As his eyes traveled over the length of her, she felt as if she’d just been undressed.

“Well, if you don’t want to stand out, maybe you should be wearing a bag or a sack over your head, because your looks make you a standout in any circle,” Brennan told her.

Tiana stared at him, stunned. “Are you flirting with me?”

He spread his hands wide in innocence. “Just stating it like it is.”

“In other words, you’re flirting with me,” she concluded.

Think again, she warned him silently. She didn’t trust men, especially good-looking ones. “You can save your breath,” she told him out loud. “I am much too rich for your blood.”

He laughed softly. Brennan couldn’t help being amused by her efforts to put him in his place.

“How do you know what I can afford? Maybe I’ve got a bulging … billfold,” he concluded suggestively.

Her eyes narrowed. She was going to enjoy bringing the law down on this one, she thought.

Cavanaugh Undercover

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA, a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author, has written more than two hundred books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

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To

My wonderful readers who wanted

To read about more Cavanaughs.

This newest branch

Belongs to you.

And to Alex Yu who

Told me his friend’s name and

Made a character come to life.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Extract

Prologue

On his way home from the neighboring city of Shady Canyon, lost in his own thoughts, Andrew Cavanaugh smiled broadly to himself.

It had been a good, extremely productive and satisfying visit that had lasted a good deal longer than he’d first anticipated. Dusk had come and gone, and evening, with its long, engulfing shadows, had taken up residence along his route, allowing the hint of a fog to tag along, further intensifying the loneliness of this stretch of land.

It wasn’t often that the former chief of Aurora’s police department patted himself on the back for something, but this definitely was one of those rare times. Through his efforts of relentless investigation, he’d not only discovered the missing branch of his family that his father had charged him with finding, but made contact with them.

Contact? Hell, he made arrangements to have the entire bunch—and it was a rather large bunch—come out to his place a week from next Saturday so that they could get acquainted with a lot of family that they hadn’t even realized existed.

Who would have thought that the missing branch of the family was only a city away? And that those members were all, just as they were here, entrenched in some form of law enforcement?

Andrew didn’t normally believe in coincidences, but this, certainly, was a huge one.

It was a damn small world, Andrew thought, a deep chuckle echoing within the interior of his sedan.

He was really tired, but at the same time, he was very enthused and extremely pleased with the results of his relentless efforts. He’d called Rose before he left for home and shared the entire experience with her. She was as excited as he was about these new family members. She’d said that she couldn’t wait to meet them. That was his Rose, he thought with a surge of affection.

No two ways about it, the woman was a saint to put up with an unending number of family members and still keep on smiling. There were women who would have the exact opposite reaction.

He’d ended the call by telling her that he was coming home tonight, but it might be late so she shouldn’t wait up.

As if she’d listened to him, he thought with a soft laugh. The light of his life listened to him when it suited her, did what she wanted the rest of the time. She always had.

It didn’t matter. He was a hell of a lucky man and he knew it.

He—

Andrew’s breath caught in his throat as he made out something up on the road just ahead.

The slight fog was beginning to settle in more intensely now, and visibility was definitely being challenged.

Damn, what was that, anyway?

Andrew felt for his shirt pocket. It was empty.

Where had he put his glasses? He should have worn them driving home tonight, but they made him feel old.

Hell, you are old, a voice in his head pointed out. As always, he ignored it. He wasn’t twenty-nine anymore, but he was still in the prime of life. Old was destined to be fifteen years older than he was.

Always.

Andrew squinted. He was almost certain he saw someone staggering up ahead in the road. Not wanting to take any chances, he swerved at the last minute to keep from hitting it. As his car spun to the left, he struggled to regain control of it.

Andrew was so busy trying to steer into the spin, he didn’t see the person in the middle of the road raising a gun until it was too late.

The single, resounding shot went into his windshield, shattering it.

The last thing Andrew Cavanaugh was aware of was the windshield glass falling inside his vehicle like so many bits of fragmented snowflakes.

The pain in his chest consumed him, blotting out the entire world.

* * *

The bent, ragged, homeless man, who had appeared to have been so preoccupied with pawing through the overflowing trash cans that were lined up in the alley like so many drunken revelers, came to attention at the first sound of squealing tires. The vacant look on his face vanished as if it had never existed.

Eyes on the fishtailing white sedan in the middle of the deserted road, the undercover DEA agent heard the gunshot screaming through the night air and then saw the shooter hurrying toward the immobilized vehicle.

By then Brennan Cavanaugh stopped pretending that he was just a hapless spectator, interested only in his own survival, and was galvanized into action. He began sprinting toward the car and, more important, toward the victim he glimpsed inside it.

That was when the shooter obviously realized there was someone else in the vicinity besides the driver who had been presumably taken out by the well-aimed bullet.

Biting off what sounded like a livid curse, the shooter turned around and ran back into the shadows, seeking the cover of night. Undoubtedly focused on survival, the shooter didn’t turn around one last time and so wasn’t able to see the ragged man dragging the former chief of police from his car. Consequently, there was no second shot piercing the night air to finish the job.

Only the sound of running feet growing fainter.

* * *

Brennan checked for a pulse the moment he felt he and the victim were far enough away from the car in case it burst into flames.

It took him two tries, but he finally detected a pulse. An extremely faint one.

“Hang in there, mister,” he told the unconscious man. “Don’t die on me. Don’t let me blow my cover and just possibly my whole career for no reason.”

Feeling around in the deep pockets of his filthy khaki-colored hoodie with his left hand—his right was busy trying to stem the victim’s flow of blood—Brennan pulled out his cell phone and called for an ambulance.

As he did so, he couldn’t shake the strangest feeling that he was watching a chapter of his life slam shut.

And maybe, just maybe, another one creak open.

Chapter 1

“You’ve been nursing that beer for the last hour. Something bothering you, son?”

Brennan Cavanaugh was lost in thought as he leaned against the cool white stucco wall and watched people who constituted his newly discovered family enjoying themselves. It took him a moment to zero in on the man asking the question.

Brennan had an aptitude for names and faces—in his line of work, or former line of work, he corrected himself, he’d had to. He knew the man speaking to him to be Brian Cavanaugh, the Aurora police department’s chief of detectives, younger brother of the man whose life he had saved, an act that had, as he’d silently predicted, terminated an active part of his own career, since he had to blow his cover in order to save Andrew Cavanaugh—his long lost uncle. He couldn’t help thinking that truth could be a lot stranger than fiction.

“Not really,” he replied.

It was the easiest answer to give. In his experience, when people asked how you were doing, or if something was wrong, they really didn’t want to know and certainly not in detail.

But Brian obviously did not fall into that general category, because he pressed a little. “Fakely, then?” Brian asked with an understanding smile.

Brian knew all about people’s reluctance to talk. He’d witnessed it initially from his early days on the force when he questioned victims and suspects. He was aware of it currently because of the office he’d held for a number of years.

Since becoming the chief of detectives, he had come across more than one person who was afraid to share his private feelings because he thought it might affected his work life adversely. Brian’s gift was that he knew instinctively how to separate the two and how much weight to give to what he heard in both capacities: as the chief of detectives and as a relative/friend.

“All right, let’s just say, for the sake of hypothetical argument, that there was something causing you some minor concern. What would that be?” he asked when Brennan made no response to his earlier joking comment.

Because he wasn’t quite ready to talk about it, Brennan went with the most obvious answer. “I’ll be the first to admit that I grew up in a crowd scene. Every holiday, birthday or miscellaneous celebration, there were always acres and acres of family—but this, well, this gives a whole new meaning to words like overwhelmed. I’ve heard of family trees, but this, this is damn near a family forest,” Brennan quipped with a grin that took its time in forming.

Brian laughed. “You have that right,” he readily agreed. “But at the risk of harping, that’s not what’s bothering you.” He saw the suspicious way Brennan looked at him. “Don’t look so surprised, boy. I didn’t get to where I am on good looks alone.” The statement was accompanied by another, this time deeper, laugh. “I’m a fair hand at reading people.” And there was definitely something bothering this young man who had saved his older brother’s life. Brian intended, eventually, to get to the bottom of it. “Now, if you don’t want to talk, I understand. But if you do,” Brian continued, “I am a good man to talk to. I listen.”

Brennan shrugged as he stared down at the light that was being reflected in what was left of his beer. The overhead patio light shimmered seductively on the liquid surface, as if it were flirting with him.

“It’s nothing, sir,” he finally said. “I was just wondering what I was going to do with myself come Monday morning, that’s all.”

Brian appeared slightly puzzled. “I thought you were working undercover for the DEA. Something to do with drug smuggling.”

Brian left the statement vague despite the fact that he knew exactly what the young man next to him had been up to when he rescued Andrew. The moment he’d done that, Brian had made it his business to find out everything he could about the tall, strapping DEA agent with the same last name.

Brennan nodded, avoiding his eyes. “I was.”

