Bait: A dark erotic thriller (Hunter & Prey Book 2) (4 page)

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she railed, looking a second away from blowing a gasket.

“Replacing your good-for-nothing plan with one that will actually work?” I suggested, looking back at her calmly.

Her dark eyes went wide as if she couldn’t fathom how anyone dared have the gall, but before she could go off on me again, I forestalled her by getting to my feet and stepping up to her, meeting her glare from up close.

“That was not what we agreed upon,” she reminded me.

“Actually, it is exactly what we agreed upon, only that you read something else into it. Did you really think that you could catch a fish the size of Darren Hunter with a low-budget operation?” Her eyes narrowed, but when she held her tongue—grudgingly, without a doubt—I went on. “I agreed to help you, and this is what I will do. Am doing, as of this very moment, in fact. I knew that you wouldn’t listen to me, so I didn’t bother boring you with the details of my plan.”

“And what is your plan? Seeing as you can’t even follow the simplest instructions?”

I ignored her insult. She could do so much better, and it really wasn’t worth it to get riled up over petty squabbles.

“The opposite of yours, actually. I mean, just show up, let him see me from afar while I keep weaving in and out of the crowd, like a ghost? What did you think that would accomplish?”

“Make him aware of your presence and lure him closer,” she pressed out between gritted teeth.

“You are aware that Hunter isn’t just some random little street crook who will run at the very notion of the cops being on to him? Just seeing me somewhere in the crowd would barely even draw his attention, let alone make him jump to action.” That part I wasn’t sure about, but my entry certainly had made it impossible for him to remain passive.

“So instead you did what?” she asked, still exasperated, but I could see that I had her there. She hated it, but she’d known from the start that sooner or later she’d have to let me have the reins. Maybe not this soon.

“Instead, I put myself in easy reach of him where he simply cannot ignore me,” I offered.

“This is a risk.”

I couldn’t help but snort at that.

“Are you kidding me? I’m walking around here, all out in the open, with a target painted all over my body, and you call that a risk? Just coming anywhere near a thousand-mile radius of the city is a risk.”

Agent Smith gave me a haughty look, then let her eyes roam over the lavish furniture of the suite. “I’m not paying for this.”

“Of course you’re not. You couldn’t even pay for a decent outfit for tonight,” I shot back.
 

“Three hundred bucks should have been enough—“

“Not even for the shoes,” I replied. “But don’t worry, I’m paying for this myself.”

Her brows shot up. Clearly she’d had a look into my checking account before, although I was sure that she hadn’t gotten a court order for it.

“With what? Are you going to put out again?”

I hated that the accusatory tone made me defensive, but there was no helping that.

“Personally, no, but it is the logical next step to get back into the saddle.”

Possible tax evasion first, now prostitution—Agent Smith really wasn’t happy with not being able to rise to the occasion and tear me a new one for the slew of criminal activity I carelessly tread upon.

“You didn’t mind that the tax payers paid the cost it took to fix up your hand.”

“Send me an invoice,” I offered blandly.

“So what’s your grand plan now? Don’t think I don’t realize that you’re avoiding answering me.”

I ignored that jibe.

“Tomorrow, I will meet with my old madam. Either she will help me, let me use her business as a front, or I will have to start my own. This suite is large enough to double as my base of operations should I have to do all the legwork myself. Hell, there’s even a second bedroom where the girls could fuck their clients. You see? The perfect setup.”

I had proposed something similar already, but she’d shot me down then. Now she seemed to realize that I wasn’t just randomly grasping at straws.

While the others had kept silent so far, I heard a snicker from one of the agents at that, but it was Adam who cleared his throat. When neither Agent Smith nor I looked at him, he stepped up to her where he forced himself into my field of vision.

“You really want to take over the escort agency? After everything that’s happened?”

He sounded hurt, although he was trying to hide it. I held his gaze for a moment, then had to look away. I knew that he realized that this was a step back from the path we’d been on together since fleeing the city. Sure, Agent Smith might have forced us to work with her and that came with concessions to be made, but it took that statement from me for him to realize that I wasn’t just physically withdrawing myself by setting up this suite.

