Author: Roni Loren

He nodded. “Yeah, I saw that. Not sure what a hooker could do to warrant a twenty-five-thousand-dollar fee. No lay is that good.”

Reid gave him a humorless smile. “Celia LeBreck used to work in the high-end strip clubs. Not until after she had her second child did she start turning tricks on the street. Maybe she still had connections to someone she met in her glory days.” He pointed at the photocopies he’d made of Celia’s appointment book. “This J. Kennedy person listed on the last day. He’s in there a number of times before that, but only for a thousand bucks at a time.”

Will’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe she had something on him and was upping the ante.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Reid said, nodding. “And maybe he didn’t want to pay up.”

“This definitely throws suspicion away from your client. I never did believe that kid was the guy, but I don’t know if this is enough to get you an appeal.” The detective stared at the copies again, rubbing his chin. “Unless we can figure out her code and actually get some solid suspects. Every name in here is a fake one.”

Reid sank back in the booth and sighed. “Yeah. J. Kennedy, C. Eastwood, S. Poitier, A. Lincoln. All celebrities or historical figures. Smart lady—protecting her ass and her clients.”

The waitress stopped by and refilled Will’s coffee cup. He dumped a few packets of sugar in and stirred, the contemplative look crossing his face again. “My guess would be that she didn’t pick the names randomly. If this was her way of keeping people straight, she probably had some reason to assign each name. Like Sidney Poitier probably isn’t a young white guy.”

Reid nodded. “Right. And she may have let clients pick their own code names as well.”

“Was Kelsey any help with who the names belonged to?” he asked, sipping his coffee.

Reid shifted in the booth. “Well, I haven’t exactly been able to talk to her about it.”

Will nailed him with shrewd eyes. “You have her evidence, but haven’t talked to her? How’s that work, Counselor?”

Reid cleared his throat. “Um, well, I sort of had the opportunity to get this from Kelsey’s apartment… without consent.”

Will titled his head back as if he were going to shout at the heavens. “Jamison, what the fuck? I know this case has eaten at you, but you’re breaking and entering now?”

“No, no, nothing like that. I got ahold of a key from the other daughter. She just didn’t know my intentions.”

He groaned. “Still makes the evidence inadmissible.”

“Unless Kelsey agrees to give it to me, which I think she would do—if I could find her.”

“You don’t know where she is?”

He rubbed his eyes, the all-nighter starting to catch up with him. “She’s kind of disappeared. She called her sister last night and then never showed up to meet her.”

His pissed-off expression switched to concern. “Uh-oh. You think something’s wrong?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure. Kelsey doesn’t have the best track record. She’s got a drug history and from what I gather, a habit of being flighty.”

“Well, if she doesn’t show up by the forty-eight-hour mark, her sister needs to report her missing—just to be safe. Although with the overload at the department, I don’t know how much focus it will get.” Will frowned and added even more sugar to his cup, as if the sweetener could make the bitter situation easier to swallow. “That girl was still living at home when all this went down. She’s the only one who may have a shot at identifying some of the people behind these names. Without her and her permission to admit this ledger as evidence, you ain’t got shit.”

Acid burned in his stomach. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

This case had ruined Reid’s reputation and had continued to keep him up at night. There was no way he was going to let such potentially explosive evidence go by the wayside. No, he needed to find Kelsey and find her fast.

Reid’s cell phone vibrated against the table, and he picked it up to check the caller ID. Ah, just who he needed to talk to. He plunked a few bills on the table and slid out of the booth. “Will, I gotta take this. Thanks for your help. I’ll be in touch.”

“No problem.” He lifted his coffee cup in salute. “Hope you find your girl, Counselor.”

A bloodcurdling scream wretched Brynn from the depths of sleep, and she jolted upright, nearly hurling herself off her living room couch. She glanced around frantically, her chest heaving with choppy breaths, but found nothing amiss in her sunlit living room.

She sank back against the arm of the couch and put her hand to her sweat-slicked neck, the rawness in her throat confirming where the scream came from. “Dammit.”

She hadn’t had a nightmare in over a month and had dared to hope she was past them. But the blanket twisted around her legs and her pounding heart confirmed otherwise. She rubbed her eyes with her hands, the familiar images from the awful dream seeping through now that her mind was fully awake.

Unwanted hands. Being trapped. Darkness. Flashes of the always-faceless rapist now mixing with the image of the man who’d attacked her in Kelsey’s stairwell.

She released a groan of frustration and threw the blanket off her. “I am so sick of this shit.”

She wanted to holler the words, throw something through the sunny window, shake her fists at the fates. But she knew none of it would do any good. And right now, she didn’t have time to bellyache about her own problems.

She glanced at the clock on her DVD player. Right past noon. She’d stayed up all night, calling Kelsey’s friends, the clubs she’d worked at in the past, hospitals, and even put in a message with her police contact. But so far, she didn’t have squat and was at a loss as to what her next step should be.

