Trace straightened. He would recognize those signs of fear and intimidation anywhere. How the hell had he missed it with Alice? Murray hired lots of people straight up, people he kept disconnected from the seedier side of his true profession.

Apparently Alice wasn’t one of them.

“I’m the one who’s sorry, Alice.” He nodded at her and headed for Murray’s office. So many reasons to kill Murray. And soon.

Trace rapped twice on the door and entered.

Murray sat behind his desk facing the window and speaking on the phone. He glanced back as Trace entered, waved him in, and then returned to his call. “No, damn it.” He paused before snarling, “Because the product is arriving early.”

Just inside the door, Trace waited with his head down so that Murray wouldn’t realize how intently he listened. Maybe this would all go quicker than even he had hoped.

“Enough.” Murray jerked his chair around to face his desk. “This isn’t up for debate. Get your money together and be there.” He ended with slamming the phone down on the desktop.

Lifting a brow at the show of temper, Trace asked, “Should I come back?”

“No.” Murray scrubbed his hands over his face in frustration. After a second, he picked the phone back up and, with more care, placed it in the cradle. “Come on in. I need a drink. You want one?”

As usual, Trace refused. “I just finished off a pot of coffee.”

“Late morning?”

“Very.”

“Maybe it was a full moon last night or something.” He sloshed a generous portion of whiskey into a tumbler. “Helene was also running late today.”

Was? “So she’s here now?”

Murray downed the drink and poured another before reseating himself behind the desk. “She called ahead to say she had something important to share with me.” He studied Trace. “You know anything about that?”

Trace took a nonthreatening stance to the side of Murray’s desk. “I have doubts that Helene would share the whole truth, but that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Helene?”

“In part.”

“Huh.” Murray folded his hands over his cumbersome gut. “You’ve got me on pins and needles.”

“Last night, she overstepped in a big way.”

Murray waved that off. “I gave her permission to play with Priscilla.”

Trace locked his back teeth. “I know, I was here.” And he’d make the son-of-a-bitch pay for that. “But I don’t mean with your daughter.” He maintained eye contact with Murray. “She overstepped with me.”

“You?” He huffed. “How so?”

“Helene was at my hotel when I returned last night after our business.”

A frown pulled down Murray’s thick brows. “But what about Priscilla?”

“I have no idea. I tried to find her last night and then again this morning. No luck.”

He sat forward, his forearms on the desk. “You’re saying that Priscilla is missing?”

“Seems so.”

He searched Trace’s face. “And you think Helene did something with her?”

“That, or she scared her off.”

“I suppose that’s possible. Helene can be very…exuberant at times.” Rubbing his goatee, Murray thought about it. His gaze slashed up to Trace in suspicion. “What did you say to Helene when you found her there?”

“I told her to get lost.”

Chiding, Murray said, “Trace. Tsk, tsk. That was unkind of you.”

“You already knew my plans, and they didn’t include secondhand bait from you.”

“Oh-ho! If Helene heard you call her that, she’d castrate you.”

No doubt she’d try. “I wanted a quick shower, a couple of drinks and a woman.”

“Other than my Helene.”

Trace shrugged. “As you just said, she’s yours, and I don’t share.”

“A man after my own heart.” He slapped his hands down onto the desk. “So. After you rejected her, what happened?”

Remembering brought new tension to invade Trace’s muscles. “The bitch drugged me.”

Murray lost his relaxed posture. “Come again?”

“She stabbed me in the ass with a hypodermic. Whatever it was, it left me dopey long enough for her to…”

Sitting forward in anticipation, scowling darkly, Murray demanded, “Don’t keep me in suspense, damn it! For her to do what?”

“She tied me up. She was going to have her jollies regardless of what I had to say about it.”

Murray simmered…and then burst out laughing. “By God, Trace, you sound like one of those little twit virgins I’ve brought to auction!” He slapped his hands onto the desk again. “Worried about your virtue, are you?”

There was no comparing him, a capable, hard-living grown man to a helpless, frightened and fragile girl. But yeah, it had given him a small—very small—taste of how those females probably felt being so helpless.

The difference was that he knew he’d get loose, and he knew he’d make them all pay. The women whose lives Murray had ruined never had that satisfaction.

Expression and mood dark, Trace said, “You like control, Murray. I like control. Anything else is out of the question.”

“True, true.”

It wasn’t exactly accurate, but close enough. Trace said silkily, “If she wasn’t yours, I would have killed Helene for what she tried to do.”