“Was,” Brian repeated as if he was trying to see if he’d heard the word correctly.

At the last moment, Brennan withheld a sigh. “Yes, sir.”

Brian was about to tell the younger man not to call him sir, but he knew it would be a wasted effort, so he let it pass. “But you’re not anymore.” It was now an assumption.

Brennan frowned, though he thought it hid it. “No, sir.”

“Case over?” Brennan asked. Obviously his digging hadn’t turned up the whole story.

Brennan shook his head. “No, sir.”

“I see,” Brian replied quietly. And he did because all the pieces suddenly came together. “You blew your cover saving my brother.”

Brennan didn’t want any accolades. He’d done what needed doing. That it cost him wasn’t the victim’s fault. “I had no choice.”

“Some people might argue that you did have a choice.”

At bottom it was an argument that debated the responsibilities of a cameraman. Does he or she watch a scene unfold and film it as it happens no matter what that might be or interfere if what is being filmed depicts something immoral or illegal? Some felt it was their duty to record events as they happened; others felt duty-bound to come in on the side of right.

Brennan shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what anybody argues. Way I see it, I didn’t have a choice. He would have been dead if I just stood and watched.”

Brian smiled and nodded. “Good answer—for all of us. So, does this mean you’re currently out of a job?” he asked.

“Change of venue,” Brennan corrected. “They put me on desk duty.”

“Until we can trust you to keep your assignment foremost on your ‘to-do’ list and not play superhero, you stay behind a desk,” Lieutenant Lisbon, his direct superior, had shouted at him. As fair skinned as they came, Lisbon had a habit of turning an almost bright red whenever he was angry and he had been very angry the day he’d thrown him off the case.

Brian looked at him knowingly. “Let me guess. You’re not a desk duty kind of guy.”

“Nope.”

Brian didn’t even pause before asking, “Have you given any thought to having a different sort of change of venue?”

Was the chief of Ds being philosophical, or—? “What do you mean, ‘different’?”

Brian felt him out slowly, watching Brennan’s eyes for his true response. “Let’s just say going from the DEA to being a police detective on the Aurora Police Department?”

Brennan’s electric blue eyes narrowed as he stopped taking in the people in the immediate vicinity and focused completely on the man he was talking to.

“Are you offering me a job, sir?” he asked a little uncertainly.

The politely worded question almost had him laughing out loud. “Boy, after what you did, you can write your own ticket to anything that’s within this family’s power to give, so yes, I am offering you a job. As a matter of fact, something recently came to my attention that you would undoubtedly be perfect for, given your undercover background.”

Brennan could feel himself getting hopeful. He needed to nip that in the bud if this wasn’t going to pan out. “You’re not just pulling my leg, are you, sir?”

“I have been known to do a great many things in my time, singularly or on an ongoing basis. However, leg pulling does not number among them, so no, I am not pulling your leg.”

Setting his own glass—now devoid of beer—aside on the closest flat surface, Brian turned his attention completely to the subject he was about to share with this new member of the family.

“Word has it that we’ve had more than our share of runaways lately. There have always been one or two in a year. However, the number went up dramatically recently. Ten in two months.”

“You don’t think they’re runaways?” It was a rhetorical question.

“I do not,” Brian confirmed. Runaways were bad enough. What he was about to say was infinitely worse. “Rumor has it that these missing girls are being ‘recruited’ one way or another for the sole purpose of becoming sex slaves, used to sate the appetites of men whose sick preferences tend toward underaged girls. Preferably untouched underaged girls. I’m putting together a task force to track down the people in charge of this sex-trafficking ring, and I could use a man like you on the inside to do what you normally do.”

“And that is?” Brennan asked, curious as to how the chief perceived him.

“Get the bad guys to trust you,” Brian said simply, humor curving the sides of his mouth.

This definitely sounded as if it had possibilities and it certainly beat the hell out of sitting behind a desk, aging.

“Who would I have to see about applying for the job?” Brennan asked.

“You’re seeing him,” Brian assured him, then Brian laughed softly to himself as he shook his head and marveled, “Who knew it would be such a small world and that someone from the very branch of the family that Andrew set out to track down wound up saving his life.” Brian straightened, moving away from the wall. “I guess that’s what they mean when people talk about ‘karma.’”

“Maybe,” Brennan allowed.

He certainly had no better or other plausible explanation for why he’d been where he was that fateful night. He hadn’t even known that his late grandfather had had any family other than the four children he had fathered.

The life Brennan had chosen didn’t allow him to make any unnecessary contact with anyone from his “other” life for months at a time. Since he wasn’t married and his last semimeaningful relationship was far in the past, he was a perfect candidate for the job he’d had.

Emphasis, Brennan reminded himself, on the word had.

Brian grinned at him as the man straightened and indicated a keg several yards away. “Let’s see about getting you that refill now,” he prompted.

Brennan looked down at the glass he was holding and noticed that it was empty. Without realizing it, as he’d talked to Brian, he’d consumed the rest of the beer.

He flashed a grin now and said, “Sure, why not?”

Brian clapped an arm around his shoulders, directing him toward the keg. “Can’t think of a single reason,” he confirmed. “Let’s go.”

* * *

“A little overwhelming, isn’t it?” the tall, broad-shouldered man who had joined Brennan nursing something amber in a chunky glass, asked, amused.

The dinner had been served and now everyone had broken up into smaller groups, some remaining in the house, some drifting outside. All in all, Andrew Cavanaugh’s “get acquainted” party was teeming with Cavanaughs. Brennan was still trying to absorb everything that his chance action several weeks ago had brought about.

So many names, so many faces, he couldn’t help thinking.

Brennan looked now at the man who was addressing him. They were around the same height and there was something vaguely familiar about him.

Or maybe it was that the amicable man looked a great deal like the lion’s share of the men who were meandering about the house and grounds, talking, laughing or, in some instances, just listening.

“You could say that,” Brennan agreed.

“Don’t be shy about it. First time I attended one of these ‘little’ family gatherings, I thought I’d wandered into a central casting call for Hollywood’s answer to what a family of cops was supposed to look like.”

“The first time,” Brennan repeated, having picked up the term. “Does that mean that you’re not a Cavanaugh?”

“Well, yeah, actually, I am,” the other man more than willingly admitted, then grinned as he remembered the confusion that had ensued over this discovery coming to light. “But at the time, I thought I was a Cavelli.”

If this was some kind of a riddle, it left him standing in the dark. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t follow.”

Thomas laughed. “At the time, neither did I. I’m Thomas,” he said abruptly, realizing that he hadn’t introduced himself.

Shifting his glass to his other hand, he offered it in a handshake, which Brennan easily took. “Brennan,” Brennan told him.

The expression on Thomas’s face told him that he didn’t need to make the introduction. His name had made the rounds. “My father’s Sean Cavanaugh, the—”

“—head of the daytime crime scene investigative unit,” Brennan completed. “I looked over the roster at the department before I came here.” Even so, he couldn’t untangle the confusion associated with what Thomas was telling him. “But if your father’s a Cavanaugh, then I don’t—”

Thomas decided to tell this story from the beginning. “There was a time when he didn’t know he was a Cavanaugh. You notice the strong resemblance between my father, Sean, and the former chief of police, Andrew—the guy whose life you saved,” he added.

Brennan nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well, so did a lot of other people a few years ago. They thought that the chief was snubbing them and flat-out ignoring them. Since he was doing no such thing and wasn’t even in these places they claimed to have seen him, he did a little detective work of his own to see if he could track down this man who supposedly had his face.

“That led to tracking down a few important details—like where he was born, when, all that good stuff. Turns out that the day my dad was born, so was another male baby. And if that wasn’t enough of a coincidence, they were both named Sean. One was a Cavanaugh and the other was a Cavelli—Two Cs,” he emphasized.

“And let me guess, the nurse got them confused.”

“Give the man a cigar. Story goes she’d just been told her soldier fiancé had been killed overseas by a roadside bomb. She was completely beside herself and just going through the motions to keep from collapsing in a heap. To add to our little drama, the infant the Cavanaughs brought home died before his first birthday.”

“I guess that trumps a divorce and estranged brothers,” Brennan quipped.

Thomas held up his hand, indicating that he not dismiss the matter so quickly. “Not when the reunion brings twenty-four more Cavanaughs to the table.” He laughed.

Brennan looked around. He knew that all his siblings and cousins, not to mention his father, aunt and uncles, hadn’t all been able to make this gathering. Despite that, it still looked like a crowd scene from some epic, biblical movie.

“Just how many Cavanaughs are there?” he asked, looking at Thomas.

“You asking about Cavanaughs strictly by birth, or are you including the ones by marriage, too?”

Brennan shrugged. “The latter, I guess.” He’d heard that once you entered the inner circle, you were a Cavanaugh for life.

