“Maybe you can talk him out of it,” Derek offered.
Though they knew it was hopeless, the brothers spent most of their meal attempting to do exactly that. “Dad, why don’t you let me dig a little deeper on these guys,” Danny said. “Get someone to corroborate their story before we spend the time and money to fly all the way over there.”
“We?” Joe said, affronted. “I don’t know where you boys got the idea that I need a keeper.”
The brothers’ eyes met across the table. Ethan’s near-debacle in Siberia had hardly been the first time their dad ended up in danger. Though none voiced it, they all were remembering the numerous occasions when they’d pulled Joe out of potentially deadly situations.
“Going alone is out of the question,” Danny said. “And I don’t understand the urgency.”
“I don’t care if you understand or not, Daniel,” Joe replied, his voice gone scary-quiet, with an undercurrent of steel. It was a tone Ethan remembered all too well from childhood, the tone Joe used to remind his sons that the Taggart household was by no means a democracy. Joe Taggart was in charge, and his word was law. “I’m leaving tomorrow for Denpasar and that’s final.”
For several tense seconds, Danny’s steel-gray stare met Joe’s identical one. But even at age thirty-four, and standing six foot five and weighing over two hundred pounds, former Special Ops badass Danny couldn’t stare down Joe Taggart. Danny dropped his gaze to his plate, muttering under his breath as he mopped up a blob of red sauce with a hunk of bread.
Ethan stirred his spaghetti around his plate, his appetite killed by the knot in his stomach. He wished he could be anywhere but here, partaking of this sad parody of family bonding.
He knew how perfect they looked on the outside. His father, still handsome and fit at the age of sixty-three, a silver-haired, more craggy-featured version of his oldest son, Daniel. He and his brothers, strong and square-jawed with their all-American good looks. Nobody looking at them would know they were broken inside, their lives forever altered by the selfish actions of one sad, weak woman.
Ethan took a slug of beer, wondering where the hell that burst of self-pity had come from. Broken? They weren’t broken. Hell, he and his brothers were all good-looking, had successful military careers behind them, and had built a rapidly growing business. Okay, so their mom had left them high and dry and sent their dad off the deep end, but they’d all done absolutely fine in spite of it. They’d survived as a family, remained close.
Closer, in fact, than most siblings he knew. Rather than let tragedy rip them apart, their bond had grown more fierce after their mother had disappeared. With their mother gone and their father lost to his obsession, they’d realized they needed to take care of themselves and each other, because no one else would. When they’d all found their military careers ending at roughly the same time, Danny had suggested starting their own security firm, leveraging their combined experience in military intelligence. None of them had hesitated to go into business together. There was no one Ethan trusted more than his brothers to have his back, and he knew Derek and Ethan felt the same way.
But tonight all the family togetherness threatened to smother him. Nights like tonight, his father’s relentless, delusional search for their mother made him want to make a run for it.
Plus, Toni had zeroed in on their one and only lead on Kara, and he was anxious to get back to her.
For professional reasons only, of course.
As though reading his mind—which he probably was—Derek asked, “So do you have any leads on the Kramer girl?”
Everyone breathed a silent sigh, relieved at the change of subject.
“We found another online profile for Kara. Not exactly the good girl she’s been showing the rest of the world.” He quickly filled them in on the photos Toni had uncovered. “But the good news is she updated her other Web page again.”
“You’d think she’d call her folks.”
Ethan pulled a face. “Yeah, but she might love that she’s making her parents squirm.” He felt a twinge of guilt even as the words left his mouth, remembering the way worry had etched deep lines into Toni’s face.
“You think the nude pictures have anything to do with it?” Danny said.
“Hard to tell. But they sure as hell complicate things,” Ethan said, taking a pull on his beer. “Toni’s convinced she’s in danger.”
“But you aren’t.” Danny said.
Ethan shrugged. “She’s been gone for nearly two days. I have to take that seriously.”
“So what’s she like, the other investigator?” Derek asked. “She looked sort of cute from her driver’s license photo.”
“If you like the nerdy, I-just-got-home-from-band-camp look.” Danny snorted.
Derek shrugged. “Not everyone goes for Pam Anderson clones.”
