He rushed out into the bright Florida sunshine. Everything was so fucking bright and shiny here. He’d gotten used to the dark.
He could still hear Master Asshole beating his woman. He could still hear the slap of his hand on her flesh and her breathy cries as she took his…discipline. God, what a word. It wasn’t discipline. It was fucking abuse, and he hated the fact that it had gotten his dick so hard he could pound nails. He’d just stood there listening to them. He’d seen himself there, smacking that beautiful ass.
He wasn’t a fucking pervert. He just wasn’t.
He’d heard the way the brutal fucker beat his woman, saw how he humiliated her in the meeting earlier in the day.
So why had it seemed so lovely to him? He hadn’t been able to stop watching, and it wasn’t just the smacks and how the Master tugged on her hair. He’d watched how she’d curled onto the Master’s lap, how she sank to her knees before him and her face had been serene. All the trust in the world had been on her lovely face.
Just for that moment, he’d wondered how it would feel to have a woman trust him like that.
He dragged humid air into his lungs as his cell started to ring. The boss man was right on time.
He answered the phone, looking behind him to make sure no one was following. He started walking down the cobblestoned streets that marked St. Augustine’s downtown. “I’m here.”
“You haven’t sent me the information I requested days ago. I would like an explanation.”
Jesse tried to hide his frustration. “There hasn’t been a good time to take pictures. I don’t want him to catch me. He’s gotten in good with Chazz. I think he could cause trouble if he decided to try to get rid of me. So I’ve been patient. He’s actually very observant.”
Master A was always watching, Jesse had noticed. The only time the man hadn’t been watching was when he was beating the holy shit out of the idiot Chazz had brought with him. Jesse had immediately dismissed the man as one of Chazz’s show-off friends and had gone back to concentrating on Anthony Priest.
Who wasn’t Anthony Priest. He’d heard the woman call him by another name. And damn if the man didn’t move really well. He was supposed to be some sort of professional pervert, but he walked like a cop. And his eyes. They were always moving, always hard. Until he looked at the woman.
Fuck. They were acting. Shitballs. He’d missed it. They were really total perverts, but the Master person wasn’t as hard as he pretended. It had been in the way he held her when the others weren’t watching. He might have had a negligent look on his face, but Master A’s arms had curled around her, making sure there was no way she would fall and he’d settled her in as though her comfort was deeply important to him.
A cop making an appearance could screw everything up.
“Is there any way the local cops are onto this operation?” Jesse asked.
A long pause came over the phone. “I would have heard something. I have contacts there. Why do you ask?”
“I think this Master person is some sort of law enforcement. I don’t know why. It’s something about the eyes. My instincts tell me he’s not what he says he is.”
“Your instincts have been off before.”
He didn’t need to be reminded. There was a reason he was in this position. “Yeah, well, at least I know Anthony isn’t his name.”
“And how did you figure that out? How did you run anything on him without facial recognition?” The boss relied heavily on high-tech equipment.
Jesse had found out that sometimes it was better to just rely on his eyes and ears.
“His woman called him by another name.” While he was spanking her ass. While he was making her groan. How long had it been since he’d had anything but a quickie meant to get both him and the lady off as fast as possible so they could go their separate ways? Half the time he didn’t even ask for a name.
“I need to know that name, Murdoch.” The boss’s voice had gone low, whispering across the line.
“Alex. I didn’t catch the last name, but she clearly called him Alex.”
Jesse held the phone to his ear as he walked down the crowded street. Tourists were milling around the narrow lanes that offered small restaurants and art galleries and more fudge shops than any town should be able to handle. They really liked their sweets here. Nothing. He heard nothing for thirty seconds. He stopped, worried the line had gone dead. “Boss?”
“His name is Alexander McKay, and he’s an enemy, Murdoch. He’s the worst possible person to have walked through that door. He’s going to ruin everything.”
A cold shiver went up his spine. He’d known there was something wrong with Master A, but he still had to ask the question. “How can you be sure? There are millions of dudes named Alex in the world.”