Good Girl Gone Bad (22 page)

“Thank you, for calling, Miss Flint.”

“Meet me in an hour under the Case Street overpass and Old Minion Road.”

“I—”

A dial tone droned in her ear.

Exactly an hour later, Phil pulled up on her bike at the corner of Case and Old Minion. She killed the engine and took off her helmet. The whiz of traffic overheard disturbed the night’s stillness. Only one streetlight, several hundred feet down the road, illuminated the area. Weak, gray light streamed from all corners. Not a car in sight. Where the hell was Margery? Was she in the right spot? She knew she was, she’d heard Margery loud and clear.

In answer to her question, high beams flashed ominously ahead of her and an engine roared to life. She double damned herself for riding the bike down, and more for breaking her word to herself.

She’d been set up.

Phil pressed the electric ignition button. The engine sputtered. She pressed it again. She looked up. Tires squealed ahead of her.

“Shit,” she hissed.

Instinctively, knowing she wouldn’t make it out of the car’s path even if she did get the bike started, Phil jumped clear of it. The vehicle picked up speed and Phil knew Margery wasn’t behind the wheel as it careened toward her. There was no time to jump back on the bike and try to start it, so Phil ran for one of the concrete girders.

The car raced closer, too close. As she rounded the girder the car sped past, the side mirror catching her elbow. She screamed in pain and rolled to safety. The car made a full one-eighty, tires squealing. It came to an abrupt stop. The engine revved, then it started back for her. Phil pulled out her Sig and pulled off several rounds.

Bullets thudded into the steel. Tires squealed again. The car swerved, then straightened, and sped past her. She rolled, trained the gun on the tires, and pulled off three more rounds, spending her magazine. Dammit!

Slowly, she stood brushing herself clean of debris. From a nearby booth, a phone rang. Ignoring the sting in her right knee and the throb in her right elbow, she limped to the phone booth. “Where is Margery?” she demanded, her breath forced.

A deep male voice altered by an electronic device answered. “That’s your only warning. Back off.”

“Who is this?”

For the second time, a dial tone droned in her ear.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“I
have a dancer out tonight, Kat. I need you to fill in.” Micki Donaldson the stage manager wasn’t asking.

Phil swallowed hard, gripping the phone so tightly her fingers tingled. “Um, I—”

“Look, Kat, I need you to step up to the plate. I have two dancers out sick and you’re my only option. Turn me down and you’re fired.”

Phil’s fight instinct took hold; she couldn’t be fired if she refused to dance! But this wasn’t about her and her pride. Nor was it about semantics or labor laws. This was about catching a kidnapper and probable murderer. Realization sprung deep in her gut. Like seeing a puzzle piece and knowing exactly where it fit, she knew the person who killed Scott Mason was also the person responsible for taking the dancers. And the killer was linked to the club.

“No problem, Micki. What do I need to do?”

“Good answer. Put a gimmick together and bring your own music. Be ready to go on by ten.” Once again, a dial tone droned in Phil’s ear. She was starting to get a complex.

For several long minutes, Phil contemplated her situation. She was bruised and sore from her incident Monday night. And try as she might to lay low, the past two days she’d been repeatedly interviewed by the Laurel and Hardy heading up Mason’s homicide case. When she’d gone back to the PD on Tuesday, she caught sight of Ty in the hall once. Just a glance of him sent her hormones rampaging, dammit. When she wasn’t making a statement at the PD, she spent time on the computer. The PD had a program that could cross-reference the phone numbers from the cell phone and home phone numbers they had pulled. So far nothing of interest, although there were several interesting numbers Milo frequented and paid dearly for. They all began with 1-900. Bud was a good son, calling his ninety-year-old mother daily at the Cedar Hills retirement home. It was more of the same for everyone else.

The warrant for the hard drives was proving to be an effort in futility. Shapiro wasn’t having any of it. Their hands were tied. You couldn’t shop a warrant. Once a judge refused, your ass was toast.

“I want more probable cause,” Shapiro had said.
Grrr.
Give them the damn warrant and she bet they could find all kinds of PC.

She paced the kitchen floor. She was beginning to wear a wedge in it.

Phil felt angry, frustrated, and worse, horny.

