Whiskey Sour (7 page)

Savage nodded and continued.
“For two weeks we’ve kept in touch with pawnshops and some private collectors who keep us informed of underground auctions, but we haven’t heard anything about the gems being sold. It’s like they never existed, which means whoever killed the courier and took them didn’t do it for money. At least not initially. They can afford to sit on them and wait until the right time to unload the product.”

Savage took another picture out of his folder and tossed it in the m
iddle of the other pictures. I sucked in air and my fingers tightened on the edge of my seat at the sight of another body. This one was of a woman, and she hadn’t met death easy.

She’d been beautiful before
her life had been taken. Her dark brown hair was long and silky, spread out like eerie tentacles on the gray carpet beneath her. She was young—really young—maybe a year or two over twenty, and her skin was smooth and flawless. Her dark eyes stared sightlessly and were filmed over with a cloudy substance, and her arms and legs were splayed at an odd angle. She was nude, so the single gaping slash across her throat stood out all the more grotesquely.

“Up close and personal,” Nick observed dispassionately. “Who is she?”

“Her name is Amanda Whitfield. A twenty-year old undergrad at Emory. She comes from a white-collar family, and on the surface she’s everything a normal college girl should be. With the exception that she turned up dead in a suite at the Ritz two days ago, and underneath her body was a diamond of the first water, and an exact match for one of the stones the Russian courier brought over.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“All of the gems were museum quality goods, and they’ve all been marked with a serial number invisible to the eye.”

“Handy,” I said.

“So Amanda Whitfield wasn’t who everyone thought she was,” Kate said, looking at the picture more closely.

“Why would you say that?” I asked.
One thing I always noticed about cops was that they immediately thought the worst of everyone, with the theory being that people always had something to hide. “Maybe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Nice college girls d
on’t end up murdered in a three-thousand dollar a night suite, surrounded by enough sexual paraphernalia to start their own business, and lying on top of stolen gems,” Savage explained. “But if I told you she was a high-priced call girl, the picture starts to make a little more sense.”

“You could’ve just said that in the first place,” I grumbled.

So I had a lot to learn in private detective school. Sue me. Savage grinned at me and I narrowed my eyes in his direction. A pretty face would only get him so far.

“What did her financials say?” Kate asked.

“That she was very popular in her profession.
She received direct deposits of $25,000 every two weeks for the past year and a half. She was barely eighteen when she started.”

“Was it traceable?” I asked and everyone turned to look in my direction. “What, I’m not allowed to ask questions?”

Nick winked at me and turned back to look at Savage, and I was so distracted by the uncharacteristic display of affection I’d completely forgotten the question by the time it was answered.

“It took some digging,
” Savage said, “but the money has been traced back to a company known as Sirin Incorporated. It has its fingers in a lot of pies—”

I snorted out a laugh at the unintended pun
—you know, call girls and fingers and pies—and cleared my throat. “Sorry,” I said. “Please continue.”

“And it’s the parent company for Sirin Escorts
,” he said as if I hadn’t interrupted. “I haven’t gotten any names as far as who its Board of Directors are, but the one name that kept popping up in conjunction with the company was a woman named Natalie Evans. She’s listed as CEO and president.”

Savage tossed another photograph out on the table and we all looked at the most stunning redhead I’d ever seen.

“Natalie is a forty-eight year old divorcee with no children and an unlimited bank account. She has connections from A-list Hollywood all the way to the White House. She pays for her girls to be educated, most of them getting advanced degrees in things like political science or international business so they can be well informed on different issues, and she also requires they be given lessons in etiquette and languages. The girls have to be in top physical condition, and according to the official propaganda of the company, sleeping with clients is grounds for termination.”

“Damn, maybe I should be an escort,” Kate said.

I was thinking the same thing. “That woman does not look forty-eight.”

“I need to moisturize more,” Kate added.

“Women are so strange,” Nick said. “This woman is the Heidi Fleiss of the South and all you can talk about is how good she looks.”

“That’s not all,” I said. “She also has great taste in shoes.”

I saw Savage take a quick drink of coffee to hide his smile. Apparently, badass FBI agents weren’t supposed to have a sense of humor. Savage regrouped and looked directly at me.

“We have no grounds to shut her down
because we can’t prove her escort service is a prostitution ring,” he said. “Everything on the surface is above board, and she has enough clout and high profile support that we’ve already been getting calls from the governor and two senators to back off. If there weren’t a dead body involved we’d be out of this completely, and I don’t know how long we’re going to be able to hold on to that.”

“
The official statement from Ms. Evans is that Amanda wasn’t scheduled to work that night, therefore she must have had plans of her own. We don’t have proof otherwise to dispute the fact. Just a body and a stolen diamond. But I can’t think of a reason that girl would have the gem unless someone who had the means and opportunity to know what it was gave it to her.”

“So what do we do?” It hadn’t gone past my notice that Agent Savage had been solely talking to me for the last little bit. I was starting to get the feeling Nick and Kate were
superfluous in this conversation.

“I’d like you to apply for a job with the company, or if that fails, make friends with some of the other girls. You’re a littl
e older than they like to hire, but you don’t look your age. You could pass for early twenties. You have the look of the kind of girl Ms. Evans likes to employ, so you have a shot.”

“You’ve got to be out of your mind,” Nick said incredulously.
He leaned forward and put his hands on the coffee table, intimidating the hell out of me but not doing much for Agent Savage. “Do you realize the risk you’re putting her in? She’s not trained for this.”

