Rogue (13 page)

One hand pressed into his stomach, Kevin took several deep breaths with his eyes on the ground, clearly mentally assessing his injuries. When he finally looked up, he seemed angry but surprisingly calm.

If Marc had just been thrown into a wall by a single
punch, he’d have come up spittin’ and swingin’. For that matter, so would I.

Kevin looked past me as if I weren’t there, glaring at Marc. “You know,
I
wasn’t the one who just suggested your girlfriend take her clothes off for cash.” Although, actually, that’s exactly what he’d done. “Maybe you should have taken your irritation out on
that
little prick.”

“He’s human,” Marc growled, his fists still clenched. “He gets an automatic walk. Once. And since I don’t plan to see him again, he’ll probably live. But this is
your
last warning to watch your mouth—if you want to keep your canines.”

A weak, hot breeze blew down the ally from the end opposite us, fluttering several scraps of paper and bringing with it the unmistakable stench of mold. When one of those scraps failed to settle into the shadows, my attention centered on the door Jeff had come through. A single sheet of paper flapped against the dented metal surface, hanging from a long strip of Scotch tape.

“Um, Marc?” I stepped carefully over a splintered crate on my way toward Forbidden Fruit’s rear exit. “You’re going to have to see the little prick again. Soon.”

“What?” Glass crunched behind me as Marc’s boot came down on a broken bottle. He stopped at my side, following my gaze to the homemade poster printed in black on hot-pink paper.

In the center of the page was a black-and-white photo of a stereotypically buxom blonde, smiling with her beautiful, thickly lashed eyes as well as her mouth. The caption at the top read, “Have you seen me?” Beneath the photo was the name “Kellie Tandy” and a list of her vital statistics. Below that, the poster read:

“Remember the bundle of ones in Bradley Moore’s wallet?” I asked Marc, still staring at the poster. “The only building within five miles of that damn field was a strip club. Do you believe in coincidence?”

Marc shook his head slowly, and when his frown deepened, I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. “Harper wasn’t at the Cajun Bar and Grill. He was at Forbidden Fruit.”

S
eptember 11th. The stripper had been missing for three days, since Thursday, the day we’d buried Bradley Moore in Arkansas. Then yesterday—Saturday—Parker and Holden found Robert Harper’s body in the alley behind the missing stripper’s place of employment. I saw no obvious connection, but like Marc, I didn’t believe in coincidence.

Kevin focused on the picture of the missing girl, and his forehead crinkled in confusion. “Wait,” he said, his voice rising in pitch as his words rushed out. “Greg said your men found a dead stray here. Guy named Harper. So who’s Bradley Moore, and what does he have to do with some psycho killing Robby Harper? And what the hell does all
that
have to do with a missing stripper?”

My father had given Kevin only the information he needed to know, which included nothing about the foreign tabby or the body we’d buried in Arkansas.

“
Robby
Harper?” I asked, turning to watch Kevin through narrowed eyes as his familiar use of the dead stray’s name
sank in. I ignored his questions in favor of one of my own. “You knew him?”

Kevin shook his head as if to clear it. “Only by reputation. He…uh, used to sneak across the boundary line every so often to party in the Big Easy. Guess there’s not much to do in rural Mississippi.”

“And, of course, you reported him for trespassing, right?” I asked, already well aware that he hadn’t.

Marc took a threatening step toward him, and Kevin shrugged, slouching back. “It didn’t seem important enough to bother Greg about. Especially considering all the trouble he was having keeping tabs on
you.
” He shot an accusing glance my way before turning his attention back to Marc, who represented the biggest threat. So far as
he
knew, anyway.

Kevin’s last statement rang in my ears, and the hairs on the back of my neck bristled. My immediate impulse was to correct his misconception with my fist, but a slow, deep breath brought my temper back under control. See, I really was growing up. Mostly.

“He was
not
having trouble with me,” I snapped. “And
you
should have reported Harper the minute he set
foot
in the south-central territory.”

“Come on, Faythe.” Kevin crossed his arms over his chest, as if unaware that Marc was prepared to maim him if he couldn’t justify his failure to report the trespasser. “We all know you have your father over a barrel. You won’t settle down with a decent tom, for no reason anyone else understands, and he can’t make you, so the best he can do is try to keep tabs on you until you listen to reason and give him some heirs.”

A grinding sound met my ears, and it took me a long moment to recognize it as the sound of my own teeth gnashing
together. I was struggling to keep a grip on my rage, but that wasn’t easy to do with Kevin flaunting the fact that my personal life was about as private as a celebrity sex video.

“Rumor has it your dad’s had you under round-the-clock surveillance for the last
five years
just to keep you safe and in one place. If that’s true, he’s not only been consistently one man short, but he had to break up a team of enforcers to keep one man free to watch you prance around campus with all your college buddies. Greg hasn’t had the manpower to check out every trespassing report in years. Because of
you.
”

Even as I shook my head in denial, fury sending sparks of indignation up my spine, part of me wondered if he was right. Had I kept my father from doing his job? Had I forced him to divide his loyalties between me and the rest of the Pride? Had I compromised the security he worked so hard to give us all?

