Chapter Five

Perrie

 

It didn’t happen often, but life was kind to me. My regular sitter somehow was free, apparently under the assumption she’d be minding Lola as normal tonight anyway.

I’d obviously forgotten to cancel her after I’d been arrested and ‘quit.’

I didn’t want to say it was a coincidence, but it was definitely a nice surprise.

The butterflies that fluttered through my stomach weren’t unlike the ones from earlier. They were rampant and heavy, wild and sickly, making the nerves that came with them feel like they were ten times worse than they were.

How was I going to get away with this without a disguise? I hadn’t had time to come up with one. I wasn’t exactly unrecognizable. There were places in this city I wasn’t allowed to go, places I was banned from because of what my job was.

Had been.

What it had been.

I wasn’t that person anymore. With any luck, I never would have to be again.

Those were points I’d have to bring up with Adrian when I saw him. How was I supposed to pretend to be someone I wasn’t? How would he get me into these places I’d been banned from?

I sighed heavily as I walked into the police station. Luce was gone, and after quickly showing my new ID card to the guy behind the counter, I punched in the code for the door and slipped through.

I was so out of place here. Everyone around me was wearing suits or uniforms, and here I was, tentatively making my way through the building wearing jeans, a fancy shirt, and heels. All I was told was to show up looking like I was meant to be in a casino.

Awkward signs directed me to the briefing room I was supposed to be in.

All right, I asked for help. I had assumed Adrian or somebody would meet me and show me where to go, but I’d been wrong.

He was, however, waiting outside the briefing room for me.

“Feeling okay?” he asked, his blue-green eyes searching mine as I stopped in front of him.

“Uh, not really.”

“Great—you have to say a few words tonight on how to spot a hooker.”

“Sounds like a weird, slumber party game,” I muttered.

He laughed, running his hand through his hair. “You’re not wrong. Do you think you can do that?”

Not. At. All.

“If I really have to. Will they know who I am?” I fidgeted on the spot.

“Well…” He hesitated. “We used some artistic license. As far as they’re concerned, you’re a former prostitute who has agreed to help us clean up the city’s tourist hotspots.”

“Technically speaking, that’s correct.”

“There you go, then. Let’s get started.” He shoved open the door to the briefing room before I had a chance to eke out my disagreement with this entire situation. “Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to Perrie. She’s a former sex worker who has graciously dedicated her evenings to us to help us identify our targets.”

Adrian shot me a look that told me to move my ass, so I shuffled into the room. At least a dozen pairs of eyes pinned themselves on me, and I froze halfway to where Adrian was standing.

Thankfully, Adrian obviously recognized this, because he walked toward me and touched a hand to my upper back.

“Perrie will be undercover with me every night. She’ll be working both as an insider and as a potential client for male prostitutes, since we’re short on female associates for this case.”

I was?

“Her expertise will be available to us all, and she’s going to give us all a few insider tips on the things we should be looking out for when identifying our targets.” Adrian tapped a finger against my shoulderblade, and it took all my strength not to turn to him and look at him as if he’d lost his mind.

What the hell? I didn’t agree to this.

It was instinctual. I couldn’t have a single person identify a hooker from a goddamn virgin without a gut feeling, and now I had to tell twelve guys how to do just that?

Fuck. My. Life.

With a cactus.

There was no gentle way to handle this.

“Hi.” The word left me shakily and uncertainly. “So, I guess it might seem obvious, but really pay attention to the way couples interact with each other. If they aren’t a genuine couple, they’ll either have an air of awkwardness about them or they’ll be overly touchy-feely. If you’re looking for someone before she finds a client, keep a special eye out on single women who don’t talk to anyone or seem to have any friends around them. The bar is a good place to start and monitor that. It’s a good spot to keep an eye on other people and pick out potential clients. It’s also a perfect meeting place because you can always find your client there.”

I glanced over at Adrian.

He nodded. “Right. Focus on the bar and anyone who doesn’t have interactions with friends or anyone around them. Perrie will be with me at the Roma Hotel. Because of this, we’ll probably make the first arrest, then we’ll make our way around to everyone else. Chief is pissed, so be extra vigilant and let’s get a good result tonight. Let’s go.”

 

***

 

“Are you all right?” Adrian looked over the car at me. “You haven’t said a word since we left the station.”

I sighed, leaning my head right back on the seat. “This feels…wrong, that’s all.”

“Because you’re effectively giving me a direct line to your friends?”

