Chapter 19
Ace
I have no idea why I stare down at my phone as if I'm willing it to send me a message.
I have even less explanation for why I have her contact information pulled up.
I press my thumb to the screen, holding it up to my face when it goes dark, just so I can continue to stare at her name— CORA.
She didn't even put her last name in there, as if she just assumed she'd be the only Cora in my contacts.
She is, of course, because this phone isn't the one I use in my day-to-day life. It's one I've been given for this particular case. It's a phone provided by Cerberus, which makes me even more resistant to sending her a message. Everything I do with it is monitored, not only with activity but also with geographical location. It's how I know without asking that Kincaid knew exactly where I was last night and how long I was there.
Having my activities tracked normally doesn't bother me. It's what keeps me safe in case shit goes south, but, for some reason, it irritates me a little this time.
I drop my phone on the coffee table and keep my eyes locked on the television screen. I'm running through video from last night, logging the comings and goings of the spa's clients. Although it's faster to do it this way rather than watching it live, it's also a risk that we might find something in real time that we could use at that moment. Something popping up now would only lead us to a dead-end road.
I shoot off some information to Max on a new license plate, and although I know better, while my phone is in my hand, I stupidly send off the address to this little studio apartment to Cora.
I could be grilled for hours about my reasoning, and I still don't think I'd be able to explain why I did it.
There's no response. She doesn't ask me why I sent it or question my motives. The phone goes dark and stays that way until Max sends me info back on the car.
Of course, it comes back to the spa and not a rental to another person. Face recognition is slow because the camera I placed is so far away. It's nearly impossible to identify anyone unless I know them from sight, but I still flip through the binder provided of people known to frequent DC and look to see if I can't identify the guy.
I get busy as I dive deeper into the visitation to the spa from the night before, and almost manage to lose track of time, but thoughts of Cora keep infiltrating my mind. At first, I reason that it's because she was the client paying Cerberus to find her sister, but I've never been a fan of lying to myself.
The woman intrigues the shit out of me which is more a surprise than anything, because she isn't the first pretty woman I've been around. I've had my fair share of hookups in my lifetime, so many that she shouldn't even be on my radar past our connection through the case.
But she isn't even a hookup, is she?
Before I can delve deeper into my psyche, my eyes lift to movement on the small screen in the corner of the television.
The smile that spreads across my face is slow, but my body's reaction to what I'm seeing is much faster.
I stand, making my way to the door and pulling it open before she can lift her hand to ring the doorbell .
She gives me one of her fake smiles. I fight the urge to challenge it and tell her not to smile at me unless it's one of her real ones, but I have no right to demand anything of this woman other than to stay out of my way during this case.
"Hi," she says when I simply stand wordlessly in the doorway. She lifts a bag in her hand before speaking again. "I was hungry and figured you might be too."
"I can always eat," I say, hearing the damned inflection in my voice.
Her cheeks heat, the pink on them becoming one of my favorite things as she drops her eyes.
I take a step back so she can enter the small apartment, letting my eyes drop to her delectable ass as she enters.
"Is it going to be frou-frou food?" I ask as I follow her to the small kitchen table.
"What exactly is frou-frou food?" she asks as she begins pulling items from the reusable bag.
"Not that," I say, pointing to the container of delicious-looking chicken salad.
She chuckles.
"That is frou-frou," I say, pointing to the paper, bakery bag marked 7 GRAIN CRACKERS .
"I grabbed these too," she says, pulling a box of crackers from the bag made by a company I recognize. "It's loaded with all sorts of preservatives though."
"I'm old," I remind her. "I'll take all the help I can get."
She laughs again, and it makes my brain work overtime in an effort to think of ways to make it keep happening.
"Help yourself to any…" she begins but pauses long enough to snatch up a tiny bag of dark chocolate-covered almonds. "Any of that."
"Not too keen on sharing the chocolate?"
She looks down at the bag in her hands as if she feels guilty for being selfish .
