Guarding the Socialite (12 page)

“He's just a kid, like me. And he didn't have anywhere else to go.”

D
illon swung around the corner of the hallway and bypassing a drunk snoring off a bender in the corner, gave the apartment door two kicks with his booted foot. No way he was going to touch anything in this nasty place. Not even his knuckles to the front door. Dillon heard a muted crash, some cursing and then a bleary-eyed Mad Johnny opened the door.

“You again? What the fu—”

“Hey, watch your mouth…there are kids around here, you know. May I come in?”

Mad Johnny had the presence to give Dillon a dirty look then sneered. “You got a warrant?”

“Nope.”

“Then piss off.”

“There you go getting all surly and unfriendly-like. I'm just here to chat.”

“I'm not in a chatty mood,” Mad Johnny said, and then
tried to slam the door in Dillon's face, but Dillon anticipated that and put his foot between the door and jamb, then shoved the door into Mad Johnny's face, causing him to stumble back screaming something about his nose. “You crazy, mother…You broke it again!”

Dillon cast his gaze around the disheveled room before quietly closing the door behind him. Pizza boxes, flies and a putrid smell seemed to be Mad Johnny's decorating style. “You're a pig,” Dillon observed casually, moving past the punk as he blinked against the pain and sucked back snot. “We have to talk.” Mad Johnny shot him another nasty look that said
go screw yourself,
and Dillon saved him the time by saying, “Don't start with your mouth. I've come for some information and I think you might be able to help. Now, if you're wondering how I will be able to compel you to cooperate, I'll tell you because I'm feeling generous. You were one of the last people to see Charlotte alive. You were also blackmailing her with something to get her to do your dirty work. I want to know what you had on her. If you don't tell me I will make it my business to make your life miserable with frequent visits by police and I'm sure that will cramp your—” he glanced around at the pigsty Mad Johnny called home and then finished with a shudder “—style.”

Mad Johnny tilted his head back to stem the trickle of blood leaking from his busted nose and wobbled to the equally vile kitchen where there wasn't a clean spot visible, grabbing a towel to mop up the mess on his face. He took his time in answering but Dillon gave him a little latitude. He wasn't heartless. He'd just broken the man's nose—again—for God's sake. A man had his pride. Even scum-sucking bottom feeders like Mad Johnny.

“What's in it for me?” he finally asked, his voice nasal and slightly muffled by the ugly towel pressed to his face.

“The ability to keep breathing,” Dillon answered evenly.

“Right,” Mad Johnny sneered. “There's rules even you have to follow. You can't threaten me like that.”

To that Dillon just smiled and Mad Johnny visibly quailed. “Try me. Have I mentioned I'm a bit of a loose cannon?” He swirled his index finger around his temple. “Doc says my clock's not wound right.” He shrugged. “Occupational hazard of dealing with scum like you and psychopaths on a regular basis.”

Dillon held Mad Johnny's bloodshot gaze and finally the punk relented with a defeated shrug. “I got pictures of her doing some old guy.”

“To run the risk of being blunt…so? She was a former prostitute. I suspect there are plenty of those floating around.”

“Yeah, but this guy was real particular. She was afraid if he found out he'd dump her, and for some reason, Char had it bad for this guy. Once I realized she'd do anything to keep the pictures hidden…I knew I had her back.”

“How'd you get the pictures in the first place?”

He smirked. “That was easy. All I had to do was slip the night desk guy a little cash and then set up a digital camera at the skank motel she and him liked to use for their little visits. Like I said…easy.”

Dillon mulled over the information. “So, basically, you paid the clerk to give the couple whatever room you had rigged with the camera. What was in the package you had her deliver?”

“Do I get some kind of immunity for helping you out?” Mad Johnny asked.

“Sure,” Dillon lied with a smile. “What was in the package?”

“Heroin. But it wasn't mine. I was just the middleman moving it around. Unfortunately, cops got my face on their radar and so I needed someone they wouldn't look twice at.
Since Charlotte started living at the group house, she cleaned up pretty good. I figured she'd get the package delivered no sweat. And she did. It went down smooth.”

“Yeah, but then she ended up dead. Doesn't seem so smooth for her.”

“Hey, I told you I didn't have nothing to do with that,” Mad Johnny exclaimed, alarm coloring his voice until it got a little shrill. “She was fine the last time I saw her.”

