by Julie Miller
She had a split-second instinct to glance over her shoulder and summon Josiah to come rescue her. She supposed she could even go back to the bar and let someone else serve the drink.
But that wasn’t who Riley was. She didn’t cry for help. She didn’t let someone else fix her problems or handle the tough jobs for her. She saved herself. Besides, Lawrence already had her captured in his icy stare
Riley tucked her hair behind her ear and tipped her chin to a confident angle. Just serve the damn drink. She’d dismiss him with some impersonal words and move on to the next table.
She resumed her stride and picked up the cocktail glass to set it in front of the man who once upon a time had helped her pay her rent. Considering her options at the time, a married man with a hankering for teenage girls, an insistence on condoms and plenty of money to pay for a clean hotel room, had seemed like a relatively safe bet.
But that was the past. That was the young runaway whose options had been limited to bearing the brunt of Sal Fusco’s drunken fury at home, becoming an unwanted foster teen at the mercy of the state, being forced to work for a pimp or choosing a couple of select customers and saving every last penny she could until she was able to walk away from life on the street. She’d made the choice. She’d taken control of her own survival.
She might have kept the skills from that life. But she hadn’t kept the life. It was up to her to make him understand that.
But as soon as Riley set the frosty glass on the table, the man’s hand clamped around her wrist. Brandy and Cointreau sloshed over the edge of the glass onto her hand and his shirt cuff. “Doreen, darlin’. I knew it was you.”
“Lawrence.” She acknowledged the former acquaintance even as she twisted free of his grasp. “You made me spill your drink.”
“Screw that. I knew you’d remember me.” His voice was even more twangy than she remembered. Must be the alcohol. “What are you doin’ here? I thought you’d left town.”
Just this part of it. “If you’ll excuse me.”
He hooked his finger beneath the hem of her skirt, tugging her off balance and pulling her back to his side. “Come on, now. I’m here for the show. Aren’t you gonna entertain me?”
“I don’t…” Riley glanced around the club as a new strain of music started and a different girl came out on stage to strip. Fortunately, with all that bare skin onstage, no one was interested in this little interchange. Well, one person’s whiskey-brown eyes were still fixed on her. But that wasn’t desire that deepened the taut line of scar tissue beside Josiah’s mouth. She’d better end this before Lawrence Houser created a scene. She slapped his hand away from her skirt. “I don’t do that anymore.”
“Not even one little lap dance for old time’s sake? You and me were special.”
“It was a business arrangement, Lawrence.”
“Well, then let’s do a little business.” Lawrence reached into his pocket as he pulled her onto his lap. Before she could get to her feet or shove him away, he tucked a tight roll of cash into her bra. “Maybe you can meet me out front after the show, and we can rekindle a few memories.”
She felt the warm bills from his pocket against her skin, but for several seconds her mind blanked. She was shutting down. Her body could feel, but her thoughts and emotions were disengaging in that instinctive self-defense mechanism that had gotten her through those few times when she’d been so desperate that she’d turned to men like Lawrence Houser to earn money to survive.
Maintain control, Riley. Don’t give this man the upper hand. You are not that girl anymore.
But before she could clear her head with the silent pep talk, two big hands closed around her shoulders and lifted her off Lawrence’s lap. Josiah set her on her feet and quickly nudged her behind him. She clung to the circle of his barbed wire tattoo as the club spun around her for a couple of dizzy moments.
“The girls here aren’t for sale,” he announced.
Lawrence chuckled. “That’s not what I heard.”
Josiah wasn’t laughing. “And just what have you heard?”
“That for the right price, I can buy exactly the kind of woman I want.”
Riley felt the tension harden Josiah’s muscles as he clenched his fists. “Don’t let him—”
“Is there a problem?” Before she could pull Josiah back from an ugly confrontation that would draw even more attention to the situation she just wanted to go away, Rocky jogged up to the table to intervene. He moved behind the chair and patted Lawrence’s shoulder. “Mr. Houser, isn’t it? I think there’s been a miscommunication here.”
