I WATCHED Dess cradle her hot chocolate. She seemed totally unaffected by Talon’s relentless front of hostility. I’d seen people crumble under one of Talon’s mere stares. This woman was a mystery, that was for sure.
I cut in again, tired of participating in a game that she seemed all too good at playing. The only reason we continued this good cop, bad cop routine was her reaction to me. Talon’s threatening accusations didn’t seem to get under her skin, but my gentle questioning did. I could see the way I unsettled her.
It was easier to get a read on how honest a person was being if their emotions were off kilter. I still couldn’t quite pick apart how much of her story was true. I thought I’d caught flickers of genuine distress and shame in her expression, but was it a fraction of a larger trauma she was trying to suppress or a sign that she wasn’t really all that affected?
“Where do you live in that neighborhood?” I asked. “One of us could go to your house and gather some belongings for you. If your boyfriend is as useless as it sounds like, I’m sure Talon or Julius could handle him just fine.”
Dess scoffed, revealing nothing but mild distrust behind her storm gray eyes. Right now, they resembled steel—sharp and clear.
I had to cut through that steel in whatever way I could—subtle but penetrating, the way I always worked a job.
“You think I’d give away my address to four total strangers?” she asked, looking around and meeting everyone’s eyes before turning her gaze back on me. Cold. Detached. Unreadable. Blaze shifted in his seat across from us but kept his mouth shut. He knew not to interrupt a gambit once it was in progress.
Talon stepped forward with the air of menace he gave off so easily, but I put out my arm, stopping him in his path. “Enough.” I stepped around the island closer to Dess, my body language poised to be open and inviting. “We just want to help you, really. Even that lout does. But if you’re still not comfortable, I totally get it. I’m not going to push.”
Reverse psychology was absolutely a thing. In my experience, most people who’d balk at a direct question found themselves spilling the beans as soon as you told them they didn’t have to answer after all, as long as you framed it right. Especially women, who were so often programmed to please.
Not Dess.
She stayed silent, her muscles stiffening as she turned her mug of hot chocolate in her hands and then took another sip. I couldn’t suppress the twitch of my cock as I watched her savor the liquid, her tongue darting out to swipe the last traces from her lips, her expression briefly relaxing with apparent delight. She looked so damn sexy relishing the offering I’d made for her.
I shut down that twinge of attraction, just as she flipped the script.
“How about you explain why you brought me to your apartment instead of the hospital,” she said, arching an eyebrow.
I didn’t allow anything to show on my face. “Were we not allowed to be concerned?”
“I’m pretty sure a normal concerned person would have taken me to the emergency room.”
Talon smacked his hand down on the island. “Now you’re complaining about being here? You made it pretty fucking clear that you wanted nothing to do with any hospital.”
“I think I also made it clear I wanted to be left alone,” Dess shot back.
I held up my hands. “You can’t expect us to leave a woman who’s fainted from her injuries lying at the edge of the road. We’re not some kind of psychopaths. Whenever you need to leave, the door’s open to you. Hell, we can take you to the hospital after all if you want.”
Years of practice allowed me to smooth out the edge that wanted to creep into my voice. What kind of game was she playing with us? It was starting to feel like one, and I didn’t like that at all. I was supposed to be the one who ran the games around here.
How the fuck would this look to Julius and the other guys if I fell on my face in the one job they’d given me today?
Dess adjusted her stance on her stool again, and I noted the drooping of her eyelids. I’d slipped a sleeping pill into her mug—she’d blame her growing exhaustion on the accident. The more physically helpless we could keep her, the easier it’d be to hold her here while we figured out what she was really up to without giving away that we wouldn’t actually let her walk out the front door.
As soon as she figured out she’d essentially been kidnapped, most of my usual strategies would become useless. You needed to generate a certain amount of good will to con a person.
“I’m still thinking about it,” Dess muttered. It’d clearly taken some effort for her to speak clearly. The pill was kicking in fast now.
I cocked my head with a sympathetic vibe. “You’re looking a little wiped. You are still healing from that crash. If you need to—’
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
I raised my arms in a gesture of surrender. “Again, what you say goes. You know yourself way better than the rest of us do.”
