Skin Deep (9 page)

Tap-tap-tap-tap went one bright green nail against the countertop. “Nothing. That’s all I remember.”

“Bullshit.”

Carmen’s eyes darted toward Kellan at the same time his darted toward Isabella, but Isabella didn’t stand down. “I need this guy, Carmen. I think you know why.”

“I know nothing,” she snapped, and Moreno’s voice gentled to balance out her thorny edges.

“You’ve seen him around, haven’t you. From before you started working here.”

The prompt was enough to either take Carmen by surprise or make her throw in the towel. A little, anyway. “Maybe. Look”—her dark stare swiveled over the tiny dining area beside them before moving furtively to the plate glass windows facing the pier—“this is big shit, Isa. These people…you don’t understand.”

Kellan’s blood chilled at the sudden, nameless emotion in Carmen’s eyes, then turned colder still at Isabella’s reply.

“Believe me, I do. That’s why I need to know what you know,
mija
. So I can do something about it.”

Carmen’s frown expressed her doubt at the possibility in no uncertain terms. Still, she looked out at the water in the distance and said, “There was only the one guy in the house when I delivered the pizza. I’ve seen him before. Once. Six, maybe eight months ago. I was at a club and he invited me to a private party.” She paused, but only long enough to shrug. “Said I was his boss’s type, and if I went, I could have whatever I wanted. Booze, pills, heroin. Said it would be just a taste of the future.”

Moreno didn’t move, just listened, and even though Carmen’s story was kicking him in the gut, Kellan did the same.

“But something about the whole thing felt off,” Carmen continued. “A little too good not to have a punch line. I said no, and one of the other girls who was there didn’t, so he didn’t push. But I never saw her again.”

“Would you recognize her if you did?” Moreno asked, but Carmen shook her head.

“I don’t think so. She was pretty new to the scene, and I was on my way out. I’d only met her once or twice.”

Moreno met the apology on Carmen’s face with a quick shake of her head. “That’s okay. How about the guy? He got a name?”

“Something weird, like one of those MMA fighters. Fury? Or maybe Rage? Something like that. Huge guy. Longish dark hair. He gave me the fucking creeps. But he didn’t recognize me when I delivered the pizza, and I got the hell out of there, fast.”

Moreno nodded in encouragement. “Do you remember what club you were at when he asked you to the party?” she asked, but Carmen shook her head, reaching out to check the napkin dispenser by the register even though it was already full.

“No. I’m sorry. I ran the circuit that night, so it could’ve been half the clubs on the north side. A couple of them have even closed since then. It’s been a while.” She paused, her chin snapping up as if someone had just snuck up on her to yell boo, and concern washed over Isabella’s face.

“Carmen? What is it?”

“No. Nothing.”

But this time, rather than going all pit-bull on her, Isabella softened her demeanor and her voice to just above a whisper. “I think this guy is hurting people, Carmen, and I really need to find him. Help me out here. Please.”

“Danny Marcus. He and I used to…” Carmen dropped her gaze to the floor tiles. “He’s a john. Small-time dealer, he used to trade product for services. I just remembered that Danny was there that night, talking to the wrestler guy. I heard he’s running with a high-end group now, moving up in the game. Real fancy.”

Kellan thought of the background in the photos he’d found, and his heartbeat picked up the pace. It was a stretch—a yoga instructor’s wet dream, actually. But at least it was something.

Apparently, Moreno thought so, too. “You know where I can find him?”

Carmen nodded. “Danny might be moving up in the game, but he ain’t gonna forget his roots when they mean he can make a fast buck or get an easy lay. He still slums it sometimes, doing business over by the park on Atlantic Boulevard Friday and Saturday nights. Skinny guy, really curly dark hair. Talks about himself in the third person all the time, you know ‘Danny Marcus says he’s ready to play,’ and stupid shit like that.”

She paused to laugh, although the sound didn’t hold a whole lot of joy. “He has a thing for Hispanic girls. He’ll probably love you. ’Til he finds out you’re a cop, anyway.”

“Thank you, Carmen. You’ve been really helpful.” Isabella took the other four twenties from the back pocket of her jeans, carefully putting them into the tip jar before taking a step back from the counter.