Ethan paused, beer halfway to his lips, considering his words carefully. He didn’t know exactly how to explain Toni. “She’s cute enough, I suppose,” which was an understatement. She was beautiful behind those big nerdy frames, and with a little makeup and something sexier than jeans and a T-shirt, she’d give the silicone set a run for their money. “And really fucking smart. And a complete pain in the ass.” But even as he said it, a reluctant smile crept a across his lips.
Derek shot Danny a look. “Wednesday.”
Danny shook his head. “Tuesday, max.”
“What?” Ethan asked.
“You’ll do her by Tuesday,” Danny said.
Ethan shook his head. “I don’t think so. She’s not my type.”
“Oh, please, like that’s ever stopped you. Besides, when you talk about her, you get that look.” Derek said.
“What look?” Ethan said. “I don’t have a look.”
“Yes, you do,” Danny said around a mouthful of pasta. “It’s that look you get when you get a whiff of fresh pussy, and you won’t stop until you’re nose-deep.”
“Jesus, not in front of Dad,” Ethan said, the back of his neck on fire. Ridiculous that at this stage in his life he could still be so easily embarrassed. But if anyone had the power to reduce his thirty-two-year-old adult self to an awkward teenager, it was his brothers. Fortunately, Dad seemed to be paying no attention, his mind on his upcoming trip.
“I still say Wednesday,” Derek said. “If she’s as smart as we think, it’ll take awhile for her to fall for Ethan’s usual game. He’ll have to be more creative.”
“No way.” Danny shook his head. “The nerdy ones are the fastest to fall. They’re not used to the same attention the bar bunnies get, so she’ll be all flattered to have a guy like Ethan sniffing around.”
Ethan shook his head. Little did they know that despite the attraction Ethan sensed, Toni was throwing up barriers left and right. Ethan suspected Derek was right, that Toni wasn’t about to fall for Ethan’s regular tricks. It would take Ethan more than a few days to get her where he wanted her.
But he didn’t want to talk about Toni, not even with his brothers.
It was stupid, really. Usually he had no problem indulging in a little locker-room talk with them. It wasn’t like he gave detailed play-by-plays about his dates, but they were guys, and guys talked.
But he didn’t want them talking that way about Toni, even in jest.
Nevertheless, their comments summoned up a whole host of raunchy images of her. Naked on top of him. Naked underneath him. Naked on her knees in front of him, staring seductively up through those sexy-librarian glasses at him as she took his cock between those luscious lips. He shifted in his chair, mentally cursing Derek and Danny for getting him all riled up.
His cell phone rang, and as though he’d summoned her, Toni’s number flashed on the display.
“I found out who T-Bone is,” she said without preamble. “His name is Toby Frankel, and from what I’ve been able to dig up, I’m afraid he has Kara into some bad shit.”
“I’ll be right over.” He hung up and met his brothers’ curious stares. “Speaking of Toni, I need to get back to her place. Make sure you wear your watch when you leave tomorrow, and make sure Dad has his.”
Danny gave him a “duh” look and flashed his wrist where his watch was securely fastened. All three of the brothers and their father had tiny tracking devices in their watches so they could keep track of each other’s locations at all times. After what happened with their mother, they were a little anal about keeping tabs. But Danny had an annoying habit of taking off into the mountains for “private time” and leaving his watch at home.
“You don’t forget your rubbers,” Danny shot back.
“She’s a colleague. Nothing else.”
Danny’s eyebrows wiggled lasciviously, and he pulled his wallet out of the back pocket of his cargo shorts. “Fuck Tuesday, my money’s on tonight.”
Derek was still mulling over his bet when Ethan flashed them the finger and walked out the front door.
T
ONI OPENED THE door before he had time to knock. She felt Ethan give her a quick once-over and was glad she’d taken the time to change her clothes. Even so, his intense blue gaze scorched through the thin material of her T-shirt. His lips pulled up at the corner as he took in the cartoon girl and the caption “Little Miss Sunshine.”
“Cute,” he said. She prayed he couldn’t see the way her nipples jumped to attention under his stare.
There was something seriously wrong with her that she could have such a strong physical reaction under these circumstances.
