A Little Too Hot (9 page)

“No.”

His eyes flash to mine. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

His gaze hardens. “Did you ever hear of any transactions between Arroyo or his wife and the other dancers?”

“Never.”

He purses his lips and thumbs past a few pages before slipping a paper out and turning it to face me. “So, as you know, this is Benjamin Arroyo,” he says, tapping the end of his pen on the top corner. The page is a collage of candid shots of men’s faces, and the one he’s pointing to is Ben. In the shot, he’s standing on the sidewalk outside Benny’s, talking to Marcus.

I nod.

“These pictures are of his known associates,” he tells me, sweeping his hand over the rest of the page. “Do any of them look at all familiar to you?”

“What if I say yes?” I ask, knowing if I do, it would be a lie.

“Then I’ll see what I can do to make this all go away for you.”

“And, if I say no?”

He shrugs. “Then there’s nothing I can do to help you. You’ll be held until your hearing, and you’ll go to trial.”

I haul a deep breath, then give the photos a cursory glance. “I’ve never seen—” But my gaze catches on a face in the middle of the page. It’s the guy who was flirting with Nora. The one who had Ben all uptight.

“You recognize someone?” he asks just as the door is flung open behind me.

“Montgomery’s in the house,” Jenkins’s says. “But he’s on the line with Special Agent in Charge Navarro.”

Cooper ignores him, sliding the pictures closer. “Which one, Jezebel?”

“None of them. I told you, I only worked there for two weeks. I don’t know anything. And I didn’t prostitute myself. Harrison Yates is a manipulative asshole. Can you say ‘entrapment’?”

Cooper just looks at me, but Jenkins breaks out laughing.

“Harrison Yates,” he guffaws. “May as well have called himself Prince fucking Charming.”

I look between him and Cooper, confused.

Cooper cuts him a glare then levels me in his sharp gaze. “Providing a perpetrator opportunity to commit a crime does
not
constitute entrapment.”

I think about all of our encounters. He told me he wanted to touch me. I’m pretty sure he kissed me first tonight. Is that enough? At just the memory, my skin prickles into goose bumps, my heart races, my breathing gets shallow, and a thin sheen of sweat breaks over my whole body.

Damn
. How can I still want him?

Behind me the door clicks open, and I don’t have to turn around to know it’s him, as if my thoughts summoned him.

“Find anything?” Cooper asks, looking over my shoulder.

“The evidence team is going through it now. Hopefully we’ll have something by morning.” That warm honey drawl causes me to shudder and I want to slit my wrists. “How’s it going in here?”

Cooper scrapes his chair back. “Excuse me for a minute, Jezebel.” He looks past me to where I know Harrison is standing. “I need to talk to Agent Montgomery in the hall.”

“Don’t call me Jezebel,” I grumble, but I don’t turn around as he passes me on his way to the door. I can’t look at Harrison. My body’s reaction to just being in the same room is totally unacceptable, and that’s without even seeing him. I won’t let him know he still affects me.

“Your boyfriend’s looking a little rough around the edges,” Jenkins tells me with a smirk after the door clicks closed, and that’s when I realize Harrison must have gone outside with Cooper and that Montgomery person that Jenkins seems to hate so much.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I say, turning and finding the room behind me empty.

Muffled voices come through the door, Cooper’s and Harrison’s, as best I can tell. The door opens a minute later, and the chair next to me scrapes back. I don’t look as Harrison lowers himself into it, but I feel the weight of his gaze.

Cooper finds his seat across from me and sets my bag on the table. “This is your purse?” he asks me.

I nod.

He reaches in and pulls out my phone. “And this is your phone?”

“Can I have it?” I ask, holding out my hand.

He flips it in his hand and looks at the screen. “What would we find if we went through your texts, I wonder?” he muses.

I think about that for a second and realize there would be nothing incriminating. I didn’t even text anyone about Harrison. “About a hundred raunchy texts from my friend, Jonathan; a couple of conversations with Katie and Izzy; and, I suppose if you go back far enough, you’ll find a thousand to-do lists from my mom.”

“Nothing from Ben Arroyo?”

“It wasn’t like we were friends.”

He sets the phone down. “Jezebel here was just telling me that she recognizes someone on this page,” he says to Harrison, sliding the collage in front of me again.

