Bait: A dark erotic thriller (Hunter & Prey Book 2) (17 page)

With my plan finally set in motion, I still had a handful of things to do. I had to get waxed, buffed, and perfectly coiffed. I also had to call Agent Smith to let her know who to bully so her people could gain access to the premises. Just to err on the side of caution, I called a private physician that Brigitte sometimes used and told her to be on stand-by later tonight and tomorrow morning.

Then, all I could do was wait, and hope that I hadn’t just set things rolling that would not just harm, but potentially kill, several people, and I would be the only one to blame for that.

The soiree seemed the same as hundreds of such events that I’d attended over the past decade and a half. It was a private affair—that’s why the very strict invite-only code—but a lot of not very private persons were in attendance. I knew a few, but it was less from my client book than the tabloids. Some celebrity birthday or other, disguised with a fancy title to lend it legitimacy. There even was a red carpet that I avoided like the plague as I led my three girls inside through another entrance. One might have thought that affairs like this would be teeming with escorts, but that’s what the after-parties were for. Here, it was all legitimate people doing legitimate business, pretending not to.

We were a little early, so I had the perfect spying position down pat by the time Alison and her guests arrived. Ray was nowhere in sight, Darren and Daliah were also missing, but right now I had no time to waste on them. Some pertinent studying, and I recognized the man Alison needed her distraction for. The college professor rather than the banker. It was always the legitimate-seeming ones.

Brigitte’s hacker team had brought up next to nothing about him, except for two divorces that had ended in settlements—including sealed records, both of the court proceedings, but also medical files. Adam had, thanks to his wider reach, given me a few details about those, and it wasn’t pretty. It was likely for the best that the professor seemed to have switched to using prostitutes now, because that, at least, kept his students safe from him. That this was absolutely no consolidation for me or my girls didn’t help me right then. Pam, in particular, eyed him with the right amount of apprehension, but when I told them all to put their game faces on, I didn’t get a word of objection. I guessed that now officially made me a bully.

Few words were exchanged as I herded the girls over to Alison, and consequently the bright smile of the man they were here to distract. Alison scanned them shrewdly, and within moments, the dear professor and his new entourage had left the group and were heading elsewhere. There was a suite booked in a hotel that I knew was stellar about discretion, and the sooner they were out of the open, the better. I didn’t linger as Alison showed absolutely no interest in introducing me to her other guests, so I retreated to the upper floor, using a place by the open balconies to overlook the people mingling below.

As I kept waiting for Darren to make an appearance, I couldn’t help but ask myself what drew women like the professor’s previous wives to men like that. Adam hadn’t sent me pictures, but he’d recited part of the psych evals to me. Years of emotional abuse, paired with the odd but not that infrequent physical altercation. Bruises, broken bones, even a dislocated shoulder in one case. Both women had ended up pretty much as husks of their former selves, requiring outside help to finally make the jump and file for divorce.

In the light of this, how could I justify my obsession with Darren—to the world, but mostly to myself?

There was no denying what he’d done to me. More than anyone else, I knew that he hadn’t changed in the meantime, likely never would. And even if he’d turned a new leaf, that didn’t negate his actions, too atrocious to forgive.

But still. I wanted him. I needed him.

I probably hungered for him with the same twisted need and intensity that he had for me.
 

I could have walked away forever. Had done a good job for half a year, really. Sure, there was the guilt for not being able to give Adam what he needed that had made me agree to help Agent Smith with her crusade. Back then, I hadn’t realized it, but our talk two weeks ago had been quite sobering, making me analyze everything from different angles. I knew that she—and Adam, too, in a sense—were playing me. They knew that I had this deeply ingrained character flaw of needing to mold myself into what others wanted me to be. In that sense, they were doing the very same thing to me that Darren had, too.

Was it time to break the cycle?
 

Could I even pull that off, if I wanted to?

