Dangerous Secrets (20 page)

“Don’t most men?”

“I didn’t ask about most men. I asked about you.”

She sashayed to him, letting her hips do a sultry dance, stopping in front of him, letting him know she wasn’t about to wilt under this threats. “What are we doing here, Judge? Or should I say, Master?” She glanced around the room. “I would have thought you’d have chosen a nicer place.”

“Isn’t this the kind of place you prefer?”

“I moved up from this years ago, honey,” she said. “I like my hotels plush and my men loaded. I hope you have lots of cash. I’m expensive.”

He laughed. “So you don’t mind if I pass your card out to your employers? There are eleven men and Julie, aren’t there? I bet we could get you a promotion.”

Her lips twitched as her gaze dropped to the bulge in his pants. “What is it you want besides the obvious, Judge?”

“It’s simple enough,” he said. “I want information on your boss and anyone she comes in contact with. Passwords to her private files, records of her calls, anything with my name on it, as a top priority.”

She clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth, seeing her chance for a turnabout. “Sounds like a big order. What will I get in return?”

He looked down at her breasts. “What we do,” he said, tearing his gaze from her cleavage, ”which I intend for us to do often, will be our little secret. Just as what you’ve done in the past will be as well.” He reached out and shoved her blouse and her bra down to expose her nipples, teasing them with his fingers. And damn, if her body didn’t respond, as it always did, even when she hated the bastard like she did this one.
 

“There is one condition,” he said with a raspy voice.

She quirked a brow, trying to ignore the way his fingers were arousing her. “Which is?”

He ignored her question. “Unbutton your blouse,” he ordered.
 

She didn’t hesitate. Her fingers worked the buttons quickly. His lust was her power. She went down on her knees in front of him, her hand striking his zipper. “I’ll give you what you want, all of it – pleasure and satisfaction. For fifty thousand dollars I’ll even get you your dead wife’s journal.” It was a mistake. He had her up and shoved against the wall in two seconds flat. “What journal?”

Her heart thundered in her ears but she recovered from the initial surprise of his attack. It wasn’t the first time she’d been roughed up. “I told you for fifty-”

He shoved a hand to her throat. “You have no idea what you are into, bitch. What journal?”
 

Gina grabbed at his hands, gasping for air. “Let go,” she squeaked. “Let…go.”

“You going to tell me what I want to know?”

“Yes. Yes.”

He loosed his hold on her neck but didn’t let go. “I heard Julie talking to someone named Diana about a dead person’s journal. I did some research and figured out that’s Elizabeth’s sister.”

“Where is it?”

“She and that Walker brother have it,” she hissed.
 

 
“You’re going to get it for me and you can forget the fifty-fucking thousand dollars. The only one who’ll be paying anything is you if I don’t get it. That price will be your life. The people I work with will bleed you dry to get what they want and then make you disappear.”

***

Judge Moore sat on the edge of the lumpy mattress and dropped his head into his hands. “Shit,” he mumbled letting the word echo through the empty room.

He had gotten himself into a hell of a mess. If Arel found out he had done him wrong he would be a dead man. Just hearing his wife had caused more trouble would be enough to make Arel mad enough to draw blood. If Arel ever found out he and Dragonfly had double-crossed him, they’d be digging their own graves.

He picked up the hotel phone, knowing the call wouldn’t be traced because no one would ever know he had been there. The line rang three times before he heard a clipped hello.

“We have problems,” he said without any greeting.
 

“Damn you, I told you to never call me at work.”

“Unless you want Arel to know his trusted man Dragonfly did him wrong, you’d better listen.”

Silence greeted him for several long moments in which he could tell the other man was walking, probably to privacy. Finally, he said, ”Go on.”

“My wife had a journal which she gave to her sister. I doubt it exposes us to the police, but she saw you with me several times. We need that journal so Arel can’t get to it.”

A series of muffled curses rumbled across the line. “So I’ll do the sister and get the journal.”

“She gave it to Julie Harrison and if you kill either of them, you know damn well it’s going to bring attention on me.”

“No bodies, not murder. Believe me, I know how to make people disappear.”

“And if you bring me down, I’ll take you with me.”

More silence. “What do you propose we do then? Sit on our fucking hands?”

“I have someone close to Julie who’s going to get me the journal. Once we know what’s inside, we can decide what to do about anyone who’s read it.”

“When will you have it?”

“Soon.”

“Get it and get it now, because if you don’t make me feel as warm and fuzzy as a school girl in pink quickly, I’ll deal with this my way.”

The line went dead.

Chapter Sixteen

Tuesday flew by for Julie. She stood in Luke’s bathroom, dressed in an emerald silk knee-length gown, applying her lipstick, and wondering where he’d gotten to. They’d spent the afternoon at the gallery readying it for tonight, and Luke had used the excuse of helping her to plant some surveillance equipment. The charity event included a live band and the dancing began at seven. Fortunately there were volunteers the door, so she didn’t have to be there any longer than she had to be without Luke. Her nerves were jumping all over the place, but worrying about him was making her crazy. He and one of his men were going to break into the judge’s house while he was at the event and look for the safe Elizabeth mentioned in the journal. And while she knew Luke was an ex-SEAL, she also knew exactly what she’d told him back at the airport. SEALs could die, too.
 

Voices carried from the other room and she grabbed her small cocktail purse from the bed and went looking for Luke.
 
