Читать книгу Undercover with a SEAL - Cindy Dees - Страница 10
ОглавлениеHank stared down at the big, intimidating man seated before her and answered forcefully, “No!” She ought to be offended by his far too personal question, but she got the distinct impression he wasn’t asking because he wanted to buy an hour’s use of her body.
Not that she would necessarily say no to him if he offered. He was handsome with a capital H. Fashion magazine hot. He had that whole chiseled features thing going. Dark hair. Dark tan. And Lord, his light eyes looked right through her. She couldn’t tell in this light if they were gray or blue. A hint of pain clung to him, masked by his deep reserve. She never could resist a man with a dark past.
Not just his big, athletic body, but his entire being, was perfectly still as he watched everything that went on around him. She got the feeling that his all-encompassing stare could turn predatory in a second. But so far, whenever he’d turned it on her, his eyes had lit up with something reminiscent of a volcanic eruption—hot and molten.
If only she could tell him the truth. That her brother was lost somewhere inside the criminal organization that ran this place. That she was trying to infiltrate the Russian mob far enough to find him and save him from whatever he’d gotten mixed up in. Or at least to find out what had happened to him. That he was her big brother, and he’d practically raised her after the car accident.
She turned her attention back to the man lurking in the shadows. She was a total sucker for brooding, dangerous men, and he was both in spades. She couldn’t get over how well his dark hair was set off by those light gunmetal eyes of his. And the way he’d handled himself in the bar fight left no doubt how deadly he really was. He’d waded through seasoned brawlers and armed mob muscle like they were school children.
She spoke earnestly under her breath. “You seem like a decent guy. This isn’t the kind of place you should hang out in. Go have a nice life and don’t worry about me.” Find yourself a supermodel and have insanely great sex...
He poured himself a healthy shot of whiskey from the open bottle she’d put in front of him. “Not how I roll.” How then, did he roll? God, she’d love to find out firsthand. Of course, any idiot could see he was severely out of her league. Men like him just didn’t want anything to do with cheap waitresses in sleazy joints like this.
“I’m not everyone...Hank. Hankova is a feminine patronymic. What’s your actual first name?”
She frowned. He knew how patronymics worked? Practically no American had ever heard of the universal Slavic custom of taking the father’s first name, adding an ending, and making it the child’s middle name. “It’s Evgeniya. My first name, that is.”
He winced sympathetically, for which she might just have loved him a little, and then smiled ruefully. “I see now why you prefer Hank. It’s going to take a little getting used to, though.”
He planned to stick around long enough to adjust to her weird name? Whoa. Cue the stunned happy dance. She smiled shyly. “My mother called me Eve.”
“Eve. That’s nice.”
Nice? Well, crap. There went any chance of him ever seeing her as a sexy femme fatale. The kind of woman he would consider having a torrid affair with. “I always thought it made me sound like an old lady.”
“Well, then, Hank it is. But you’re still nice.”
Frantic to dispel the nice image that went hand-in-hand with “girl next door” and “my best friend’s off-limits little sister,” she took a step closer to the table. Then she leaned down, planted her palm on the table beside the whiskey bottle and gave him a generous look down her shirt.
Reaching for her toughest, most threatening tone of voice, the one she used to back off drunks who simply would not take no for an answer, she purred, “I’m a lot of things, mister, but nice isn’t one of them.”
Lifting a brow, he leaned back in his seat and pinned her with an intent look. Well, that wasn’t exactly the response she’d been hoping for at all! She’d wanted heat. Interest. Acknowledgment that she was torrid-affair material. Instead, it felt like he was stripping her bare with that laser stare of his, analyzing her psyche with computer-like precision.
She had to fight not to squirm under his probing gaze as the layers of her deception fell away. Drat and double drat. He’d seen right through her ruse.
At long last, analysis apparently complete, a wry smile curled up one corner of his mouth and he looked away from her, his gaze casually scanning the club. She sagged in relief and released the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Intense guy.
He murmured mildly, “Put your claws away, kitten. I’m no threat to you.”
Hah. He had no idea. She did not need any distractions. Nor did she need some high-profile guy coming in and making waves around her—the kind of waves that would attract undue attention in her direction. Her whole plan revolved around being invisible. Innocuous. Quietly sliding so deep inside the Russian mob outfit running this place that she could unearth the truth and maybe get some closure. Figure out whether Max was alive or dead—
“Take this,” the man seated before her murmured. He passed her a business card.
