Scorching Desire (4 page)

“You’d make a good James Bond,” he said, clearing his throat.

“I do enjoy martinis.” Tasha put on the clubbing top and then pulled the strap of her bra down, tucking it inside so that her right shoulder was bare.

“I noticed you went for straight vodka.”

“You had good vodka. There was no reason to hide the flavor. You can look now.”

“You, Tasha, are one hell of a woman.”

It was stupid, but his comment made her smile as she folded her clothes and stuffed them into her bag. She switched her designer sunglasses for a cheap pair of white plastic ones and then added big sparkly earrings.

“Where are we staying?” he asked as she navigated them away from the airport.

“We’re not staying. We have a flight back to Chicago tonight.”

“Oh. Then where are we going?”

“To Sandra James’s house.”

“And who is that?”

“The redhead.”

“You found her?”

“Yes.”

“What are we going to do when we get there?”

“Well, I’m going to kill her and then you’re going to help me cut her body up into pieces. Then we’ll dissolve it in a vat of acid.”

Marco sucked in a breath and held himself very still.

Tasha bit her lip but couldn’t hold in her laughter.

“Fuck me,” he muttered as she started laughing. “I thought you were serious.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Since you think I’m a spy it seemed like the right thing to say.”

He blew out a breath. “So what are we going to do?”

“We’re going to talk to her.”

“I’m excited about that plan.
Very excited.”

“Compared to murder and an acid bath that does seem better, doesn’t it?”

She took the 215 freeway to Henderson, a suburb of Vegas.

“Have you ever done that?” he asked as she navigated the off-ramp.

“What?”

“Dissolved someone in acid?”

Tasha snorted. That was an unnecessarily messy way to get rid of a body, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. “I saw it on
Breaking Bad
.”

Marco laughed until she pulled up outside a three-story apartment building.

She parked at the curb and examined the street. There were enough cars that she doubted they’d be noticed. A neighborhood like this housed people who worked in the casinos, meaning that in the early afternoon they were at home or running errands before going to work. There was plenty of traffic and movement to cover their visit.

“Do you think she’s home?” Marco asked.

“She’s an escort, so probably.”

“She’s a what?”

Tasha’s lips twitched. He looked mortally offended. “An escort. A high-class one if that makes you feel better.”

“An escort?
I don’t sleep with escorts.”

“It seems that you did.”

“Fuck.” Marco rubbed his face. “We really were set up, weren’t we?”

“I’m afraid so. It’s unlikely an off-duty escort just happened to join your party the same night that a blackmail video was taken.”

“Do you think that’s what she does? Blackmail people who hire her?”

“A quality escort can make more serving clients than with blackmail. Besides, I thought you said you didn’t hire her.”

“We didn’t, I meant…never mind.”

“Let’s go.”

Together they got out of the car. Tasha took a hair tie from her pocket and pulled her hair up into a high ponytail. She then adjusted her expensive jeans, tugging them down just enough that a bit of belly showed between the waistband and the bottom of the shirt. She laced her arm through Marco’s, setting her expression to a casual smile. After a moment of stiffness, he adapted, covering her hand with his and smiling down at her.

Tasha’s belly fluttered. Taken aback, she looked away from his smiling face. What was wrong with her that she was having this strange uncontrolled reaction to him? She still wasn’t sure why she’d brought him. She never took people with her on ops unless she needed them as bait. The words had popped out of her mouth last night before she could stop them.

They took the stairs to the second floor. Tasha tugged on him to keep the pace slow, giving her time to identify where they were going so that to anyone watching it would seem they knew exactly what they were doing.

She let go of Marco and nudged him so that he was standing beside the door, outside the range of the peephole before she knocked on the door to 210.

A sleepy-looking Asian girl with improbably large breasts opened the door.

“Hello?” The girl shrugged a
hoodie on over the tank top and boxers she wore, her eyes, still lined with last night’s make-up, were wary.

“Hi.” Tasha cocked her hip to the side and grinned. “Is Sandra here? I’m her friend Ashley. I know this is so last minute, but she totally said I should drop by next time I was in town, and here I am.”

“Oh.” The girl relaxed, leaning on the open door. “Sorry, Sandra doesn’t live here anymore.”

“Shoot.” Tasha let her face fall. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. She moved out about a month ago.”

Around the same time the blackmail video was taken. Marco, who was pressed against the wall to the right of the door, stiffened.

“Do you have her new address? I’ve totally texted her too, but I think she isn’t getting my messages. She never responded when I texted her about coming.”

“I think she got a new phone. And she moved away to Boston or Chicago, I don’t remember which.
She peaced out pretty quick.”

Tasha’s fingertips were tingling—the woman in the blackmail video all of a sudden moved to Chicago, where Marco lived, or Boston, the headquarters of the Trinity Masters?

“Seriously?” Tasha pouted. “Well, do you have the number for her friend? You know, the super pretty one she always hung out with? I forget her name, but we partied together a couple times. Since I’m in town I totally want to connect with someone local, you know? Go out to the good spots.” Tasha kept her smile in place.

“Jennie? Yeah, I have her number. Let me get my phone.”

The girl wandered away, leaving the door open. Tasha stuck her head in and looked around. It was a good-sized place with nice furnishings. Nothing too classy, but the pieces were clearly real wood rather than pasteboard. It wasn’t the place a seriously successful escort would live, but Sandra had been working for a service, meaning she wasn’t quite at the level of having a private client list and therefore keeping all her profits.