I see the second she makes her decision, and I wonder how freeing it is for her.
"I bought these for myself."
I give her a quick smile, not willing to make her second-guess that decision by pushing her to see how long it would take to convince her to share with me. I imagine she has had a lot of selfish people in her life, including her sister, who would do it just to watch her cave.
I'd never take something so simple from someone just to lessen their joy and fuck any asshole that would.
"This looks delicious," I say, popping the top off the chicken salad before opening the box of preservative-riddled crackers.
"What are you doing?" she asks, a look of pure disgust on her face when I dip the crackers in the chicken salad. "Don't you have dishes?"
My brows furrow for a second when I pop the food in my mouth, but it doesn't last long. It's better than I ever imagined.
"This has pecans in it," I say, with a mouthful while pointing to my mouth. "It's delicious."
"Do you plan on sharing? We need bowls or something."
I know she's judging me. I know she can't fathom eating food from the same bowl as someone else, but it's not like I plan on double-dipping or anything. I'm not a sociopath.
Instead of turning and grabbing a bowl from the cabinet behind me, I open her bougie bag of crackers, dip it into the container of chicken salad and scoop up a big glob of the stuff.
When she opens her mouth to question me again, I slide it into her mouth. The tip of my finger brushing her lower lip probably shouldn't cause such a visceral reaction from me, but it's the way her eyes track the digit to my mouth as I lick off the food left behind that makes me want a world of things I have no business even considering where she's concerned.
"Are you going to freak out when I suggest we eat in the living room so I can keep working?"
Her eyes drop back to the little kitchenette table before turning toward the living room area.
"I think I could survive that," she says as she begins to gather some of the food items.
I follow behind her, grabbing what she can't carry and placing them on the coffee table.
"I'll concede to dipping the crackers in the chicken salad, but I won't ever agree to eating cake with my fingers."
Instead of asking me to get silverware, she brushes past me, the scent of her skin leaving a trail as she goes into the kitchen to find some. As if she's been here before, she opens the correct drawer on the first try and pulls out two forks.
I drop my ass to the couch, grabbing another cracker and scooping up more of the chicken salad.
"I'm not trying to sound like I'm judging you, but those crackers really aren't good for you."
"I'll be fine," I assure her, watching her wince as she takes a seat beside me. "Are you okay?"
She huffs as she grabs one of her crackers and dips it into the bowl of chicken salad.
"I'll be okay but I slept wrong last night and my back has a catch in it. Drinking like I did last night isn't the same as it used to be. The recovery time required just isn't worth it these days."
I huff a laugh of understanding. "I know I'm at least twenty years older than you. I don't know how I managed to even stand this morning. It shouldn't bother someone as young as you though."
"I'm not that young," she argues. "I'm thirty-seven."
I know exactly how old she is. I know her birthday and more than any other person in her life probably knows. I'm very thorough in my investigations, and I have the ability to commit a lot of stuff to memory. I'm sure there will come a time when I look at a date five years from now and think… It's Cora Preston's birthday. I wonder what she's up to.
"So young," I say before throwing another cracker into my mouth.
"Twenty years isn't that big of a difference, is it? I mean, at a certain age, it just becomes a number, right?"
I don't know whether I should argue with her or distract her with something else. It sounds like she's trying to convince me that we might be compatible in a way other than this job I'm working, and I can't let my mind wander there at all. For one thing, it's not ethical with the position I'm in and, secondly, I get the feeling that Cora Preston has had a lifetime of disappointment. I don't want to be one more thing that she's going to regret, and that's how it would end up. There's no scenario where we end up together.
"I guess if the people were compatible and had the same goals in life, it's not a big deal," I say, praising myself internally for having such a diplomatic answer.
"What are you watching?" she asks, pointing to the paused screen. "Is that Daydreamer's Spa?"
"It is. I'm going through video footage from last night," I explain. "I usually watch it live, but I wasn't here last night."
She keeps her eyes on the screen, watching as I fast forward to the next person visible on the front porch.