Pound the pavement to talk to people in person? Report her missing?

She shook her head. Part of her wished she could just shrug the whole thing off and chalk it up to Kelsey being irresponsible. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was really wrong. Why wouldn’t Kels have called her or left a note, something? She’d sounded really freaked out on the phone. Was she using again? Was that what this was about? She hoped to God that wasn’t the case. Last time her sister had gone on a bender she’d nearly killed herself.

The memory clenched Brynn’s chest in a vise grip. Kelsey was the only family she had left. If she lost her…

She gave herself a mental shake and took a breath. No. She wouldn’t go there. Would. Not.

She grabbed her cell phone off the coffee table and checked the screen. No messages. With a sigh, she leaned forward to set it back down, but it rang in her hand. The sudden noise made her jump, but she had the phone to her ear in record time.

“Hello?”

“Brynn, it’s me.”

Reid. Even after ten years, he apparently didn’t feel the need to say who it was. Like he knew she’d be able to identify his voice from any other man’s. She could. “Hey.”

“Any word from your sister?”

“No one’s seen her or heard from her. I’m running out of people to call. What about you? Did you find out anything?”

Papers shuffled, like he was turning the page of a notebook. “I talked to someone who’s a member and found out that The Ranch does hire attendants and pays them well. A person gets a bonus of ten grand when he or she completes the intense training program, which apparently involves a few weeks of total immersion in each side of the D/s relationship.”

“Wow, that’s a lot of money.”

“Yeah, no kidding. It could be pretty tempting for someone like Kelsey.”

She tucked her legs beneath her. “So how do I find out if she’s taken a job there?”

He sighed. “That’s the problem. The place is like Fort Knox. The only way you’re going to find out is if you go there yourself and look for her. My friend said he could probably get you in as a guest.”

She swallowed hard. “How would that work?”

“They don’t allow doms to come in as guests, only as full members, so your only option is to go in as a sexual submissive. You would have to be willing to submit to a member.”

Her fingers curled into the twisted blanket on the couch, the material still damp from her sweat-inducing nightmare. A bone-deep shudder went through her. “Reid, I don’t… I can’t… do that.”

The line went quiet, and she wondered if the call had dropped, but then he took a breath. “I could go with you. Save you the stranger part.”

Her throat seemed to close. Not just submit, but submit to Reid? The idea sent her brain and body into a tailspin. Her gaze darted to the picture on her side table—the last one she and her sister had taken with their mom. Before the murder. Before the trial. Anger stirred in her belly.

“Brynn?”

“No,” she bit out, her voice finally returning. “No fucking way.”

He snorted. “Calm down, LeBreck. It was just an idea. If you’d rather hand yourself over to some stranger, I’m sure there will be many at The Ranch happy to oblige.”

She closed her eyes, bile burning the back of her throat. No way would she survive either of his suggestions. “Let me make a few more calls. I’ll let you know if I need your friend’s help.”

“You know where to find me.”

“Why’d I even bother?” Brynn hung up her office phone and rubbed her forehead, a piercing headache hatching behind her eyes. Two days with hardly any sleep, and her body was no longer responding to caffeine.

A light tap on her open door made her lift her gaze. Mel stepped into her office, lines of concern creasing her forehead. “Still no word from your sister?”

Brynn shook her head. “I just keep calling her like all of a sudden she’s going to come to her senses and answer her phone.”

Mel plopped into the chair across from Brynn’s desk. “So what now?”

Brynn sighed, her shoulders sagging. “I have no idea. I’ve talked to everyone I can think of, and I can’t even officially report her missing to the police until tonight.”

“What about Reid’s friend? Have you given any more thought to trying to get into that resort? Sounds like a good lead.”

Her stomach flipped over. “Mel, I don’t know if I could pull that off. I thought I was past all this crap. I did the therapy, took the self-defense classes, but the minute that guy put his hands on me the other night, the panic sucked me in. I was completely useless.”

Mel eyed her for a long moment, and Brynn could almost hear the gears grinding in her friend’s head.

Brynn pursed her lips. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“What if…” Mel said, then waved her hand. “Never mind.”

“Oh, no,” Brynn said, shaking her head. “Just say whatever it is you’re thinking. It’s not like you’ve ever held back before.”

She leaned forward and straightened the papers in Brynn’s outbox, adeptly avoiding eye contact. “I don’t know, it’s just, maybe this is exactly what you need, you know? Exposure therapy.”

Brynn stared at Mel as if her friend had sprouted antlers. “Are you being serious? Exposure therapy?”

She shrugged, but still didn’t raise her eyes.

“Don’t you think turning myself over to some stranger’s sexual demands is a bit of an extreme prescription? I was raped, Mel. It’s not like I’m trying to kick a fear of spiders or something.”

She cringed. “I’m sorry, B. I’m not trying to minimize what you’ve been through. I just wish I could help you get past it. Exposure therapy is brutal, but you know it can be effective.”