Lace Underground: The Complete Trilogy

by Oliver, Tess

  Rowan steps so close now I can feel the heat rising off his naked chest. He lifts his hand and presses his fingers over my mouth. "I could cover your mouth. But then I think it would be much more fun to hear my name on these lips." He pushes my hair back and leans his mouth close to my ear. His breath tickles my skin as he whispers. "And I would definitely make you scream, Red."

  A dry chalky taste clutters my throat. I swallow discretely to clear it.

  "I've got no doubt of that. Is that your big top secret shit?" A coquettish laugh slips from my mouth. I silently congratulate myself on how convincing it sounds. I sidle closer and jump into flattery mode, a sure fire way to get a guy like Rowan off his game. "Any girl can just look at you and know you've had many girls scream your name inside that tent. But I'll bet you have more secrets to share." Desperate measures are needed. I can't let this guy slip away. He might be my only chance to make this assignment a success.

  I press myself up against him and am not surprised when my belly rubs against a rock hard erection. He groans when I push myself a little closer.

  "Shit, Red, you are testing my willpower here."

  "Then give in to your sweet tooth and taste the candy." I briefly imagine Maddox and me having a good laugh when I recant the story of my undercover flirtations. I switch right over to being angry with myself for even thinking about the jerk. The touch of irritation makes me more bold. I'm determined to make this assignment a big fucking success just so I can rub it in Maddox's face.

  I reach between our bodies and rub the back of my knuckles along his rather impressive erection. He surprises me by grabbing hold of my wrist to stop my slow tease. I'm astounded at how insulted I feel. Maybe Maddox would have every right to laugh about my attempt at seduction. It seems I can't even entice a guy living in a tent in the park.

  Rowan surprises me again by squeezing my wrist just a little too hard. He lifts my hand to his mouth and drags his tongue across my knuckles. "You are sweet, Red. But I can't risk it."

  "Risk what?" I ask airily as if I really don't care.

  "If you're chosen, the boss doesn't like spoiled goods."

  I laugh to pretend I think he's just teasing me, but he looks plenty serious. "And just who would the boss be? That bearded guy who snores like a bear? Or maybe it's that little lady at the end of the park who likes to talk to the birds."

  Rowan smiles at me and winks. "You'll see soon enough, Red. Just be ready. Now since you've got me rock hard, I need to go inside and take care of some business." He turns to go into his tent but takes one last, appreciative look at me. "Fuck, I might just be up for a bonus this time," he says out loud, but it seems the words are just meant for him.

  I scurry away, not wanting to be anywhere near when he takes care of business. Olson has dragged his filthy self out of his tent. He's standing against a tree near the bathrooms smoking a cigarette. I walk to the drinking fountain nearby and take a long drink. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and mutter to him as I walk past.

  "I found Cherry Cola and I'm in." I keep walking not wanting to draw any connection between us. I don't need to look back to know I've left Olson with his chin on the ground.

  11

  Maddox

  I knock again on Ten's apartment door, but there's no answer. She'd given me a key with explicit instructions to use only if the building was on fire or if a meteor was heading directly to her apartment. There was no meteor or fire, but I jammed my key into the lock anyway.

  Silvana was a good six inches shorter than me, so he bent sideways to look around my arm. "You've got a key to Ten's place," he says with a teasing tone and then glues his mouth shut when I turn to look at him. "Your secret's safe with me, Maddox."

  "There is no secret, Silvana. So shut the hell up about it." I open the door. It's hot inside and unusually clean. There are typically at least a few pairs of shoes and socks and an empty pizza box or chip bag on the kitchen table, but the whole place is spotless.

  "Maybe she went on a vacation," Silvana suggests.

  "Except her car is in its parking spot and Ten hates flying."

  "Train?" Silvana followed rule one for the first ten minutes of the car ride through town before breaking into what others have termed the Silvana sideshow. He's a nice enough guy when you look past his lack of skills as a detective, but he's the last thing I need right now. It is like babysitting a big, dumb kid who likes to talk and laugh at stupid jokes.

