One To Watch (Fantasy Heights) (4 page)

“There are three more dismissals coming,” Beverly confided. “No one knows who yet, so I’d mind yourself. And make sure you show up for your psych eval.”

“Of course I will. And what am I supposed to be doing in a network booth? You know I’m not trained on that stuff, right?”

“I don’t think it matters. I think you’re just a prop.”

Amanda hoped so. It was a popular fantasy. Both network booths were almost always booked with couples who wanted to turn an everyday scenario into something more. The ‘booth’ consisted of two small adjoined rooms, with two computers networked between them, complete with webcams. One room had all the latest in remote-operated female toys, the other was kitted out for men. What made the fantasy work was the connecting doors so that at some point, the remote play could turn up-close and personal.

She hurried down the hall into the female side of the booth’s greenroom. She slipped inside, expecting to find a more senior performer waiting to tell her what to do.

Nothing doing. Her half of the booth was empty save for the huge king-sized bed, a vinyl office chair and computer equipment. An enormous monitor took up a third of one wall beside the door that would open onto the male half of the booth. The monitor was active, though the pane open for a webcam feed was grayed out.

The rest of the screen showed a typical private messaging window. A cursor blinked in the chat field and above it, her first message from the client.
Say hi when you get here
.

Amanda took a seat at the desk so she could reach the keyboard and mouse. Her attention was caught by a piece of hardware resting beside the keyboard, a very sizable, detailed dildo hooked into the computer by USB cord. It was pink with a thick shaft and rabbit-eared vibrator attached. Halfway up the shaft was a wider section she hoped to discover the purpose of before they were done.

She pulled the keyboard closer and typed, “Hi, I’m here.”

After a moment, she got a response, though nothing like what she’d expected. Three simple, chillingly familiar lines made her blink in disbelief.

You’re on the radar.

Thomas can protect you if you stop asking questions.

Stay away from Gail, Lily and Marla.

While she was still mentally stumbling through the processes of remembering and figuring out what it meant to see these words on the screen today, right now, in this network booth, a new line appeared.

Don’t be afraid. I needed to talk to you, and this was the only way
.

That propelled her out of the surprised stupor in a big hurry. Her fingers flew on the keys. “This was not the only way. You could talk to me. In person. Face to face.”

You are much better off not knowing who I am
.

“Why? And what did you mean about Thomas protecting me? From what?”

This time there was a delay before a much longer string of text appeared.
Stop with the questions. I am no fan of Thomas but he has put himself in serious hot water for you. Every time you get curious and press for answers, the water gets hotter for him and me both. Do you understand?

She said ‘no’ aloud, quite forcefully, frustrated, before she remembered he couldn’t hear her. She didn’t know if he could see her. This side of the webcam could be active for all she knew.

She typed her response. “No. I don’t understand. At all. Who are you? And why should I listen to anything you say?”

Very long delay this time. Then:
If you plan to stay at Fantasy Heights, you have to be smarter than this. You have to know that a place like this has history and secrets no one wants exposed. And you have to tell Thomas about Fiona.

“What about Fiona?”

About Saturday night. I know she was in your house. What did she want?

Amanda leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. How did he know any such thing? And surely he didn’t think she’d answer his questions when he would never answer any of hers?

Amanda, please don’t be angry. This is really important.

She rolled her eyes, then typed. “She said a bunch of crap about me being important, and then typed Josh’s name into a search engine and told me to run the search when I was ready.”

The door between the two offices must not have been completely soundproof. She distinctly heard the muffled report of several profane syllables uttered at high volume.

Did you?

“No. When I need to know something about Josh, I’ll ask him. Face to face. The way you should be talking to me.”

It’s too late for that. Run the search. And tell Thomas about Fiona. Promise me.

She frowned. A moment ago, he’d been swearing his head off about it, and now he wanted her to run the search? “I’m not promising anything unless you come in here and ask me yourself.”

