Jaded, page 15
Slowly, Jase flipped the phone closed and wondered just what the hell he’d done.
Jade was grateful Branford Pettigrew was waiting for her when Jase escorted her into the Twelfth Precinct. He was the first membership she’d sold when she began at Callahan’s five years ago, and for that first year they spent many hours together. He had been quiet and awkward. But slowly he had opened up into the confident man standing before her. Not much older than she, Branford was forever in her debt for getting him over his fear of women.
“I’d like to speak privately with my client,” he said as he strode up to her, putting his arm out and bringing her into the protective fold of a half hug. “Are you okay?” he asked, concern lacing his words and face.
“Yes,” she lied.
“Just a minute,” a voice boomed from behind them. Jade, Branford, Ricco, and Jase turned to the loud voice. A large man in a bad suit with a ruddy complexion, Detective Kowalski, filled the doorway leading to a hallway.
“Miss Jade Devereaux?” he asked.
Jade nodded.
“Who are you?” Branford asked.
“Detective Kowalski,” he boasted.
Kowalski looked at Jade, his wary gaze sweeping up, then down, his contempt obvious. “Miss Devereaux, you have the right to remain silent.” He smiled when Jade gasped, but Branford squeezed her arm. “Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, an attorney will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as I have explained them?”
Jade nodded.
“I can’t hear you, Miss Devereaux.”
Jade stiffened. She glanced over to Jase, who stood next to his partner as stoic as an oak. He refused to look at her but she could see the muscles clench and unclench in his jaw. “Yes, Detective, I understand my rights as you have explained them to me.”
Before Kowalski could comment, Branford stepped forward. “Is my client under arrest?”
“We’ll decide that after we talk to her.”
Branford laughed. “There’s nothing to discuss. Either arrest her now or we walk.” When none of the cops made the necessary moves, Branford took Jade’s hand and started for the door.
“Hold on a minute!” Kowalski bellowed.
Everyone in the room stopped and stared at the frustrated detective. “I might not have physical evidence right now, the lab is as usual decades behind, but I got a body and your client was the last known person to see him alive. I got a cop who puts her there, and she admitted it to him. Now, I can charge her and make you both miserable until arraignment tomorrow morning, or your client can talk to me.”
Branford nodded. “I’d like to speak to my client for a moment.” He pulled Jade away from the detectives.
Her heart thudded against her chest. Was she going to be arrested and put in jail?
“What the hell is going on, Jade?” he softly asked.
“I don’t know, Bran. Mr. Hiro is dead.”
“Where you with him today?”
Jade swallowed hard and nodded.
“Did you kill him?”
“No!”
Branford smiled and kissed her on the forehead. Taking her hand again, he walked back to the three detectives.
“Unless you produce physical evidence, my old Stanford Law professor and the current DA, Stanton Wilcox, will toss the charges against Miss Devereaux out the window. I’ll request him personally to oversee this case, and while the three of you have your doubts about Miss Devereaux’s innocence, I do not. I will strongly argue that point to Stanton.”
Kowalski looked as if his blood pressure was about to erupt. Jase stood quietly watching her, a snide smirk twisting his lips. His partner, Ricco, was not readable. Jade held her breath. She did not want to be arrested.
“Miss Devereaux,” Kowalski said, his beady black eyes fixed on her, “do not leave the area.”
Jade looked up at Branford. He smiled down at her and squeezed her hand. “Good day, gentlemen.” He tugged her hand and drew Jade from the cold sterile building.
Once they exited the building, Branford stopped at the top step leading to the precinct and turned to face her. He smoothed a strand of hair from her cheek and smiled. Lightly, he kissed her on the forehead. “Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on?”
Jade shivered and shook her head. “I don’t know, Bran. Two of the club members are dead in less than a week, and I saw both of them shortly before they were killed.”
“Was the first Andrew Townsend?”
She nodded.
“I read about it.” His eyes softened and he smoothed more hair from her face. “I have to ask you, Jade. Did you have anything to do with Townsend’s death?”
She swallowed hard. “I don’t think so.” God, she hoped not.
He squinted his eyes. “You either did or you didn’t, Jade.”
She took a deep breath. She could not go to jail. Not yet. “I didn’t.”
He hugged her to him. “Okay. C’mon, angel, let’s get you home.”
“No, take me back to the club. My house was broken into; I’m not going back until my housekeeper cleans all of that mess.”
“Your house got tossed? Why didn’t you tell me?”
And once again, she trusted no one with her secret. “A simple breaking and entering, the cops said. The guy got some jewelry and stuff. Random.”
Branford stared at her for a long minute, then continued to walk toward his car. “C’mon.”
Jase watched the tender moment between Jade and her attorney. Disgust mingling with a sharp stab of jealousy wrestled inside his gut like two terriers going at it over a bone. He turned to Kowalski. “What do you have?”
Kowalski grinned and shook his head, his fleshy jowls swishing in the air. “You hot for that piece?”
“Hardly.”
Kowalski snorted. “You gotta be dead not to get wood over that.”
“Not my type. Now, tell me what you have.”