I blow out a weary breath and hang my head. “No. Actually, if your hearing wasn’t so selective, you’d remember I said I didn’t know anything. And you’d also remember I told you not to call me Jezebel.”

“Sam,” Harrison says, too close to my ear. “If you work with us, things will go a lot easier for you.”

I spin on him and find he’s leaning his elbows on his knees. He’s so close I can feel the heat of his skin and I scoot my chair back. But he gives me a focal point for all the fear and anger and betrayal. The cyclone of chaos tearing my insides apart spirals into a sharp point, and all I want to do is stab him with it. “You know what? Fuck you.”

“Your girlfriend’s a little pissed, Montgomery,” Jenkins scoffs. “Think you need some work on your dating skills.”

Harrison cuts a look at Jenkins, but I’m still trying to work out what he said. He called Harrison, Montgomery.

When it all clicks, I stand so abruptly the chair flips over behind me. I glare down at Harrison. “Who the hell are you, exactly?”

Chapter Twelve

H
ARRISON . . .
OR WHOEVER
he is, gets up and straightens my chair behind me. Then he stands and locks me in his icy gaze. “Special Agent Blake Montgomery. L.A. unit, DEA.”

“Harrison Yates,” Jenkins snickers under his breath from across the table.

It’s a relief when Harrison/Blake shifts his gaze toward Jenkins. His voice turns sharp as broken glass. “That was the cover Special Agent in Charge Navarro put in place. I’ll be sure to give her your thoughts on it, though.”

Jenkins chokes on his snicker, suddenly looking like he swallowed a canary.

Cooper splits a glance between them. “Can we finish this pissing match when we don’t have a suspect to interrogate, gentleman?”

I sit and bark out a laugh.

Cooper’s eyes shoot to me, none too pleased. “You have something you want to share?” he asks, clearly fed up with this whole circus.

I shrug. “It’s just that I don’t see any gentlemen here. Just a couple of horny boys fighting over who got to feel up the girl.”

“Point taken,” he says, rubbing his forehead.

I was hoping to get a rise out of Harrison/Blake, but his expression is aggravatingly blank. “I’ll leave the suspect to you,” he says to Cooper, ignoring Jenkins’s snort. “If you need me, I’ll be in Evidence.” He spares a glance in my direction as he turns for the door, and as much as I hate myself, I can’t deny the tingly rush when our eyes connect. But his stay glacial. No crack in the ice or the cool exterior. “Somebody should get her some clothes,” he adds. Then he’s gone.

It’s just then that I realize I’m still in my skimpy Benny’s uniform. Without even thinking, I cross my arms, covering my bare midriff. “Can I call someone to bring me some clothes?”

“When we have what we need,” Cooper says, shoving the collage in front of me. “So, which one?”

“I want a lawyer.”

He drops his head in defeat. “This is going to be a long night.”

T
URNS OUT,
I
don’t need clothes. The DEA has something special for me. A gray jumpsuit that could double as a potato sack.

It was dawn when Cooper finally led me out of the interrogation room to a holding cell, which really is just another white room. But instead of a table and chairs, this one has a cot. And a window. I watched the sun come up over the city, then laid on the cot and closed my eyes as my body burnt through its last ounce of adrenaline. I might have slept for an hour, tops.

My door clicks open and Cooper steps through. His face is strained and he looks like he hasn’t slept in three weeks.

“You look like shit,” I tell him, though I haven’t looked in a mirror in a while, so it’s probably one of those glass house deals. I really shouldn’t be throwing stones.

He sets a paper coffee cup and something in a McDonald’s wrapper on the table near the door. “Your lawyer will be here in an hour,” he says without acknowledging my comment.

“Thank God.”

His eyes flick to me, and it’s clear I’m getting on his last nerve. “Eat if you want, then we’ll show you where you can get washed up.”

“Fine.”

He nods and disappears out the door.

A combination of my caffeine headache and my growling stomach draws me off the cot, and I drain the coffee, then pull the wrapper off the food to find an Egg McMuffin, which I devour. I’m just licking my fingers when the door clicks open again. I brace myself for Cooper, but it’s a woman in her late twenties with long dark hair pulled back in a sleek bun. And she’s pregnant, a definite baby bump under her blue top.