The line of bullshit I spoon-fed her didn’t seem to loosen her guard in the slightest. The good cop, bad cop routine had gotten us nowhere. The kindness that I tried to show her hadn’t had any effect on her.
For the first time in nearly a decade, I had no idea how to get a true read on a mark. She admitted nothing with her words or glances, other than a few tiny details that would give us no advantage.
The question ran through my mind again. Who the hell was this chick?
And why wasn’t she pushing harder to get away from us? I’d been prepared for that, and she obviously didn’t trust us any more than we trusted her… but she hadn’t come out of the room demanding to leave immediately. She hadn’t even taken me up on my supposed offer that she could walk away right now, although maybe that was because she could tell she wasn’t in any state to make it very far on her own.
She took another deep swig of her drink, likely in an attempt to jar her into alertness. If anything, it’d have the opposite effect.
Her body started to sway, and her spine went even more rigid. She was definitely noticing that she wasn’t at her best. I could read that much in her posture.
After taking one last gulp from the mug, Dess pushed herself to her feet. She held her legs tensed, managing to keep her balance despite the toll the sleeping pill must have been taking on her senses. “You know, maybe I do need to get some more rest. Thank you again for the hot chocolate.”
“Get as much sleep as you need,” I said, and Julius nodded.
She strode stiffly but quickly back to the bedroom where we’d set her up, just barely keeping it together. I still caught her teeter just as she reached the doorway. She kicked the door shut behind her.
I’d bet she’d flopped right down on the bed the second we couldn’t see her. She’d been trying to keep up a front of being in control, but she’d be out like a light in a matter of minutes. Those pills were potent stuff.
Blaze started tapping away on his phone. Talon sighed, shaking the tension out of his stance and looking more like the imposing but not outright murderous guy he normally was—when we weren’t out murdering people, at least.
Julius waited a few minutes and then went to the bedroom door. He opened it a crack. “Dess?”
No answer. He stepped inside, and I heard the rustle as he must have given her a shake. He came back out, shutting the door again, and rejoined us. “She’s dead to the world. What did you make of her?”
My stomach sank before I answered. “I got next to nothing,” I had to admit. “She’s intimidated by kindness more than hostility, which might make sense if the abusive boyfriend story is true, but I couldn’t even tell for sure about that. She didn’t respond in a typical way to just about anything, but it was all in different atypical ways.” I raked my fingers through my hair in frustration.
“Fuck.” Julius rubbed his hand over his face, looking equally annoyed. And there was no one to blame but me. “Do you think she was lying about everything?”
“I don’t know. If she lied, she’s a great liar, but she didn’t say anything in a way that screams ‘truth,’ either. It could have all been a lie.”
“Or it could have all been the truth,” Blaze put in.
“Yeah, that too.”
Talon didn’t seem to react to the news, which was par for the course, but both Blaze and Julius looked uneasy.
“At least we know her full name now,” Blaze said, turning back to his phone. “Here we go. Dess Parker. It’s pretty uncommon, I think—yeah, there’s her driver’s license photo.”
He showed us the image on his screen, which was unmistakably the woman currently sleeping in the other room, maybe a year or two younger. I was hit by a jolt of surprise. Somehow I’d assumed she’d given us a fake name.
“Twenty-two years old,” Blaze said, flicking through the various files he’d brought up. “No criminal record. Brief stint working for a clothing store downtown. Has a credit card that’s always been paid off on time. Went to elementary and high school in the city but no sign of a college education.” He frowned. “This is… this is weird.”
“What’s so weird about any of that?” I demanded. “Lots of us aren’t brainiacs who jizz at the idea of sitting through years of boring lectures.”
Blaze rolled his eyes at me and waved his phone, his leg swinging in his usual fidgety way. “That’s the thing. There’s nothing remotely weird in here. It’s all very basic, very typical… I don’t know. It just feels too clean to me.”
“Are you suggesting she’s got an entire history of false documentation set up?” Julius asked with a tone of disbelief.
Blaze held up his hands in surrender. “I don’t know. Nothing about any of this looks faked either. Usually I can spot a clue or two. I guess if she’s been under a boyfriend’s thumb for most of her adult years, she just might not have been interacting with the outside world much.”