The girl came back, phone in hand. Tasha took her own phone out of her purse and typed in the phone number.

“If Jennie isn’t around maybe we could go out?” Tasha smiled, biting her lip as if she were nervous about asking.

“I’m working tonight, but if you come by the club I’ll put your name on the list. I’m
Jacki, just tell them you’re with me.” Jacki reached over and grabbed a card off the entry table. “I work at the club at Caesar’s.”

“Pure, right?”
Tasha said. “That’s so cool. I’ve heard it’s a sick scene.”

“It can get intense. I’ll hook you up.”

“Thank you so much. I’m gonna call Jennie, and then I’m totally going to see you tonight.”

Tasha hugged
Jacki, taking advantage of the instant friendship girls were able to create, then with more promises of seeing her later, Tasha walked away.

Marco remained pressed to the wall until the door closed. Tasha held up her hand, motioning for him to wait for thirty seconds before he joined her by the stairs.

“Chicago or Boston?” he said as they made their way to the car.

“An interesting coincidence, don’t you think?”

“The situation was bad, but it feels like it’s getting worse.”

They got into the car and Tasha pulled up her phone. She plugged the number
Jacki had given her into a tracer program and got a name and address.

“Guinevere Mallory. She lives not far from here,” Tasha reported.

“Guinevere? Jennie?”

“If my name were Guinevere I’d use a nickname too.”

“And you think she’s the one who took the video?”

“Whoever Guinevere/Jennie is, she’s important enough to Sandra that she was the first person Sandra’s former roommate thought of when I asked for her friend.”

Tasha tapped in the address and started the car.

~~~~

Chapter Four

Tasha drove past the address she’d gotten for Jennie. A block later, she pulled into the parking lot of a liquor store.

“Was that it?” Marco asked. “It didn’t look like an apartment.”

“It wasn’t.” Tasha checked her phone again. “It’s a fetish club.”

Marco’s eyebrows rose. “It’s a what?”

“I thought maybe the club was on the first floor of a condo building, but clearly there’s no living space above. That means she gave her work address when she got the phone.”

“So the first girl is an escort and this one is a…stripper?”

“More likely she’s a fetish model, but there’s only one way to find out.”

Tasha got out, grabbed their bags from the trunk and threw them into the backseat.

“What are you doing?” Marco asked, twisting to watch as she climbed in with the bags and unzipped her suitcase.

“What else do you have to wear?”

Marco looked down at his slacks and polo. “Pants, shirts.”

Tasha rolled her eyes. “That’s descriptive.”

“What are you looking for?”

Tasha took out a pair of designer leggings. They had panels of leather on the inner thigh and outer calf. Bracing her shoulders on the backseat, she unfastened her jeans and wiggled out of them.

Marco whipped around to face front.

“You seem like the kind of guy who would look.” Tasha kicked her pants and shoes off and then tugged on the leggings.

“Normally I would.”

“Then why aren’t you now?”

“Because…” His voice trailed off.

“Because I’m the one who’s cleaning up your mess, or because I’m a member of Trinity Masters and you have to treat me with at least as much respect as a bottle of wine?”

“You don’t think much of Damon or me, do you?”

Tasha winced at his half-hurt, half-disgruntled tone but didn’t say anything.

“I think it would be worse if I started relationships with people I have no future with because someday I’ll be called to the altar.” Marco’s words were quiet and more sincere than she expected. “I always make it clear to my lovers that I’m looking for a night or two of pleasure, nothing more. Plenty of women have turned me down because that wasn’t what they wanted.”

I’ll be called to the altar.

Tasha stuffed her jeans into her suitcase. Marco was right, it would be cruel of him to start relationships that would never go anywhere. He and Damon and all the other members of the Trinity Masters would eventually be married. Tasha would not. She’d accepted that fact several years ago, around the time the Grand Master had stopped apologizing every time he sent her out on an op.

She took off the silver shirt, slid her bra strap back in place and then put on a tunic-like top made of sheer black material. Her upper body was clearly visible, but the cut of the shirt was ostensibly modest. She closed up her suitcase and started digging through Marco’s, selecting items and passing them up to him without a word.

She started running through the scenarios for the op. She’d done hundreds of different ops before her CIA handler had helped to get her off Uncle Sam’s radar and into the Trinity Masters. At the age of twenty three she’d already been an agent for the US government for ten years. She’d been so tired and burned out that she’d gotten sloppy—it would have been only a matter of time before she was killed if she hadn’t gotten out.

Those first few years had been quiet and peaceful—until the day she’d been summoned by the Grand Master.

She’d gotten her hair done and had a bikini wax, sure she was being called to the altar. Having never had a normal relationship, she was desperately looking forward to her marriage. To outsiders, a trinity union would seem impossibly strange, but to Tasha it had seemed like the answer to a prayer—if there were two other people in the relationship there would be less pressure on her.

But the Grand Master hadn’t matched her. He’d needed her to get the CFO of a manufacturing conglomerate to retire. The Trinity Masters had someone in place to take the job, and they needed their person in a position of power before another member formally announced a new plastics recycling process they’d developed.

On the Grand Master’s orders, Tasha had seduced the CFO. Not slept with him, but seduced him nonetheless—showing him what life after retirement would be like. Implying that if he did retire he would have the time and the money for an affair with someone like her.