Brazen Seduction (13 page)

Brazen Seduction

103

Richard felt a renewed sense of unease, and that missing woman—Virginia Townsend—lay at the heart of it. Despite the fact Molly had never heard of her, he couldn’t help but think that somehow, Ms. Townsend was connected to his woman.

Sixth Precinct. It just so happened that Richard worked as a detective assigned to the sixth, and he knew that at least one of his former associates was still there, promoted to lieutenant. He’d make time tomorrow to give Thomas Brady a call. Probably, this uneasiness would be nothing. The best way to settle it would be to have a talk with the cops.

104

Morgan Ashbury

The phone awakened him with its first shrill ring. He lay unmoving for one moment, eyes blinking away the sleep, the comfort of the pillow beneath his head steadying him so he could take one moment to focus. He answered the summons on the third ring.

“Brady.”

“Hey, LT, sorry to wake you,” the voice of Craig Paulson effectively knocked the rest of the sleep out of Thomas Brady.

Paulson was on duty in the detectives unit of the Sixth Precinct. He took whatever call came in, worked it, and would never call to wake Brady—unless something happened related to one of Brady’s cases.

Thomas Brady got a sick feeling in the pit of his belly. “What have you got?”

“Just received a call from the State boys with regard to that missing woman case you got the other day.” Paulson pulled the night shift on a regular basis, said that working a shift opposite to his wife was the secret to a long and happy marriage.

The man could be right. God knew Brady didn’t have a clue as to how to hold together a marriage. What he did know was the job. And those thoughts were a stalling tactic. Sometimes, Brady thought, you needed a minute.

Paulson wouldn’t call unless the woman had been found dead.

“Crap.” He’d had a feeling when he’d taken the report from Virginia Townsend’s sister that this would be a bad one. Sometimes he got those feelings. For Brady, his instincts seldom lied to him.

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Another cop might have figured the missing woman just partied hardy on a Friday night, gone home with some guy for a little mattress aerobics, filed the report, and left it at that. But Brady had had this feeling, so he’d reached out to State as well as giving a bulletin to the media.

“State wants to know if you’d like to join them on the scene.

Poindexter’s got the case. He was the one who called.”

“Yeah, I think I better. Even if it happened outside the city, she’s still one of mine. Did Poindexter leave you his cell number?” He likely had it somewhere, but getting it again from Paulson would save time.

Brady sat up and turned on the bedside lamp. He kept pad and pen by the phone. He wrote the number, then disconnected from Paulson.

He called John Poindexter, a sergeant with the state cops he’d dealt with a number of times and played poker with on a semi-regular basis. Poindexter was the kind of cop who did the job, no short cuts, no grandstanding. He was only a so-so poker player, which meant Brady only lost to him about half the time they played.

“Hey, John, I hear you found my M. P.”

“Yeah, got a call around an hour ago. Guy stopped his car to take a leak on the way home from the city. As he started back for his car, he saw something strange in the ditch about ten yards away. Checked it out. Thank God he had the sense to puke elsewhere.”

“Son of a bitch.” Brady scrubbed a hand over his face. Dealing with death was always harder when the victim had been young and vibrant.

“Where are you?” He listened, took down directions. “Shit, that’s in the middle of damn-freaking nowhere. Probably take me at least a half an hour to get there.”

“That’s okay. The medical examiner got held up, so he’s about thirty to forty minutes out, too.” John said.

“Okay, then since I won’t be holding you up, I’m on my way.”
106

Morgan Ashbury

He hung up the phone and reached for the pants he’d tossed on the floor just before climbing into bed. Giving them a shake, he decided they’d do. A certain amount of rumple would be expected this late at night.

He did grab a clean shirt but didn’t bother with a tie. Normally he wouldn’t bother with a jacket either, unless going to court where a full suit was
de rigueur
. The sport coat would help against the chill of the night.

It wasn’t only darkest before the dawn, but coldest then, too, even if it was the end of freaking May.

