Panama City Beach, Florida. Goldi’s Box Strip Club
Nothing stank quite like the odor of stale fucking.
It was a stench Tony Santoro knew well, unfortunately—like musky, dried-out fish parts or the inside of an oyster shucker’s worn boot. He’d bet ten bucks some guy sitting at this small, round, chipped table had been jerked off underneath it as a happy ending to a lap dance. Wonder what something like that costs in a joint like this? Probably not much. With its exposed wiring, stained floors, and rancid smells—a nauseating purée of toxic perfumes and regurgitated alcohol—Goldi’s Box ranked among the lowest of dives. Perfect for peddling drugs.
Which the people here did.
Tony supposed his job of fighting to make the world a safer, drug-free place made him somewhat of an upstanding guy, but still… He could think of a hundred better ways to spend a Thursday night than working undercover in this shithole.
Music throbbed, making his temples do the same, and a slow-rotating disco ball overhead lasered the occasional beam of light at his sunglasses. Lights onstage, where Candy Pudding—topless but not yet bottomless—sinuously humped the stripper pole, were a muted pink. Lights out here, where the spectators sat, were nonexistent. Made observing the crowd from behind his shades a bitch, but looking wherever the hell he wanted to without anyone knowing it was essential to the job.
Picking up his drink, he tipped the beer so it touched his lips but didn’t go further. He scanned the crowd over the rim of the glass.
Two tables over, some pervert had his hand down his pants.
Three tables over and two rows back, a guy was working his hand up a cocktail waitress’s slinky miniskirt.
Ringside, a rare-in-this-joint businessman type was reaching for his rear pocket, fumbling more cash out of his wallet while Candy Pudding—who was now without benefit of below-the-waist attire—assumed a rear-facing, ankle-grab position directly in front of him, displaying the almighty Grand Canyon of all she had to offer.
Tony took a real sip of beer now. Couldn’t be helped. He was very much not enjoying the taste that’d just backed up into his mouth.
The black backstage curtain crept open, grabbing his attention. His partner, Nicole, peeked out at him. She was playing the part of a stripper tonight, while he was in the role of the smarmy boyfriend who was willing to peddle his girlfriend’s ass for his own benefit. In that capacity, he’d brought Nicole to Goldi’s Box to audition late yesterday morning, when the light of day made this place look even more like a sad, bombed-out hovel.
Nicole was hired at a glance. No dancing required. The excuse she’d planned for why she couldn’t take off her clothes that morning likewise unnecessary. Probably Jay-Jay, the manager, figured Nicole could clomp around onstage like a woman on the German shot put team and it wouldn’t matter.
Because DEA Special Agent Nicole O’Dwyer was staggeringly beautiful.
She was Latina, actually—the Irish last name came from her husband—with exotically shaped eyes, long, flowing, caramel-colored hair, and smooth, lustrous, light brown skin.
And why wasn’t such a stunning woman lighting up the marquee at a high-end gentlemen’s club, the manager wanted to know. Glad you asked, Jay-Jay. Those places frown on drugs, see, and Nicole has a bit of a, shall we say, nose addiction. If you want her, supplying her is part of the gig. She doesn’t work without it.
Tony generally used a little more of the verbal soft shoe when negotiating with drug dealers—an inherently skittish breed—but his instincts had proven sound with Jay-Jay. The man was so eager to bag Nicole as a headliner he didn’t even pretend to have a no-drug policy. That’s gonna come back to bite you in the ass, friend, seeing as you really just brokered a deal with a DEA agent.
“She can start tomorrow night,” Jay-Jay had said, “and my bartender, Dubner, will set her up.”
Jim-fucking-dandy. One-night ops were Tony’s favorites.
Dubner was small potatoes, a peon dealer for the big fish drug lord Tony and Nicole were actually after. But wasn’t it amazing what kinds of information spilled out of a lowlife’s mouth when he found himself on the hook for possession with intent to sell and a long prison term stretching out in front of him? A damned miracle, that’s what it was.
The douchenard just needed to show.
