The Redemption (21 page)

Sarah groans. “This ain’t no casino heist, guys. We’re gonna need a helluva lot more than George Clooney to pull this off.”

I exhale. “How much of this can we prove as of right now, Henn?”

“The ‘Funding the Evil Empire’ thing is all circumstantial right now because I don’t have the banking records yet. I can prove quite a bit with lots of creativity, putting the pieces together, but to immediately convince anyone else about all this you’d have to have an audience with a long attention span that’s willing to listen closely and make certain leaps in logic.”

“We can’t count on that.”

“I know. Everything will be airtight and clear as a bell when I’m able to hack into The Club’s actual mainframe—and I’m super close on that.”

“We need to be able to show them the money,” I say. “That’s the key—the only way we’re gonna get anyone’s attention.”

“I agree,” Henn says. “I don’t have all their accounts or passwords yet—but I’m working on it.”

“How long ‘til you’ve got everything you need to make this airtight?”

“A couple more days and I’ll be solid. Maybe not airtight, but solid. I mean, I could do this for months and months and still be gathering new information. But as far as having something to use as an opening salvo, something that’ll get the good guys’ attention quickly and make them take immediate action, I can get you what you’ll need in a couple days.”

“Excellent,” I say.

“Henn, I’m your new best friend,” Sarah says. “I’m gonna start collecting and collating the information you find and synthesizing it into one concise document—like a legal brief. We have to have something to hand over to the good guys and get their attention quickly. I’ll make it easy for them—outline the facts, The Club operations, all potential criminal counts—RICO, wire fraud, money laundering, racketeering, etcetera, etcetera—and summarize the evidence collected thus far in relation to each count.” Sarah’s mind is really clicking now. “Kat.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“For each and every criminal count, I’m gonna need a piece of supporting evidence—something to show them we’re not making this stuff up. I’ll tell you exactly what kind of thing I’m looking for, and then you’ll go digging through whatever Henn’s been able to find so far to get it for me. You’ll be my research assistant.”

“I can do that,” Kat says.

“That’s good,” I say. “And Josh and I will pow-wow and figure out our best strategy for the hand-off. I agree—we’re going to have to turn this over to
someone
—but to whom, that’s the question. If we put it in the wrong hands, we might just buy ourselves an even bigger enemy than The Club.”

“What does that mean?” Kat asks, her eyes wide.

“It sounds like there are plenty of powerful people on that client list who wouldn’t want this scandal to see the light of day.”

There’s a long beat while everyone lets that sink in. We’re about to open a very large and dangerous can of worms.

“It’s all gonna come down to the money,” I say. “Money talks.”

“I agree,” Josh says.

“Henn, that’s top priority, okay?” I say. “Track the money. Get access to it.”

“Roger,” Henn says. “Shouldn’t take me more than a couple days.”

“We can do this,” Sarah says, but she doesn’t sound convinced. “Look at the talent in this room. We don’t need no stinkin’ George Clooney and Brad Pitt and Matt Damon.”

“Yeah, but I sure wish we had that Chinese acrobat guy,” Henn says. “He was cool.”

“The one they stuffed into the little box?” Kat asks. “I loved him.”

“Yeah, he was rad,” Henn agrees.

“Yen. Wasn’t that his name?”

Henn laughs. “Oh
yeah.
Good memory, Kat.” He taps his temple. “Brains
and
beauty.”

“Hey, guys, sorry to interrupt your profound musings, but I’m kind of getting tunnel vision here,” Sarah says. “There’s a lot to do and I wanna get started right away.”

“Sure thing,” Kat says. “Whatever you need, boss.”

“Hey, Sarah,” Henn says. “One more thing. What do you wanna do about Dr. Evil’s text to you?”

Sarah’s face turns bright red.

“I’m monitoring his phone, remember? ‘I’m not a patient man.’ What was
that
all about?”

Sarah obviously can’t speak at the moment, so I grab her hand and explain Max’s demand for a “freebie” from Sarah and the gist of his follow-up text. (I don’t mention the specifics of Max’s text—as far as I’m concerned, no one needs to know about Max’s reference to a ‘low-class strip club’ and ‘masks’—and, thankfully, Henn has the good sense not to reveal those details, either.)

“What should I do?” Sarah asks the room, her voice small. “Ignore him? Answer him? Hide?”

