Brutally Beautiful (12 page)

“Shit, maybe you shouldn’t have told me on an open line.”

“It’s not open at this end, and who’s going to be tracking you? This is a disposable number, isn’t it?”

“Oh yeah.”

“You’re good, then. Lawrence is bringing his wife.”

Nick grinned. Yolanda, Texas-born, blonde, classy. A real find. And the sister of the owner of Symbiotics. He paused, his mind full of memories of a dark-haired temptress from Idaho. Not now he wouldn’t. “Give them my best, but don’t tell them anything else. Hopefully we can celebrate soon, but don’t tell them that either. Don’t want to get their hopes up.”

“Listen, how do I get in touch with you?”

He paused briefly. “I have a mailbox.” He gave the address and the name he used for that mailbox. “I’ll pick up another phone.”

“I’ll send one to the box. It’ll be fully coded.”

“Thanks.” Even safer, a phone personally coded by Jim Goddard. Nothing would be able to crack that. He might even be able to talk to Larry on it. At the thought, excitement lodged in his stomach, sending signals fizzing through his body. He’d kept away, in case the very dangerous people who wanted his blood caught up with him. He wanted to take no risks, not even with Jim’s help, so he’d cut ties completely. God knew why he’d mentioned it to Gen the other night. He’d never told anyone else he had a brother, not in the almost five years he’d been Nick Taylor.

His life, pleasantly static for the last few years, was shifting again and taking a new path.

* * * *

“What’s going on?”

She hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that, but Gen couldn’t bear the suspense a moment longer.

As she’d expected, her boss leaned back in his capacious leather chair and steepled his fingers, smiling at her. “Explain. And calm down.”

The time it took her to sit opposite him gave her a chance to regain her calm. “Sorry. Bad trip on the subway.” If one counted staring at every passenger, wondering if this was the one who’d kill her. All this shit was making her antsy. “That guy, Anderson, who died? You saw that on the news?”

Nolan nodded.

“He was the one who slipped me the mickey at the club.”

Nolan froze, his smile fixed in place. “You don’t say?”

“I do. I recognized him the minute I saw him.”

“Who else have you told?”

She thought briefly of Nick, but he’d known already. “Nobody. Tell me the truth, Nolan.”

His shoulders slumped. “Okay. If you were targeted, I guess you have a right to know.” He reached into a drawer and produced a plain manila folder, which he pushed across the table to her. She opened it, and the first picture she saw was Anderson’s, the same gloomy mug shot from the news report. “He was working for us, but probably not solely for us. He could have recognized you in the club and panicked. I’m sure that’s what happened.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t be telling you any of this because Nick Taylor could be part of it. We—I—suspect that Bared is part of an immigration racket.”

Oh, no. It could be possible. Her department usually routinely passed and stamped citizenship application forms, but from time to time something like this turned up and they had the initial investigations to do before they passed it up the line. “Part of an organization?” She meant the gangs. With a sickening sense of inevitability, she realized that would explain why Nick had such a great apartment, why he could afford to pay his way through university without getting a job on the side.
“A legacy,”
he’d said. She already knew he had more money than she’d first assumed. So vague. Money from immigration deals, passed through the club to launder it… Yeah, that made sense.

“Listen, Gen, I’ll be straight with you.” He met her gaze, his own darkly sincere. “I thought Odell Prejean was doing this on his own. Then Nick Taylor, the man so close to getting his green card, turned up. I checked his credentials and so did you. Did you notice anything?”

She hadn’t, so she shook her head. “Everything seems perfect.”

“Not quite.” He kept her attention. “One or two of those documents aren’t right. I mean they could be—as far as we can tell they check out—but going back, I’m not so sure. A shame Nick Taylor is such a common name, because there are far too many in the UK to track down. Everything’s too perfect. But he could be okay. It could be that he’s being blackmailed. Did you check his address? One of the converted warehouses in DUMBO. True, he bought it when he first arrived, when the owners were trying to make the area fashionable, so it wouldn’t have cost as much as it is worth now. Still, an apartment like that set him back a few.”