She found him and Blake both in all black, and there were two other, also very good looking, men – one with a short, military cut, the other with longish blonde hair that curled at the ends.

 
Good lord, she thought. Their mothers must have taken some sort of hormone to breed hot men. There was so much testosterone in the place she was afraid the apartment might go up in flames.
 

Luke pulled her under his arm, his big body warm and wonderful, and she clung to him. She didn’t want him to die.
 

“I told you about the task force that’s in on tonight. They’ll be nearby watching, but we have our own team in place, and they are the only ones you are to trust, ever. I don’t care who shows you a badge, the people in this room are the people you listen to.”

“Okay,” Julie said. “Do we think there’s a problem with the task force?”

“We have a judge involved and the Dragonfly who has yet to be identified. We aren’t taking any chances.” He motioned to the dark haired man. “This is Jesse. He’s going to be driving the cab that is taking you to the gallery.”
 

“He’s a former NYPD detective,” Blake said, leaning against a counter, arms folded. “We couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t be recognized at the event so he’ll stay out of sight. He’ll be nearby if you need him though.”
 

Jesse gave her a two-finger salute. “Your chauffeur awaits, madam.”
 

Julie tried to smile but failed and Luke tightened his grip on her, as if he sensed how tense she was. She didn’t want him to go tonight, and it was all she could not to turn to him and beg him not to.
 

Luke motioned to the other man, the blonde. “And this is Kyle. He’s our tech expert and if there is a safe in the house, he can get in.”

“He also removed the snake from Lauren’s apartment when she had that crazy man stalking her a while back,” Blake mentioned, referencing the hell that Lauren had gone through that had led to her leaving the District Attorney’s office.
 

“That would be me,” Kyle said, and lifted the lid to a small steel case on the counter before flipping it around for her to see what looked like some sort of tiny chip. “This will be your mic. Blake will be on the other end until I take over for him, at which time, you’ll have Luke back with you as well.
 

“You so much as need an escort to the bathroom you just say the word and I’ll be there.” Blake added.

Julie nodded. “Thank you, Blake.”

“And he was serious about saying a word,” Blake added. ”I need ‘a word’. Something you can say discreetly that lets me know you need me.”

For an attorney known to think on her feet, Julie’s mind was utterly blank. “I don’t know.”

“Apple,” Blake said. “Orange. Oh what a beautiful day it is. A spoon full of sugar.”

Julie actually laughed at that. “A spoonful of sugar?”

“It makes the medicine go down,” he said, with a nod.

Julie shook her head and glanced at Luke. “You have a very strange brother.”

“Yes,” Luke said. “I know.”

“We all know,” Jesse agreed.
 

“Pride myself on it,” Blake said, “and I still need that word or even a phrase that tells me you’re in trouble. I’ll have limited visual.”

Julie thought a moment about what would be easily used in the mixed company she’d be in. “How about ‘I have a headache’?”

The men all laughed. Julie’s brows furrowed. “What’s so funny about that?”

“Almost every woman given this question comes up with that answer,” Blake supplied. “It’s like all females are born with that excuse in their psyche.”

“That’s your discreet ‘help’ call,” Luke said. “If you feel like the situation merits Kyle and Jesse coming with guns drawn, you say ‘I think I’m getting a migraine.”
 

Her stomach knotted. He was about to leave. “Okay.”

Luke slapped the cover down on the mic and picked it up, then twined the fingers of his one free hands with hers. “Let’s go get you wired.”
 

She nodded because suddenly her throat was too tight to form words. A few minutes later they stood in the bedroom by the bed, and Luke used some sort of adhesive to stick the device on the inside of her bra.
 

His fingers skimmed her neck. “Don’t leave the building and stay in the highly populated areas of the function until I get to you. It’s killing me to leave you.”

“Then don’t,” she said, her hand grasping his wrist. “Please don’t go to the judge’s house. He’ll have moved anything of importance after Elizabeth’s threat.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But we have to try, and tonight when his main collection is on display will make it easier to see what is left behind.”

“Just come to the party with me, Luke, please. I have a bad feeling about all of this.”

“If I didn’t think my experience was critical to doing this, I’d send someone else, but I know how to get us in and out unnoticed. And Blake would die to protect you or I’d never even consider this.”

“I don’t care about me. I care about you. Just don’t do this at all.”

His expression softened. “I care about you and you said you wanted a means to an end. And as much as I want to lock you away someplace safe, I know it’s not realistic. That means I have to find answers and end this. I have to a look in the judge’s house and his safe.”

“It’s my fault you’re even in this.”

“It’s not your fault,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “And anywhere you are, I want to be, including at the party. So I’m going to go get this over with so I can join you.”
 

***

Julie spent the first thirty minutes inside the Manhattan Museum of Art checking on every detail to make sure the event was going well. More than anything, she didn’t want to think about what could be happening to Luke. That meant staying busy, which also allowed her to avoid the judge, and, for that matter, anyone who might want to kill her.
 

When her excuses to avoid mingling ran out, she stood at the edge of the main event space, large enough to host a wedding of at least five hundred. A band played a soft melody opposite from where Julie stood. White linen-covered tables surrounded a dance floor where only one couple had braved center stage thus far. Away from the tables, people in fancy dresses and suits stood in groups, chatting.
 

Julie headed for the tables, deciding to make the rounds and thank everyone for coming. She’d just finished chatting with the first table of ten when she felt a light tap on her shoulder.
 

“Julie.”