Brian Freeman - Stripped

“No, it’s okay.” Claire waved her back to her seat. “We can keep talking.”

She took the few steps to the dressing room door and turned the dead bolt, then began unbuttoning her blouse. When she was done, she left her blouse hanging open, her cleavage and midriff on display.

“Do you sing?” Claire asked Serena.

“Me? No. I clear the room on karaoke night.”

“So how do you express yourself? You must have something.”

“I take pictures,” Serena said. “Desert photos.”

She watched Claire carefully remove her earrings, using two hands as she unhitched the gold hoops. Claire put the earrings on the table, then ran her hands back through her hair, gently separating the strands.

“I’d like to see them,” Claire said.

Claire nudged the blouse off her shoulders. The silk rubbed up along her skin, then separated and fell down her back. Her breasts were bare, perfect white globes with erect red nipples. She gently tugged the sleeve off each wrist and turned away to hang the blouse on the clothes rack. Her spine rippled, dipping into the hollow of her back.

“Would you like to have dinner?” Claire asked, without turning around.

“Sorry, I can’t.”

Claire slid a zipper down the side of her black pants. She pushed them down over her ass and past her thighs and then bent each leg to step out of them. She was now wearing only a black thong. She turned back. “Too bad.”

Serena knew she had an opportunity to say something, to make a joke, to leave. When Serena sat there, not moving, not even breathing, Claire stripped the thong off her body, exposing her auburn mound, which was trimmed to leave only a wisp of curly light hair. She stood there for a brief moment and then disappeared into the bathroom. The water in the shower began running.

Serena got out of the chair. She looked at the locked door to the dressing room and knew she should simply leave. Then Claire returned, a towel slung around her neck, reaching low enough to cover her breasts but not the rest of her naked body.

“The water takes forever to heat up,” she said.

Serena nodded and tried to moisten her lips with her tongue, but her mouth was dry.

Claire walked up to within a few inches of Serena, too close for comfort. “You could join me.”

“No. I couldn’t do that”

“You’re very beautiful,” Claire told her.

“So are you,” Serena admitted, before she could stop herself.

“I’d like to see you again.”

“I’m not gay,” Serena said.

“Does that matter? I’m attracted to people. I don’t care whether they’re men or women. I’m attracted to you.”

“I’m involved,” Serena said. She added, “With a man.”

“But you’re attracted to me, too.”

Serena wanted to deny it, but she didn’t. “Look, this isn’t going to happen.”

Claire reached out and touched Serena’s face with the back of her hand. “Don’t hide it from him. You’re keeping a secret now.”

“I’m sorry.” Serena pulled away. “I sent the wrong signals.”

“They weren’t wrong. You want me so bad you can taste it. What’s wrong with that?”

Serena’s cell phone rang. She backed up as if the room had caught fire and dove into her pocket to retrieve it. She heard Stride’s voice, and she felt a wave of guilt crashing over her. She couldn’t believe what she was doing, what she wanted to do. Not since Deidre , she thought.

“What is it?” she asked, and she hated herself because her voice was husky with arousal.

Stride brought her down to earth.

“There’s been another murder,” he said.

Amanda choked back tears as she stared at the body of Tierney Dargon. It surprised her. She had steeled herself to death over the years, but the bodies she saw day in and day out were rarely people she had known when they were alive. They were corpses, flesh, wounds, devoid of personality. Amanda had seen Tierney so recently that she could remember her perfume and hear the girlish intonation of her voice. She had liked her. Felt sorry for her. Tierney was a decent kid lost in the Vegas high life. No more.

Now she was like MJ, eyes wide with shock and fright, trails of blood streaked on her face from the gaping bullet wound in her forehead. Dead in the foyer of Moose’s sprawling house, like Alice Ford in Reno, with no time to react or scream. Open the door, see the face of death, and bang. Her brain was gone before it had time to react. Instantaneous.

Amanda looked beyond the foyer into the mansion and realized that, even alive, Tierney would have looked out of place here. She was young, and this was a rich old man’s house. Moose had made it into a shrine to his past, with bookshelves filled with awards, decades-old posters advertising his shows, and dozens of photographs of Moose onstage. He was larger than life, and so was his estate, both of them gaudy and giantlike. The living room was decorated like a lavish casino, with tall Roman columns, gold trim, a grand piano, and-most impressive of all-a second-story indoor swimming pool with a translucent bottom, so visitors could look up and see the blue water. Moose had one of the prime locations in Lake Las Vegas, in the MiraBella development, hugging the golf course and the resort’s private man-made lake, with the moonscape of the desert hills stretched out in the distance.

No one would hesitate to open the door here, even to a stranger. Lake Las Vegas was located a few miles east of the city, over the mountains on the road to Lake Mead. There was only one narrow road into or out of MiraBella and the other south shore developments, with a guard station to keep out strangers and gawkers. If you made it in, you were safe.

But not this time.

Amanda wondered: How did the killer make it past the south shore gate?

“Where’s Moose?” she asked one of the uniforms on the scene. She saw the cop’s eyes cloud over with disgust and felt her hackles rise. Nothing ever changed.

“Guard at the gate said he left in the limo around eight,” he said. “I assume someone is tracking him down.”

“You assume?” Amanda retorted. The cop shrugged, and she added sharply, “Don’t assume. Find out, and let me know.”

“Yes, sir,” he replied acidly. Amanda felt her mood sour further as he left.

There was a large team on hand to work the murder. That was one advantage of getting killed in a place like Lake Las Vegas, which was usually immune to that kind of crime, unless it was a rich wife shooting a rich husband. A body out here got plenty of attention. The call had come in from a neighbor who heard the gunshot. He was a hunter and knew the difference between the report of a pistol and the crack of a target rifle, which wasn’t an uncommon sound in the desert hills. When he went to investigate, he found the door wide open and Tierney just inside.

Amanda’s cell phone rang. It was Stride.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“I’m parked outside, next to your car,” Stride said. “I thought you didn’t use the Spyder at crime scenes.”

Amanda was puzzled. “Usually I don’t, but I love to take it on the mountain roads. So what?”

“Come out here, okay?”

Amanda swallowed back acid and felt a pit of worry in her stomach. She slapped her phone shut and headed for the front door. As she passed two of the crime scene techs, she heard a whispered comment and a laugh behind her. She wheeled around but couldn’t tell who had spoken. She gave them a fierce glare, then bolted past Tierney’s body into the warm air outside. The curving driveway was being scoured for evidence. She took a circuitous route through the garden rocks and passed the cluster of patrol cars on the edge of the crime scene tape. Beyond the house was the deep darkness of the lake and sparkling lights from the resort hotel on the opposite shore.