“So tell me about T-Bone,” he said, brushing against her as he walked into her entryway. He’d changed clothes, too, trading in his businesslike sportcoat and dress shirt for a black T-shirt and cargo pants. The shirt wasn’t one of those metro-fabulous clingy things, but the sturdy cotton outlined the taut muscles of his back and shoulders, and the dark olive cargo pants did mouthwatering things for his butt.
Ogling Ethan’s clothed butt reminded her of the bare ones she’d been looking at, bringing her focus back to the task at hand. “T-Bone is the alter ego of Toby Frankel,” she said, following him as he walked into the living room. “He’ll be a senior at Stanford this fall. He’s twenty-two years old, a member of the Sigma Delta fraternity.”
She followed Ethan over to her desk, where he was looking at the Web site Toni had left up on the screen. “He’s also runs his own porn site.”
“Please tell me that’s not Kara,” he said, looking at a picture of a girl on her knees in front of a guy, about to perform oral sex. Both faces were blurred out.
“Fortunately, no,” Toni said, embarrassed heat raising beads of sweat on her neck. She’d seen a lot worse than this on the Net, but sitting here in her apartment with Ethan, looking at porn, sent her usual businesslike cool straight out the window. She strained for equilibrium, reminding herself this was just a case, and Ethan was just a colleague. “There are a few pictures of Kara on the site. You can find them under the ‘horny virgin’ heading.” God, just saying it turned her stomach. She’d known Kara was having a rough time keeping her shit together, but Toni had never thought she’d do something like this. And after reading Kara’s comments, Toni had serious doubts about whether she still qualified for the virgin classification.
The small silver lining was that if Kara was having sex of any kind, there wasn’t any photographic evidence on the Net, at least not that Toni could find.
And she’d looked a lot in the few hours Ethan was gone, downloading and analyzing all of the JPEG files on Toby’s site until she was satisfied that none of the explicitly sexual photos were of Kara. “Her pictures definitely weren’t the worst of it. Some topless shots, a few with another girl doing some light lesbian action, but her face was blurred out in all of them.”
“But easy enough for you to decrypt.” Ethan said.
Toni nodded. “Yeah, me and anyone else with a little extra time and some shareware.”
“Looks like he runs it out of his dorm room,” Ethan said.
“Yeah, it’s strictly low-budget amateur hour,” Toni said, feeling her lip curl as she tried to shove the images out of her mind. “I mean, it all looks consensual, but…yuck. I’m sure you want to take a look yourself.”
Ethan huffed out a chuckle. “No thanks. I’ll take your word for it.”
“Seriously? A man who doesn’t take the opportunity to look at naked women, especially when he can say it was for purely professional reasons?”
He straightened and turned his back on the computer, biceps flexing as he folded his arms across his chest. “Let’s put aside the fact that one of the girls is the teenage daughter of my client—not something I need to see. But if I’m looking at a naked woman, ideally it’s because I’m in the room with her and I’m about to show her a really good time.”
Toni felt her mouth go dry and her body go wet as her mind took that scenario and ran with it. Her—naked, waiting, watching—as Ethan stripped off his shirt and moved over her with that predatory grace. She swallowed hard and pushed her glasses up her nose. “In that case, we might as well go see him.” Grateful for the excuse to get out of her apartment before she did something really stupid, she handed him her BlackBerry, where she’d keyed in Toby’s address on the nearby Stanford campus.
On the short drive, Toni told him everything else she’d discovered about Toby Frankel, T-Bone. “In addition to his amateur porn ventures, Toby also has had several scrapes with the law. Minor drug stuff, mostly, public intoxication—all of it when he was a minor, and nothing ever really stuck. Then last year, he got busted for allegedly supplying most of the drugs to the local junior high and high-schoolers. It went to trial, but they couldn’t get the charges to stick.”
“Good lawyers?” Ethan asked.
“The best,” Toni said. “He was represented by Goodly and Shipman.”
Ethan knew that Mark Goodly took on only the highest-profile cases. “So our boy Toby comes from some major cash.”