  "Or maybe a bus," Silvana adds. "You can take one of those luxury cruise buses anywhere in the country. They're real comfy and they serve good food. Probably not five star stuff but better than plane food. Shit, did I tell you about my flight to Denver on one of those economy planes?" Again, it only takes one look from me for him to put a quick end to his plane trip story. "Nothing. Not even a lousy bag of peanuts or pretzels," he blurts quickly just to give me the cliff note version.

  I'm trying to picture Ten sitting on a crowded bus with a load of chatty gray haired tourists talking about baked bean recipes and their grandchildren's birthday parties. There just wasn't any fucking way.

  I walk into the kitchen. The coffee pot is clean and dry, another big clue that Ten hasn't been here. Aside from a half tray of eggs, a bottle of ketchup and some cheese that was blue but that definitely was not blue cheese, the fridge was empty. Ten rarely cooked. She preferred to eat out, but this was pathetic even by her standards.

  I shoot down the hallway to her room and think about how mad Ten would be if she knew I was going through her stuff. Her bed is made. Another anomaly. I pull open the closet. Her favorite sneakers are sitting on the floor. There's no way she would go on a vacation or anywhere without them.

  It is time to hit the streets and talk to some of our connections. My mind keeps going to the day in Clark's office when Ten asked him to send her undercover to find whoever it was that was kidnapping runaway girls and clobbering billionaires. But I push the thought out of my head. There is no way Clark would send her undercover on something like that. It's way too dangerous. Not just for Ten but for anyone.

  I head back to the front room. Silvana walks out of Ten's kitchen with his arm buried in a box of Lucky Charms cereal. His fist pulls free and cereal and marshmallows sprinkle the kitchen floor. I don't even know what to say. I just hold out my arms in question.

  "Sorry, Maddox, but the medicine my doc has me on makes my stomach hurt if its empty." He shovels in the handful of cereal and makes a show of rolling down the inside cellophane bag before closing the box.

  "I'm sure Ten won't notice the stretched box or spilled cereal. Let's go. I want to talk to Norville."

  "Norville? Isn't that your snitch?" he talks over his mouthful, and I instantly remember another major complaint from his past partners.

  "No, it's my first grade teacher, I want to talk to him and find out why the hell he encouraged me when I told him I wanted to be a cop." I wave him out of the apartment so I can lock it.

  Thankfully Silvana has swallowed the cereal before he blurts out a laugh. "You're so damn funny, Maddox. Everyone told me you were, but I said 'I don't know that Maddox seems kind of intense'. Kind of mean, you know? But you're not. You're a funny guy." He keeps blathering on as I walk past him on the metal stairs leading down from the apartment. "No wonder all the women have the hots for you. I mean, other than the obvious, the whole big shoulder, movie star face thing."

  Silvana reaches for the passenger side door. It's locked. He waits for me to climb in and unlock it. Instead, I start the car.

  Silvana taps politely on the window. "Hey, Maddox, it's locked."

  I stare straight ahead at Ten's shabby little car and wonder just where the hell she could be.

  Silvana taps again. "Gotta open up, buddy." He says with a nervous laugh. "Come on, Maddox. Fun time is over."

  My phone rings and I yank it from my pocket, hoping its Ten. Tiffany's voice floats through the phone. "Hey, my big honey bear, I just want to remind you that we have a cake tasting date today
at Shirley's Cake Shop. I texted you the address."

  "Come on, Maddox, let me in." Silvana has pushed his pillowy face against the window.

  "Isn't it a little early for them to start baking a cake? The wedding is eight months away." Normally I'd be down to taste a bunch of cake but today wasn't a good day for it.

  Tiffany laughs but it sounds edged with irritation. "Funny man. Shirley's cakes are really popular. You have to get on her schedule months in advance."

  Silvana peers into the front windshield. His cheeks wobble forward like a dog with jowls. "Come on, Maddox. Let me in."

  "Hey, Tiff, I've got to go. I'll see you at the bakery."

  I slap my hand over the door lock button and open the door. Silvana thuds down in the passenger seat with the same laugh. "Thought you were gonna make me walk back to the station."

  "I was seriously thinking about it." I pull out of the parking lot and head toward Norville's favorite hangout, the pool hall.

