Marie Ferrarella - Cavanaugh Undercover

“You’re leaving him here?”

“Why not? He can’t be traced back to anyone of consequence and since he can’t hold up his end of the conversation, I don’t see any point in taking him with me. Dead bodies are really a pain to get rid of,” he told her.

The first second when no one else was around, he intended to call in and tell the chief of Ds about this latest casualty of the sex trafficking ring they were looking to take down. From everything he’d managed to put together, the man on the bed was nothing more than a would-be gofer for the organization. Someone who’d traded on his looks to get girls to follow him into the trap that was set for them. More than likely, he’d probably gotten an inflated sense of self and had asked for a bigger share of the profits. The answer to his demands was undoubtedly why his person was now sporting a bullet hole.

“If you’re asking about me, I go back to where I came from. As for you,” he began as he looked down at her—and then paused.

The woman sounded a little impatient. “Yes?”

“Are you really on the level about looking for fresh talent?” he asked. His first instinct had been to cut her loose. His second was to keep her close. Maybe he could incorporate a little soul-saving into this assignment he was on.

She raised her chin again, appearing ready to go at it with him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

He laughed shortly. “You really want me to go into that?”

“That depends on how wild your imagination is.”

His eyes met hers. If she really was a madam, he wondered what she’d been like, working her way up within the ranks. He knew better than to get involved, but it cost nothing to let his imagination go for a moment or two.

His mouth curved as his eyes swept over the length of her. “Pretty wild.”

“Then no,” she answered almost primly. “But I am on the level,” she informed him. “Girls wear out fast in this line of work. And if they don’t, they have an unfortunate habit of outgrowing it. My clients like them young and dewy fresh. The bloom only stays so long on the rose before it fades away.”

Brennan nodded. “Your clients are fickle,” he concluded.

“My clients are discerning,” Tiana corrected him pointedly.

“Potato-po-tah-to,” Brennan replied, waffling his hand in front of her as if to say that he saw right through her protest.

He couldn’t help wondering again what someone like her was doing mixed up in something like this. She looked too clean, too refined for the kind of lowlife this sort of a trade usually attracted. They might have more money and have positions of importance in the everyday world, but her clients were still scum, just well-kept scum.

With no effort at all he could see this woman who’d given him such a phony name being a teacher or a shop owner, not someone who dealt in the misery of young women as she peddled their flesh to the highest bidder.

He wasn’t here to get personally involved, Brennan reminded himself. Or to save a so-called fallen woman. The only people he was supposed to be concerning himself with were the young women who had been kidnapped or pressed into this life by being lied to. He was here to save them, not to get mixed up with a woman with electric blue eyes and hair that made him think of an out-of-control forest fire.

“I wouldn’t look down my nose at anyone if I were you,” she informed him. “It’s not exactly as if you’re without reproach here.”

Brennan spread his hands in an exaggerated show of innocence. The smile on his face was positively wicked. “Never said I was.”

“You haven’t really said very much of anything, have you?” she accused.

Brennan didn’t bother denying it. “Better that way. I make it a rule never to hand over the nails to my coffin to anyone. Never know when someone could use it against me,” he told her.

“Well, not that I don’t enjoy debating philosophy with you, mister...” She paused for a moment before asking, “What did you say your name was?”

Boy, was he enjoying this. “I didn’t.”

“Well, say it now,” she ordered.

“Wayne,” he said, drawling out the surname. “Bruce Wayne.”

He had to be kidding. “Bruce Wayne,” she repeated. “As in Batman?”

He heard the disbelief in her voice. He’d meant it as joke, but decided to stick to the name. For one thing, it was easier to remember. “My father had a sense of humor.”

Her eyes took measure of him, from his head right down to the tips of his shoes. Okay, let him have his little joke. Maybe if she went along with it, Tiana thought, she could get closer to him. She needed some sort of a way in, and now that Wayne was permanently out of the running, this man was going to have to be it.

“Obviously,” she agreed.

Not that she believed it for a minute. But it didn’t matter what his name was. He could call himself Peter Rabbit for all she cared. As long as he provided her with a way to get to her sister, she’d call him any name he wanted.

“Not that I’m not enjoying this meaningless exchange,” she went on to say, trying to light a fire under him and finally get out of this motel room, “but I’m kind of in a hurry.”

“Don’t be.”

Was he putting her on some kind of notice? Or was there some other hidden meaning behind his words? She had no patience with riddles and puzzles, not when the stakes were so high.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“It means that the man you’re going to be dealing with holds people in a hurry suspect. You need to be laid-back.”

That didn’t make any sense to her. “Why?”

Roland, the man he’d dealt with, the one who had sent him out on what turned out to be a fool’s errand, was nothing if not paranoid. “He might just think you’re trying to set him up and are looking to put some distance between you before the trap goes off.”

This Wayneman was getting too close to the truth. A lucky guess on his part? Or was she somehow transparent in her concern? Back in San Francisco she was a lab rat. She was damn good at her job but still a lab rat. Fieldwork wasn’t exactly her specialty. She was winging this as she went along.

“I’m not trying to set anyone up,” Tiana protested. “I just want to see if he has the kind of girls my clients prefer.”

He raised his shoulders in a dismissive, disinterested shrug. “Just your word against his suspicions. You’re better off acting like you have all the time in the world,” he advised. “It sets off fewer alarms that way.”

“But I don’t have all the time in the world,” she protested, getting further into her role. If Janie was being held captive by this sex trafficking ring, then she had no idea how much time she actually had before her sister was shipped off for parts unknown. The second Janie left the area, the chances of finding her fell abysmally. “I’ve got clients who’ll take their business somewhere else if I don’t bring them the kind of selection they’re looking for.”

“Somebody breathing’s not enough, huh?” he asked her with a grin that she found hugely unsettling. It wasn’t that it was creepy. What worried her was that it wasn’t. Moreover, it got to her—which was totally unacceptable.

“Not even close,” she told him. “They have very definite requirements.” When he didn’t say anything in response for a couple of minutes, just looked her over, she found it difficult not to shift uncomfortably. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Making a judgment call.”

He was judging her? Tiana squared her shoulders combatively. “And?” she challenged.

His expression was easygoing—quite the opposite of what she felt. “You pass.”

“Good to know,” she said in a bored voice. “Now will you take me to talk to someone in authority?” It was more of a demand than a request.