Disappointment coursed through her. Really? He was giving her his phone number to get a date? One word was written on the back. Asher. And a phone number.
“Is that your first name or last?” she asked.
“First. And my mother called me Ashe.”
She couldn’t picture this hard-edged man ever having had a mother. Glancing back down at the card, she frowned. What was that area code? It wasn’t local. She turned the card over. It was for some sort of sporting goods and ammunition warehouse in Baton Rouge. “You sell tents and guns, Asher?” she asked drily.
His voice was low, sexy as he murmured, “You can call me Ashe, too.”
Cripes. Her toes curled in her high-heeled platform shoes as the masculine confidence in that low rumble vibrated through her belly.
He was speaking again. “...only thing I had to write on. That’s my cell phone number on the back. You ever get into any trouble you can’t handle, call me. Okay?”
She looked up from the scrawled number quickly. “You’re some kind of hired muscle?”
The corner of his mouth curled up again. “Something like that. Keep it, eh? No strings attached if you call the number. Just a helping hand. You’re a good kid, and you’re clearly in over your head.”
Oh, God. That was so nice of him. Something hot and sharp caught in her throat, choking her a little. She’d nearly forgotten what it was like to have a decent human being give a damn about her. An urge to take him up on his offer and confide everything to someone—anyone—nearly overcame her. Heck, the temptation just to have a simple, honest conversation was almost more than she could resist.
But then her spine stiffened. Her work here was not done. She had to maintain her cover. Her life, and possibly her brother’s, depended on it. She was in too deep to back out now. A list of names, deals, dates and crimes she’d already procured was etched in her mind. There would be no leaving this quest until she succeeded...or died.
Belatedly, she smiled cynically at Asher—Ashe—and spoke with utter sincerity. “Believe me. I’m not a kid. Not anymore.”
“Take care of yourself, Evgeniya Hankova.” He pronounced her name exactly right, palatalized vowels and all, as if he was a native speaker of Russian.
Her gaze snapped to his. Surely he wasn’t one of them! Had this been a test? Ohmigod. Had she said something to give away her real motives for being here? Frantically she reviewed their brief conversation while her face froze into a mask of a smile. She backed away from his table quickly, turned, and fled to the storeroom behind the bar to catch her breath.
Vitaly, the owner and manager of the whole establishment, poked his head into the filthy little room far too soon. “I need you out front. Candy’s done with her set, and everyone wants drinks.”
Great. Candy was one of the sexiest pole dancers in the entire club. She was also all of fifteen years old. The patrons would be horny and grabby after her performance. Steeling herself to ignore the lewd comments and inappropriately groping hands, she nodded at her boss and stepped back out into the bar.
He was gone.
She knew it without even having to glance over at the table in the corner. Ashe’s absence was a cold chill against her skin where there should have been warmth. She smiled down blankly at the mobster who’d just proposed vulgar sex with her in Russian she wasn’t supposed to understand. Take the drink order. Move on to the next table. Keep moving. Just keep moving...
God. For a minute there, she remembered what life had been like before everything went to hell. A nice, normal guy treating her with a modicum of respect and concern. Was it possible to be homesick for America while standing on American soil? Apparently, yes, because she felt tears welling up in the backs of her eyes.
Stop it. No feelings. No fear. She was a stone. She would have her answers, and then nothing else mattered.
* * *
The bar closed at 2:00 a.m., but Hank and the other waitresses were expected to stick around to clean up after that. The Voodoo was particularly trashed tonight because of the fight. The one Ashe had broken up with such ease. She yanked her thoughts away from the enigmatic American who had wandered so far from where he should have been and ended up in this little corner of hell. He was not for her. That whole normalcy thing was not for her, not anymore. She bent down to pick up the remains of a broken chair.
The good news was she was not one of the trafficked, drug-addicted girls upstairs. She was still free to walk out of here and never come back if she chose to. At least for now.
She could turn the crew in charge of this place in to the police. But a) she wasn’t entirely certain the police weren’t being paid to ignore the goings-on at the Who Do Voodoo, and b) then she would never find Max. Besides, she was convinced this place was a small fish in the overall crime ring running it.