“Which is why I need her to do it,” Savage said calmly. “There’s not an agent or a cop out there I could put in undercover without them sniffi
ng her out. I need an outsider. Ms. Evans has been in this business for a long time for a reason. She’ll know how to spot a plant.”

“What happens if they don’t hire me?” I asked.

“It’s not the end of the world. You’re used to doing surveillance, so you can stick to that in the meantime, checking out the girls and documenting any suspicious behavior. Your involvement is just another avenue for us to take in this investigation, because right now we have nothing except two dead bodies and a fortune in missing gems. What do you say Ms. Holmes?”

“Addison,” I automatically corrected. “Who’s paying me?”

“You’ll temporarily be on FBI payroll as a consultant. Any other fees are between you and Kate.”

“I’m in,” I said, before I had the chance to think it through too much.
I needed the money, and beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“Addison—” Nick growled.

Kate hadn’t said anything, so I turned to look at her so I wouldn’t have to see the death glare Nick was giving me. She looked contemplative and a bit pensive, but she wasn’t issuing a protest. She shrugged her shoulders at me and sighed, and I knew she’d help me do whatever I needed.

Savage gathered up his files and looked at
his watch. He knew when to retreat. “I’ve got another meeting scheduled for today. Can you meet me tomorrow afternoon? Around three o’clock? I’ll talk you through everything and show you what I want you to do.”

“Sure, you can pick me up from here.” I figured that would be easiest, considering I was practically
living here for the moment.

“Tomorrow then,” Savage said and gave me the full power of his smile.

Oh, shit
. I could have just made a very big mistake. That was definitely interest in his eyes, and I could tell he’d thought he’d won this round with whatever the hell was going on between him and Nick.

“Nice to meet you, Ms. McClean,” he said, nodding first to Kate then Nick. “Detective.” And then he was gone and I was left in the room with two people who had so much to say I could practically see the words bubbling out the tops of their heads.

“I think I need to check in with Lucy and see if she has any important messages for me,” Kate said, looking back and forth between me and Nick.

Nick was glaring at me, so I stood up as if I were going to head out with Kate.

“Don’t you dare walk out that door,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”

“Not if you’re going to use that tone of voice,” I said.
“I’m a grown woman. Not your lapdog.”

“I think I’ll take a long lunch while I’m at it,” Kate interrupted. “Really, use my office for as long as you’d like.”

Neither of us paid attention as Kate left. I backed away as Nick stalked toward me until my hip hit the edge of Kate’s desk.

“He’s using you,
” Nick said. “And you’re so blinded by his looks that you’re not taking any time to think this through. This isn’t a game. It’s dangerous.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, poking my finger into his chest. “I’m not blinded by anything.
I’m not an animal in heat who heads toward whatever alpha male is left standing after a fight. I’m doing this because I need a job. You probably haven’t heard, but I’m currently unemployed.”

Nick winced and I watched the anger drain out of him. “The school board fired you?”

“Right the first time.”

“Shit, Addison. I’m sorry.” He pulled me into his arms and just held me for a minute. It was everything I could do to keep from crying.

“It’s okay,” I said, pulling back far enough that there was space between our bodies. “I’ve got a plan.”

“
I’ve heard. It involves you sticking your nose into business you’re not trained for and possibly ending up in a hotel room with your throat slit.”

I waved
his concern away. “You’ll keep me safe. And anyway, I’ve got a new plan. I’m going to get my private detective’s license. That way you won’t have to worry about me anymore.”

“Jesus,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s like the world is conspiring against me.”

“Hey—”

“
No, I’m fine with it. Really,” he said, holding up his hands as a peace offering. “I’ve known you long enough to recognize that stubborn tilt of your chin, and believe it or not, it might be good for you. The process of getting your license isn’t an easy one, and you’ll at least learn to keep yourself out of trouble. Hopefully.”

Nick looked off into the distance as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just said. I was having a hard time believing it too.

“Who are you, and what did you do with Nick?”

“Very funny. I mean it,” he said with more enthusiasm. “This will be good. You need a strong dose of caution in your life, and this is the way to get it.”

“You know,” I said, moving back into his arms and dropping my voice so it rasped with sultry charm. “You might not know this about me, but I’m pretty competitive.”

Nick’s eyes twinkled with laughter as he backed me up against Kate’s desk. “I never would have guessed that about you.”

His fingers dug into my hips and he lifted me up so I sat on the edge of the desk. He settled comfortably between my thighs and I sucked in air as I felt him hard and ready against me.  

“I’m going to want to be the top of my class, and I think the only way to do that is to get a private teacher to show me the ropes. You wouldn’t happen to know anyone, would you?”

I nipped at the corner of his mouth teasingly and reveled in the power as I watched his eyes go dark with lust and his body tighten against me. I wrapped my legs around his hips and twined my fingers into his hair as his mouth ravaged mine. I moaned as he licked into my mouth and whimpered as he ground himself against the most sensitive part of me. I was a hairsbreadth away from climaxing in the middle of a busy office building in the middle of the day. And I didn’t give a damn.

“Damn,” Nick said as he broke away. “I’m supposed to be on duty. I’ve got to go back to work.”

“Right. Kiss me again.”

I
gripped his shirt and pulled him back towards me, fitting my lips against his. He didn’t put up much of a fight, but eventually we were going to have to take this to the next level and I knew this wasn’t the time or the place.

“Tonight,” he said. “We can hold off for—” He stopped and looked at his watch. “Another five hours. And then we finish this. Once and for all.”