“Haven’t a clue,” Thomas admitted honestly, keeping a straight face. “But I’m betting we could have easily had enough people to storm the Bastille back in the day.” The oldest of the Cavanaugh-Cavelli branch—not counting his father, Sean—Thomas grinned as he raised his glass in a toast to Brennan. “Welcome to the family.”

Brennan laughed. “Thanks,” he said, draining his own glass. Being part of what was perceived to be a dynasty felt rather good from where he stood.

* * *

Tiana Drummond didn’t pray much anymore.

It was an activity she’d given up even before her father, Officer Harvey Drummond, had died. There didn’t seem to be much point in engaging in something that never yielded any positive results.

The official story given out about her father’s untimely demise was that he’d died on the job, in the line of duty. That, strictly speaking, was true—as far as it went. But the whole truth of it was that her father had died because he’d been drunk while on duty and it had drastically robbed him of any edge he might have had. Drawing his weapon faster than a punk bank robber hadn’t even been a remote possibility and consequently, Officer Harvey Drummond had died by that bank robber’s hand.

At the funeral—a no-frills version mercifully paid for by the patrolmen’s union—she and her younger sister, Janie, had heard glowing words about a man neither one of them recognized, much less knew. It was the way his fellow officers on the beat knew him.

The father that she and her sister remembered was a man who’d been both too bitter and too strict to do anything but give them the minimal basic shelter while trying to verbally and physically break their spirits every opportunity he got. For her part, rather than run away from home the way she’d been tempted to do more than once, Tiana had done what she could to protect her sister. She got between her father’s punishing hand and Janie time and again. Some of the scars didn’t heal.

Harvey Drummond blamed both of his daughters for the fact that his wife had left him, disappearing one day while they were at school and he was at work. Sylvia Drummond had left nothing in her wake but a note secured by a fish-shaped magnet to the refrigerator that said “I can’t take it anymore.”

The note had been written to him, but Harvey maintained that it was their behavior she couldn’t take, hers and Janie’s. He took his rage out on them every time he was drunk. Which was often.

Tiana and her sister endured hell on a regular nightly basis.

But once their father no longer walked among the living, life got better. Harder financially despite his pension, but better because she and Janie were finally allowed to pick up the pieces of their souls and do their best to reconstruct those pieces into some sort of workable whole again.

But the years they had had to endure with their father had left their mark, affecting them differently. Tiana, always self-sufficient, became more closed off. More distrustful of any man whose path crossed hers. Any relationships that looked as if they might have some sort of potential she quickly shut down before they ever flourished.

Janie, on the other hand, desperately craved attention, hungered for affection and was starved for approval—the three As Tiana called them—and looked to any man hoping that he would provide her with them. Janie, Tiana had asserted more than once, was far too trusting, while Tiana only trusted men to stir up trouble and make situations worse. She knew that she wasn’t being altogether fair in her estimation—but at least she was being safe.

Tiana would have been the first to admit that their late father was good for one thing—he had, without really meaning to, provided her with valuable connections. Connections on the police force. While Tiana had never wanted rules bent in her favor, she wanted to make sure that they weren’t bent against her, either. All she had ever wanted was a fair shot at whatever she set her sights on. In this case, it was becoming part of the police department.

Eventually, while taking college courses on her computer at night, Tiana joined the San Francisco police force, managing to impress them with her physical stamina—another unintended “bonus” of surviving her father’s brutal treatment.

Once she joined up, it wasn’t long before she found her way to the crime scene investigative unit, a subject that had always fascinated her.

Every penny Tiana earned that didn’t go to cover basic living expenses went toward Janie’s education. Her only request was that Janie attend a college within the state so she could keep an eye on her. Janie was very disgruntled at what she perceived to be a restriction. “You’re just like Dad,” she’d railed.

The words cut her deeply, but Tiana had remained firm on this one condition. She had to since she felt that Janie, while not exactly outwardly rebellious toward her, was far too naive and prone to making bad judgment calls.

Like the boyfriend she’d gotten mixed up with, a supposed senior at the same college that seventeen-year-old Janie was attending—the University of San Francisco.

When she first met Wayne Scott, the light of Janie’s life, Tiana had felt really bad vibes coming from this man. The occurrence took her by surprise because she generally didn’t believe things like that were possible. There was just something about him; he was too verbally obliging, too ready to take her—Tiana—anywhere she wanted to go. There were a few times she could have sworn the college senior was actually coming on to her.

Tiana tried as gently as possible to encourage Janie to see other guys. But for her sister, the sun rose and set around Wayne’s close-shaved head. Tiana instinctively sensed that the more she’d say against Wayne, the more Janie would defend him and dig in her heels, at the same time turning her back on the only family she had.

So Tiana had kept her peace and even refrained from saying anything when it became apparent that Janie was cutting classes to hang out with this loser.

But when one of Janie’s friends called to ask if Janie had quit college altogether, all sorts of red lights and alarms had gone off in Tiana’s head. When she asked around, it came to light that no one had seen Janie either in her classes or at the part-time job she’d gotten to help with her schooling expenses approximately two weeks ago. Sick with worry, Tiana only became more so upon learning that according to her roommate, Janie hadn’t been to her dorm room for those same two weeks.

And no one had seen her boyfriend, either.

Tiana immediately went into high gear to try to track down her sister’s movements and current whereabouts. Accessing local cameras around the college and the places that her sister had frequented had ultimately yielded eyestrain and nothing else. For all intents and purposes, both Janie and her boyfriend had completely disappeared from the San Francisco area.

Tiana tried calling Janie on her cell phone both day and night to no avail. All her calls went straight to voice mail until finally, the metallic voice told her that the mailbox was full.

Growing increasingly desperate, Tiana tried to get coordinates on her sister by using the GPS feature of her cell phone. That had eventually gotten her sister’s phone—abandoned in a Dumpster—but not her sister.

“C’mon, Janie,” she had pleaded, glaring at the cell phone—an electronic fixture her sister would have never willingly thrown away. “Give me a clue, something to work with. Anything. Where are you?”

And about that time the rumors regarding a white slave ring operating somewhere in the general vicinity, “recruiting” new faces or, more aptly, new bodies, began to circulate.

The moment she heard, a cold chill had gone down her spine. And she knew, knew this was the direction she had to go in.

Further investigation on her part pointed to the trail working its way down to the southern portion of the state. She had no jurisdiction outside San Francisco and she knew she’d be strictly on her own.

But since nothing in the world was more important to her than Janie, Tiana did what she had to do. She requested a leave of absence and took off that very day, following the only lead she had—a confidential informant who owed her a favor since it was her work in the lab that had eventually cleared the man of some pretty nasty charges. The informant told her that Wayne was mixed up with the traffickers.

When she was a kid, Tiana had prayed feverishly, seeking the help of a higher power. She had prayed that her mother would come back to take them away, out of her father’s reach. She also prayed nightly that her father would change, suddenly regret the way he had treated them and do his best to make it up to her and her sister. Finally, all but devoid of hope, she still prayed that someone, anyone, would come to their rescue.

But their mother had never returned to take them with her, their father had continued to mistreat and abuse them—especially her—until the day he died and no one ever came to rescue them.

A week after their father was killed, Tiana turned eighteen and she was the one who rescued Janie. She was the one who stood up and did what had to be done, taking care of herself and her sister. And, since none of her prayers were ever answered, she concluded that there was no one listening. So she gave up praying.

She still didn’t pray.

Faced with the huge challenge of tracking down her sister and bringing her home, Tiana saw no reason to go back to something that had only failed her time and time again. In this big, wide world, Tiana had discovered that the only person she could rely on with any sort of certainty was herself.

So be it.

She just had to gather her inner fortitude and her strength together. She intended to do whatever had to be done to find her sister. And if, along the way, she ran into Wayne, she felt confident that she could be forgiven for pummeling the worthless piece of garbage into the ground for having kidnapped Janie.

Tiana was convinced that was what had happened. He’d drugged Janie and kidnapped her. There was no other reason why Janie hadn’t gotten in contact with her in two weeks. Always before, no matter what kind of an argument they’d had, she and Janie had never gone for more than a few days without getting in contact with each other. Neither one of them had ever held any sort of a long-term grudge, although this campus Romeo had definitely thrown a wrench into the works and caused an upsetting schism to form between them.

But this went beyond even that. Something was definitely wrong.

She could feel it way down deep in her bones.

“If anything bad has happened to Janie,” Tiana promised the missing Wayne between clenched teeth as she packed a few essential things, then threw the single suitcase into her car, “I am going to fillet you and make you wish you were never born.”

Voicing the threat aloud didn’t make her feel immeasurably better.

But it helped.

Chapter 2

Tiana held her breath as she walked up to the motel door. The faded, peeling gray door was in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint and number 13’s 3 was hanging upside down, held only partially in place by a nail precariously inserted at the bottom.

The thought occurred to Tiana that the barely attached 3 might be an omen of some sort.