“Ignore him and hide,” I say. “I don’t want you saying a fucking thing to that motherfucker.”

“I agree,” Josh says. “Ignore him and hide.”

“No,” Kat says flatly. “Answer him and hide. Ignoring him will piss him off, and we don’t want to piss that guy off. We want to keep him calm and confident and predictable.”

Everyone looks at her, considering.

“Dr. Evil’s real boner isn’t for Sarah—it’s for Jonas.”

I grimace. “Jesus, Kat. Please don’t say it that way.”

“Not sexually. He’s got an alpha-male boner for you, Jonas. This is all about a beta silverback wanting to knock off the obvious alpha. He wants what you’ve got so he can
win
. Hence, his Jonas-boner.”

“For Chrissakes,
please
stop saying that,” I say.

“So how should I reply to him, then?”

“We have to keep him off your back and convince him you’re motivated solely by greed and absolutely
not
by loyalty to Jonas,” Kat says. “The more he thinks your interests are the same as his, the safer you’ll be. You’ve got to keep him trusting you. If you ignore him, he’ll start getting paranoid.”

Sarah looks at me. I nod. Kat’s making a lot of sense.

Kat sees my nonverbal exchange with Sarah and seems encouraged. “Tell him that right after your meeting with him, Jonas went totally ballistic—out of his mind with jealousy. Jonas saw the obvious chemistry between you and Dr. Evil and he accused you of lying about never having met him before. Jonas is convinced you two are an item, and he thinks you wanted to be alone with Max just so you two could have sex in the bathroom. And now, dang it, there’s absolutely no way you can get away without arousing Jonas’ suspicion even more. Jonas the Jealous Boyfriend is watching you like a hawk now, not letting you leave your room without him. Just make Jonas out to be a wacko. Tell Max not to text—Jonas is monitoring your phone—and he’s just on the cusp of giving you another humongous check. That way, you play right into his egomania and also appeal to his greed. No matter how much he wants his little freebie to satisfy his Jonas-boner—”

“Okay, Kat, that’s enough,” I caution.

“—he won’t insist on it at the risk of sabotaging the scam. We’ll just make Jonas out to be the bad guy and let Sarah sound like she’s doing her best to manage him and keep the money rolling in.”

Everyone stares at Kat, speechless and impressed.

Kat shrugs. “What? There are two things I know well in this life—PR and men.”

“Nice,” Henn says, his admiration palpable.

“Hey, I might be dumb, but I’m not blonde,” Kat says, and everyone laughs.

Josh flashes Kat an adoring smile. “Does everyone agree with Kat on this? Because I most certainly do.”

Everyone expresses agreement.

“Especially the part about how you’re not allowed to leave the suite without me,” I say. “That part is true. I don’t want you going out there without me.”

“Trust me, I won’t,” Sarah says. “Now that I know that creep’s out there watching me, I have no desire to leave the suite ever again. I’ve got to hunker down and write my report, anyway. This is going to be a huge job.” Sarah shakes her head in disbelief. “This is so crazy.”

“It’s totally insane,” Henn agrees, exhaling happily. “Isn’t it
awesome?
”

Sarah
 

It’s been a long-ass day. But a productive one. For the better part of today, Kat and I shadowed Henn as he worked furiously on his three computers, and when Henn finally crashed and burned due to total sleep deprivation, Kat and I kept going, doing our best to categorize and prioritize the information he’d retrieved thus far. And as Kat and I worked, Jonas and Josh did, too, brainstorming, researching governmental agencies, and drafting a spreadsheet outlining potential strategies.

Occasionally, the boys bickered until one of them started laughing and the other joined in—and, once, out of nowhere, they got into a heated argument about who would top the list of the best NFL quarterbacks of all-time—and, admittedly, at one point, Kat and I got so punchy we sat fully clothed in the empty Jacuzzi tub to drink a glass of wine—but otherwise, it was a day filled with nonstop work and stress.

In the middle of writing a particularly frustrating section on my report, I looked at Jonas across the room to find him intensely studying something on his laptop, his brow furrowed, and I felt an overwhelming desire to crawl into his lap and say, “To hell with everything—let’s go back to Belize.” But instead, I suggested he take a break to work out in the hotel gym.

“There’s no time for that,” he said. “I’m on a mission from God here, baby.”

