He laid his hand over hers. “What’s your fault?”
She swallowed hard, a few tears slipping down her cheeks. “All those injuries, and Mark’s death, and the other man’s. They’re all my fault.”
Dex frowned. This definitely hadn’t been what she had told the other agents.
“What did you do that makes you think you caused all of that?”
She cleared her throat softly. “I didn’t mention this to the other agents, but I was hired as a PI to watch Kate Fretwell.”
Dex frowned, remembering Kate’s relief that he wasn’t a PI. “Who hired you, and what were you looking for?”
She sighed. “Her father hired me. He had heard from one of his business associates that she was a sub at The Dungeon, and that she had dozens of Doms who passed her around. He apparently has a rocky relationship with her, and he knew she would only dig in deeper if he tried to tell her to get out of the lifestyle.” She sucked in a shuddering breath through her tears. “So he asked me to find out the truth, and keep tabs on her.”
Dex clenched his teeth. Kate had had a handful of Doms over the past few years, but it was far from dozens. He wondered briefly if the business associate had been Balkins. He half hoped it was so he could have the man picked up for interrogation. But he had just found a reason to have a talk with Richard Fretwell.
Opal sniffed and took another drink from the soda can. “Fretwell figured that if I got a job here and acted like I was looking for a sugar daddy to sponsor me for membership, I would blend in better than if he paid my membership and found someone to vouch for me to Ed Ralston.”
Dex nodded, trying to appear patient as he waited for her to continue.
“Every week I would call him with reports and he would pay me through his company’s payroll, listing me as an executive assistant.”
He shifted in his chair and took another sip of coffee, willing himself to slowly and calmly draw Opal out. “But even doing PI work for Richard Fretwell doesn’t mean everything that happened is your fault.”
She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, and Dex handed her a cloth napkin from the tray Jeff had brought. “A few months after I got here, I started having a clandestine affair with Ed Ralston. He insisted it be kept secret, but I ended up having full access to all the behind-the-scenes operations, including Ralston’s office. I know I should’ve steered clear, but I allowed myself to believe my heart instead of my head.” She shrugged.
“Anyway, once the reports on Kate became more predictable, Mr. Fretwell asked me to stay put and only alert him if there was something of interest going on.” She swallowed hard. “Nothing did for several months. Then you showed up.” She cowered in her chair and wouldn’t look at him, telling Dex they were coming to the part she feared telling him the most.
“Fretwell was still paying me, and I was fully entrenched at The Dungeon, although my role was that of a waitress who was at best treated as invisible.” She fell silent for a long moment, and then stared past him at the large picture window that looked out over the twinkling lights of Paradise Valley, which was beautiful at night. “Anyway, that wasn’t an excuse, but it’s all I can think of to explain why I took an offer from someone else to gather information and report back to them. They paid me triple what Fretwell did and I gave them information on anyone in the dungeon I could.” She shrugged. “For example, Ed Ralston uses The Dungeon as a major money-laundering operation for militia and neo-Nazi groups. He doesn’t know I know that, but it was a tidbit I passed along, and got a huge bonus for.”
Dex would definitely pass that information on to his team. And since Opal was in FBI custody now, they could find out details straight from the source.
“Who was this second party who was paying you for information?”