Caught (9 page)

The elevator doors slid open and Toni hurried out.

“Still, you’re taking this way more personally than you should.”

She whipped around to face him. “And maybe you should take it a little more personally. As far as I can tell, Kara’s nothing to you but a paycheck. You don’t care if we find her in a Dumpster, as long as you get paid.” She threw open the front door and stalked across the parking lot.

He caught her in three strides, his grip firm on her upper arm. “That’s not fair, and you know it. Of course I care what happens to her. I want to find her and make sure she’s okay as much as you do. But you have to remember that Kara’s not the innocent kid you thought she was, and she may be off having a great fucking time with her boyfriend while you beat yourself up worrying about her.”

She could see his point but had to get in one last jab. “Or her pissed-off ex-boyfriend could have kidnapped her.”

“Which is why we’re going to track down Toby and find out. But it’s probably just like the police said. She’s going to stroll into her house in the next couple of days and won’t give a shit that she left a lot of people worried sick.”

“Smile for the camera.”

Kara pressed herself harder into the mattress, trying to disappear into the firm bulk. Smile? Her mouth was shaking uncontrollably as her chest heaved with hysterical breath.

Her parents had never taken her and her brother to church, but now she couldn’t stop praying.
Pleasegodpleasegodplease. Let me get out of here. Please don’t let them hurt me.

So far her prayers had been answered. She hadn’t been hurt beyond the pain in her wrists where she’d been bound.

But that didn’t stop the clawing fear that kept a death grip on her heart.

After her conversation with the man, they’d put her in a shower, fully clothed, and told her to clean herself up or else.

She didn’t even wait for the threat of “or else” to start scrubbing herself clean.

Another man stood guard in the bathroom while she showered, a stocky blond guy who watched her through the beveled-glass door in a way that made her want to throw up.

They won’t rape me. They want me to be a virgin.
It was the only shred of hope she could cling to through her panic.

Her skin crawled when she remembered the way the man had talked about her “treasure.”

And now they were taking pictures of her. Pictures of her on a big, white bed, wearing a ruffled white nightgown, the kind an eight-year-old might wear. It was unbuttoned at the throat and pushed up her legs to show the white cotton panties they’d told her to put on.

It was way more clothes than she’d ever worn when Toby took pictures of her for his Web site. But she’d never felt filthier, knowing some gross old man was going to look at these pictures and fantasize about popping her cherry.

“Make them good,” the blond man said, watching from the foot of the bed as the bigger, stockier man aimed the lens at Kara.

“Relax,” the bigger man said in a thick European accent. “The camera is brand-new. The salesman said it was top of the line.”

“I want our buyers to have a clear image of what they’re getting.”

The camera clicked, flashing in her face. She focused on the spots, blocking out the faces of the men at the foot of the bed, fighting back nausea as they positioned her legs, spreading her knees wider, before the flash popped again.

Her father would cooperate. He wouldn’t let them go through with this. He would give them whatever they wanted to get her back.

But what if he’d found out the truth? That she wasn’t his perfect little girl? Would he still do anything and everything to get her back?

No, she couldn’t think that way. Her father was a good guy, and Kara knew he loved her even if he wasn’t good at showing it. He wouldn’t let anyone hurt her.

In the meantime, she would cooperate, do what they told her, keep herself from getting hurt.

E
THAN WAS RARELY surprised by anyone anymore. He’d always been good at reading people, and he thought he had Toni nailed. Serious, thought she knew everything because most of the time she did. The smart girl in the back of the class who kept quiet, rolling her eyes until she finally condescended to raise her hand and enlighten everyone. The girl who thought she knew the score and tapped her foot impatiently for everyone to catch up.

After watching her deal with Joyce and Laurie Friedland earlier, he’d expected her to try to run roughshod over the pothead roommate. Hell, Ethan had been all geared up to do the bad-cop routine and beat it out of the little punk.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

But Toni had thrown him, morphing in front of him from reserved computer nerd to cyber sex goddess, sassing her way into the apartment and filling Dave’s head with visions of Toni in all kinds of provocative poses. Poor kid had been toast from the moment she puckered that lush mouth and batted those big hazel eyes.

