When it came to staging an ambush, the Blues were experts.
A husband and wife, united in every power play and business venture, they controlled elite society as effortlessly as a champion manipulated a novice in games of risk and didn’t respond well to the word no.
Josephine de la Peña had considered herself doubly exempt from their exploitation—she was a retired DEA field agent and their daughter’s best friend. She had never before been their target. But she knew what they were capable of and this setup, schemed and executed to perfection, had their prints all over it.
Mierda!
Wrapped in a fitted pantsuit that had been sexy but wilted in a graceless surrender to wrinkles and sweat and coffee stains, accessorized with waning makeup and a pissed-off sneer, she could loiter at the entrance to the Palazzo’s CUT steak house only so long before her presence summoned a tempest of unwanted attention. The curiosity in the hostess’s demeanor had already darkened to suspicion because her sociable, “Would you like to be seated?” remained unanswered. And Joey, trapped in a rush of hot indignation, was flustered. Caught unawares. Totally off her game.
It might be possible to counterattack and beat the Blues at their own wheeler-dealing. Was it even too late to turn and run? Or hobble, because her walking stick wasn’t a magician’s wand and could do only so much for her permanent limp.
Marshall and Temperance had apparently recruited her supervisor to lay on the pressure, and the three of them sat in the exquisite ritzy glory of Joey’s favorite steak house sharing a round of drinks. Scotch, if her boss had his way.
A toast to the idiot, she thought, her mind whirring, blazing, as she imagined them raising their shot glasses in anticipation of cornering her. Blame them, she would—and did, vehemently. But she’d flown into the jar and let them twist on the lid. She could be at home stripping off her clothes and the workday if she hadn’t ignored her instincts. Since putting down stakes in this city, she’d become too soft, trusting, weak to manipulation. Perhaps it was a blessing that she was an inactive DEA agent, off field assignments, a Department of Justice researcher confined to a desk. No more than a civilian with a few valuable contacts and a firearm.
If she’d resisted her gut reaction to leap at the chance to eat a steak, if she’d at least had the sense to think past her celebrity crush on Wolfgang Puck, then she would’ve seen this dinner invitation for the ploy it was.
For one thing, her supe never singled out a team member. Whether someone screwed up or succeeded, the entire Las Vegas Office of Diversion Control knew about it.
For another, the Blues had responded uncharacteristically kindly when she’d flat-out denied the favor they’d asked of her. Divide her time between ODC and a roster of NFL players suspected of illegal drug use? She wouldn’t do it.
Couldn’t.
Logistically, it was virtually impossible. She was damaged, physically unqualified to babysit muscle-bound athletes and split open their secrets. What did they expect her to do, anyway? Go all Bad Cop and use her stick to whack confessions out of their men?
She didn’t exactly know what they expected because she hadn’t given them the opportunity to bog her down with specifics. She didn’t own the Las Vegas Slayers; the Blues did. Maintaining a healthy roster was their responsibility, not hers. And she’d do herself one hell of a favor to keep away from that particular championship-winning, scandal-tainted team.
A fear-motivated attitude, but so what? She wasn’t invincible. The bullet fragments embedded in her hip made that clear. The cane in her hand reminded her every day what a solitary gunshot had taken away.
“Ma’am. If you’re not dining here, would you mind...?” Lips drawn in a fake-pleasant smile, the hostess carved a hand through the air in a universal get the hell out of the way gesture. “We need to keep this area clear for customers.”
As if a five-three, one-hundred-twenty-pounds-soaking-wet woman was taking up too much space. Beside her, a group of folks thumbing smartphones and spewing conversation lazily assembled. Escaping now would be pathetically easy—just blend into the fray then slip out of the restaurant and disappear in the tide of luxury chasers pursuing The Shoppes at the Palazzo.
Except she wasn’t a coward. And someone owed her a damn steak.
“I’m staying. Straight ahead there, passing around what’s probably one of your most expensive bottles of liquor?” Allowing the hostess a moment to sling her critical gaze from Joey’s hair—which the triple-digit summer heat was relentlessly bending to its will—to the party in question, she cleared her throat. “Yeah. They’re expecting me.”