Lawrence seemed amused to be the center of so much attention. “Calibrisi.”
“I hope you’re enjoying your evening.” Rocky waved away the dancer who had strutted to their side of the stage.
“I’m bored with what’s onstage, actually. And I’m not drunk enough to not care. I was promised a better time than this, Calibrisi.” Lawrence reached for Riley, Josiah shifted his stance and Rocky pinched his hand around the drunk man’s shoulder, squeezing tight enough to make Lawrence wince and fall back in his chair.
“Of course.” Rocky made no apology for hurting the customer, but his tone remained friendly. “Would you come back to my office, please? What are you drinking? I’ll make sure you get another.” Rocky might be a sleaze, but he seemed to have a knack for defusing a tense situation without spoiling the experience for any of his customers. “Doreen, send Tammy backstage with a fresh drink for Mr. Houser. Josiah, I’ll handle this. Get back to your post.”
But her beefy protector refused to move. “She needs to take her break.”
“Um, who’s the manager, and who works for the manager?” Rocky reminded him.
Riley snapped out of her mental coma and rested her hand against the middle of Josiah’s back. This wasn’t the time for Rocky or anyone else to become suspicious of the undercover cop and his cocktail waitress ally. “I’m okay.”
Rocky seemed to agree. “Doreen has other tables she’s responsible—”
“She’s taking a break.” Josiah’s low-pitched command vibrated through her fingers with such force that she pulled away.
Even Rocky seemed to hesitate at the tension surrounding the table. “Looks like you’ve got Ms. Riley here rattled, Lawrence. What did you do to her?”
The good-ol’ boy in the three-piece suit smacked his lips. “It’s what she did to me.”
Before Riley could shake off the humiliation and anger that crawled across her skin, Josiah picked Lawrence up by the lapels. “I thought we threw out scum like this, Rocky.”
Rocky eyed Josiah as if debating whether or not his boss status was enough of an advantage to take him on. “Relax, Kemp. I said I’ve got this. Maybe you should take ten minutes, too. Walk off some of that temper in the night air.” Josiah shoved Lawrence away. Rocky caught the man before he tumbled backward over his chair. “Mr. Houser, let’s have a conversation in my office?”
“Nobody manhandles me, Calibrisi. I have my rights.” Lawrence slurred the Italian name and brushed at the wrinkles in his suit as if he’d been the one to break Josiah’s grip on him. But when Josiah took a step toward him, daring him to do something about the veiled threat, Rocky wisely tugged at his arm, and the two men scurried away.
Riley dropped her tray on the table and headed into the back hallway a few steps behind them. But when she turned toward the women’s dressing room, a broad hand at her waist pulled her in the other direction, out the back door into the alley.
“Josiah, I…” She shivered at the chilly air dancing across her skin and hugged her arms in front of her. “What now?”
After his regular check to make sure they were alone with the trash cans and eddies of fallen leaves swirling across the pavement, he came back to cast a giant shadow over her. He reached out to catch the strands of hair that blew across her cheek and tucked them behind her ear, letting his warmth linger against her cheek. “You okay?”
A needy impulse surged t
hrough Riley, making her want to turn her face into his hand and turn her whole body into the shelter of his chest. But that would be giving up control and admitting she wasn’t strong enough to deal with her past. Although it hurt to deny herself that need to give in, Riley tilted her chin and pulled away from him. “Don’t touch me right now.”
“Riley—”
“Please.” She took a couple steps away, breathing the cooling air into her lungs. “I just need a couple of minutes to get my armor back into place. With everything that’s going on, I just wasn’t expecting to see Lawrence here.”
Josiah splayed his fingers at his waist, reining in the emotion that still colored his voice, anchoring himself into place. “For a minute there, I thought he might be Salvatore Fusco.”
“No, he’s…” Riley swiveled her gaze up to his. “How do you know about Sal?” She nodded with a grim understanding and paced away. More lies. Her boots crunched on the pavement as she turned to face him. “You ran a background check on me.”
