Sweet Seduction Stripped (7 page)

I glanced around the premises, trying to pick up cameras, but knowing they were undoubtedly of the spy-like variety. Is that why he wrote that code with me? For his work?

"You really are a private investigator," I said, stunned.

He pulled his head back, obviously surprised.

"What did you think I was, Amber? A cop?"

That hadn't even crossed my mind. I wondered if it should have.

"I thought..." I stopped, licked my lips. "I don't know what I thought," I said, defeated.

"Ah, Dancer," he murmured softly. "You look exhausted. How're you holding up?"

My shoulders drooped and embarrassingly tears sprang to my eyes.

"Oh, sweetheart," he whispered. "Let me help you."

I blinked the offending moisture away, determined not to show a weakness. I'd never been a victim, I wouldn't start now.

"You said you wanted my help, too," I reminded him, watching as a smile teased the corners of those lush red lips. His eyes darting appreciatively all over my face. I think he may have been impressed with my backbone right then.

"Yeah, I did, didn't I?"

I nodded.

"So, maybe we can help each other," I suggested.

"Don't wanna owe me a favour?" he guessed.

I shrugged. Really, I just wanted all our cards on the table, I was sick of doing this blind. The confusion, the angst, the turmoil. It was all adding up.

I took a deep breath, held those mesmerising eyes and leapt off the edge of the abyss, saying, "You tell me your secret, and I'll tell you mine."

"You got a secret, Amber?" he asked.

"Have you?"

"Mine's not much of a secret, I'm more interested in yours."

"You would be, but I just don't know why yet." He flashed white teeth in a big smile. "You first," I encouraged.

The room all but forgotten, my full attention on the magnetic man before my eyes. Since the moment I'd first seen him on my laptop screen I hadn't been able to get the image of him out of my head. Picture perfect recall. And my mind was lapping up more fodder for the files.

He stared at me, no,
into
me. His breaths as rapid as mine. His focus completely on me. Nothing else existed. Just two people falling into each other. Two almost strangers crossing a line in the sand. I didn't know what it meant. I just knew it was monumental.

"I want..." he started, and I leaned forward.

He leaned forward too, our eyes still target locked on each other.

What did he want?

Me?

"Fuck," he breathed. "You..." Shake of his head. Scrub of his stubbled jaw.

"What do you want, Ric?" I asked, noticing the huskiness of my voice.

He swallowed. I saw his Adam's apple bob.

"Fuck me, sweetheart. You are danger with a capital D."

I raised an eyebrow and pulled back, the moment shattered.

"What do you want?" I repeated, and there was no huskiness there now. All demand.

A suspended moment, then he suddenly leaned forward again, practically over the entire table and into my lap, sucking me into all that green.

"I want to get you away from that bastard," he announced on a growl. "Out of his life. Out of his bed." Pause. "And into mine."

I stared at him. He stared back in challenge to me.

And a blonde, I hadn't seen before, in a Sweet Seduction uniform beside us, said, "
Dude
, that is so fucking hot."

Completely and utterly breaking the spell.

But not erasing what Ric had said. Just this once, I think, my picture perfect recall would extend to the spoken word.

Silence filled the space between us. Somehow it sounded loud. Or that could have been the thunderous beat of my heart pounding inside my head. I licked my lips as I watched Eric scowl after the blonde and then rub the back of his neck, as though frustrated.

I didn't know what to say. I even opened my mouth a couple of times to fill the too awkward quiet, but only air passed my lips.

Out of his life. Out of his bed. And into mine.

A thrill of excitement washed through me, filling me up like bubbling champagne. My stomach, for the first time in hours, fluttered in a pleasing manner, not a nauseous one. The shaking in my hands was pure excitement, mixed with the good kind of fear.

I'd never before realised that fear could come in so many different nuances. But it does. And that thought reminded me that now was not a good time to fall for another man.

I wondered if Ric and I had tried to get to know each other better when we first met on-line whether things would be different. I'd known RiC3.1415 for almost three years now. Longer than I'd known Jaxon. Would I have even gotten involved with Jaxon if Ric and I had met face to face first?

I shook my head. It was too late now. I was entangled in a deathly web of lies and deceit and danger. Eric was so far out of my reach. Hell, I'd be lucky to survive Jaxon. Thinking of a future, or what might have been, could have been, was a useless waste of time.

Which made me look at my watch again.

"When does he expect you?" Ric asked, making me jump a little in my seat.

"How do you know...?"

"You keep checking the time and when you do your bottom lip gets chewed on frantically."

Huh.

"I have to be at the club by eleven."

"OK," he said. "We better get a move on then."

