Designed for Murder (Killer Style) (9 page)

Kimmie rolled her eyes. “Only on a day that ends in Y.”

He pressed the power button. “Let’s try now.” The screen came back on.

“Yes,” she said, a pink flush bringing color to her pale cheeks. “How can I thank you for working your magic?”

A few days ago, he might have taken her up on her unspoken offer, but it didn’t do a thing for him today. “This is embarrassing, but is there a bathroom I can use?”

“Sure. I can let you use Mr. Durning’s private bathroom, since he’s out today.” She wrote her number down on a card and handed it to him. “Just in case we don’t get a chance to chat again before your friend gets back.”

“I appreciate that.” He slipped it into his pocket, right next to the small case holding the listening devices. “So where should I go?”

She hit a button under her desk and the inner doors to the rest of the office slid open. “Take a left at the first hallway. His office is the second door on the right.”

He gave her a wink and strolled through the open doors, careful to maintain a slow pace until he turned in to the empty hallway. Then it was all hustle as he got to the office without being seen and closed the door behind him. The computer on the elder Durning’s desk was just as old as the hunk of junk the receptionist had. Bypassing it for the moment, Carlos sat down behind the desk and pulled open a file drawer.

Bingo. Bank records.

He plucked them out and hurriedly thumbed through the contents. It didn’t take long to realize that the business’s finances were in trouble. Durning Imports was just the type of target Diamond Tommy Houston looked for. Lots of goods from all over the world going in and out so as to avoid suspicion and a major financial drain that needed to be plugged or the whole business would go under. He slapped the folder shut and replaced it.

Glancing at the analog clock hanging on the wall, he figured he’d been gone from the front lobby for about five minutes. Not a lot of time left if he didn’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention from Kimmie. He withdrew the case from his pocket. The listening devices were about the size of a single caramel chew. He secured one behind a dusty fake fern that probably hadn’t been looked at, let alone moved, in a decade. Then he got the hell out of there.

The hallway was empty as he started for the front lobby. Mission accomplished, he had time to take a better look at his surroundings. Surveillance cameras were secured to the ceiling at both ends of the short hallway. That along with the locked doors between the lobby and the inner sanctum had him popping his knuckles trying to figure out what was going on. The importers weren’t set up like a regular business pushed into illegal dealings because of Diamond Tommy’s influence. By the fifth knuckle, his certainty had gone from a state of fluidity to being as solid as concrete. The place was rotten, and it may not even have a damn thing to do with Harbor City’s biggest scumbag.

He passed by a door marked
Roger Durning
. Not stopping to think, he changed course and ducked inside. This office was the polar opposite of the elder Durning’s office. Pristine. Painfully organized. A brand-new laptop on the uncluttered desk. There wasn’t a single place Carlos could see to hide the listening device.

He spun around on his heel, doing a three-sixty inventory. If it weren’t for the fact that Roger’s name was outside the door, Carlos would think the office was abandoned. The digital clock on the wall told him he’d been gone for nearly ten minutes. He didn’t have time to futz around here. Grabbing a piece of gum from his pocket, he walked to the desk. He popped the gum in his mouth and started chewing as he checked the desk’s underside. There was a notch in the wood where the side met the back that was the perfect size for the listening device. He slid the case out of his pocket and withdrew one of the devices. He squished the chewed gum to the back of the device and pressed the whole gooey mess into the notch under the desk.

It wouldn’t hold forever, but it wouldn’t need to. Between the devices and what he could dig up online, if During Imports was as dirty as he figured, he’d know soon enough.

He made it down the hall without seeing anyone, but Mika’s giggle stopped him as he approached the turn that would take him back to the lobby. He peeked around the corner and saw her standing with Roger in front of the doors leading to the lobby. She was facing the hallway where Carlos stood, but Roger had his back to him.

Fuck. The last thing they needed was for Captain Douchetastic to realize he’d left the lobby.

Mika must have spotted him, because her almond-shaped eyes widened for a second before she grabbed Roger’s hand and leaned in close. The way she looked up at the jerk reminded Carlos a little too much of how she’d watched him through her thick eyelashes while they’d danced at Feeny’s. That look had gotten him harder than a railroad spike on the frozen tundra. Judging by the way Roger adjusted his stance and the subtle way he swept his gaze across her every delectable curve, there was no way he wasn’t having the same reaction.

