Careful What You Kiss For (33 page)

“He was the one who paid.” The big guy pointed at Bryan.

Two officers led Bryan, who Tensley could swear she heard sniffling, and Big Blond Guy from the room. Milo followed. Outside the door, Tawny yelled something about calling Gary.

That should be a fun call. Tensley hoped she could miss it.

Max was saying something to her, but the sound of his voice twisted her insides into a knot of humiliation. He took a step closer and said it again. This time, she understood. “You, too. Let’s go.”

She nodded.

He leaned down and lowered his voice several notches, until only she could hear. “I have to put you in handcuffs.”

“Can I get some clothes first?” she asked, keeping her head down.

He took her arm, leading her out the door. “Where’s the dressing room?”

Tensley inclined her head down the hall, where Tawny stood, so furious she had already stomped off the heel of one shoe. “You’re not closing this place down!” she told one of the officers. “You can’t do that!”

“Yes, ma’am, we can,” he answered. “Watch us.”

Max steered Tensley down the hall and to the left, as she indicated. They passed Milo, being led away in handcuffs, his face stoic.

Halfway down the second hallway, Tensley stopped. “This is the dressing room.”

Max nodded. He pounded on the door with his fist. “Police. Everybody out.”

A squeal of alarm from the other side and a few minutes later, two dancers pushed past them. “What’s going on?”

“Gary’s is closed for the night. You need to leave.”

“Lila?” said one of the women, the one who had helped her behind the bar a couple of times. “You okay?”

“Going to jail,” she said, trying to sound offhand about it.

The woman glared at Max. “He’d better treat you right.”

He had. That was part of the problem. “I’ll be fine,” she said, hoping it was true.

Max knocked again. No response. He opened the door to the dressing room. “Get your clothes on.”

Tensley did as she’d been told, hurrying to her locker to pull on a T-shirt, jeans and flip-flops. She ran a brush through her hair and wiped off the worst of the over-the-top makeup. Jail. She couldn’t even conceive of it. But that’s what they did with women who traded sex for money. Even if she’d been the one to call the police.

Bile again rose in her throat. She ran to the bathroom, making it into a stall just in time. A few minutes later, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, brushing it across warm tears. She sat down hard on the tile, her head pressed against the metal of the stall divider, her eyes closed.

Had she ever felt worse, like such a failure, in her entire life?

Easy answer. No.

The voice of her fellow bartender sailed over the stall door. “What are you still doing here?” she demanded. “This is a women’s dressing room. You some kind of perv, cop?”

“I have a dancer in custody,” was Max’s calm reply. “Thought it would be nice to let her get her clothes on first.”

“Yeah? Where is she? ’Cause I don’t see anyone in here but you.”

Tensley struggled to her feet, holding on to the side of the stall for support. “I’m here,” she called, her voice thin. She made it to the sink and rinsed her mouth as best she could. A glance in the mirror showed her face was flushed and the front parts of her hair damp. Makeup she had tried to wipe off had smeared in a bluish-black streak to the side of her eye.

She looked the part. A stripper on her way to jail.

When she emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, the other woman had gone. Only Max remained and he was staring at the mirror over her station, eyes locked on the Lila Delightful flyer.

She lifted her chin, desperately searching for a shred of dignity she might have overlooked. “May I request that another officer escort me to jail?”

“Funny thing,” he snapped. “We don’t take requests.” Then he was at her side. “Hands behind your back.”

She obeyed and felt the cool steel of the cuffs lock into place.

He held the dressing room door open, motioning for her to go through it. This place was even rattier than she’d first thought. With her head down, she saw the gum wrappers and other bits of trash kicked to the side of the carpet; the scuff marks against the puke green walls.

Just as they arrived at the back entrance, the detective who had been with Max at the coffee shop came barreling through it. “Got the search warrant,” he said.

Max jerked his head down the hall. “Gary’s office is down there and to the left. Taylor and Baker can help. I’m taking her.”

