“JJ,” she greeted him in a tone that made it sound like they were old friends as well. “How’s your morning so far? Can I get you a coffee?”
JJ looked like shit. Pale. Unwashed. Exhausted. Cold-blooded as a fucking snake. He definitely didn’t look like the friendly neighborhood dealer. His hands were cuffed to the table, but he didn’t appear the least bit concerned about it.
“Don’t waste your time. Wrong tree, ladies.” He nodded to Gage. “And gentleman.”
Elaina frowned. “Pardon?”
“Meaning I’m not the one you’re looking for.”
Gage smirked. “You know who we’re looking for?”
Silvery eyes with a hard-glinting edge gleamed at him. “Let me see if I can get close.” He examined his hands while he spoke, slowly, like he was contemplating whether he needed a manicure. “Two missing models, one dead, washed up a couple of days ago. You think because she owed Antonio some money we offed her, and possibly have the other one or fucked up and killed her too.”
“Too?” Gage crossed his arms over his chest.
JJ rolled his eyes.
Elaina stared at the man so hard Gage wondered if he’d melt.
“How about this, JJ,” she began, stepping closer until she was practically in his lap. “How about we don’t waste our time like you said. We don’t want to play games. Today I don’t give two shits how much meth you push on the street or how many children go hungry because you helped Mom and Dad get hooked on heroine. Today I just want to know what you know about Caroline Isla. But if you leave here without giving me anything . . . things will change tomorrow.” She sat in the chair beside him and scooted so close it even made Gage uncomfortable. “Tomorrow I will absolutely give a fuck. I will focus all my energy on contacting every DEA agent I’ve ever met and I’ll have your ass in a federal prison before you’ve taken your morning piss.”
Gage watched the man suck in a lungful of air and stare at Dr. Keats. He was trying to work out whether she’d make good on the threat. Gage had a feeling she’d meant every word of it.
The tension seemed to reduce the small amount of oxygen in the already-cramped space.
Elaina stared at him with a wide, friendly smile. “What do you say, JJ? You want to be friends? I can be a very good friend. Or I can be one hell of an enemy.”
The tension from JJ’s shoulders dropped. “Look, I don’t know anything except that the dead model was a smoke show. Antonio originally wanted his money, and I went to see what she could contribute to the cause, since it was her fuckstick of a boyfriend that screwed things up. But when I told him how hot she was, Antonio went to see for himself. He got sweet on her or something. Hell if I know how that happened. But he told Joey she was working off the debt just to fuck with the little punk-ass bitch because he was locked up. Truth was, Antonio was crazy about her.” He stopped and restarted. “Not murder her crazy. Like, ‘quit screwing all his usuals and focus on her and only her’ crazy. When they found her body . . . well, let’s just say you aren’t the only ones looking for whoever is responsible. And if Antonio finds them first, you’ll have another body to process.”
Gage sat across the table. “Any chance one of Antonio’s enemies or the competition could’ve taken her out to hurt him?”
“Yeah, boy genius. Of fucking course. There’s always the chance of that. Hence why I don’t tangle other people up in my shit.”
Elaina laughed. “Yeah, I’m sure the ladies are just knocking down your door.”
“You’d be surprised,” JJ deadpanned.
Something about JJ was unsettling. Gage couldn’t put his finger on it. But he didn’t seem like the usual middleman. He was levelheaded, articulate, and not at all intimidated, even though Elaina was intimidating as hell. Usually these types were cocky, uneducated smart-mouths who talked a big game but were just looking out for their own asses.
This one was different.
There was a knock at the door. Director Anderson-Wyatt opened it and Holt McCain stood on the other side.
Gage tried to contain his surprise, since there was a suspect in the room. Holt was just supposed to drop off JJ, then go looking for Antonio. He hadn’t expected him to stick around.
“Pierce, got a minute? It’s important.” He jerked his chin toward JJ.
“Excuse me.” Gage stepped around the table and out into the hall.
“Who’s the redhead?” was Holt’s first question. He’d already met Gage’s boss that morning.
