Chapter 22
I love little red dresses
April 13
Saturday evening
My sparkly redtwo-piece outfit didn’t cover a whole lot, which of course was the idea. It had a halter top that revealed my diamond belly piercing, and a little red skirt that barely met the tops of my thighs.
When Georgina and I had gone shopping last weekend, we’d picked up a fragrance that was citrusy yet sexy and enticing. I’d always preferred orange blossom perfumes, but this was on the exotic side and I definitely needed exotic.
I did manage to keep my hands at my sides and resist tugging down on the skirt as I let myself into Kristin’s house and walked toward Donovan’s war room. I could swear the skirt was climbing up the naked butt cheeks that my thong failed to cover.
“Damn!” The calico cat appeared out of nowhere. I almost tripped over Dixie in my four-inch heels, and would have landed on my backside if I hadn’t caught myself by bracing my hand on the wall.
She gave me a look that told me that as far as she was concerned she couldn’t wait to see the back of me when I wasn’t around anymore. “Stupid cat,” I shouted at her as she strutted down the hall, tail twitching high in the air.
After glaring at the calico, I reached Donovan’s war room and walked inside, where the door was partially open.
He looked over his shoulder. “You okay?”
“Your cat almost killed me,” I grumbled. But then I brightened. “Hey, how about some washing-machine sex, before we leave? I bet there’s a load of clothes that needs to be washed.” The vibrations would be awesome.
The corner of Donovan’s mouth quirked. “Steele, you’d better watch it, or I’m taking you up on your offer.”
It turned me on big-time when he gave me that almost-smile.
Then his eyes roved over me in my little “fuck me” dress and shoes, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
“How about some war-room sex instead?” he asked in a rumbly growl.
The leather was smooth beneath my thighs as I sat in a chair next to him and let my dress hike all the way up my thighs as I crossed my legs at the knees. Even from here his masculine scent called to me and I wanted him.
“War-room sex, huh?” I scooted my chair close to him and rubbed my palm along his thigh.
“You are playing with fire.” He made that low growling sound as he faced me completely, grabbed me by the waist, and jerked me onto his lap.
I let out a cry of surprise as he caught me off guard. My dress had gone up around my waist when he grabbed me, and my bottom half was only covered by a leather thong.
“What the hell are you doing to me, Steele?” He gripped me tightly. “I can barely think around you.”
“Apparently my dastardly plan is working.” I grinned as he looked at me. “Heh, heh, heh.”
Donovan chuckled and let me slide off his lap. “I need my brains back, Steele.”
He returned to looking at the monitors while I watched him, my whole body tingling.
One of these days I would have him.
I just had to let go.
I turned my attention to the monitors and screens, too. Somehow, some way, we’d find something that would connect the dots.
If only Kristin had been one of the girls on the ship, she would be safe now. Instead, she had been a domestic sale, and was probably already going through a living hell. We’d confirmed with Schilling the fact that Kristin had already been delivered to her buyer.
I clenched my hands and clenched my teeth harder as Donovan’s fingers flew over the touchpad.
Every time I thought of Kristin being a sex slave to some pervert, I wanted to hurt something, someone. Who knew what the sonofabitch was doing to her?
The one, tiniest of bright spots, was that we knew she was somewhere in the greater Boston area and not somewhere across the country.
Puff Cheeks, whose real name was Frederick Schilling, let us know that much after some heavy “persuading.”
“Oh, that little piece.” He’d laughed when I described her and her birthmark. He’d continued with a snort. “She’s right under your noses in the Boston area. Don’t know who owns her, but you can bet you’ll never find the slut.”
One punch and Donovan had knocked the crap out of Schilling. The man was out for the count.
I shifted in my seat as I looked at the monitors that covered various rear doors of nightclubs girls had been taken from. If only we could get a big break on the whole operation.
“Maybe tonight will be the night,” I said to myself. Donovan glanced at me and I met his gaze. “Our big break. A bunch of pieces of the puzzle. It’s got to be Cabot, since Tarantino and Strong came up clean.”
“I hope you’re right.” Donovan suddenly didn’t look like the same man I’d just had a teasing moment with. “That bastard Schilling— fine time for RED’s truth serum to cause a reaction.”