“If you want to shower, I’ll take you to the bathroom,” she says.

I round up my trash and she takes it as I follow her out the door.

“I’m Special Agent Nichols,” she tells me as she leads me up the hall. “If you need anything, I’m your gal.”

“I need to wake up from this nightmare,” I grumble.

She glances over her shoulder at me. “Can’t help you there.”

“Where’s Cooper?” I ask.

“He’s with the team in Evidence.”

The team. Is Harrison in there?

Harrison doesn’t exist, I remind myself, acid rising in my throat. The guy I wanted was a figment of my imagination. Fake.

Every door we pass has a card scan on it, and when Nichols scans her card and opens a door for me, it’s into a small bathroom, complete with a stall shower. “There’s a shampoo and soap dispenser in the shower, and a towel, fresh toothbrush, toothpaste, and a comb for you there,” she says with a nod at the shelf over the sink. “Take your time and knock when you’re done. I’ll be right here.” She closes the door and I hear it latch behind me.

I pull open the glass door and start the shower, then shuck off my jumpsuit. The water is super hot when I step in, but I don’t turn it down. I stand here for a long time as it scalds my skin, thawing me a little. Once I’ve shampooed, washed, and dried off, I climb back into the same jumpsuit I just took off.

I try tugging the comb through my thick hair for a few minutes before giving up and peeling the plastic wrapper off the toothbrush. I look at my pink face in the mirror as I brush. Without my stage makeup, I look younger. Really young. And scared. I pull my eyes away from the mirror as my face crumples and spit into the sink. I’m not going to cry.

But as I brace my hands on the sink, I do. Tears trickle over my lashes and into the basin.

I rest on my elbows and let them flow for a minute to get them out of my system, then take a few deep, calming breaths and drag my sleeve under my eyes. I move to the door without looking back into the mirror. When I knock and the door opens, my heart stalls and an electric jolt zings up my spine.

I didn’t expect Blake.

I lower my face. He’s never seen me without my layers of stage makeup, and I feel suddenly too exposed without a mask to hide behind. Vulnerable. “Where’s Agent Nichols?”

“Elsewhere,” he says, his tone as flat as his expression. Without a word, he leads me to a room and scans his ID, then pushes open the door.

Sitting at a table is a gray-haired woman in a charcoal business suit. She looks up and sees me, and her voice is a deep purr as she says, “I’ve got to go, but I’ll check back later,” into her phone. She tucks it into a briefcase on the table next to her and pulls out a file, then stands and holds out her hand. “I’m Yvonne Grantham, your court appointed lawyer. You must be Samantha.”

“Sam,” I say, shaking her hand.

She gives Blake a narrow-eyed look. “You can leave.”

My bunched insides relax, and I immediately know I can trust her.

Blake splits a glance between us. “We’ve got some questions for her,” he says through a tight jaw, obviously not happy with his dismissal.

She gives him a hard look. “They’ll have to wait until I figure out if you’ve even got a case against my client, Agent.”

His icy gaze cuts through her as he steps into the hall and closes the door.

“This is highly unusual,” Yvonne says, sliding into a chair and indicating I should do the same. “I wasn’t able to find another case of the DEA arresting someone on solicitation charges. They usually leave that to the local police.”

“He set me up. I didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, flicking a hand at the door.

“Him?” she says, her eyes widening. “He’s your arresting agent?”

I nod. “He came into Benny’s the night I started and sat at my stage, then he hired me for privates that night and the next. He got all touchy and told me—”

“Back up,” she says, jotting notes on a pad. “What do you mean, ‘he got all touchy’?”

I squirm a little in my chair. “He said he wanted to touch me . . . and I sort of let him.”

“At any point in all this . . . touching, did he identify himself as a federal agent?”

“No, never,” I say, shaking my head adamantly. “At least, not until he pulled out his badge and arrested me.”

“So, let’s talk about that,” she says, her eyes lifting from her pad to my face. “They haven’t disclosed if there are tapes yet, so tell me, what exactly happened?”

A jolt of fresh panic freezes me in my seat. “Tapes?”

She nods. “It’s unlikely your arresting agent wore a wire because they can’t try you in federal court for solicitation, and California has a two-party consent law. If they taped you without your knowledge, that would be grounds for dismissal, and they know that. But the Feds don’t always give a rat’s ass about state law, so it’s possible.”