“They are?” The woman faltered when Marshall Blue crooked two fingers at Joey. “So they are. I’ll escort you, and can I have a server bring you a drink? A chilled cocktail, perhaps?”
A seat in front of the wine wall and a fat slice of caramelized banana cream pie wouldn’t be so bad, but there was business to be done here. “Thanks, but I’ve got this.”
The pressure, the slick setups, they ended here—tonight. She should be more offended than she was, but she held her supervisor in the highest regard and loved the Blues as her own.
Grip tight on the walking stick, Joey did her best to barrel toward the main dining room. Modern, upscale elegance dripped from the chandeliers, reflected in the windows and art, shimmered in the very ambience of the place. She caught the teeny pops of cell phone camera flashes as people photographed their entrées, and almost smiled despite how irked she was at the three people standing to greet her.
“No private table?”
“Waitstaff, photographers, they pay extra close attention to the private tables,” Ozzie Salvinski answered neutrally, resuming his seat. “You’re late.”
Marshall snagged her hand in a hard shake that spared no consideration for her size, then let his wife lean in to buss the air beside Joey’s cheeks. God forbid Temperance Blue ruin her perfect lip color application by making contact with actual skin.
“And you lied to me,” Joey responded evenly. “What’s the payout for getting me here, Ozzie? Season tickets? Box seats?”
Ozzie was up again, springing off the chair like a jack-in-the-box in spite of his bulk and the usually calm, deliberate way he carried himself. Bladelike nose, grizzled jaw, muddy amber eyes—they formed an angry palette, confronting her dead-on. “You implying I can be bought? Don’t do it. Don’t make that mistake, damn it. I’ve been on the right side of the law longer than you’ve been alive.”
But Ozzie wasn’t a black-and-white, right-is-right-and-wrong-is-wrong kind of guy. She didn’t exactly doubt his heart rested on the side of justice, but in the four years since she’d given up DEA gigs in DC and taken up residence at Vegas’s ODC, she had observed her supervisor get a little creative with the rules to make things happen.
Not to mention Ozzie was a middle-class man with a minimalist blue-collar lifestyle, and Joey would wager her designer shoe collection the man wouldn’t be breaking bread with a pair of billionaires if they hadn’t sought him out for very exact reasons—reasons that had everything to do with coercing her to do a job for them.
“Here’s what I know, then. I get an invitation for steak, which ought’ve tipped me off, because you’ve never treated me to anything more extravagant than a street vendor hot dog. Imagine my thoughts when I walk in and find you with the Blues drinking—” she braced her weight on the stick and reached across the glass table to pick up their bottle “—Scotch. Of course. What am I supposed to be thinking, boss?”
“I think,” Tem intervened, dismissing Ozzie and settling a pair of unblemished brown hands on Joey’s face. Without question, she found perspiration beneath her fingertips, but she didn’t recoil. The need to get a point across overtook the utter ick factor of encountering someone else’s sweat. “I think, Josephine, that a tantrum is neither appropriate nor attractive for a woman your age. Ah, sure, keep frowning like that and ask yourself why you can’t hold a man’s interest with your clothes on.”
“Are you calling me a mattress? It’s not the wisest way to get a favor.” Fact was, guys rarely held her interest outside of sex. If sex was the sum of her connection with someone, she wouldn’t apologize for taking what she could.
“You’re insulted.” Tem looked puzzled.
“Because you insulted me.” No one understood the complications, strings and catch-22s that came attached to Joey’s every attempt at a genuine romance. “Please don’t go there.”
“Well, it’s the same thing I’d tell my daughters.” Tem tried to tuck a few errant curls behind Joey’s ears but quickly gave up on the effort and took her seat with a dainty plop. She then none-too-discreetly began wiping her hands on a napkin. “Why don’t you try on a sweeter disposition sometime? It couldn’t hurt.”
“Thanks, Tem, but I already have parents.”
“Who are in Texas. Would you please sit down already? Folks are beginning to stare and this—” she ran a finger up and down to indicate Joey’s sweaty, wrinkled appearance “—likely isn’t the impression you want them to take away. Goodness knows, I wouldn’t appreciate an irate woman’s outburst wrecking my dining experience.”
