Jaded (16 page)

Jase drove back to the club on autopilot, preferring the quiet peace of nothingness as opposed to the static noise a certain proprietress created. He waited on the opposite side of the street from the parking lot. He could have waited for her at her house, but he decided instead to follow her. Who she left with and the state of that person’s health could be at stake.

Long after midnight, Jade walked out to her car. The eerie quiet of the moonless night unnerved her. A cold emptiness filled her. Like an arctic wind, it whistled through each cell, chilling her to the bone. She was emotionally spent, physically wiped out, and afraid for everyone.

She had spent a little time with each of her employees, reassuring them that not only was she not in any danger but neither were they, and that they should just go about their regular business. Their jobs were not in jeopardy. She flinched as if an invisible hand had reared back to strike her. It remained to be seen when the members’ murders, less than a week apart, would hit the tabloids. It would kill business. Members would not come to the club for fear of being the next victim. And then she would have to lay off employees. And she would be without a job.

Jack Morton’s words came back and jabbed her in the gut. She’d made the decision years ago never to allow a man to touch her for money. Not even for Tina would she go back on her promise to herself.

Somehow she’d have to manage the status quo at the club and keep her new pimp owner happy, and pray for no more distractions. Jade let out a long relieved breath. Even if the papers printed the names of the victims, there would be no tie-in with the club. Their membership list was private. She doubted the cops would release that information. She bit her bottom lip. Or would they? Could they?

Impulsively, Jade reached for her cell phone, then just as quickly she put it down. It was too late to call Jase and find out exactly what the cops planned on releasing. And she wasn’t going to be the one to give them any ideas.

It wasn’t until she was halfway to the Blue Orchid that Jade realized she was being followed. Fear shimmered through her. The tightening of her lungs returned. Along with the feeling of suffocating. Was the killer following her? She grabbed her cell phone again and called the only person who came to mind.

“Vaughn.”

“It’s me, I’m being followed. I’m scared.” The split second her confession left her lips, she cursed herself.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, since I left the club.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m on Saratoga heading toward the one-oh-one.”

“What the hell are you doing there?”

“I—I can’t go home. My house…”

Her eyes darted to her rearview mirror and the car that had been tailing her turned right onto a frontage road before turning right again. Relief followed by embarrassment flooded her.

“He’s gone.”

Jase nodded. He gave her more time to continue down Saratoga before he picked her up again. Even if he lost sight of her, he had his laptop and her signal was loud and clear.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I must have imagined it. I’m feeling a little shaky right now.”

“Jade?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Do you want some company?”

Every fiber of her screamed yes. Just for an hour, just until she forgot why he was there, just until she fell asleep. “No, but thank you.”

“Where are you staying?”

“At the Blue Orchid on Hacienda.”

“Who else knows you’re staying there?”

“No one.”

“Lock your door.”

“I will.”

Jase drove by the hotel a few minutes later. The front porch light was on, the curvy silhouette of a woman canvassed the upstairs window. His blood quickened, warming his limbs, heating his groin. His breathing accelerated. It occurred to Jase then that he was in deep shit.

Jade spent the next day holed up at the Blue Orchid. She had another massage, a facial, and allowed herself to be pampered. She called her sister and left her a message, she napped, she tried to read, and ultimately found herself bored and restless. It occurred to Jade as she paced the plush carpet of her room, that she was avoiding the world. The world that included her turbulent past, her tenuous present, a life that held little promise of a smooth future. A world that included a man she had allowed on several levels to get under her skin.

Jase Vaughn was never far from any of her thoughts. When she awoke hot and sweaty in the middle of the night, craving his touch, she knew she had a problem. A problem she didn’t want, a problem she didn’t need, and a problem she had no idea how to handle. She was once again under the control of a man. And this man wanted something from her she had never given to anyone, not even Tina. He wanted the truth.

The truth was something she could barely face herself. With it came pain and the loss of her freedom. Her freedom was crucial to Tina’s survival. She’d vowed the day her mother died Tina would never have to want, never have to subject herself to the whims of a man to survive. She would support her sister emotionally and financially, pay for her college, and set her up for a life where she could choose to do whatever she wanted or do nothing at all.

Without her freedom, Jade could not work and no work meant no income. If not for Tina, Jade would walk into the nearest precinct, turn herself in, and take her medicine. She had been dead inside for too long to remember what it meant to feel.

Until Jase.

