CHRISTIAN woke up slowly, groggy as hell. Which was odd. He hadn’t had anything to drink last night, but he felt hungover. Maybe not odd. He’d gotten drunk as hell on Stone Jackson. For the first time in his entire life, he felt well and truly made love to—body, heart, and mind. Stone had held nothing back.
The man had a gift for stripping away the layers of his mental self-defenses, laying him bare, and then devouring him whole. And yet he felt sated, as if Stone had given himself back in return. A fair trade. A soul for a soul.
Christ, it had been intense.
No wonder he felt so exhausted this morning, like he’d run a couple of Iron Man triathlons last night. It felt so damned good to just lie here, utterly relaxed, the cool air-conditioning blowing across his naked skin, his limbs tangled with Stone’s until he wasn’t sure where he ended and Stone began.
A cell phone rang, and Stone jolted awake.
“Relax. It’s mine,” Christian murmured. He rolled across Stone’s chest, pinning him down and enjoying the feel of chest hair against his stomach as he reached for the far nightstand. Stone was rousing slowly. Last night knocked him out too, huh? Awesome.
He put the device to his ear. “What’s up, Travis?”
The security man was as frantic as he’d ever heard him. “He’s gone.”
Christian lurched upright, and Stone stared up at him in gathering alarm. “What do you mean, gone?”
That brought Stone bolt upright beside him.
Tucker talked in a rush. “Gone. No sign of Jack or the girl. Suite’s empty. Poof. Disappeared.”
Stone must have heard the ex-Marine, for he snatched Christian’s phone out of his hand. “Don’t touch anything. Don’t move. We’ll be there in sixty seconds.”
Stone tossed the phone at him and snatched up his own cell phone, dialing with one hand as he yanked on underwear, khaki slacks, and a black polo shirt.
Horror, hot and pure, poured over and into Christian, filling his eyes and clogging his throat. He’d taken one lousy night off the job, and disaster had struck. He’d dared to steal a moment for himself, and fate was punishing him for it now. Son of a bitch.
“Martin, it’s Stone. Senator Lacey has disappeared. Did he talk with Peregrine? Did my yanking the protection trigger this? If so, I’ve got to help find the guy. Did he give Pere any idea where he might have gone? Or are we looking at a kidnapping?”
Sweet baby Jesus. Christian’s mind spun off into all sorts of hideous scenarios while he yanked on his own clothes. How in the hell was he going to explain this to the public? Congressional aide has wild sex with male security guard while senator is snatched out from under their noses. He’d never get a job in Washington again. Hell, he’d never be employable anywhere. This kind of shit ruined a person.
He glanced up in dismay at Stone. God, and he’d wrecked Stone’s career too. This was what the guy had been talking about when he said bodyguards had one failure in their entire career. Lose one principal on your watch, and you were finished. He got it now. He and Stone were both done.
Christian raced for the living room, shoving his feet into socks and shoes. The phone conversation with Martin—likely Martin Wylde, cofounder of Wild Cards—wound down.
Stone emerged from the bedroom. “My boss says Lacey was shockingly unconcerned at last night’s cancellation of the security contract. Bad news is he said nothing about leaving Miami. Good news is Wild Cards, Inc.’s Internet watchers have picked up no chatter to indicate that a kidnapper might have taken him.”
“You have watchers who would find something like that?”
“Oh hell, yes. We put a close watch on every client. Regular web, deep web, and dark web.”
“What’s the dark web?”
“The places the really bad actors hang out and not the wannabe posers.”
“I’m sorry about this—” he started.
“Save it. Not your fault the bastard disappeared. I’m the one who quit the job and left the man underprotected.”
“Jack doesn’t let Tucker stay in his suite when he’s got a girl with him. He surely wouldn’t have let you stay with them last night.”
“If we’d had any idea that a kidnapping was on the table, Travis and I could have stood guard outside the door.”
“Jack wouldn’t have allowed it. I guarantee it.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I know my boss.” They were both dressed and headed for the door.
They raced down the long hall to Lacey’s suite, and Christian let them in with his key. Stone stopped just inside, presumably to prevent the disturbance of any evidence. Tucker was standing still in the doorway to the senator’s bedroom and didn’t move when they came in. Oh, right. Stone had told him to stay still. The man could by God follow an order. Christian squeezed in behind Stone and closed the door.
“What have you got?” Stone asked Tucker from his position.
“They had sex in the bed. His cell phone and wallet are gone. Toothbrush and razor still in the bathroom. No clothes missing. Nothing out of place. No sign whatsoever of a struggle.”
“His laptop?” Christian asked.
Tucker glanced over his shoulder into the bedroom. “Don’t see it.”
“May I look around the living room for it if I don’t touch anything?” Christian asked Stone.
“Yeah. You can move now, Tucker. And touch whatever you want. There won’t be any fingerprints or hairs lying around. If he was in fact kidnapped, pros did it.”
“How can you tell?” Christian asked as he moved into the large room, lifting newspapers and stacks of briefing papers, hunting for any sign of the senator’s thin, brushed-aluminum laptop.
