"Thanks."
"Eve."
She turned and felt her breath catch. He was wearing only a towel knotted low around his lean hips. He'd been a beautiful boy. She couldn't help but appreciate what an astonishingly gorgeous man he'd grown into. Broad shoulders, narrow waist, gloriously defined muscle bulked up in all the right places. His wasn't a bodybuilder's form but that of a well-conditioned man in his prime. But for the surgical scars that ruined his knee, he was perfect. He kept in shape. In bed, the man had stamina in spades.
Finally, she managed to drag her gaze to his face. His hair was wet. His expression somber.
"No more beating yourself up about this, all right? We're adults. We're single. We enjoy each other. Not a sin. Not a crime. Not a mistake. Let's not reduce it to one, OK?"
Who'd have thought he'd end up being the adult in this situation?
"OK," she said softly, and headed for the bathroom.
Her cell phone rang just as she stepped out of the shower.
It was Kat. Tiffany had just called her. She was in Las Vegas.
For as wonderfully slow as he moved in bed, McClain was a speedball when it came to business. Eve wasn't even fully dressed and he'd finished packing. Like he said, he traveled light.
She'd decided to travel with a little less baggage, too. McClain was right. Since she couldn't seem to find it in her to fight the chemistry between them, she'd ditched that scratchy hair shirt. It was unavoidable that their search for Tiffany Clayborne bound them together. Who knew how much longer it would take to find her? Tiffany had just called Kat, and the result was leading them to Vegas and, hopefully, another step closer. Until their search ended, though, it was pointless to deny the attraction. And the fact was, fighting it was much more distracting to their investigation than going with the flow.
Or so said a logic Eve somehow managed to twist around to fit into making her feel justified in indulging herself. And that's all it was. A temporary indulgence. As long as she remembered that, when this was over, everyone walked away clean. No harm. No foul.
"Tell me exactly what she said again," McClain said after scooting into the backseat of a cab with her and giving the driver the address of Eve's hotel. It would be the first of several stops. Once they picked up her luggage, they'd head for Kat's for a quick lesson on reading her particular GPS unit—which Kat had agreed to let them commandeer. Then they were off to JFK to catch a red-eye to Vegas that McClain had booked while Eve had dressed.
Eve understood why he wanted her to repeat the content of Kat's phone call. They'd both moved so fast since they'd heard from her that Eve had filled him in on the run.
"Wish there was more to tell. According to Kat, Tiffany didn't sound the best, but she was evidently alert enough to use the cell phone Kat had planted on her. She didn't know where she was, but she was scared and she was crying. Kat got her to look out her hotel window, and when she described what she saw, they both realized she was in Vegas. She had no idea what hotel she was in."
"Was the call long enough for the GPS to get an exact fix?"
"Would have been if the batteries in the tracking unit hadn't died."
"Fuck," he muttered under his breath. "That's one of the bugs with the smaller GPS units," he added with a scowl. "OK. We go with what we've got. We at least know that she's in Vegas. If she calls Kat again, we'll get a fix on her exact location. Provided she doesn't spook."
"And provided she gets another chance to call," Eve added. "Kat said Tiffany hung up so abruptly, she was sure she'd been afraid of getting caught."
"Was she sober?"
Eve shook her head. "Kat didn't think so. But she was scared; of that Kat was certain."
While Eve went up to her room and threw her things together, McClain called Kat back and found out what kind of batteries the GPS unit needed. Then he bought out the hotel gift shop's supply so they wouldn't run into a dead battery problem with the locator once they arrived in Las Vegas— again, providing Tiffany called Kat back. And providing, when they found Tiffany, they could convince her they were the good guys in the mix and she'd trust them enough to let them get her away from Reno.
On the way to SoHo and Kat's, they hashed over what to do about Edwards.
"I think you should give him another update," Eve said.
"Vegas?" Edwards said when Mac phoned and advised him where he was headed.
"Got a lead on an ATM transaction," he lied. He didn't figure Edwards needed to know about the GPS, either. "I'm catching a flight in a couple of hours."
"I want a call as soon as you pin down her exact location. And when you do, I want to hear from you immediately. Do not approach her. Do nothing, do you understand? I'll handle things when I get there, and at that point, your work is done."
"You got it," Mac said, and hung up.
"What?" Eve asked when he sat there deep in thought.
He gave an absent shake of his head. "I'm trusting that guy less and less. He was adamant that I was not to make any move on Tiffany when I found her. I was to wait until he got there.
"Why take the chance on her getting away again?" he speculated aloud. "Why risk it? Or worse, why take a chance on a delay that could potentially lead to Tiffany getting hurt while Edwards had the means in place—mainly
me
—to sew things up? I mean, for all Edwards knows, she'll just run again—or Reno will take her. Then Edwards is back to square one."
"So are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"If you're thinking that you want a chance to extract Tiffany and make sure she's safe and sound—"
"And hear what she has to say about where she wants to go," Eve added.
"Then yeah, we're on the same page. Edwards plans to drag her home to Daddy. I say we give her another option."
"Kat," Eve said. "She seems to be the only one who gives a fig about what's best for Tiffany."