She dismissed the thought. Behind this door—hopefully—was the only lead she had to help her find her sister. By calling in every favor she’d had, she’d managed to get Wayne’s credit card activity traced. The cocky dimwit had used his card to pay for his motel room, allowing her to trace him to this run-down twenty-unit motel.

With any luck, Janie was here, too. Tiana wasn’t going to leave without the girl.

And if this lowlife had hurt Janie in any way, she would make sure he regretted it. Her sister was still a minor despite the fact that she was in her first year in college. Wayne was not. It was ultimately all the ammunition Tiana needed to have him put away.

Damn it, Janie, you’re the smart one in this family. You’re supposed to have more brains than this, running off with a loser. What were you thinking? Tiana silently demanded.

The next second, the direction of her thoughts did a one-eighty and anger turned to foreboding. Please be all right, Janie. Please. I’ll forgive this stupid lapse in judgment, just please be all right.

Glancing around to see if anyone was watching—this unit faced the rear parking lot, which was at present devoid of any activity—she took out the small precision tools she needed to help her gain entry into the room. The last thing she intended to do was knock, alerting Wayne so that he’d wind up fleeing through the back window, dragging Janie in his wake.

But as Tiana inserted the thin metal tool into the keyhole, the door moved back.

It wasn’t locked.

Tiana caught her lower lip between her teeth. She was either lucky—or something was very, very wrong.

It had been a while since she’d considered herself lucky.

Bracing herself, Tiana drew out her service weapon from its holster beneath her jacket. Her breath backing up in her lungs, she pushed the door open with her fingertips, moving it a painfully slow inch at a time.

The instant she saw Wayne spread out on the bed, she moved quickly, crossing from the entrance to the bed in less than a quarter of a heartbeat.

“Hands up, ‘college boy’!” she ordered, aiming her weapon straight at him.

Wayne continued to lie exactly where he was, not flinching, not moving.

Nothing.

That was when the dirty bedspread lying beneath him finally registered with her brain. The bedspread was soaked with his blood. Tiana realized that he wasn’t just staring into oblivion; his wide-open eyes no longer saw anything at all.

A wave of panic-fueled anger seized her.

“Oh, God, no, no, no. You can’t be dead, you worthless piece of trash, do you hear me? You can’t be dead!” she cried. “You have to tell me where Janie is!”

Wayne was her only connection, her only way of finding Janie. Biting off a curse, she pressed her fingers against his neck, searching for some sign of his pulse, faint or otherwise.

There was none.

Only blood that smeared against the plastic of the gloves she’d thought to put on before she’d entered—a habit from her day job where she’d learned to be very, very cautious about leaving crime scenes undisturbed.

This was surreal. It couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t!

Dazed, unable to process any thoughts, Tiana stared at the dead man for a full moment, trying to pull herself together.

Now what do I do? her mind demanded. This waste of human skin was her only lead and he was dead.

Not only that, but he now represented a serious complication. What was she supposed to do with him?

She needed to call this in, but she couldn’t very well stand around, waiting for them to arrive. She was going to have to make it an anonymous call to get them over here. Otherwise, there’d be too much to explain to them, and she didn’t have time for that. All along, as she drove here, she’d been fighting an ever-increasing feeling of urgency. She just couldn’t shake the feeling that she had to find Janie before it was too late.

There was this very real fear eating away at her that if she didn’t find her sister soon, she never would. Victims caught up in the stranglehold of sex traffickers could vanish in an instant.

Yet she couldn’t just leave this body here like this. It went against everything she was ever trained to do.

A compromise was in order. Since Wayne was already dead, Tiana decided that she’d call the police once she was well clear of here. From a pay phone—if she could locate one—so the call couldn’t be traced back to her. She didn’t have time for lengthy explanations or interrogations.

Returning her weapon to its holster beneath her jacket, she looked one last time at the person who had caused her so much grief. There was no pity, no sympathy for a life cut short. She felt nothing other than frustration. It occurred to her that she would have felt worse about any roadkill she encountered.

Crossing to the door, she threw it open, intending to run.

Only to find herself smack up against what would have been a solid brick wall had it not moved back even as it grabbed her by the shoulders.

Heart pounding as she tried to get herself together, Tiana simultaneously shook off the hold on her shoulders and pulled out her weapon for a second time in five minutes.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded, anger usurping the fear she felt.

“Someone with a gun pointed at him,” Brennan remarked, his hands partially raised out of respect for the weapon aimed at his chest.

He found himself looking even more intently at the petite redhead with wide blue eyes. But, despite her stature—was she even five two without those sexy-looking black stilts she was passing off as shoes?—she gave the impression of strength. Not the kind of outer strength that could easily lift heavy objects but the kind of inner strength that was able to move mountains.

Brennan had the impression that this redheaded powerhouse was a force to be reckoned with. And he found himself rather looking forward to that encounter.

Trained to make quick judgments, he swiftly took in the room, assessing what he saw. Sent only with the instruction to “tie up any loose ends” as a way of proving himself, he realized that he’d apparently walked into the middle of something unsavory.

“Mind pointing that somewhere else? You can point it at him,” he suggested, nodding at the body on the bed, “since you seem to have already killed him.”

The suggestion as well as his assumption took Tiana by surprise. “You think I shot him?” Pausing to review the scene, she knew how it appeared. She needed to do some quick explaining—if this man actually believed what he’d just said.

“Why not?” he asked rhetorically. “You’re the one with the gun.” As he spoke, he slowly lowered his hands, watching her intently as he did so for some sign that she’d shoot if he dropped them completely. “A woman can pull a trigger just as easily as a man—and then there’re those neat gloves you’re wearing—” he nodded at her hands “—so you don’t leave any fingerprints. Looks like you’ve got all the bases covered.” He cocked his head, as if daring her to prove his theory wrong.

“I’m cautious,” Tiana countered, referring to the plastic gloves. “But he was already dead when I came in. I found him this way,” she emphasized pointedly.

“And just how did you come to ‘find’ him in the first place?”

Tiana couldn’t tell if the man she was talking to was a cop or part of the organization she suddenly realized she needed to track down. What she did know was that he was a lot bigger than she was and she had a feeling that he was pretty quick, as well. She might have a shot at outrunning him, but then what?

If he was part of the organization that dealt in sex trafficking, he might be her best shot at finding Janie. That meant making nice with him.

How nice?

Not that, she couldn’t help thinking, being “nice” to this man would exactly be a miserable hardship, strictly speaking.

There was no doubt about the fact that the man was good-looking. Not the kind of good-looking that might be noticed peripherally in passing, but the kind of tall, dark and handsome good-looking that brought you to a jarring halt no matter what you were doing and had you staring, absolutely mesmerized by deep blue eyes that seemed to look into the most private corners of your soul.

Her mind scrambled for a plausible story. A kernel of an idea came to her. Utilizing it, she made up the rest of it as she went along.

“I have a phobia about catching something I shouldn’t. These are just a precaution.” She held up one hand as an illustration of her point. “I also like staying under the police’s radar.”

“Why’s that?”

Her eyes on his, she carefully holstered her gun. It was a gesture of good faith—one she hoped she wouldn’t regret.

“You a cop?” she asked.

Brennan laughed.

“Do I look like a cop?” he challenged, amusement highlighting a rather rugged face.

Tiana studied the stranger for a moment. He was tall, dark-haired and broad-shouldered, not to mention rather impressively dressed in a gray suit that undoubtedly set him back a bit. They were making bad guys better looking these days.

“You’ve got the jaw for it,” she quipped.

“But not the taste,” he pointed out. “Mine’s expensive,” he explained. “A cop’s salary wouldn’t begin to pay for one of my suits.” The corners of his mouth curved. “Okay, I showed you mine. You show me yours.”

She realized he was alluding to being part of the organization. Here went nothing. “I’m new in town and looking for fresh talent.”

“Him?” Brennan asked, a skeptical frown taking over his face.

Tiana laughed harshly. “Hardly. I came to talk to him because I’d heard that he was tied in to recruiting young girls.”

The handsome stranger with the good bone structure raised an eyebrow. “You like girls?”

He was baiting her on purpose, she thought. Tiana kept her cool. “My clients do.”

The raised eyebrow went up farther. “You’re a madam.”

She could hear the skepticism in his voice. This was her first hurdle and she needed to make a believer out of this man. If she didn’t, she had a feeling that her foray into this dark world to extract Janie was doomed to failure right from the start.

“Yes, I am,” she informed him haughtily. “Something wrong with that?”

“Hey, not mine to judge.” He raised his hands as if to push the entire concept away. “But you are kind of dressed understated for a madam, aren’t you?” he pointed out.

What was someone with her obvious good looks doing in a field like this? She looked too classy to be what she claimed to be. He could see her in a professional capacity—a legitimate professional capacity, not someone who dealt in flesh peddling.

But it took all kinds, he thought.

“I don’t like to stand out when I’m out among civilians,” Tiana told him.

He let his eyes travel over the length of her and could see her trying not to look away.

