Brazen (B-Squad #1) (6 page)

Elisa flashed an evil grin, then began humming as she slathered the wax over one section of his short beard. The con artist with a heart of black coal was a master of disguise and her transformational skills had helped on more than one mission for the B-Squad, but she seemed to be enjoying the prospect of yanking out every single strand of hair in his beard a little too much.

After hacking off most of his hair and dyeing it from ebony to a brown only a few shades darker than his skin, she’d said she needed to wax off his beard to make sure a black five o’clock shadow didn’t fuck up his disguise. There was no doubt after what went down at Bisu Manor six months ago that Sterling Walsh had a file on him as well as Bianca, but he still wasn’t buying Elisa’s explanation for the extreme makeover.

“Do we really need to do this?” he asked as she rubbed a strip of white cloth over the wax.

“Probably not.” She gripped the edge of the cloth with one hand and pressed the other down hard on his jaw, pulling his skin taut. “But you sure as hell deserve it.”

The words were barely out of her mouth before she jerked her hand back and peeled off half the skin on his face along with the wax—at least that’s what it felt like. He blinked away the black dots on the edge of his vision as he worked his jaw back and forth.

For her part, Elisa just stood there gleefully holding up the cloth covered in wax and hair, but not—surprisingly—his skin. How in the fuck some people voluntarily did this to their balls, he couldn’t comprehend. The idea alone made his nuts nervous.

“Fucking A.” He pressed his hand to the sticky part of his face that throbbed like he’d just gotten the business end of his dad’s belt. “You could warn a guy.”

“Oops.” She dropped the cloth into the trash and loaded the stick up with another glob of hot wax. “My bad.”

Gritting his teeth, he forced his hand down and turned his head to give her better access to the virgin territory on his face. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Keir, Marko, Lash and Duke watching. Each of them wore matching horrified expressions. He would have laughed if Elisa wasn’t pressing another cloth strip to his wax-covered beard.

“I promise it’ll only hurt half as much as I wish it would.” The words came out as smooth and sweet as if she’d just told him that mint chocolate chip was the best flavor ice cream ever. Then she ripped the cloth back with a gleam in her eye.

He should have expected this. Bianca, Vivi, Lexie and Elisa were a tight unit. Lash called them the coven—but only behind their backs, because he had a genius IQ to go along with that pretty-boy face of his.

While his chipper tormentor, Elisa, gathered more hot wax, he searched his periphery vision for Bianca and came up with nada. She was either still hunkered down in the bedroom or was keeping out of his sight line.

Fighting Bianca’s righteous anger with orgasms may not be the best plan he’d ever thought of, but he’d use what worked until she finally got it through her stubborn head that nothing had changed between them. She argued that he didn’t know her—he caught sight of Elisa coming toward him with more hot wax and tensed his jaw—well, he wouldn’t be going through this shit if he didn’t and wasn’t willing to do anything for her.

Bianca could hide all she wanted during the flight, but as soon as the jet touched down on the Indulgence Resort’s private airstrip, they were going to have to work together to find Gidget, and he meant to use that time to his full advantage—even if he had to go through hot wax hell first.

T
wo hours
until touchdown and the Pacific Ocean stretched out brilliant blue below the jet. Taz stretched out his legs and blinked the sleep out of his eyes. He’d fallen asleep with the brown colored contacts in, adding a weird itchiness to his eyes to go along with the pinch in his neck and the numbness in his ass, thanks to the comfortable looking chairs that were not.

As soon as the room came into focus, he searched the cabin for Bianca. She wasn’t huddled up with Lexie, tethered as always to her laptop, or playing cards with Duke, Lash and Marko.

The cockpit door opened and Bianca walked out still chuckling at something Vivi must have told her. Her gaze connected with his and the smile curling her full pink lips froze and her eyes went wide. It was the first time she’d seen him since Elisa had tried to chop, wax and dye her way into the makeover torturer hall of fame. He’d seen the results in the mirror. He’d gone from looking like the rough-around-the-edges Roma boxer who’d fought his way to the light heavyweight to looking like some rich, preppy hedge fund manager asshole type—exactly how Trey Alderson should appear.

His hand automatically went up to the short buzzed sides. The top was longer but Elisa had snipped off the waves that always fell into his face. His movement must have knocked the shock out of Bianca, because her smile tightened before melting into a grim line. She narrowed her brown eyes and looked away, keeping to the opposite side of the cabin. Still, it was tight quarters and she couldn’t walk past him and still stay out of arm’s reach.

But she didn’t hesitate. Not his girl. No, she brazened past him, almost making it—but he caught her.

An electric current shot straight to his cock as soon as he wrapped his fingers around her slim wrist. Her step faltered just the tiniest bit, but he clocked it. Attraction, passion, anger, hunger, and want made the air sizzle around them. His cock went from stiff to impossibly hard. One tug and he could tumble her into his lap. Would she resist? Judging by what had happened in the bedroom earlier, not for long. She still wanted him as much as he wanted her.