 I was about to say his mind might actually benefit from a break, when, without notice, he added, right in front of everybody, “Because I love my baby more than life itself.” And then he looked back down at his computer as if that wasn’t the most heart-stopping moment of my entire life.

And now, finally, everyone’s gone and there’s nothing to keep me from crawling into his lap now—or doing whatever else the heck I might want to do to my hunky-monkey boyfriend.

Jonas comes out of the bathroom after his shower, every single inch of his naked body as hard as a rock, and crawls into bed next to me. He flips me onto my back roughly and crawls over me, his erection grazing my belly and his eyes gleaming. “What shall we do first, my lady?” he says. “Shall I take a big bite out of your ass? Or perhaps nibble on your crumpets?” He leans down and nibbles one of my nipples.

“Hang on, sir,” I say in a clipped accent, and he pauses—though it looks like it physically pains him to do it. “I happen to have a few very specific thoughts on this subject this fair evening.” I pat the bed next to me and he reluctantly obeys, a questioning look in his eyes. “When I was Googling to find that strip club I took you to the other night, I initially searched the term ‘peep show Las Vegas,’ and you know what came up?”

He shakes his head.

“All kinds of crap about some now-defunct topless musical revue on The Strip starring Ice-T’s wife.”

Jonas glances at my crotch with pure longing in his eyes.

I smile wickedly. “So then I searched ‘peep show sex club,’ just to see what might come up, and gosh darn it, Google must have thought I wanted search results for ‘peep show
sex.’
Huh. Talk about fascinating reading.” I bite my lower lip.

A shadow of a smile flickers across Jonas’ face, but he somehow manages to keep his excitement under wraps.

“It turns out there’s a sexual position called The Peep Show. Are you familiar with that one, sir?’

He pauses. “Well, actually, that could refer to one of several different things, my dearest lady.” He licks his lips. “You’ll have to be more specific about your particular item of interest.”

I grab my laptop off the nightstand and quickly find the graphic 3-D animation I stumbled upon by accident the other night—two attractive, animated avatars performing “peep show fellatio” with body-jerking enthusiasm.

Considering how many different and sometimes surprising ways Jonas has performed oral sex on me—who knew there were so many ways to do it?—the sight of that “peep show fellatio” animation really shouldn’t have surprised me at all. But it did.

 All this time, I’d accepted Jonas’ paradigm that
my
pleasure was the elusive beast—the hard-earned prize he’d studied and practiced and trained specifically to vanquish
—
and all the while it never even occurred to me that there might be a thing or two I could learn to maximize
his
pleasure, too. It was like a light bulb went off in my head—and between my legs.

I turn the computer screen toward Jonas and his face lights up. “This,” I say, showing him the avatars performing peep show fellatio. “Ring any bells, sir?”

His smile spreads across the entire width of his face. “Why, yes, my lady,” he says, his voice edged with suppressed excitement, “it rings bells and whistles and buzzers and clappers and ding-dongs.”

I laugh heartily.

“I have indeed heard tell of this ‘peep show’ sex act to which you refer,” he says, his eyes ablaze, “but I’ve never been so fortunate as to have someone suggest performing it on me.” He bites his lip. “
For
me.”

I’m floored. I didn’t see that one coming. I thought Jonas had done every conceivable sex act known to man. I can’t believe my ears. “How is that possible?” I ask, dropping our playful politeness.

“I’ve never done it.”

“But, I mean, I thought when it came to sex, you’ve already done everything there is to do—and then some.”

He shrugs.

“But, I thought...  ” I shake my head. I’m utterly confused. How is this possible?

He blushes. “It’s not the kind of thing I’d ask some random hook-up to do. And I’ve never had a...” He sighs. “I’ve never had a girlfriend like you before.”

Heat spreads throughout my body. “What do you mean?”

He shrugs again but doesn’t answer.

“Your girlfriends have never wanted to do this for you?”

He shakes his head.

“You’re going to have to give me more than a headshake here, big boy. ‘Fess up. Come on.”

He exhales. “It’s just never come up.”

“Why not?”

“Why don’t I lick you and make you come and then we’ll talk about this afterwards?” He starts crawling on top of me again, grinning lasciviously.

I push him off me. “This is too fascinating. Tell me first and then I promise it’s crazy-sexy-freaky time ‘til the break of dawn.”