“Well, if you don’t want to stand out, maybe you should be wearing a bag or a sack over your head, because your looks make you a standout in any circle,” Brennan told her.

Tiana stared at him, stunned. “Are you flirting with me?” she asked incredulously.

He spread his hands wide in innocence. “Just stating it like it is.”

“In other words, you’re flirting with me,” she concluded. She noted the lopsided smile gracing his lips. Undoubtedly the undoing of a lot of women and it made him feel he could just reach out and have anyone he wanted.

Think again, she warned him silently. She didn’t trust men, especially good-looking ones. Her father had once been exceptionally good-looking, not to mention a charmer.

“You can save your breath,” she told him out loud. “I am much too rich for your blood.”

He laughed softly. “How do you know what I can afford? Maybe I’ve got a bulging...billfold,” he concluded suggestively.

Her eyes narrowed. “It doesn’t matter what you’ve got in your billfold. You can’t afford me,” she told him confidently.

He knew this was all about how successful he was at role-playing and posing. He needed to keep his mind on the game. That was what the chief was counting on, and he didn’t want to disappoint the man the first time out.

All that taken into consideration, he admitted to himself that the woman in front of him made him itch. Itch a lot.

In a place he couldn’t afford to scratch.

It was way too risky to do anything but banter with this low-key madam.

“You’re piquing my interest,” he finally told her.

“Well, you’re boring mine.”

“Sorry to hear that,” he acknowledged. “I’ll try harder next time.”

“What makes you think there’s going to be a next time?” she asked, sneering.

“Oh, lady, there’s going to be a next time,” he promised her. One way or another, he added silently, intrigued despite the situation. “Count on it.”

Tiana narrowed her eyes. “You’re part of the organization?”

He smiled, enjoying this game, even if the circumstances didn’t quite call for it. Keeping her in suspense. “I might be.”

“You either are or you’re not,” she said impatiently, her nerves just about at the end of their frayed life expectancy.

“What’s it worth to you if I am?” he asked her, his eyes drifting over the length of her again.

She pushed ahead. “I’ll pay top dollar for every girl I take off your hands—but they have to be in prime condition. No bruises, no scars, no signs of abuse. And teeth,” she added. “They have to have teeth,” she underscored. Tiana was doing her best to describe Janie the way she looked the last time she’d seen her. Hopefully, nothing of consequence had changed.

“Picky,” he said.

“Thorough,” she countered.

“That, too,” he agreed. “Also very cool.”

Her suspicions were immediately raised. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t think I know many women—or many men for that matter—who could remain so calm around a recently murdered victim.” He was studying her. “But you act as if this is an everyday occurrence in your world.”

Tiana supposed that she did come off somewhat insensitive—not that she cared what this man ultimately thought of her unless it helped her find Janie—but she was far more concerned about the living. About her sister and other girls who undoubtedly had been stolen from their homes, from their parents who had to be as worried sick about them as she was about Janie.

As for her disregard of the lifeless body on the bed, well, to her way of thinking, Wayne had just gotten what he had coming to him. He’d stolen her sister, quite possibly stolen Janie’s innocence, as well, and maybe even more than that. She had absolutely no tears to shed for the likes of someone like Wayne.

“I’m not interested in the dead,” she told the tall stranger with the intense eyes. “My only interest is in the living. Now, can you help me or at least give me the name of someone who can? Because if you can’t, then get the hell out of my way.”

“All business, huh?”

She had the feeling he was baiting her, seeing how she reacted in a given situation. Why, she didn’t know. Maybe it was some sort of a test. All she knew was that she wanted to wipe that smirk off his face. Badly.

“I left my warm, fuzzy center in my other outfit,” she told him coldly.

“The one with the whip?” he asked with a straight face. Only his eyes showed any trace of humor.

“You’ve seen it,” she deadpanned.

“Only in my dreams—” He hesitated for a moment. “So, what do I call you, anyway?”

If he was asking that, then maybe she’d passed whatever stupid test he was giving her. She never hesitated. “Aphrodite.”

“The goddess of love,” he acknowledged.

“You know your Greek mythology.” She hadn’t expected any of the people on the lower rungs of this organization to be educated. Maybe this man wasn’t low man on the totem pole. Maybe he went up higher than that.

“I know a lot of things,” he replied.

“Such as where the merchandise is being kept?” she asked, trying to sound vaguely bored as well as impatient. She fervently hoped her pounding heart wasn’t going to give her away.

“Such as that, yes,” Brennan said. Truth be told, he had just managed to breach the outer ring of the organization in this past week. He’d come to the traffickers, thanks to an informant who had since disappeared, only a few days ago, posing as a wealthy representative of a club that catered to depraved men who craved being serviced by females who were definitely below the legal voting age.

Because nothing was accepted at face value, his background—the background that had been created for him by Brenda Cavanaugh, the chief of Ds’ daughter-in-law who ran the tech support division—was being checked out by unknown people even as he stood here, talking to this madam-in-search-of-an-extended-stable. He only hoped that Brenda was as good as everyone said she was. His life could very well depend on it.

“Then take me there,” she challenged, moving in close to him.

“Whoa, hold your horses, honey,” he warned. “Nobody sets foot in ‘the candy store’ without being checked out first.”

“Like him?” she asked contemptuously, nodding her head at the dead college senior on the bed.

“I think it’s pretty clear that he didn’t make the grade,” Brennan told her matter-of-factly.

“Was that why he was eliminated?” she asked, wondering why Wayne had been killed now rather than later. Knowing might help her find Janie. Every piece of information might very well be crucial—or not. It was like trying to navigate a moving van in a dense fog. She had no idea if she was going in the right direction, or completely off the road. She couldn’t remember a time when she had been more frustrated.

“Part of the reason,” Brennan allowed vaguely.

“Hold it,” Tiana ordered as something dawned on her.

“If you knew he was already dead, why did you accuse me of killing him?” she demanded.

For a second he seemed flustered before quickly gaining his composure. “Simple,” he said after a beat. “I wanted to see how fast you thought on your feet.”

Incensed, because for a moment he’d had her thinking she was going to have to kill him in order to survive, Tiana gave in to her temper. She swung and made contact with his cheek—hard. The target of her wrath rubbed his cheek but refrained from saying anything or retaliating.

However, when the so-called madam began to swing again, he caught her wrist and held on to it just tightly enough to get his point across.

“The first one’s free, on the house, so to speak,” he told her. There was the hint of a smile on his lips, but his eyes were deadly serious. “Anything after that has consequences,” he warned. His eyes narrowed as he looked into hers. “Understood?”

“Understood,” she ground out grudgingly between clenched teeth. Okay, she thought. Now I know how far I can push you.

She dropped her hand to her side when he released it.

Chapter 3

It did surprise Tiana that the good-looking stranger was making no effort to leave the room. Most people wouldn’t have wanted to share space with a corpse, yet he didn’t look the least flustered. Since he appeared to be her only possible link to Janie, she couldn’t leave until he did. She needed to have him take her to whoever he was associated with—and hope that whoever that was had a link to her sister.

“So now what happens?” she asked him.

“That all depends,” he answered. He was still trying to figure her out. He’d already decided that the woman was a spitfire, but what else was she? Was she telling the truth about why she’d come to see the dead man, or was there something else going on? And just how was that going to affect the ultimate outcome of his assignment?

Like everything else he’d dealt with in the secret lives he’d had to undertake, Brennan decided to play it by ear.

“On what?” she asked.

“On who you’re asking about. If you’re referring to our friend here—” he nodded toward the dead man “—he stays right where he is. The motel maid will undoubtedly find him sooner or later and then he becomes the motel manager’s problem.”

“You’re leaving him here?”

“Why not? He can’t be traced back to anyone of consequence and since he can’t hold up his end of the conversation, I don’t see any point in taking him with me. Dead bodies are really a pain to get rid of,” he told her.

The first second when no one else was around, he intended to call in and tell the chief of Ds about this latest casualty of the sex trafficking ring they were looking to take down. From everything he’d managed to put together, the man on the bed was nothing more than a would-be gofer for the organization. Someone who’d traded on his looks to get girls to follow him into the trap that was set for them. More than likely, he’d probably gotten an inflated sense of self and had asked for a bigger share of the profits. The answer to his demands was undoubtedly why his person was now sporting a bullet hole.

“If you’re asking about me, I go back to where I came from. As for you,” he began as he looked down at her—and then paused.

The woman sounded a little impatient. “Yes?”

“Are you really on the level about looking for fresh talent?” he asked. His first instinct had been to cut her loose. His second was to keep her close. Maybe he could incorporate a little soul-saving into this assignment he was on.

She raised her chin again, appearing ready to go at it with him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

He laughed shortly. “You really want me to go into that?”

“That depends on how wild your imagination is.”

His eyes met hers. If she really was a madam, he wondered what she’d been like, working her way up within the ranks. He knew better than to get involved, but it cost nothing to let his imagination go for a moment or two.