Mika giggled. She never fucking giggled.

“Roger, you have to show me the chiffon you brought in for BC Designs. Rumor is, it’s gorgeous.”

“Anything for you.” Captain Douchetastic tucked Mika’s hand back in his elbow and led her toward the back, away from Carlos.

Carlos was going to have to kill him. Not literally, of course, but that man’s face was going on every shooting target at the practice range for a good long time. No one got to look at Mika like that but Carlos.

He gave it to the count of ten and then double-timed it to the lobby doors and strode into the lobby.

Chapter Ten

“Fashion is about having a fantasy.”

—Alber Elbaz

T
hirty minutes later, Carlos was back in Mika’s design studio, and all he wanted to do was touch her—drag her back over to the couch and make her forget she’d ever smiled at the douche Roger. Wanting her was the last thing he needed in his life right now and the one thing that pushed through everything else crowding the front of his brain to take center stage. Wanting didn’t matter, though. He couldn’t have her.

Mika was the Silver Queen LARPer
, a Magic Battledome player, and a nerd sex goddess. She represented everything he’d left behind after he’d killed Ivy and walked away from the man he’d been. Falling back into that world wasn’t an option, no matter how much he wanted to fall into her.

Also not an option was sitting around on his ass waiting for something bad to happen. Something was off at Durning Imports, and it was his job to figure out what so he could solve this case and get away from Mika before he forgot the lesson Ivy had taught him. He opened her laptop, dragging his fingers across the touchpad to bring it to life as he watched her pace in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows. The sun was setting behind the Faversham Building, throwing a skyscraper-size shadow across most of the fashion district. The golden light put a halo around her when he knew that she was anything but an angel. Wearing the skin-tight jeans from yesterday and a drugstore T-shirt with a V-neck that dipped between her tits, she was all temptation. The sooner he got away from the source, the better.

Hands on her hips, she stopped in the middle of her pacing. “So what now?”

“I call Reggie.” Sharing information had been the entire point of the farce of an interrogation this morning. Carlos needed to hold up his end of the unspoken bargain and bring the detective up to speed.

“He thinks I’m a drug mule!”

“No. His bosses
want
him to think you’re a drug mule. There’s a difference. Someone in the department is pushing an agenda.” He scrolled through his contact list and tapped Reggie’s name.

“Dirty cops?” she asked as she started pacing again, her ass swaying from side to side as she strutted across the studio.

The phone on the other end rang, buzzing in Carlos’s ear. “Either that or overworked pencil-pushing supervisors who have to close cases or get their asses handed to them by the mayor and the press. Crime is up in Harbor City and everyone wants it down now. A closed case is a closed case.”

“That’s comforting.”

“That’s life.” The call clicked over to voicemail. He hung up without leaving a message. Reggie would know it was him by the caller ID. “He’s not answering.”

“What did you find at Durning Imports?” She toyed with the end of her braid and walked close to him, worrying her full bottom lip.

It was mesmerizing, and his cock was officially hypnotized. It twitched behind his zipper.

“Your old employer isn’t as squeaky clean as you’d like them to be. Large sums are coming in and going out just as fast.” Glad for an excuse to look at something besides the way she chewed her bottom lip, he sat down at the computer and brought up Harbor City Federal Bank’s website.

“So?” she huffed. “They have bills, plus the economy is still recovering.”

Carlos logged in with the password he’d seen the elder Durning had helpfully written on the outside of the bank statement folder. “Did you look at that place? There were security cameras, high-end sensors around the entry points, and those locked lobby doors that would look at home at an off-site betting facility where the need to keep someone out was of vital importance. There aren’t any dangerous fabric thieves armed to the teeth that you know too much about, are there?”

She flipped him the bird. “No.”

Mika moved to his blind spot behind his left shoulder, placed her hand on his shoulder, and leaned forward to get a better look at the screen. Her spicy perfume wrapped around him. If he turned his head even the slightest bit, he’d get an eyeful of her luscious tits. His dick fully endorsed that idea, and the rest of him was warming up to it.

Focus, ’Los.