"Not the only one," McClain said. "You give a fig. You have from the beginning."
Before she could offer up her own conjecture that Tiffany was lucky to have him on her side as well, he dug into his jacket pocket.
"Thought you might have a need for these." He tossed her a sack full of M&M's.
He laughed when she tore into the bag like a tiger on raw meat.
"My God," she said on a sigh, savoring her first taste of chocolate in almost twenty-four hours.
"Figured you were close to withdrawal."
"I owe you, McClain."
"That's kind of the way I see it, too." His grin made it clear that he had a particular form of payment in mind as the cab pulled up in front of Kat's building.
Chapter 20
las vegas
Tiffany was straight. It was six in the
morning, she was lying on the bed, and she was sober. And she was going to stay that way. No matter how much it hurt. No matter how sick she got. Or how shaky she felt. One hit of weed would take the edge off. One snort of blow would bring oblivion and cut through the pain. But she wasn't going to do it. She needed to stay alert.
With sobriety came truth.
And the truth hurt. But it was time she faced it.
The truth was that Lance didn't love her. He didn't even like her. In fact, she was fairly certain he hated her. It was only her money he loved. The drugs it could buy. The places it got him into.
She heard a noise in the other room of the suite. The sound of voices. Lance and Abe. They were back.
And what she had once welcomed now frightened her.
Scared. She was so scared.
Her heart pounded so hard she was sure it would burst. Tears filled her eyes. She wanted to get up and run, lock herself in the bathroom and hide. But she made herself lie still, dug deep inside to draw on her yoga breathing to calm herself. If Lance came in here, he had to think she was passed out, stoned out of her mind, or he'd force more drugs on her. She was done with drugs. She had to be.
Making him think she was out of it should be an easy sell.
He'd kept her stoned for days. Maybe even weeks. She didn't know. It was all such a blur. Such a murky, horrible blur. Even her contact with Kat.
Kat.
Tears threatened again when Tiffany thought of her friend. Kat cared about her. She may be the only person in the world who did. Eve had once and the fact that she'd deserted her, too, only made it more painful.
But Kat... Somehow, Kat had given her a cell phone. Tiffany had no idea how—or when. She'd thought she'd just dreamed about seeing Kat in Oracle, but it had been real. The phone proved it. Somehow, Kat had reached out to her and that little bit of reality had made her think—realize she had a life to go back to, to make of it what she could.
She wanted to get straight. Somehow get her life back. A life she'd lost and had no idea how.
Lance had taken everything away from her. But now she had a phone. And she'd managed to place a call to Kat. She had to be careful. Had to hide the phone so Lance wouldn't find it. Had to disconnect from her call to Kat last night because he'd almost caught her.
She had to ... had to what?
She lost all train of thought. Panicked. Drew a deep breath. Think. Had to think again about where she was. Vegas.
Yes, Vegas.
And Lance didn't love her.
The bedroom door opened and her heart lurched again. She closed her eyes.
Play dead. Play dead.
"The bitch is still out," Lance said when he walked up beside the bed.
She was lying on her side, her back to him, but she could feel him watching her. Watching. Watching. She willed herself to lie still. To breathe deep.
"I don't know why you don't just do her and get it over with."
Do her?
Abe's statement made her blood run cold.
"I told you. All in good time."
Lance moved away from the bed. She heard him rummage around in a bureau drawer.
"What you keep forgetting, Gorman, is that the minute she's dead, the money tree shrivels up. The longer we keep her around, the longer we play. Besides, it has to look like an overdose or we don't get the payoff."
All the blood drained from her head. Made her dizzy with terror.
"The payoff?" Abe made an angry sound as he walked back to the bedroom door. "You blew the payoff when you didn't ice her two weeks ago when you were supposed to. That money's long gone. We'll be lucky if there isn't a new contract out on us for fucking up the job."
"Stop being so paranoid. No one's going to put a hit on us. Where in the hell did I put that ATM card?" More searching sounds, like he was tossing clothes everywhere. "And we'll get paid, believe me. All I have to do is make noises about ratting to the police and we'll have that money and be long gone before anyone can find us."
"What about Campbell?"
"Billie?" Lance made a snort of disgust.
Tiffany had heard Billie leave earlier. He must still be gone.
"That dumb country fuck hasn't got a clue what's going on. I'm still working on an angle where he can take the fall when Tiffany Rich here does her poor little self in on some bad smack."
"I'm telling you," Abe said again, "it's past time to do it."
"Yeah, yeah. Fine. Found it." She heard the snap of plastic against Lance's palm. "Let's hit the Strip again and tap her account for some more cash."
"When?" Abe insisted. "When are you going to do it?"
"When we get back, all right?" Lance let out an impatient breath. "That soon enough for you, you bloodthirsty bastard?"
"Yeah," Abe said. "Couple hours tops, then we come back and you get it done, or I'm gone and you're on your own."
The door slammed shut behind them.
Tiffany finally let out the breath she'd been holding. Felt her heart lurch again when she heard the unmistakable sound of something being wedged against the door. Lance was barricading her in. So she couldn't get out. Couldn't escape.