Trained To Kill (2 page)

He headed down after a few minutes,
carrying his files on the case. Malone was in i-a. He opened the
door next to i-a and set the camera and audio to start recording.
Walking the two feet over, he opened the door and saw Malone
sitting in the gray scrubs they provided in the jail downstairs.
Malone looked over at him and Alex could see his teeth
grinding.

"You've got nothing on me Jax," Malone
ground out.

"Ah, ah, wait until I get started,"
Alex said waving a finger at him. "You were Mirandized at the crime
scene, but we'll do it again just to be safe." Alex gave the spiel
every cop knew by heart. "Do you understand your rights?" Alex sat
back and crossed his long legs at the ankles, waiting for Malone to
answer. He picked at an errant thread on his worn-out
jeans.

Malone was quiet for a moment,
glaring, but then said, "Yes."

"Excellent. I am under obligation to
inform you that you are being recorded. Do you
understand?"

"Yes."

"Wonderful, then we can get started,"
he said suddenly sitting forward and flipping open his
file.

"Get started? Go fuck yourself. You
have nothing on me Jax," Malone spat out again.

"Oh really? So it wasn't you running
drugs and girls at the club The Inferno?"

"Of course not."

They went around a few times. Alex
asking different variations of the same questions, Malone
denying.

"Were you at The Inferno on January
22nd of this year?"

"I was."

At least Malone realized the cameras
would place him there. Alex continued down the list, placing Malone
at the scene of the crime for every date he knew a deal had gone
down.

It was his job to gather evidence and
place him at the scene of the crime. It was the DA's job to get him
convicted. Alex was done for the night. Malone had never called for
a lawyer. That meant he was stupid, arrogant, or scared. Probably
all three. If there was someone bigger at the end of all this, he
should be scared. He had fucked up royally.

Uniforms took him back to Booking
where he would wait until the next cycle to see if he could get
bail. Alex knew he would get it. It would be high, but he would pay
it and get out. It was how it worked. Now Alex had to be careful
and watch his back for Malone and his men until they were
convicted, or dead.

He walked back to his desk and thought
about laying his head down and napping. It was 4:30 am. He put his
head in his hands for a moment and rested his eyes which felt like
they had been rubbed with sand. Normally undercover Narcos were
never seen if it could be helped.

It was for their and their family's
protection. They gathered the evidence and gave it their boss and
moved on to the next. But since Alex's cover had been blown, he had
handled Malone himself. They knew he was a cop, so it hardly
mattered now. He had to find out where he had blown it. Who knew
him at The Inferno? His life could depend on the
answers.

Chapter 3

Isa shut the door to her apartment.
Her boots clicked on the black tile floors. She didn’t bother
turning on any lights. She liked the dark and could see well enough
from the light coming in the wall of glass. The lights of the city
glittered like a thousand eyes to light her way. She started
shedding clothes on her way to the office.

With each bit of skin exposed, scars
appeared on her pale skin. Small slashes, some crisscrossing. They
were already fading with time. They were marks of her training with
Rudolph, the Russian knife expert for which her stepfather, Roger
Thorn, had paid a princely sum to bring to America and train her.
Rudolph, such a silly name, but he had known his knives. He hadn’t
been afraid to mark up her young, soft skin. Thorn had been
furious. Rudolph had ruined his precious product. He had thrown
Rudolph over the Levy in New Orleans with a gut wound. Good bye
Rudolph.

For now she had some work to do on the
present problem. She walked into her home office after shucking her
jeans. She wore a black tank top and no bra. She hadn’t put one on
in the first place. She hated the stupid things. She wasn’t
flat-chested, but neither was she big enough to make one
necessary.

Isa sat down at her desk and turned on
her computer. She had the very best money could buy, this was the
stuff the Government used for Research and Intel, so she thought it
was good enough for her. While her computer booted, she made a
phone call to Ricky. The snitch she liked to consult with around
her neighborhood, just to make sure everything was above par. Isa
frowned, he wasn’t answering. Ricky loved to answer her calls; she
paid well enough for it.

Shrugging, she went back to her
computer and started digging. This she could do like drawing
breath. Ben had called her earlier to tell her about The Inferno,
the club she owned with him. It had been a front for prostitution
and drugs for the last few months. Apparently their Night Manager
Maggie had been helping them. Ben said it was because she was being
threatened, but Isa would ascertain that for herself.

She rarely took things at face value.
Ben was a little more trusting. Hell, look who his business partner
was. Isa had been back barely a month from killing Thomas Riley,
the monster her stepfather had gladly, even gleefully, let rape and
strangle her on multiple occasions. Of course Ben didn't know about
Riley, but he knew a little about her past. Roger Thorn, her
hospitalization, then the years spent wandering in
grief.

Ben had filled her in on the
undercover cop, the damage to the club, and Tyler Malone.
Everything he had been told anyway, and there wasn't much at his
point.

It took her a little under an hour to
hack into Sergeant Alexander Jackson's files and see what he had
gathered about Tyler Malone. He wasn’t the one they wanted. They
were looking for the supplier. Standard Operating Procedure for
Narcotics, she knew.

The small fry were great, but they
needed to get the stuff off the streets. Thorn had also provided
her with a couple of ex-cops who taught her all she needed to know
about Police Procedures. What to do, what to look for, how to get
around them. It would come in handy now.

Not that she particularly wanted to
get around Sergeant Jackson. She wanted to help get those pricks
for using her club that way. The insult burned deep in her gut. She
walked over to the window and poured herself a drink to try and
ease that burn.