Only way I’m coming in there is if you shut the light and the computer monitor off, and don’t try to unmask me.

She was almost ashamed of her own weakness for the man when she actually considered what he was asking her to do. Keep quiet. Let him come in here and touch and enflame and consume without letting her finally, after all this time, find out who he was.

And of course her body had to chime in with vivid memories of what it felt like to be on him. Beneath him. To have him inside her. The spreader bar and his unrelenting hands.

No. She was not that weak, and he was right about something. She had to be smarter than this. She would make this deal, and promptly break it to find out who he was, once and for all. She typed, “Deal.”

She got up and switched the monitor off, then the overhead light. Praying the camera couldn’t pick her up in the dark, she stayed by the door, ready to flip the switch again.

She stood and waited for the door to open. And waited. It took her a full minute to realize her mystery client had just tricked her into letting him make his getaway.

Now it was her turn to swear long and loudly. If she ever did find out who this guy was, he would be very, very sorry.

Fuming, she hurried back to wardrobe and then home once more, feeling foolish and angry. Good thing she had her psych evaluation later in the week. She definitely needed her head examined for staying on at this place. Maybe she’d flunk her eval and Dr. Carpenter would do the whole resort a favor and have her fired.

At home, drawn to her office once more, she sat at the computer. Which of the two possible outcomes would be worse? “If only I’d listened and run that search” versus “Thank God I didn’t run that search.” During the moral and logical battles that ensued, she realized a few things about herself that weren’t entirely good, but the job was not to blame. If anything, the job was chiseling something better from the automaton she’d been. The job demanded extremes of discipline and talent. Courage, too, and she had begun to feed on the challenges of scripts and mysteries and coworkers as if she’d been starved for them all her life.

Be brave.

She set the tips of her middle and ring finger on the
enter
key. Then she closed her eyes and clicked.

She couldn’t quite believe she’d actually done it, but there it was. She’d run the search.

She opened her eyes to find thousands of results. The first six links all led to the exact same news story, dated three years ago:

One federal law enforcement agent was killed and another gravely injured last evening while executing a search warrant on local resident Simon Dixon. The agents sought evidence related to the disappearance of Kay Prescott-Taylor, wife of local businessman Josh Taylor. Dixon later died of his own injuries after confessing to Taylor’s kidnapping and murder.

District Attorney Gregory Hughes says Dixon had long been a suspect in the case. Both federal and local authorities feel satisfied with Dixon’s confession. Earlier this morning, Hughes stated, “Before he ultimately passed away, Dixon was able to describe crime scene details never disclosed to the public. A search of his residence yielded evidence linking him to both the victim and the crime scene. It’s not much consolation to her family, or the families of the agents involved, but at least we finally know for certain the person responsible is no longer at large.”

The story went on for a few more paragraphs, giving more details about the victim and her disappearance, describing Kay Prescott-Taylor as a former beauty queen turned high-energy, high-powered real estate magnate. Kay’s picture made clear how she’d won beauty pageants. She had idyllic Georgia-peach coloring and features. The smile on her face radiated pure joy.

Seeing that picture, the tragic outcome of Kay’s life reached out to jar Amanda like a slap to the face. Quick as she could, she clicked on the red
X
to close the browser.

She propped her elbows on the desk and tented her hands over her mouth and nose, feeling sick. She had known Josh’s wife had passed away, but no one had ever said anything about kidnapping or murder.

Poor Josh. Poor
Kay
.

Time went oddly slippery as she sat there, stunned with sympathetic horror, quite unable to process it all. Moving on reflex alone, her hand shook as she reached for her cellphone to try Thomas one more time. She needed to talk to someone about this. She was scared and saddened and afraid of what it might mean, and more than a little angry that she had no idea why Fiona Cornell should use Josh’s tragic history to stir up trouble.

She dialed Thomas’s cell, wondering why she bothered. He hadn’t called her back the first time. He probably wouldn’t answer or call back this time, either, but she had to try. If she didn’t talk to someone, get this off her chest, she’d lose it.