His mouth curved as his eyes swept over the length of her. “Pretty wild.”

“Then no,” she answered almost primly. “But I am on the level,” she informed him. “Girls wear out fast in this line of work. And if they don’t, they have an unfortunate habit of outgrowing it. My clients like them young and dewy fresh. The bloom only stays so long on the rose before it fades away.”

Brennan nodded. “Your clients are fickle,” he concluded.

“My clients are discerning,” Tiana corrected him pointedly.

“Potato-po-tah-to,” Brennan replied, waffling his hand in front of her as if to say that he saw right through her protest.

He couldn’t help wondering again what someone like her was doing mixed up in something like this. She looked too clean, too refined for the kind of lowlife this sort of a trade usually attracted. They might have more money and have positions of importance in the everyday world, but her clients were still scum, just well-kept scum.

With no effort at all he could see this woman who’d given him such a phony name being a teacher or a shop owner, not someone who dealt in the misery of young women as she peddled their flesh to the highest bidder.

He wasn’t here to get personally involved, Brennan reminded himself. Or to save a so-called fallen woman. The only people he was supposed to be concerning himself with were the young women who had been kidnapped or pressed into this life by being lied to. He was here to save them, not to get mixed up with a woman with electric blue eyes and hair that made him think of an out-of-control forest fire.

“I wouldn’t look down my nose at anyone if I were you,” she informed him. “It’s not exactly as if you’re without reproach here.”

Brennan spread his hands in an exaggerated show of innocence. The smile on his face was positively wicked. “Never said I was.”

“You haven’t really said very much of anything, have you?” she accused.

Brennan didn’t bother denying it. “Better that way. I make it a rule never to hand over the nails to my coffin to anyone. Never know when someone could use it against me,” he told her.

“Well, not that I don’t enjoy debating philosophy with you, mister...” She paused for a moment before asking, “What did you say your name was?”

Boy, was he enjoying this. “I didn’t.”

“Well, say it now,” she ordered.

“Wayne,” he said, drawling out the surname. “Bruce Wayne.”

He had to be kidding. “Bruce Wayne,” she repeated. “As in Batman?”

He heard the disbelief in her voice. He’d meant it as joke, but decided to stick to the name. For one thing, it was easier to remember. “My father had a sense of humor.”

Her eyes took measure of him, from his head right down to the tips of his shoes. Okay, let him have his little joke. Maybe if she went along with it, Tiana thought, she could get closer to him. She needed some sort of a way in, and now that Wayne was permanently out of the running, this man was going to have to be it.

“Obviously,” she agreed.

Not that she believed it for a minute. But it didn’t matter what his name was. He could call himself Peter Rabbit for all she cared. As long as he provided her with a way to get to her sister, she’d call him any name he wanted.

“Not that I’m not enjoying this meaningless exchange,” she went on to say, trying to light a fire under him and finally get out of this motel room, “but I’m kind of in a hurry.”

“Don’t be.”

Was he putting her on some kind of notice? Or was there some other hidden meaning behind his words? She had no patience with riddles and puzzles, not when the stakes were so high.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“It means that the man you’re going to be dealing with holds people in a hurry suspect. You need to be laid-back.”

That didn’t make any sense to her. “Why?”

Roland, the man he’d dealt with, the one who had sent him out on what turned out to be a fool’s errand, was nothing if not paranoid. “He might just think you’re trying to set him up and are looking to put some distance between you before the trap goes off.”

This Wayneman was getting too close to the truth. A lucky guess on his part? Or was she somehow transparent in her concern? Back in San Francisco she was a lab rat. She was damn good at her job but still a lab rat. Fieldwork wasn’t exactly her specialty. She was winging this as she went along.

“I’m not trying to set anyone up,” Tiana protested. “I just want to see if he has the kind of girls my clients prefer.”

He raised his shoulders in a dismissive, disinterested shrug. “Just your word against his suspicions. You’re better off acting like you have all the time in the world,” he advised. “It sets off fewer alarms that way.”

“But I don’t have all the time in the world,” she protested, getting further into her role. If Janie was being held captive by this sex trafficking ring, then she had no idea how much time she actually had before her sister was shipped off for parts unknown. The second Janie left the area, the chances of finding her fell abysmally. “I’ve got clients who’ll take their business somewhere else if I don’t bring them the kind of selection they’re looking for.”

“Somebody breathing’s not enough, huh?” he asked her with a grin that she found hugely unsettling. It wasn’t that it was creepy. What worried her was that it wasn’t. Moreover, it got to her—which was totally unacceptable.

“Not even close,” she told him. “They have very definite requirements.” When he didn’t say anything in response for a couple of minutes, just looked her over, she found it difficult not to shift uncomfortably. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Making a judgment call.”

He was judging her? Tiana squared her shoulders combatively. “And?” she challenged.

His expression was easygoing—quite the opposite of what she felt. “You pass.”

“Good to know,” she said in a bored voice. “Now will you take me to talk to someone in authority?” It was more of a demand than a request.

The amused, cocky grin widened. “What makes you think I’m not someone in authority?”

“Let’s call it a hunch,” she told him.

He inclined his head. She’d played that hand well. Whatever she was up to—and he was fairly certain she was up to something, something she was keeping to herself right now—she had guts. “Not bad. All right, I’ll take you with me and introduce you to Roland.”

“The man in charge?” she asked.

Brennan laughed shortly. There was very little humor in the sound. “He thinks he is.”

Her eyes never left Wayne’s face. She was looking for a chink in his armor, a tell she could use in her favor. There was nothing. “Is he right?” she asked.

Isaac Roland was far from in charge, although no one who worked directly for him would ever have had the nerve to tell him that to his face. The man in charge had yet to be identified, a fact that kept Brennan playing this charade. They needed a name in order to shut everything down and make their arrests.

“He’s two rungs up the ladder,” Brennan told her.

“What about you?” she asked. How did the man who called himself Wayne actually figure into all this? Was he the cleanup man, the guard at the door of an exclusive club who decided who gained access and who was turned away?

Or—?

“I’m the guy leaning against the ladder,” he told her. The grin on his face made it impossible for her to gauge if he was telling her the truth or pulling her leg. And just what did he mean by that line, anyway? Was he saying that he wasn’t part of the operation but just an interested spectator?

Or was he deliberately belittling his role in all this to gain her confidence and get her to talk to him? If so, to what end?

It was too much of a puzzle for her to solve now. As long as he didn’t pose any sort of an immediate threat—and she remained on her guard—she didn’t care what he was in the scheme of things. Or who he thought he was.

On the surface, she seemed to be winning his trust—as far as it went—and right now that was good enough for her.

“If you’re going back to him, I’ll follow you in my car,” she told him, about to leave the room. The dead man was making her feel claustrophobic.

Brennan caught her by the arm and she looked at him quizzically. She also spared a look at his fingers that were wrapped around her upper arm, her indication clear. The words Let go practically vibrated between them.

But he ignored the silent message and continued holding her forearm for a moment longer. “I think Roland would prefer it if we both used my car. He’s very big on green energy and cutting down on pollution,” he told her, his expression unreadable.

This “Roland” was also big on cutting back on avenues of escape, Tiana couldn’t help thinking. But there was absolutely no way she could allude to that without raising all sorts of suspicions on the part of this man.

First she had to find Janie, then she could plan their escape, she told herself. The idea that, since Wayne was dead, Janie also might be dead, fleetingly visited her thoughts, but Tiana refused to allow it to take root. Janie was alive and she was here. Tiana refused to allow her mind to entertain any other possibility. To believe that her sister might be dead would render her completely inert. She’d be no good to Janie or herself that way.

Still, she knew she couldn’t just docilely allow herself to be led away like some overgrown, directionally challenged lemming.

“What about my car?” she asked. “I can’t just leave it here.”

“Sure you can,” he said. “I’ll bring you back for it after you meet Roland and state the nature of your business to him.”

Tiana knew she had no choice. If she protested, he’d just leave her here. Possibly in the same condition as Wayne was in. For that matter, she still wasn’t a hundred percent convinced that this so-called Bruce Wayne wasn’t the one who’d killed Wayne in the first place. The latter had always struck her as being almost too stupid to live, but discovering she was right was of no great consolation to her. He could have at least remained alive long enough to tell her where Janie was.

She struggled to contain her impatience and concern. “All right, have it your way, ‘Bruce,’” she said.

Brennan flashed a quick smile in her direction. “I usually do.” He said it without bragging or bravado. It was just a stated fact. “My car’s right outside,” he told her, finally leading the way out of the room. He paused to look around, as if to make certain that the area was still deserted. It was.

The sunlight seemed extra bright as she walked out of the dingy, dimly illuminated motel room, and she squinted for a moment, trying to acclimate her eyes to the pronounced change. In doing so, she didn’t see the rock right in front of her. Stubbing the toe of her shoe on it, she tripped.