Was it really possible that we’d kidnapped an abused woman fleeing a monster, a victim who’d just happened to end up in the wrong place at the really wrong time?
Before that question could sink in, my phone buzzed. I pulled it out of my pocket and checked the ID. My back drew a little straighter. This might be a problem too, but it was a problem in my usual wheelhouse.
“It’s the client,” I said. “I’ll take this outside.”
Julius motioned me onward. He knew as well as I did that we didn’t want to take any chance at all of Dess overhearing this conversation.
I went out the door and up the steps to the scruffy enclosed backyard. Julius and Talon had built an arching greenhouse-like roof over it which I appreciated year-round for the privacy it offered, though especially during the colder winter months. During the summer, we kept a couple of panels propped open and a fan going to circulate the air. The yard was still a bit sweltering.
As soon as I’d stepped outside, I cleared my throat, deciding on what persona I’d use for this call. I always dealt with the clients, and I never used the same voice or demeanor more than once. The less our clients knew about us, how many people we had working for us, and who those people might be, the safer we stayed. We couldn’t work in the shadows if they knew much more about us than our group name.
I forced my voice up an octave. “You’ve reached the Chaos Crew.”
“Put me on with the man I spoke to last time,” the man on the other end demanded.
I suppressed a laugh at his stupidity. It had always been me. I could have transitioned back into the deeper, more masculine voice I’d used before, but he didn’t have control over this conversation. I did. “I’m representing the Chaos Crew today.”
“I don’t give a fuck who’s representing them. They didn’t complete their job,” he spat into the phone, and I stiffened. “Something is missing from the house that should have been there.”
“The Crew killed every person inside that house, per the manifest, and they didn’t take anything with them,” I assured him. “It was a successful job with no hiccups.”
“Did they find any hidden areas in the house that weren’t mentioned in the manifest?”
“Are you implying that the brief you provided was faulty?” I asked. “I certainly hope you didn’t put the Crew in danger by leaving out information.”
The man remained quiet for a moment, giving me the answer that I needed. There had been information he hadn’t included in the job details they’d passed on. It didn’t matter what words he spewed to deny the claim after that telling pause.
After dealing with Dess, it was almost a relief to be able to spot the lie so easily.
“I gave you all the necessary information to ensure the job was completed successfully,” he snapped. “But clearly you screwed up somewhere.”
I wished I had chosen a more intimidating persona, maybe channeling Talon. Too late now. “Are you going to tell me what exactly was missing?” I asked. My thoughts darted to all that jewelry Dess had been carrying.
But what were the chances she was a thief who’d broken into a home, found a vicious massacre there, and decided to continue with her robbery like it was nothing? And why would the client be so worked up about some pieces of jewelry anyway? It’d been expensive stuff, sure, but he’d placed more money in escrow for the job than the whole lot would have come close to being worth.
“That isn’t your business,” the client said. “What matters is that it’s gone, and you’re the only people who’ve left the house in the timeframe.”
Jackass. How did he expect us to help him if he wouldn’t even explain what the problem was?
I let my voice get clipped. “We deliver expertly orchestrated chaos. Our motto doesn’t lie. Your instructions were to kill everyone inside the place, and I guarantee that the inside of that house was a chaotic bloodbath when the crew was finished. Nobody escaped. Those were the terms, and they were met to anyone’s satisfaction. And now you’re accusing us of stealing?”
The man hesitated. “I’m not accusing your team of anything. But something was taken from that house, and we will be doing a close investigation to determine who was responsible. If we find that the Chaos Crew interfered in any way that was not outlined in the contract, there will be severe consequences. For the sake of your crew, I hope that you have nothing to do with this. We aren’t playing Candy Land here.”
I had a snarky remark at the tip of my tongue, but he ended the call before I had a chance to launch it.
I looked down at my phone, my forehead furrowing. We hadn’t taken anything from the mansion. Hell, we hadn’t even touched anything in the place other than our bullets and blades severing all those bodies—and me patting them down for weapons and phones after. As always, we’d followed each clause in the contract, and we’d completed the task with no hitches. Julius wouldn’t tolerate anything less.
Well, there’d been almost no hitches. What could we call Dess?