Grinding his teeth together, he clicked on the tab for past statements. A minute later, he had the importer’s past year’s bank statements laid out in front of him. The numbers didn’t add up. There were a lot of transactions, but they usually weren’t consistent in both amount and timing—except for a nine-thousand-dollar deposit that came in on the tenth of every month and went back out on the eleventh. The dollar amount would keep it under the federal limit that would have required the bank to report it to the authorities.

“What happens on the tenth of each month?” he asked.

Mika reached past him to run her finger over the touchpad and scroll the screen down. “Deliveries.”

“Every month?” That would provide cover and ensure a regular supply of drugs coming in.

“Occasionally the shipment will get held at customs, but Mr. Durning has built a solid relationship with customs, so that rarely happens.”

“How rare?” he asked, forcing his gaze to stay on the screen instead of straying toward her.

“Maybe once in the five years I was with them.” She straightened and stepped back away from him. “But he doesn’t have
that
good of a relationship. They still inspect the goods to make sure they’re all fabric and whatever else is on the manifest.”

“Exactly.” Really, it was the perfect cover. “So a few special bolts of fabric wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow. The nine grand is courier charges. The dirty drug money goes into the business account one day and gets withdrawn as clean funds the next day.” His gut twisted when he looked at the cabinet holding the tainted fabric she’d used to make the vestments for her court. As long as she still had the fabric, she wasn’t safe. “What you’ve got there is worth half a million on the street, probably more right now with the city experiencing a cocaine drought.”

“Fuck.” Mika groaned.

That was the understatement of the year. He texted Reggie.

CARLOS: 911

“We need to stay here until Reggie calls back and we can arrange a handoff. We can’t risk taking it to the police department and it getting into the wrong hands.”

“Or them arresting us for possession with intent to distribute.”

“That too,” he said.

He checked out the studio’s setup. Thick metal door. Three deadbolt locks. No outside entrance. It wasn’t Fort Knox, but it was pretty damn secure. And if their luck held, no one had discovered that Mika had a new design studio. The realization jarred a memory loose.

“This afternoon, Roger mentioned that he’d heard you weren’t working out of your living room anymore. I thought you said no one knew you had the studio.”

“No one does.”

“So how would he know you weren’t working in your living room anymore if he hadn’t found that out himself when he broke in yesterday?”

“Roger is the mugger? No way.”

A mental side-by-side comparison said differently. “They’re the same size, same build, and if the muggings were all about retrieving the cocaine-tainted material, then he has motive.” Everything fell into place, all the more trustworthy because he wasn’t just following his gut. He had clues, and damn if they didn’t fit together. “Looks like you won’t be dating Captain Douchetastic after all this is over.”

Mika grabbed the back of his chair and spun it around so he faced her. “What are you talking about?”

“You were pretty convincing flirting with him this afternoon.” He clamped his mouth shut before anything else came out before he could filter it. Fuck. If he had a time-travel remote control, now would be the time to use it.

“Oh my God. What is your deal?” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “I was
helping
. I think you need to find another line of work. This one has fucked you in the head. Not everyone is lying to you all the time.”

“It wasn’t the job that taught me that.” The words were out before he could stop them. He’d never talked about the reason for turning his back on his old life. He hadn’t thought twice about his decision—not until he met Mika. “Does the name Ivy Rhodes ring a bell?”

It had been a year since he’d said her name out loud. It tasted sour in his mouth.

“Yeah, she’s the supermodel who tried to kill that fashion blogger.”

His skin crawled as his nerves fired up all at once. Sitting still wasn’t an option. He had to move or implode. “Sylvie.”

“That’s right, she runs the High-Heeled Wonder site.”

He nodded and got up, rubbing his palm across the back of his neck as he strode to the large window. The sunset had turned everything gold and pink, but all he could see was red. “Ivy was Scarlett in Magic Battledome.”

Mika blinked rapidly several times. “Zephyr’s partner? She was with you at the gargoyle uprising. Players still talk about that. It’s legendary.”

The pain had gone from sharp slice to dull ache over the past year, but it was still there any time he thought of the battles he’d won with Scarlett while playing Magic Battledome online.

“You guys were together?” she asked.

