Unbridled and Untethered [The Double Rider Men's Club 10] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (3 page)

Clay hated that he’d forgotten Zeke was coming when she was so adamant in her requirements that no one in his security force supervise her or remain with her while she worked. He knew it was because of this discomfort she had around men. She certainly had a valid reason for her unease.

She told him it was due to the proprietary nature of some of the equipment she used. He let her use that as her excuse, but he knew better. They’d resolved that issue the first time she’d come out to the DRMC. Clay had never balked at keeping her safe and out of the view of other men while on his property. It was the least he could do. And it made him feel that much worse about his forgetfulness tonight.

Clay had quite a few irons in the fire regarding various aspects of his life these days. However, the revelations on his mind were no excuse for forgetting he’d invited Zeke here to help yet another old friend. He needed to find better focus.

His life had changed significantly in recent months. Not only had he reconnected with his brother, Kendall, and visited his place up in Montana not too long ago, Clay had also been in contact with an old friend, Jake Salerno. In fact, Jake was probably the reason Clay had so much on his mind lately.

Among other things, Jake, was the first guy he’d ever shared a woman with back when they’d both been barely in their twenties. Having decided recently that he’d been on his own for far too long, Clay was considering inviting Jake to the DRMC. He didn’t know if his old friend was still interested in a ménage lifestyle, and that frustrating lack of information apparently made him stupid about everything else going on around him.

Clay took the time to stop in his command center to send Emma Rae her electronic payment. Double the hourly rate was still a bargain, in his opinion, so he added an additional bonus on top of the bill. She deserved it. Once that was complete, he headed to the conference room and Zeke.

Seated at the table with files open and paper spilling out in five different directions, Zeke was already poring through the information Clay had brought him here to look at. On the large screen at the front of the room, a video was paused at the end of a grainy display showing a woman poised half in shadow. The remote control for it was inches away from Zeke’s hand.

“Thanks for jumping right in,” Clay said.

“Sure. What am I looking at?”

“Surveillance footage and still photos of someone who is supposed to be dead.”

Zeke’s eyebrows went skyward. “Really? She looks awfully good for having expired.”

“Exactly. But what I need to know is if it’s actually her. It’s entirely possible the woman is simply a doppelganger.”

“I’m in the Treasury Department. We are concerned with counterfeiting. How would I, in any stretch of anyone’s imagination, know that or care to find out?”

“I know it’s a long shot, but in the film, she’s coming out of a bank in Denver carrying a satchel. Maybe we can identify her through the bank transactions at that time of day. Don’t you have access to bank-withdrawal information?”

“No,” came his sharp retort. His tone didn’t soften when he added, “And even if I did, the information is not for just
anyone
asking. Who needs this?”

Clay pulled out a chair and sat across from Zeke, trying to reduce his ire. “It’s for an old friend of mine.”

One of Zeke’s eyebrows rose a notch. He shook his head. “Still not good enough. Specifically, who?”

Clay wasn’t ready to out Jake yet. “I have a very good friend who works in Immigration and Customs Enforcement—ICE. They are trying to identify this woman and ascertain whether or not it’s a former witness. My friend is asking because no one is even sure that this woman is who they think she is. If this woman is alive, she’s probably in danger. My friend was connected with the case at the time of her disappearance. Up until now, she was thought dead.”

Zeke pushed out an annoyed-sounding breath, but his harsh manner diminished just a bit. “Aren’t there easier ways to discover her identity instead of a long shot using bank transactions?”

“Apparently, a facial-recognition expert said there was a sixty to seventy percent probability it
could
be her. But that’s due to the best shot of her face being only a partial and the rest being in shadow. It was high enough to make my friend want to pursue it quietly.”

“And what did this woman do? If it’s even her.”

Clay cleared his throat. “She was a witness in a foreign-based organized crime ring. Someone blew up the house where she and her husband lived. They found two bodies. If this picture is her, then someone else was identified incorrectly at the house where she lived. She was about to be put into witness protection.”

Zeke huffed. “So the Federal Marshal Service is involved, too?
Shit,
maybe we could invite Homeland Security into this and
really
have a party.”

Clay sighed. “I already tried that direction. Dalton couldn’t help. Plus, he deferred to both Wit Sec and ICE.”

“Why can’t the ICE folks determine if it’s her? Surely they have resources.”

“The thing is, my friend has a difficult boss who has made more than a few enemies in his career. Apparently, the usual communication channels that are opened between most government agencies have not been available in this particular matter. Besides, this is sort of a private inquiry. It’s being done on personal time and is not truly a formal investigation.”

Zeke looked up at him for the first time. “So my next question has to do with why this ‘friend’ of yours is so important that you’d go to all this trouble.” There was a mischievous glint in his expression.

Clay rolled his eyes. “It’s not a female friend. If that’s what you’re asking.”

“No. Not necessarily.” Zeke crossed his arms. “Tell you what. You introduce me to the cute blonde from the other room and I’ll do everything I can to get the information you seek.”

“Forget it. Not going to happen.” Clay blanked his features then put in place
his
sternest look. Zeke should know by now that he’d have better luck taming a wild, angry mama bear after her cubs had been threatened than changing Clay’s mind.

“Why not? She was looking at me, you know. I think she might be interested.”

“In your dreams. Trust me, she’s not interested.” Clay actually thought the exact same thing but didn’t intend to tell Zeke that. Emma Rae
had
seemed particularly interested in Zeke rather than horrified. But he wasn’t exactly a matchmaker. Well, not today anyway.

Appalled and horrified was what she had been the last time someone had interrupted them. This time not so much, but still. Clay wasn’t going to facilitate a relationship between them.

