by Vivi Andrews
Images of her flashed in his mind. Ciara smiling up at him, her black eyes twinkling. Ciara naked and writhing in the dunk tank. Ciara pressed against him, begging for more as his mouth explored hers.
Was he getting too emotionally involved? Nate winced and pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d made out with her in a taxi, for fuck’s sake. That was a textbook mistake. Would he even know if she were crooked?
What had been proved really? She’d jumped naked into a dunk tank. She’d told him the necklace was here. But he didn’t have any confirmation of that fact. So why did he believe her now? Why did she suddenly feel so much more trustworthy?
He needed to stop thinking with his dick and get his head back into the game. To think about the case, not how quickly he could get out the condom stashed in his wallet.
Nate dialed the office, hoping for a bracing dose of perspective.
A fellow agent picked up his boss’s phone on the third ring. “Cutter,” he barked.
“Sam. It’s Nate Smith. Is Roberts there?”
“Nate. How’s the leg, man? We were hoping to see you in the office this week.”
“The leg’s fine, but I don’t think I’m going to make it into the office. I’m in Atlantic City with Ciara Liung.”
“The psychic? No shit? A psychic in Atlantic City. Why didn’t I ever think of that? You playing roulette? Letting her pick the numbers and shit?”
“Sam, I’d really like to talk to Roberts.”
“The bossman, eh? You can try the cell, but I wouldn’t expect him to answer it. He’s out chasing leads on the Monaco crisis.”
“It’s about the Monaco thing, actually.”
“Yeah? Did you know some chick named Karma’s called the office fifteen times about you and that Liung chick? She sounds pissed as all hell.”
“Yeah, I’ll deal with her later. About the necklace…”
“Your psychic chick find it already? That’s great, but I wouldn’t expect a lot of backup anytime soon. Unless you’ve got something hard. Everyone’s out rattling cages trying to shake something loose so we don’t end up with a fucking international incident. I pulled the short straw to stick around here and sort through the crazies on the tip line. You would not believe some of the messed-up shit people call in.”
“Cutter,” Nate began irritably.
“You want me to add your psychic chick’s tip to the pile? Where’d she say it was?”
“A hotel safe in the Borgata. Atlantic City.”
Cutter snorted into the phone. “Sure it is. Wanna trade caseloads? I’ll take all the ones involving casinos and strippers, and you can have my slimy assholes in back alleys. Seem fair?”
“Just tell Roberts to call me,” Nate said.
“Y’okay, Smith. You got it.”
Nate cut the connection and dialed his boss’s cell. It went straight through to voice mail. He left a message, and then tossed the cell phone onto the mattress behind him. “Dammit.”
Cutter was a likeable guy—even criminals seemed to get along well with him—but if Nate could have picked someone to take his call, Sam Cutter would have been pretty far down the list.
Cutter hadn’t taken him or Ciara’s lead seriously. Nate couldn’t even be sure his message would get passed along. The odds of more resources being allocated to Atlantic City were crappy at best.
He’d certainly come down in the world. Special Agent Nate Smith used to be a name that was whispered with awe around the Bureau. He was a badass undercover agent with an unprecedented arrest record. He had a reputation for being a hardass. A little edgy. Certainly someone no one ever mocked.
Now he was like a toothless shark. He still had the killer instinct, but he couldn’t act on it anymore.
The water had stopped running in the bathroom and he could hear Ciara humming tunelessly. He crossed to the door and knocked on it softly. “Ciara? You getting anything more?”
The sound of water splashing helped him conjure up a vivid image of her bathing nude on the other side of the door.
“Just more of the same,” she called. “No luck with the room number yet.”
Nate dropped his forehead against the door. He couldn’t catch a break. “Keep trying,” he requested. “I’m going to go see if I can find anything out from the hotel staff.”
Technically he was on medical leave and shouldn’t even be here, but he couldn’t wait around here and do nothing. He was not a useless cripple behind a desk. He was a trained field agent. He didn’t need a woman in a pink bustier to find the necklace. He’d solved dozens of cases without psychic intervention.