I hadn’t meant for any of that to happen, for my decisions to affect everyone else so drastically. Yet they had. I’d just wanted a little freedom, but the entire Pride had paid for my liberty. If an ass-clown like Kevin Mitchell had seen that, why the hell hadn’t I?

Fortunately, Kevin was so consumed in his own defense that he noticed neither my fury nor my self-doubt. “I was doing your father a favor.” He crossed his arms, as if determined to make himself believe the load of cow shit he was shoveling. “I’m perfectly capable of keeping an eye on the odd stray who wanders across the border without having to bother Greg. If there was a real problem, I’d have given him a call. But there wasn’t. I had it under control.”

Marc took another step forward, and Kevin mirrored him with another step back, flinching and uncrossing his arms when he bumped into the Dumpster. Marc stared down at him, gold-
flecked eyes glittering in rage and unspoken challenge. “Then how do you explain Harper winding up dead in an alley?”

Kevin held up his hands, palms out. “I had nothing to do with that. I wasn’t here yesterday. I have no idea who killed him.”

Stunned, I blinked at Kevin, and from the corner of my eye I saw Marc stiffen. He’d heard it, too. “You weren’t here
yesterday?
” he growled. “Meaning you
were
here on other days? With Harper?”

Kevin stuttered as comprehension surfaced in his eyes. Finally, he understood how deep his pile of shit was. And he had no idea how to dig himself out of it.

“Spit it out, Kevin.” I made no move to intercede as Marc closed in on him. Marc was the better bad cop, anyway—not because I couldn’t carry it off, but because he wasn’t believable as a good cop. “Did you and Harper go to Forbidden Fruit together? Were you strip-club buddies?”

“Don’t bother. The answer’s obvious,” Marc spat, his voice dripping with disgust. He watched Kevin the way a cat watches a mouse he plans to play with, rather than eat. “The only thing I don’t understand is why a prissy little snot like you would hang out with a scratch-fevered stray.”

Kevin glanced at me around Marc’s shoulder, having evidently decided I was the lesser threat. I saw no reason to disillusion him. “He paid me.”

I cocked my head in mock confusion. “He paid you to hang out with him? Isn’t that a little ‘desperate-schoolboy’?”

Kevin glared at me, shaking his head as sweat dripped down his hairline. “He paid me to keep my mouth shut. To let him cross the lake and hang out in a city that doesn’t roll up its sidewalks at 9:00 p.m.”

“And you went with him?” I asked, prodding him on.

“Yeah, to keep an eye on him. So what if I got paid? Your dad should be paying me, anyway.”

“Why weren’t you with him yesterday?” Marc asked.

Kevin stared at the ground, nudging a broken bottle with one foot. “My boss called me in to work, so I couldn’t go. I had no idea he was dead till Greg called last night.”

Marc lunged forward, and his fists slammed into the Dumpster on either side of Kevin’s head, leaving two deep dents in the metal. “If you’re lying, you’ll walk with a limp for the rest of your life.”

Kevin glanced anxiously at Marc, then around him at me, and his left eyebrow began to tic. “It’s the truth.” Though he was clearly angry, his voice came out in a high-pitched whine. “You want to see my fucking check stub?”

Satisfied, Marc took a step back and dropped his hands to hang at his sides, but even then he was no less of a threat. He seemed to tower over Kevin, intimidating the smaller man with his very presence. “Do you know Kellie Tandy?” Marc’s question lent credence to my own suspicion that the missing stripper was somehow involved.

“Only by sight. She’s hot.” Kevin paused and shrugged, looking at me over Marc’s shoulder. “Well, I assume she’s dead now, but she
was
hot.”

Nausea rolled through me at his complete lack of sympathy for the missing girl. Diplomacy be damned, Kevin was inches away from stepping past my point of no return.

“You think Robby killed her?” he asked, completely unaware of my mounting irritation.

But his question gave me pause. I pushed damp strands of hair from my face, considering. I had no intention of answering him, but it would have been nice to actually
have
an
answer. Did I think Harper had killed the stripper? Because if he’d attacked her at all, the only possible result would have been her death.

Okay, that wasn’t the
only
possible result, but definitely the likely conclusion. But did I actually suspect him?

I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t see how Kellie Tandy fit in at all. Not yet, anyway. And if Harper had killed her, was it mere coincidence that
he’d
been killed only two days later?

“Have you ever seen any other cats in the strip club, stray or otherwise?” Marc asked, when I failed to respond to Kevin’s question.

“Nah. There’re only two others in the area, that I know of. The youngest Pierce boy goes to Loyola, but the college kids don’t hang out around here. And Jamey Gardner lives near Baton Rouge, but I haven’t seen him in nearly a year.”

I nodded toward Forbidden Fruit’s back door. “Do you know Jeff the pip-squeak?”