He didn’t bother to remove the hard-ass tone from his voice when he said, “I’m not a pimp. Get your own girls. Now can you help me with this or not? I know you don’t necessarily have connections to the banking industry through your job with US Treasury beyond forensic accounting services, but maybe you know someone that can help anyway. Don’t you have any connections to other agencies able to assist with something like this on the down low?”

“Maybe.” He raised his eyebrows slightly as if to say, “You know what I want as payment for any help.” His features then shifted like he wanted to negotiate further, but Clay wasn’t going to sacrifice Em for any reason. He leveled his most demonic stare at Zeke, hoping he’d get the message.

Zeke finally broke the stare and huffed. “Fine. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll have to find someone to look at the sure-to-be-extensive transactions for the Denver bank that day. Do you have the exact date and time stamp for the footage to narrow the data?”

Clay relaxed and pointed to the papers on the desk. “It’s all included in the file.”

Zeke nodded and gathered up the files and papers he’d spread out on the table. He didn’t speak, and Clay wondered if his feelings were hurt. His first private response was
too fucking bad
. Then again, Zeke was doing him a favor, and he didn’t mean to seem ungrateful.

In the way of an apology, he said quietly, “She has a stipulation in her contract that she works alone. That’s why I kicked you out. And…she’s been hurt badly by men in her past. At best she’s wary, and at worst she’s distrustful. I’m not going to make her uncomfortable. Not even for you.”

Zeke gave him a pained look, like Clay had just accused him of something. “I see.”

“I hope so. Because I’m not trying to thwart your love life or accuse you of anything, but please, while she’s here, she’s off-limits to everyone on the property.”

“Except for you.” His dubious expression put Clay on guard.

“Right. Except for me.”
What the hell?

Zeke kept gathering files and looked away. The implication being that Clay was keeping Emma Rae for himself and only
saying
that she didn’t want anyone else around.

“Holy hell.” Clay threw his hands in the air. “It’s not like that. I think of her like she’s my little sister.”

Zeke rolled his eyes. “Is that supposed to make me forget about her?”

“No. It’s supposed to tell you that I don’t have a romantic interest. And that you shouldn’t either because of her past.”

After a few seconds of quiet contemplation, Zeke smiled faintly. “Okay. I won’t dwell. At least not for the present. But if I ever see her out and about in town somewhere, I’m taking a shot and talking to her. Maybe she’ll at least give me her name.” Zeke gave him a look like he wanted at least her name, but Clay wasn’t going to break.

“Fine.” He shrugged. “As long as it’s not while she’s here, go for it. Because I’m not telling you her name. And if you ever do find her, but she’s not interested, you back off immediately, or I’ll show you how a big brother protects his female siblings from unwanted advances of a romantic nature.” He pounded a fist into his other palm to make his point.

“Got it.” Zeke saluted him with a growing smile, grabbed the file, and left the building.

Clay wondered if he should warn Emma Rae she had an admirer. More than that, he worried that if he didn’t provide a protected environment while she was here, she wouldn’t come back again.

That wouldn’t do.

He tucked Zeke’s infatuation away and made a mental note to mention it later, if the topic ever came up while Emma Rae was there working. He hoped he’d remember to tell her. Lately his memory had not been up to par. And really, what were the odds that the two of them would ever run into each other.

Slim? None? Well, only if they didn’t see each other in his security fortress again.

Clay turned his attention to another important matter. He needed to call Jake.

Sometime soon, when things weren’t so crazed, he planned to invite his old friend down to the property. He hadn’t seen Jake in person for several years, but they’d kept in touch now and again through e-mails. He wanted to discover if Jake still had the same proclivities he’d had in his early twenties. If he did, Clay wanted to explore a possible future.

Perhaps he could finally participate in the annual Stadium events instead of just watching the shows all alone in his box.

* * * *

Emma Rae made it back to her simple home well before her regular late-night bedtime. She lived in a ground floor unit of an unremarkable apartment complex, but it suited her needs. She took a long, hot shower to ease her bones and take the chill from her skin. She couldn’t get Zeke’s face out of her head. Then she started thinking about what his friend Luke might look like. Dark hair or blond? Light eyes or dark? Tall, short, slim, muscular? She was driving herself mad over men she would likely never see again.

But what else did she have if not her imagination? Still naked from her shower, Emma Rae slid on a short, silky robe and sat down at her home computer to do a little research.

She looked up Zeke’s license plate number from a place she probably shouldn’t have access to and got his last name. Zeke Traynor. A further legal search in the public records for his name yielded a boon. Among other entries, Zeke owned land just outside of Ryder with a man named Luke Benton. After a quick reverie trying to further picture what
he
looked like, she did a more detailed search of Luke’s name.

How sad that she really didn’t have anything better to do tonight than this. Scoffing at herself didn’t keep her from looking. Ultimately, she didn’t find an abundance of information on Luke. Just an old newspaper photo from more than fifteen years ago showing that he’d completed basic military training, but at least she got a glimpse of his overall appearance. He was very nice looking.

In the picture, Luke looked fairly young. Twenty, maybe. With his short-cropped hair beneath a formal military cap, it was difficult to picture what he might look like now. But she made the effort.

His hair was too short to discern the color, but his eyes were definitely light in color.

Emma Rae shut her laptop but spent a few more minutes daydreaming about both Luke and Zeke. She closed her eyes, let her mind wander freely, and played the
what if
game.

What if she weren’t so damaged by previous relationships? What if she dared to take a walk on the wild side with these two men? What if she pretended she was a part of their club? What if they came over and gave a hands-on demonstration of their two-men-pleasing-one-woman lifestyle?