“Dr. Elaina Keats. Bigwig psychiatrist. Today she’s a consultant helping us out. Why? What’s going on? Did Chloe do something?”
Holt seemed disappointed at hearing Dr. Keats’s profession, but he shook it off quickly. “No, Chloe is right where she’s supposed to be. But your friend in there isn’t who we thought.”
“Huh?” It wasn’t an articulate response, but he was still tired from not sleeping much the night before.
“JJ in there is undercover. Deep undercover. In my haste, I didn’t run a full check on him. But I just heard back from my guy in Washington. He’s DEA.”
Gage wasn’t sure what to make of this. “No shit?”
“No shit. He’s been locked up twice in two years. Hasn’t made a peep. It’s a huge fucking case. We’re talking only a handful of people know. Anything happens to them, our friend Brad in there—that’s his real name, Brad Johnson—is going to be stuck out in the cold for a long fucking time.”
Gage thought of Kate. Him, her handler, and the director had been the only ones who knew about her assignment in detail. They’d been so careful. And she still hadn’t survived it.
“Wife and kids?”
Holt nodded. “Once upon a time. Child died. Seven. Cancer. That’s her name inked on his neck. Hannah. Got divorced soon after. Went undercover after the divorce. That was five years ago. Hasn’t come up for air since.”
Gage sighed. “Jesus. Okay. Thanks, man.”
“I’m still following leads on Antonio.”
Gage couldn’t explain it—maybe it was like Chloe’s intuition about Eden, but he was pretty sure JJ/Brad was telling the truth about Antonio and Caroline.
“I don’t think he’s our guy. Keep digging though. These women, Caroline and Eden, let’s see if we can’t find out what else they had in common.”
“We need to get inside Red Light,” Holt told him, confirming what he already knew. “And maybe even Provocative. Need to find out who else those two confided in.” Before he walked away, Holt added one last thing. “And hey, that ballsy redhead? Might want to bring her in on what we’re doing. She could be of use.”
“Agreed.” Gage had still been handling this like a one-man show, but he had a few agents—Aly, Holt, and now possibly a psychiatrist he already respected—on his team, and he decided he’d start acting like it.
“Cut him loose,” he said once he stepped back into the interrogation room.
Elaina was staring strangely at JJ.
Dr. Anderson-Wyatt looked irritated.
Everyone turned to look at him.
“He doesn’t know shit. Antonio is the shot caller. He’s the one we need.” He looked at JJ. “Any chance you can help with that?”
“Not if I want to keep my job.”
Gage nodded. “I figured. I’ll catch up with him. Don’t worry.”
“We done here?”
Elaina looked to him. Gage nodded. “Yeah.” He knew a few things though about being undercover. “Hold him twenty-four hours. In case I change my mind or new information comes to light.” JJ caught his eye. “I’ll take him down to the holding area.”
Both women looked like they disapproved. He shot them a look that he hoped said, “I’ll explain later.”
Once he had JJ down in the basement where several currently empty temporary holding cells were, the man frowned as Gage uncuffed him. Typically, one wouldn’t be handcuffed, but JJ’s record had indicated several scuffles with law enforcement. Now he knew why. Part of the show.
&
nbsp; “The fuck is going on, man? You’re pretty enough but you’re really not my type.”
Gage smirked. Dude was committed, he’d give him that.
“Can I get you something to eat?”
JJ’s eyes widened. “Still not blowing you, buddy. Sorry.”
Gage laughed. “I’m good, thanks. Maybe you should get some rest, Brad.”
Bloodshot eyes narrowed. “How the fuck do you—”
“I know a guy. Relax. I won’t say a word. It won’t go on file. I’m going to make a scene tomorrow about you being an uncooperative asshole. You’re not the only one capable of selling it. I’m sure Antonio will have guys watching to see if you flipped.”
For a moment, JJ the Jet Plane was plain old Brad Johnson. Brad Johnson was tired. And sad. It was the sadness that had thrown Gage in the first place. What he couldn’t put his finger on earlier. He wasn’t rattled by any of their threats. Because he truly had nothing to lose. Prison wasn’t scary to him because he was already living in his own personal hell.