As I kept mulling all that over, I watched as Darren entered the ballroom below, Daliah on his arm. As usual, she’d tried to appease his taste, and had fallen short by miles. The shimmery dress she wore may have been filed under “classy”—if the only competition was a room full of kindergarteners. It was too tight in all the wrong places; the material looked as cheap as it probably was; the cut flattered her, but more in a bombshell kind of way, utterly inappropriate attire for tonight. From a distance, I couldn’t see her makeup well, but the vibrant red of her lipstick was easily discernible. Prom queen chic all the way. How he could stand being seen with her was beyond me.

They mingled. They danced. They chatted. Then Daliah made the mistake of excusing herself to the bathroom—presumably—which left Darren on his own. He still hadn’t spotted me as far as I could tell, but he wasn’t looking around, either. Instead, he headed right into the fray and started that smalltalk race of his that I remembered all too well. Apparently, Daliah was excused from duty, because when she returned, he made no move to pick her up again and drag her along. Her frustration was palpable even across the room, painting a smile onto my face as I saw her head to the bar. Where, wouldn’t you know it, it took that charming young fellow who had been waiting there all of three seconds to glue himself to her side. And he was good—the perfect amount of oozing charm but not being overly obsessive. He made her blush. He made her smile. He made her forget that she’d already downed two flutes of champagne as he ordered something stronger for her. In short—she was game.

And I was a little too focused on her, I realized, when I felt myself getting pressed against the satiny fabric of the curtain I had been partly hiding behind, a strong, warm body flush with mine. That made me go still, but only until I felt Darren’s breath ghost over my bare shoulder as he glanced over it at the revelers below.

“I have to admit, I admire your tenacity at showing up where you don’t belong. It’s one of your more charming quirks.”

Looking back over my shoulder, I cocked one eyebrow at him.

“You flatter yourself. I’m actually here for work.”

The smile on his face didn’t falter. No, it widened at my statement.

“Ah. So the gamely ladies were yours? I hope you did your background check well, because that’s not a client just any escort would take on.”

“Alison is paying them well,” I let him know.

If her involvement was news to him, he didn’t show it.

“That explains why you came here. Not why you stayed.” I didn’t give an answer, and after a few seconds he shrugged, making it plain that he didn’t care either way. His gaze drifted from me down to the bar below, finding his fiancée immediately. “So this is who you think can make her abandon me? Please. My pull on the ladies is stronger than that.”

I didn’t even feel disappointed that he’d seen right through my plan. But the how was a different thing.

“It could just be anyone attending the party who’s chatting with her, you know?” I said.

Darren shook his head. “I’ve been fucking whores for years, remember? Gender notwithstanding, you all have a few tells in common that make it very easy to pick you out of a crowd. Particularly when you’re on the prowl.”

“Please, do tell. I hate being that easy to read,” I griped, actually a little offended. And there I’d thought I’d always done a good job blending in.

It came as a surprise that Darren looked actually a hint chagrined at annoying me.

“It’s not what you do, but how you do it. Just watch them. See how his full attention is always on her? That you never get with anyone you’re not paying for their company.” Leaning in, his lips pressed against the soft skin right below my ear, making me shiver. When he continued, his voice was so low that I could barely make out the words. “It’s why I love fucking whores. I love that attention. No, scratch that. I need it. I crave it. And whenever I’m around you now, you look at me with that same single-minded focus. Like I’m the center of your world. Like I’m your everything. And I can’t tell you how fucking hard that makes me.”

His hands, formerly at my waist, now slid lower, down my legs. At the lower side of my dress his fingers found the slit in the skirt, drifting warm across my thigh. Within seconds he was well aware of the fact that I was going commando, but before he could turn it into something more, I grabbed his wrist, stilling it. I more felt than heard him give an annoyed chuff, and when I turned to fully face him—thus dislodging the hand completely—he had a look of true exasperation on his face.

Every fiber in me was screaming to wrap myself around him, but somehow I managed to make my stand instead.