Instinct had Brennan reacting to the faint, telltale noises. He turned around just in time to catch her and keep the supple handful from making direct contact with the ground.

It all happened very fast, less than two beats of an old-fashioned clock, but even so, he was exceptionally aware of the softness of her body as it made contact with his.

As was she. He could tell by the very startled look in her eyes—which had flown wide-open.

“You make more headway if you keep your eyes open,” he told her, amused.

“So they tell me,” Tiana snapped, brushing herself off.

Since he’d caught her before she’d actually had a chance to hit the ground, he could only guess that she was attempting to symbolically brush away any trace of contact with him.

Was the lady protesting too much? he wondered. Or did she find him as compelling and intriguing as he found her?

“Car’s right here,” he pointed out.

Raising his hand, he pressed the security release on his car key. The silver BMW that had been recruited especially for this part he was undertaking softly whispered that its doors were now unlocked.

He waited until she opened the passenger-side door and got in before he followed suit himself on the driver’s side.

She slid onto a seat that would have made butter seem unusually hard and brittle. Without thinking, she feathered her fingertips along the side of the seat appreciatively. “Business is good for you, too, I see.”

The implication wasn’t wasted on him. She was telling him that she was doing well in her chosen field.

“Can’t complain,” he said. He started the car with another press of a button.

“A person can always complain,” she countered.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But nobody likes to hear complaints. Makes them unreceptive to the person. Me, I always believed in counting my blessings.”

She looked at him in disbelief. Was this man for real? She couldn’t decide one way or another. Her immediate gut feeling would have been to say no, but there was something about his tone of voice that told her she was being made privy to the truth, strange as it might sound.

“An optimistic pimp,” she marveled as they left the parking lot behind them. “I don’t think I’ve ever encountered one before.”

“Then you need to broaden your social circles,” he quipped.

Tiana pretended to think it over before she inclined her head. “Maybe,” she allowed.

“And for the record,” he told her matter-of-factly, “I’m not a pimp.”

“A procurer?” she suggested. When he made no answer, she said, “Okay, what would you call yourself if you were filling out a résumé?” she asked loftily. “A matchmaker?” She laughed.

“A businessman,” he corrected in all seriousness. “A pimp is someone who deals with the dregs of society, pushing them into the arms of their destruction for a hefty cut of their earnings.”

She’d never heard it described that way. “You really are into philosophy, aren’t you?” she marveled. “Either that, or you’ve learned just the right way to appease your conscience.”

“Conscience has nothing to do with it,” he assured her. Then, out of the blue, he asked her, “How about you?” When she looked at him quizzically, he elaborated on his question. “How did you get into this line of...work?” he finally said when the right word seemed to be eluding him.

“Quite by accident, actually,” she answered.

“Explain,” he urged.

“It’s a long story for another day,” she told him. When I can come up with the story. Out loud, she said, “When I know you better.”

“We can take care of that little detail any time you say so,” he assured her, his meaning made crystal clear by the smile on his face.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she answered. And I’ll keep you at a distance. It’ll be much safer that way, she added silently, although she had a feeling that “safe,” much less “safer,” was not going to be something she would feel until she and Janie were as far away from here as possible.

And as far away from this man as possible, she added as an afterthought.

Chapter 4

The Aries Hotel with its understated opulence and its refined ambience was the complete opposite of the dingy motel where she’d tracked down Wayne. Tiana was confident that the average price of one room in the hotel was more than the combined sum gathered from all the rooms at the motel.

“What are we doing here?” Tiana asked, addressing the question to the back of “Bruce Wayne’s” head as she followed him through the hotel’s revolving door.

“You said you wanted to meet the man I’ve been dealing with,” Brennan reminded her as he waited for her to join him.

“He’s staying here?” she asked, scanning the immediate vicinity.

Realizing that the man who was essentially her guide for the moment had kept on walking, she hurried to catch up with him.

She managed to reach him just as “Wayne” reached a bank of elevators located at the far end of the floor, a few feet beyond the registration desk.

Brennan nodded. “He has a suite near the top floor.”

“And you?” she asked, not really sure what had prompted her to ask, other than she was attempting to live up to the image of a madam she was creating. “What do you have?”

An elevator car’s door slid soundlessly open in front of them.

Brennan looked at her pointedly as they walked into the empty elevator car. He pressed number 30. “An itch I can’t scratch—yet.”

Was he actually putting her on notice, she wondered, stunned. “Saving yourself for Miss Right?” Tiana deadpanned.

The spontaneous laugh was deep and rich and all-encompassing within the small space. And, if she allowed it, it was also hypnotic in its own compelling way. Tiana did what she could to block the effects. Beyond his being good-looking, she knew nothing about the man. He could be a homicidal maniac for all she knew, even though her gut told her that he most likely wasn’t.

“There’s no such thing as ‘Miss Right,’” Brennan told her.

“How do you know?” she asked, deciding to give him a hard time. “Just because you haven’t encountered her yet doesn’t mean she’s not just around the next corner.” As far as she was concerned, there were a great many “Miss Rights” out there. The main problem was that there were no “Mr. Rights” to receive them.

Numbers flashed by as they passed each floor. Brennan stared at his companion as if she’d lost her mind. “Never met a madam who was into fairy tales. How long did you say you were in this business?”

“It feels like all my life,” she responded, infusing just the right amount of weariness into her voice.

They got out and he led the way down a winding hallway to a recessed door that appeared to be removed from the other rooms. This was clearly a suite among suites. Whoever this man was, Tiana thought, he certainly knew how to enjoy the fruits of his labors.

“Any word of advice?” she heard herself asking the tall man beside her.

She had to be crazy, but there was just the tiniest part of her that trusted this man—which on the face of it was nothing if not a foolhardy move on her part. Other than not really knowing this man from Adam, she realized again that she could very well be allying herself with a stone-cold killer. She had no way of knowing who or what he was. Why she should feel that she could trust him was a concept that was completely beyond her.

Since when had she turned into a trusting soul where men were concerned? a small voice in her head asked. She had no answer.

“Yeah,” Brennan told her after a beat during which time he appeared to be weighing the pros and cons of answering her question at all, much less truthfully. She might, after all, be trying to trap him. For all he knew, she was allied with Roland and had been sent to test him.

Maybe he was crazy, but he decided to take his chances—up to a point.

“Don’t let your guard down around Roland for a second. He’s a narcissist, but he’s the type who wouldn’t think twice about slitting your throat if he thinks you’re lying to him—or if he believes that you went against him.”

“Doesn’t sound like he’s going to be winning any Mister Nice Guy awards anytime soon,” she quipped drolly.

“That’s not his bottom line, no,” Brennan agreed. He knocked on the door and it opened immediately.

A veritable giant of a man was standing in the doorway, blocking any access to the suite. She guessed he had to be about six foot six at the very least and he looked as though he weighed more than the two of them combined—perhaps even with Janie thrown into the mix. The seams on the suit he was wearing appeared to be stretched to the limit.

“Bodyguard?” she asked Brennan.

“More like all-around everything guard,” he answered, never taking his eyes off the man.

The giant with the close-cropped blond hair regarded her through slits where his eyes should have been. The extra fat he was carrying in his face had all but crowded out his eyes, giving him a permanent squint that made the man’s face look more ominous and menacing than it already did.

Recognition was evident in his eyes when he looked at her companion and he allowed the man to pass, but as she began to follow, he placed one hand against her upper torso, holding her back.

“Just him,” he rumbled, his face unsmiling.

Brennan didn’t attempt to remove the bodyguard’s hand because it would be like trying to move a tree trunk. There was no pitting his strength against the giant’s outright.

Instead, he looked at the man authoritatively and said, “She’s with me. It’s okay.”

The bodyguard appeared to roll the matter over in his head; then he dropped his hand and inclined his head, as if to say she was allowed to pass. This time.

Swallowing the heart that had climbed up to her throat, Tiana glared at the bodyguard and told him in a voice filled with barely suppressed fury, “Don’t you ever lay a hand on me again without an invitation.”

Both men looked surprised at the bravado erupting from such a small, compact source. Brennan allowed a smile to slip over his lips.

“Pretty gutsy of you,” he commented as they moved farther into the suite. “You do realize that he could easily have broken you in half like a twig without even half trying.”

“I realize,” she answered, her voice giving away nothing. She was silently relieved that it didn’t crack and give her away.

The suite, she thought as she got a better look at it, was huge. Bigger than some houses. Definitely larger than the house where she and Janie had grown up. Business had to be very good.

The thought made her sick to her stomach. She wished she could take the man out right now, bring down his operation. But arresting Roland wouldn’t get her anywhere. She needed tangible evidence.

“Should I be dropping bread crumbs?” she asked the man in front of her.

They had taken a couple of twists and turns within the suite and she was trying to commit each step to memory, but she really didn’t like leaving anything to chance in case a quick getaway was necessary. The size of the place was overwhelming.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take you back,” Brennan promised in a soothing voice.