The man eyed him warily, like a caged animal once he was in the cell.
Gage tossed him a blanket and a pillow from a cabinet. “I’ll send someone down with dinner and a soda or something. Pizza or burgers?”
“Burger would be great. ’Preciate it,” Brad said, sitting back on the cot and staring at the ceiling. “Good call on the twenty-four hours, by the way. If you’d cut me loose too soon it would’ve been a dead giveaway.”
“That stuff true about Antonio and Caroline?”
Brad took a bottle of water Gage handed over and drank from it. “Yeah. He’s not your guy. He’s no prince, and his ass is going down eventually. Trust me. But he didn’t hurt her.” He shook his head in what looked like disbelief. “I’ve never seen him like this. He’s broken. He went to the morgue this morning knowing there might be agents everywhere. Knowing he might be the number one suspect. I’ve never seen him take a risk like that for anyone.”
Gage heard a modicum of respect coloring Brad’s tone. Being undercover was complicated; Kate had told him more than once. You stopped being you, she’d said, but you never really stop being you. He’d never fully understood but he was starting to.
“Loss . . . it’s . . .”
“A motherfucker,” Brad finished heavily.
Gage didn’t offer any pointless apologies about his daughter. He just nodded. But before he turned to leave, he had to say one last thing to the fellow agent. Something he’d learned somewhere between losing Kate and meeting Chloe.
“It’s easy to run sometimes. Hide. Bury yourself in work. But you can’t run from pain forever. You just can’t. Try and you’ll run right past the people who actually give a shit. People who need you. Life is too short to spend it on the run.”
“Gettin’ too old to run anyway.”
Gage grinned. “You and me both.”
With that, Gage ascended the stairs, leaving Brad in peace.
Elaina Keats was waiting for him in his office by the time he made his way to it.
“Undercover?”
Gage nodded. She’d figured it out all on her own, which made him strangely proud of a woman he barely knew. “Yeah.”
“Deep?”
He nodded again. “As it gets.”
She sighed. “I figured that’s what G.I. Joe was coming to tell you. Something was off from the start. I just wasn’t sure what. I’m sorry he was a dead end on your case. Anything else I can do?”
Gage had been extremely impressed at how she’d conducted the interview with Brad. Chloe would like her. Plus he was amused. Holt had called her a “ballsy redhead” and she’d referred to him as G.I. Joe. That would make for an interesting work dynamic.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think there might be.”
19
“Sebastian has an airtight alibi,” Holt McCain informed Elaina the moment she stepped into the conference room at the FBI field office in Los Angeles. “Caroline Isla’s death was estimated to be between two and three weeks ago. No more and no less. Sebastian was working and visiting family in Brazil at the time. It’s been confirmed. He wasn’t even in the country in the window of time in which she was murdered.”
Elaina rubbed her temples. “So that leaves the producer then. He makes my skin crawl, but I just don’t know if he’s a murderer. It’s not the vibe I get from him.”
She’d met Ulrich that morning. Right after she’d been introduced to Chloe Sterling. He was still waiting to be interviewed.
Holt gave her a skeptical side-eye glance. “So that’s what we’re going on now? Women’s intuition?”
She narrowed her eyes at the giant meathead. “No,” she bit out through gritted teeth. “But Agent Pierce mentioned he was backing off of Antonio Cavallari due to your gut feeling. How that would be more substantial than my women’s intuition is beyond me. Maybe you can mansplain it to me, McCain.” She waited for him to challenge her. When he didn’t, she continued. “I’m just saying, he seems like a coward, not like the type to get his own hands dirty. I’m not saying he’s not involved or pulling strings and writing the checks that make his problems go away. But I’ve faced a lot of cold-blooded killers, and he doesn’t have it in him.”
“In your opinion.”
“Yes. In my opinion.”
Holt studied her silently, and she hated the way her skin warmed under his gaze. She didn’t need some alpha male he-man type coming in to tell her what was what. She was perfectly capable of analyzing Ulrich without G.I. Joe’s input.