And now I understand just why Charlotte was talking about eloping. The words were practically slamming against Joey’s teeth, demanding to be released, but she’d promised her best friend she’d lock the info away in the vault. Many months ago Charlotte had mentioned she and her fiancé might marry in secret to sidestep their families’ Montague-Capulet drama. She’d abandoned the thought and was now planning a very traditional, very expensive August wedding. Still, the conflict rained fire and brimstone on them, and Joey regretted the minor—or not, depending on who you asked—role she played in it all.
Lowering onto a chair, propping the stick against the table, she addressed each of them with a stoic glance. “Boss,” she said to Ozzie, “how about you pour me a Scotch and tell me why you tricked me into coming here.”
“Tricked.” He spat the word, swinging up the bottle and turning a shot glass upright on a tray. “I said meet me here for a steak. So help me, you’re gonna leave here with steak in your belly.”
Joey accepted the drink, turning it up without pause. Welcoming the impact of the liquid saturating her taste buds, she signaled for another. “What do they want from me, exactly?”
“Ask them.”
“No.” She relaxed against her chair, sank the next drink. “I’m asking you, sir.”
“Somebody’s using. Cocaine, marijuana, meth. The team’s management put together a training camp drug prevention program. So running workshops, looking after the men, staying alert and making things look straight and narrow for the press. In the vein of the substance abuse prevention you dealt with at those schools back in the day.”
Not so far back, technically. In between Fed cases, she’d touted DARE and other drug education programs to K-12 institutions and universities as part of community outreach. But it felt as though a lifetime had passed since she’d been the agent—the woman—she once was.
“Yeah, I get the basic idea. Marshall and Tem pitched it to me before. I told them no, so why don’t you tell me why you can’t get DEA on this?” She shut up when a server appeared at their table with menus and a bottle of Pinot Noir. The Blues let the server fill two glasses and depart with the bottle, as both Joey and Ozzie were good with Scotch for now.
“We have something specific in mind for you,” Marshall said, settling his obsidian-black gaze on her. As a child she’d been taught to study faces, and this mountain of a man had one of the most interesting ones she had ever seen. She liked to think of him as comprised of stones and rocks—bald head, prominent jaw, wide shoulders—yet the ingredients of his personality could be found in the details of his facial features. The gray-touched mustache and beard framed a scowling mouth; the hard-edged eyes seemed to always expose an unprovoked threat. Give me a reason to make you sorry you crossed me, they implored. But the creases etched deep into his dark skin, especially the carvings between his brows and bracketing his mouth, revealed a man staggering under immense pressure...a man who worried.
A man who had taken a few brutal bumps and found out he wasn’t invincible. She could relate to that. Besides, in him she saw glimpses of her own father—someone she missed daily but spoke to only a fraction as often.
“What, Marshall? It’s impractical to think you can browbeat me into chasing your football players around training camp. My duties are to ODC. And there’s the drive. You’d be asking me to do a Vegas–Mount Charleston commute.”
“We’ll compensate you for the mileage,” Tem offered. “Or provide you with an entirely new vehicle.”
New, for Tem, probably meant showroom new. Not that Joey wasn’t loyal to her vintage Chevy Camaro, but a brand-new car was enticing—and stop. Concentrate. “Um...thank you, but no. I want to focus on the career I have and not this side narc gig. Charlotte’s a trainer—does she know about this initiative?”
“Yes.” Tem sipped her Pinot Noir.
“What about the part you want me to play?”
“To a degree.”
Joey sighed, considering her empty shot glass. She wouldn’t fill it again until after she got some food down. “Why me, then? What is this really about? Spare me the charades and say what’s up.”
Ozzie raised his eyebrows at the Blues then splashed more Scotch into his glass and said nothing.
“We think of you as family,” Tem began. “You’re loyal, noble, intelligent—”
“Quit complimenting me. I’m not used to it.” She looked from wife to husband. “What’s the gig?”
Marshall leaned, spoke quietly. “To the media, you’ll be just another drug prevention leader. To the Slayers, you’ll be a friend. They’ll want to loosen up, talk, get close.”
“Oh, I get what’s up.” She addressed Tem. “This is why you suggest I work on a sweeter disposition? To get your men hot under the uniform? Why you’d court that kind of distraction on your field, I don’t know.”