“Asian male, Katsuo Hiro. Hog-tied, his balls cut off and shoved down his throat. My guess is he choked on his nads.”
Jase nodded.
“Your boy Maza says you had one like this Sunday?”
“Yes, same MO, and both members of Callahan’s.”
“I’m aware of Callahan’s. Don’t tell me that fine piece that just left here was the last one to see your boy alive?”
“No, she wasn’t. At least I can’t place her as the last. I interviewed a Genevieve Monroe this evening, she was the last to admit to seeing him alive. She had a drink with him at Delicato’s a few blocks from Callahan’s. She said she called a cab for him, he was too drunk for anything. His BAC supports it. The guy had enough alcohol to float a boat. Cause of death, asphyxiation. He choked to death on his balls.”
Kowalski nodded. “Your girl there could have run into him again, maybe when he stumbled out of the bar.”
“Ricco will be heading over there shortly to question the employees. We’ll know when Townsend left and how.”
“Okay, so let’s say he stumbled back to the club. Runs into that harpy and she whacks him,” Kowalski suggested.
“Motive?” Jase asked.
“You tell me.”
Jase shrugged. “So far, other than the fact that the guy was a scumbag, no motive. And while I’m sure Miss Devereaux works out, she doesn’t have it in her to hog-tie a guy.”
“What if she had help?” Ricco asked.
Jase narrowed his eyes. “Okay, so she had help. Why? Was Hiro missing his wallet?”
“No,” Kowalski said. “Over five grand in his wallet and he had enough jewelry to make my wife happy for decades. But the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is, what was your girlie doing there before Hiro was whacked?”
Jase scowled and his blood pressure jumped. “I have a hunch.”
Kowalski waved a hand in front of Jase’s face. “Earth to Vaughn, murder investigation in progress.”
Jase’s scowl deepened. “I think she was turning a trick.” As he said the words, he thought he was going to be sick.
“Ah, so man-hater hooker whacks john. Classic.”
The truth bit Jase sharply in the ass. “Call me an idiot, but my gut says she’s telling the truth.”
Ricco shook his head. Kowalski chortled. “Vaughn, you are way off base. She’s a black widow, and she has your dick in her mouth right now. If she confessed, you wouldn’t believe it.”
“No shit,” Ricco muttered.
Jase shot his partner a hard glare. “I haven’t lost my objectivity.”
Both Kowalski and Ricco hooted over that one. Were they right?
“Tell you what, Vaughn,” Kowalski said. “Since you seem to be so cozy with her, why don’t you turn up the charm and find out for us poor slobs what she’s hiding under that thousand-dollar dress of hers.”
Jase nodded. He’d worked too many years of undercover not to know how to work a suspect for information. The thought of getting between Jade’s thighs for information made him feel like he needed a shower. His head snapped up and he grinned. Jase slapped Kowalski on the shoulder, pulled a card from his breast pocket, and handed it to him. “Will do. Keep us posted and we’ll return the favor.”
Kowalski nodded, and Jase left him and his partner staring after him.
As Jase pulled out from the precinct his mind ran rampant. What the hell was going on? He knew Jade was hiding information from him regarding Townsend. She knew something and was not telling him. And Hiro? If she wasn’t the last person to see him alive, who was? And why all of a sudden were two of Callahan’s club members ritualistically killed? Had they crossed a line? Was their death revenge for some wrong? He gripped the steering wheel so tightly, his hands cramped. The common denominator was Jade Devereaux.
Jase drove back to the club on autopilot, preferring the quiet peace of nothingness as opposed to the static noise a certain proprietress created. He waited on the opposite side of the street from the parking lot. He could have waited for her at her house, but he decided instead to follow her. Who she left with and the state of that person’s health could be at stake.
Long after midnight, Jade walked out to her car. The eerie quiet of the moonless night unnerved her. A cold emptiness filled her. Like an arctic wind, it whistled through each cell, chilling her to the bone. She was emotionally spent, physically wiped out, and afraid for everyone.
She had spent a little time with each of her employees, reassuring them that not only was she not in any danger but neither were they, and that they should just go about their regular business. Their jobs were not in jeopardy. She flinched as if an invisible hand had reared back to strike her. It remained to be seen when the members’ murders, less than a week apart, would hit the tabloids. It would kill business. Members would not come to the club for fear of being the next victim. And then she would have to lay off employees. And she would be without a job.
Jack Morton’s words came back and jabbed her in the gut. She’d made the decision years ago never to allow a man to touch her for money. Not even for Tina would she go back on her promise to herself.
Somehow she’d have to manage the status quo at the club and keep her new pimp owner happy, and pray for no more distractions. Jade let out a long relieved breath. Even if the papers printed the names of the victims, there would be no tie-in with the club. Their membership list was private. She doubted the cops would release that information. She bit her bottom lip. Or would they? Could they?
Impulsively, Jade reached for her cell phone, then just as quickly she put it down. It was too late to call Jase and find out exactly what the cops planned on releasing. And she wasn’t going to be the one to give them any ideas.
It wasn’t until she was halfway to the Blue Orchid that Jade realized she was being followed. Fear shimmered through her. The tightening of her lungs returned. Along with the feeling of suffocating. Was the killer following her? She grabbed her cell phone again and called the only person who came to mind.
