Chapter 3
three
. . .
Mia
We’re nearly to the elevator when he touches the small of my back and leans in close to whisper in my ear, “Stairs.”
I pick up speed, and pass the elevator doors, but I can tell it’s not enough. In my periphery there’s a flurry of movement. Armin slams open the stairwell door to shove me through. “Run to the bottom. Don’t go outside.”
And he pulls the door closed, before I can argue.
I snap open my purse and consider the Beretta. But I just can’t. Shots fired will jeopardize my cover, years of work.
It’s been hell. The only way I get through it these days is by believing we’re about to close in on Harvey, put him away forever. That’s what’s going to make it all worthwhile. I snap it shut again and turn.
Still, I can’t leave Armin behind either.
I hold my breath and listen and wait. A shot rings out, then another, two short bursts. Screams from the bar.
The door bursts open, and I gasp.
Armin. He yanks the door closed behind him. “We’ve gotta go.” He grabs my hand and drags me down the stairs.
But as usual, I’m dressed for sex work, not for fleeing an impromptu gunfight, so I’m a stomping, echoing mess in the stairwell.
He snatches my purse off my arm and throws it over his shoulder.
Then he picks me up and throws me over his other shoulder.
I open my mouth in protest, but he’s right to fireman-carry me the rest of the way.
We burst into the night air at the same time the upstairs door slams open and footsteps hit the stairs.
“He’s coming,” I warn.
“Hold this.” He hands me his gun. Armin cinches his arms around my waist and picks up his pace. “I need you to get better shoes,” he pants.
The streetlight’s out, and it’s dark in the alley. Probably for the best. He sprints us to the SUV parked behind the dumpster, sets me inside, snatches his gun back, and slams the door shut.
A little wormy guy bursts out of the emergency exit, his head pivoting in all directions. His shoulder is nicked, he’s got a splotch of blood on his sweater. A hit hitman in a raggedy cardigan. Not a top-form killer. Looks like he’s breathing hard. He can’t be one of Harvey’s guys.
This loser’s not worth the rounds. I’d rather dodge this creeper all night every night; if we get a body count out of this little exchange it means I’ve got a lot of paperwork to do, and my designated agent’s gonna be pissed.
And if Armin gets hurt or killed…I don’t let myself finish the thought.
“Let’s go,” I yell. I can’t tell if he hears me. His back is to me, I can’t see if he’s taking aim or not. Finally he turns to open the car door, and a bullet clinks off the driver-side window.
Bulletproof.
He’s not. That was close. I lean to yank on the door handle: I pull and pull; nothing happens. I bang on the window. “Get in the damn car,” I scream.
He was better at taking orders back at his cabin.
I hesitate in the doorway.
I didn’t want this, for Armin to take me to his place.
But I live in one of Harvey’s properties, as usual, so we can’t go there.
And where else is there, in this filthy city?
Harvey’s already got as much of a network here as he ever did in East Greenwich, if not more.
Anybody snaps a picture of us, Harvey sees me with the sheriff who tried to put him away, and he’s going to know something’s up.
“Please.” Armin ushers me across the threshold with a nervous glance around, shuts the door behind me and locks it.
I run the case through my head again, all the admissible evidence, all the witnesses we’ve got on board.
The ones we’ve lost.
And it’s not enough, not by a long shot.
I want to nail Harvey to the federal prison wall on the DA bribery charges too, but he’s stopped short every time.
Even with all the trafficking and building violations, health and liquor law infractions, possible weapons charges, it’s not enough.
He’ll pay some fines and walk. All those he’s killed, their deaths would be for nothing.
He’ll keep on forcing women into prostitution with his bullshit rent scams, keep packaging up the debt on his slums for investors, buying more property, and on and on.
And he’ll keep getting away with it.
I ball up my fists in rage.
I stand there in the foyer of whatever this place is. Looks like a tech bro’s nouveau money nest. Not Armin’s style. But then again, he’s a billionaire. I always forget. Maybe he’s bulldozed that little cabin in the woods by now. Maybe these days his whole style is money.
Money and a fake badge and a bulletproof SUV.
“You’re shaking.” He takes my fists in his hands, drags his fingertips across them, slow and careful, to open them, so that we’re holding hands.
I hate to admit it, even to myself, but it feels good, safe, my hands in his.
I shrug. “I’m scared.”
“That’s not like you.” He brushes my hair back from my face, rubs a lock of it between his fingers. “And neither is this.”
I bark a short, humorless laugh. “They told me blondes have more fun.”
“Well,” he says. “Are you?”
“I’m about to.” It takes all my acting skills not to cringe at my own lame line, something a sex worker would say to her John.
And, well, that’s how we started out, back in the tiny town of East Greenwich.
No. We started out in a fire. At Harvey’s club.