Toni, who had been staring out the window, turned at his involuntary chuckle. “What?” she said.

“Porn and feminine sexuality in mainstream media?” He laughed again, taking his attention from the road long enough to see her sly, pleased smile illuminated by the passing streetlights.

“It was the first thing that popped into my head. My friend Megan actually wrote a paper on that for a feminist studies class.”

“Research must have been interesting.”

“That’s one way to describe it.” They pulled into Toni’s parking lot and she let herself out of the car. She led him up the stairs, and Ethan took a second to appreciate the way her jeans outlined the subtle flex of her butt muscles as she climbed. Those folks at Lucky Brand really knew their business.

“The stuff she saw was enough to make Kara’s pictures look like they were taken for a Girl Scout recruiting brochure,” Toni said as she unlocked her door.

The mention of Kara quickly sobered him up. Right. They had a spoiled punk amateur pornographer at large, possibly with the teenage daughter of his client in tow. Not the time to be ogling a woman’s ass, no matter how tempting.

Toni flipped on the kitchen light and went to the refrigerator and grabbed two beers, twisting the cap off one before offering it to him. She carried her own to her desk and turned on her computer. “I don’t get it,” she said as she waited for her system to boot. “Why would a kid like Toby, with all that money, everything handed to him, bother selling drugs and porn? It’s not like he needs it to make student loan payments.”

“Never underestimate the boredom of a kid who has everything.”

She looked up from her screen. “And you have experience with this?”

“I grew up less than half a mile from Kara Kramer.” He took a sip of his beer as he waited for that to sink in.

Her fingers froze over the keyboard. “Your parents are rich?”

Ethan sank down on her couch and pulled out his phone. “Yeah, my dad was an investment banker in San Francisco.”

She swiveled around her her chair to face him, one dark eyebrow cocked over the frames of her glasses. “So did you sell drugs, too? Make your dad pay off the cops?”

He gave a short laugh. “No. We were pretty good.” He paused. “Well, mostly. And if we weren’t, nobody knew about it.”

She turned back to her screen and typed in a series of commands. “We? How many of you are there?”

“Three. There’s Derek—he and I are twins—and Danny, our older brother. We formed Gemini together three years ago.”

“You must be close if you manage to stay in business together.”

He shrugged. “We have our moments, like all brothers do. How about you? Any brothers or sisters?”

She opened her mouth and paused, as though not sure how to answer the question. Something dark passed in her gaze before she shook her head.

Something had happened there, something that hadn’t come up in the brief background check Derek had run. Ethan knew it would be relatively easy to find out, but he wanted her to tell him herself. An impulse he didn’t want to examine too closely—when was the last time he wanted a woman to share her secrets? In his experience, that was only asking for trouble.

“So why do you? Work, I mean?” she asked, obviously eager to steer the conversation back to him.

“Because we’d all be bored shitless if we didn’t,” he said. “Besides, my father set it up so that we don’t come into our money until we’re fifty. I’m not saying we haven’t had help. Dad gave us the seed money to start our business.”

“Generous of him,” Tony said.

Ethan nodded. Yes, it was generous, but it also meant they got roped in every time Dad went hieing off after some phantom lead.

“Why not just give it to you?” Toni asked.

“Because he’s smart and doesn’t want the guarantee of a pile of money to turn us all into shiftless assholes.”

“Oh, so it’s not the money, you managed to turn into an asshole all by yourself?” Toni said with a teasing smile.

Her comment cracked the tension building inside him. He laughed, wondering when he’d ever laughed at a woman calling him an asshole.

And why did he find the one woman who did so goddamn entertaining?

“Okay, I have Toby’s car,” she said. “It’s a black 2006 Yukon, California license plate XJY 424,” she read off.