Soon after Tony had sat his ass down at this fuck-stinking table, Dubner scuttled up in a fog of eye-watering BO and assured him that the merchandise was on the way. Then the dickwad disappeared. Tony had been forced to sit through three stripper acts, and now Nicole was raising her brows at him from backstage. She was up next and obviously wanted to know what the deal was. The plan had been to have the bad guys cuffed and headed for the hoosegow before her turn came up.
So, shit, he didn’t know what to tell her. Not with Dubner AWOL.
Tony rubbed a hand over his chin.
In their pre-mission briefing, he and Nicole had worked out a variety of codes to communicate with each other, since they couldn’t be miked up or wear earpieces. Real earpieces—not TV ones—had wires attached to them, which didn’t fly for undercover work. A hand being rubbed over the chin meant the deal is stalled, but not dead.
Nicole blew out her cheeks. Yeah, a difficult decision loomed in front of her now: should she go onstage so she wouldn’t blow her cover?
And if she didn’t go onstage, would it blow her cover? At the audition, they told Jay-Jay cocaine was a very necessary part of Nicole’s contract, but… Hell, they hadn’t specifically said that absolutely no way would she go onstage without first snorting a noseful of feel-good. Without that groundwork laid, it probably would be suspicious if she didn’t go on. So, yeah, her cover would be blown, and then this drug deal wouldn’t go down…if it was still happening.
The DJ announced her.
Tony quickly combed the room but still no Dubner. Shit. He flicked his fingers up from the top of the table. It was the only way he could think of to shrug at Nicole. I don’t know. Your call.
A small grimace flashed across her face. But Nicole was tough and ballsy, and after a moment, she got herself under control, arranging a sensual smile on her face as she strutted out from behind the curtain. She was dressed in a yellow sequined bikini that looked dynamite wrapped around a body that was sleek and defined almost to the point of absurd. Nicole held black belts in both tae kwon do and aikido, and in her current getup, her athleticism really showed.
A strange, stunned burp of silence rolled over the crowd. No way had the men in this low-rent dive ever seen a woman of Nicole’s quality before, and the idea that they were about to see her naked made them—
Holy shit! The uproar of applause and shouts that followed the silence-burp jerked Tony in his seat. People in Tallahassee could probably hear these guys going nuts.
Nicole widened her smile, as if loving the reception. But…
The muscles in Tony’s stomach tightened. Was she really going to be fine with this? He scanned the room again, absently fingering the scar on his forearm. Damn you, Dubner.
Nicole grabbed the stripper pole and flung her hair behind her. She arched her spine and at the same time stuck out her booty, creating a sexy arc with her body.
Another roar took the roof off, real deafening shit—Jay-Jay was probably peeing himself—and while every man in the joint was ogling Nicole’s ass, Tony zeroed in on the scar streaked along the left side of her waist.
She’d been grazed by a bullet there, back when she was Special Agent Nicole Gamboa. Back when Tony was working deep undercover as an enforcer for scuzzy drug lord Tavo Jiménez out in San Diego. In that role—and for a lot of complicated reasons, most of which came down to Tony trying to save Nicole’s life—Tony had shot her in an alley.
Yeah, the scar on Nicole’s waist was his fault.
It had to be one of the galaxy’s weirdest cosmic loops that the agent Tony shot would transfer from San Diego to his own home office in Panama City within the same year and then be partnered with him. Turned out there were no hard feelings, and they ended up being a good fit, doing local undercover work together for several months now.
They’d never played roles like this, though, and while Nicole danced onstage, continually casting covert glances at him from beneath her lashes, searching for answers he didn’t have, he got the sinking feeling that he was supposed to be doing more than he was.
Finally, Dubner, the ass-pucker, appeared near the bar.
Tony made a snarl-mouth, letting the man know just how pissed he was. No acting required.
Dubner rushed over. “Sorry, man.” He shouted at Tony to be heard over the racket. “I don’t have anything for you tonight. Tomorrow—”
“What?!” Tony growled.
“—night for sure.”
Tony balled his fist into a brutal knot. He had every intention of decking Dubner—a totally unnecessary part of the job, but satisfying all the same—but the dickhead scurried off before Tony got the chance.