And while she couldn’t put a finger on the emotional aspects of the man, and she didn’t want to go there anyway, her body had a mind of its own. She reacted to him on a most basic level. A level that, if she tapped into it, could control her.

Jade sighed and started to get ready for work. She went through the mundane motions of creating the woman men dreamed about. Wet dreams, that is. She trembled as she applied her mascara. It was ironic. Her mother turned her out at fourteen and she had had no clue what a man wanted from a gangly girl. She found out soon enough. For a pervert, the colonel hadn’t forced himself on her, but what he did do to her was humiliating and she swore, as she stood there naked in front of him while he jerked off to her baby talk, that she would never allow a man to take advantage of her again. It would be on her terms and her terms alone. It was how she went to work every night, how she dated for money. It was her choice. She picked the men, the time, the place.

She slid the jade-colored sheath down her curvy form. The shimmery fabric matched the color of her eyes spot-on. She’d spent a few minutes in the tanning bed this morning and her skin glowed a healthy bronze. She shivered as she looked at herself in the mirror and visualized Jase standing behind her, his lips tracing a path along her neck to her shoulder. Her nipples stiffened and she felt a warm flush between her legs.

She could almost feel his body heat, the pressure of his large hand, the warmth of his lips on her skin. She’d only allowed one man to touch her so intimately, and his betrayal was almost harder to endure than the betrayal of her mother.

Jade closed her eyes against the sudden sting of tears. “He’s not worth it!” she shouted at the mirror. Abruptly, she turned and zipped up her dress, slid on the matching snakeskin stilettos, grabbed her purse, and left the room.

It wasn’t until she was halfway to the club that it occurred to her that she was being followed again. She glanced at her purse where her cell phone was but refused to make a call to a man. For as much as men had screwed up her life, she’d managed without one, and she wasn’t about to start playing the helpless female role.

Jade pulled over to the bike lane without signaling and waited for the car behind her to pass. Her heart rate elevated when the dark-colored vehicle pulled over, as well, but nearly fifty yards behind her. Anger swelled and she did a too-stupid-to-live move. Jerking the car door open, she stepped out and strode angrily toward the car.

When the engine revved, it occurred to her the driver might run her down. Instead he or she backed up with the squeal of rubber and did one of those TV cop moves, where the car spun around. Oncoming traffic swerved and horns blew as the car crossed over the median strip and headed the other way. As far as she could see, it was a dark green or black four-door sedan, maybe a Taurus or Corolla. Hell, she didn’t know. But she would recognize it again.

Jade hurried back to her car and drove off, keeping a sharp eye on her rearview mirror.

Jase sat at his desk, feeling oddly discontent. A large Styrofoam cup materialized in front of him. Jase looked up to see his partner’s dark penetrating gaze. “You look like a lost puppy, Vaughn.”

Jase reached for the cup and opened the lid. The rich scent of fresh-brewed coffee teased his nose. “Thanks.” He took a sip and set the cup down. “Did you hear what the techs found in Miss Devereaux’s garbage can?”

Ricco nodded. “Townsend’s cell phone.”

Jase nodded and took another sip. “Puts her in a whole different light.”

“Prime suspect light.”

Jase shook his head and took another sip of coffee. “It could have been a plant, no prints.”

Ricco laughed. “Wow, amigo, which head are you thinking with? She had motive, opportunity, and, with some help, means.”

Jase’s head snapped back and he challenged his partner. “Motive? What motive?”

“A man-hater. Chicks like that hate men, hate the way they control them, use them for sex. Vengeance, revenge, or just because she feels like getting back for the cause.”

Jase shook his head. “I don’t get that from her. I’ll give you this much, though, she’s not on the up-and-up and she has no great love for the opposite sex, but she doesn’t strike me as violent or vindictive. In fact, she strikes me as the quiet loner type. She’s in no hurry to bring the spotlight on herself. So why now?”

“A trigger. Maybe repressed feelings have surfaced. Maybe this Otis Thibodeaux has something on her. Maybe she’s setting up the kills to take him out, because he’s the original target.”

Jase took another sip of his coffee and nodded. “Maybe.”

“Despite what her high-priced lawyer said, I think we have enough to charge her. At least for Hiro.”

Jase shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. If Pettigrew is tight with Wilcox like he says, the DA is going to want indisputable proof. The labs will give us the physical proof we need. She’ll either be ruled out.” Jase cringed, not wanting to imagine Jade behind bars. “Or we’ll peg her.”

