Sexual Games [The Heroes of Silver Springs 8] (Siren Publishing Classic) (15 page)

Jennifer gave a nervous laugh at that and appeared to relax, albeit marginally. “I miss my shift.” Her brown eyes clouded. “I know it probably sounds stupid, but I love being a bartender.”

“There’s nothing stupid about enjoying your job,” Mallory said. “And you’re good at what you do.”

“Kyle keeps telling me that. He’s called me several times asking when I’ll be back.” Jennifer looked down at her hands folded on the table. “I hope I can go back soon.”

“What makes you feel like you can’t?” Cooper took the seat at the head of the rectangular table, rested his forearms on the edge, and steepled his fingers.

Jackson watched his boss study Jennifer. His expression revealed nothing of his thoughts or first impression of the woman.

Jennifer took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She didn’t look at Cooper when she lifted her head. She settled her gaze on Jackson, instead. “The night before Lexie disappeared, she came into Cinderella’s during my shift. She did that sometimes when she had the night off and I didn’t. She had this guy with her. He was nice-looking, a classy dresser with a smooth voice, and very polite, but something about the guy gave me the creeps. She didn’t tell me a lot about him, just that she had met him at another club and talked him into coming to Cinderella’s.” She paused, her lips unfolding in a small smile at the memory. “I think she wanted to show him off.”

Jackson reached for the legal tablet and pen that lay in the center of the table, pulled it in front of him, and quickly jotted down her brief description of the guy. “Did she bring men into your club a lot?”

“He was the first. The guys she usually dates are, well, slime balls.” Her cheeks turned pink as if it embarrassed her to reveal what she really thought about the men her friend had dated. “Most of the time they are older men she’s met at Stardust. Creeps only looking to get laid and figuring a stripper is a sure bet for that. I’ve met a few of them, most of the time outside of Stardust when I would stop by to give her a lift. With every one, I’ve told her she can do better.”

“Is that what you told her about this guy?” Cooper asked, his tone even and interrogational.

“I didn’t get the chance. I haven’t seen her since that night.” She shrugged. Her gaze momentarily dropped to the table again where she toyed with the ring on the middle finger of her right hand. “I don’t know what I would’ve said. He was an improvement, in appearance and age at least, and he definitely seemed to treat her better, but…”

“Your gut was telling you something different,” Jackson finished for her.

“I’m a psychology major, Agent Graham. My education was telling me something different. I can read people, detect when they’re holding something back, when they’re hiding something. Like the other night with you. You weren’t scared even when I was holding a gun to your back. You went with me, but it was more out of curiosity than fear.” The corners of her lips twitched. “It almost seemed as if you thought I was a girlfriend playing around or something.”

“Or something,” Jackson muttered, unable to hide the sourness in his tone.

“You would make a good agent,” Mallory said, a trace of amusement in her tone as she worked her way deeper into the other woman’s confidence.

Jennifer’s smile was laden with sadness. “My brother said that, too, that I would make a good cop. It only took me a few seconds to know Jim was a dangerous guy. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly how. I just knew.”

Jackson heard Mallory’s quick intake of breath and saw her stiffen. She propped her elbows on the table and leaned in closer. “Jim?”

Jennifer nodded. “That was his name. I didn’t get his last name. If she told me, I forgot. Honestly, I didn’t want to know it. The guy freaked me out that bad.”

“Mid to late twenties, chestnut hair, bright green eyes, flawless complexion, built like a swimmer?”

Mallory rattled off descriptive details that sent a bone-deep chill racing through Jackson’s system. She knew this guy? She had been close enough to him to see he didn’t have so much as a pimple marring his face?

“Handsome”—Mallory continued, drawing her perfect eyebrows together in obvious recollection—“casual dresser, at least he was dressed that way when I met him. A smooth talker, polite, polished, but oddly intimidating.”

“That sounds like the same guy.”

Jennifer confirmed at the same time Cooper asked, “When did you meet him?”

“The night Jennifer kidnapped Jackson,” Mallory answered Cooper. “I was at Cinderella’s when he called me to pick him up. I stopped by there for a drink after I left here. Jim came up to me, introduced himself, and we talked for a while.”

Talked?
Jackson suspected that talking had everything to do with the guy trying to pick her up and very little to do with casual conversation. Jealously, white-hot and fierce, surged through his bloodstream. It wasn’t an alien feeling when it came to Mallory. The green-eyed demon had been growing stronger inside him for years. He had fought against it, kept it behind an almost-impenetrable lock and key, knowing he had only to give in and he would be the man touching her, tasting her, feeling the sweet recesses of her amazing body.

You gave in last night.

Yeah, he had, and look where it had gotten him this morning.

“What did he say to you?” Cooper asked.

Jackson shoved the demon back in its cage, knowing it wouldn’t stay there for long now, and focused on the conversation.

“He talked mostly about how beautiful I was and how he was surprised I was there alone. I told him I only planned to stay for one drink. He tried to convince me to have another, to dance with him, that sort of stuff.”

Jackson’s mind flashed back to the ride in the car after she had picked him up, to the brief conversation they’d had about Cinderella’s.

I was considering leaving when you called.

Considering? Was there something that might have kept you there if I hadn’t called?

She had told him she had thought about staying for another drink, maybe a dance or two. With this guy Jim, no doubt.

Jesus, God.
If this Jim guy was responsible for Lexie Stratus’s disappearance, Mallory could’ve been next.

Mallory paused thoughtfully. “He asked a lot of questions about friends, how many people I knew in the club, how often I came there. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but…”

“He was digging,” Jackson said.

Christ.
They’d had the guy right under their noses. Fishing for information was a classic move of human traffickers. Find a lonely, beautiful woman, make her feel like she’s above all the rest, gain her trust, slip a drug in her drink, and she was theirs for the taking.