“I don’t know,” I lied, glad now that the lack of emotion in my voice also leeched the thread of guilt from my tone. “First, we have to catch Hunter. And I have to survive that, too. After that, who knows?”

None of the agents protested my somewhat dry assessment of the situation, but Adam wasn’t so blasé about things. Heat crept onto his face, his eyes narrowing.

“You do know. You never do anything without a plan,” he accused.

“Except for falling in love with the wrong guy, you mean?”

That retort was a loaded one, much more so than even our handler seemed to realize. How the fact that Adam was pretty much acting like a lovesick puppy around me while I was about as responsive as a dead fish could have eluded her was beyond me—but then it was entirely possible that she simply didn’t care. Our deal was that, in case we managed to get enough concrete evidence on Hunter so she could properly get him convicted, Adam and I both would get complete immunity, rendering his skills useless to her. That in itself must rankle—he had been her forced-into-service pet hacker for years. But maybe the baggage he now came with was no longer worth the anger over losing him?

And, sure enough, dragging a big fish like Hunter on land would sweeten the loss somewhat.

“And after you’ve set yourself up as the queen of whores, what’s next?” Trust it to Agent Smith to bring the conversation back onto less loaded territory.

“Then I make him come for me,” I replied.

“Now why don’t I like the sound of that?” Adam ground out, glaring daggers at me from beyond his watchdog’s shoulder.

“It’s the only way,” I explained. “He’s already unstable. With the right incentive, the right push, it can’t be too hard to make him slip up. The only reason why no one has ever managed to get anything on him is that he was meticulous in his methods. That’s going to change now.”

“And you really think he’s going to fall for that?” Agent Smith asked.

“Yes. You should have seen him tonight. Now that he has me right where he wants me, he’ll drop the girl, so one less concern for you,” I remarked. “And when it’s just him and me, you don’t really stand to lose anything, right? I mean, if worse comes to worst, you can convict him over my cold, dead body.”

Adam winced, but his handler looked disturbingly calm about that option.

“Your plan is half-assed at best. I want a status update as soon as you have finished setting everything up.”

I was surprised that she gave in that easily and didn’t even insist on crowding her operation into my new home, but then I didn’t think for a moment that there wouldn’t be two surveillance cars parked right outside from now on. And maybe the fact that my core idea was the same as hers—make him slip up in whatever way possible—helped. That it might come with my untimely demise was maybe a bonus for her.

“Will do,” I promised, raising two fingers in a mock oath. “Anything to save our country.”

That got me the glare I likely deserved, but it also made her turn around and jerk her chin at her flunkies, signaling their retreat. Adam lingered for a moment, but he seemed to realize that my plan didn’t exactly include him—or else I would have talked to him already. His frustration was visible in every line of his body.

“You’re going to stay with them?” I asked, hating how much like a traitor that made me feel. I’d presumed they’d hunker down in his old apartment, and maybe approbate mine next door, too.

“Do I have a choice?” He paused, then exhaled slowly. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

I nodded, if reluctantly.

“I’ve had seven and a half months time to plan this.”

He looked up sharply, but it only took a second for the pain in his eyes to subside, crushed by what he must have seen coming in the moments where he wasn’t deluding himself with hope.

“You always planned to come back.” Not a question, and all the more accusation for it.

Sighing, I looked away, my gaze snatching to the scars on my hand—and the white-gold band wedged below where the bones of my ring finger had fused together crookedly.

“Not at first,” I said, happy that, in this, I didn’t have to lie. Looking back up, I found Adam’s gaze and held it. “And I didn’t come back for him. Not in the sense of wanting to be with him again. I’m here because we“—I jerked my head toward the agents at the back of the room—“are coming for him. That’s all.”

“So you want revenge?” he asked. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a loaded question.

“Of course. Why the hell wouldn’t I? With everything that he has done to me—“

Adam’s ironic smile made me cut off.

“There were security cameras in the ballroom, you know? The equipment in the van wasn’t good enough to hack them, but the rig in my tablet is. You should have seen your face when you saw him. Maybe then you’d stop lying to me.”