“Vaughn.”
“It’s me, I’m being followed. I’m scared.” The split second her confession left her lips, she cursed herself.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, since I left the club.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m on Saratoga heading toward the one-oh-one.”
“What the hell are you doing there?”
“I—I can’t go home. My house…”
Her eyes darted to her rearview mirror and the car that had been tailing her turned right onto a frontage road before turning right again. Relief followed by embarrassment flooded her.
“He’s gone.”
Jase nodded. He gave her more time to continue down Saratoga before he picked her up again. Even if he lost sight of her, he had his laptop and her signal was loud and clear.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I must have imagined it. I’m feeling a little shaky right now.”
“Jade?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Do you want some company?”
Every fiber of her screamed yes. Just for an hour, just until she forgot why he was there, just until she fell asleep. “No, but thank you.”
“Where are you staying?”
“At the Blue Orchid on Hacienda.”
“Who else knows you’re staying there?”
“No one.”
“Lock your door.”
“I will.”
Jase drove by the hotel a few minutes later. The front porch light was on, the curvy silhouette of a woman canvassed the upstairs window. His blood quickened, warming his limbs, heating his groin. His breathing accelerated. It occurred to Jase then that he was in deep shit.
Jade spent the next day holed up at the Blue Orchid. She had another massage, a facial, and allowed herself to be pampered. She called her sister and left her a message, she napped, she tried to read, and ultimately found herself bored and restless. It occurred to Jade as she paced the plush carpet of her room, that she was avoiding the world. The world that included her turbulent past, her tenuous present, a life that held little promise of a smooth future. A world that included a man she had allowed on several levels to get under her skin.
Jase Vaughn was never far from any of her thoughts. When she awoke hot and sweaty in the middle of the night, craving his touch, she knew she had a problem. A problem she didn’t want, a problem she didn’t need, and a problem she had no idea how to handle. She was once again under the control of a man. And this man wanted something from her she had never given to anyone, not even Tina. He wanted the truth.
The truth was something she could barely face herself. With it came pain and the loss of her freedom. Her freedom was crucial to Tina’s survival. She’d vowed the day her mother died Tina would never have to want, never have to subject herself to the whims of a man to survive. She would support her sister emotionally and financially, pay for her college, and set her up for a life where she could choose to do whatever she wanted or do nothing at all.
Without her freedom, Jade could not work and no work meant no income. If not for Tina, Jade would walk into the nearest precinct, turn herself in, and take her medicine. She had been dead inside for too long to remember what it meant to feel.
Until Jase.
And while she couldn’t put a finger on the emotional aspects of the man, and she didn’t want to go there anyway, her body had a mind of its own. She reacted to him on a most basic level. A level that, if she tapped into it, could control her.
Jade sighed and started to get ready for work. She went through the mundane motions of creating the woman men dreamed about. Wet dreams, that is. She trembled as she applied her mascara. It was ironic. Her mother turned her out at fourteen and she had had no clue what a man wanted from a gangly girl. She found out soon enough. For a pervert, the colonel hadn’t forced himself on her, but what he did do to her was humiliating and she swore, as she stood there naked in front of him while he jerked off to her baby talk, that she would never allow a man to take advantage of her again. It would be on her terms and her terms alone. It was how she went to work every night, how she dated for money. It was her choice. She picked the men, the time, the place.
She slid the jade-colored sheath down her curvy form. The shimmery fabric matched the color of her eyes spot-on. She’d spent a few minutes in the tanning bed this morning and her skin glowed a healthy bronze. She shivered as she looked at herself in the mirror and visualized Jase standing behind her, his lips tracing a path along her neck to her shoulder. Her nipples stiffened and she felt a warm flush between her legs.
She could almost feel his body heat, the pressure of his large hand, the warmth of his lips on her skin. She’d only allowed one man to touch her so intimately, and his betrayal was almost harder to endure than the betrayal of her mother.
Jade closed her eyes against the sudden sting of tears. “He’s not worth it!” she shouted at the mirror. Abruptly, she turned and zipped up her dress, slid on the matching snakeskin stilettos, grabbed her purse, and left the room.
It wasn’t until she was halfway to the club that it occurred to her that she was being followed again. She glanced at her purse where her cell phone was but refused to make a call to a man. For as much as men had screwed up her life, she’d managed without one, and she wasn’t about to start playing the helpless female role.
Jade pulled over to the bike lane without signaling and waited for the car behind her to pass. Her heart rate elevated when the dark-colored vehicle pulled over, as well, but nearly fifty yards behind her. Anger swelled and she did a too-stupid-to-live move. Jerking the car door open, she stepped out and strode angrily toward the car.
When the engine revved, it occurred to her the driver might run her down. Instead he or she backed up with the squeal of rubber and did one of those TV cop moves, where the car spun around. Oncoming traffic swerved and horns blew as the car crossed over the median strip and headed the other way. As far as she could see, it was a dark green or black four-door sedan, maybe a Taurus or Corolla. Hell, she didn’t know. But she would recognize it again.