Nicole obviously saw the convo go down, and from the stage, she gave Tony a long, sensual gaze, playing her role while actually asking, What’s up?
Tony was still pretty much in the ballpark of beats the shit out of me. This op wasn’t dead in the water yet. Dubner had said tomorrow night for sure. He and Nicole were still in the running to collar their big fish…but it would require Nicole maintaining her role as a stripper. If Tony signaled her to stop, the op was over.
Cursing under his breath, Tony offered his partner another hand-shrug.
The skin across Nicole’s cheekbones tautened slightly. After a little more dancing, she couldn’t delay any longer. She reached behind her to unclasp her top.
The tight muscles in Tony’s stomach tugged more sharply. How bad was this going to be, exactly?
Nicole flung her top off.
A flash-fire lit up the back of Tony’s neck as the shouts of the crowd pegged the decibel meter. Among the frenzied shadow of spectators, it looked like a hundred hands shot up in the air, sweaty fingers clutching various denominations of money, vying for Nicole’s notice. A bunch of the dickwads surged toward the stage, and the bouncers muscled forward belligerently.
With his insides tangling up, Tony looked at his partner’s breasts. They didn’t strike him as sexy—even though they were—but, rather, the bare flesh was a demonstration of her vulnerability.
The bottom of Tony’s esophagus dunked in bile. What the hell was he doing, just sitting here letting Nicole strip naked? He grabbed for his beer but moved too aggressively and sent the glass flying off the table. It bounced across the floor and whacked some guy in the ankle. Dude couldn’t have cared less.
Nicole slid her thumbs under the straps of her thong, preparing to do the full monty, and the strangest, most unwelcome thought came to Tony.
Had Nicole dyed her pubes blond?
It was required of all the strippers who worked here—to go along with this club being called Goldi’s Box. Haha, get it? Yeah, well, the double meaning wasn’t exactly subtle. Had Nicole figured the op would go this far and prepped for it?
Was it going to go this far?
Tension constricted the muscles between Tony’s shoulder blades. The familiar odor of stale fucking assaulted his nostrils again, and this time it hurled him back to his childhood, landing him on his living room couch—where the odor had been the strongest—at about the age of ten. His mother sauntered by on the arm of a faceless man, smiling widely at the guy. But even though her smile was big, it wasn’t like the smiles she gave Tony, the ones that reached her eyes and lit them up. Only years later had Tony figured out that his mother didn’t like those men. She didn’t want to do what she did…and ten-year-old Tony had just sat on the couch and let her do it.
And now the same dead look was entering Nicole’s eyes. She was about to do something she didn’t want to do, and he was just sitting on his ass.
She started to tug her bottoms down, and—
Tony slammed out of his chair and rushed the stage.
A bouncer who could’ve been the progeny of Ronda Rousey and Arnold Schwarzenegger charged him.
Tony snarled, “I’m her boyfriend, you fuck,” and rammed his shoulder into the guy’s chest with his full body weight behind it. The man stumbled back far enough for Tony to reach Nicole. He grabbed his partner by the arm, and, to a loud chorus of boos, propelled her off the stage. Heading into the dressing room, they nearly plowed into the night’s first act, Pearl Necklace.
The naked woman yelped and lurched aside.
The second act, Daisy Chain, was smoothing on lip gloss in the mirror. Tony saw her eyes widen in the reflection at his sudden appearance in this Dancers Only area.
“Put your clothes on,” Tony barked at Nicole, playing the role of alpha-hole boyfriend, but also…also…feeling desperate and weird and tangled and fevered.
Lounging in a nearby chair, Candy Pudding dragged on a cig and inspected his zipper.
Nicole hurried into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
Jay-Jay arrived, his face flushed. “Dammit, man, you are outta here. Boyfriends aren’t allowed at performances if they can’t handle other men seeing their old ladies buck-assed.” He jabbed a warning finger at Tony. “For the second show, you’re fucking going to—”
“There won’t be a second show.” Tony slapped aside Jay-Jay’s offending finger and went toe to toe with the manager. “You didn’t keep to our bargain. So you can go blow yourself.” He again grabbed Nicole, now fully clothed, and hustled her out the rear employee exit.