Riley looked away, wishing these broken bricks and asphalt would swallow her up.
So Josiah knew about the beatings and the broken arm and the night Sal Fusco had come into her bedroom to rape her. Had he read the report about how she’d brained her stepfather with a lamp and he threatened to press assault charges against her because her “wild child” antics had finally gone too far? Did Josiah know that was the night she’d left her home for good and started learning a whole new set of survival skills stripping at the Cheap Peep and finally turning a couple of tricks to get enough money to buy the old car she lived out of for a few months that first semester of community college?
She didn’t know whether to feel hurt or angry or completely humiliated. She wasn’t used to feeling much of anything, and every emotion came out in barbs of sarcasm. “You are good at your job, Detective. Very thorough, I see. I suppose you know that Lawrence Houser was a former client of mine, too.”
“I didn’t ask for those kinds of details.”
“A girl has to support herself when going home is no longer an option.”
He caught her by the arm when she paced in front of him. Hunching his shoulders, he dipped his face closer to hers. “I’m sorry if you feel I violated your privacy, but I had to know if you were involved in any of this. That’s what a cop does. He checks out the people involved in his investigation. I know as much about anybody else who works here as I do you. I have to know who the bad guys are so I can protect myself.”
“Maybe I was once the victim, Josiah, but I was never the bad guy.” She jerked her arm free and moved several steps past him. “The only reason I’m here is to find my sister.”
“I know that. Now. But do you think I was going to risk my entire investigation on some woman I just met?” He followed her down the alley and forced her to face him again. “I couldn’t just blindly give you my trust.”
“I know the feeling,” she answered, bracing her hands against his chest, making sure he understood that whatever seedlings of trust she’d felt with him had just been yanked out by the roots. “My past isn’t up for discussion with anybody, especially you.”
“Why especially me?” he demanded. “I’m on your side, Riley.”
Why had she added that? Did it mean anything? Was she just spewing emotions that had broken loose inside her without really thinking them through?
“Really? Do I get to know all the details of your sordid past? Do you even have any?” She shoved him away, snatched his keys off his belt and moved toward the door into the club. “I’ll take my break in your office. Alone. Maybe I can find out what Lawrence and Rocky are discussing on one of your monitors.” She shook the ring of keys in her hand, wondering which one fit inside that lock. “If you trust me to do that.”
“You don’t have to be on the job 24/7.”
“You are,” she argued.
Josiah plucked the keys from her fingers to sort through them and hold up the one she needed. “I warned you this would be dangerous.”
Riley grabbed the key and thrust it into the lock before gesturing toward the interior where Rocky and her best-paying john had disappeared. “I can handle them.”
He reached over her shoulder, forcing the door shut as soon as she pulled it open. “What can’t you handle?” Riley shrugged his chest away from her back, but there was no budging the door beneath his grip. “Me knowing the truth about who you really are? Your past doesn’t bother me. We all have history we have to deal with.”
“That’s bullshit.” She spun to face him, flattening her back against the door. “I know you’re attracted to me. But now you’re rethinking those impulses, regretting that you can’t help wanting me. I slept with other men. For money. What guy isn’t bothered by that?”
“Not every man is a selfish prick, Riley. We aren’t all your stepdad or that shit in the bar or whoever might have hurt your sister. Maybe if you didn’t spend so much time bending us to your will instead of getting to know who we really are, you’d see that we aren’t all the enemy.” He took a deep breath and softened his tone until it was dark like the night around them. “I said I’d protect you and that’s what I did. I’m not going to stop doing that. I didn’t like how he put his hands on you. I could tell you got rattled by it, so I stepped in.”
Even though that deeply masculine whisper did funny things to her pulse rate, Riley flattened her palms on the cold steel door at her back, latching on to cruel reality before she latched on to him. “I may have to let men put their hands on me to get the information you need. Beauty and the beast, remember?”
