despite the butterflies churning in her gut, she slowly walked through the crowded club, following Sweet.
2
“She’s on her way up to my loft.”
There was a pause before the other man spoke. “You don’t waste any time. Do I want to know how you accomplished that so quickly?”
Demetri held his cell phone in one hand and used the other to pull off his jacket and shirt, carefully laying them over the small leather chair in the corner of the room. He then unbuttoned his slacks and shoved them, along with his boxers, down the length of his legs.
“Probably not.”
“Shit.”
He sat down on the chair with the phone cradled between his shoulder and ear and pulled off his shoes and socks before taking off his slacks.
“Yeah, well, you wanted the job done. Do you give a shit how I accomplish it?” he asked.
“No, I guess not. As long as the job gets done.” Another pause before the other man continued, “You’ve decided to take the case, then?”
“Did I have a choice?” Demetri grunted, walking through the open loft.
“There’s always choices, Agent My—”
“Don’t call me that,” Demetri broke in, cutting the man off, mid-sentence.
“Once an agent, always an agent. You can’t escape your past. Can’t hide from it, either.”
“I was a pencil pusher. Before I left, I’d quit fieldwork. If you’re gonna pull the patriotic card, get it right,” Demetri walked, naked, across the room toward the bathroom. “I don’t have a lot of time for small talk, no disrespect, sir. Can we cut this short?”
“Do you have a plan?” The man asked after a pregnant pause.
Demetri loosened his watch and placed it on the bathroom counter, then removed a ring suspended on a gold chain from around his neck.
It was the only other piece of jewelry he wore, one that reminded him of the reasons he no longer felt any desire to reenter a world of deception and manipulation.
Did he have a plan?
Good question, Demetri thought with a grimace.
Just when he was getting his life back together, Nick Panin, his former commander, called and convinced him to fly out to D.C., dangling a carrot he knew Demetri wouldn’t be able to resist in front of his nose.
Completely disrupting the tranquility he’d worked so tenaciously to achieve over the last two years with an offer the son of a bitch knew he couldn’t refuse.
If Demetri agreed to help him on a case involving two con artists—Gabrielle Marlowe and Adam Quick—who were involved in a Medicaid and pharmaceutical fraud, his former commander would use all of his considerable power to find Demetri’s former partner.
He thought back to Siobhan and his time in the Bureau.
They’d been paired up as new recruits fresh out of the academy, assigned their first mission together. Over the course of five years as partners, they’d successfully helped bring down hundreds of con artists whose game had been so tight they’d escaped the long arm of justice for years.
Their cases usually involved criminals who preyed on the helpless, often scamming them out of their life savings. With each success, they’d gotten more and more accolades. It wasn’t long before they were recruited by a special division within the FBI, headed by Nicolai Panin, dealing with criminals higher up, or down, depending on one’s view, the food chain.
Their first case in the newly formed special ops team had been their last.
They’d taken months to set up a sting to infiltrate an underground BDSM cult to investigate the murder of one of their members, one they’d linked to other similar murders.
They’d first gone into “training” to learn the lifestyle. Unfortunately for Siobhan, Demetri hadn’t seen the psychological effects the training and months spent living that lifestyle had on her. When the time for the bust came, unknown to Demetri, Siobhan was no longer the same woman.
She’d turned on the agency. On Demetri.
She’d informed the cult’s leader, the man they believed to be the one responsible for the murders, and he’d gotten away, taking Von with him. And from all accounts, it appeared she’d gone willingly.
Demetri’s gaze settled on the ring on the bathroom counter.
Siobhan had left it in the “dungeon” area of the secret club they’d infiltrated, in a small five-by-five-foot steel-barred cage.
Along with the black leather, ruby-encrusted studded collar—the one he’d given her—and a note telling him not to look for her.
He fingered the ring.
It was the ring all the cadets received after graduating from the FBI Academy.
That was the last communication he’d had from her.
“Well?” Panin prompted him, jarring him out of his musings.
“I’m working on it. I’ll let you know when I have more to report,” was his gruff reply.
“Demetri…listen—”
“I’ll be in contact.”
Demetri pressed the end button on his cell and flung it, as well as the ring, on the counter. The ring spun and rolled, landing with a ting on the marble bathroom counter.
He’d been told Gabrielle and Adam frequented the Sweet Spot, which was one of the reasons his commander had come to him for help. Demetri thought there were more reasons he’d been brought into the investigation, but if there were, his former commander wasn’t telling. The most he would say was that if Demetri could bring them in, find out who else was involved, who was at the top, he’d put a special team out to find Siobhan.
For Demetri, that been reason enough for him to agree.
Upon his return home, he hadn’t had to wait long before he identified Adam Quick and Gabrielle Marlowe. Quick looked exactly as he did in the many photos Demetri’s former commander had given him. He was tall, with the type of muscular build that came from working out in a gym regularly.
He had what Demetri thought of as a “pretty boy” look. Women fell for that type hard.
Adam wore his dark blond, artificially highlighted hair swept back from a wide forehead, and in the photo he was smiling a lopsided, practiced grin.
With his light blue eyes, classic features, and no scars, nothing to mar his pretty-boy perfection, teamed with what most cons had in abundance, manipulativeness, women fell like a ton of bricks.
He’d dismissed the man in the photo and looked at the woman, his partner, Gabrielle Marlowe, wondering if she had been