I just stared at him. Unsure exactly how a private investigator could help me. Then wondering how I would pay him if he did. Wondering if the
help
he needed would cover the cost of getting me out of this mess.

"Why are you interested in Jaxon?" I asked. Perhaps a question I should have considered before, but it only just sprang to mind now.

"Ever heard of Declan King?"

Everyone in New Zealand had heard of Declan King. He blew half of the Auckland Court House building to smithereens. His ties to criminal activities throughout the North Island of New Zealand were splashed all over the news for weeks. People had died.

And his name was on the encrypted file I'd hacked in C&C.

I knew exactly who Declan King was.

"Yes," I whispered back.

Eric nodded, as though he expected as much.

"We worked to bring him down," he announced.

"We?"

"ASI." Oh. "Now we're cleaning up his mess."

"Working with the cops," I surmised, remembering the names of those police officers also in that file.

"We do things they are unable to," Ric explained, making me shift in my seat uneasily. "We bridge the gap between them and the underworld."

"Underworld?" I asked, my voice barely there now, but he still heard. Or read my lips.

"Criminal underworld."

"Jaxon's world," I added. Ric nodded.

"How much do you know?" he asked, and my eyes automatically darted around the café looking for anyone I recognised.

It wasn't until my chair creaked that I realised I'd started rocking, as though my body couldn't
contain the fear inside without moving. Ric watched, his eyes steady, but a shadow appearing behind them. A brief flash of compassion or worry or, maybe, fear. Fear for me. Fear because I feared.

What would telling him do?

My hand rubbed my queasy stomach. I felt perspiration bead on my upper lip.

I squeezed my eyes shut, but all I could see behind the lids was that file. The pictures. Jaxon and blood. I rubbed my face, looked around the bustling café again, and sucked in a shaky breath of air.

Dad. I couldn't run, and I was beginning to think if I did run Jaxon would spare no cost to hunt me down. So that left staying.

My hand covered my mouth as I swallowed back bile. The coffee I'd drunk burning an acidic path up my throat. Tears blossomed in my eyes from the harsh pain it caused. I blinked rapidly to wash them away.

I was so shit scared.

"I promise," Eric said, voice low and even, "that I can help."

My eyes found his, green anchoring me, pulling me back to the ground, stopping me from spinning out of control. He held my gaze, saw right through the panic and angst I was feeling. Looked right into me and didn't baulk at what he could see. He knew things about my lifestyle, possibly about me. He knew who I'd lived with for the past twenty months. Who I worked for. What I'd done on stage. He knew.

I'd never felt so vulnerable before in my entire life. I'd never felt so naked. Stripped. Completely peeled back and still he didn't look away, or look shocked, or disturbed, or disgusted. He just held my gaze with that peaceful, steady, beautiful green.

Green the colour of a freshly mown meadow. New lush grass. Clean and pure.

"I never knew," I started, my eyes locked on his, my head shaking, my body still rocking, but not as much. Just a rhythm that helped to soothe. "I never truly suspected. But I found something," I admitted. "I was trying to be smart." I laughed abruptly. Not humorously. "I was showing off."

"Go on," Ric encouraged when my eyes fell to the table's surface and my words dried up.

"I hacked a file on C&C's secured network." The words tumbled out one after the other so quickly I was surprised Eric understood them. But he must have, because his eyes widened and he leaned forward, cocking his head in a motion to get me to keep going.

My mouth opened, my breath came out in little pants, but to say aloud what I'd seen, to voice what my mind kept replaying in vivid detail... I couldn't do it. My body started rocking again more forcefully.

"Amber," Ric said, reaching over and taking hold of one of my hands. "You can do this, sweetheart. You're stronger than you think."

"He knows," I whispered and Eric stilled. "He knew the instant the tripwire was triggered. I thought I'd covered my tracks. I thought I could pretend I hadn't seen it. But he knows."

A chill invaded my body as those words hung like threatening icicles in the air. Brittle, harsh, razor tipped.

"My father," I added, my fingers trembling in Ric's firm grasp. "I know he'll hurt him."

"He hasn't yet, he may not," Eric attempted.

I shook my head. "Every time he mentions my father, I
know
it's a threat."

Eric was silent for a while, then rubbed a hand over his face - not releasing his grip on mine with his other - and let a long breath of air out.

"What you saw, Amber, it was incriminating, wasn't it?" he finally asked.

I nodded.

"Did you copy it?"

Was he mad? I could only shake my head, horrified at the thought.

"Listen," he said, moving closer.

We were practically side by side now, his chair had shifted around the table at some stage, making his thigh now rest against mine. I could feel his warmth. I could see highlights in his stubble, that weren't reflected in his jet black hair. I could count the striations of darker green in his eyes.