“Aren’t you gonna eat your pizza? I thought you said you were hungry.” Carmen pointed to the paper plates still splitting the divide between them, but Moreno just smiled.

“The pizza’s for you. Take care of yourself,
mija
. I’ve got an appetite for something far bigger than food.”

I
sabella coaxed
her cell phone to life with a quick tap of her thumb, the time stamp display cutting through the shadows around the pier and filling her chest with a whole lot of oh-hell-yes. She had just about an hour to scope out the park on Atlantic Boulevard and figure out a strategy for her next move. If—no,
when
she spun this Danny Marcus thing just right and got him to give up the wrestler guy, she’d likely have enough of a lead on whoever was hurting the women in those pictures for Peterson to open an investigation. With the mention of high-end “parties” and the way Wrestler Guy had been obviously recruiting prostitutes, there was no chance the connection between all the pieces was merely a coincidence. All she needed was some sort of hard evidence from Danny to link the whole thing together.

Evidence she was a lot less likely to get with Walker going along for the ride. And judging by the way he was walking no more than a foot beside her on the boardwalk and looking way too sexy for his own good—not to mention way,
way
too expectant about the next move—convincing him to let her fly solo was going to be a ten-foot-tall order.

“I’ve got some time to kill before I head down to Atlantic Boulevard.” Isabella kept her voice as neutral as possible, as if she were remarking on the weather or hockey scores or anything else that didn’t have a massive bearing on breaking the case in front of her wide open. “Nothing starts moving in that neighborhood until at least midnight, so that gives me plenty of time to drop you back at your car.”

Walker’s mouth curled into a smile, and really, was it too much to ask that he have crooked teeth or bad breath or
something
that would keep her freaking lady bits in check?

“You’re not taking me back to my car,” he said, and she stopped short on the pavement leading back to the dilapidated side street where they’d left the Mustang, crossing her arms over her chest so tightly that the seams of her jacket dug into her shoulders.

“I agreed to let you come with me to the pizza place, Kellan.”

“Yes you did, Isabella,” he replied in the exact same tone, and shit. So much for the first name thing working on him. “And now I’m going to come with you to the park on Atlantic Boulevard to try and find Danny Marcus.”

Tread carefully, girl
. “I don’t need a chaperone.”

“Well that’s a relief, because ‘babysitter’ isn’t on my resume.” Walker spun a gaze over the dusky street, tipping his head toward the spot where her car stood a half a block away before they both started walking again. “I’m not trying to mess with you, but my original argument stands. Pursuing this case off the books in a rough neighborhood without backup is dangerous. Not to mention stupid.”

“Thank you,” she said, although fuck all, he was right. Atlantic Boulevard definitely wasn’t brimming with milk and cookies, especially after midnight. Still, putting her own ass on the line was one thing. Putting someone else’s, especially when that ass belonged to a civilian? That was risky with a capital R. “I already bent the hell out of the rules by bringing you to the pizza place.”

“You’re bending the rules by doing all of this, with or without me. The least you can do is let me make sure you won’t get yourself shot, stabbed, or worse.” Walker paused, his feet coming to a stop beside her Mustang. “Would it make you feel any better to know I have tactical training?”

Curiosity pumped through her veins, riding her quickening pulse, but she stuffed it back in favor of popping the locks on the car and climbing into the driver’s seat. “Unless it’s with the RPD and you have a super-secret badge I don’t know about, no.”

Walker slid into the passenger seat, his body radiating both stealth and strength and his jaw hard-wired in determination. “Even if my training came courtesy of the Army Rangers and I could put a kill shot on damn near anything within two hundred yards of here using nothing more than the Glock in your glove box?”

Holy
crap
. She knew he’d spent some time in the Army, but… “You were a goddamn sniper for the Army Rangers? How come you never said anything?”

“Because.” He blew out a barely audible breath. “It’s not something I advertise, just like I imagine you don’t brag about being a cop.”

Okay. So he had her dead to rights there. “Still. You could’ve told me when we worked on Kylie’s case together.”

“Then it wouldn’t have mattered,” he said with a lift of one shoulder against the leather seatback. “But now it does. All I’m saying is you don’t have to worry about me when we go find this Danny Marcus guy. I can take care of myself, and I won’t interfere unless you need backup.”

