“Clear as crystal, boss.” But there was a grin on Jesse’s face.
“It better be.”
Eve wanted to say something, to protest, but this wasn’t the place. Alex turned, grabbing her hand and starting down the hall.
She practically ran to keep up with him. Nothing had changed? She was fooling herself because from the moment she decided to get on that plane, everything had changed.
She just needed to figure out how to deal with the fallout.
Jesse Murdoch watched the ridiculously titled Master A walk away, his shoulders squared off and a possessive arm around his…what did they call her? Submissive? Why did they have to fuck things up with different names for shit? He wasn’t sure he got the whole BDSM thing.
Scratch that. He was damn sure he didn’t get that shit. It seemed an awful lot like a way to abuse a woman to him.
The first few times he’d had to watch Chazz take a whip to one of the girls had sent him straight to the bottom of a bottle. He still wasn’t sleeping, but fuck, he never slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see the dirty cell that had been his home for so long, smell the shit and piss and blood that had been his life.
The brunette turned slightly, her eyes trailing behind, finding him.
He had to admit, she was a looker. A little thin for his tastes, but there was an almost innocent appeal to her. He gave her a smile and she turned away, disappearing down the hallway with her psychotic boyfriend.
Was Master Asshole the one who had given her those scars on her neck? Fucker.
The new Dom and his pretty punching bag were more than just a curiosity for Jesse. They were a complication he didn’t need.
He glanced once and then twice down the hallway. Empty. By nightfall, the whole place would be buzzing and a mad sort of chaos would take over, but, for now, all was quiet.
Like he liked it.
He slipped inside the women’s locker room. He had to use the women’s locker room because some asswipe had bugged the men’s. No prying eyes or ears in there this time of day. He gave the whole place a quick lookie-loo. No one in the stalls or the showers. He shoved a trashcan in front of the door. It wouldn’t keep anyone out, but it would let him know if someone was coming in.
He moved back to the shower stalls and pulled out his cell phone, the one he kept in his boot along with his knife. He had two cells. This one was utterly untraceable and had only one number programmed in. Jesse hit the button and waited.
“You have something for me?” His contact was always succinct.
“A couple of new players.”
“Names?”
“Anthony Priest and Amanda King. I just met them. Chazz brought them in to, I don’t know, I think they’re supposed to fuck in front of a crowd or something.” He was still a little hazy on what the dickwad was supposed to do. “He’s forty or so. Buzz cut. A couple of tats. She’s a brunette with some scars. Nice tits. She’s less mouthy than Kris. The dude is Kris’s brother.”
“Really? Because as of three months ago, she didn’t have a brother.”
He should have known. “Fuck.”
“Calm down. There’s a reason you leave the intelligence work to me. You’re a useful vessel, Murdoch, but you’re a soldier.”
He wasn’t anymore. He’d lost that as surely as his honor had been stripped away, along with his humanity. “Who the fuck is he, then? And why did he show up now? If Kris is pulling some shit, what does she know that I don’t?”
It sat in his gut—this feeling that she was on top of him. She wasn’t what she said she was. He knew that even before he’d been told to watch out for her. But his contact didn’t want her touched. Not yet. Somehow, it had been there in the back of his head that maybe she played for the same team as him, and he’d been brutally surprised to discover it wasn’t true.
He didn’t want to kill her, but he would if he had to.
“Just lay low for now.” His contact had a deep voice. He’d never met the contact, only been given a phone number along with living expenses and the keys to a rathole loft he’d quickly turned into his little hidey-hole, but he’d seen pictures of the man. “I want everything in place when it’s time for me to come in.”
That was his job. Make things right. “What do you need from me?”
“Well, I seriously doubt that Anthony Priest is anything but an alias. I need pictures. I want pictures of him and the woman who’s with him. Do it quietly. I don’t want them to suspect a thing. You’ve gotten close to Chazz?”
“I’m in the inner circle. He’s a loyal employee from everything I can tell.”
“See that he stays that way. I want reports on anything out of the ordinary. And if it comes to it, I might need you to take out the new guy.”
Jesse took a long breath. This was kind of what he’d been dreading and hoping for since the moment he’d decided to move to the dark side. What his father had done was all pure and white hat, but this was something different. It was all he had left. “Yeah, I can snuff him if I need to.”