She looked at him. He was acting as if they were on some ordinary stroll through the park instead of walking through a very sick bastard’s temporary living accommodations.

“Why should I believe you?” she asked.

That was a simple enough question to answer. “Because you have no choice.”

He was right and she hated him for it. Hated the fact that once again, everything was all on her shoulders and she had no one to look to, no one to trust or share the burden with. Her sister’s life depended on what she did here.

If it’s not already too late, a small, nagging voice whispered in her head. She clenched her hands at her sides as she blocked the voice.

Instead, she made a silent pledge—not her first—to her sister. Hang in there, Janie. No matter what, hang in there. I’ll find you. I swear I’ll find you.

They entered what looked to be a sitting room. It was decorated entirely in stark white, which made the room appear twice as large. The only color in the immediate area was provided by the two men on the opposite sides of the room and the man in the middle who they were obviously paid to protect.

The deeply tanned guards appeared as if they were interchangeable, somewhat smaller versions of the guard at the front door. Both men were wearing dark navy blue suits, white shirts and dark ties. Each had a telltale bulge beneath his jacket, which Tiana assumed was caused by their not-so-concealed weapons.

The suits had to be specially tailored, she guessed, because the twin guards, like the man at the front door, were hulks in their own right.

The man in the center, looking out on the terrace with his back to them, was a great deal smaller heightwise. But he was far more imposing when he turned around to face them. While the guards were a compilation of sheer muscle and brute strength, the thin, dark-haired man had an aura of intelligent evil about him.

His eyes, as they passed over them—or accurately, over her—were flat. They were eyes that might have belonged to a dead man for all the expression that they had in them—except that she was fairly certain this man missed nothing.

Granted she spent most of her time in the lab when she was at work, but she could definitely recognize evil when she saw it. And this was the worst example of evil she had ever seen. It took effort not to shiver in its presence.

“You brought me a gift?” Roland asked Brennan. Approaching Tiana, he circled around her slowly as if she were an inanimate object, like a painting or a vase that had been given to him.

“No, she was in the motel room when I got there. He’s dead, by the way,” Brennan told Roland. “The kid you wanted me to check on. He’s dead.”

“You?” Roland asked, his implication clear.

“No,” Brennan answered, wondering if all this was part of an elaborate game. He was fairly certain that Roland had been the one to have the young man killed. “I didn’t kill him. He was already dead when I got there.”

Roland raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “You?” he asked, turning toward Tiana.

She shook her head, hoping she could keep the charade up long enough to find her sister. “No, I found him that way. Someone got to him before I could.”

“The whore has a mouth on her,” Roland announced with a nod. It was difficult to say whether there was admiration in the man’s voice or if what they were hearing was the calm before a storm.

Not taking any chances, Brennan remained alert. He knew that things could turn on the head of a pin at any moment.

“She also isn’t a whore,” Tiana informed him with a toss of her head that seductively sent her flame red hair over her shoulder.

The appearance of amusement in Roland’s features increased. “Oh, really?”

“Really,” she confirmed in a no-nonsense tone of voice.

“You brought along your girlfriend?” the man questioned, as if he believed the woman’s disclaimer.

“Why don’t you talk to me instead of him?” Tiana proposed, making her voice sound as arrogant as the man she was speaking to. “Especially since he doesn’t speak for me because he doesn’t know me.”

“Is this true?” Roland asked, looking at Brennan. What the man was thinking was impossible to gauge.

Brennan had no choice but to tell the truth without knowing where that might lead. “I just met her in the motel room.”

“All right, who are you?” There was an unspoken threat in the man’s voice that forbade her to say anything but the truth. It went without saying that it would go badly for her if she lied.

She said the lines that she had been practicing ever since she’d asked for a leave of absence. “I go by Aphrodite Starling and I’ve come with a business proposition for you.”

The cold, dead eyes never left her face. “I’m listening.”

“I run an escort service of young ladies, emphasis on the word young,” she began. “Some of my girls have aged out, shall we say? I’m in the market for replacements. I need fresh talent. Word has it that you have fresh talent,” she told him, forcing herself not to look away. If she did, she knew he would take it as some kind of weakness—or worse. She had to win him over and do it fast.

“I might,” he said vaguely, as if they were talking about a tool she wanted to borrow from his garage.

She kept it conversational, as if he was her first stop, but not necessarily her only one.

“I’d be interested in seeing what you have, perhaps taking a few off your hands.” She paused a moment before adding, “I’ll pay you top dollar.”

The man appeared to only be vaguely interested, but she knew that had to be an act. Men like him were only in it for the money and they wanted as much as they could get their hands on as fast as they could get it.

“I’d like to see the color of your money,” he told her.

She had a counterrequest. “I’d like to see the nature of your girls.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “Not so fast. I don’t even know who you are.”

“And you won’t,” she told him matter-of-factly. “I don’t broadcast my organization. Staying under the radar is how I survive. Word of mouth in a very small, elite, tight circle does all the advertising for me that I need. Once I’m confident that you can deliver—and that you’re not just out to steal my money—I’ll give you references and you can have me checked out to your heart’s content.”

“That sounds fair,” he allowed, then added, “But I’ll have to think about it. It doesn’t pay to be trusting. You understand that?”

“Oh, perfectly.” Because I trust you as far as I can throw you, she told the unsavory man silently. Still, what she thought of him didn’t really matter. He had her sister, of that she was fairly certain. That gave him all the cards to hold. She just had her bluff, nothing more.

“I have photographs I can show you,” Roland was telling her. “You can make your choices from them.”

“Photographs can be easily doctored,” she told him with just a hint of contempt in her voice. “When can I see the girls in person so I can make my choices?” she countered.

“My, my, such eagerness,” Roland said with a laugh that had no humor in it whatsoever. “All in due time, my dear, all in due time.”

Okay, if he wanted to play word games, she’d play along. Anything to gain his confidence—as far as it went. “I heard that time was scarce and that you and your ‘people’ would be leaving the country very soon.”

He sneered at her gullibility—or at least that was his inference. “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

“Then you’re not leaving soon?” she asked, watching his eyes for some sort of a sign that would give him away one way or another. When he didn’t answer, she looked to the man who had brought her here for a confirmation or denial.

“Don’t look at him,” Roland warned sharply. “He doesn’t have an answer to that any more than you do. You see, I do believe in equality. You will both be kept in the dark until such time as I feel you need to be enlightened. Not a moment sooner,” he told her.

“All right, then, for the time being, I’ll look at those photographs you have.” The moment the words were out of her mouth, she knew it wasn’t even going to be that easy—seeing a photograph of Janie wouldn’t confirm that she was still alive. But she had to try even though she knew she was playing right into his hands. Maybe she could use that, she told herself. Use that to win the miserable human being over.

It was a long shot, but right now she didn’t have anything else.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Come back tomorrow and perhaps I’ll let you look at them then.”

She played along and looked confused even though in her heart, she knew that the man was enjoying asserting his power.

“You just offered to show those photographs to me now,” she protested, delivering just a part of the frustration she was beginning to feel building up inside her.

“I changed my mind. Women aren’t the only ones with that prerogative, you know.” The smile on his face indicated just how pleased he was with himself. “Give one of my men a cell number where you can be reached and I’ll call if and when I want to see you again. You can go,” he commanded like the tyrant he aspired to be within this growing organization, dismissing her with a wave of his hand.

Inwardly, Tiana was seething, but she couldn’t afford to indulge herself and show it. Somehow, exercising supreme control, she managed to keep her feelings under wraps.

“Tomorrow, then,” Tiana said to him as civilly as she could.

“Tomorrow,” Roland said with a smirk. “Or the next day.”

She turned on her heel and began to walk away. It was either that or lose all control and strangle the pompous ass.

When Brennan fell into place beside her, she looked at him almost accusingly. “I can find my way out of here without your help.”

“I’m your ride, remember?” he reminded her cheerfully.

Roland, apparently, hadn’t heard him say it. “Where are you going?” he demanded, eying Brennan, as if outraged that he’d leave without being dismissed.

“I’m taking her back to her car,” Brennan answered. “I drove her here, thinking it was better if she didn’t have a way to leave from the hotel unless you wanted her to leave.”

Roland appeared rather impatient for a second, then shrugged.

“Not half-bad thinking. All right, be quick about it—and then come back. I want details from you about that motel room and then I might have another assignment for you. See if you’re worth my time,” he said loftily. “So whatever you’re going to do,” he ordered, and it was clear he wasn’t referring to just a simple drop-off and delivery, “make sure you do it fast.”

“I’ll see what I can do to move things along,” Brennan replied respectfully, playing up to the man because there were a great many lives at stake if he played the game correctly and well.

He was well aware that the woman beside him—who in his opinion remained an enigma—clearly had contempt in her eyes when she looked at him.

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