Maybe someone in hotel security had seen something. Casinos could be real bitches about the privacy of their clientele. Without a warrant, he couldn’t demand to see a guest list or access their security tapes, but often if the guys manning the security monitors felt like running their mouths, he could get all he needed without bothering with the slower-than-hell proper legal channels. He wasn’t without resources.
He would prove this shark still had a tooth or two.
Chapter Eight—Finders Gone Wild!
Ciara tried to wait patiently in the room for Nate to return. Really she did.
She tried finding the necklace a dozen different times, but she just got the same flashes over and over again. Usually she could pick up on some new clue, a visual hint she’d missed the first time, but this time she kept seeing the same woman, the same safe.
Ciara gave up and climbed out of the tub. She dried off and pulled on her dress, which was slightly the worse for wear.
Standing in the luxurious bathroom, Ciara studied herself in the enormous mirror. She looked…frumpy. Her dress had been chosen for comfort rather than style. It hung loosely from her shoulders with about as much shape as the average potato sack. Her hair hung straight and boring to the middle of her back. She’d never bothered with elaborate hairstyles, since fancy salons were out of the question, with the fancy stylists putting their fingers all over her head.
She didn’t have makeup. She didn’t have accessories. Even the little things added to the static—which she still heard. She’d tried listening to objects the same way she did to Nate, but she just got the same static feedback. No tuning-fork hum of perfection reverberating through her. But she wasn’t giving up. Ciara had every intention of trying until she figured out the right frequency for the objects. She wasn’t going to give up so easily ever again. She’d wasted too many years believing she couldn’t touch people because she’d stopped trying.
She was a new Ciara now.
She studied her reflection. She needed to look new.
She’d seen a shopping mall off the casino downstairs while she and Nate were trying to find the right bank of elevators to take them up to their room. In the window of one boutique, a mannequin in a sexy red sheath dress had caught her eye.
She would look like eleven kinds of sin in that dress. Nate would never turn down a quickie if she were wearing that.
Two hours later Ciara had discovered there were very few things at the Borgata which could not be charged to your room—designer dresses, cosmetics, a haircut at the spa salon, even poker chips were just a signature away. Charge it to the FBI, darling. They could take it out of her fee.
Strutting from a blackjack table over to the noisy excitement of the roulette wheel, Ciara heard people whispering and pointing, mistaking her for a celebrity. She added a little extra swivel to her hips, managing not to trip over her new three-and-half-inch heels. She felt like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, living out every fantasy as fast as she could before reality came crashing down.
The men at the roulette table sidled aside to make a space for her, leering appreciatively, and Ciara smiled to herself.
She felt powerful. She was a goddess tonight. A vampy starlet who took whatever she wanted.
Ciara leaned against the rail and casually flipped a chip onto the table, smiling at the man next to her. He was Jersey from head to toe. Italian, a little heavyset, wear
ing a dark suit over a brightly colored, partially unbuttoned shirt of some slippery material.
He wasn’t appealing in the visceral way Nate was, but the idea of putting her hands on him was almost narcotic in its appeal.
She could touch him if she wanted. Hell, she could kiss him senseless. She was adventurous. She was wild. What was stopping her?
Doubt. Doubt was stopping her. Those damned what ifs. What if it went away? What if she couldn’t kiss anyone but Nate? Sure, in the last few hours she’d had other people’s hands on her hands, her arms and her scalp, but that didn’t mean her lips wouldn’t trigger a nuclear meltdown. Really, she ought to test it. In the interest of scientific discovery.
Ciara met Joe Jersey’s eyes and gave him a flirty little smile.
She’d leave it up to chance. Ciara stacked three chips on top of the number seventeen. If she won, she’d kiss him. If she lost…she’d play again until she won.
Was this how most gambling addictions started? As an enabler to nymphomania?
The ball spun in a dizzying whirl around the wheel. Ciara watched it intently, excitement bubbling up to a rapid boil inside her. The ball rattled off a series of slots, bouncing erratically, then settled suddenly.