Straight to voicemail again. “Thomas, please. It’s really important that you call me back. I really, really,
really
need to talk to you.”

With a sigh, she took the phone away and pressed
end
. If nothing else, two more days and she’d see him on set. And maybe he had a perfectly good reason not to call her back.

Maybe. Sleep was more rare than unicorn feathers that night. She did manage to drop off around dawn, only to dream about Neil and Steph getting engaged, but dying in a car wreck on their way home from a Robert Warnous concert. She might not have remembered the dream if the phone hadn’t rung right in the middle of her mystery client in a ski mask delivering the bad news to her, Thomas, and—in that eternal inexplicability of dreams—Neil himself.

Amanda snatched up the phone, hoping it was Thomas, but got the next best thing. The phone call came from her landlord, and she was grateful when he and the security company rep arrived later that morning. It was a nice break from stewing over Kay, Josh, Fiona and the mystery client. Thomas, too, who couldn’t be bothered to call her back. She’d worked herself into quite a fury by the time Beverly called to see if she’d rather swap out of a dull movie-reenactment that evening to accommodate a last-minute request from Neil. Only an hour session, but Amanda said yes immediately. If nothing else, his unbendingly cocksure swagger of a personality would soothe many ills.

She hurried into wardrobe. Kara produced a coffee-colored silk dress very like the dark-side-Veronica-Lake slinky sheath number, only with a few design improvements. Halter-style in front, nothing in the back, the brown version had a thick band at the neck with two snaps. Two more snaps in the small of her back held the bodice together. The shin-length skirt was slit clear up to the waist, leaving plenty of skin bare.

Undergarments were an impossibility, but with Neil, what would be the point? The easier he could get his hands where they both wanted them, the happier she would be.

After slipping into dainty low heels, she hurried to meet him at
The Eastern Star.
He got to his feet while she approached. She’d missed him, she realized, and his dark, brooding appeal. His suit coat had been abandoned on a chair, his tie discarded. She wondered if he realized his doctor’s security ID still hung on a blue lanyard around his neck.

Despite concerted effort not to be curious, her mind flicked over to that moment in the throne room when she’d speculated on Neil and Thomas’s history. Neil was, after all, a neurosurgeon, and Thomas had faint but extensive strips of scar tissue on his back and flank where a plastic surgeon had made an earnest attempt to hide something.

She did not need Thomas’s voice in her head to tell her to ignore the curiosity. Whether Thomas and Neil were connected in that way was none of her concern. And Neil was right here, right now, and she wanted him focused on nothing but his own pleasure. A more feral part of herself recalled how Neil paid that pleasure forward, and her gaze automatically strayed to his mouth. Was it terrible that whenever she thought of Neil, she immediately thought about his mouth on her pussy? It wasn’t as if she could help it. Either neurosurgeons knew something other people didn’t, or somewhere along the line, he’d been coached by a woman in delightful detail how to stimulate a clitoris.

Her mind veered off into plans to drag him into some quiet corner, strip off the dress, and guide his mouth between her legs. She had to remind herself that he was the client. He was in charge, and though Beverly had said there was no script this time, that did not mean Neil had chosen
The Eastern Star
on a whim. The club was half full of people, most of them scattered between tables, a few more on the dance floor.

When she finally reached his table, Neil kissed her cheek and pulled a chair out for her to sit, wearing a most disarming smile.

Something was clearly up. “What is it?”

He caught her subtle glance at the lanyard and stripped it off to tuck it away in his suit coat pocket. “Nothing. I just had a really, really good day.”

“Oh? What’s a good day like in Neil world?”

“Any day with you in it, pretty girl.”

“Wow. That was shameless.”

“Opportunistic, too. I don’t know where you came from, but God, am I glad you did. You’re like the world’s most alluring bandage.”

Interesting, she thought. That was much the same way she felt about him, like a soothing, bolstering port in a storm.