Ricco nodded. “I wish the lab worked as fast as
CSI: Miami.
”

Jase smiled. “No shit. And if the techs carried guns and interviewed the suspects, who would need us?”

Ricco got serious and faced his partner square on. “Look, man, I know you got it bad for that woman, but you need to back down. You could get kicked off this case or out of the department. You have too many years in to throw it all away for a chick who is probably guilty of killing two men.”

Jase nodded and sipped his coffee. He looked Ricco dead in the eye. “I’m having déjà vu here. I told Reese the same thing not too long ago.”

Ricco shook his head and sat back in his chair. He steepled his fingers and tsk-tsked at his partner. “Just don’t shoot me when I say I told you so.”

W
hen Jade entered the club later that afternoon, she did it with the confidence of a woman who hadn’t a care in the world. In the world she’d created for herself in California, she had no cares. Relief had flooded over her when Branford called to tell her Townsend died of asphyxiation. She had no hand in Townsend’s or, she knew for a fact, Hiro’s death, and she had Branford to prove she didn’t if it came to that.

“Miss Jade,” Rusty quietly said from behind her. Jade started and immediately laughed it off. Gracing the kid with a smile, she tousled his chestnut-colored hair.

“You startled me, Rusty.”

His freckles darkened and he looked down at his feet and shuffled them. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“It’s okay, we’re all a little jumpy these days.”

“What’s happening here?” he asked.

“I told everyone last night, Rusty, not to worry. Our jobs are safe.
We’re
safe. The club is fine. Just answer any questions the police have and do your job.” She set a comforting hand on his shoulder and with her other put her finger under his chin, raising it so his eyes met her gaze. “Don’t worry, your job is not in jeopardy.”

“Promise?”

Jade smiled and crossed her heart. “Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”

“I sure hope you don’t die next, Miss Jade.”

The hair on the nape of her neck sprung straight and the room grew suddenly cold. She swallowed hard and looked into the young man’s eyes. “I hope so, too, Rusty. I hope so, too.”

As the kid shuffled off, Jade made a mental note to speak with Mac, Thomas, and Bernard. She would strongly stress they were not to discuss the murders with any member or other employees or the press. As the girls started to arrive, Jade had private conversations with each of them. She also took the other staff aside and gave them the same lecture.

As Jade walked back to her office, she watched Rusty make goo-goo eyes at Genny. The girl smiled at him and Rusty blushed ten shades of red. Poor kid. For all of the male employees, with the exception of Thomas, it must be hard working so closely with such exquisite women on a daily basis, knowing even if both parties were consenting there could be no fraternizing.

It was a stringent rule, and one that had Sam Callahan, the original owner not insisted upon, nor Jack Morton supported, Jade would have created herself.

She had been on the fence about firing Mac when he let her know early on that he was interested in her. Her cool rebuff had been taken in stride. But it took years for her to finally feel like Mac had gotten over it. Jealousy was nasty and insidious, and in this climate it bode well for no one.

Despite her earlier feeling of elation, knowing she had not killed Andrew Townsend, the rest of the evening moved by like a slow-motion car crash. By ten o’clock, Jade’s head was pounding. She asked Genny to come back to her office and take care of some menial paperwork that needed to be done. Genny had shown interest in the business side of the club and for the first time since she’d taken over as manager, Jade allowed someone into the sanctity of the financial part of the club.

“You don’t look very good, Jade. Are you feeling all right?” Genny asked, closing the office door behind her. Jade looked up from the spreadsheet on her computer screen. “Just a headache, nothing a couple of aspirin can’t cure.”

“Let me get them for you.” Genny hurried out of the office. No sooner had the door closed behind her than the fax machine next to Jade’s desk began to ring.

Jade ignored it, not wanting to deal with another order or reading one of Jack Morton’s nightly memos. Why he didn’t use e-mail like everyone else was a mystery to her, but she’d gotten used to his run on faxes. Always the same message:
Customer satisfaction is job one.
Except now he’d expounded on the “customer service” part. Jade turned away from it and rubbed her throbbing temples.

Genny came in with a glass of ice water and handed her two white pills. “Thank you,” Jade murmured, then took the pills, chasing them with a long drink of the cool water.

“Who’s Crystal?” Genny asked.

Jade’s eyes flew open, her temples screamed, the pain radiating to her eyes.

It took a superhuman effort to keep focused and turn to face Genny. Her neck seized, her stress level skyrocketing. Her head felt like it weighed two hundred pounds.