“No sign of a struggle. Tucker knows his shit. If nothing’s out of place, then nothing’s out of place. Lacey either walked out of here or was carried out carefully by a pro.”
Christian spotted the computer under a briefing about an upcoming vote in the Senate Commerce Committee pertaining to imports of Cuban sugar. “He didn’t take his laptop with him. Either he wasn’t planning on working, or whoever took him didn’t care about his personal files.” He looked over at Tucker. “Have you called Jill yet?”
“And told her what? Her husband and his porn-star girlfriend have gone missing?”
Christian winced. He really liked Jill. He and Tucker both did their best to shield her from the worst of her husband’s excesses. This was a freaking nightmare. The moment he told Jill he’d lost her husband, she was going to fire his ass. And he would deserve it. Heart heavy, he pulled out his cell phone.
STONE watched resignation settle on Christian’s features. He had to give the man credit. He was willing to face up to the consequences of what he believed to be his mistake.
“Not so fast,” he murmured, putting a hand over Christian’s phone. “Give Travis and me a little while to find out what we can.” He knew from bitter experience that the more information you could give a loved one about how their family member had met their demise, the better it was. Questions and unknowns ate at a person’s soul like nothing else.
Christian nodded reluctantly.
“Does hotel security have anything on his departure?” Stone asked Tucker.
“Nope,” the security man replied. “They were the first people I called. The Imperium’s surveillance is so porous that he slipped right through it.”
Hell, Lacey had been standing in this very room when he’d complained to Tucker about how easy it would be to slip unseen out of the hotel by the stairwells.
“Have you tracked the GPS in his cell phone?” he asked next.
Tucker shook his head. “No. And I haven’t called the police yet to ask them to locate his phone.”
Stone snorted. “It doesn’t take the police to track a phone if you have the right contacts.”
He made a quick call to a friend who owed him a favor. After a short pause, the guy announced that Lacey’s phone was turned off. Of course it was. Either the kidnappers knew not to make such a rookie mistake, or else Jack didn’t want to be found just yet. Frankly, he favored the notion that the bastard had taken off with his porn star and was getting a kick out of fucking with his staff.
“Thanks, man,” Stone muttered to the FBI contact. He reported to Tucker and Christian, “No joy on the phone. It’s turned off.” He thought for a minute. “Did any of the e-mails or letters Lacey’s received threaten a kidnapping?”
Tucker answered, “Negative. They were all death threats.”
The Wild Card analysts had already combed through the letters at the start of this job and declared the notes the work of an unhinged sociopath, likely female, and likely without the organization to mount a detailed and dangerous attack. Stone had been briefed to be ready for a direct assault—the would-be killer was likely to barge into a public space, guns blazing, and try to make a big, public statement. A sophisticated and unseen kidnapping was not the letter writer’s likely MO.
Frowning, he widened the net of possibilities they had to consider. “The girlfriend,” he said abruptly. “Anyone got a full name, address, or cell phone number on her?”
Tucker shook his head. “I only know her stage name. Chesty Hills.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
Tucker grimaced. “Wish I was.”
Stone made another call. “Martin, it’s me again. I need a legal name, address, and phone number for a porn star who goes by the stage name Chesty Hills.” A pause. Then dryly, “No, I’m not going over to the straight side of the Force.”
Christian smiled faintly, but the expression disappeared so fast Stone wasn’t sure he’d seen it. The guy was clearly experiencing severe morning-after regret. He knew the feeling. His life was all about keeping moving, staying in motion, never letting anything bad catch up with him. Last night had been an anomaly. He’d actually slowed down. Physically and emotionally, he’d come to rest in Christian’s arms. He’d been so damned tired of the rat race, and it had felt so good just to stop. To be in one space for a few hours. And not to be alone.
He yanked his attention back to the crisis at hand. If Jack had just taken off for shits and grins, without telling Travis where he’d gone, Stone was going to break him in half, client or not. Christian and Travis worked their asses off for Jack Lacey. He owed them both better.
A voice in his ear announced, “I found your porn star. She’s, umm, improbable. But hey, if you’re gonna go straight, I say do it in a big way. You ready to copy some information?”
Stone picked up a pen and yanked a piece of hotel stationery out of a drawer. As Martin rattled off numbers and street names, he scribbled it all down. “Got it. And I’m not dating her. The client is, fuck you very much.”
“The married senator? What a naughty, naughty boy.”
Huh. That was one way to describe it.
Stone disconnected and punched Chesty’s phone number into his cell. “Service provider says the device is not turned on.”
Christian blurted, “So she got grabbed too?”
“We’ll have to swing by her place to be sure she and Jack aren’t just stoned or passed out before I definitively declare this a missing-person scenario.”
Tucker headed for the door. “I’ll drive,” he declared.
The three men raced to the parking garage and piled into the SUV. Tucker drove north through Miami to the Doral address where Chesty lived under her real name, Chelsea Jenkins.
The address belonged to a modest, late-model ranch that was about as far from porn star as Stone could have imagined. He would bet a million bucks the neighbors didn’t know how Miss Jenkins made her living.
A quick walk around the house banging on all the doors and peering in all the windows, made it abundantly clear that Chesty and Jack Lacey were not in residence.