Leverage. That’s what he had, and he was going to use it—just not yet.

Color high in her cheeks, she pulled away from him and he didn’t try to hold her there.

Bianca disappeared into the bedroom where Elisa had set up her makeover torture center. She could go hide from him a little bit longer because once they got to Indulgence, she wouldn’t be able to.

Someone who wasn’t hiding sat bold as brass next to the table where his brothers were playing cards.

Tamara held her chin high and her shoulders back, her face as serene and icy as a mountain lake in January. At first, second and even third glance, she looked as if she didn’t give a shit that everyone on the jet thought the worst of her. She played a good game, but Taz saw the cracks in her facade. Her knee hadn’t stopped bobbling since they left Ft. Worth, her bottom lip was going to be bloody soon if she didn’t stop chewing it and tension had her entire body strung tight.

“Oh look, Butt Chin is awake,” Duke called out, using the nickname his brothers had used for him until he’d gotten old enough to grow a beard.

Taz dragged his gaze away from Tamara and flipped off the grinning fools gathered around the table. Too drag-ass tired to do more than that, he let his eyes drift close, but the vibration of his cell phone against his thigh stopped him from getting any much-needed sleep.

The caller ID read: Isaac Camacho. He glanced up at Tamara. She lifted her chin and looked away, out the window and at the deep blue below. She could ignore him all she wanted, that didn’t mean he was just going to hand over a million dollars without getting a little more information first.

He pressed the talk button. “That didn’t take long.”

“I know. Sometimes it hurts to know I’m so good,” the freelance investigator said in his trademark gruff bass that made it sound as if the former Recon Marine smoked a pack or two a day. “Not that I can take all the credit on this one. Your girl isn’t exactly an unknown entity.”

“She’s not my girl,” Taz snapped back. “And what do you mean by unknown entity?”

“Whoo, simmer down there, man,” Camacho chuckled, obviously not impressed by the show of frustration. “The Idaho State Police have a warrant out for one Miss Tamara Post.”

Taz’s gaze snapped back to Tamara, but he kept his voice low. “What for?”

The sound of papers shuffling came over the line before Camacho said, “Breaking and entering, violating a restraining order, and kidnapping.”

“What the fuck?” If Camacho had reported Tamara was a space alien who ate kittens and bathed in orange juice, he wouldn’t have been more shocked.

“Yeah, not a bad sheet for a beauty queen.”

Taking a deep breath, Taz laid the facts out in his head like a to-do list but for the life of him he couldn’t mentally check off any of them. “Who did she kidnap?”

“Her dead sister’s kid,” Camacho said. “Seems her sister’s will named Tamara as the sixteen-year-old’s guardian. The sister, Amelia, and the husband, Jarrod Fane, were divorced. I’m still working on getting the court transcripts, but judging by the number of files connected to the proceedings, it was one nasty divorce. But of course, I have just the skills needed to get some details out of a sheriff’s office clerk with the sexiest little voice.”

Like most of Lash’s old Marine buddies, Camacho could drag out a story with the best of them—which was probably why he and Loud Mouth Lash had stayed close after they’d both gotten out of the Corps. Still, if he didn’t cut him off now, Camacho would talk until his cell battery died.

“Give me the short and snappy, Camacho.”

“Alrighty,” he said. “The ex-husband leads some kind of cult. Think Jim Jones or David Koresh mixed with some survivalist militia outside of Redfin, Idaho. I’m talking some creepy, well-armed motherfuckers. I’m surprised the sister made it out alive to even file for divorce, but she did and with the daughter, Essie.”

He tried to remember everything Tamara had ever told him about Amelia. It hadn’t been much. She was younger. A teacher of some sort, maybe kindergarten. They didn’t keep in touch. Now he knew why.

“I take it she wasn’t alive for long after she got out?”

“Three weeks after the divorce was final, she disappeared. Body showed up five days later. Tamara, who hasn’t gone by your last name for years from what I see, was with Essie at the time and skedaddled with the kid.”

Okay, shitty so far but not illegal. “So where did she go wrong with the law?”

“The ex was contesting the guardianship and the courts had declared that Tamara had to stay local with the kid and give the father unsupervised visitation until the case was decided. It seems she took exception to that.”

It was a world of suck all around and he was in the middle of it. “Any news about the divorce papers?”

“Still waiting to hear back from a court clerk in New York.”

“Not a hot clerk you could sweet-talk?”

Camacho snorted. “Got stuck with the one woman on the planet who doesn’t find me charming.”

Normally that would have gotten a laugh, but not this time. Being on the lam would explain why she needed the money, why it needed to be wired to an offshore account and why she’d shown up in his loft in full bitchy beauty queen mode willing to bleed him dry of a million dollars.

“Thanks, Isaac.”