Her goal was to work her way up to the big sharks before she called the authorities. She had names and pictures of a few of the girls that she’d snuck on her cell phone over the past few months. Those would go to the police as soon as she concluded her own investigation.
She even had pictures of a few men who came into the bar and disappeared quickly into the back any time they showed up. Vitaly was always surly when they left, and his complaints about how much money his bosses took out of the till always happened right after those silent strangers paid a visit.
The bar was finally restored to a semblance of its usual squalor, and Vitaly growled at the waitresses to go on home. She took off her apron, hung it in the storeroom and slung her purse over her shoulder. Wearily she headed outside with the other girls. They traded good-nights and went their various ways. As for her, she trudged deeper into the bowels of the Warehouse District’s worst section.
The darkness at this time of night was thick and impenetrable, shrouding her in heavy menace. Ever since the car accident, she’d been terrified of being alone in the dark. She walked fast and tried to project a badassery she was far from feeling as she hurried home. If she could call it a home. Her apartment was, at best, a dive. But it had a bed, a sofa, a tiny kitchen and a tinier bathroom. And she could afford it on her meager pay.
She’d graduated from college the previous June with a degree in art history and restoration, just before Max went AWOL. She could probably land a decent job given her family connections in the art business, and there was the cash she’d inherited when her father had died. It had covered the cost of her college with enough left over to start her own art restoration business if she wanted. Instead, she was living in a slum as part of her cover and waiting tables in a cesspool while she searched for her brother.
Her humble abode was on the second floor of a hundred-year-old building situated over an Oriental rug showroom. The rug merchant downstairs had stashed a girlfriend in the apartment until his wife caught him and forced him to ditch the mistress and rent the place out. Hank suspected the only reason she was allowed to be here was because the wife didn’t realize that Hank the Renter was a girl. A young, single, reasonably good-looking one at that. The rug merchant had made a few overtures to her to take up with him where the former tenant had left off, but she’d turned him down firmly and nailed the door shut that led from her living room downstairs to the old lecher’s office.
She turned into a puddle-strewn alley running alongside the rug store and started up the rickety wood stairs that led to her place. A sound behind her made her whip around, hand plunging into her purse to grip her can of pepper spray.
A man-sized shadow rushed toward her from the alley entrance, and she froze. What to do? How to react? Hank’s heart lurched in her throat. She had to do something, but what? The back of the alley was a dead end. Nobody would hear her scream, and even if someone did hear her, no one in this neighborhood would call the police. Oh, God. She was in huge trouble.
But as quickly as that thought rushed through her brain and panic crashed through her body, a second, taller shadow raced out of the darkness from behind the first one. The fight—if she could call it that—was quick and brutal. Shadow Number Two chopped her would-be assailant in the back of the head with a vicious backhand blow that dropped Shadow Number One like a brick.
The violent second shadow took off running straight at her. Crap. The set of the big man’s shoulders was grim. Determined. She didn’t need to see his face to know she was his next target.
She turned and raced up the stairs, half-sobbing in terror. She stumbled, grabbed the rail and hauled herself upright. Splinters from the aged and cracked wood railing stabbed her palm, but she ignored them. She was going to die if she didn’t get inside and behind a locked door now.
Footsteps closed in too damned fast from behind. Oh, God. A half dozen steps to go. The stairs shook as the shadow’s weight crashed onto them. She fled across the tiny landing. Keys. Dammit. Where were her keys?
She fumbled desperately in her purse as her attacker took the steps behind her in great leaps that devoured the long staircase all too fast.
There. Her fingers found the jumble of keys. She snatched them out of her purse and found the familiar shape of her door key. Oh, God. He was almost on her. She whirled, threw her purse at him with all her strength and turned to unlock the door.
Not fast enough.
Big, strong hands grabbed her upper arms. Yanked her around.
Pepper spray. She still had the pepper spray in her left hand. She lifted the small canister and mashed down the button.
“Oww. Bloody hell!” her attacker grunted.
He ducked away from the worst of the spray, barreled into her, and propelled both her and himself against her door. His weight knocked the breath out of her for a moment, during which he released her with one hand, just long enough to turn the doorknob. Which, of course, she’d managed to unlock right before he jumped her.