“So she did your little errand. Did you give her the photos?”

Mad Johnny's gaze skittered away. “No. I, uh, didn't get the chance.”

“Yeah. Sure. My guess is you were planning to keep them for leverage. As long as she was seeing the older gentleman, you had something over her.”

Mad Johnny knew Dillon nailed it. There was no sense in hiding it so he simply shrugged. “Yeah. So what? Business is business.”

“Give me the photos.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I want them. Now.”

Mad Johnny swore under his breath, but he stalked over to a messy desk and after rooting around for a minute, accidentally knocking a half-full Coke bottle to the floor so that it fell and splashed all over his foot, he found what he was looking for. A CD case. “Here,” he spat. “Everything's on there.”

“And what about the original files?”

“Computer crashed and ate everything. This is it.”

“Excellent.” He pocketed the case. “If you're lying, I'll break something else,” he warned, then smiled coldly. “It's been a pleasure.”

“Are you going to keep showing up at my place?” Mad Johnny asked warily.

“Maybe. I find our visits…entertaining.” Dillon paused at the door. “One more question… Did you happen to catch the name of the man Charlotte was seeing?”

“Yeah, some guy named Carlyle.”

Dillon stared. “Are you sure?”

Mad Johnny nodded and pressed the towel against his nose. “Yeah, I remember because I made some wisecrack to Charlotte about her doing a guy with a sissy name. Then I asked her if he liked to wear her panties when she's spanking him.”

Dillon's mind was moving in dizzying circles. Who was Carlyle? And what the hell had Charlotte been mixed up in? He patted the CD case in his pocket. Time to find a computer and take a look.

 

Emma blinked at Bella, shocked at the pain in the teen's voice. When Bella first came to Iris House she cared about no one and was strictly operating in survival mode. The fact that she felt compassion for a stranger was a huge milestone, but Emma had to consider the rules of the house.

“How'd you meet him?” she asked. “What's his name?”

Bella hesitated, biting her lip, clearly reluctant to share that information, which told Emma she was probably ditching school again. She withheld the sigh.
One crisis at a time,
she thought. Finally, Bella admitted, “His name is Ben. He was sleeping in the boiler room at school.”

“And you found this out how?”

Bella cut her gaze away from Emma. “Because I go there sometimes when I need to get away from all the stupid people.”

“Okay,” Emma breathed, feeling a headache coming on. “We'll talk about that later. How do you know he's all alone? Is he in the system? Is he a runaway?” Bella's stony silence
was answer enough. “Bella, if he's in the system, he has a home to go to. He can't stay here.”

“He won't go back,” she said. “Bad things were happening to him, Emma.”

“What kind of bad things?” Emma asked, though she needn't have bothered. She could imagine. And when Bella gave her a hard look she didn't need to hear the details. Unfortunately, social services wasn't infallible. Sometimes a bad seed got through the checks and balances. “If someone was hurting your friend we need to alert the authorities.”

“No one will believe him. He tried.”

“I will believe him,” Emma said firmly. “I will help him get out of a bad home but Iris House isn't the place for him permanently. You know that. It's a home for women only. It's that way for a reason.” She frowned against the pounding gathering behind her eyebrows. “So, where is he now?”

Bella looked sullen. “I don't know. You scared him off.”

“Well, you must know where he went?”

Bella shook her head. “He won't tell me. He doesn't want to go back to his foster family.”

Lord help her. Emma took a deep breath, not quite believing what she was about to do. “When your friend returns…tell him he can stay until we get things figured out. But he can't stay in your room. He can take Charlotte's room until we figure out what to do.”

“Really?” Hope, new and vulnerable, shone in Bella's eyes. “You mean it?”

“Have you ever known me to lie?” Bella shook her head. Emma smiled. “Well, I don't plan to start now. But this is temporary,” she warned. “And if it turns out that Ben isn't living in a bad environment, he'll have to go back home to his foster parents. Do you think he'll talk to me?”

“I don't know…maybe.”

“Well, tell him no one will hurt him here. This is a sanctuary, remember?”

Bella's mouth lifted in a sheepish smile. “I know. Thank you, Emma.”

Emma reached up and gently moved a swatch of hair from Bella's eyes, almost holding her breath. When Bella stiffened but didn't pull away, Emma nearly sagged with relief. “You're welcome, Isabella.” They shared a moment laden with tears that neither would shed at the moment and then Emma straightened. “From now on, no more secrets. All right?”