"We do our best to run facial recognition, but the shot is so far away, we can't always figure out who it is. Like this guy," I say, watching a man I couldn't identify earlier exit the building. "We can't determine who he is."
"That's Randall Carver," she says around another cracker.
I find it adorable how she keeps talking with a mouthful, despite her lifting her hand to cover her mouth.
"He's a congressman's nephew. "
I turn my gaze in her direction, not exactly surprised that she knows who he is, but that she could actually help with this case.
"Thanks," I tell her as I shoot off the name to Max. "How do you feel about helping me with all the people I can't identify?"
She shrugs. "It's not like I have anything else to do."
I hand her a folder with pictures from screenshots of the video and a pen. For the next half hour, we work in silence as we eat—me watching the video playback and her jotting down notes on people she can identify.
"So we're done?" she asks after she's done with the folder. I make my way through to the end of the video at about the same time. "There's more?" she asks, when she looks up at the scene and sees a car driving into view.
"This is live," I explain. "It's happening in real time."
She looks over her shoulder toward the window. "I missed the sun setting."
"This kind of work has a way of making time slip away."
"Perfect," she whispers, her eyes locked on the screen. "That's—wow, really?"
"Who is she?"
"Estelle Baringer. She's the wife of—"
"Vice President Scott Baringer," I finish for her.
"How deep does this place go?"
"I don't know. I don't know that we'll ever know, but it isn't surprising. There are all sorts of—Cora, you can't tell anyone what you see on these tapes."
"Won't it all come out in the wash when you shut the place down?"
I see the hope in her eyes. It's not that she wants any one of these politicians in trouble, but she sees this place for what it is, an illegal business and nothing more .
It's not how I view it or how Cerberus views it. We know the danger of places like this, but they also serve a purpose.
"I don't know that Daydreamer's Spa will be shut down."
Her head tilts, eyes narrowing, and I hold my hand up, feeling the need to explain before she judges me too harshly. Not that I should be worrying about her opinion of me on any level.
"This place leads us to the bad places, and before you argue with me, which I know you will, there are worse places than this. Much, much worse places. We're able to find those really bad places by letting these ones stay in operation. There's always someone who wants more than these places can offer, and although the people running these may not be running the others, they have those connections. We don't need to police what kinks people have who go to places like this because they need to feed something the public would consider immoral. We need to find the place where men, women, and children are being trafficked so they can't be hurt or assaulted against their will."
I watch her throat work on a swallow as she keeps her eyes locked on the screen. "I never thought of it that way."
Maybe I didn't explain myself as thoroughly last night as I had hoped, but I can see how her mind is working, and it's already imagining that Sadie ended up in a place like Ijust described.
"Places like this are the lesser evil of some very bad things," I continue. "In a perfect world, we'd eradicate the bad places and police the places like this."
Her eyes snap in my direction. "Places like this should be wiped from the face of the earth."
"Is that you speaking or an echo of your father's political stance?"
Her eyes narrow in annoyance, but I won't let her irritation keep me from trying to explain my point .
"The other night you paid ten grand to watch a guy strip. I paid ten grand to cuddle with someone. Although those were chosen because they're considered some of the less deviant options they have, have you stopped to consider why they're listed in the first place? Couldn't someone go to a legal strip club or meet someone for a cuddle? They could if they didn't have the scrutiny of the public questioning why they might go there in the first place. There's a place in our world for the sex industry, Cora. It just needs to be governed and held to very high standards. Until that happens everywhere, places like that spa will always exist."
She turns her head, eyes meeting mine, but I know better than to think that just saying the words makes her change her mind. That's the thing about politics and religion. There's nothing anyone can say that will make people shift their views, and something like this had to have been ingrained in her head from the day she was born.
"I think—"
Her voice halts when my phone rings, and I don't hesitate to answer it, needing the reprieve.
I wish I had a better poker face because when I answer and Kincaid tells me what they've found, I know she can read it all over my face.