“No kidding.”
Without the red tape other agencies faced, our med-techs administered RED’s version of a “truth serum” that had been concocted in the agency’s medical lab. Instead of dragging answers from Schilling, he’d had some kind of reaction. That had been a first for RED.
Schilling was now in our underground medical center covered in a full-body rash, head the size of a prize pumpkin, on a ventilator, and oh, yeah, currently in a coma.
“Friggin’ great,” I said. “We should have let our ‘persuasion artists’ have a couple more rounds with him.” As far as who ran the sex slave auction ring, and how it worked, we’d never had a chance to find out.
I gripped the lower part of the seat and dug my fingers into the leather.
Feel sorry for a man who auctioned off women, a man whose brain was close to exploding? No way. Pissed because that potential source was out of the running to interrogate? Hell yeah.
But Kristin was in our area. We didn’t have to try to track her down in every city of every state. She was right here.
Somewhere.
I adjusted the leather collar I’d had to put back on for tonight. Martinez had added a trigger that would have RED agents all over the nightclub if we needed them. All I had to do was peel off one of the silver studs on the collar. Which stud was it again? The one to the left of the stud that hid the camera? The right, maybe?
Whenever we weren’t working on Operation Cinderella, trying to track down more info on Cabot, Tarantino, and Strong, Donovan and I conducted our search for his sister in his war room.
My contacts had gotten us nowhere, Yeager hadn’t come up with anything else, and as much as I wanted to help Donovan find Kristin, most of the time I felt as useful as a wind gauge in a hurricane.
Right now, his attention was directed at multiple surveillance monitors—which included the front and back entrances of the Champagne Slipper, the Glass House, and the Crystal Twilight.
If they were trafficking girls from those nightclubs it wasn’t showing up on any of our monitors. Of course, Donovan had been monitoring the Diamond Castle, too, the place Kristin had been kidnapped the night she was out with her friends.
“Anything new?” I asked as I watched.
More and more fury started to grow in his expression. He didn’t look at me. Oh, crap, by the look on his face something had happened. And it was bad.
“Watch the monitor stationed at the back of the Diamond Castle,” he said in a voice full of anger. “Last night’s footage.”
A tipsy young woman with long dark hair stumbled out of the back entrance of the nightclub. She hung onto a guy who might have been her boyfriend.
My scalp tingled as the couple moved toward a maroon van—and the guy shoved the girl through the open side door before slamming the door shut behind her. The guy climbed into the passenger seat and the van took off. Couldn’t catch a visual of the driver or the man who’d thrown the girl in the van.
When I looked at Donovan, murderous rage darkened his features and the currents in the air told me just how difficult it was for him to contain his fury.
“The sonsofbitches probably kidnapped Kristin the same way,” he growled.
“They must have been lying low since then.” I pushed the words out. The heaviness of his rage filling the room almost made it difficult to talk.
When the van started to drive away, Donovan paused the vid and zeroed in on the license plate.
“A Massachusetts plate.” My cell wasn’t small enough to fit in my bra or panties, and I’d left my purse in the bedroom, so I grabbed the cordless off the desk for its secure landline. “I’ll phone it in to RED and let them know they’ll have the footage in a few moments. They’ll be on it in rocket time.”
Donovan slammed his fist on the desk beside the monitor. “A RED agent should have been monitoring this girl’s kidnapping. We’d have had the assholes last night.”
I gave the info to an agent before pressing the phone’s off button and setting the receiver back on the desk. “Must have been that new agent, but that’s no excuse.” RED hired the best, and this was a major screwup. I looked back at the monitor, and the zoomed-in license plate. “No one else in that department would miss something like this.”
Donovan’s scowl made me feel like thunder was about to shake the building. “It’ll be the last mistake he makes.”
I stood and watched him weigh his Beretta in his palm as if deciding whether or not he should take it or an AK-47 tonight.
“Uh-uh,” I said. “That thing stays in the glove compartment while we’re in the club.” He turned to me, his scowl still firmly in place, and I raised my hand. “Don’t go rabid on me, Donovan. We’ve got work to do.”
After he pulled on a pair of shitkickers, he turned off the dim lighting and shut the door behind us.