“You need anything else?” the other man asked.

“This whole thing sits like a concrete block in my gut. Keep digging, focus on the ex-husband. Nice or not, Tamara isn’t the motherly type. If she’s sticking her neck out like this, there has to be more to it.”

“Will do.”

Taz ended the call with even more questions than he’d had before talking to Camacho. The whole thing made his left eye twitch.

In all the years he’d known her, he’d never even seen Tamara hold the door open for someone, let alone risk everything for another human being. There was more to this than family obligations and he was going to find out what.

“Tamara.” He stood up and crossed the narrow aisle to the kitchenette cubby and opened the curtain blocking it from view. “I need to speak to you.”

She sighed and her shoulders dropped for an instant before she jammed them back up into place. “Anything you want, Honey Bear.”

As a unit, his brothers turned and watched as she strolled over, passed under his arm, entered the small kitchenette and went out of view of anyone in the cabin.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Duke asked, giving the closed bedroom door Bianca had walked through earlier a meaningful look.

His eye spasmed. Shit. He wasn’t even sure he’d know a good idea if it ran him over and backed up to have a go at him for a second time. That didn’t change the fact that he had to find out what Tamara was really up to before her presence fucked things up even more than it already had.

* * *

Standing naked, except for her thong, Bianca held her arms out in the bedroom’s makeshift spray tan booth while Elisa turned her orange. Okay, not orange exactly. It was more of a light bronze. Still, it definitely wasn’t her regular shade of pasty.

The fake tan was step one in the total body makeover into Bethany Alderson before they touched down at Indulgence Resort. She’d always thought having her own
Miss Congeniality
moment would be fun. She was wrong.

Bianca shook her head. “This is weird even for us.”

“After everything we’ve been through, I don’t know if there is such a thing as weird anymore.” Elisa put down the tanning airbrush and took off her goggles. “Do you remember when we spent the night in the air shaft at St. B’s to keep Lexie company when she got put in solitary for a week?”

“How could I forget?” she asked as she slipped on a thick spa robe. “I’m surprised I don’t still have dents from your elbows in my sides.”

Elisa shrugged. “Hey, it was a tight fit.”

That was putting it lightly. Even as skinny pre-teens, they’d had to squeeze to fit into the narrow vent shaft. She’d had bruises for a week after the night spent in there, but it had been worth it to hear Lexie’s voice. She’d been in “the closet” for three days before they’d figured a way in. They hadn’t been able get the vent cover off, but Lexie had sounded almost like herself by the time they’d army crawled their way back to the B dorm.

“The closet” had been just one of the ways the school administrators had kept the students in line. The others weren’t any more humane. Extreme food rations. Extra chores to be completed between the hours of one and four in the morning. Revoking the few privileges students had, such as Sunday afternoon in the library. Life at St. B’s had been rough. So much so that three students committed suicide and the administrators tried to cover it up.

On the way back from “the closet” when Elisa was having her turn being shut in the tiny room, Bianca had overheard the administrators talking about the students’ deaths and how they’d covered it up to make it look like they’d run away from St. B’s. She’d told her girls, and Lexie had hacked into the school computer system to access the automatically backed-up security video feed that showed the girls hanging themselves in the gym. Headmaster Sterling Walsh was on tape, cutting the girls down and ordering the janitor to take the bodies into the city and dump them in a drug house so the police would find them there.

After seeing that, the girls agreed they had to do something. They’d hatched a plan. Vivi, Lexie and Elisa started the mother of all brawls in the library while Gidget and Bianca snuck into reception and made the call to the cops. After that, the school got shut down and she’d been sent back to the Sutherland ranch outside of Houston. The other girls had been scattered across Texas. For years they’d been apart, but they were back together now—and all because that shithead Walsh had kidnapped Gidget and put targets on Vivi’s, Elisa’s, Lexie’s and Bianca’s backs.

He didn’t realize that while they may have been physically separated, the bond they’d forged at St. B’s couldn’t be severed—it only grew stronger with time. If it hadn’t been for Vivi, Lexie, Elisa and Gidget, Bianca didn’t know if she would have made it out of St. B’s alive. They’d saved each other then and they were still doing it now.

Emotion squeezed her throat tight. “We’re going to find Gidget.”

“Was that ever a concern?” Never one to entertain a single doubt, Elisa winked and patted the chair in front of her. “Come on, we land in a little over an hour and I have makeover magic to work.”

Nearly an hour and what felt like a pound of contouring makeup later, Bianca still sat in the chair facing away from the mirror while Elisa did her thing.

“Can’t I just take a look?” she asked as she fought not to blink while Elisa wielded the mascara brush.

“Nope.” She capped the mascara and grabbed a poofy makeup brush.

The not knowing was starting to get to her. She fucking hated being in the dark. “You’re mean.”

Elisa dabbed the brush into a soft pink blush. “Not as mean as I was to that pretty slimeball.”