The trio climbed back into the SUV, and Tucker spoke grimly. “I’ve got no training in kidnapping recovery. This is out of my league. Now what? Call the FBI?”
Stone shrugged. “I’m not technically on this assignment anymore. Wild Cards, Inc. pulled its contract last night and refunded Lacey’s money.”
“When did that happen?” Tucker demanded.
“Last night after we got back to the hotel, my boss called the senator.”
“Why?”
Stone threw a withering look at Travis.
“Yeah, I know,” Tucker grumbled. “He’s an asshole. But my kid is one semester from done with college, and then I won’t need this lousy paycheck. I can tell Jack Lacey to fuck off, and I can retire.”
Stone replied, “I’ve worked for plenty of assholes. But Lacey’s complete unwillingness to listen to me or take any instructions whatsoever is what caused the Wild Cards to pull the contract. The man didn’t give a damn that someone threatened his life. You know as well as I do that he’s a sitting duck if there really is someone out there with serious intent to kill him.”
“More like a dead duck,” Christian corrected from the backseat.
“It’s time to call the police,” Stone said grimly.
Tucker glanced at Christian in the rearview mirror. “You’re the slick talker. You call the police.”
“I think we’d better call Mrs. Lacey first. If this thing goes public, I don’t want her blindsided.”
Christian reluctantly placed the call to the senator’s wife and put her on speakerphone. “Good morning, Mrs. Lacey. How’s Texas?”
“Do you know why there’s no sinning in Texas during the summer, Christian?”
“Why, ma’am?”
“Because Satan himself would rather stay in hell than come to Texas at this time of year.” Stone smiled as the woman asked, “What can I do for you this morning, Christian? It’s a little early in the day for Jack to have messed up already.”
“I’m afraid that’s not true, ma’am. You haven’t by any chance heard from him in the past twelve hours or so, have you?”
“No. Why?” The keen intelligence Christian had mentioned before had obviously kicked in, and her voice was sharp with concern.
Christian winced reluctantly. Had the two of them been alone in the vehicle, Stone would have been inclined to give the guy a supportive smile. “Jack has disappeared from his hotel room, ma’am. There’s no sign of a struggle and no ransom demand to indicate there was any foul play. However, we also can’t rule it out.”
“What about that fancy security firm he hired? How did they lose him?”
“They terminated the contract and refunded his money last night. Jack was… singularly uncooperative… with them, and they felt they couldn’t guarantee his safety. Ethically they felt obliged to pull themselves off his security detail.”
Jill swore rather more saltily than one would expect of a genteel Southern woman, and Stone grinned reluctantly.
She asked tartly, “Has the Wild Cards’ man left Miami yet?”
“No, ma’am. He’s here with me now.”
“Hire him to work for me. I need him to find Jack and keep this whole thing from turning into a media circus.”
Stone stared down at the phone and up at Christian.
“Speaking of which….” Christian trailed off, obviously unsure of how to tell her delicately about Chesty.
“Jesus H. Christ. There’s a woman involved, isn’t there?” she asked baldly.
Give the woman full marks for knowing her husband.
Christian winced. “Uh, there might be, ma’am.”
“Don’t pussyfoot around with me, Christian Brandeis. I know my husband. How bad is it this time?”
“She’s a porn star. Famous enough that the media would have a field day with it.”
“Tell your man from Wild Cards to prepare a quiet plan to dispose of Jack’s body, just in case.”
Stone started. He was willing to cross a lot of lines in the performance of his job, but murder was not one of them. She continued, “And tell your guy he’d better find Jack before I do. Because I am going to pull his scrotum over his head and feed his balls to him one by one before I choke him to death.”
“Got it, ma’am. Scrotum. Balls. Choking. Check.”
Christian’s dry comment made her laugh just enough to break the tension a little.
“We’ll find him for you. Don’t you worry, Mrs. Lacey.”
“I trust you completely to handle this with speed and discretion, Christian. It goes without saying that there will be no police or FBI. Cops gossip like old women, and we can’t afford a leak to the media. If Jack doesn’t get the infusion of cash he’s getting paid for this publicity junket, he’s going to have to suspend his campaign.”
Stone was startled. He’d had no idea the senator’s campaign was in such dire financial straits. No wonder Christian was stressed out.
“What about his scheduled appearances over the next several days, ma’am?” Christian was asking.
“We can’t cancel them. Find Jack and make him appear. He’s got to go to every scheduled appearance. Each one represents a large campaign donation.”
“But, ma’am.” A pause. “He’s not here. I can’t make him materialize out of thin air.”
“You’ll figure out something, Christian. You always do.”
Right. Because Christian could fix anything. Stone did not envy the guy this particular toxic-waste cleanup. The mess might be too big even for him to manage. He glanced back at Christian, who looked nonplussed. What the hell did Jill expect the guy to do, anyway?
Christian replied blankly, “I’ll do my best, ma’am.”
Brave man.
Christian disconnected the call and stared off into space, either thinking hard or just completely in shock. At length he roused himself to ask, “So. Stone. Any chance I can interest you and your employer in a new client with a missing husband she needs found very, very quietly?”