His jaw tightened and a vein throbbed beneath the scar by his mouth.
Yeah, making him feel like he was pimping her out wasn’t the best way to end this argument with the man who was supposed to be helping her. But maybe it was a good way to end those foolish emotions that kept sneaking up on her with this man who had somehow touched her heart.
“Riley.” The arm beside her head relaxed. He caught a loose wave of her hair and watched it sift through his big fingers and settle over her breast before he tilted those whiskey dark eyes up to hers. “You don’t have to be with any man you don’t want to be, not even me. Not for this job. Not to find your sister. Not for anything.”
“But I’m good at that, Josiah. In a place like this, it’s the one thing I bring to the table that you can’t. And I’ll do anything to find Megan. Anything.”
“A good cop is supposed to protect his partner. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
Her breath hitched as his knuckles brushed across her breast before pulling away. “You can’t have it both ways. You can’t expect me to do…what I do, and then try to stop it from happening.”
“You’re my secret weapon,” he admitted, reluctance evident in his tone. “You’re the only way I can break this case before whatever is happening Saturday goes down. After that, it may be too late.”
Riley nodded. On that point, at least, they could agree. “Then you’d better let me get back to work.”
Chapter Seven
Ten minutes in front of the monitors in Josiah’s office could teach a girl a lot of things.
For one thing, Opal Cunningham kept a lot of cash in her office, in a safe behind a door that locked with a keypad like the secret room upstairs. And the bleached-blonde bitch was either skimming money off of After Dark’s profits, or she was managing two separate accounts. Because she was very definitely counting out two piles of money on her desk. Although the camera angle didn’t allow Riley to see the information Opal typed onto her computer, the club’s finance manager carefully bundled and logged in one stack of cash, and locked it back in the safe. But with the second batch, she pulled a gym bag from under her desk and stuffed the money inside without entering any data.
After Opal stashed the gym bag and dialed a number on her phone, Riley turned her attention to the image coming from Rocky Calibrisi’s office.
Although she couldn’t make out the words, there was a very di
fferent type of conversation going on between Rocky and Lawrence Houser than the cajoling, customer’s-always-right exchange that had taken place out in the club. Lawrence stood up to argue something and Rocky came around his desk to shove him down in his chair. Rocky showed his muscle, leaning over the stunned man, jabbing a finger in his chest and making something extremely clear.
So much for the fast-talking businessman Riley had known. When Lawrence’s posture sagged and he raised his hands in surrender, Rocky sat back on the edge of his desk and pulled a business card from his pocket.
No, wait. Riley squinted to get a better look. It wasn’t paper. It was more like a credit card. Or a plastic key card.
She instantly shifted her gaze up to the monitor showing Danny Mertz at the top of the spiral staircase. When he adjusted his position on the stool where he sat, she saw the ring of keys and a similar key card hanging from his belt. She looked back down at Rocky and Lawrence. Was that key card passage into the secret room?
Rocky waved the card in front of Lawrence, but snatched it away when the older man reached for it. With his gestures and posture reading like an apology now, Lawrence dug inside his wrinkled suit and pulled out his wallet. He counted several bills into Rocky’s hand before the club manager handed over the card. Leaving Lawrence little time to gloat over his success, Rocky grabbed him by the collar, turning over the chair as he hauled him to the door. He threw Lawrence up against the wall for another finger pointing lecture before pulling him aside and opening the door.
“Oscar!” Riley backed her chair up against the far wall and held her breath as she heard Rocky yelling in the hallway outside Josiah’s office. The monitor showed the guard in front of the elevator responding to the summons. He shoved Lawrence into the guard’s waiting grip. “Get this scumbag idiot out of here. If he shows his face around here again, you have my permission to rip it off his head.”
“Yes, sir.”
She could still hear Rocky’s voice as he walked Lawrence and the guard to the private side exit. “You’ll get the information for Saturday night just before it’s time to start. But one word to anybody about this and you won’t live to see Saturday night. Understood?”