“Like you didn’t interfere with Carmen?” she asked, the words out before she could cage them. Although the hookup with her CI could’ve gone so much worse, Walker had thrown Isabella for one hell of a loop by interrupting their conversation with flawless—albeit a little bit formal—Spanish. The last thing she needed was to worry about a distraction that could twist this trip to the park into a disaster.

No, rewind. The last thing she needed to worry about was what Walker had heard Carmen say. God, when this case was said and done and safe in Peterson’s hands, Isabella’s first order of business was going to be to find a warm, willing bedmate with a whole lot of stamina and some time on his hands.

Walker tipped his head to look at her and added a little more wattage to his smile, which did nothing for the state of her composure. “That wasn’t interfering. I’m charming, remember?”

“You’re something, all right.” Using the pretense of fastening her seatbelt as a cover, Isabella snuck a covert glance at him.
Damn it
. She’d given him the inch. Of course he wasn’t going to let go until he’d taken every last bit of the mile. “You’re really not going to let me take you back to your car, are you?”

“Not even a little bit,” Walker confirmed. “But don’t worry. You won’t even know I’m there.”

Ha! Pretty flipping unlikely, considering the way his cocky little smirk was suddenly turning her panties into a hot zone. His mouth was weirdly beautiful for being on such a rugged face, those full, firmly set lips set against the backdrop of dark stubble. The occasional flash of straight, white teeth. The suggestive lift at the edges of his mouth that made her wonder what he could do with that quick tongue.

And how many times he could do it.

Good
Lord
she needed to get some air in this car. Like yesterday.

“Fine,” Isabella said, jamming her keys into the ignition and her finger over the button to lower her window a few inches. Scrambling for something to focus on other than Walker’s potential for superior oral skills, she blurted the first thing that popped into her overly addled head. “I had no idea you speak Spanish.”

He nodded. “Arabic, too, although I’m not nearly as fluent.”

“That’s an interesting skill set,” she said, her curiosity bubbling enough to finally override her libido.

“I also sing a mean karaoke version of Springsteen’s ‘Born In the U.S.A.’, and on occasion, I cook,” he quipped back.

“Hmmm.” Isabella spared him a quick glance before turning onto a side street to head deeper into North Point. “Now it’s even more interesting. I assume you learned Arabic overseas?”

“Baghdad. Most of the Spanish is from high school, and Kylie taught me the kitchen skills.” Although Walker didn’t skip a beat with his cadence, he aimed the words out the passenger window, the small action grabbing every last bit of her attention. He clearly meant to slip around the topic of his deployment, and for a second, she nearly caved. But Isabella had never been anything other than brash, with him or anyone else. Changing her stripes now seemed stupid, and anyway, she couldn’t deny the truth.

She wanted to know more about the dark, sexy firefighter sitting next to her in the shadows.

“Nice try with the bait and switch,” she said. Hell, she knew every evasive maneuver in the book. And even a couple that weren’t. “Too bad for you I’m not that easy.”

Walker’s laughter deepened both her curiosity and her surprise. “You are a lot of things, Moreno. Easy doesn’t even make the top twenty.”

Isabella laughed too. After all, he wasn’t really wrong. “So you were stationed in Baghdad as a Ranger?”

He paused, but then he said, “For part of my first tour. But I actually spent most of my time in Afghanistan. Kabul and Kandahar.”

This time, she managed to check her shock before it made the trip to her face. Two tours as a Ranger were definitely no pleasure trip down Main Street. “That does explain the Arabic. You got any other hidden talents I should know about?”

He lifted one dark brow. “Not unless you’ve got an MK24 you need me to assemble or field strip.”

Isabella knew she shouldn’t flirt with him, with that dangerously distracting smile and those deep-ocean eyes, but God, the words slid out as if they’d been well-oiled and waiting to go. “Be careful, Walker, or I might start to blush.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” he said, the corners of his mouth edging up. “It figures you’d be the type to get all giddy over high-end weaponry, though.”

She lifted one hand off the steering wheel to signal
guilty as charged
. “I did some extra tactical training with the Remington 700 last year, but those MKs are pretty badass.”

“They get the job done.” Walker watched the grungy neighborhood scenery for a minute before his own curiosity seemed to get the better of him and he added, “The Remington 700 isn’t your run of the mill hardware. Where’d you get your hands on one?”