Toni nodded and scrolled through the rest of her notes. “His father is the managing partner for a hedge fund back east. And it looks like he’s spent a fair portion of his multimillion-dollar bonuses keeping his son out of jail. In fact, that’s why Toby’s taking classes this summer. Funny how a criminal trial will mess with your academic schedule.”
Ethan pulled into the parking lot of the luxurious-looking apartment building where Toby was spending his summer. “Wow. Student housing has changed a lot since I went to school,” marveled Toni.
“Lots of rich alumni, showing the school a little love,” Ethan said.
A young woman was unlocking the front door as they approached. To the right of the entry was an intercom system that allowed tenants to buzz visitors in.
But they didn’t need to bother paging Toby. The student looked over her shoulder, took one look at Ethan, and held the door open wide.
Ethan murmured his thanks and motioned for Toni to precede him into the building. They joined the girl in the elevator, Ethan smiling and chatting politely as the girl somehow managed to ask a hundred questions in the course of riding up three floors.
“Maybe I’ll see you around,” she said, peeking up under her lashes and wiggling her fingers in an impish little wave. Toni watched the doors close behind the girl’s nubile twenty-year-old butt. She clenched her jaw, feeling about a hundred years old and as sexy as concrete. She generally didn’t indulge in insecurity over her appearance, didn’t obsess over how she stacked up against other women. Toni never had been and never would be a sex kitten. She’d never be like that girl—cute and petite with lots of luscious curves. She’d faced reality long ago and never let it bother her. But Ethan’s oh-so-easy banter and the girl’s receptive smile set her off.
“Do you ever pass up an opportunity to flirt?” she asked, immediately regretting the question.
“I was merely making conversation with a friendly girl,” he said. “And besides, she could have had valuable information.”
“Yeah, like her apartment number and a hand-engraved invitation into her panties.” Toni clamped her lips shut, wishing she could call the words back, and pissed because she’d been in danger of issuing a similar invitation back at her apartment. She would not be the first to melt in the face of Ethan’s effortless charm, and she would be far from the last. She really needed to remember that, especially when her body sent out urgent reminders every time he so much as looked at her that she hadn’t had sex in over a year.
Ethan laughed as the doors slid open on Toby’s floor.
Ethan knocked on his door, which was opened by a guy Toni assumed was Toby’s roommate. He was a little shorter than she was, with shaggy brown hair and skinny legs that stuck out from the bottom of his ragged khaki shorts.
“Is Toby here?” Ethan asked. “We need to ask him some questions.”
“Who wants to know?” the kid asked. He wore a sleepy, smart-ass smile, his eyes bloodshot and narrowed into telltale slits. She sniffed the air. Yep, Toby’s roommate was high as a kite.
Gone was the flirty charmer from the elevator. Suddenly Ethan was all steely, square-jawed authority.
The kid blanched. “Toby’s not here.” The door started to close, and Toni realized they weren’t going to get anywhere with Stoner Boy if Ethan went all
Law & Order
on him.
“Really,” Toni said, affecting the sweetest, widest-eyed look she could manage. “I’m sure he told me to meet him here tonight.”
The kid squinted at her through red-rimmed eyes. “Are you here for a shoot?”
“Yeah,” she said, pushing her way past the roommate and into the apartment. Her nose twitched at the mingled odors of pot, dirty laundry, and stale Doritos. “Is there someplace I should change? I’m Toni, by the way.” She stuck out her hand at the kid who shambled after her, trying to keep up.
Ethan had no such trouble, eyeing her as though waiting to see how far she’d take this.
Not that far, Ace.
“I’m Dave,” the roommate said. “Toby’s not here right now.”
Toni feigned a look at her watch. “Really? I swear he said nine o’clock.” She looked at Ethan. “Didn’t he say nine o’clock, honey?”
Ethan’s teeth flashed as he grinned. “That’s what he said, baby.”
“Wow, you’re really tall,” Dave said, blinking dazedly as he looked at Toni.
“Thanks. My dad was six four. So when will Toby be back?”
“I dunno.” Dave shrugged. Toni strained to keep her smile fixed as he took a long, hard look at her, his gaze seeming to stick somewhere around her boobs. “You’re not like the regular girls. No offense, you’re hot and all, but aren’t you a little…old?”