Bella bit her lip but nodded. “No more secrets.”

Emma swallowed and savored the breakthrough. This was what she'd been working toward with Bella for the past six months. But as Emma left Bella's room, her buzz was short-lived. How would she keep her promise to Bella when the state would surely not agree to letting Ben stay if his parents wanted him back? She was skating along the edge of insanity. She should've flatly told Bella no. She had enough on her plate; she didn't need further complications. But she'd worked so hard to help Bella recover from the trauma in her life that Emma had nearly wept with joy at the appearance of compassion and empathy in the girl's emotional palette. She probably would've agreed to anything.

Emma detoured to her office, her mind in a jumble. She kept a board in her office with pictures of runaways; that way if she came across one, she knew the appropriate agency to contact. Sometimes kids ran away because their home lives were horrendous and the street seemed a far better option than living one more day under their abusive parents' roof. But other times, kids just ran away because they were young and immature with romantic delusions about life on the streets. Those were the ones who were only too eager to
return to the comfort of their homes, their parents sobbing with relief as their wayward child was collected.

It was possible she'd missed a new runaway report with all that'd been happening lately. And it was possible no one had issued a report. The city was full of runaways; not every parent cared to have them back.

Where did this mysterious Ben fall?

D
illon knocked on Emma's door, ready to start his night shift. Although his back twinged from being on his feet all day—another by-product of that lovely explosion—his mind was still chipping away at the mystery that had presented itself at Mad Johnny's and he was eager to ask Emma some more questions.

She answered the door and immediately his heart rate kicked up, setting his blood to percolate and simmer inside his veins. Even when she wasn't trying, she took his breath away. Wrapped in a soft gray velour tracksuit and fuzzy pink slippers with her hair tucked into a messy knot at the base of her head, she should've looked ordinary. In his eyes, she radiated beauty. Hell, she could've answered the door wearing a paper bag ensemble and his tongue might've still hit the ground.

“You look cozy,” he observed, a smile warming his mouth as his gaze devoured her from head to toe. What would she
do if he just pulled her to him and made love to her lips the way he wanted to do to her body? But as his feet carried him closer, obeying the growling hunger pushing him, the clear, agitated look in her expression stopped him. “What's wrong?”

“We had an incident with Bella,” she said, her brow furrowing. He followed her to the living room, where she took a seat, kicking off her slippers to curl her feet underneath her. “Apparently she's been secretly housing a boy she met at school.”

“Help me out. Why is this something that has you stressed out? I imagine teenage girls have been sneaking boys into their rooms for aeons. So, it seems she's normal. Isn't that a good thing?” he said, his hormones not quite ready to release his brain. Perhaps if she didn't look so delectable…

She gave him a look. “No one is allowed to bring home strays at Iris House. It's one of the rules.”

“So you going to toss the girl out?”

“Of course not,” she retorted unhappily. “While yes, she did break the rules, the very fact that she cares about another human being means she's reached a milestone in her recovery. So, I'm trying to help him in order to help Bella.”

“Very noble of you,” he said, taking a seat at the other end of the sofa, stretching out his long legs for a bit. “But I'm not surprised. You have a soft spot for the girl.”

“Is it that obvious?” she asked.

“Yes, but that's all right. Everyone in this house makes special allowances for her.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, from what I can see, you and Chick protect her while the other ladies look out for her. She's their surrogate little sister it seems. Iris House is her family.”

Tears pricked Emma's eyes and nodded. “It's true. I just never knew if Bella realized it.”

“She does,” he returned with easy confidence. During his interviews with the house, the common thread among them was their affection for the surly teen. He didn't blame them…he liked Bella, too. He'd always had a soft spot for the prickly ones. “So is he here now?”

She shook her head. “No. Chick scared him off. She only caught sight of him as he jumped out the window and shimmied down the fire escape. Poor kid must be so frightened out there. I wish I knew where he was staying just for Bella's sake. She's a wreck. This is the first time I've ever seen an emotion on that child's face aside from anger and contempt. I was so flabbergasted by the entire situation I might've promised more than I can deliver,” she confessed, her distress pulling at him.

“Well, don't beat yourself up too much just yet. With everything going on right now, until we get a positive ID on this kid…I say let him keep his distance. Trust isn't something we can afford with that psychopath running around, looking for an opportunity.”