She had a rage in her she liked to
direct at people like this, people that used innocents for their
own selfish aims. She would use it now and give Jackson all the
help he needed whether he knew it was from her or not. She would
have to decide how much to show about her true self. Turning back
to the computer, she began to gather the information.

Isa glanced at the time. 6:00 am. She
would grab a quick nap before calling her lawyer, and then Sergeant
Jackson and setting up a meeting. Walking into the bedroom that
joined her office, Isa crawled into her King Sized bed. She loved
her bed. It was the one place she could go to relax, to think, to
rest, to daydream and plan. And of course to sleep.

Chapter 4

Fucking lawyers, Alex thought as he
slammed his apartment door. His Captain had walked in at 7:30 am,
gotten the gist of what had happened to Alex, and order him home to
sleep. Mother fucking, piss-weasel lawyers and those pussy ass
ADA’s can’t scratch their asses without the DA’S approval. Alex was
seething. Malone was posting bail now Alex knew. He would probably
get it soon.

Alex was too pissed for sleep; he tore
off his shirt and started wrapping his knuckles. He attacked his
punching bag with a force great enough to knock it back a few feet.
Lawyers would give him a deal to roll on the supplier. He knew
that’s what they needed but he didn’t have to like it.

After he had exhausted his body, he
fell into a deep sleep and didn’t move until the incessant ringing
of his cell phone jerked him awake. Looking at his clock, he read
12:30 pm. Not too bad for someone that rarely slept more than 3
hours at a time.

“
Hello,” he said quietly.
His heart still beating fast from being woken.

“
Sergeant Jackson,”
Isadora said, just as quietly. “Isadora La Beau. I'm part owner of
The Inferno. I know you met my partner Ben Axworthy."

“
How did you get this
number,” he asked his voice was low and Isa could practically feel
the stubble on his chin as she heard it scratch against the
phone.

He heard a small puff of laughter on
the other end. “I have ways,” Isa said.

“
Cliché,” Alex said
waiting a beat. “You can’t just pick police officers’ private
numbers out of the phone book.”

“
Mmm,” Isa said,
noncommittally.

Alex waited. Isa waited. Neither
spoke.

“
So anyway,” Isa finally
said. “Would you like to meet me at The Inferno in half an
hour?"

"It's still a crime scene,” Alex said
still in a huff about the number.

“
Great. See you soon,” Isa
said and hung up. Alex stared at the phone in shock. Well shit, he
thought.

He would have to get there first and
stop her from entering. He got up and went to the bathroom. He
splashed some water on his face and yanked on some clothes. Her
accent had been odd, he mused. A mix of some kind of European and
southern.

Alex ran to his car and got moving. He
knew who she was and what she looked like. He had done a search on
her last night after speaking to Axworthy about The Inferno and
Malone. Her I.D. photo was a knock-out. Pale blonde hair, green
eyes, and fairly golden skin with a few light freckles sprinkled
around.

He knew about her stepfather, Roger
Thorn. The most notorious mafia king-pin in New Orleans from the
last century. He was dead now, and she had been the one to kill
him. It had been in all the papers the next day. Of course that had
been, what, Alex counted backward, nine years ago? He wondered what
she had been doing all this time.

He pulled up to the curb at The
Inferno, parking illegal, and flipped down his On Duty sign on his
visor so he wouldn't get towed. She was pulling in around back to
the employee parking. He saw her drive by in an immaculate, red,
1964 Ford Mustang. He whistled lowly at the car. Damn.

He ran around the building and hailed
her before she unlocked the back door, "Ms. La Beau."

She turned quickly and saw the
knowledge of who he was in her eyes.

"Call me Isa," she said sticking out
her hand to shake his.

Her eyes pierced him like something
otherworldly. He swore he could feel her gaze like a physical touch
on his face. He took her hand and the ground fell out from under
him. Her touch burned.

He took a breath and managed to gather
his thoughts. "You can't go in. It's still a crime scene Ms. La
Beau." He refused to call her Isa; it was too personal, too
soon.

"Ah, yes. I thought you would have a
problem, but my lawyer has already spoken to your
Captain...Williams?" Isa said, reading off a piece of paper torn
from a notebook. She continued when Alex nodded. "They said I can
go in to assess the damage. My insurance agent will be here
soon."

Alex said nothing, so Isa unlocked the
door and they went in. She flipped on some lights as they made
their way to the front of the club. The employee area held no
interest since it hadn't been touched.

"You're awfully young to own such a
big place," he was fishing. He knew she was 27 and had opened the
club a little over a year ago.

She looked back at him over her
shoulder and flashed a quick smile, though he could tell it wasn't
from happiness at being called young. It felt like she did it to be
normal, because it was expected. If someone gives you a compliment,
you smile and say thank you. He didn't like it.

He watched the way she moved. It was
like a dancer, but she had a tension in her shoulders, like she
didn't like him walking behind her.

Interesting, he thought. He couldn't
tell much about her body because it was buried under layers of
winter clothes, but he would bet his salary she was fit and
flexible underneath it all. He knew she also owned half of a Dojo
with Axworthy, and it looked like she took advantage of
it.

Very interesting. He wondered if she
could fight or if she just worked out.

Alex had been following her and
staring at her tight jean clad legs, so when she stopped and
turned, he was caught. He looked up slowly and she raised an
eyebrow.

He smiled his best professional smile
and began to ask her questions about the club and Malone. The
questions were short lived however, when she revealed she had just
arrived home from a five month stay in London.

"What were you doing in
London?"

"Visiting my father. I haven't seen
him in years."

"Your father?"

"Yes, Maximilian La Beau."

"Your biological father," Alex said
walking over to where the mammoth had slammed him against the wall.
He was examining the dent his head had made.