The other man barely glanced at Tensley before he took off in the direction of Gary’s office. Alone again, Max and Tensley stepped into the summer night, where he opened the back of a black car and told her to watch her head when getting inside.

Though it had no markings on the outside, it was clearly a police car on the inside. The back seat was covered in plastic; she didn’t want to think why. The handcuffs dug into her wrists and her shoulders protested at being held in such a position. And now she would have to either stare out the window at passing scenery, which would heighten her nausea, or look at the back of Max’s head and contemplate all she’d lost. Great choices she had.

The worst part, though, was that for all she’d done, there had been no flash of light, no return to her real life. Madame Claire had either lied or Tensley had pinned her hopes on something entirely wrong. Frustration built until it spilled out in a tight question. “Did I help you?”

He turned his head to look in the rearview mirror, his expression quizzical. “You did a great job. We nailed him.”

Tensley cast her eyes upward in a plea, as if someone, somewhere, should be able to hear her and send the flash that would shoot her out of the police car and back to her desk at Tanner Cable. She’d never take her job, her life, for granted again. She promised.

But nothing happened.

Max looked in the rearview mirror again. “You didn’t have to do it. Thank you.”

“In exchange, I get a cozy night in jail.”

“What?” He looked baffled. “I’m just getting you far enough away to take the cuffs off. If they don’t see you getting arrested, your confidential informant status isn’t so confidential anymore.”

“Oh.” Her shoulders sagged in relief. “Thank God.”

“Did you really think I would take you to jail?”

“Well, the handcuffs, the back of the police car … it all looked pretty real.”

“You made a deal and you carried it out. I’ll keep up my end.”

A deal. That’s all it was.
“Thank you.”

His gaze caught and held hers in the mirror. “You took some big chances. And you’re probably still taking them. I can’t promise they won’t figure out you were working with the police.”

“That’s the least of my problems,” she said, below her breath.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She stared out the window. “Sorry.”

“I don’t want you to go back to your place. Razor could find you there and get suspicious.”

Now
he worried about her. “I’m staying with Kate.” Her wrists were really beginning to hurt. “How long until you take these things off?”

“Hold on a couple of minutes more. I’ll pull over.”

True to his word, he did, bringing the car to a stop under an overhead light on a quiet side street. Relief washed over her as soon as he let her out of the back of the car. That lasted until he unlocked the handcuffs and his hands, rough, warm and gentle, brushed against hers.

She masked the shiver of excitement that shot up her spine with an exaggerated flexing of her arms and hands. “That’s an experience I don’t care to repeat,” she said.

He contemplated her. “Which one?”

Let me name them, one by one. If you have an hour or ten.
She changed the subject. “How much time will Gary do?”

Max shook his head. “Nothing for what was going on in the back. That’ll just shut him down and result in one hell of a fine.”

A fine? For all she’d had to resort to? “That’s
it
?”

Max leaned against the car door, studying his hands. “But the other information you got could be a different story.”

He kept talking, saying something about Gary and previous felonies, but she couldn’t focus on his words. It mattered more that he wasn’t looking at her. Probably couldn’t stand to after what he’d seen her doing with Bryan.

She tried to pretend it didn’t matter, looking down at her own hands, her feet. It didn’t work. When he stopped talking, she said, “Glad I could help.”

“Ten.”

There was a jagged crack in the sidewalk, right next to her shoe. She did not want him to call her by her nickname; it reminded her of everything that had happened before he’d walked in on her with another man. A man who had paid for her services. Her throat went tight and all she could do was keep staring at that crack in the pavement.

“One of those phone numbers you gave me. Turns out it belongs to someone who works with your mother.”

That got her attention. She looked up. “What? Who?”

“Mark Dorlan. He’s one of her senior — ”

“I know who he is.”

Max looked at her long and hard. “I think he’s involved in some of the stuff Gary’s doing. Outside of the club.”

Tensley shook her head. “Mark Dorlan. I knew there was a reason I never liked him.” She thought for a moment. “But I don’t see him having anything to do with scum like Gary.”

“Looks like there might be a connection to a couple of political campaigns.”