“What are you doing?” she hissed once they were out of earshot. “We can’t leave before the deal goes down.”
He started across the parking lot in long, ground-eating strides, towing Nicole with him. “There is no deal. Not tonight.”
“What?” She tugged against his hold. “Wait, when did you find out?” As they reached his car, she wrenched her arm free. “Was it when Dubner talked to you?” she snapped. “Mierda, you could’ve saved me from exposing my tits to a bunch of beer-guzzling pendejos, and you didn’t? Why the hell…? Or maybe”—her tone changed, grinding out like an over-cranked car engine—“you didn’t want to miss the chance to take a gander yourself.” She glared at him like he’d just betrayed her in the worst way possible.
He had. But not in the way she thought. He ripped off his shades so he could give her a good, hard glare back.
After a long moment, she turned her head aside and gazed across the parking lot. “I’m sorry,” she said, a raw crack fissuring through her voice. “That was knee-jerk. Stuff from my past with other men.”
He jammed his sunglasses into his shirt pocket, his esophagus burning. “I’m sorry too. Dubner said the deal was going down tomorrow night, so I was trying to keep the op on point. I had no idea how bad…how awful it was going to be for you up there.” Although he should have known, damn him. That dead look had started coming into her eyes the moment she stepped on stage.
Jay-Jay materialized in the rear doorway of the club and eyeballed them. The last thing Tony needed was for that prick to come over and try to talk Nicole into the second show.
“Let’s get out of here.” He put Nicole in his car and slammed his own door getting inside. He took off, smoking half the rubber off his tires as he peeled out of the parking lot and aimed for the interstate, shifting gears with forceful jerks.
The muscly growl of his Dodge Challenger’s engine was the only thing between him and his partner for a long while. He took a corner too fast, and Nicole’s shoulder bumped into the passenger side door.
“Tonight wasn’t your fault,” she finally said. Her attention was aimed out her window. “You left the choice up to me, and I made the call. I just…misjudged myself.”
He unwrapped his fingers from the steering wheel, then re-gripped it. Her voice sounded so small.
“I’d like to go home.”
“Yeah. Of course. I’ll drive you to your apartment right—”
“No,” she clarified. “Home home.”
He glanced at her. That would be all the way to Millington, Tennessee, where her husband lived. Nicole was married to a Navy flyboy who was doing a tour at the Bureau of Personnel in Millington, but since Millington wasn’t exactly a hotbed of drug activity, Nicole had decided to work out of the Panama City office. She hopped a three-hour flight home to see her hubby, Eric, every weekend.
“If you could take me to the airport, I can—”
“I’ll drive you,” he cut in. It was kind of a strange, brotherly urge of his to see her safely into her husband’s hands before he left her.
She didn’t argue.
By car, the trip from Panama City to Millington took eight hours. He made it in about five and a half. He might have exceeded the maximum rate of allowable speed once or twice.
For the whole trip, Nicole stared out the window. She never talked; she didn’t sleep, eat, drink, or ask to pee.
He parked in front of an expansive, one-story brick house at six o’clock in the morning. He and Nicole climbed out and started up the flagstone walk.
About halfway up, the front door swung open, revealing a tall, black-haired man in a khaki uniform. He had a body like a middleweight boxer’s and carried himself with a great deal of confidence. It figured a woman of Nicole’s looks would have an attractive husband. And Eric was that, by a long shot.
“Nicole,” Eric called out, “what are you doing home a day early?”
Tony and Nicole trudged up the three steps to the front porch.
Tony held out his hand. “I’m Tony Santoro, Nicole’s partner. Good to finally meet you.”
Nicole’s husband shook. “Eric O’Dwyer.” Gold aviator wings sat on the left side of his chest, nametag and commendation ribbons on the right, and lieutenant commander insignias were pinned to the lapels of his shirt.
“We did a job last night that…” Tony hesitated, “…went a little sideways.”
Eric’s eyebrows lowered. He gave his wife a thorough inspection from beneath them. “Everyone all right?”
Tony wasn’t sure he had a pinpoint accurate answer for the question. Physically? Yeah. Otherwise…
I just…misjudged myself.
Tony cleared his throat. “Sort of.”