She’d already worked that one out. His concern for her… Was it an excuse, a chance to get her under his control? Her head spun while her boss continued. “I’ve traced several suspicious individuals back to that club, possible illegals.”

“Do you have any proof?” She leafed through the folder. Photographs from applications, scanned copies of official forms—she understood. None of it, taken separately, added up to anything, but together it started to look suspicious. She cleared her throat. “What do you want me to do?”

“You live close by, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“I’m not sure I should be asking you to do anything, but would you feel comfortable visiting the club again? They know you now. But just watch and report back. Find out what you can, chat to Prejean, watch the comings and goings and make a note of the exit doors. Don’t do anything else. You hear me? Officially you’re off this case, so it needs to look as if you’re just a customer.”

She nodded again, numbly going through all recent events in her mind. Nick’s concern, his desire to protect her, his seeming honesty. Usually, people didn’t lie to her without her spotting it, but an accomplished liar might. Her studies in sociology and her special study of body language usually dealt with that. “Have you told anyone else about this?”

He shook his head. “I’m trusting you, Genevieve. We’re at a stage where we’re only doing prelim work. We don’t have to pass the case on yet. If events happen fast, we’re within our rights to keep it in department. You see?”

Oh yes, she saw. The prospect of promotion stamped his features with greed. She couldn’t blame him; this was a backwater of a job for anyone wanting to get on. However, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services department was part of Homeland Security, and he could move up the chain of command. Nolan was a competent officer and knew how to play the political game; he could start climbing. He had his qualifications and experience. He should be moving on.

Taking her with him, if she went along with this plan. She didn’t need Nolan to tell her explicitly. Everything in his gaze said so. “Yes, I see. So we keep it on the down low until we’re close. Then we move?”

“And take the credit we deserve.”

She knew it had frustrated Nolan to pass on information that other parts of the agency had then taken the credit for. It burned when that happened. Homeland Security and its various departments were newcomers in the battleground between the CIA, FBI, and the NYPD. Everybody wanted the glory cases, the fast tracks to promotion, and there weren’t enough cases to go around.

Caution drove her to say, “As long as we inform the people we need to the minute we need them.” They could arrange a basic raid, for instance, but not a full-scale takedown. They didn’t have the manpower for that.

“Of course.” Yes, he would. Nolan had a rock-solid record for the cases he had helped on. If he had more patience, he’d probably get the promotion he badly wanted in the fullness of time, but this would give him the jump start he needed. But if he blew it, the results for them both could be catastrophic.

He gave her his trademark avuncular smile. “What do you say? Another visit, or do you have another date with Taylor?”

“I arranged to see him again, yes,” she admitted. “But he’s hardly going to trust me after two dates, is he?”

“It might be worth waiting until he does.”

Was he asking her to fuck Nick for the cause? Maybe, but he wouldn’t expect it of her. Only if she wanted to, and he couldn’t know she’d done it already.

But at lunchtime, she took her electronic tablet and went to a coffee shop in Times Square. Surrounded by tourists, nursing a tepid cup of coffee, she used their free Internet connection to do some investigating of her own.

She never trusted someone who made a point of meeting her eyes before he lied to her, and if she wasn’t mistaken, Nolan Bennick had either lied or withheld some of the truth.

A few things made her uncomfortable. Nolan’s request that she go back to the club, for one thing. The undercover work she did was very routine—discovering where a subject worked, verifying some of the facts on his claim, sometimes watching from an unmarked vehicle to see if an applicant for citizenship was telling the truth. She spent most of her time checking that everything was in order and stamping applications.

None of it included this kind of work. And Nolan knew it was dangerous—someone had tried to kill her.
Kill
her. That meant someone might have recognized her. Now Nolan wanted her to go back. Would Nick ask her to do that? No, she was sure he wouldn’t.

Something else was wrong here. She’d memorized some of the names in the manila folder. Now she looked them up. Some of the names were unusual enough for there to be only a few people in the city. She could link them with their photos. Most had joined social networks, and following them showed her normal-seeming posts. They were going out, buying shit, and a couple of them were students as far as she could tell, bona fide. She made notes, in pen in a notebook. Nothing on a screen. Then she could look up the educational establishments they went to.