Toni faked a laugh. “I’m a graduate student, doing research on the way pornography and its prevalence on the Internet are influencing portrayals of feminine sexuality in mainstream media. I feel like the only way I can really understand what drives the average girl to want to be the next Jenna Jameson is to experience it for myself. Anonymously, of course. Toby promised he’d blur out my face.”
Dave nodded soberly. “I help him edit the photos sometimes. I’ll make sure no one knows it’s you.”
She walked across the messy sitting room and pushed open the door to a bedroom. She switched on the light and looked inside. She recognized the blue bedspread from numerous pictures. A tripod sat empty across from the bed. Wherever Toby was, he’d taken his camera with him. “Is this where he’ll set up?”
Dave nodded and shot a nervous look at Ethan. “What’s with the big dude?”
“Ethan’s my boyfriend. He’s very jealous,” she said, speaking in a stage whisper.
Her stomach muscles clenched as Ethan’s hand slid around her waist. “I wasn’t about to let her do this alone.” He drew her back against him, until she could feel the hard outline of every muscle in his chest against her back. “She says it’s all for her dissertation, but I want to be here in case Toby tries anything.”
Toni laid her hand across his forearm in the guise of affection but dug in her nails in warning. Ethan retaliated by pulling her even tighter against him, until she could feel an unmistakable firmness nudging at the small of her back. “Actually, I’m hoping to talk him into a couple’s shoot. Do you think Toby would do that?”
Ethan must have been giving him the death stare, because Dave swallowed hard and looked anywhere but at Toni. “Maybe. Listen, should I have him call you when he gets back?”
“Any idea when that will be?” Ethan asked. “We’ve got a packed schedule and I want to get this over with.”
“He took off yesterday for Vegas.”
“That’s right,” Toni said, slapping her forehead. “My friend Kara said something about that. Do you know if she ended up going with him?”
“Kara?” Dave said, clueless.
“She’s Toby’s girlfriend.”
“Toby has lots of girlfriends.”
Toni pulled up Kara’s picture on her cell phone. “You have to have seen her. She’s been seeing Toby for a couple of months now,” Toni said, though she had no idea how long they’d known each other or how close they were.
Dave stared at Kara’s picture for a full thirty seconds, opening his bloodshot eyes wide as he struggled to focus. Then, as though a circuit finally connected in his brain, he grabbed the picture, pointing eagerly. “Yeah, yeah! I’ve seen her. Toby started hanging out with her at the beginning of the summer,” Dave said. “But she hasn’t been around lately. I think they had a fight.”
“Huh. She never mentioned it,” Toni said, as Ethan slid a possessive arm around Toni’s shoulders.
Only the prospect of finding out where Kara was kept Toni from turning and nuzzling her face into Ethan’s chest.
“A couple weeks ago she came by and found him in bed with another chick. She went apeshit and flushed his stash of Ex. He got really pissed.”
“That’s weird, because I’m sure she said she was going to see him this weekend,” Toni said, trying to jar a memory out of Dave’s pot-laden brain cells.
Dave shrugged and plopped down on the couch in a heap of gangly limbs. “Maybe they made up. You’ll have to ask her.”
“We’d better go,” Ethan said, guiding her to the door with his arm around her shoulders. “We’ll see you around.”
As soon as the door shut Toni extricated herself from his grip. “You can stop feeling me up now.” She stepped into the elevator and moved to the opposite corner, as far from him as possible.
“A couple’s shoot?”
“Hey, it got him talking, better than you scaring the crap out of him would have,” she said with a chuckle.
He shrugged and pulled a face as though mulling it over. “I’ve always been a door-closed kinda guy, but I’d be willing—in the interest of our investigation, of course.” His naughty smile made her feel hot all over.
“Do not get any ideas,” she said, laughing, then trailed off as guilt and worry surged back to the forefront. “This isn’t funny. Kara’s involved with this scumbag, and I’m laughing about it.”
“Kara’s almost eighteen,” he pointed out. “In a couple of months she’ll be able to show her tits to everyone with a Web browser and there’s nothing we can do.”
“Don’t talk about her like that. She’s not eighteen yet, and Toby Frankel is exploiting a minor.”