Branch Dillinger was standing there, stony-faced (as usual), hot (as usual) and looking pissed (not as usual, he usually didn’t look anything but bored, uninterested or unfriendly).
Behind him stood Josh Coates next to a dark-haired, mildly attractive man of average height and enraged expression who she knew from her research was Barclay Richardson, and a tall, built black man who might be in the top six (now seven—in order: Stellan, Diesel, Aryas, Maddox, Olly, Branch, and that guy) of the handsomest men she’d ever seen.
Diesel pushed Beardsley off, sending him careening into a partition wall then falling flat on his ass, dripping blood from lip, nose and a cut over his eye.
With a nasty shove at the back of his head, Maddox sent DM number two staggering his way, and Maddox must have done some damage before the chokehold because the dude could barely keep himself up. He ended on a knee and both hands, for some reason Sixx suspected was Maddox’s doing, his other leg dragging behind him, a few feet away from Beardsley.
“Join your colleagues,” Stellan murmured in a voice very like him, silky, calm and articulate, but he did it dragging the stupefied DM number three he’d beat to hell over to his compatriots, dropping him close and stepping away.
DM number one was trying to get to his feet, but Diesel wasn’t a fan of that so he planted a cowboy boot in his ass and sent him lurching into the group on the floor of the passageway.
Barclay Richardson at this point stepped over a pair of legs on the floor, walked between Sixx and D without looking at either of them, and slid open the door to station seven, moving to stand in it.
Sixx turned and saw the girl now seemed more alert, so she was also now freaked.
But the john looked terrified.
“Your pimp is out of business,” Barclay said in a low, infuriated voice, his gaze aimed at the man. “After I deal with this nightmare, I’m calling the cops. So my suggestion is, get out of my house and do it fast. And my requirement is, do not ever come back.”
The guy took off quickly, though he had to slow and suck his gut in to glide sideways by Barclay, who did not move except to turn his head to stare him down as he went. But once free of the door, he raced down the passageway.
Barclay then looked to the girl, and his tone was far more gentle, but still ticked.
“I’m sorry you’re in this situation. If you need help getting clean, come to the front desk and ask for Clay. If that isn’t something you’re ready for, fine. But now I need to ask you to get anything you have here and get gone. I won’t call the police on you. But as I told that man, I’m going to be calling the police. So I suggest you leave, do it quickly, and unless you come at some other time for help, please don’t come back. I can’t have you doing what you do here. Any of it,” he told her.
She nodded and moved to where a bulky black purse sat on the floor in the corner.
Barclay moved out of the doorway, eyes to Dillinger.
“This one?” he asked, pointing to station six.
Dillinger nodded.
Sixx looked that way to see the girl now out of her robe and dressed in street clothes in the doorway, cradling her purse in her hands.
“I heard you, buddy,” she said quietly to Barclay before she skedaddled on scuffed, high-heeled red pumps down the passageway.
Barclay turned to Diesel and Maddox. “Can I ask you boys to help me and my boys get these assholes up to my office?”
“Absolutely,” Maddox rumbled.
He and D moved toward the body pile.
Barclay turned his attention beyond them, so Sixx did too.
There were two DMs there, in polos and everything, both who had not yet been on that night, though one of them had been on last night.
“You’re on duty,” Barclay told him.
Not that there was anything to be on duty to do at that present moment. All the players in the play areas had ceased their play and were watching, including some who had gathered around and others who were standing at the windows and open sliding doors of the rooms.
But Sixx thought this, as well the DMs being ready to take over, and Dillinger, that black dude and Stellan there, meant they’d somehow had this takedown planned. Before she and D and Maddox had made their move, they’d had this planned and ready to be executed.
It was just that Sixx, Maddox and Diesel had forced their move.
But …
How?
And why was Stellan involved?
She looked to her man.
He was in his casualwear, linen shirt, sleeves rolled up to under his elbows, hem untucked, faded jeans, a pair of smart but casual brown suede oxfords on his feet.
“Baby, what are you—?” she started.
He shifted cold eyes to her, and witnessing that look in them, she shut her mouth.
“Not now,” he said low.
He turned and moved behind the men who were manhandling their human take down the passageway, and she noted both Maddox and Diesel, each with hands curled in the back collars of shirts, looking at her.
Baby? Diesel mouthed, his brows high, his gaze shifting back and forth between Sixx and the in-motion Stellan.
“D, focus,” Maddox ordered, and D did that, shoving a stumbling DM in front of him, following the others down the passageway.
Sixx watched them go, feeling ice start to invade her veins.
Not now.
She looked high around the room.
There weren’t many cameras, but a couple of them were roving.
As well as remotely movable.
She located the one aimed directly into the room she’d been in with the trio.
He’d been watching.
Not now.
But why?
Why was he there?
Why had he been watching?
He couldn’t possibly think …
She shoved her phone in her cleavage, turned her attention to the now-empty passageway, and hustled down it, through the door, around the dancefloor, and to the reception area where she knew the narrow flight of steps behind the front desk led up to the management office.
It was all clear except a receptionist and a bouncer against the wall by the door.
She headed to the stairs.
“You can’t go up there,” the receptionist called.
“Stop me,” she replied, not strolling but running up the stairs.
At the top, she opened the door and went through.
She found herself in large room filled with bizarre, slouchy furniture that looked like huge, partially molded pillows. It also had a large desk that probably was once stately but now was chipped and nicked all around the edges. And the four men they’d caught were on their knees on the floor in front of the desk, Barclay behind it, Josh off to the side.
Stellan was across the room, standing in front of some windows with a view to the club. He stood next to Dillinger and the black man.
D and Maddox were off to the side, just in from the door.
Stellan spared her barely a glance when she came in, though Dillinger gave her a good long look, the black guy gave her a lips-twitching assessing one, and she noted Coates gave her a scarily apologetic one.
She moved to stand with D and Maddox.
“Mistress girl, serious as shit, is that your boy?” D asked under his breath when she got there.
“He’s my Master,” Sixx replied, also quietly.
Diesel and Maddox’s brows shot high.
But she looked right into Diesel’s eyes.
“I’m a switch,” she told him.
Diesel stared.
Maddox did too.
Then D grinned.
Maddox did too.
“Obviously, you’re fired.”
The words took Sixx’s attention back to what was happening at the desk.
Barclay was talking to the three DMs.
“The shit in your lockers has been searched, left where it is, but you can consider it confiscated, including the dope. Doesn’t matter what you left in them, you’re not getting any of it back because once you leave, I’m not seeing any of your asses again, and not only because you’re imminently going to be arrested.”
There was shuffling around on knees, and the heavy air got heavier.
That said they’d found a lot of illegal substances in the lockers.