“But he's just a kid,” Emma protested.

“Maybe.” He caught the unease fluttering between them. “And maybe…he's not.”

 

Emma swallowed and rose sharply. “I feel the need for a glass of wine. Would you like some?”

“I suppose one glass wouldn't hurt,” he said, and she was incredibly relieved. She didn't want to drink alone but her hands were shaking from the fear that had stationed itself in her stomach. She hurried to her kitchen and pulled a red wine from the rack without glancing at the brand or vintage.

What had happened to her world? She ran Iris House like a military vessel—efficient, orderly and structured.
This philosophy had served her well. Now everything was slowly unraveling, being pulled apart by a psychopath with an agenda only he knew. She poured the wine and a little sloshed out of the crystal glass. She bit back a cry of frustration. Jerking a paper towel free, she quickly wiped it up.

Drawing a deep breath to find some sort of calm, she scooped up the glasses and returned to Dillon where he sat, a pensive look on his handsome face. Somehow just having him here made her feel better, more centered. It was silly and rubbed the wrong way against her need for total independence, but she yearned to sit beside him and just relax for a moment.

She handed him the glass, which he accepted with a short smile that didn't bode well for a quiet evening, and she tried not to hold her breath in apprehension. “I know it's been a stressful day but I need to ask you some questions,” he said with a look of regret. “It's about Charlotte.”

She nodded and returned to her seat, longing to guzzle the wine in her glass rather than sip at it the way she was trained since she was old enough to socialize. “Did you find a lead?” she asked, ridiculously pleased to hear that her voice didn't wobble or quiver. An appearance of control would do in a pinch since she was dangerously close to revealing she felt the exact opposite.

“More of a curiosity,” he said, earning a frown on her part. “I talked with that pleasant fellow Mad Johnny today. He was so kind as to share some new information with me.”

Distaste pulled her mouth into a tight pinch. “He's a vile creature. I doubt he gave you anything of value. I might suggest a rabies shot if you got too close,” she muttered, taking a deeper swallow of her wine, forgetting to let it aerate in her mouth. “What did he say?”

“Well, he was blackmailing Charlotte with some photo
graphs of her and her lover, which I assumed was Robert Gavin—whom I also visited, by the way, and I found to be a total ass—but the man she was seeing was named Carlyle. Does that name ring a bell?”

“First or last?”

“I don't know,” he admitted.

“Well, off the top of my head, I don't recall a Carlyle, though I suppose that's not a surprise. Charlotte wasn't required to tell me of her romantic attachments.”

“Does it bother you that Gavin was seeing Charlotte sexually?” he asked.

She blushed a little and laughed, a trifle uneasily. “The easy answer is no but the honest answer is yes. I wouldn't encourage any of the Iris House boarders to engage in a sexual relationship with one of our donors. In my opinion, it sends the wrong message. I wouldn't want anyone to think that if they make a donation, they get personal favors. First and foremost, I have to consider Iris House and the ramifications of such a relationship, but then again, I can't tell my boarders how to live their lives. If one of them were to meet someone through their association with Iris House and it turned out to be the love of their life…who am I to stand in their way?”

“Well, let me set one thing straight…Gavin wasn't looking for true love with Charlotte. He was using her.”

Robert? Kind, sweet, generous Robert? “How do you know this?” she asked, not ready to believe it. “Surely, he didn't just come out and say something so crude.”

“Oh, of course not,” he agreed easily. “At first he was congenial and suitably somber when the conversation turned to Charlotte, but when I questioned his relationship with her, he became more reserved…almost prickly.”

“Perhaps he values his privacy,” Emma said, still troubled by this new side of Robert she'd never even suspected. “It's
not unusual or suspect that Robert didn't feel compelled to share private aspects of his personal life. It's simply bad luck that the woman he was seeing turned up dead.”

“Perhaps,” he mused. “But what if it's not?”

“Not bad luck?”

“Well, it was certainly bad luck for Charlotte but what if Gavin was actively hiding something? What do you know of this man aside from the fact that he's a generous donor to Iris House?”

Emma paused for a moment, thinking back, trying to remember when she first met Robert. He was a fairly new acquaintance introduced by another frequent donor…or was he? She frowned. “That's funny, I can't seem to remember how I came to meet him. I know it was sometime last year, but I can't quite recall who introduced us.”