Attention riveted on her screen, she paid no attention to him. She was so fucking pretty and seemed to get better-looking every time he looked at her. Even now, seeing her frown at her screen as she looked up Toby’s recent credit card activity, Ethan couldn’t stop wondering how she’d react if he went up and bit her on the neck, on that tender spot right below her ear.

He closed his eyes and sipped his beer, hoping it would ease the restless, itchy feeling he’d been fighting all night, as if his skin had suddenly shrunk one size too small. But the second his lids dropped, all he could think of was Toni, the way she’d felt when he’d pressed up against her while playing the part of her jealous boyfriend.

He opened his eyes again and studied her. She was working hard to keep that wall up, to pretend she wasn’t interested. But with his arm around her waist, palm flattened on her stomach, he’d felt her catch her breath, seen the pulse in her neck pick up speed when she’d felt the pressure of his thickening cock snugged up against the small of her back.

He couldn’t stop wondering if it had gotten her hot. If her thighs had subtly clenched and unclenched inside her jeans. When they got into the elevator, he’d wanted nothing more than to press the emergency override and pin her up against the wall, to slide his hand up between her thighs, slip his fingers down the front of her pants and see if her pussy was as silky-wet as he imagined.

Now wasn’t the time or the place for the full-court press, but as soon as this case was wrapped up—

“Aha, got him!” Toni crowed, her fist punching the air in triumph. Ethan casually crossed his ankle over his knee and tugged at the fly of his pants, praying she wouldn’t notice the way his cock was straining against his zipper. Either he was regressing to adolescence or he seriously needed to get laid.

He struggled to get a grip on his libido, reminding himself harshly of the seriousness of the situation. A girl was missing, for Christ’s sake, and all he could think about was fucking Toni so good and hard she wouldn’t be able to move for a week.

“He used a Visa to buy gas in Barstow, and at seven fifty-three yesterday, he used that same Visa to check into the Wynn Las Vegas Hotel.”

Ethan quickly dialed Jerry, eager to relay the information and have something to take his mind off sex. Or more specifically, sex with Toni.

While he left Jerry the information in a voice mail, Toni called Marcy and did the same.

“Jerry didn’t answer either?” Toni asked, walking over to the couch and plopping down beside him. “If my kid were missing, I’d have the phone glued to my ear. Where the hell are they, and why the hell aren’t they answering their phones?”

At the moment, Ethan didn’t particularly care, because he was all too aware of how close Toni was sitting. Her arm was only inches away, and he wanted to reach out, trace the inner curve with his fingers and see if the skin was as baby smooth as it looked.

“I should have known something was going on,” Toni said. The deep worry in her voice pulled him momentarily out of his lust-filled musings. “I knew she was having a hard time…” Toni’s voice trailed off. She took another sip of her beer and stared into space.

“You said that before. Her own parents didn’t know what she was up to.”

“I know, but I should have been looking out for her, checking up on her.” Toni shook her head. “If I’d known about this whole Kstar90 thing, we could have gotten on this before anything bad happened.”

“We still don’t know that anything bad has happened.”

“Nude photos of an underage girl all over the Internet isn’t enough?”

He held his hands up. “Point taken. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t hanging out with him willingly, having a great time. Did Marcy hire you to check up on her kids?”

“No.”

“Then how is Kara your responsibility?”

“She’s my friend. Don’t give me that look.” She frowned at his apparent surprise. “My parents split up when I was sixteen and I knew what she was going through.”

“And you didn’t want to spy on your friend?”

Toni slumped back against the lumpy sofa cushion. “I promised Kara I wouldn’t do anything behind her back,” Toni said. “I wanted her to trust me.”

Ethan placed his hand on the smooth skin of her forearm. “You kept your word to her. You shouldn’t feel guilty for that. You did what you could.”