There was nothing I could say to that—except that this shouldn’t have been news to him, not after the painful dance around each other that we’d been through since leaving the city—so I didn’t. “I’m sorry” really wouldn’t have cut it.

A loud knock at the door interrupted our increasingly uncomfortable moment, giving me an excuse to step away from Adam and join Agent Smith where she was letting Philip into the suite, heavily burdened as he was. I stared at what he was carrying for a moment, then looked at the table in the center of the foyer.
 

“Please put them down there. Thank you.”

He did as told, but that clearly wasn’t everything yet.

“The manager bid me to welcome you to our hotel again, and told me to inform you that your suite has already been paid for for the duration of the first month.”

I glanced at the clock on the wall. Less than twenty-eight minutes had passed since my arrival. That speed surprised even me.

“Thank you,” I said, dismissing him, but Agent Smith wasn’t satisfied with that.

“Paid for by whom?”

Philip gave her a benign look that was, in and of itself, the worst rebuke I figured he could allow himself. It certainly spoke loud and clear.

“Why, Ms. Thompson’s husband, of course.”

I waited until the door had closed behind him before I walked up to the ticking bomb he’d left—a bouquet of white roses and lilies, like a bridal bouquet, but to me they looked more like a funeral arrangement. Picking up the accompanying card, I took one look at it, then handed it to Agent Smith. There were only two words on it—
Love, Darren
—but they were in his handwriting, clearly not just the hasty scrawl of the florist.

“Do I need to say ‘I told you so,’ or do you believe me that I know what I’m doing?” I asked, giving her a smile—but it wasn’t a warm one.

She looked down at the card, then dropped it onto the vanity by the door as she left. Adam was the last to follow, giving me one more frustrated, hurt look. And then I was alone—with my thoughts, my fears, my plans, my reservations—but above all else that damn deep-seated longing in my chest that was now burning brighter than ever.

As predicted, I didn’t sleep at all that night. Technically, I knew that my floor was only accessible by key card and code, and there was a camera just outside the elevator monitoring who was coming and going, but I doubted that even inside a maximum security prison cell I would have found any rest. I didn’t need to close my eyes to see his face come up, that intense stare boring right into my very soul.

So much for that.

Not even trying to go to bed, I spent the night time getting acquainted with my new home—including an hour-long soak in the hot tub outside on the wraparound terrace—trying to get a grip on my affairs. As much as I might loathe Darren paying for my accommodations, I didn’t mind not being set back by that kind of bill. I might have a substantial amount squirreled away in several offshore accounts, but that was supposed to last me for the rest of my hopefully very long life.

I managed to get a hold of someone at my bank—paying a financial manager to take care of all my official funds came with some perks—and by morning I had a new checking account complete with everything, an envelope holding my new credit card and a couple grand in cash waiting for me downstairs at the reception. I also spent some quality time dousing my hair and skin with moisturizing products I’d pilfered from the bathroom, starting the long process of undoing the last months’ damage. With only my dress for clothes, I spent the night in the fluffy bathrobe, feeling somewhat more human the next morning after luxuriating in the rainforest shower.

After breakfast, I met with the personal shopper Philip had organized for me. She didn’t bat an eyelash at my apparent lack of outfits—plural—and took diligent notes as I described to her what wardrobe items I’d require. I had all the intentions in the world to go shopping myself later, but I needed the basics now, including several dresses I could wear whenever I couldn’t slum it, and those might take a few days to assemble. As I’d feared, Agent Smith hadn’t bothered with dropping off the gym bag full of my current belongings, but I was sure that Adam was still holding on to the important stuff, none of which were clothes.

The woman earned herself my eternal gratitude when it only took her fifty minutes to return with all the staples I’d need for my first day back in the city, including shoes that I could actually walk in for more than a couple of blocks. So it came that when I dropped by my financial manager, I was looking a little more like myself, clad in a simple yet stylish tan dress and voluminous coat, complete with my purse and all the gimmicks I started filling it with now that I could again.