Caught

by Jami Alden

  Ethan huffed out a chuckle. “No thanks. I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Seriously? A man who doesn’t take the opportunity to look at naked women, especially when he can say it was for purely professional reasons?”

  He straightened and turned his back on the computer, biceps flexing as he folded his arms across his chest. “Let’s put aside the fact that one of the girls is the teenage daughter of my client—not something I need to see. But if I’m looking at a naked woman, ideally it’s because I’m in the room with her and I’m about to show her a really good time.”

  Toni felt her mouth go dry and her body go wet as her mind took that scenario and ran with it. Her—naked, waiting, watching—as Ethan stripped off his shirt and moved over her with that predatory grace. She swallowed hard and pushed her glasses up her nose. “In that case, we might as well go see him.” Grateful for the excuse to get out of her apartment before she did something really stupid, she handed him her BlackBerry, where she’d keyed in Toby’s address on the nearby Stanford campus.

  On the short drive, Toni told him everything else she’d discovered about Toby Frankel, T-Bone. “In addition to his amateur porn ventures, Toby also has had several scrapes with the law. Minor drug stuff, mostly, public intoxication—all of it when he was a minor, and nothing ever really stuck. Then last year, he got busted for allegedly supplying most of the drugs to the local junior high and high-schoolers. It went to trial, but they couldn’t get the charges to stick.”

  “Good lawyers?” Ethan asked.

  “The best,” Toni said. “He was represented by Goodly and Shipman.”

  Ethan knew that Mark Goodly took on only the highest-profile cases. “So our boy Toby comes from some major cash.”

  Toni nodded and scrolled through the rest of her notes. “His father is the managing partner for a hedge fund back east. And it looks like he’s spent a fair portion of his multimillion-dollar bonuses keeping his son out of jail. In fact, that’s why Toby’s taking classes this summer. Funny how a criminal trial will mess with your academic schedule.”

  Ethan pulled into the parking lot of the luxurious-looking apartment building where Toby was spending his summer. “Wow. Student housing has changed a lot since I went to school,” marveled Toni.

  “Lots of rich alumni, showing the school a little love,” Ethan said.

  A young woman was unlocking the front door as they approached. To the right of the entry was an intercom system that allowed tenants to buzz visitors in.

  But they didn’t need to bother paging Toby. The student looked over her shoulder, took one look at Ethan, and held the door open wide.

  Ethan murmured his thanks and motioned for Toni to precede him into the building. They joined the girl in the elevator, Ethan smiling and chatting politely as the girl somehow managed to ask a hundred questions in the course of riding up three floors.

  “Maybe I’ll see you around,” she said, peeking up under her lashes and wiggling her fingers in an impish little wave. Toni watched the doors close behind the girl’s nubile twenty-year-old butt. She clenched her jaw, feeling about a hundred years old and as sexy as concrete. She generally didn’t indulge in insecurity over her appearance, didn’t obsess over how she stacked up against other women. Toni never had been and never would be a sex kitten. She’d never be like that girl—cute and petite with lots of luscious curves. She’d faced reality long ago and never let it bother her. But Ethan’s oh-so-easy banter and the girl’s receptive smile set her off.

  “Do you ever pass up an opportunity to flirt?” she asked, immediately regretting the question.

  “I was merely making conversation with a friendly girl,” he said. “And besides, she could have had valuable information.”

  “Yeah, like her apartment number and a hand-engraved invitation into her panties.” Toni clamped her lips shut, wishing she could call the words back, and pissed because she’d been in danger of issuing a similar invitation back at her apartment. She would not be the first to melt in the face of Ethan’s effortless charm, and she would be far from the last. She really needed to remember that, especially when her body sent out urgent reminders every time he so much as looked at her that she hadn’t had sex in over a year.

  Ethan laughed as the doors slid open on Toby’s floor.

  Ethan knocked on his door, which was opened by a guy Toni assumed was Toby’s roommate. He was a little shorter than she was, with shaggy brown hair and skinny legs that stuck out from the bottom of his ragged khaki shorts.