And the bastard nearly had Mallory.

No, Mallory was too smart for that. She wouldn’t have left with the guy, likely wouldn’t have even allowed him to buy her a drink unless she watched every step of that drink being made until it landed in her hand.

“You were on the phone with me when you walked out of the club.” He remembered hearing the blaring music fade in the background. “Were you paying attention? Did he follow you?”

Mallory narrowed her eyes at him. “I always pay attention. No, he didn’t follow me. He listened to the first part of our conversation, though. I know that. Well, my end of the conversation at least. I called you something. I don’t remember what it was now, but the instant the word left my mouth he turned away, and I walked out. No good-bye. No nothing.” She shrugged. “I left him sitting at the bar, and no one walked out after me.”

“You called me handsome,” Jackson remembered. She had called him that right after she had asked him what kind of position he had thought she would be in. And his mind had boarded an instant flight to do-her island, where he had envisioned her in a number of poses that all included her naked and writhing while he fucked her.

The memory of her last night, beneath him when he had first laid her on his bed, surfaced in his mind. He could still feel her pliant body giving against his harder torso, still feel her hands on his flesh, her thighs clamping his body between them. He saw a flash of how she had looked sitting on top of him, her hair falling like a curtain around her face, teasing the swells of her breasts, and his dick swelled in his slacks.

“That was enough for him to know she wasn’t an easy target,” Cameron commented behind him. “He has to know Jennifer isn’t either. Lexie took him to meet her, proving she has at least one friend in this big ole city.”

“Proving
both
women have at least one friend in this big ole city,” Mallory corrected. “Jennifer and Lexie at least had each other, but that still didn’t stop him from taking Lexie.”

“He’s been following me,” Jennifer cut in. “Him or someone he’s connected to. Someone has been keeping tabs on me. I think they’ve been watching to see if I would go to the cops when I realized Lexie was missing.”

“Did you?” Jackson lifted a questioning brow. “You told me that night to find Lexie, that no one else would. Who else did you go to for help? We’ve checked with the Waterston PD and the task force that frequents Stardust. They were unaware Lexie did anything beyond quitting her job.”

“I know. Their apparent ignorance is why I came to you.” Jennifer pushed strands of her dyed black hair behind one ear and returned to her recollection of the last time she had seen her friend. “I called Lexie when my shift ended the night she brought Jim into Cinderella’s. They had left about an hour before that.”

“Did you see her when she left?” Cooper jumped in. “Did she appear to be intoxicated or coerced at all?”

“No. She had one rum and coke. He drank a Heineken. They hung around for about forty-five minutes and then she told me good-bye and walked out the door with him, holding his hand.”

“And that’s the last time you saw her, the last time you spoke to her?” Jackson asked. If the guy had done something to Lexie, he had apparently waited until he got her alone before he made the move.

Jennifer nodded. “Like I said, I called her after my shift. When she didn’t answer, I stopped by her apartment. I wanted to make sure she had made it home okay, but she wasn’t there. The next day I tried again, called her repeatedly, and went by her place. I went into Stardust Sunday night and was told she’d quit. I knew something was really wrong then. Lexie needed that job. It might have been less than respectable in the eyes of most people, but she made good money. She was sticking with it because she was finally making enough to enroll at the community college to get her degree. She always talked about being a counselor, helping out girls who’d had the same rough life she’d had. Classes started that Monday. I checked with the college, but she hadn’t showed up there either. That’s when I called the Waterston PD to report her missing.”

“You did call the police?” Jackson asked. And yet their guys at the department had no record of the call. “Who did you talk to?”

“I asked for Detective Reese. He’s in the narcotics division, but I knew my brother worked with him before”—Jennifer paused and took a deep breath—“before he was killed. I was told Detective Reese was on vacation, so I got transferred to missing persons. The officer who answered didn’t give his name and, when I tried to ask for it after I gave him the information on Lexie, he hung up. I waited, and when I didn’t hear anything, I called again. I talked with an Officer Evans that time, who informed me there was no record of the report even being filed.

“I’m not delusional, Agent Graham. I filed that report. Someone at the Waterston PD, most likely the first officer I talked to who wouldn’t give me his name, made it disappear. After that first phone call, I realized I was being followed. Most of the time it’s a white, four-door sedan with tinted windows. A couple of times, I’ve noticed a beat-up black Chevy van. Neither has gotten close enough for me to get a look at the driver or the license plate, but I’ve seen one of them at the university, outside our apartment building, and places I’ve gone to shop. They’re watching me. The sedan even tried to follow me to Meridian. I ditched them about twenty miles out of town.”

“Your brother taught you well,” Jackson said and watched the saddened smile return to her lips.

“Yes, he did.”

“You’re sure no one followed you here this morning?”

She nodded vehemently. “Positive.”

Jackson exchanged a wordless glance with Cooper. Should they tell her about the body found in the abandoned warehouse that morning? They still didn’t have a clue if it was Lexie Stratus or anyone even remotely connected to the girl’s disappearance. However, if it had been Jennifer who had made the call, they would know they didn’t need to continue looking for the informant.

“The bureau received an anonymous tip this morning that may be connected,” Cooper told her, keeping the information vague. “Was it from you?”

“No. What was the tip? Was it about Lexie?” The hope in her voice twisted a knot in Jackson’s chest.

“Not directly.” Jackson followed his boss’s lead, not giving away too much, not wanting to crush the woman’s hopes that they might still find Lexie alive.

“We’re currently investigating the whereabouts of four other women who have quit Stardust in the last six months,” Cooper said. “Do you know anything about these other women?”

“Lexie went to work there about three or four months ago. I know she was hired to take someone’s place, but I don’t know the details. You think they’re connected.” Jennifer’s tone made her words more of a statement than a question.