The nighttime dreams of her and Ty sweating up the sheets seeped into her waking thoughts. Every day she fought the urge to call the man, tell him to get his ass over here and take care of her.

She needed a dildo.

She also needed a gimmick and to learn the art of stripping in less than six hours.

Ty’s eyes locked on Phil the minute she strode into the backstage area. Blood careened straight to his dick. Her ass looked tempting as hell beneath the snug denim cradling it, and the white tank top she wore revealed the sexy curve of her breasts. He’d spent considerable time over the past couple of days plotting how to get between her legs. Repeated visions of him fucking her hard from behind tortured his waking and sleeping hours. So much for his distance methods. He convinced himself that once he had her, he could move on.

“Hey, Ty,” Candi said, her full breasts all but revealed in the tubetop she wore. She sidled up close to him, resting her hand on his back. Unbelievably, he felt no reaction. His gaze darted back to Phil, who was chatting with the stage manager. Had Phil spoiled him? The two women laughed, Phil went into the dancers’ dressing room. He scowled.

Candi’s roving hand slid down his fly. His hard-on flared. Nope, not completely ruined by Phil. “I’m happy to see you, too,” Candi crooned, standing up on tiptoe and pressing her offerings against his side. He couldn’t help the groan of frustration that followed or the way his hips bucked against Candi’s well-trained hand. “Let’s go to your office, Ty, and I promise I’ll take good care of this beauty.”

Grinding his teeth, Ty swept Candi’s hand away. “This isn’t the place or time.”

He strode past her toward the dressing room. “When will be the place and time, Ty?” she asked, following close behind him like a trained dog.

He heard her words, but they didn’t register; he was too intent on locating Phil.

Candi touched his hand. “When, Ty?”

Scowling, he turned to face her. “When what?”

“When will be the time and place for us?”

It took Ty a minute to register what she meant. “There
is
no ‘us,’ Candi.”

Micki strode out of the dressing room, her cell phone stuck to her ear. She gave Ty a cursory nod as she whisked by. If his suspicions were correct, there’d be no arguing with that dragon. He let her pass unaccosted.

“What do you mean, there’s no us? What about Lola?”

Candi’s voice rose several octaves, the sound irritating.

Mentally, Ty shook himself. He didn’t have time for this. There was only one reason for Phil to be in the dancers’ dressing room. No fucking way!

“Look, we’ll talk about all of that later. Right now I have work to do.”

“Can we meet later and talk, Ty? Maybe at my place?”

As he walked away from her, his eyes trained on Bud chatting with a new cocktailer, he said over his shoulder, “Maybe.”

So Bud had hired a new cocktailer and two dancers called in sick. And no Phil. Ty glanced around the crowded room. They were a rowdy bunch, and not typical of the club.

“Looks like redneck night at the carnie,” Jase said, sidling up next to Ty at the bar. Ty grunted and nodded imperceptibly at Jase’s latest persona. Looked like he just stepped off a reggae bandwagon. Blond dreads and three days’ worth of beard covered his face. He sported a colorful knit cap, tie-dyed polo to conform to the collar dress code, and skintight leather pants with sandals completed the island look.

Ty nodded. “Yeah—looks like murder is good for business. Not a vacant seat in the house.”

Ty swept the room for Reese and found him tucked in a corner, hunkered down under a black Stetson. He’d didn’t doubt Reese wore a pair of shit kickers. Give him a six-shooter and a gun belt and he could play the rogue marshal. Ty turned back to face the bar, confident his men had eyes everywhere.

“Where’s your new cocktailer, Kat?” Jase asked.

Ty grunted. “Dressing room.”

Jase chortled. “You telling me she’s dancing?”

“It would appear so.”

Jase grinned so wide Ty could have parked a Mac truck in his mouth. “What a player.” He nudged Ty. “Now that’s taking one for the team.”

He clicked his short shot of tea against Ty’s bottle of water. “Here’s looking at you, I mean, Kat.”

“Fuck you, Jase.”

As the night careened forward at a hot-fevered pitch, Ty’s gut went on alert. The first dancer slipped and fell during her routine and the crowd jeered her. The next dancer couldn’t quite pull off her dance, at least not to the satisfaction of the rabid men. Few women paid for the evening’s entertainment. It was almost exclusively male and they wanted blood, or, in this case, pussy.