  “Is Toby here?” Ethan asked. “We need to ask him some questions.”

  “Who wants to know?” the kid asked. He wore a sleepy, smart-ass smile, his eyes bloodshot and narrowed into telltale slits. She sniffed the air. Yep, Toby’s roommate was high as a kite.

  Gone was the flirty charmer from the elevator. Suddenly Ethan was all steely, square-jawed authority.

  The kid blanched. “Toby’s not here.” The door started to close, and Toni realized they weren’t going to get anywhere with Stoner Boy if Ethan went all Law & Order on him.

  “Really,” Toni said, affecting the sweetest, widest-eyed look she could manage. “I’m sure he told me to meet him here tonight.”

  The kid squinted at her through red-rimmed eyes. “Are you here for a shoot?”

  “Yeah,” she said, pushing her way past the roommate and into the apartment. Her nose twitched at the mingled odors of pot, dirty laundry, and stale Doritos. “Is there someplace I should change? I’m Toni, by the way.” She stuck out her hand at the kid who shambled after her, trying to keep up.

  Ethan had no such trouble, eyeing her as though waiting to see how far she’d take this.

  Not that far, Ace.

  “I’m Dave,” the roommate said. “Toby’s not here right now.”

  Toni feigned a look at her watch. “Really? I swear he said nine o’clock.” She looked at Ethan. “Didn’t he say nine o’clock, honey?”

  Ethan’s teeth flashed as he grinned. “That’s what he said, baby.”

  “Wow, you’re really tall,” Dave said, blinking dazedly as he looked at Toni.

  “Thanks. My dad was six four. So when will Toby be back?”

  “I dunno.” Dave shrugged. Toni strained to keep her smile fixed as he took a long, hard look at her, his gaze seeming to stick somewhere around her boobs. “You’re not like the regular girls. No offense, you’re hot and all, but aren’t you a little…old?”

  Toni faked a laugh. “I’m a graduate student, doing research on the way pornography and its prevalence on the Internet are influencing portrayals of feminine sexuality in mainstream media. I feel like the only way I can really understand what drives the average girl to want to be the next Jenna Jameson is to experience it for myself. Anonymously, of course. Toby promised he’d blur out my face.”

  Dave nodded soberly. “I help him edit the photos sometimes. I’ll make sure no one knows it’s you.”

  She walked across the messy sitting room and pushed open the door to a bedroom. She switched on the light and looked inside. She recognized the blue bedspread from numerous pictures. A tripod sat empty across from the bed. Wherever Toby was, he’d taken his camera with him. “Is this where he’ll set up?”

  Dave nodded and shot a nervous look at Ethan. “What’s with the big dude?”

  “Ethan’s my boyfriend. He’s very jealous,” she said, speaking in a stage whisper.

  Her stomach muscles clenched as Ethan’s hand slid around her waist. “I wasn’t about to let her do this alone.” He drew her back against him, until she could feel the hard outline of every muscle in his chest against her back. “She says it’s all for her dissertation, but I want to be here in case Toby tries anything.”

  Toni laid her hand across his forearm in the guise of affection but dug in her nails in warning. Ethan retaliated by pulling her even tighter against him, until she could feel an unmistakable firmness nudging at the small of her back. “Actually, I’m hoping to talk him into a coupl
e’s shoot. Do you think Toby would do that?”

  Ethan must have been giving him the death stare, because Dave swallowed hard and looked anywhere but at Toni. “Maybe. Listen, should I have him call you when he gets back?”

  “Any idea when that will be?” Ethan asked. “We’ve got a packed schedule and I want to get this over with.”

  “He took off yesterday for Vegas.”

  “That’s right,” Toni said, slapping her forehead. “My friend Kara said something about that. Do you know if she ended up going with him?”

  “Kara?” Dave said, clueless.

  “She’s Toby’s girlfriend.”

  “Toby has lots of girlfriends.”

  Toni pulled up Kara’s picture on her cell phone. “You have to have seen her. She’s been seeing Toby for a couple of months now,” Toni said, though she had no idea how long they’d known each other or how close they were.