“How do you compile the guest list for the Winter Ball?” he asked.

“Invitation only. We make it that way so that it's considered prestigious to attend. We invite big money because we expect them to spend big money, either at the silent-auction table or with a straight donation.”

“I'll need a list of your top donors,” he instructed, at which she balked.

“That's confidential information. I can't just hand it over like a grocery list.”

“It's not like that but if you need me to I could get a warrant,” he said, watching as her lips tightened and her cheeks flushed with a faint dusting of agitated pink. She was circling the drain, he could feel it. Too many things were being wrenched from her control and it was like a sensory overload. “The information is safe with me,” he promised. “I just want to check it over and run some names through the system. Something tells me we're dealing with someone who's accustomed to traveling in tony circles. He knows how
to blend, how to move in and out of those circles without drawing attention to himself.”

“But don't you think that it would be rather counterproductive to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars if you didn't want attention? We take a picture of the top donors to mount on a plaque for their contribution. It's one of our little tokens of appreciation. I can't see a killer wanting that kind of press.”

“Unless he's a narcissist, which many serial killers are. They have no ability to feel empathy and often cannot think of others in relation to their actions. Their victims are simply objects used to fulfill their own twisted desires, whatever those may be.”

“That's horrid,” she said, shuddering. She finished her wine and contemplated another glass, needing the alcohol to blunt the razor's edge of worry and apprehension that cut at her ability to stay centered and focused. She stared at her empty wineglass. “Did Robert say how long he and Charlotte had been seeing each other?” she asked, privately mortified that Robert and Charlotte had been together.

“Yes, he admitted to three months, though I wouldn't put it past him to lie. He pretty much tossed me out as soon as the questions got too personal. But I sensed he was hiding something. And—” he paused a moment until she looked at him in question “—I think Chick was right…he has a thing for you.”

Emma looked away. Damn Chick and her mouth. “I suspect he does,” she admitted. There was no sense in lying. Robert hadn't been subtle in his pursuit no matter how much she tried to deter him. “I never encouraged him but I knew he hadn't given up.”

“Out of curiosity…”

She cut him a sharp look. “Because I don't feel that way toward him. He's a generous man but not my type.”

Emma tried not to see the way Dillon lost some of the tension in his shoulders when she answered. She wished someone like Robert was her type. He was stable, kind, patient…
dull. Where'd that come from?
She shook out the errant thought whispered in her mind and focused on Dillon. “But even if he'd been my type, I'm entirely too busy to casually date.”

“Completely sensible,” he agreed with a smile, but there was a glint in his dark eyes that sent a shiver down her back. “A woman in your position…dragging around a significant other doesn't seem your style,” he said, moving toward her.

Her eyes widened, apprehension warring with her desire to meet him halfway, and she stammered as she tried to slide away, “Wh-what are doing?” By this point, he'd climbed her body, pressing against her in the most delicious way as somehow she'd ended up on her back, the forgotten wineglass leaving her fingers to roll harmlessly to the floor. “Dillon? We shouldn't…I'm not looking to date anyone, not even you.”

“Shh,” he instructed softly. He stared into her eyes, melting her with that heated gaze, demanding her full attention without saying a word. “Who said anything about dating?” he growled right before claiming her mouth in a sizzling capture that for a split second made her forget what she'd been protesting.

Why fight this? It's so good,
a voice said in a breathy gasp that was surely not her own. There was a very good reason for not doing this. And in just a minute she would remember…any minute now.

Neither of them was looking for a relationship, but that didn't mean she was looking for casual sex.
Good God, no.
The idea made her feel dirty. She wasn't that kind of
person and didn't want to be. And just like that the mental fog cleared.

She wrenched her mouth from his and gave him a hard push that toppled him right off her body.

“What the bloody hell, love?” he exclaimed, his brow furrowed in a dark storm of confusion and cooling ardor. “A simple no would've sufficed.”

Emma sat up and crossed her arms, anger replacing the hot stuff flowing through her veins. “We agreed not to do this.”

“We did?” he asked, indolently propping himself on one elbow. His tousled hair and reddened lips gave him a decidedly Lothario look that was incredibly sexy, but Emma sensed he probably knew this so she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of reacting to it. He'd plainly gone against their agreement and was now feigning ignorance.