Milo approached him several times, singling out the troublemakers. Although Ty disposed of them, it didn’t seem to matter. As soon as he kicked out the front-runners, more idiots surged forward, taking their place. Bud’s quiet resolve and professionalism vanished, the old man’s lines deepening in his face. The cocktailers complained about groping attacks and foul requests. The tension inside the club grew explosive. Ty hoped to hell no one lit a match.

After sending off two drunks in a taxi, Ty stepped into an eerie silence. His eyes swept the dark stage. His heart thudded in his chest and he waited like every other male in the place. He wanted to see this as bad as the guy standing next to him.

A shrill whistle echoed through the club, the sound resonating off the walls. The patrons erupted in panic. Ty stiffened.

“Raid!” someone yelled.

The spotlight flashed red and the whistle shrilled again, followed by the wail of a siren. Strobe lights flickered across the stage and fog from the dry ice machine spewed low, clouding the red-and-white flashing lights. The whistle shrilled three more times.

“Stop! Police!” the DJ screamed over the sound system.

Nervous laughter tittered across the room and chairs scraped as men sat down again. But Ty felt the expectation. The fog separated and the red-and-white strobes hiked up their speed, and through the mist the DJ called to the crowd, “Whatcha gonna do, bad boys?”

Phil strutted onto the stage in thigh-high black leather boots, black fishnet stockings attached to viewable garters, fitted beneath a little blue skirt complete with duty belt. A nightstick and cuffs dangled from the black leather. She wore a black SWAT vest and a police hat. And covering the top part of her face was a black velvet mask. Ty’s dick jerked hard along with every other cock in the room. He swore vehemently.

She cracked the whip in her right hand, standing straight with her legs spread, her chest out, daring the crowd to come near.

“The badder the boy, the better the chance Siren will cuff you and make you her slave,” the DJ taunted.

The place erupted and the song “Bad Boys” thundered through the speakers.

More than a dozen men rushed the stage and Ty hurried down to make sure none of them climbed onstage or touched Phil. As she wagged her hips and swayed to the driving beat of the music, Ty forced himself to watch the crowd instead of her.

Reese and Jase were already up in front. Even though he knew they were there for Phil’s protection, it bothered him. She turned, presenting her back to the crowd, and bent forward to give everyone in the room a great shot of her ass. She wiggled it, wagged it, and rolled it before straightening and half-turning to face the crowd. Her full red lips pouted, then she smiled and turned. As she strutted, swayed, and thrust at the crowd, she slid off one leather glove in a slow taunting strip. She dropped it on the stage and continued to the edge.

Son of a bitch, she was going to get hurt. Ty pushed through the crowd, stopping just shy of the edges of the stage. Siren’s eyes locked with his. She smiled seductively and sunk to her knees, her eyes never wavering. She parted her knees and moaned, her tongue darting out to lick her red lips. Her right hand slid down her belly to rest between her thighs, and in a slow deliberate movement, her hips undulated as if a man rode her deep and hard.

Throwing her head back, Siren rode out an imaginary orgasm. As she came, her eyes caught Ty’s and held them for one breathless heartbeat, electrifying him to his core.

He was going to have her. That night.

In a slow sexy charade, Siren stood up, her body swaying like Delilah for Sampson. Her long fluid limbs shimmered effortlessly under the flashing lights. Ty was close enough to smell her sultry intoxicating perfume.

Her smile promised torture.

She began her seductive strip, boldly strutting across the stage, daring any man to take her. Peeling one piece of clothing off with agonizing deliberation that whetted every man’s libido to bursting, Siren teased and tormented.

Ty’s temper soared. The crowd loved it. Phil was down to her G-string, garters, and bra. The music drummed and the crowd surged forward. They wanted to see all of her.

The tension thickened, the crowd grew louder, and Siren’s hips gyrated harder. Ty’s concern heightened. He caught Milo’s gaze and cued him to get up to the front.

As Milo stepped in front of a man, blocking his view, the drunk made the mistake of pushing Milo in the back. It caused the giant’s forward inertia to continue forward with three hundred and fifty pounds of driving force. The crowd was so thick, Milo’s bulk stopped after only a few feet.

Siren rubbed her ass up and down the pole as if it were every stiff cock in the house. Ty cursed. Siren’s eyes never wavered from Ty’s.