Gage walked into the conference room and glanced back and forth between them, clearly sensing the tension.
“We got DNA back on Caroline, and there isn’t anyone else’s anywhere to be found. But Ulrich doesn’t know that, so I say we fake him out. Pretend we’re just waiting on the lab to confirm what we already know.”
“I do love a good game of pretend.” Elaina didn’t even attempt to muddle her sarcasm.
“I know it’s not much, but for right now, it’s all we’ve got.”
Holt remained behind to keep an eye on Chloe while Elaina followed Agent Pierce into the interrogation room.
“What is it exactly that he brings to the table?” Elaina jerked her head toward the closed door.
Gage gave her a sympathetic smile. “He can be headstrong and shortsighted at times, I know. But trust me, if we need someone found or someone extracted from a bad situation, Holt McCain is our guy.”
“He’s not my guy,” she mumbled under her breath as Alexander Ulrich was brought into the room by two other agents and unceremoniously dumped in a chair.
He shoved his asymmetrically cut black hair out of his eyes and shot the agents who’d disposed of him a pissed-off glare.
“Mr. Ulrich,” Elaina greeted him warmly. “This is my friend Special Agent Pierce. So nice of you to join us.”
He sneered at her. “Wasn’t my first choice of where to be this morning.” His voice still held traces of a Russian accent.
“Oh?” Elaina did her best to appear wounded by his rejection. “And what was?”
“What was what?” He raked a hand through his hair.
Elaina noted that he smelled like a brewery and looked in serious need of a shower. “Your first choice?”
“I have work to do.”
She sat across from him and folded her hands on the table. “And what kind of work do you do, Mr. Ulrich?”
“I’m a producer,” he said, his tone giving off a forced arrogance she doubted even he believed. “Time is money. I should be shooting right now.”
Agent Pierce narrowed his eyes on the man. “Shooting what, Ulrich? A young, underage girl compromising herself for pervs on the Internet? Pervs like you?”
“You don’t know me,” Ulrich sneered. “My girls are all of age. I make sure of it.”
“How do you make sure of it?” Elaina probed.
“They have to show two forms of ID and fill out the necessary tax forms to get paid.”
Gage continued g
laring. “To get paid for what exactly?”
“Acting,” the other man answered. “I don’t know why you’re wasting my precious time. My company isn’t a secret. Clearly you found it. I shoot films. I produce them, and sometimes I direct them. You can look up my business license. It’s legit.”
“Is it?” Agent Pierce flipped through a folder that held miscellaneous pages from the stack of recycling in the copy room she’d given him. “Because we’ve found several ‘actresses’ with complaints against your company. Not to mention the fact that your employees have a tendency to go missing.”
They were bluffing for the most part, but it looked like they’d struck a nerve. Ulrich did his best to look unconcerned, but Elaina saw his hands fidgeting in his lap. “I want my attorney present for the remainder of this interrogation.”
Elaina lifted her chin. “It’s an interrogation?” She looked at Agent Pierce. “Did you know this was an interrogation?”
He shrugged, playing along. “I thought it was just an interview.”
She nodded. “It is. Merely a discussion, really. Until that DNA evidence from Caroline’s body comes in. Then it might become an interrogation.”
She watched Ulrich frown. “Caroline’s body? Caroline who?”
Agent Pierce looked ready to knock the man’s teeth down his throat. “Caroline Isla. Know her?”
She slid the medical examiner’s photo of Caroline’s body onto the table. Ulrich didn’t even flinch.
“I know her. Well, knew her. She filmed a few movies with us. Then she quit showing up a couple of weeks ago.”
Elaina retracted the photo. “You file a missing person’s report?”
Ulrich snorted. “No. Girls quit all the time without notice. It wasn’t exactly office work. They come around when they need the money. They stop when they don’t. She had a crazy boyfriend. Figured he told her she was done.”
“You got a name for the boyfriend?”
“Nope. She just acted strangely one day during a scene, and when I asked what the problem was, she said her boyfriend didn’t like her working for me anymore. Said she felt like she was cheating on him.”
Blood & Lace Page 11