“What?” Jade asked, her voice barely a whisper.

Genny handed her the picture that had just come through the fax. Jade’s stomach felt like a runaway elevator. The muscles in her chest tightened, rendering her breaths incompetent. A picture of Crystal’s aka Tina’s smiling face as she crossed in front of her dorm building happily chatting with a classmate. The words “I found you, do you want me to find Crystal?” were scrawled across the bottom.

Jade snatched the picture from Genny, crumpled it up, and threw it in the trash can. “It’s a bad joke, Genny.”

“Do you know that girl?”

“No, I don’t. Please, can you leave me alone?”

“Okay, but, Jade, if you need help—”

“I’m fine, it’s just this headache. Give me a minute.”

When Genny finally left the room, Jade grabbed the picture out of the trash can and stared at it. Anger snaked from her pores, a poisonous gas infiltrating the bone-chilling fear that held her captive. She tore the picture in half and threw it into the trash, grabbed her keys, and strode out of her office, nearly colliding with Genny. “I’m leaving for the night, help Mac with whatever he needs.”

“I have a date at midnight!”

“Cancel it.”

She proceeded to the bar, where Mac chewed the fat with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Catching his gaze, she inclined her head toward the other side of the bar.

“What’s up?” Mac asked.

“I have something I need to take care of. Can you close?”

Mac’s eyes held only concern in their dark depths.

“Of course.”

“Thank you.”

Jade hurried out to her car and headed to the San Jose Fairmont. When she knocked on Otis’s door, he opened it, a grin as wide as the state of Louisiana plastered across his face.

“Hey, suga, you’re early.” His smile morphed into a frown. A slow knowing smirk followed. “A picture is worth a thousand words, ain’t it, Ruby Leigh?”

Jade shoved Otis backward with both hands. When he stumbled, she kicked him in the groin. She steamrolled forward. She kicked him again, this time bringing him to his knees. “If I see or hear from you again, Otis Thibodeaux, I’ll fillet you so nice you won’t be good for nothin’ but catfish bait.”

She towered over him and, coward that he was, he cringed away from her. She guessed she must be a sight. Her hair fell wild around her and her hands were fisted by her sides.

She kicked his thigh. “You get that fat ass of yours back to Louisiana where it belongs.”

She saw the flash of humiliation flare into anger in his eyes. She didn’t care. “You go on and do your worst to me, but if you touch my baby sister, I’ll kill you.”

Otis managed to stand up. “We ain’t playin’ by your rules here, Ruby Leigh. You sign those papers, then I’ll leave you alone. Not a second before.”

“I’m not Ruby Leigh!”

“Yeah, you are. We both know it.” He grinned and rubbed his belly. “An’ you know what else, Ruby girl? You’re gonna do for me what the colonel couldn’t do for you. And when I’ve had enough of you all alone, when that girlie of yours comes over here, later on tonight, you’re both gonna make Otis a very happy man.”

Jade slapped him. He backhanded her. Jade screamed and shoved him. Otis’s arms windmilled, and he suddenly lost all balance and fell backward. His head crashed against the end of the desk with a sickening thud. Déjà vu hit her so hard in the chest, she couldn’t breathe.

Jade scrambled to her feet and over to Otis’s still body. She shook him. Relief flooded her when he started to cough. She stood up smoothing her hair and dress, and gave him a final warning. “Don’t contact me again.”

She turned then and left him lying on the floor, groaning and cursing her to a life in hell. What he didn’t know was that she had been living in hell since the day her mother handed her over to the colonel.

For two hours Jade aimlessly drove the streets of San Jose. Emotion built and as it gathered steam, it culminated into a wild unleashing of hot angry tears. When she pulled over, unable to see through the blur of moisture in her eyes, it took long minutes before the racking sobs subsided. It took even longer for her to compose herself, and when she found herself parked in front of a familiar house, tears erupted again. Not for her past or for her present, not for her sister, and not for her lost innocence, but for the realization that she had nowhere to go but to a cop’s house, a cop who would arrest her in the blink of an eye if he had enough evidence.

Jase sat staring at the fire, a short glass of Gentleman Jack in his hand. It was his sixth in two hours. He glanced over at the half-empty fifth on the counter.

For the first time in his professional career, Jase was torn. Torn between what his gut told him, what his brain told him, and what his dick told him. Jade Devereaux was lying. Jade Devereaux was quite possibly guilty of murder. Twice. And Jade Devereaux was the sexiest woman he’d ever crossed paths with. And she was off-limits.