“They’re not my friends,” I said, looking out of the window despite his numerous glances my way. “They’re people I understand.”

“I get that.”

“No, you don’t. I don’t think you get it at all.”

“Then help me to.” He shrugged a shoulder.

“Why? Do you expect me to believe that you’ll suddenly understand and turn this car around? Because you know as well as I do that you won’t.”

“This is my job.”

“And you’re stopping people from doing theirs.”

“Then I’ll correct myself: This is my legal job.”

Whatever. “If you stopped for a second to think about the fact that probably fifty percent of the women you arrest aren’t doing it because they want to, then you might view what you’re doing a little differently.”

“All due respect, Perrie, it doesn’t matter to the law if they want to do it or not. They are. They’re making the decision to work illegally against the county laws. It’s not like prostitution isn’t legal in other counties in Nevada.”

“That might be so, but there isn’t the work there compared to here. If you have a child or a family to support, you’re gonna go where the work is.”

“I suggest trying Walmart or somewhere like that.”

I snapped my head around to look at him. “Not everyone in this industry has a choice. If you think they’re all selling themselves for fun on a Saturday night, you’re sorely mistaken.”

“Then tell me more.” His knuckles whitened as he gripped the steering wheel. “Explain to me why they’re doing it.”

“So you can arrest them anyway?”

“No, because maybe there’s another problem in the city we’re not aware of. Are there trafficking rings working under this guise that we don’t know about? Are they secretly porn stars recruiting unwitting men? Is there a problem we can solve? Get to the bottom of it?” He shot me a glance once again. “Are they like you and is there anything we can do, any charities or safe places we can send them instead?”

“Gee,” I said dryly, “You almost sound as though you’ll let them go if they cry like I did. Which would be ridiculous, because I know you have a quota of whores to collect like little trophies, so don’t pretend like you actually care about it.”

His jaw twitched, and the skin over his knuckles went completely right. “Don’t assume I don’t care. I asked for this job, not because I’m a spiteful asshole who wants to deny people the opportunity to support their families, but because I want to help them.”

“Throwing people in jail doesn’t help them. It costs them the money you won’t let them earn.”

“This conversation is going nowhere. You can believe what you want to believe, but us arguing like a pair of teenagers isn’t going to help us do what we’re here to do.”

“I don’t want to be here. I only am because you blackmailed me.”

“That wasn’t blackmail.”

“For an officer of the law, you have a skewed idea of what that is. You told me I had two choices: work with you or be arrested by you. That’s blackmail.”

“You seem real certain you know the ins and outs of that law.”

“I’m a Fox,” I said dryly. “I’ve probably seen more blackmail than you have, and I haven’t spoken to my family in seven years.”

He raised an eyebrow at that. Thankfully, he didn’t push it. “Perrie, us fighting isn’t going to make this work. The quicker we get our quota and we can do this without you, the quicker you can go back to your life and get a proper job.”

“You assume I haven’t been trying? Like I said, not all of us want to sell our bodies.”

“But you do.”

“Doing and wanting are different things. Sometimes I let my kid eat cookies for breakfast. Doesn’t mean I want to let her.”

His lips twitched as we pulled into the hotel valet area. “If we can’t get along, our cover is blown. To convince people we’re a couple, we have to pretend to like each other at the very least.”

“But I don’t like you, and I don’t want to like you.”

“I’m not that bad once you get to know me.”

I blinked at him. “I would rather get to know a scorpion poised to kill me than get to know you.”

For some reason, that made him laugh. A deep, husky laugh that sent shivers up my arms, making the hairs stand on end.

“God. You’re so adorable.” He got out of the car before I could process his words. “Yes, thank you,” I heard him say to the valet as I got out and shut the door.

Adrian held his arm out for me.

I stared at it and then him.

“Take my arm,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

The eyes of the valet hovering on us questioningly made me move. I slipped my hand into the crook of his elbow, standing as close to him as I could bear.

Which wasn’t very close. Anyone watching us would think—

Never mind.

Adrian closed the few inches between us and leaned his head down as we walked into the air-conditioned lobby of the hotel. “Nobody here knows who we are,” he whispered, his mouth almost touching my ear. “Swallow your annoyance for a damn hour and pretend, would you?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Tough shit.” He held his arm closer to his side, trapping my hand against him. “You agreed to this, regardless of how you think I made you do it. The other option is always available to you.”

“You’re a bastard.”

“Only when I’m dealing with a stubborn, insufferable woman.”

