“I know. But this is our best shot. She can’t go in one evening with a wire and hope to get what we need. The man is very private, and it will take time to find out what he knows. If he knows anything, and that’s a seriously big if.”
“So she wears a wire, has some meetings with the man, and we analyze everything first before she gets too involved,” Viola said, shrugging. “No need to go in guns blazing yet.”
“Won’t work,” Carson said, frowning. “What if he wants to see her naked? We don’t know how he decides to work with a submissive. It’s the same reason why she can’t wear a wire at all. At anytime she could be asked to strip. We have some very high-tech, inconspicuous devices, but they’re not foolproof. Hell, for all we know, he could have some top-notch security measures in place to scramble the frequency, and that’s if she doesn’t get caught with one on her. The only way I see this working is going in undercover. She’d have to be the eyes and ears for us. Sorry,” he added, looking at Shelby sheepishly.
“Agreed,” Rick said. “We need Shelby to gain his trust so he’ll let her get close to him and maybe even the more personal areas of his life. We only need enough to decide to bring him in to help us out or if we have to play hardball with him.”
But the phrase personal areas of his life lingered in her mind. “How personal are we talking here?” she asked, gaping at her boss. Sure Carson had just teased about sex, but as the conversation went on, she got the sinking feeling her boss expected more from her than just showing up at the club.
He shrugged. “If you could get a date out of him, get him to take you someplace public, away from the club and any security measures it possesses, that would be a good start. We can record any conversation he has with you without needing a warrant. If you’re someplace public, you could be wired without the fear of getting caught. That’s just an idea, an option we’d have if it comes to that.” He took another sip of his coffee. “The closer you get to him, the better our chances are of getting intel directly from the source.”
“So I can’t just come right out and ask him if he’s involved or if he wants to help,” she said with an edge of sarcasm, though it’d be a heck of a lot easier on her if she could do just that.
Rick slammed his fist on the conference table, startling her. “Use your head. That’s what someone undercover does, Landry! You play along and get what you need through any means necessary.” She’d thought of Anna and the hell the last assignment put her through, lying to the man she loved in the name of justice.
How many lives would this case try to ruin?
She knew the answer to that. One. One life. Hers.
At least Rick had finally answered her question.
Shelby was going undercover in a sex club and would have to sleep with a man who had connections with the company they were investigating. She could fight this assignment and be relegated to a desk job for the indefinite future. Or be transferred out of state like they’d done to Anna and be forced to start over with a new team.
Or she could suck it up and do what she needed to see an end to this case. There was really only one answer, assuming she honestly had a choice. Prostitution was supposed to be illegal, but apparently not if one’s pimp was the federal government.
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
Chapter One
Mason sat at the bar, looking through the dimly lit room. He wasn’t staring at all the half-naked women—or fully naked in the case of Emory’s sub for the night. He was just watching, monitoring the level of energy in the atmosphere. Some nights, the feeling was subdued, but others, it arced through the air, electrifying his sexual desires. But tonight, as was the case for many weeks now, it was almost dull. He hadn’t lost his sense of need, but for some reason, he hadn’t been able to latch onto an honest opportunity to feed his primal hunger either.
Oh, there’d been offers. Mason was one of the four Master Doms who owned the club they’d deftly named Scene, although Rafe was the one who managed it. Jedrek and Emory dealt mainly with ordering supplies, and Mason’s finance background awarded him the dubious honor of handling the books. He’d tried to explain the difference between accounting and investment financing, but it had fallen on deaf ears. It was known throughout the club that all four of them were the owners, the Masters. And every sub in the place who wasn’t attached to a Dom vied for their attention. Yeah, there’d definitely been propositions.
Problem was, Mason was bored. His friends and colleagues would laugh at him if he’d ever verbalized that. Besides owning the club, he was a new executive at one of the largest investment firms in the U.S. To those on the outside, he was already spread thin, but his professional aspirations far exceeded the average man’s. He had every intention of rising up the ranks, getting as close to the top as he could without being blood related to the family who’d founded the company. And he would do just that. He sneered thinking about his new boss. That man was only there because he was in the family, but if Mason had his way, that prick wouldn’t be his boss for long. He aspired for greatness and reporting to the runt of the litter was unacceptable. Mason had worked hard to get where he was today. Nobody handed him anything.
But business was second-nature to him. He’d even taken steps to achieve his latest professional goal at the firm.
He needed a real