Isabella grinned. She could talk shop for a month and never get tired of it. “Ah, the guys on SWAT let me sneak in sometimes when they have an open spot in their training schedule. You can never practice too much.”

“That’s pretty ambitious practice,” Kellan said. “Most people just empty a couple of clips at the gun range and call it a day, you know.”

Isabella straightened against the Mustang’s driver’s seat, her pulse knocking against her throat. The last thing she needed right now was to field flak from yet another person over how many hours she put into the job. Hearing the all-work-no-play routine from her
mami
and
papi
was bad enough, and there were way worse things to have than a jumbo-sized work ethic.

“Yeah, well I’m not most people. I happen to like a lot of ambition,” she said, brows up and bravado at the ready, but Walker’s decisive nod had her ballsy defenses screeching to a halt.

“I get that,” he said, all quiet truth. “I mean, if I’m going to do a job, it doesn’t make sense to go halfway.”

Holy. Shit
. “Exactly,” Isabella answered, giving the word a slow stretch. Her expression must’ve betrayed the shock running rampant in her veins, though, because the next thing out of his mouth was a laugh.

“Don’t look so surprised, Moreno. I’m more than just a pretty face over here. I go all-in at the firehouse just like you do at the Thirty-Third.”

Stone cold busted, she had no choice but to start laughing along with him. “Okay, okay. Point taken. There might not be a whole lot of people who really get my level of job dedication, but I shouldn’t have assumed you weren’t one of them.”

“Speaking of which”—Walker’s stare glinted through the shadows—“I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier.”

“I said a lot of things earlier,” Isabella replied, blinking in an effort to follow the newly forged direction of the conversation. Where the hell was he headed?

“This morning,” Kellan said. “When we were at the scene of the house fire, you said if I thought you wouldn’t take a slim lead and run with it, then I didn’t know you very well.”

She pulled the Mustang to a stop about a block from the park, using the time it took to quiet the engine and cut the headlights to replay their earlier conversation in her mind. “I guess I did.”

Walker dropped his voice to a low rumble, matching the relative quiet and darkness of their surroundings. “And I guess I don’t. So tell me.”

He had to be kidding. “Tell you what?”

“Tell me something about you so I know you better.”

Oh God, he
so
wasn’t kidding. “Let me see if I’ve got this right. You want me to fork over a running biography in the front seat of my car? That’s kind of personal, isn’t it?”

“Relax, Moreno. I’m not asking for a head count on the skeletons in your closet,” Walker said with a shrug. “But we
are
about to go put the full court press on some dirtbag to try and catch a lead in your case, so the way I see it, a little insight is probably better than a lot of assumptions. Plus, we’ve got time to kill. So go on. Enlighten me.”

“You first,” her deeply trained defenses made her say, surprise filling her chest as Kellan answered without hesitation.

“Okay. I like my pizza cold.”

Isabella bit her lip two seconds too late to trap her incredulous laugh. “You’re serious. We’re giving up personal information, and that’s what you’re going to lead with?”

“You didn’t really think I was going to give you something juicy on the first go, did you?” He looked at her through the scant ambient light in the car, his gaze still unwavering even as she leaned in closer to pin him with an inquisitive stare.

“Fair enough. Can’t say I pegged you as the cold pizza type, though, what with your sister training to be a chef and all.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” he said, taking off his seat belt and easing a little lower against the passenger seat, melting into the shadows. “I’ll eat it warm, too. After a couple of walkabouts through the Middle East, I learned not to be terribly choosy. But the funny part is, the cold pizza thing is actually Kylie’s fault.”

“Does she know that?” Although his sister was far from stuffy or snobby, Isabella had to imagine cold pizza wouldn’t appeal to her culinary sensibilities.

But Walker nodded. “She does. It was mostly just the two of us growing up. Our mom wasn’t in the picture and our dad worked two jobs, so we had to fend for ourselves in the dinner department a lot of the time. Frozen pizza was my specialty, but one night we lost power during a thunderstorm and I couldn’t warm up the leftovers I’d put in the fridge. We ate them cold because we had no choice, but Kylie ended up liking the pizza better that way. After a while, we both started looking forward to the cold leftovers more than the hot meals.”