Seventeen.
Ciara squealed, jumping up and down, clapping her hands and playing the lucky winner to the hilt. She pounced on the man beside her, wrapped her arms around his neck and planted one full on his mouth.
After Nate returned to the room to find Ciara had vanished, he panicked and began searching the hotel. The last place he expected to find her was at a roulette table in a juicy lip lock with a perfect stranger.
“Ciara.”
She sprang away from her new friend, flashing him a bright, unapologetic smile. “Nate! There you are. Look, I won!” She pointed to the roulette table, bouncing in her spiky heels.
“Congratulations,” he said grimly. Nate turned to the bastard who’d taken advantage of her excitement.
Who took one look at the expression on Nate’s face and immediately held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, buddy, she kissed me. How was I to know you had a prior claim? Am I right?”
Ciara bent over the table, blithely gathering up her chips. She looked cheerful and bright-eyed and not at all like someone who’d just been kissed against her will.
“You kissed him?”
Not that it mattered who’d kissed whom. It was none of his business. She was none of his business. Just an informant. So why did he feel like he’d just discovered his favorite puppy played with other little boys when he wasn’t around?
Ciara caught his arm and tugged him away from the table, carrying a small stack of plastic money against her chest. “I can kiss him,” she gushed.
“That doesn’t mean you should,” he heard himself snap.
Ciara paused beside an abandoned craps table and tipped her face up to him, a feline smile curving her lips. “Why, Agent Smith. Are you jealous?”
“Of course not.”
She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “You’re a much better kisser, you know. Joe Jersey over there has an excessive amount of saliva. It was very…moist.”
“Good to know.”
“It is good to know. I can kiss moist men. I’ve cracked the code, Nate. I can touch people again. Not just you, people. Do you know what this means?”
“No.” He was still playing catch up on the she’s-not-a-thief-and-she-kisses-like-a-siren front. The implications of the touching stuff were beyond him.
“It means I don’t have to live like a hermit anymore. It means I’m not a freak. It means I can finally have a life.” Ciara closed her eyes and shook her head sharply. “God, I can’t believe what an idiot I’ve been. All the time I’ve wasted just because I didn’t try. Just because I didn’t listen.” Her eyes popped open, their black depths sparkling wetly. “That’s all it took. All I had to do was stop fighting my own abilities, stop bracing myself for every attack and just accept it. If I didn’t want to waste even one more second on regret, I’d be so angry with myself right now.”
She didn’t look angry. She looked a breath away from laughter or tears, but not angry.
Ciara had been a vibrant force from the second he laid eyes on her, but now it was like the life in her was amplified, like a raw diamond cut and perfectly set to show off every sparkling facet. Before she had been beautiful, now she shone.
And there was quite a lot to show.
“What the hell are you wearing?”
Ciara laughed and twirled. “You like? Not bad, eh?”
Not bad. Sweet Jesus. She looked like temptation incarnate in that red dress. It was short and tight and the color of a luscious apple. Eve didn’t need a piece of fruit. All she needed was a dress like that.
Ciara clutched her winnings against her ribs, her arm pressing her breasts up like offerings above the low neckline. Nate placed a finger against one narrow strap at her shoulder. He traced the strap down until he brushed the warm upper curve of her breast. Her breath caught, her inky eyes locked on his.
“I like,” he murmured. He fixated on her mouth—the smooth curve of it. He’d never noticed before, but her mouth was a little lopsided, quirking up on the right. He wanted to kiss that up-tilted edge, nip the full lower curve and suck it into his mouth.
She stared at his lips, caught in the same moment he was, as the noise in the casino seemed to recede. He leaned down, hypnotized as her tongue snuck out to trace her lips. She rested her free hand on his chest and stretched up to meet him.
A slot machine erupted ten feet away from them, bells and whistles shrieking merrily as some lucky bastard hit the jackpot. Nate didn’t even glance in that direction. He was too focused on his own jackpot. But Ciara’s eyes flicked over. She gasped. Her spine stiffened.