“I may be your wife, Darren, but unless you stop screwing that little nun of yours, you’re not going to get to screw me.”

It shouldn’t have taken so much energy for me to press those words out, but somehow I made them sound convincing. Not that Darren looked pleased at them, but the way he narrowed his eyes at me was less displeased and more calculating.

“Did you really think that sending an escort after Daliah would make me forsake her?”

“You don’t love her,” I pointed out. “I don’t get why you even bother with her.”

Now that damn disappointment was back, and the heat from before drained from his eyes.

“We already went over this—“

“Yes, yes, I get it. She gets under my skin, so you keep her around,” I said, using a belligerent tone better suited for his side of our conversation. “That’s not what I meant. How do you justify fucking her? According to you, we’re married. You are cheating on your wife. The wife you profess to still love. How does that work? Are you gunning for a suicide? You know, seeing as you mortally disappointed yourself, there’s only one option left to you for what to do about the problem.”

And, just like that, the intensity returned, and I was back in the game.

“I can see where you would come to this conclusion,” he mused. “But that would mean that I’d have to regard you as my equal to start with.”

“And you don’t?”

Why, oh why, did that wry twist coming to his mouth do ungodly things to me? It should have scared the living shit out of me. Kind of did, but unlike last time, now it was the lust for him that won over terror.

“Why should I?” he asked. “You ran from me. You hid from me. You shared a man’s bed every night who wasn’t me. And while you try to appear smart about your venture of getting back into my good graces, you are utterly amateurish about it. I’m really starting to get disappointed with you. You were showing so much promise with that great entrance of yours your first night back in the city.”

That rankled, and I didn’t want to analyze why.

“Do you really think impressing you is my goal in life?” I shot back, not having to feign annoyance now.

Darren’s smile, already on the dip toward predatory, turned a few shades darker.

“If you just set the right actions, you wouldn’t have to work so hard and flail around so much. Do you really think that your little ploy to make her fall for someone else will work?” He leaned closer still, almost close enough to kiss me, but the look in his eyes spoke of very different things than amorous passion. “I give you one guess what will happen to her if she actually does fall for it. Can you imagine what I will do to her? Just because I don’t love her doesn’t mean I’ll let her run off with some paid whore. Oh, no. That would be way too easy. She is digging her grave right now, and you lent her the shovel. How exactly does that make you feel?”

Like I was going to hurl any minute now, but I forced myself not to show my emotional turmoil, or the horror clawing up my spine.

“But you don’t love her,” I protested.

His smile widened. “Which only means that she doesn’t deserve a chance to make things up to me. And she doesn’t deserve a place on the pedestal I put all the women I have loved over the years on. It does in no way mean that she deserves to live.”

I knew that I should have looked away then, but I didn’t want to. Instead, I held his gaze, defiance now rearing its ugly head.

“And what, dear husband, would it take for you to let her go? Will anything short of me trading myself in for her do?”

He didn’t even mull that over.

“What you do does in no way influence what I’m going to do to her. Unless, of course, you manage to persuade her to come with you to your little band of miscreants so they can put her in protective custody and thus out of my reach. So if you want to save her, you need to make sure that she will never stray, and never slip up. Is that the life you want for yourself? Always in the shadows, your spot in the light forever taken by a woman you loath? Who you despise for every imaginable reason, but most of all because she has what you really crave—my undivided attention? Think about it, Penelope. But think fast, because I have it on good authority that Daliah’s time is about to run out.”

A last smile that should not have been so filled with glee, and he was gone, leaving me standing there, my fingers clenching the fabric of my gown.

That had not turned out the way it was supposed to.

The longer I thought about it, the more obvious it got: I only had one chance to get Daliah out of this, and that was for her to do exactly as he’d just told me—to go to Agent Smith, and let herself be uprooted and carried away. In many ways, I had lived exactly that kind of life after I’d fled the basement—and I could already tell that Daliah would never accept that option.