One thing about getting a call at four in the morning, Brady thought as he cut cleanly through the center of the city. No traffic. He drove in silence to the outskirts of town, then took one of the state roads that would get him where he needed to be.

He passed houses on what he guessed were farms. He wouldn’t mind having a house himself one day. He thought it might be nice to sit out in the back yard in the summer, maybe grill a steak on the weekend. But he couldn’t see having so much land.

That much space went beyond carving out your own territory and edged into serious work. He had enough to do working out of the Six.

He didn’t need to come home and be a slave to his property on his down time.

Brady made a left and then a right. Up ahead, the flashing blues and reds of emergency vehicles along with the bright glare of portable halogens told him he’d found the place where Virginia Townsend’s body had been found.

He pulled his Buick behind a black and white and turned on the dashboard cherry that told anyone who didn’t know him he belonged there. He got out of the car and looked for Poindexter and found him at the bottom of a ditch.

He followed the marked trail down into the ditch, the lights so bright they lit the path like daylight. Dew made the grass a bit slippery but a couple of uniforms stood by to help people both down
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107

and up the steep incline. John Poindexter stood just off to the side while another man—probably the M. E.—crouched down beside the body.

“Hey, Brady.”

“John.”

From where he stood, he could see the woman. She lay sprawled out, a sheet covering her, as if she’d been rolled in it and then rolled down the ditch from the road.

In the glare of the lights, her skin glowed ghostly white, making her red hair look almost ghoulish. She’d been a pretty young woman.

He’d thought so when her sister gave him her photo.

“What do you know so far?” he asked.

“Not much. No overt wounds that I could see. We’ll know more when Rogers gets her in, I guess. We’ve got all the photos of the scene we need. She didn’t have any clothes, nor any identification, so it stands to figure she was killed elsewhere and just dumped here.

Wouldn’t have been able to I. D. her except I recognized her from the picture you sent us Saturday. Last seen Friday night, that makes for pretty diligent processing on your part. Otherwise she’d be going in right now as a Jane Doe. We’ll still need a positive I. D.”

“Yeah.” It had been diligent work, just not diligent enough.

Though Brady thought the woman might have already been dead when her sister reported her missing Saturday morning.

“I’ll have to call her sister,” Brady said. “But I’ll wait until seven or so.”

“So how come you moved on this so fast? Was she a hooker or something? Bad crowd? High risk behavior?”

“No, she was a secretary for a dentist,” Brady said. “And I likely never would have pushed it except for what her sister said when she reported her. Said she knew Ginny didn’t plan not to come home because she didn’t take any of her medicine with her, and she would have needed it before bed and first thing in the morning.”

“Medicine?”

108

Morgan Ashbury

“Yeah, Virginia Townsend had a bad heart.”

* * * *

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“You don’t wake up in a very happy frame of mind, do you?” Molly stood toe to toe with Richard in the basement of his brownstone. The house itself stood as testament to the elegance of an earlier time. But on the inside of the front door, everything screamed twenty-first century.

Including the gym in the basement.

“I did wake up in a happy frame of mind,” Molly said “Which lasted exactly as long as it took you to relieve me of my cup of coffee before I’d even sipped it, and drag me down here. And now, you expect me to…to…
exercise
?”

“Oh, that was good. You said ‘exercise’ as if it was the worst four letter word, ever,” Alan said as he passed her and headed to one of the two elliptical machines.

“Don’t tell me you’re a devotee of this torture, too?” He flashed her a quick grin. “What can I say? Richard is relentless. I’ve gotten to the point that I actually crave a good workout now. My God, what a man will do for love.”

“You live under my roof, you live by my rules. And one of those rules is exercise, Monday through Friday.” Richard said.

Despite the fact she stood with her arms folded in front of her chest and gave him as good a frown as she knew how to muster, Richard treated her to a huge smile. In fact, if she didn’t know better, she’d say he was this close to laughing in her face.

His house, his rules
. It wasn’t as if he didn’t warn her. She took a moment to look around the well-lit, well-outfitted space.

