Twenty minutes later, I was stepping out of a room full of half-naked chicks and fairly decent music and into the surprisingly quiet office of Benny Price. Businessman. Father of two. Murderer.
“She’s not wired, boss,” one of his bouncers said, a tall and muscled blond at whom the strippers had batted their lashes as we walked past. He’d brought me into a shadowy hall that led to Price’s office before searching me, simultaneously providing me with a rush of indignation and a rather inappropriate thrill. “She does have a video camera, though.”
Benny Price, who was sitting behind a massive teak desk, turned out to be much more striking in person than his surveillance photos had led me to believe. But in all fairness, he hadn’t been prepared for those shots and didn’t know to pose. He had short black hair and a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee. Where I lost complete respect for him was with his tie and kerchief. The tie was magenta against a sleek black shirt and pin-striped vest, and the handkerchief peeking from the vest pocket was much closer to violet. That settled it. He had to go down.
“You wanted to see me, Ms. — ?”
“Mrs. … Magenta. Violet Magenta,” I said. While keeping a straight face.
The bodyguard stepped forward and placed the video camera he’d found in my handbag on Price’s desk. “She told me her name was Lois Lane.”
Sadly, I think he believed me.
Price stood and picked up the camera. His very stance was meant as a threat, meant to belittle and intimidate. I knew plenty of women his tactics would work on. I was not one of them.
I sat down opposite him as he opened the LCD monitor and played the video on the camera.
“My name is Donna Wilson,” I heard myself say from the other side. Well, not
“I have sent this video to ten people, including my lawyer, a coworker, and my pedicurist.” Pedicurist. I tried not to giggle. “If I do not call each and every one of these people by nine P.M. today, they will take the tape directly to the police. I have irrefutable proof locked in a safety deposit box that Benny Price, owner and operator of the Patty Cakes Strip Clubs, is trafficking children and selling them as slaves in foreign countries. One of the ten persons mentioned has the key to the box and will give it to the police if I do not return unharmed within the allotted time.”
Benny stood stunned for a moment before closing the monitor and handing my camera back to me. Since I seemed to have his complete attention, I started the act. Breathing heavy, I curled my fingers into my handbag — a gorgeous silk clutch Cookie let me borrow — and leveled a determined, and slightly naive, stare on him.
Clearly, I would not win the Patty Cakes Club’s fave person of the year award. Though he hid it well, Price was angry. He forced himself to stay calm as he sat back behind his desk. “And what kind of proof do you have?” he asked, his voice like ice water.
I let my gaze dart to my purse then back up, hoping I wasn’t overdoing the nervous damsel-in-distress bit. I had to sell it, not cram it down his throat.
“I have a USB flash drive I obtained from my employer, a lawyer who was shot a couple of days ago. He said it had everything we would need to put Benny Price — you — behind bars.”
Price calmed then. The corners of his mouth twitched, and I knew he had the flash drive. Maybe he would be just stupid enough to …
He opened his desk drawer and withdrew a flash drive. “You mean this one?”
Yep. He was precisely stupid enough. While my insides were doing a Snoopy dance, my outsides were starting to panic. Angel and Sussman had stepped from the room behind Price with a thumbs-up. The camera was recording.
“Can I go watch the strippers now?” Angel asked.
With teeth gritted, I shot him a quick glare, then continued to hyperventilate. Price smiled one of those superior smiles of Mafia bosses and nursing home directors. Sussman stood back, glared at him.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Angel said. Hopping over to me, he popped open the top button on my too-tight blouse, giving Price, and hopefully the camera, a nice shot of my cleavage. Price’s gaze landed instantly on the erotic zone. Danger and Will Robinson. Distractions extraordinaire. When he looked back up, a few strands of my hair had magically fallen to frame my face just so.
I pushed up my glasses in a nervous gesture. “I can assure you, that’s not the same one.” After licking my lips slowly in thought, I said, “He handed me a flash drive.… I know it has … he said it had evidence. It was encrypted, but—”
“Perhaps he handed you the wrong one?” Price offered politely.
“No, that’s not possible. He has … I mean, he has several thousand flash drives on his desk at any given moment, but…”
“I promise you, little beauty, my man took this directly off your lawyer. Seconds after he died.”
Little beauty? What was I? A racehorse? You’d think a man who hung around beautiful women all day could come up with something a little less corny.
While I was doing my best to hyperventilate without actually hyperventilating, Price stood, walked around his desk, and leaned against it in front of me. Partly, I was certain, so he could look down his nose while watching his newest victim squirm, like watching an ant burn through a magnifying glass. But a bigger part of the partly was so he could check out the girls.
Taking advantage of the situation, Angel went for another button, an evil smirk glittering on his face. I pretended to close my blouse and slapped his hand away in the process — the little perv. Angel frowned in disappointment.
“Were you after money?” Price asked, so cool an inferno wouldn’t have melted his bravado. He gestured for blondie to leave.
I gulped, unable to meet his stare any longer — in theory — and nodded.
He reached down and pulled off my glasses. Guilt, utterly remorseless guilt, oozed off him and pooled at his feet. “And you just decided to waltz in here and demand some from me?”
“Yes. I’m … in trouble. With the deaths of the lawyers at my firm, there’ll be an audit.”
“Ah,” he said, folding the glasses and placing them on his desk. “And you’ve been a naughty girl.”
“You … killed them? It was you?” Without raising my chin, I looked up at him through my lashes. He seemed to enjoy it.
“Of course not. I have men for that.”
Damn. Could he be any more evasive? I needed a confession, not a paltry assertion any lawyer worth his weight could weasel him out of.
I struggled to get to my feet, but he was ridiculously close. I brushed against him, making sure my shoulder grazed over his erection. “You sent men to kill my bosses? Why would you do that?”
As with most criminals, his arrogance was his downfall. He wrapped a hand around my arm and helped me up. “Because I can.”
After sucking in an appalled breath, I tried to wrench free of his grip. I pretended to pretend like I was pretending to be confident when I said, “I’m leaving.” He had just confessed to conspiracy. No way on Earth was I getting out of that office alive.
“What’s your hurry?”
“If I don’t show up by nine o’clock tonight, you
Price glanced at his watch, then pulled me closer, encircled my waist with his arms. “That gives us almost three exquisite hours to find out who your friends are.”
Oddly, I was finding it easier and easier to act afraid. With a toss of my head, I gave Angel the signal. He nodded and took off, but Sussman stood there, cemented to the spot, a peculiar hatred seething in his eyes.
“So, in answer to your question, yes, I did kill those three lawyers.” He ran a finger along my collarbone, dipped it into my cleavage. “But you don’t have to be next.”
Yeah, right. I pushed against his chest all helpless-like. Seriously, how long can it take to storm into a room? All Angel had to do was tug on Uncle Bob’s tie, thus giving the signal for Ubie to send his men in with guns blazing. It wasn’t brain surgery.
“You mean we could work something out?” I asked, my voice breathy with fear.
A sleazy smile widened across his once-handsome face. The face of a killer and a kidnapper who sold children as slaves. Or worse. He wrapped a confident hand around my throat, dipped his head to access one corner of my