I picture Blake’s body as his shirt fell open: ink over sculpted perfection. “I didn’t see any wire.”

“It would have been concealed under his clothing.” She’s riffling through some papers in her briefcase and stops at the look on my face, which I’m sure is somewhere between mortification and chagrin. “How far did this go, Sam?” she asks warily.

“Um . . . just . . . not too far, but I saw his chest. There was nothing on it.”

Her lips press into a line. “So tell me in as much detail as you can exactly what happened.”

I take a deep breath. “He hired me for a private dance, and . . .”
Shit
. “We’d been flirting for a few days and all, and I told him I wanted to go back to his hotel with him.”

“Did you ever ask for money in exchange for sex acts?” she asks, unfazed by my admission.

“No!” My fingers dig into my knees. “I mean . . . he didn’t agree to go back to his hotel because he said someone else was staying in his room with him. And then, somehow, we ended up kissing and I sort of started taking off his clothes—”

Her eyes flick to me again. “Right there in Benny’s?”

My face is burning. “Yes. In the VIP room. But I never asked for money.”

“How do private dances work? There’s a fee involved?”

“Yeah.” I swallow. “Two hundred for a half hour. He bought an hour.”

So, I guess I
did
ask for money. I hang my head and my face pulls into a grimace.

“And, did he ask you for sex?”

My stomach tightens, and I swear I’m going to be sick. “Not in so many words, but he kissed me . . . and I could tell he wanted it . . . if you know what I mean.”

The pen in her hand stops moving, and she levels me in her severe gaze. “You were clear that he’d paid for your services.”

“Yes.”

“And to the best of your knowledge, was he clear those services did not include sex acts?”

Panic starts to cloud my brain, twisting my thoughts into a jumble. “I told him he wasn’t allowed to touch me. There was a three feet rule.”

She jots another note. “At any point would you have given him reason to believe it was okay to break this ‘three feet rule’?”

I rub my forehead as the sinking feeling in my stomach intensifies. “I modified it to one foot.”

“But you didn’t tell him he could touch you.”

“No. He said he wanted to and I told him he couldn’t.”

“And did he?”

God, it’s hot in here. I wipe beads of sweat off my upper lip with the back of my hand. “Yes.”

“Who initiated the contact?”

When I don’t answer right away, she looks up from her pad. “I need you to be honest if I’m going to be able to help you.”

All I remember is his body pressed against mine, but I don’t know for sure how we got there. “That’s a little bit fuzzy.”

“Fuzzy,” she repeats.

I want to say it was Harrison, but I honestly don’t remember. What I do remember is that I wanted him. “I don’t know . . . it was pretty mutual.”

Her expression takes on a cynical edge. “So you just sort of collided in the middle of the room?”

“No.” I close my eyes and picture the room—where we were. I was at the door, totally embarrassed that I’d just propositioned him and he’d turned me down, and then the next second, we were kissing . . . “Up against the door. He came to me.”

She nods. “Good. If we’re going to go with an entrapment defense, that will help.”

“What if it’s just his word against mine? What if I can’t prove it?”

“The beautiful thing about the United States of America, Miss West,” she says, arranging the papers in front of her into a stack and tucking them into her briefcase, “is that you’re innocent until proven guilty. The burden of proof is on them.” She snaps her briefcase shut. “I’m assuming they can’t produce a witness?”

I shake my head. “We were alone.”

“Even if they have tapes, they won’t show proximity.” She scrapes her chair back and stands. “Don’t talk to anyone about the case without me present. I expect they’ll get your arraignment on the docket within the next day or two. I’ll come back before then to fill you in on what to expect.”

“So . . . how will this work? Can I go home?”

She leans her hands on the table. “Because you have no criminal record, and this isn’t a violent crime, I don’t think they’ll hold you here until trial.”

I lean back in my chair. “When will I know?”

“The judge will make that decision at the arraignment.”

I’m suddenly cold as my blood returns from my face to my bloodstream, the mortification ebbing. “So, I’m stuck here until then?” I say, wrapping my arms around my middle.

Her face softens. “Let me talk to them. I’ll see what I can do.”

She turns for the door, and as it clicks closed, I slouch into my chair, feeling more alone than I ever have in my life.