  Dave stared at Kara’s picture for a full thirty seconds, opening his bloodshot eyes wide as he struggled to focus. Then, as though a circuit finally connected in his brain, he grabbed the picture, pointing eagerly. “Yeah, yeah! I’ve seen her. Toby started hanging out with her at the beginning of the summer,” Dave said. “But she hasn’t been around lately. I think they had a fight.”

  “Huh. She never mentioned it,” Toni said, as Ethan slid a possessive arm around Toni’s shoulders.

  Only the prospect of finding out where Kara was kept Toni from turning and nuzzling her face into Ethan’s chest.

  “A couple weeks ago she came by and found him in bed with another chick. She went apeshit and flushed his stash of Ex. He got really pissed.”

  “That’s weird, because I’m sure she said she was going to see him this weekend,” Toni said, trying to jar a memory out of Dave’s pot-laden brain cells.

  Dave shrugged and plopped down on the couch in a heap of gangly limbs. “Maybe they made up. You’ll have to ask her.”

  “We’d better go,” Ethan said, guiding her to the door with his arm around her shoulders. “We’ll see you around.”

  As soon as the door shut Toni extricated herself from his grip. “You can stop feeling me up now.” She stepped into the elevator and moved to the opposite corner, as far from him as possible.

  “A couple’s shoot?”

  “Hey, it got him talking, better than you scaring the crap out of him would have,” she said with a chuckle.

  He shrugged and pulled a face as though mulling it over. “I’ve always been a door-closed kinda guy, but I’d be willing—in the interest of our investigation, of course.” His naughty smile made her feel hot all over.

  “Do not get any ideas,” she said, laughing, then trailed off as guilt and worry surged back to the forefront. “This isn’t funny. Kara’s involved with this scumbag, and I’m laughing about it.”

  “Kara’s almost eighteen,” he pointed out. “In a couple of months she’ll be able to show her tits to everyone with a Web browser and there’s nothing we can do.”

  “Don’t talk about her like that. She’s not eighteen yet, and Toby Frankel is exploiting a minor.”

  The elevator doors slid open and Toni hurried out.

  “Still, you’re taking this way more personally than you should.”

  She whipped around to face him. “And maybe you should take it a little more personally. As far as I can tell, Kara’s nothing to you but a paycheck. You don’t care if we find her in a Dumpster, as long as you get paid.” She threw open the front door and stalked across the parking lot.

  He caught her in three strides, his grip firm on her upper arm. “That’s not fair, and you know it. Of course I care what happens to her. I want to find her and make sure she’s okay as much as you do. But you have to remember that Kara’s not the innocent kid you thought she was, and she may be off having a great fucking time with her boyfriend while you beat yourself up worrying about her.”

  She could see his point but had to get in one last jab. “Or her pissed-off ex-boyfriend could have kidnapped her.”

  “Which is why we’re going to track down Toby and find out. But it’s probably just like the police said. She’s going to stroll into her house in the next couple of days and won’t give a shit that she left a lot of people worried sick.”

  “Smile for the camera.”

  Kara pressed herself harder into the mattress, trying to disappear into the firm bulk. Smile? Her mouth was shaking uncontrollably as her chest heaved with hysterical breath.

  Her parents had never taken her and her brother to church, but now she couldn’t stop praying. Pleasegodpleasegodplease. Let me get out of here. Please don’t let them hurt me.

  So far her prayers had been answered. She hadn’t been hurt beyond the pain in her wrists where she’d been bound.

  But that didn’t stop the clawing fear that kept a death grip on her heart.

  After her conversation with the man, they’d put her in a shower, fully clothed, and told her to clean herself up or else.

  She didn’t even wait for the threat of “or else” to start scrubbing herself clean.

  Another man stood guard in the bathroom while she showered, a stocky blond guy who watched her through the beveled-glass door in a way that made her want to throw up.

  They won’t rape me. They want me to be a virgin. It was the only shred of hope she could cling to through her panic.

