Marie Ferrarella - Cavanaugh Undercover

The thought made her sick to her stomach. She wished she could take the man out right now, bring down his operation. But arresting Roland wouldn’t get her anywhere. She needed tangible evidence.

“Should I be dropping bread crumbs?” she asked the man in front of her.

They had taken a couple of twists and turns within the suite and she was trying to commit each step to memory, but she really didn’t like leaving anything to chance in case a quick getaway was necessary. The size of the place was overwhelming.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take you back,” Brennan promised in a soothing voice.

She looked at him. He was acting as if they were on some ordinary stroll through the park instead of walking through a very sick bastard’s temporary living accommodations.

“Why should I believe you?” she asked.

That was a simple enough question to answer. “Because you have no choice.”

He was right and she hated him for it. Hated the fact that once again, everything was all on her shoulders and she had no one to look to, no one to trust or share the burden with. Her sister’s life depended on what she did here.

If it’s not already too late, a small, nagging voice whispered in her head. She clenched her hands at her sides as she blocked the voice.

Instead, she made a silent pledge—not her first—to her sister. Hang in there, Janie. No matter what, hang in there. I’ll find you. I swear I’ll find you.

They entered what looked to be a sitting room. It was decorated entirely in stark white, which made the room appear twice as large. The only color in the immediate area was provided by the two men on the opposite sides of the room and the man in the middle who they were obviously paid to protect.

The deeply tanned guards appeared as if they were interchangeable, somewhat smaller versions of the guard at the front door. Both men were wearing dark navy blue suits, white shirts and dark ties. Each had a telltale bulge beneath his jacket, which Tiana assumed was caused by their not-so-concealed weapons.

The suits had to be specially tailored, she guessed, because the twin guards, like the man at the front door, were hulks in their own right.

The man in the center, looking out on the terrace with his back to them, was a great deal smaller heightwise. But he was far more imposing when he turned around to face them. While the guards were a compilation of sheer muscle and brute strength, the thin, dark-haired man had an aura of intelligent evil about him.

His eyes, as they passed over them—or accurately, over her—were flat. They were eyes that might have belonged to a dead man for all the expression that they had in them—except that she was fairly certain this man missed nothing.

Granted she spent most of her time in the lab when she was at work, but she could definitely recognize evil when she saw it. And this was the worst example of evil she had ever seen. It took effort not to shiver in its presence.

“You brought me a gift?” Roland asked Brennan. Approaching Tiana, he circled around her slowly as if she were an inanimate object, like a painting or a vase that had been given to him.

“No, she was in the motel room when I got there. He’s dead, by the way,” Brennan told Roland. “The kid you wanted me to check on. He’s dead.”

“You?” Roland asked, his implication clear.

“No,” Brennan answered, wondering if all this was part of an elaborate game. He was fairly certain that Roland had been the one to have the young man killed. “I didn’t kill him. He was already dead when I got there.”

Roland raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “You?” he asked, turning toward Tiana.

She shook her head, hoping she could keep the charade up long enough to find her sister. “No, I found him that way. Someone got to him before I could.”

“The whore has a mouth on her,” Roland announced with a nod. It was difficult to say whether there was admiration in the man’s voice or if what they were hearing was the calm before a storm.

Not taking any chances, Brennan remained alert. He knew that things could turn on the head of a pin at any moment.

“She also isn’t a whore,” Tiana informed him with a toss of her head that seductively sent her flame red hair over her shoulder.

The appearance of amusement in Roland’s features increased. “Oh, really?”

“Really,” she confirmed in a no-nonsense tone of voice.

“You brought along your girlfriend?” the man questioned, as if he believed the woman’s disclaimer.

“Why don’t you talk to me instead of him?” Tiana proposed, making her voice sound as arrogant as the man she was speaking to. “Especially since he doesn’t speak for me because he doesn’t know me.”

“Is this true?” Roland asked, looking at Brennan. What the man was thinking was impossible to gauge.

Brennan had no choice but to tell the truth without knowing where that might lead. “I just met her in the motel room.”

“All right, who are you?” There was an unspoken threat in the man’s voice that forbade her to say anything but the truth. It went without saying that it would go badly for her if she lied.

She said the lines that she had been practicing ever since she’d asked for a leave of absence. “I go by Aphrodite Starling and I’ve come with a business proposition for you.”

The cold, dead eyes never left her face. “I’m listening.”

“I run an escort service of young ladies, emphasis on the word young,” she began. “Some of my girls have aged out, shall we say? I’m in the market for replacements. I need fresh talent. Word has it that you have fresh talent,” she told him, forcing herself not to look away. If she did, she knew he would take it as some kind of weakness—or worse. She had to win him over and do it fast.

“I might,” he said vaguely, as if they were talking about a tool she wanted to borrow from his garage.

She kept it conversational, as if he was her first stop, but not necessarily her only one.

“I’d be interested in seeing what you have, perhaps taking a few off your hands.” She paused a moment before adding, “I’ll pay you top dollar.”

The man appeared to only be vaguely interested, but she knew that had to be an act. Men like him were only in it for the money and they wanted as much as they could get their hands on as fast as they could get it.

“I’d like to see the color of your money,” he told her.

She had a counterrequest. “I’d like to see the nature of your girls.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “Not so fast. I don’t even know who you are.”

“And you won’t,” she told him matter-of-factly. “I don’t broadcast my organization. Staying under the radar is how I survive. Word of mouth in a very small, elite, tight circle does all the advertising for me that I need. Once I’m confident that you can deliver—and that you’re not just out to steal my money—I’ll give you references and you can have me checked out to your heart’s content.”

“That sounds fair,” he allowed, then added, “But I’ll have to think about it. It doesn’t pay to be trusting. You understand that?”

“Oh, perfectly.” Because I trust you as far as I can throw you, she told the unsavory man silently. Still, what she thought of him didn’t really matter. He had her sister, of that she was fairly certain. That gave him all the cards to hold. She just had her bluff, nothing more.

“I have photographs I can show you,” Roland was telling her. “You can make your choices from them.”

“Photographs can be easily doctored,” she told him with just a hint of contempt in her voice. “When can I see the girls in person so I can make my choices?” she countered.

“My, my, such eagerness,” Roland said with a laugh that had no humor in it whatsoever. “All in due time, my dear, all in due time.”