“No one’s advising you to sleep with them. Ask your friend Charlotte how our organization responds to interoffice affairs.”
“Gosh. And here I was thinking the prospect of football player nookie might be a perk. Way to kill the dream.”
“I’m dead serious. Sex with our players is prohibited. Should you violate this stipulation, you’ll be pulled off the assignment. Ozzie can handle further disciplinary action as he sees appropriate.”
“So tease them?”
“Josephine, you’re being facetious,” Tem accused, shifting her attention to the menu. “Were you this difficult when the feds put you on assignments? Or is this bitterness something that set in after you were shot?”
“Spare me the psychology trip, Tem. I’m ready to select my steak now.”
To her relief, the others relented—at least long enough to consult the menus and order appetizers and entrées. With conversation centered on food for the moment, Joey let herself absorb the cool air and the thick aroma of gourmet offerings. Anticipating a sirloin with potatoes and paired with a burgundy, she observed the Blues. They had riches and power beyond her comprehension, yet she felt sorry for them. Because that was the thing with ultimate wealth and success—once you found it you spent an eternity struggling to defend it.
A basket of pretzel bread arrived, and Joey didn’t waste a moment dissecting a piece right along with the sparse info the Blues had shared. “Persuade the players to get chatty with me. That’s what you’re asking, hmm?”
“That’s right,” Tem confirmed. “The championship win was a high in and of itself. While we expected our men to celebrate, some of them have a false sense of security and invulnerability. Staff adjustments and trades have made things hectic, but Marshall and I aren’t out of touch. As Salvinski told you, someone’s in deep. Take a closer look at our kicker, TreShawn Dibbs.”
Joey had heard the athlete’s name on sports TV and radio often enough for one league violation or another. He was a risk to any team that took him on, but the Blues had acquired that risk because the man could win games. “Is he friends with Charlotte? Why haven’t you asked her to monitor things or have a heart-to-heart with him?”
“The dynamic of her friendship with him is why we’re not involving her in this process. She’s protective of him. Her judgment’s compromised,” Tem said. “Now, then. Dibbs may not be the only user, but if we need to make an example that no man is indispensable, then we will. We need the identities of the users and the suppliers.”
“That kind of admission won’t come from a ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ chat.”
“Precisely why it’s vital that you build a rapport. Gaining trust is key. Camp starts this month, after the rookie symposium. We’ll need you to stay out of the way during practice, but be near. Find out who goes where when they’re off the field and go with them. Get yourself on the right guest lists. Make them believe you’re kosher.”
“Meaning act as if I talk the drug-free game but secretly I’m down with using?”
Tem shrugged a slim shoulder and drummed her fingers across the bejeweled neckline of her white silk crepe dress. “You’ll know what measures to take when an opportunity presents itself. Just do what’s necessary to collect the information we require. And do it with your clothes on.”
“Had to add that, didn’t you?”
Tem sighed. “All right, I apologize.”
“What’s your endgame? A clean roster?”
“Think of it more as cleaning the roster. The NFL has a substance abuse policy in place, which we intend to enforce. But we’d prefer to avoid PR disasters this season, so the sooner and quieter we can nip this problem in the bud, the better.”
So this went beyond helping drug abusers break free of a dangerous threat that might cost them careers, families and perhaps their lives. “You want me to coax the users out of hiding just so you can cut them from the team? Do you care whether or not they get help? And suppose someone else picks them up—don’t those teams deserve the courtesy of knowing what demons come with these men?”
“Our role,” Marshall said, folding his massive hands on the table in front of him, “is to protect the Las Vegas Slayers franchise. We will accept nothing short of excellence. We won’t have our championship pissed on by a damn addict. Do what you have to do to get the information we need, then put it in our hands. It’s simple.”
“Actually, no, it’s not. What makes you believe it’d be simple? The team put your daughter through one hell of a rite of passage last year. I have neither the time nor the interest in experiencing that just for kicks.”
The man pulled a note from his billfold, scribbled something with a heavy hand then pushed it across the table to her. Joey’s mouth dropped open and a piece of pretzel bread tumbled out.
“God help us, she’s an Eliza Doolittle,” Tem murmured woefully, but Joey was too shaken by the figure scrawled in front of her to react to the insult.