Armin was a sheriff back then. He found me inside, unconscious from smoke inhalation, and carried me to safety.
Saved my life. A few months later, after the lottery, he hired me as his escort for a gala.
We never made it. I crashed my car out in the woods in that awful storm.
And he saved me again.
“Do you remember what you said to me in East Greenwich, when I asked how you found me in the fire?”
His eyes have a shine to them. “‘How do the worker bees know where to find their queen?’”
I lean in close, and lay my head on his chest. He sighs and runs his hands down my hair, one after the other, and clasps his hands together to hold me tight.
This idiot is going to get himself killed, despite all my efforts to save his life by getting far, far away from him.
“Why’d you leave?”
Because I’m an undercover FBI agent posing as a sex worker smack in the middle of a multi-year multi-state takedown of the biggest sex trafficking kingpin on the east coast.
And as much as I’d love to love you right now, it’ll only get you killed.
“Oh, I’m not a mountain girl.” I untuck his shirt, but he shakes me off.
“We didn’t have to stay at the cabin in East Greenwich.” He lifts my chin so we’re eye to eye. “I would take you anywhere you wanted to go.”
“And here we are.” I need this conversation to be over. “Together again.” So I do the one thing I know will pause it.
I kick off my shoes, reach up on my tiptoes, and press my lips to his. He takes me by the arms and pulls away from me. His eyes are disturbed, on the verge of angry. He’s sick of my shit. He wants more of a preamble. He wants to ask a thousand questions.
But the lust overtakes him, like I knew it would, his pupils wide in the dim loft, no light except the pale streetlights filtered through the tinted windows.
No curtains. I hope this glass is bulletproof, too.
I slide the jacket off his shoulders and let it fall to the floor. He doesn’t stop me. I pause to study his face. I take it in both hands and stroke his mustache with my thumbs.
“I don’t like it,” I lie.
“You told me to grow it back. This silly mustache is all for you.” He’s wearing a hint of a smile.
I pull him down to my level to kiss him again, and this time he accepts me.
His lips part; he slides his tongue the length of mine.
He breaks the kiss, but the conversation’s over.
“Maybe you’ll like it more if it smells like you. ” And he scoops me up off the ground.
It brings me back to those days at his cabin after the car accident. I can’t help it: I give myself the moment, let my body sink into his. I pop open a few buttons on his shirt with one hand so I can feel his skin against my cheek, and it comforts me.
He walks me over and lays me down, and he kneels at the side of the bed. “I missed you, Mia.” He takes my hand in his and kisses the backs of my knuckles.
My heart clenches, slight but unmistakeable. If we’d met before I went undercover—
Stop.
If we met five years ago, which couldn’t have happened anyway, and I became some damn desk jockey, then I wouldn’t be doing the most important work the FBI has to offer. I wouldn’t be fighting to keep women and girls safe from demons like Harvey Blagas.
“Come here.” I slide the spaghetti strap of my dress off one shoulder. “And I’ll show you how much I missed you.”
He flinches.
Armin’s in love. Not with me, he doesn’t even know me. He’s in love with a call girl, or so he thinks, and yet it hurts him to always be reminded that sex is my—her professional currency. Which is exactly why I keep reminding him.
But he’s so relentless. He patches up that heart I keep poking holes in, and he comes after me again.
He turns my hand over and kisses my palm. “Did you keep the SUV?”
“No,” I say, turning my eyes upward, to the exposed pipes on the ceiling. “It was too flashy. Too nice. I’m a sex worker, not a hedge fund manager.”
He laughs. It’s forced. He hates my job title.
But it’s none of his business what I really do for a living.
I drag my nails down his forearm, and his eyes flash. Always so responsive, my former sheriff, my billionaire, my mountain man turned bodyguard.
My mind conjures up the last time we were together. He started talking crazy, about killing Harvey himself. Maybe he could and get away with it. After all, he is a very wealthy man. Nothing elevates a man above the law higher and faster than money.
But I want to bring Harvey down. Not by murder. Death is too easy. I want him to lose everything, I want him suffering, in prison, for the rest of his life. As a warning shot to all the scum like him out there. And for all the girls whose lives he destroyed. For them, for me. For Nicole.
And that’s why I have to get rid of Armin. He’s in the way. He’s a liability—
“You know what?” He drags me to the edge of the bed, easy for a man of his size and strength, and he licks his lips. “I’ll show you how much I missed you. How about that?” The gleam in his eyes brings a sly smile to my face.
—a liability I can keep for another hour.
Or two.
He slides my underwear down to my ankles so I can kick them off and he lets his hands linger, warm on my cold feet.
His eyes are fiery; I feel it between my legs.
He inches my dress up to my hips, parts my thighs, and buries his tongue inside me until he finds the place that makes me clutch at his hair and moan his name.
I can’t deny it. I did miss my mountain man and that hard-working mouth of his.