“No, I didn’t,” she said, her voice tight. “The last time I talked to her I blew her off. She talked about wanting to get away, how her mom was a mess and her dad expected her to be perfect all the time. I told her she just needed to stick it out, she’d be off to college soon enough, blah, blah, blah.” She took a sip of beer and let out a disgusted sigh.

“Good advice.”

She shook her head and snatched her arm out from under his hand. “No—lame, parental, smile-and-nod advice. She needed someone to listen to her and I wasn’t listening. And now she’s gone, and I’m not going to just leave her out there like—”

She cut herself off, shifted her gaze away, and started to get off the couch.

“Like what?”

She sighed and closed her eyes, as though carefully weighing her response. “When I was seventeen, my sister Michelle ran away. We found her three months later. She’d been raped and strangled. She was fifteen.”

Her tone was even, careful to conceal any hint of emotion. Still, the blunt words hit Ethan like a blow. “That must have been awful for you. I’m sorry,” he said, his words sounding incredibly lame as they left his mouth.

“After my parents got divorced, she got into all kinds of trouble. You name it, she did it—drugs, sex, everything. I ignored her, kept my head down and focused on being the smart kid who didn’t cause any trouble.”

He could easily imagine her, dark-haired and somber, trying to keep her world together as everyone around her fell apart. He could relate.

“I’m sure Kara’s fine.”

“Yeah, that’s what they said about Michelle. ‘She’s run away several times, ma’am. She’ll come back when she’s ready, ma’am.’ And we were so tired of dealing with her by then we didn’t even bother looking for her.”

“Toni, you were just a kid yourself—”

“I was her big sister. I should have looked after her.”

He set his beer down and slid his arms around her shoulders. She stiffened slightly but didn’t move away. “Kara’s not like your sister. She’s not—”

“Not a drug-addicted juvenile delinquent? Maybe not yet, but she’s not exactly trending in the right direction.”

“Yeah, I know, but she’s never run away before, and she’s only been missing for two days. Even if she’s with Toby, she’s probably fine.” He felt like a broken record, but he wanted to ease the guilt and pain shadowing her eyes.

She looked up at him, her mouth pulled tight with strain, eyes dark and troubled. A heartbeat passed. Two. In his efforts to comfort her he’d gotten closer, close enough that her thigh was pressed against his. Close enough to smell the sweet woman-scent of her skin.

His hand slid from her shoulder to her neck. His fingers slid up, tangling in silky black hair as his thumb brushed back and forth over the creamy skin of her throat.

The itchy, tight-skinned feeling was getting worse as every cell went on high alert, every nerve screaming at him to cover her mouth with his own, slide his tongue between those plump, rosy lips, kiss away the sadness and guilt.

Not the time or the place, Taggart.
But his body was beyond listening. What the fuck was wrong with him? He never had a problem shutting down his libido. Sure, his brothers liked to tease him about being oversexed, but truth was he was always in control.

Until now.

Her eyes widened behind the lenses of her glasses as he leaned forward, but she didn’t try to move away or avoid his mouth as it came down and covered hers. His palm spread against her back and he pulled her close like he’d been dying to do since he’d first seen her in Jerry’s kitchen.

Her hands came up, curling over his shoulders, resting there, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do.

He figured he’d give her a little hint, and slid his tongue into her mouth for a taste. She was hot and salty-sweet. A shaky breath spilled into his mouth and her lips parted wider, sucking him inside as she leaned in to the kiss, as eager for it as he. For all that she’d been throwing up a brick wall, there was no doubt she was feeling the same insane chemistry he was. Her hands clutched at his back, twisting the fabric of his shirt, and the hungry little sounds she was making in the back of her throat were driving him insane.

What had started as a comforting gesture quickly spun out of control. Any thoughts of work, of the case, flew out the window as the taste and feel and smell of her coursed through his veins. Ethan cupped his hand around the back of her head, holding her in place as his mouth moved greedily over hers. Tongues tangling, lips sucking. Ethan tried to remember the last time he’d gotten hard as a spike from just a kiss, and couldn’t.