  After his cereal feast, Silvana dropped into nap mode while I drove across town to the shady pool hall where Norville liked to hang out. Silvana snored along with the beat of the music, but he woke up as soon as the car slowed to a stop.

  I turn off the engine.

  Silvana rubs his chubby fists into his eye sockets, reminding me of a pudgy faced kid just getting up from a nap. He sits up higher in the seat. "Sorry, must have dozed off. I didn't get much sleep last night. Sleep apnea," he adds even though I don't ask.

  "And here I was thinking that you were having a wild threesome with two hot women."

  Silvana laughs. "Don't I wish. Boy, do I wish. There are these two sisters who live in the apartment next to me—"

  "Don't want to know anything about sister neighbors or anything close to your sex day dreams, Silvana." I lean forward to get a better view of the pool hall. Like so many bars on this side of town, the street in front of it is sticky with old puke, spilled beers and blood from the occasional bar fight. Sometimes I get lucky and Norville is sitting on the benches outside the hall. Lady Luck isn't with me today.

  I climb out of the car.

  "Should I come too?" Silvana calls before I shut the door.

  "Or you could stay there and knit a sweater. Up to you." I hear the passenger door open and shut behind me. Silvana's feet skitter across the asphalt to catch up to me. "I used to be a pretty good pool player back in the day," he says between breaths.

  I glance sideways at him. He's in terrible shape, but he can't be more than thirty. "Back in the day?" I repeat. "You sound like my grandpa telling me how they used to have to get up to change the television channel back in the day."

  We reach the sidewalk in front of the pool hall. A hooker known on the street as Pretty Polly is sitting out front on the bench shining up her knee high boots. "Wooee, if it isn't the mouthwatering Detective Maddox. Hey, my offer for a freebie still stands, baby."

  Silvana hits my arm. "Did ya hear that? Free. Boy, the perks that come with those jade green eyes of yours."

  I stop short. He slams into me and wobbles like a punching clown.

  "Why are you talking? And stop talking about my eyes. It's fucking creepy."

  Silvana laughs. "I didn't label them jade green. That's what the girls down in forensics say about them. I sure as hell wouldn't ever say anything like that about another dude's eyes. You catch my—"

  "Silvana, you're still talking. Stop." I pull out my phone and text Norville to get his ass outside.

  "Are we going in?" Silvana asks. "I could use a cold brew to wash down that dry cereal. Ten didn't have any milk. The refrigerator sure looked empty. Maybe she went to Europe or someplace faraway."

  He follows me around the corner of the building to wait for Norville. "Told you Ten doesn't like to fly. And don't bother to bring up a cruise ship. That's just not her style."

  "True." Silvana laughs dryly. "Ten's style is a little hard to pinpoint. She's definitely different."

  Norville slinks around the corner of the building, searching around as if people were following him. His hands are shaky and he has dark rings under his bloodshot eyes. "What's up, Maddox? I got nothing new."

  "I know." I hand him twenty dollars, which he grabs from me like I'm handing him a million bucks. He shoves it into his pocket and crosses his arms tightly around himself. His feet can never stay in one place, and he dances around like a little kid trying to hold his pee. He looks at Silvana and searches around again.

  "Where's my copper haired cutie, Ten?" Norville asks and then pulls a cigarette out of his pocket. It's been smoked halfway already. He lights it with a shaky hand.

  "I was hoping you could tell me," I say.

  Norville waves the smoke away from his face and squints up at me. "What do you mean?"

  "Ten took a leave of absence. I was hoping you might have heard word on the street about something . . . anything. Fuck, I'm just grasping at straws here. So you haven't seen her?"

  "You mean like undercover?" He smiles, showing off brown mottled teeth. "I still remember when she was posing as a hooker. She was good. Bout nearly had me convinced she was a lady of the night." Norville motions with his cigarette toward Silvana. "Who's this?"

  "Never mind that," I stop Silvana from answering. "If you hear anything let me know. And don't spend all that twenty on drugs. Put some food in your stomach. You look like a walking cadaver."

  Silvana's clumsy footsteps pound the sidewalk behind me. "Do you ever watch that?" He puffs as we head across the street.

  "Watch what?"

  "The Walking Cadaver. I mean the Walking Dead. It's a cool show."

