmed over with a cloudy substance, and her arms and legs were splayed at an odd angle. She was nude, so the single gaping slash across her throat stood out all the more grotesquely.
“Up close and personal,” Nick observed dispassionately. “Who is she?”
“Her name is Amanda Whitfield. A twenty-year old undergrad at Emory. She comes from a white-collar family, and on the surface she’s everything a normal college girl should be. With the exception that she turned up dead in a suite at the Ritz two days ago, and underneath her body was a diamond of the first water, and an exact match for one of the stones the Russian courier brought over.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“All of the gems were museum quality goods, and they’ve all been marked with a serial number invisible to the eye.”
“Handy,” I said.
“So Amanda Whitfield wasn’t who everyone thought she was,” Kate said, looking at the picture more closely.
“Why would you say that?” I asked. One thing I always noticed about cops was that they immediately thought the worst of everyone, with the theory being that people always had something to hide. “Maybe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Nice college girls don’t end up murdered in a three-thousand dollar a night suite, surrounded by enough sexual paraphernalia to start their own business, and lying on top of stolen gems,” Savage explained. “But if I told you she was a high-priced call girl, the picture starts to make a little more sense.”
“You could’ve just said that in the first place,” I grumbled.
So I had a lot to learn in private detective school. Sue me. Savage grinned at me and I narrowed my eyes in his direction. A pretty face would only get him so far.
“What did her financials say?” Kate asked.
“That she was very popular in her profession. She received direct deposits of $25,000 every two weeks for the past year and a half. She was barely eighteen when she started.”
“Was it traceable?” I asked and everyone turned to look in my direction. “What, I’m not allowed to ask questions?”
Nick winked at me and turned back to look at Savage, and I was so distracted by the uncharacteristic display of affection I’d completely forgotten the question by the time it was answered.
“It took some digging,” Savage said, “but the money has been traced back to a company known as Sirin Incorporated. It has its fingers in a lot of pies—”
I snorted out a laugh at the unintended pun—you know, call girls and fingers and pies—and cleared my throat. “Sorry,” I said. “Please continue.”
“And it’s the parent company for Sirin Escorts,” he said as if I hadn’t interrupted. “I haven’t gotten any names as far as who its Board of Directors are, but the one name that kept popping up in conjunction with the company was a woman named Natalie Evans. She’s listed as CEO and president.”
Savage tossed another photograph out on the table and we all looked at the most stunning redhead I’d ever seen.
“Natalie is a forty-eight year old divorcee with no children and an unlimited bank account. She has connections from A-list Hollywood all the way to the White House. She pays for her girls to be educated, most of them getting advanced degrees in things like political science or international business so they can be well informed on different issues, and she also requires they be given lessons in etiquette and languages. The girls have to be in top physical condition, and according to the official propaganda of the company, sleeping with clients is grounds for termination.”
“Damn, maybe I should be an escort,” Kate said.
I was thinking the same thing. “That woman does not look forty-eight.”
“I need to moisturize more,” Kate added.
“Women are so strange,” Nick said. “This woman is the Heidi Fleiss of the South and all you can talk about is how good she looks.”
“That’s not all,” I said. “She also has great taste in shoes.”
I saw Savage take a quick drink of coffee to hide his smile. Apparently, badass FBI agents weren’t supposed to have a sense of humor. Savage regrouped and looked directly at me.
“We have no grounds to shut her down because we can’t prove her escort service is a prostitution ring,” he said. “Everything on the surface is above board, and she has enough clout and high profile support that we’ve already been getting calls from the governor and two senators to back off. If there weren’t a dead body involved we’d be out of this completely, and I don’t know how long we’re going to be able to hold on to that.”
“The official statement from Ms. Evans is that Amanda wasn’t scheduled to work that night, therefore she must have had plans of her own. We don’t have proof otherwise to dispute the fact. Just a body and a stolen diamond. But I can’t think of a reason that girl would have the gem unless someone who had the means and opportunity to know what it was gave it to her.”
“So what do w
e do?” It hadn’t gone past my notice that Agent Savage had been solely talking to me for the last little bit. I was starting to get the feeling Nick and Kate were superfluous in this conversation.
“I’d like you to apply for a job with the company, or if that fails, make friends with some of the other girls. You’re a little older than they like to hire, but you don’t look your age. You could pass for early twenties. You have the look of the kind of girl Ms. Evans likes to employ, so you have a shot.”
“You’ve got to be out of your mind,” Nick said incredulously. He leaned forward and put his hands on the coffee table, intimidating the hell out of me but not doing much for Agent Savage. “Do you realize the risk you’re putting her in? She’s not trained for this.”
“Which is why I need her to do it,” Savage said calmly. “There’s not an agent or a cop out there I could put in undercover without them sniffing her out. I need an outsider. Ms. Evans has been in this business for a long time for a reason. She’ll know how to spot a plant.”
“What happens if they don’t hire me?” I asked.
“It’s not the end of the world. You’re used to doing surveillance, so you can stick to that in the meantime, checking out the girls and documenting any suspicious behavior. Your involvement is just another avenue for us to take in this investigation, because right now we have nothing except two dead bodies and a fortune in missing gems. What do you say Ms. Holmes?”
“Addison,” I automatically corrected. “Who’s paying me?”
“You’ll temporarily be on FBI payroll as a consultant. Any other fees are between you and Kate.”
“I’m in,” I said, before I had the chance to think it through too much. I needed the money, and beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“Addison—” Nick growled.
Kate hadn’t said anything, so I turned to look at her so I wouldn’t have to see the death glare Nick was giving me. She looked contemplative and a bit pensive, but she wasn’t issuing a protest. She shrugged her shoulders at me and sighed, and I knew she’d help me do whatever I needed.
Whiskey Sour (Romantic Mystery/Comedy) Book 2 (Addison Holmes Mysteries) Page 6