She opened her mouth to scream, but her attacker shoved her inside and slammed the door shut behind them before she could let it rip.
“Jeez, Hank. It’s me. Ashe.”
Her scream cut off just as it got started. “Ashe? What the heck?” She flipped on the light switch and stared at him in disbelief.
“Christ. Where’s a sink? I gotta rinse that pepper spray out of my eyes.” His eyes were, indeed, watering copiously, and he took a half-blind step toward her kitchenette.
“Are you going to attack me?” she asked suspiciously, backing away from him.
“Hell, no. I just took out the bastard who was about to jump you.”
Her jaw dropped. “Who was he?”
“No idea. Sink?”
“Oh. Over here.” Taking him by the arm, she guided him to her kitchen sink and turned on the spigot. It coughed then began to emit a sluggish stream of smelly New Orleans tap water.
He splashed great handfuls of it over his face again and again, rinsing away the pepper spray from around his eyes. His back muscles flexed under his taut T-shirt as he bent over the sink. Yowza. The guy was ripped. She hovered nearby, feeling helpless and guilty that she was the cause of his hissing breaths of pain and watering eyes. Eventually he stood upright. He was easily six foot two. And freaking built like an Olympic athlete.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand to forestall her. “Stay here.” She watched as he cautiously opened her front door. Stepped out onto the landing. Looked around. Came back inside and announced, “He’s gone.” She sagged in relief and realized abruptly that her knees felt weak.
Meanwhile, Ashe pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number.
She eavesdropped shamelessly as he asked, “Is Bastien LeBlanc by any chance on duty tonight...? Perfect. Could you ask him to cruise by Malouf’s Oriental Rug Shop in the Warehouse District when he gets a chance? There was a minor scuffle in the alley beside the store, and a black-and-white drive-by would help ensure that no more trouble flares up. Tell him Asher Konig will owe him one...thanks.”
“What was that all about?” she demanded. “Who’s Bastien LeBlanc?”
“NOPD patrol officer. And an old friend. He’ll cruise by and make sure your would-be assailant doesn’t stick around for seconds.”
Wow. It must be nice to have one’s very own cop on call to do favors. If only she had the same. Maybe then she would know where her brother was by now. “You should have told me who you were instead of chasing me up the stairs,” she said accusingly.
“I didn’t know if I had knocked the bastard out fully or not,” he retorted. “Unlike on television, people can pop up pretty fast after getting walloped in the head. I needed to get you behind cover and in a defensible position before I bothered with niceties.”
“Oh.” A pause. “Sorry I nailed you with my pepper spray.”
“Don’t apologize to me. You didn’t realize who I was.”
Did he have to be so nice about it? Now she felt even guiltier than before. “Let me get you a towel. You’re soaked.”
She retreated to her bathroom, grabbed the cleaner of her two towels off the rack and hurried back to the main room. Sheesh. What was wrong with her? Was she afraid he was going to bolt from her place before she got a chance to flirt with him or something?
Oh, my. As she stepped into the living room, she was just in time to see him grab the back of his T-shirt and haul the wet garment over his head.
Oh, my. Acres of bulging pecs and rippling abs came into sight as he straightened. Top-tier male models had nothing on this guy’s physique.
“Wow,” she breathed. “You’re pretty without a shirt.”
He glanced up and smiled wryly. “Thanks. And thanks for the towel.” He lifted it gently out of her nerveless fingers and began toweling off his muscular acreage...while she stood there and basically drooled at him.
“You okay...?”
Wait. What? He’d asked her something. She replayed the garbled syllables and blurted belatedly, “Yeah, sure. I’m fine.”
“Let me see your hand.”
Huh?
Before she could figure out what he was talking about, he’d moved swiftly to her side and lifted her hand in his, palm up. Oh, hey. Look. There were three angry red scratches running the length of her hand and culminating in big gouges.
“Tweezers,” he bit out.
“Medicine cabinet.”
He turned and strode swiftly into the bathroom. Oh, God. A half dozen skimpy thongs and lacy bras were draped over the shower rod, drying. Too late to stop him.
Sure enough, he was smirking a little as he emerged from her postage-stamp-sized bathroom. But then he picked up her hand and started digging around.