“That kind of money isn’t for a just for kicks job,” Marshall said. “As a thank-you and a gesture of goodwill, we’ve arranged for a substantial donation to the city as well as the Good Samaritans of Nevada. That’s the certified prevention and treatment agency assisting us. Everything is aboveboard.”
“Then why would I be compensated?”
Ozzie said, “You’re taking an unpaid leave of absence from ODC while you’re working the Slayers job. Your income’s got to come from someplace.”
They’d thought of everything, as though the decision had been made but consulting her was a pesky formality.
“And if I say no?”
Marshall and Tem’s expressions dimmed, and Ozzie stood. “Come with me to the bar, Joey. I want a different drink and ain’t keen on drinking alone.”
“So you’re going to have peanuts with it?” she quipped, though she was pushing back her chair and reaching for the walking stick.
To the Blues, Ozzie asked, “Are you sure you want this one? She’s got an attitude that’ll raise your blood pressure. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it.”
Joining him in the lounge, Joey weakly cuffed her supervisor on the arm. “Your high blood pressure has more to do with sports super-fandom and a salt-heavy diet than it does with me, Ozzie.”
“Eh, you’re probably right.” He signaled to the bartender and ordered them each a custom cocktail. “But so what, Joey? Take the assignment.”
“Are you eager to be rid of me for a while?”
“That’s a bullshit thing to say. You’re competent. More than that, to be honest. That synthetic drug case we just wrapped up—your research was brilliant. You came to us with impeccable credentials, stellar recommendations—”
“And three legs,” she added, raising the stick.
“The sooner you stop thinking of it that way, the happier you’ll be. Guarantee it. Until then, you need a new challenge, something away from the desk. What the Blues want you to do for them, that’s a taste of what you’re used to. Going undercover, breathing in all that risk and action.”
“Deceiving folks,” she whispered, finding his amber eyes sympathetic. Could she truly convey to anyone that a career in DEA had been both heaven and hell? “Lying about who I am. Earning trust in order to twist it into a weapon.”
“It was all to serve a greater good.”
The relationships she’d severed, the victims she couldn’t save, the men she’d come to for sex but had hurt eventually—and the man who’d devastated her—they’d all been casualties. On the other side of that was all the destruction she’d helped prevent and the frail comfort of knowing she was true to her duty to the law and fulfilled an allegiance to a country that depended on the loyalty of its soldiers.
Years of protecting and serving America, empty days highlighted by the immeasurable sacrifices she’d made to hunt criminals, had brought her here—vulnerable and relying on a stick.
“What’s the greater good in this situation?” She pushed her cocktail toward Ozzie and let him knock it back. It’d take another half dozen to jiggle loose his sobriety. The man’s tipping point was legendary. “The Blues extract a couple of drug abusers from their team. Men lose their jobs and may not get the kind of aid they need to turn things around.”
“Chances are the dealers are operating in wider markets. Getting illicit drugs to kids, even. So we do what we need to do to shut ’em down. But look, Joey, nobody’s asking you to be a superhero. That’s not what DEA’s about, and not what this job with the Slayers is about.”
“Then tell me, Ozzie, what’s the greater good?”
“Could be there isn’t a clear one,” he said bluntly. “At the end of all this, though, if you can stop feeling like a victim, then it’s worth it.” He stood, left a few bills for the bartender and pointed to her stick. “It’s a cane, Joey. That’s all it is. And with the money the Blues are throwing at you, you can feed that fancy shoe fetish of yours. Get over the ego trip. Consider the opportunity.”
She sat at the bar among a gathering of people she didn’t know, as music beat in her ears and her thoughts competed for priority. On contract with the Slayers, she’d be wading into a high-profile world she knew only through her friendship with Charlotte.
Having a friend on the training staff might certainly help Joey become acclimated with the team. But Charlotte wouldn’t know the full truth behind Joey’s contract. Their friendship would be shaded with lies, shadowed under a layer of deceit.
Not ideal circumstances, but what if in the end the franchise and the Blue family could be on a real path toward recovery? What if a little bit of lying on her part could secure their chance for a fresh start in the wake of a tumultuous year?
Returning to the table, she announced, “I made a decision.”
They watched her in expectant silence.
“I’m accepting the gig. And I want dessert.”