She counted five machines and recognized only three of them!

This was not good.

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“Monday through Friday? I thought I read somewhere that you’re only supposed to do this,” she made a gesture with her hand that took in the entire room and its purpose, “every other day.” Richard gave her a sweeter smile than she deserved, considering the major grump she indulged in at the moment.

“Weight training, yes. But the treadmill, elliptical, and bicycle you can do every day.”

“I can, huh?”

“Let me rephrase that. You will do them every day. You know, my house, my rules, and me being a Dom and all of that.” No doubt about it now, he
was
laughing at her.

“For how long?”

“For as long as you live here.”

Molly gave it up. It felt much better to laugh than to hold on to her grump. “No, I mean for what duration of time must I submit to this inhumane cruelty each day?”

“A half hour. I’ll even let you break it up, ten minutes on each of these three.”

“Whoopee.”

She noticed Alan brought an MP3 player with him and currently worked the elliptical at a fairly steady pace with his eyes closed.

Probably has that whole Zen thing going where he’s pretending
he’s doing something fun
.

She walked over to the treadmill, got on the belt, and just looked at it. Fortunately, Richard came over and showed her how to set it up and turn it on.

She’d have to hunt out an MP3 player the next time she went back to her apartment. She knew she had one somewhere.

Richard started his workout on the exercise bike, pedaling as if he was running out of time. Shaking her head, Molly let her thoughts wander, her legs working automatically to keep up with the machine.

Here they were, the three of them, together yet apart, exercising, living. Like a family?

110

Morgan Ashbury

Molly felt her face heat. Why should she feel so embarrassed because in her secret heart of hearts, she’d already envisioned the three of them as a family?

She’d harbored real feelings for these two men before she made her sub debut at Reckless Abandon. It had always been more than sex for her, even if the physical aspects of the D/s lifestyle appealed to her more than she’d ever imagined.

“Molly, are you all right?”

Richard’s question pulled her from her thoughts. Before she could answer him, before she could even blink, he stood beside her, turning down the treadmill.

“What? I’m fine…” She trailed off because he’d reached for her left wrist and took her pulse.

“You’re flushed,” he said. “When was the last time you had a complete physical?”

“About eight hours ago,” she quipped, thinking of the rollicking night she’d just spent in bed with these two men.

“Seriously.”

Molly shook her head. “Richard, I’m fine. I was thinking about you and Alan.” She didn’t really want to say any more than that. He might be her master, and this might be his house, but she wasn’t willing to surrender even her most private thoughts to the man.

At least, not yet.

“Your pulse is fine.” His gaze met hers. “Even after everything we’ve done together the last few days, thinking about us made you blush?”

“I’m a redhead,” she said.

“And a natural one, too,” Alan observed.

She looked at him askance, laughing when she saw his innocent expression.
Yeah, right, he’s innocent
. “I’m a redhead,” she said again, “and I therefore have no control over the way my skin reacts to certain thoughts.”

“Hmm. Be interesting to know those thoughts,” Richard said.

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111

“It is.”

She gave him a smile that she knew looked cheeky because that’s how it felt. In response he reached over to the controls of the treadmill and turned it on.

“Ack!” She grabbed the bar with both hands and got her feet moving so she didn’t fall off the thing.

“You still have five minutes on that machine,” Richard said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Smart-ass.”

Richard returned to his bike. Molly decided it wouldn’t hurt to maybe focus a little, get some exercise in. Everyone knew the benefit of a regular workout. Even if what she’d been engaged in the night before would qualify as a marathon event in some people’s eyes, she knew it didn’t really count one hundred percent toward being a
real
work out.

Inside, she felt warm and cherished because Richard watched over her. She’d never been a neglected child or anything like that. But she’d never really been important enough to anyone that they would keep an eye on her that way.

Interesting, she thought. She personally knew of two D/s bisexual couples—Richard and Alan, and Jordan and Marcus, though the latter pair wasn’t really just a couple anymore, not since Chastity became a member of their family.