As she’d half suspected, these people raised no red flags for her. Still, Nolan was a competent and thorough investigator, and he could have spotted a pattern others, including Gen, had missed.

She had to make a choice. Who to believe? She felt drawn to Nick as she’d been to nobody else, ever. Not even the man who’d effectively railroaded her out of her home. Nick had charisma by the bucketload, but that wasn’t it.

Besides, if Nick had wanted it, she’d be dead by now. She’d given him plenty of opportunity. Instinct screamed at her that he was telling the truth. He was protective of her, treated her with care and consideration. He
cared.

Or maybe he wanted something else from her.

Shit.

The best would be to trust nobody for now. Not completely, anyway. She had reason to trust both Nick and Nolan. She’d wait on events—see what developed.

At least she had the best sex she’d had for years. No, belay that. The best sex she’d ever had in her life.

* * * *

Gen nearly gave that resolution up when she went to his apartment and found Nick waiting for her as the elevator doors opened. Her smile didn’t last long as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her like they’d been apart for months. “You,” he said when they finally came up for air.

“Me,” she agreed. “Glad you noticed.” Already she softened, warmed and comforted by him. She’d find it amazing to come home to someone like this every night.

She heard the elevator doors close. Then he grabbed another kiss. “Hungry?”

“Not yet. Not for…food, anyhow.”

That was as far as she got. He swept his arm under her knees, lifted her off her feet, and strolled toward the bedroom, pausing at the sofa so she could dump her bag on it. Okay, so she’d tell him later.

In the bedroom, he lowered her to her feet, letting her body slide against his. She felt every ridge, every bulge, especially the large one filling the front of his jeans. His eyes held no shadows today, only smiles. Desperation to have him, to feel his skin against hers, filled her to the exclusion of anything else.

He stripped her of her clothing, and she helped him get rid of his, glorying at the sight of his hard, strong body. Too eager to feel him inside her to take any notice of the doubts that crowded into her mind, she rubbed her nipples against him to bring herself some much-needed ease. He picked her up as if she weighed nothing and tossed her on the bed before coming down on top of her to take her in another long kiss. He tasted her as if they had weeks to spend on just kissing.

She tunneled her hands into his hair, the silky strands caressing her fingers and the backs of her hands. He half closed his eyes, purring low in the back of his throat. “You feel good. I missed you.”

“If this is your version of ‘Honey, I’m home,’ I’m all for it.”

Laughing he pressed closer, then delved one big hand under a pillow and returned with a condom. “Just in case,” he murmured. “Sweetheart, I don’t want to wait. This is ‘Honey, I’m home. Let’s fuck.’ Our version.”

She joined in his laughter, but it ended in a long sigh as he sheathed his cock and sank inside her welcoming body, the joining natural and right. She lifted her legs to hug his sides with her thighs. “Shortest foreplay I’ve ever known,” she murmured.

He stopped, already deep inside her. “Sorry, I just wanted you so much. Should I stop?”

“Fuck, no!” No way she’d let him withdraw now. She needed this as much as he did. More. His heat branded her, his powerful body surrounded hers with delicious intent.

His smile warmed her from the inside out as he began to thrust sure and powerful inside her, and a different kind of heat began to rise from the inside out. She wound her legs around his waist and lifted her lower body up to him as he drove her to complete distraction. She wanted him deep, touching every part of her channel, owning it.

Her body responded, almost as if she had nothing to do with it. He touched her inside, but it wasn’t just the mechanics of orgasm; there was so much more. Intimacy never had such meaning for her before. He kissed her, caressed her breasts, already knowing how she liked her nipples rubbed and tugged, nibbled her ear and licked her lobe when she shuddered. He was making this as good for her as he could. It couldn’t get much better.

She wanted to do it for him, but she didn’t know how. She had a lot to learn, a journey to take with him. Cupping his ass, she set her fingers to play over his perineum, the soft spot of skin behind his balls, and he moaned softly, let her know he liked it, so she did it some more, scratching lightly this time.