That line between online world and real world had always been so clear to him, and then Ivy had appeared in his life and everything blurred. “I didn’t know it was her in the beginning. I was helping Tony investigate Sylvie’s stalker and Ivy was a person of interest. I went with him to talk to her. She let me take a look at her computer, and that’s when I realized she was Scarlett. I’d known her online for years before we’d ever met in person.”

The memory rushed over him like a toxic wave.
With data streaming across his laptop, Carlos was in his element. The others at Maltese Security may have the brawn, but when he flexed his brain, the pieces always came together. He’d find the missing byte floating out there on the grid and solve the case. Couldn’t be any easier than if he was on the Magic Battledome dunes with his partner, Scarlett, huntress of the night and the hottest warrior goddess in any role-playing online game.

The air shifted around him and a crisp grapefruit scent descended. A steaming cup of coffee appeared on the edge of his vision.

“I added a half shot of Red Bull.” Ivy placed the mug on the desk and curled into the chair next to him.

His thumb hit the wrong key.
Act cool, man. She’s just a supermodel slash possible stalker and you’re…the short, geeky IT guy.

“Thanks.” He copied the set of numbers and plugged them into a finder program, then minimized it so it dropped into the task bar, revealing Ivy’s screen saver.

Carlos’s jaw hit the desk and his spine snapped straight. “
Dios mío
.”

Staring at a picture of himself on Ivy’s screen, his heart screeched to a dead stop before revving up again. Well, not exactly him as he appeared in real life. His Magic Battledome avatar, Zephyr, stood seven feet high, holding a monstrous scythe with a four-foot-long curved blade. Scarlett stood next to him, pulling back her bow’s string and aiming the fire arrow at an unseen enemy. The new information did not compute with the leggy redhead next to him. She’d dated rock stars and posed half naked in fashion magazines. Not the kind of woman who kicked ass in online role-playing games with the efficiency of Scarlett.

“You’re not going to give me crap for playing Magic Battledome, are you?” Ivy’s tough tone didn’t quite cover the quiver underneath.

He shot out of his chair. It couldn’t be. His brain blanked out as surely as the blue screen of death. “Scarlett?”

She froze.

They stared at each other while his brain rebooted with the speed of a cheap computer.

“Oh my God, Zephyr?” Her brain obviously had a better microprocessor, because he could only nod. “Zephyr!” She jumped up from her chair and flung her arms around him.

As the air whooshed out of him, reality filled the vacuum: Scarlett was a former supermodel and current stalker suspect. Though someone had used a proxy server to control her computer, she wasn’t in the clear yet. She still could be the crazy hot on Sylvie’s trail.

Who just happened to be Scarlett, his constant companion and object of online desire.

Who, most days, was the last person he spoke with at night and the first he wanted to tell when something happened.

Who happened to have a picture of the two of them as her screen saver.

He tried to talk, but his mind worked at half capacity and his tongue had given up the ghost.

“I can’t believe it.” Excitement punched her pitch higher and she ended her iron-armed hug. Her hands slid up his arms, over his shoulders, and to his face, her palms cool against his overheated cheeks. “It’s you.”

On the next breath, she lowered her mouth to his. The world didn’t just tilt on its axis, it tumbled off and rolled across the universe like a marble gone rogue. Her supple lips moved against his, warm honey sweetening the moment. Before the shock of it all could dissipate, Ivy released him.

Her long fingers traced a path across her now-fer bottom lip. “Sorry. I know I shouldn’t have done that, but I’d always promised myself that if we ever met for real that I would.” She collapsed into her chair, a bemused smile crinkling the corner of her eyes. “Zephyr in the flesh. Wow.”

Carlos’s phone vibrated and the Star Wars theme sounded. Mind reeling, he yanked it out of his pocket. Tony’s number came up on caller ID. “What’s up, boss?”

“Are you still at Ivy’s place?”

“Uh-huh.”

“She’s just moved up to the front of the suspect line.”

The phone slipped in Carlos’s suddenly clammy hand as he paced. “I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

He couldn’t tell his boss, the man who controlled who became partner, that it couldn’t be Ivy because she was Scarlett. “Gut feeling.”

“I need more than that.”

Normally so would he, but Carlos couldn’t ignore the intangible this time.