“Thank you. I take great pleasure in knowing I’m pissing you off.”

He laughed again. “Keep that pleasure for the next hour and people might believe that you’re my girlfriend.”

“Idiots,” I muttered, glancing around as we entered the casino.

My eyes took a moment to adjust to the smoky, stale air that enveloped us only a few steps inside the vast area. I coughed as the thickness jolted me for a moment. Adrian rested his hand over mine on his arm and guided us away from the worst area, over to where the bar was surrounded by clearer air.

“Worst part of this job—going home smelling like an ashtray,” he said under his breath.

I wasn’t going to argue it. But if that was the worst part of his job… “I’d say getting a load full of semen on your face beats that.”

He froze.

I froze.

Whoops.

I didn’t mean to say that.

He blinked his bright eyes at me for a moment before he smirked. He let my arm go, only to wrap his around my back and grip the edge of the bar, trapping me right against him. “Think about this on the bright side,” he said into my ear. “The worst part of your job tonight is that you’ll go home smelling like an ashtray.”

“Stop talking sense.” My face dipped down, my head tilting toward his. “It doesn’t suit you.”

He laughed, lifting his head and flagging the bartender. “One Budweiser and a virgin strawberry margarita, please.”

She nodded. “You got it.”

I leaned back, which unfortunately was onto his arm, and looked at him. “You remembered what I drink.”

He winked. “Mine is the same.”

“Same what? A margarita in beer bottle?

“No. Non-alcoholic.”

“But you just—”

He pressed a finger to my lips and bent down once again. “The bar workers all know us. If I ask for a beer, they know to bring me a non-alcoholic one.”

“So, the one you had when you saved my ass from the asshole tender…”

He nodded, pulling back. “It’s also why he shut up pretty quick.”

Our drinks were brought over. Adrian paid, then grabbed a bar stool for me to sit on. I perched on the edge of it as he came and stood behind me, coming in close and resting one arm along the bar between my glass and me.

My spine straightened.

“Relax,” he murmured in my ear. “I need you to be able to see the casino floor. I need people to think we’re together. I promise I won’t touch you inappropriately.”

Not that it would be a hardship.

Wait. No. I wasn’t thinking about that, not even with his hard chest pressed against my back and his breath fluttering across my cheek.

I was here under duress, potentially putting someone through the same, distressing emotions I went through the other night. I wasn’t here to think about the hot cop behind me.

I took a sip of my drink and cast my gaze out over the casino, like I had so many times before. Except this time I wasn’t looking for someone looking for me. I was looking for someone trying to avoid the man behind me.

I hoped whoever I was looking for was smarter than I was. That they could sense they were being watched or were smoother than many I knew.

The saddest part was the people we were more likely to arrest were the new girls. The ones who were desperate enough to skip from stripping to sex just to pay their way.

The people the LVPD were really interested in were smart enough to not get found out. Like I had been until my own frustration had trapped me.

The guilt crept through me like poison. I already recognized one woman by the blackjack table. In a casino as busy as this one was, there would be several more.

A quiet half an hour and the emptying of my sadly non-alcoholic drink passed before I saw it.

The woman in her thirties, draping herself over a gentleman at the poker table. She tickled her fingers over his shoulder, pushing herself against him as she whispered in his ear. He laughed, wrapping an arm around her. His hand crept across her thigh and tugged up her dress.

Nobody noticed—of course they didn’t. They didn’t care. They didn’t need to notice.

But I did.

I didn’t know who either of them were. Maybe she was just a mistress. Maybe our paths had never crossed. Maybe she’d even come with him.

Those things all made it easier.

I turned into Adrian and with my eyes down, said, “Poker table. Blue dress. Black hair. The guy with the light blue shirt.”

“You sure?” came his gruff reply.

I nodded. My throat was swollen, the lump there too thick to speak past. And as he pulled out his phone, I felt nothing but the acute sense of betrayal on her behalf.

What if she had a child?

What if she had an ill mother?

What if, what if, what if?

“Let’s go.” Adrian pushed away from the bar and pulled me up.

I glanced at the table. “They’re still there.”

“You want to watch them be arrested in about twenty seconds?” He flattened his hand on the small of my back, holding me against his hard body.

I shook my head. No. I didn’t. Not at all.

“Then let’s go.”

Halfway out of the casino, with his arm still around my waist, I peered back across the room, just in time to see the guy swing for an officer and get himself cuffed for his effort.