“Yeah. He’s one of the bartenders. His brother owns the place.”

“Did he know Harper?” Marc asked.

“I don’t think Jeff knows either of us by name, but he’d probably recognize a picture. Or a description.”

“Good.” Marc stepped back from the Dumpster and from Kevin, gesturing toward the end of the alley. “Let’s go find out what the pip-squeak saw yesterday.”

I stood between Marc and Kevin in the foyer of Forbidden Fruit, bathing in the cool current of air flowing from the vent overhead. The artificial gust was quickly turning the sweat dripping down my spine into ice-cold rivulets, a transformation I welcomed.

We’d had to walk around to the front door in the one-hundred-three-degree heat, made worse by relative humidity hovering around the ninety percent mark. Luckily, the front door was unlocked, probably because the employees couldn’t get in through the back door, either.

The interior of the strip club was visible through a wide archway, and the sticky vinyl floor, collection of cheap tables, and room-length bar were pretty much what I’d expected—minus the naked women. The club wouldn’t actually open for ten more minutes, so the elevated dance platform was dark and empty. Thank goodness. The last thing our farce of an investigation needed was Kevin in a hormone-induced moronic frenzy.

Though the dancers had yet to shake their well-proportioned hindquarters into action, Jeff and another, taller man in an identical hot-pink shirt were hard at work behind the bar, drying glasses and counting cash register drawers. And judging from the smell of fried food, someone was busy in the kitchen. The sign out front had advertised a lunch special of “hot wings and hot girls,” served with the drink of your choice.

And though my mouth felt dryer than a sand dune, the drink of my choice was any kind not served in the Forbidden Fruit.

As I watched Jeff-the-pip-squeak pour peanuts into a bowl on the bar, a short, busty woman walked past the foyer, barely dressed as a slutty version of Little Red Riding Hood. If she was looking for the Big Bad Wolf, she was out of luck.

“Sorry, boys, we’re not open yet,” Red said in a sultry Cajun accent, flashing a mouthful of small, bleached-white teeth at Kevin before she dismissed him entirely in favor of Marc. Only Marc. She hadn’t even glanced at me.
Bitch.

“I hate to ask you to leave, sugar,” she said, batting her eyelashes at
my
boyfriend, her hands propped on the hips of a
short, scarlet Lycra skirt. “But rules are rules. Come back in ten minutes, and I’ll give you a show. Then I’ll let you buy me a drink.” She cocked her head to the side and tapped her full lower lip with the end of one long red fingernail. “Oh, hell, I’ll buy
you
a drink.”

Marc stared down into her eyes, and his lips curved up in a slow, seductive smile. “As tempting as that sounds, I’m not here for pleasure. Exclusively,” he added, as if it were an afterthought. “My friend’s here to see Jeff about a job.”

My chin dropped into the cradle of my cleavage. Seriously. I nearly dislocated my jaw. And, of course, Kevin snickered, knowing he was safe for the moment because Marc wouldn’t hit him in public. And because I stood between them.

“Your friend?” Little Red Riding Whore asked, her gaze sliding in my direction for the first time.

I snapped my jaw shut in a hurry and did my best to wipe the astonishment from my face. It went willingly, but anger swooped in to take its place. I was
not
applying for a job as a stripper. Not even to find out what happened to Robert Harper. And especially not in a club that couldn’t account for all of its employees.

My teeth ground together as Red’s eyes boldly roamed my body. I’d never been checked out by a woman before—that I knew of—and wasn’t sure how to respond gracefully. Or if I should even bother.

Finally, she nodded, apparently satisfied by my appearance.

“So glad I meet your approval,” I said, my voice thick with irony. Marc was the only one who caught my tone, and I was only sure about that because he kicked my sneaker when Red turned to glance over her shoulder at the bar.

“You shouldn’t have much trouble convincing him to give
you a chance,” she said, turning back to look at Marc, though she spoke to me. “We’re short-handed right now, anyway.”

“That’s right,” Marc said, as if he’d just remembered. “We saw the flyer about your missing dancer.” Taped to the front window were three more posters identical to the one on the back door.

“Yeah, that was weird,” Red said, her fake accent vanishing as genuine concern filled her eyes. Even her stance changed. She wrapped her arms around herself and bent one knee, balancing all of her weight on one red spiked heel.

“What was weird about it?”

She reached beneath her oversize, drooping red hood and withdrew a long strand of deep brown hair, twisting it around one thin finger. “Well—”

“
Vite,
Corinne! Five minutes!”

Red, whose name was evidently Corinne, glanced over her shoulder at a tall, thin man in another hot-pink T-shirt standing on the now well-lit stage.

“
Je viens!
” she called out, then mumbled, “Gimme a damn minute,” under her breath as she turned back to face us. And by us, I mean
Marc.
“Honey, why don’t we talk some more after my set, ’kay? Sit down and save me a seat, and I’ll find you after I dance.
Oui?
”