  I climb in the car and once again consider not letting him in.

  "Oh come on, Maddox," he says as he taps the window.

  I unlock the door and he climbs inside. "Where to next?"

  I stare through the bug crusted front windshield. She has a new boyfriend but self-preservation and raging jealousy kept me from trying to find out anything about him, even his last name. The only information I had was that he worked as a longshoreman and his name was Brodie or something like that. We have a few other street connections but after the conversation with Norville, it seems I would just be wasting time with them.

  Damn it, Ten, where the hell are you?

  12

  Angie

  I spend another interminably long day in the park doing nothing except thinking about how badly I want some French fries and a diet coke . . . and a hot shower . . . and my couch and remote. Throughout the endless hours of monotony, the anticipation is chipping away at my nerves.

  Rowan walked away from the park early in the morning and there had been no sign of him since. Yoli, Becky and the other young woman, Emily, who rarely spoke to anyone, spent most of the day sleeping in their tents as if resting up for something. It occurred to me more than once that I should have been doing the same, but I was too impatient to rest.

  Dusk darkens the sky and I decide to walk to the bathroom and wash the day's grit off my face. Olson is sitting against the brick wall of the restrooms reading a newspaper. "You look like an expectant hen waiting for her eggs to hatch. Tone it down," he advises. I know he is right, but it raises my hackles nonetheless.

  "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just remember to stay awake tonight." I walk into the bathroom and stare into the grainy mirror. I've been in the park for three nights. My eyes look hollow from lack of sleep and lack of fresh water. Removing the braids had been a mistake. My hair looks as if I just drove across country in a convertible. Even the comb I brought in my tattered backpack is useless in the red nest on my head. My fellow park campers seem far more resilient than me. Yoli looks fresh faced and happy every morning as if her body and mind have evolved perfectly to living on the streets. It's as sad as it is slightly intriguing to know that humans can adapt to any living conditions. I was sure Yoli's healthy state of mind, even with everything she's been through, had as much to do with her looking fresh faced as anything else.

  As if my thoughts conjur
ed her, Yoli steps into the bathroom. "Jeez, I slept way too long. My head feels groggy." She walks up next to me in the mirror. Her eyes are clear and her cheeks are rosy.

  "I look like a corpse next to you," I note. "Maybe I should have hibernated for the day like the rest of you. Is today some national nap day or did I just miss the memo?"

  Her laugh echoes off the bathroom walls. "You're so funny, Tawny. We just want to be rested for tonight." She sucks her lips in apparently deciding she's said too much.

  "It's all right, Yoli. If this has something to do with Rowan, I might already be in on the secret. Sort of anyway. He didn't fill in many details."

  Yoli sighs loudly. "Thank goodness, I was having such a hard time not telling you. I told Becky the second you showed up to the park with your bedroll that you were going to be invited. Becky wasn't so sure." Yoli looks back to make sure there are no feet in the stalls behind us. It seems now that the secret portal is open, Yoli is going to pour out everything she knows. "Becky is sort of paranoid. For some reason, she has talked herself into not trusting you. I think she's just a little jealous is all."

  I laugh at my reflection. "Is it the crazy ass red clown hair or the dead look in my sunken eyes?"

  "Oh please, Tawny. You know you have that sex appeal thing going on. Becky has a crush on Rowan, and he hasn't taken his eyes off of you since you got here."

  "Not sure what that sex appeal thing is, but it's not looking back from that haggard reflection in the mirror. There's nothing between Rowan and me. Where is Rowan anyhow? I haven't seen him all day."

  "He always disappears on party day. He'll be back later."

  "So he goes off to some party? What kind of party?"

  Yoli turns on the water and wets the toothbrush in her hand. "No, he's getting ready for the party. Tonight's party," she says like I should understand her without question. She sees the confusion on my face. "He really didn't fill you in at all, did he? You'll see soon enough. Who knows, you might even win the golden ticket or at least that's what we call it because just like Willy Wonka's factory no one really knows what's happening inside. I don't know anyone who got the invite. I've only heard rumors of girls who were chosen. Once that happens, they are gone for good, no doubt living a marvelous, carefree, posh existence." She shoves the toothbrush in her mouth.