Interesting
. “Which ones?”

He hesitated. “It’s still early in the investigation.”

She shoved the toe of her shoe into the crack in the pavement. It was that big.

“The company that’s making a serious run at Tanner Cable’s franchise has a very good shot at getting it. They have support from key City Council members.”

She frowned at the sudden switch in subject. “My mother prefers to handle the strategy on that herself.”

Max opened his mouth and closed it again, looking confused. No wonder.
That was the old life, Tensley.
Her mother had shut her out of those discussions, even though Tensley was Director of Strategic Initiatives, likely because she hadn’t thought her competent enough to handle something so important to the company.

Well, maybe her mother had been right. She cleared her throat. “I mean, that’s what I heard, anyway.” She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans as something else occurred to her. “Why are you talking about the franchise? Are you thinking my mother’s involved somehow?”

“I don’t know.”

“Impossible. She’d never do anything to jeopardize the company. It’s her whole life.”

Max shrugged and looked away. “You never know what someone will do when everything they’ve worked for could be in trouble.”

“The company isn’t in trouble.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes.”
No.

“Okay, so say it isn’t. Maybe it has nothing to do with Tanner Cable, but Dorlan’s name keeps coming up when I try to connect the dots.”

Mark Dorlan might be the poster child for self-righteous pricks in expertly tailored suits, but he wasn’t a criminal. He flossed after every single meal and if he even had a snack. He’d told her that once. Not that she’d wanted to know. Now she was the one who shook her head. “I don’t see it.”

Max exhaled. “Like I said, it’s still early, but if he’s not involved in something, there are some pretty odd coincidences. I found out he’s tight with Councilman Digman’s campaign manager. That’s a campaign Gary used his hardware business, and a political action organization that appears to have one member — Gary — to make a substantial donation to.”

“Mark Dorlan can be friends with a campaign manager.”

“He was in Gary’s club.”

Had he seen her? She wanted to throw up. Luckily, Max kept talking.

“The City Council votes on a lot of things. One will be the new club Gary has filed for permits to open. Another will be the city’s cable franchise.”

“Oh.”

“Exactly.” Max kicked at a pebble. “It’s not all making sense, yet, but I keep going back to Mark Dorlan. I have a feeling the guy’s in it up to his ears.”

“Then trust your feeling.” It wasn’t as though Tanner Cable wouldn’t be a better place without Mark Dorlan.

He didn’t answer for a minute. “I used to trust my feelings. About a lot of things.”

She tried to pull her shoe out of the crack in the sidewalk. Stuck. Nothing was going right. Nothing at all. And if she had to take a guess right now, it would be that nothing ever would again. She felt the heat in her cheeks begin to rise, her breath begin to come faster, like a train whistle signaling danger.

She didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything, maybe ever again. Least of all Max Hunter. Judger. What did he know about her life? About her circumstances? About how an innocent visit to a deranged psychic could take an absolutely normal life and flush it down the drain?

“If you knew me, really knew me, you would know that I would never have done
that
, in that room,” she said, raising her index finger to point it at his nose, “if you hadn’t asked for my help.”

He looked startled. “Hold on — ”

“You put me on his lap, you and your police department.” She put both hands up and shoved his chest. “You hear me? You did it.”

He said something. She didn’t listen. Even her hair was sweating and she thought she might be having a heart attack.

His lips were moving, but her voice was shouting. It ratcheted up, to the scary hoarse place it only went to in an emergency. “You wouldn’t have made me do that if you cared about me. At all.”

“I told you not to.” He put a hand on her wrist. She shook it off and shoved him again. He stumbled back. She jerked her leg hard until her foot pulled out of her shoe.

“You didn’t mean it. All you care about is being a bad-ass cop.”

His arms were crossed over his chest, his eyes turning dangerously dark.

“We doing a prostitute sting next? But you won’t come in, gun blazing, until after the deed is done? Is that how it’s gonna go?” Her voice was soaring off the charts now, hitting high notes she didn’t know she had.