Eric gave him a what the hell does that mean? look.
“No,” Nicole inserted. “I’m messed up in the head.” She gazed at her husband with red-rimmed eyes. “It was like Colombia all over again.”
“What?!” Eric blasted.
“Not as bad as all the sex stuff you and I did, but…just…”
Tony quick-glanced between the two of them. Sex stuff?
Nicole stuck a fist to her nose and tears spilled over her lashes. “…humiliating.”
Eric frowned.
Tony frowned.
Nicole never cried.
Eric gently clasped his wife’s shoulders. “Hey—”
She threw her arms around his neck. Her hair, Tony saw, still had glitter in it. “I want to have a baby, Eric.”
Tony somehow kept his facial muscles immobile. Say what?
“Honey…” Eric closed his eyes. “You shouldn’t make a big decision when you’re upset.”
“You’ve been wanting to have a baby, and…and…”
Eric rubbed her back. “Nicole…”
She sniffed wetly. “I’m ready. To ride a desk, or even quit my job. I’m sick of the filth. And I miss you. So we’re going to make a baby. Right now.”
Eric exhaled then his mouth slanted. “Right now I have to go to work.”
“Well, you’re going to be late.” She angled out of Eric’s hug and set a hand on his chest, pushing him back into the house. “What I’m wearing under my jeans and T-shirt will motivate you.”
A lazy interest flickered through Eric’s eyes. The man was wavering. No surprise there. He was clearly very much in love-lust with his wife.
Nicole turned toward Tony. “Thank you for driving me home. You’ve been a great partner, and… I thought about it on the drive here. Last night you saved me from the worst of the op. I didn’t end up dropping my drawers, and that…means a lot to me.” She smiled faintly. “I’m sorry to bail on you. I just…I need to be done, Tony.”
He didn’t say anything. His heart sank, but he nodded once.
She waved at him then closed the door.
He heard murmuring, then a, “Hey!” followed by a deep laugh and the beginning of other sounds he shouldn’t listen to.
He left.
During the long drive home, he had plenty of time to crawl around inside his head and think. About Nicole: How, the first time he met her at the Panama City office, she seemed wary and sensitive about her looks, like she was all too used to the kind of male hysteria she’d triggered at Goldi’s Box last night—and hated it. The last woman in the world who needed more of that crap. Hell, what woman needed that kind of crap?
Gunning down the exit ramp for his neighborhood, he drove too fast past a Burger King, a fitness center, a Piggly Wiggly. Nicole had tried to absolve him of the part he’d played—Tonight wasn’t your fault. You left the choice up to me, and I made the call—but he wasn’t accepting it. He’d been the one with the big-picture view of the op. Nicole didn’t know about the drug deal not going down when she made the decision to take off her top.
While he’d just sat there and let her.
Last night you saved me from the worst of the op. I didn’t end up dropping my drawers, and that means a lot to me.
Yeah? His answer: big fucking deal. He finally got off his ass and did something. It’d been too little, too late, and guess what? He’d still had every intention of putting Nicole back onstage the next night in order to catch their drug lord. Maybe Nicole should know that before she gave him any more medals for being a good partner.
He wasn’t. He was a shit, all twisted up on the inside, failing to see things that should have been obvious.
His hands closed into fists around the steering wheel. He blew a red light, fishtailed into a U-turn then drove to the DEA field office, where he quit. When asked why, Tony copycatted Nicole. I’m done with the filth. But the truth was, how could he return to the job knowing he’d let down a partner so colossally that now she was thinking about quitting? The hell if he was going to risk that again.
He turned over his open cases to Higgins and Tully and was home by three o’clock.
Cracking open a beer, he slouched on his couch and switched on a game he didn’t watch. He heaved out a long breath. What are you going to do now, genius? How was he going to pay his bills? He didn’t have a lot of savings to live on. Maybe I’ll be a trash collector. It would keep him away from human filth, though yuk, yuk. That was also ironic, right? Or was it a pun?
Having no fucks to give, he took a swig of beer and adopted a screw it attitude about everything. Something always turned up.
A week later, something did…or someone did.
His name was Dan Romeo.