  Her skin crawled when she remembered the way the man had talked about her “treasure.”

  And now they were taking pictures of her. Pictures of her on a big, white bed, wearing a ruffled white nightgown, the kind an eight-year-old might wear. It was unbuttoned at the throat and pushed up her legs to show the white cotton panties they’d told her to put on.

  It was way more clothes than she’d ever worn when Toby took pictures of her for his Web site. But she’d never felt filthier, knowing some gross old man was going to look at these pictures and fantasize about popping her cherry.

  “Make them good,” the blond man said, watching from the foot of the bed as the bigger, stockier man aimed the lens at Kara.

  “Relax,” the bigger man said in a thick European accent. “The camera is brand-new. The salesman said it was top of the line.”

  “I want our buyers to have a clear image of what they’re getting.”

  The camera clicked, flashing in her face. She focused on the spots, blocking out the faces of the men at the foot of the bed, fighting back nausea as they positioned her legs, spreading her knees wider, before the flash popped again.

  Her father would cooperate. He wouldn’t let them go through with this. He would give them whatever they wanted to get her back.

  But what if he’d found out the truth? That she wasn’t his perfect little girl? Would he still do anything and everything to get her back?

  No, she couldn’t think that way. Her father was a good guy, and Kara knew he loved her even if he wasn’t good at showing it. He wouldn’t let anyone hurt her.

  In the meantime, she would cooperate, do what they told her, keep herself from getting hurt.

  CHAPTER 7

  E THAN WAS RARELY surprised by anyone anymore. He’d always been good at reading people, and he thought he had Toni nailed. Serious, thought she knew everything because most of the time she did. The smart girl in the back of the class who kept quiet, rolling her eyes until she finally condescended to raise her hand and enlighten everyone. The girl who thought she knew the score and tapped her foot impatiently for everyone to catch up.

  After watching her deal with Joyce and Laurie Friedland earlier, he’d expected her to try to run roughshod over the pothead roommate. Hell, Ethan had been all geared up to do the bad-cop routine and beat it out of the little punk.

  Metaphorically speaking, of course.

  But Toni had thrown him, morphing in front of him from reserved computer nerd to cyber sex goddess, sassing her way into the apartment and filling Dave’s head with visions of Toni in all kinds of provocative poses. Poor kid had been toast fro
m the moment she puckered that lush mouth and batted those big hazel eyes.

  Toni, who had been staring out the window, turned at his involuntary chuckle. “What?” she said.

  “Porn and feminine sexuality in mainstream media?” He laughed again, taking his attention from the road long enough to see her sly, pleased smile illuminated by the passing streetlights.

  “It was the first thing that popped into my head. My friend Megan actually wrote a paper on that for a feminist studies class.”

  “Research must have been interesting.”

  “That’s one way to describe it.” They pulled into Toni’s parking lot and she let herself out of the car. She led him up the stairs, and Ethan took a second to appreciate the way her jeans outlined the subtle flex of her butt muscles as she climbed. Those folks at Lucky Brand really knew their business.

  “The stuff she saw was enough to make Kara’s pictures look like they were taken for a Girl Scout recruiting brochure,” Toni said as she unlocked her door.

  The mention of Kara quickly sobered him up. Right. They had a spoiled punk amateur pornographer at large, possibly with the teenage daughter of his client in tow. Not the time to be ogling a woman’s ass, no matter how tempting.

  Toni flipped on the kitchen light and went to the refrigerator and grabbed two beers, twisting the cap off one before offering it to him. She carried her own to her desk and turned on her computer. “I don’t get it,” she said as she waited for her system to boot. “Why would a kid like Toby, with all that money, everything handed to him, bother selling drugs and porn? It’s not like he needs it to make student loan payments.”

  “Never underestimate the boredom of a kid who has everything.”

  She looked up from her screen. “And you have experience with this?”

  “I grew up less than half a mile from Kara Kramer.” He took a sip of his beer as he waited for that to sink in.

  Her fingers froze over the keyboard. “Your parents are rich?”