“Nate,” she whispered urgently. “Nate, look. That woman over there. In the pink.”
“Is she the woman in pink?” He reluctantly gave up on his own payday and straightened, turning to look. At first he just saw the middle-aged couple in matching sweatsuits clapping and jumping next to the slot machine. Then he saw the woman. She was pretty damn hard to miss. She looked like an Austin Powers Bimbot who’d been dunked in Pepto-Bismol. Pink brassiere, pink hot pants, black fishnets and sky-high boots. Her blonde hair was poofed up in a platinum bouffant and silver fake eyelashes sparkled in the flashing lights from the slot machine.
“No,” Ciara drawled slowly, “no, that isn’t her. But she’s dressed just like that. Are there showgirls here?”
Nate shook his head. “No floorshow. Are you sure that isn’t her? What are the odds that there are two women here dressed like that?”
As soon as the words left his mouth, a second woman, this one African-American but dressed almost exactly the same way, appeared. She spoke to the bouffant blonde, waving her hands expressively. A fraction of a second later the two women took off, jogging through the casino.
“They’re getting away,” Ciara yelped. “We have to follow them. They’ll lead us right to her.” She started sprinting through the casino after them.
Nate swore and began limping after as quickly as he could, using his cane like a pole vaulter’s stick whenever possible.
“Come on, Nate,” Ciara called over her shoulder, her eyes dancing. “Follow that slut!”
Chapter Nine—In Pursuit of Slut
Ciara tottered as fast as she could in the wake of the pink ladies. Suddenly she had a profound respect for women who could sprint in four-inch heels. Like the pink ladies. Those tramps could book. They must be wearing the Adidas of platform boots.
They dashed through the casino, dodging games and slow-moving gamblers like Olympic hopefuls in skankwear.
Ciara struggled to keep them in sight. As they bobbed, she weaved, and then glanced back over her shoulder. Nate kept pace amazingly well for a guy with only one good leg. He was definitely getting the hang of that cane.
She grinned at him, having too much fun in the slut-chase to match
the severe expression on his face. Nate needed to learn to live a little. So what if they were chasing trollops across a massive casino floor in the hopes of locating a specific trollop who knew the location of a stolen necklace? That was no reason not to enjoy the moment.
Ciara nearly crashed into a Wheel of Fortune slot machine and untwisted, deciding it was safer, while running in four-inch heels, to watch where she was going. She rounded a corner and slowed to a stop.
The pink ladies were nowhere in sight. Ciara bent at the waist—she was so damned out of shape—as she scanned the area for a flash of hot pink trampiness.
Nate staggered to a stop at her side.
“Did you see which way they went?” she asked.
He shook his head, panting heavily beside her. At least they were out of shape together. Though Ciara didn’t have the excuse of a heroic injury in the line of duty and being laid up for a month in a lengthy recovery. She just had pathetic muscle mass after spending the last decade of her life floating in her pool.
She would have to start working out. Training. In high heels. Next time she’d be ready for the Olympic skanks.
“Here, hold these.” She divided her winnings into two stacks and shoved them into Nate’s suit-coat pockets. She stretched up as tall as she could, craning her neck for some sign of the skankettes.
In front of them was a row of blackjack tables, off to the left was one of the gourmet restaurants and directly behind them was the darkened, black-velvet-rope-lined entrance to a dance club. Ciara heard the bass beat humming distantly, more a vibration through the soles of her feet than actual sound. A slim brunette dressed all in black stood at the podium at the front of the velvet-rope line, tapping her manicure against a clipboard.
Ciara tugged Nate’s arm and nodded in the hostess’s direction. “She must have seen which way they went. Come on.”
Ninety seconds later, Ciara was ready to throttle the little hostess—not that she had a good excuse for strangling the twit. She hardly qualified as a hostile witness. It had taken Nate all of fifteen seconds to find out that the pink ladies—Ashley and Monique—had indeed passed this way. In fact, they’d run down into the club. Late for work again, tsk tsk.