“Youch!” She tried to yank her hand away but might as well have had it lodged in a block of concrete for all it moved.
“Splinters,” he muttered. “Stay still.”
Obediently she stopped squirming and leaned closer to watch as he deftly extracted several splinters from her hand. He was actually really good at it. His fingers were steady and swift. Exquisitely gentle. Then suddenly, he glanced up at her and asked, “You holding up okay?”
“Uh-huh.”
“One more to go. You’re being very brave.”
This from a man who’d cracked heads twice in the same evening without breaking a sweat. The last splinter surrendered to him, and he rubbed the pad of his thumb across her palm, soothing it tenderly.
“I think the patient is going to live,” he murmured.
“Thank you. For everything.”
He looked up from her hand, and their gazes met—or rather, tangled together in a sexually charged dance of intense awareness of one another. Of hot, undeniable attraction, of hunger and need...
Yowza. The man sure knew how to, well, look at a woman.
Some sort of bright light flashed outside her window. “That would be Bastien,” Ashe said. “He’s shining his spotlight down the alley.”
“Wow. That was fast.”
“We’re good friends. Used to work together. He knows I wouldn’t bother him unless it was important.”
He took a careful step back from her and glided over beside the window like James Bond, peering furtively past the blinds at an oblique angle that spoke of cloaks and daggers. What was up with that? Her other window onto the street got the same treatment.
A text came in on his phone, and as soon as he read it, the tense set of his shoulders relaxed. “Bastien says the alley’s clear. He drove around the block a couple times, too. Your attacker has left the area.”
She was more relieved than she liked to admit. Thank God Ashe had been there to save her. And that he knew a cop who would come scope out the area so quickly and thoroughly.
Ashe moved away from the windows and settled on the lurid red velveteen sofa, part of the furnishings that came with the dive.
She had never thought of her apartment as particularly small, but he filled the space with his large frame and even larger presence. His silver-blue gaze honed in on her again, but this time it was filled with questions. Speculation. Determination to find answers. And more of that disconcerting heat.
“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a nasty joint like that?”
How did he manage to fill such a straightforward question with so much loaded innuendo? Her heart fluttered—actually fluttered—in response. Belatedly she mumbled, “You mean the bar?”
A frown pleated his dark brow. “You and I both know the Who Do Voodoo is a lot more than a bar.”
Caution stilled her entire being. She knew it because she’d been working there for months. But how did he know after only a few hours spent sipping booze in the corner? Who was this guy? Surely he didn’t work for Vitaly’s bosses. “Are you a cop?” she blurted.
“No.” His answer was prompt and without hesitation.
“FBI or something?”
“Nope.”
“Why do you care if I work at the Voodoo, then?” she asked. “It’s a steady paycheck.”
“It’s not worth the money. That place is trouble.”
“I’ll work where I want,” she snapped. “It’s my life.”
He leaned back, stretching an arm along the back of her sofa. Deeply tanned, it was wreathed from wrist to shoulder in corded muscle and bulging veins that spoke of ridiculous strength. And she was alone in her isolated apartment with this total stranger who could overpower her without even exerting himself. She really ought to be scared silly of him. But she couldn’t work up anything but a sense of complete trust in this man. Clearly, she’d lost her mind.
“So what’s the deal with the club?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I’d bet my next paycheck there’s a whorehouse upstairs. Given how young the dancers looked, I’m guessing it’s a sex trafficking outfit. You may be too scared to call the FBI, but I’m not.” He tilted up on one hip to fish his cell phone out of a back pocket of his jeans.
“You can’t call them!” she exclaimed.
He froze. Eased back down to the sofa slowly, phone still in pocket. “Why not?” Something dark and dangerous vibrated in his voice. It wasn’t menace exactly, but it was a reminder to tread lightly around this man.
“You’ll ruin everything!”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to be more specific than that. What ‘everything’ do you mean, exactly?”
She huffed. She didn’t want to tell him anything, let alone involve him in her secret investigation. But if the FBI raided the bar and shut it down, her only lead to Max would be lost.
After weeks of frantic searching and the police seeming to ignore her, she couldn’t take the constant panic anymore and had walked into the Voodoo bar to demand answers. It was the last place her brother had been seen going into the day he disappeared. And given that it wasn’t the kind of joint he would normally have been caught dead in, logic suggested the place had something to do with his disappearance.