I actually leaned in, bridging what small gap remained. Thankfully I stopped myself, before it became too obvious, and sucked in a breath of air as I pulled back.

His hand tightened on mine.

"Listen," he repeated. "Harding has only come to light in the past nine months and what we have is circumstantial. We need more. We
know
he's deeply rooted in the same world as King. We
know
he's moving to take over King's interests. We just can't get any proof."

I blinked. How was this even possible?

"I can't even find a social security trail," Eric admitted, sounding disgusted at that fact. "It's as if the guy sprung up out of nowhere five years ago, but didn't truly step out of the shadows until just before King's death."

My mind was reeling. I couldn't stop the ever increasing spin of questions swirling faster and faster inside my head; a tornado of worry and fear and confusion and uncertainty. Reality taking a back seat to this new horrific world.

"We suspect Jaxon Harding is an alias," Eric added, making the tornado spin erratically, bits of debris flying off in lethal projectiles that pounded against my aching head.

I was going to be sick. Again. That coffee churning and grumbling and twisting my stomach into a horrible mess.

"We could help each other," Ric was saying, but I felt a little light headed, sweat trickling down the centre of my back. "I know where your father is being cared for, we have an understanding with that particular facility."

What?

"We can ensure his safety, isolate him from any threat Harding makes."

Oh, God.

"It will have to be timed with extricating you. Harding has eyes everywhere."

Huh.

"Amber. You want out, don't you?" he asked.

I nodded dumbly. Yes, oh God, yes I wanted out.

"Sweetheart, we'll get you out, but we need your help first. I wouldn't ask, if we weren't up against a wall. This man is dangerous and too well protected. We can't get near him. But you can."

"I don't understand," I murmured, my lips numb. He said he'd protect Dad, get me out. It's all I could think about. Those relief inducing words. It's what I had hoped, what I hadn't been able to trust in. It's all that mattered.

But what did he mean,
I
can get near Jaxon? Being near him was tantamount to suicide.

"I can't stay there," I insisted. "He's not acting the way he used to."

"How is he acting?" Ric asked.

"Unstable. Unpredictable. Nothing like he's been in the past."

I noticed for the first time that Eric was pale, his lips pressed in a thin line, his free hand fisted, resting on his thigh. His leg jumping up and down; jittery, but not the movement of a nervous man. The motions of a man trying to control his temper.

Was he angry with me? Because I didn't want to do this?

"Dancer," he said, his voice a deep rumbled rasp. My eyes met the fierce green of his, stress lines bracketing their beauty. "I..." he began, closed his lids, shook his head. Then sucked in a deep breath of air, shoulders purposely relaxing, and said, "I have to ask you to do this."

He didn't want me there either. Somehow that made all the difference.

"I can wire you," he went on, almost too quickly. As though he had to get the rest of what needed to be said out in a hurry, or he wouldn't be able to say it at all. "I can place a tracker on you. A panic alarm. You hit it, and I will break down every wall he puts up and get to you. I promise," he growled. "You go in, you hack that system, you copy that file and you come out. And then we isolate your father, lock you down somewhere safe, and bring the bastard down."

It sounded so easy. One, two, three, four steps. That's it. Then I'd be free and Jaxon wouldn't put another bullet in a person's brain while grinning.

"I have to do this?" I asked, my voice trembling.

"No," Eric surprised me by saying. "You can refuse and we'll still isolate your father, get you into witness protection, and go after Harding another way."

"How long have you been trying?" I asked, holding his steady, calming gaze.

"Nine months since he came to light."

"And you've got nothing in all that time," I guessed. Knowing how good Eric was, knowing if anyone could find anything on Jaxon in the system, RiC3.1415 could.

Knowing that if he hadn't, there was
nothing
for them to find out there at all.

"We've got nothing. He's a ghost. A phantom. He simply did not exist before 2009."

I nodded, feeling strangely calm. It was pretty simple, really. I'd made choices that had led me here. I'd ignored the signs, chosen to seek my own agenda, therefore overlooked the darkness that was obviously inside my man. I'd slept with the enemy and the enemy killed.

I'd been living with a man who quite possibly was on the same level of criminality as an evil, murderous drug lord.

Washed-out white, orange glow, blood red. The skin on the dead. The firing of a bullet from a gun. The colour of death. All delivered with a familiar grin.

I'd made mistakes. Wrong choices. Selfish goals. This was my chance to put things right.

"OK," I whispered and Eric tensed. His whole body going rock solid, his mouth dipping down at the edges, frown lines marring his usually smooth forehead, his grip on my hand too painful.

I winced. He immediately let go and then muttered a string of swearwords under his breath.

"I have to go, if I'm going back," I said, noting the time was now twenty to eleven.