The mere thought of her unique scent, its soft musky flavor, the way it circled his senses, teasing, promising, making him want to own it, sent blood coursing to his groin, filling his cells to hurting.

He threw back the rest of his drink and swallowed. The smooth burn of whiskey did little to alleviate the pain below his belt. He slowly shook his head. Amazing, just fucking amazing. Remembering the smell of her had him as hard as a lead pipe.

He poured himself another drink. Jade Devereaux was a lot of things, but the only thing he wanted her to be was naked and underneath him.

“Fuck!”

The sudden incessant ringing of his doorbell momentarily shoved him out of his thoughts. Who the hell was banging on his door at one o’clock in the morning?

When he opened the door he stood transfixed, unable to move. Afraid to even blink. The sight before him moved something deep inside him, something primal, something he wasn’t aware he possessed. “Jade,” he softly said. Her dark hair was wild, her big green eyes open and unblinking like a startled owl. Dark streaks of mascara blotched her red swollen face. Her right cheek swelled below her watery eyes. The haunted look in her eyes nearly undid him. He reached out to her, and amazingly, she stepped into his arms.

Protectively, his arms tightened around her. He closed the door with his bare foot and drew her into the warm family room.

Jade fit into him as intimately as a well-known lover, and the thought of her attaining that status renewed the waning heat in his blood. Effortlessly, he walked with her down the short hall. When her body went limp, he scooped her up, and the soft pressure of her warm body against his hard muscles reminded him she was all woman. Not that he needed that reminder. Regretfully, Jase laid her down on the wide sofa. She shivered and moaned something inaudible. He slipped her heels from her feet, his fingertips lingering on the arch of her foot. Her red-painted toenails looked out of place against the rustic suede of the couch. She shivered again. He stood and threw another log on the fire.

He returned to her, sitting on the edge of the sofa. Her arms snaked up around his neck, her long body going taut against him, her lips, soft and hot, reached up to his, like a starved bird.

Jase responded, his body going rigid, his arms tightening around her waist, molding her softness more securely against his hardness. His lips swept down to hers, barely brushing against them. Jade choked back a sob, pressing harder into him. He tasted the warm saltiness of her tears. Emotion overcame Jase, the desire to posses, to protect, and to mate.

He bent down and scooped her up into his arms, meeting her cry with his lips. Shock waves rippled through his nervous system. He lost himself in the smoldering heat of her, the way her skin felt hot and smooth against his skin, the way she melted into him, liquid.

He would have taken her upstairs to his bed, but he couldn’t wait that long to mark her. The smell of her skin, her heat, her sex, the feel of her fingers digging into his hair, the fullness of her tits against his chest, the way she moaned and arched against him. Like a sleeping tigress awakening.

For the first time since she was a naïve teenager, Jade didn’t question the consequences of her action. She wanted to feel again. It didn’t matter that it was with a man who would lock her up. What she wanted to do was forget who she was, what she was. She wanted to indulge herself in this man because it would make her feel good, because it was her choice, because she could. She’d deal with the fallout tomorrow.

“Make love to me,” she whispered against the hard heat of his lips. His answer was a deep primal sound like a tiger letting the jungle know he was master.

He stood with her still in his arms, then bent down and snatched the thick alpaca throw off the sofa and flung it to the floor. The fire in the hearth flared as hot as her blood.

He slowly released the pressure of his embrace and she slid down against the long hardness of his body. He was hard beneath his jeans. Fear sprung from where it had been lurking just below the surface. She balked. He sensed her fear. “I won’t hurt you, Jade,” Jase said softly against her ear, his lips brushing her skin, the result a deep quake that ran straight to her core.

A violent tremor crashed through her. She dared not look up into his eyes, afraid of what she might see there. Jase didn’t give her that choice. With his finger, he nudged her chin up to look into the deep dark ocean-blue depths. Only inches separated their warm breaths. His eyes told her so many things. He wanted her, he would make her forget, and she would regret it. Because the only promise his eyes held was one of pure primal pleasure.

And while she had come to him with one intention, the minute he opened the door and his gaze pierced her, she’d had a different intent. She raised up on her toes and pressed her lips toward his. They hovered there, and she licked them. His breath hitched and she felt his body shift. The power his reaction ignited gave her courage. She realized that while she always knew she had power through sex over a man, Jase’s reaction to her was different. More complex. More was at stake. She had an emotional investment, and that made it different on so many levels.