When she’d barged into the club, Vitaly had mistaken her for someone applying for the waitress job advertised in the window. He’d offered her the position on the spot, and in a combination of instinct and impulse, she’d taken it.
For the past two months, she’d been watching and listening and learning. But the mob bosses who employed Vitaly were extremely cautious. They rarely showed their faces, and they never did anything to hint at illegal activity—not counting the whorehouse upstairs.
She occasionally served drinks in the back lounge where the lap dances happened, but she’d never waited on the mob bosses where she could get a chance to eavesdrop on their conversation.
She had also never set foot above the ground floor of the bar and didn’t intend to, either. In all honesty, she was scared to death of getting sucked into the inescapable downward spiral that was the sex trafficking industry.
“You haven’t given me a good reason not to call the feds...yet,” Ashe said, jarring her from her thoughts. “And I happen to believe trafficking in underage girls is about the worst form of exploitation there is. I have zero sympathy for anyone engaged in it.”
“Neither do I,” she muttered.
“Well, then?”
He hadn’t moved a muscle, but a promise rolled off him to have answers out of her tonight, come hell or high water. She studied him closely. He’d shown genuine concern for her in the club and had even subjected himself to bodily harm to save her from that thug. Plus, he seemed prepared to listen to her. So heck...maybe she should take him up on his offer. Because thus far, she’d had zero success on her own finding out anything about Max.
Decision made, she released a long, slow breath that made her entire being feel as if it had deflated. It seemed as if she’d been holding that breath for months. Had she really been living under so much tension and stress? As good as it felt to trust him at least a little, she wasn’t prepared to give up all her secrets to this man she barely knew. So she chose her words carefully. “Someone I know used to hang out at the Voodoo, and then we lost touch. I’m trying to figure out what happened.”
“A girl?” he asked quickly.
Oh, God. He thought she knew one of the trafficked girls from Eastern Europe who were virtual prisoners upstairs without identification documents or knowledge of the English language or American laws. Not to mention many of the girls were drug addicts who were paid for sex with heroin or crack.
“No, no. Nothing like that. A guy. I’m hoping I’ll run across someone who knew him and may know something about why he was there and where he went.”
“Ahh.” Ashe’s expression shuttered abruptly, and he leaned forward to reach for his wet shirt.
Good grief. He thought Max was her boyfriend. Cripes. He must think she was a weirdo stalker chick working at the Voodoo to chase down some poor guy who’d fled from her and intentionally left no contact information.
She winced as she bit the inside of her lip to stop herself from correcting Ashe’s mistaken impression. It was for the best. As hot as he might be, she had no time in her life for a dalliance that might distract her from finding her big brother.
Her gut howled at her that Max was in trouble and until that internal scream was silenced, she was off the market for men.
Ashe shrugged into his damp T-shirt. “How long do you need to find your...friend...before I call the feds?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been there two months and haven’t caught a lead yet.”
“And you’re sure he’s still alive?”
Her spine stiffened in denial at the notion of Max being dead. It was what the cops thought. All this time with not a hint of him, no credit card hits, no banking transactions, no sightings...
“I know he’s alive,” she declared.
“How?” Ashe asked the question evenly enough. As if he was willing to hear her reasoning.
She sighed heavily. “I feel it in my gut, okay? I know that sounds lame, but I would know if he were dead. And I’m telling you he’s not.”
He stared at her for a second and then nodded briefly. Really? He believed her? No scoffing comments about how stupid it was to rely on a gut instinct? On how the facts said she was wrong? Wow.
He spoke gruffly. “Two weeks. I’ll help you look for your boyfriend during that time, but that’s all you get. It’ll take the law that long to gather evidence, get the warrants and set up a raid. Innocent girls are suffering every day there.”
Oh, God. She’d never thought of it in those terms. In her panic to find Max, she’d had the power to save those girls and hadn’t. She was a horrible human being! In that context, giving her two weeks was frankly damned generous.
“Don’t have the cops wait on my account,” she said grimly. “When they’re ready, they should shut the place down. I’ll tell you this, though. The Voodoo is the tip of a much bigger iceberg.”
Ashe gave her a sharp look. “What do you mean by that? What iceberg?”
