Up in Smoke (Kisses and Crimes Book 2) Read online

  I’d seen her “city girl” stubbornness melt under my gaze—a gaze that was unendingly hot and hungry for her, but this?

  This was a vulnerability I’d never experienced.

  The tears started to fall from around her beautiful irises, one-by-one. I wanted to catch them with my kiss…

  And kick myself for being the prick who didn’t deserve to.

  Her voice was begging, her stare a plea.

  “No,” she called out quietly. “Don’t go. Stay with me.”

  She was wiping her hands absently on her beautiful blue gown.

  Immediately, I froze.

  I knew what she was doing. I’d seen her do it before.

  As the lifeless body of Jordan Chambers lay in her hands.

  Shot. Murdered… by a man who allegedly feared for his life, as Jordan exited the vehicle outside of the senator’s office.

  A cop—corrupt or not, the courts ultimately ruled in his favor, citing us for trespassing, but this was a hit—an assassination prepared by the senator’s people who were undoubtedly tipped off from a silent alarm that we unintentionally missed… and tripped.

  Penelope wiped her fingers for hours that night.

  After the body bag was taken. After the blood was gone.

  I spent the entire day, kissing those fingers, assuring her that the blood was no longer there. And when that wasn’t enough, I kissed other things.

  Sensitive things. Tender things that would make her forget.

  I got a glimpse of the deepness of her heart and soul that night.

  And as she reached for me in the motel room, I had to be honest with myself: I wanted to repeat those same steps I’d taken four years ago.

  But it wasn’t what she needed. It wasn’t what I needed.

  And so when her fingers yearned for me, I fell into them, stepping closer to allow her to wrap her hands around mine, and I fell again.

  Into the bed. Nearby her. Allowing the line of my body to fit like a puzzle piece alongside hers. Behind hers.

  I got inside her.

  And not in the sexual way.

  For tonight, even if it was just until the sun came up, I was deeper into Penelope than before, fitting myself into her world, losing myself in the silent promises that my body was making to hers.

  She was giving in to me. Finally.

  Hardheaded, hard-hearted, and hardworking, Penelope Castalano was the strongest woman I’d ever known.

  And part of her was mine… but I didn’t have all of her.

  Tonight was just a step. She was letting me in, just as I was letting her, but I needed to go deeper. So, so much deeper.

  I hoped I’d get the chance.

  If only I could just keep the both of us alive…

  FANNING THE FLAMES

  PENELOPE

  I went to bed with more questions than answers.

  The motel room was cold, and although I’d spent the chilly night with Jackson’s heat at my back, his soft breathing warming my cheek and his hard body having me war with my hormones all night, there was an iciness surrounding us that body heat just couldn’t drive away.

  It was this knowledge, this gigantic elephant in the room that refused to go away.

  Jackson had another woman in his life.

  He’d told me just as soon as I awakened, still in my gown, my vision murky from yesterday’s running mascara.

  Her name was a name I recognized, one I knew even before I ever saw her face in my office.

  There were a million Margot Dietz’ in the world.

  The District of Columbia held about half of them.

  They were at your local Starbucks, Go-Go dancing on the nearest club’s tabletops, or stomping around your typical political playground.

  Margot Dietz had engaged in all three of them.

  Twenty-one months ago, the ambitious Miss Dietz was a blonde bartender around the corner with call-girl aspirations at best. Now she was the right-hand to a political powerhouse.

  A D.C. social climber to the max, Margot AKA Shelby Waters came to town with a bad bleach job and no money, and within the span of two years, somehow had managed to climb her way into other positions beyond the velvet ropes of any of U-street’s popular VIPs.

  Positions, such as those within the Senator’s office… and, more importantly, the senator’s bed.

  When I’d known her, she’d been a hanger-on at some of Northern Virginia’s more expensive wine festivals, schmoozing with corporate attorneys and the like.

  Now? She was right in the thick of rich bureaucracy, and fucking a man old enough to be her father.

  Jackson was surprised, but I wasn’t…

  The only thing that stunned me was that the thirty-year old nymphomaniac seemed to have no known address, and she had disappeared—vanished into thin air as if she had never existed at all.

  No one at the senator’s office had heard from her in days. An early morning call to her office elicited no answer.

  Sometime during the day of the assassination attempt on Senator Fletcher, Margot Dietz appeared to have fallen off the face of the earth.

  Jackson and I were off, en route to find one of the only people low enough to have taken the fall with her.

  We arrived at the jail in no time.

  I had to call in favors from every New York City court lawyer I knew to get the bastard’s damn New York State Identification Number, but once I had it, we were golden.

  We sent word to the New York State Department of Corrections, and by the time Jackson and I pulled up to the Manhattan House of Detention, the rain had quickened, and Inmate #14B1687 was waiting, seated by himself in a lone room, anticipating a meeting with his lawyer, one whom he’d had never met.

  He was going to be shocked when he saw who that lawyer was.

  Security guards in a building commonly referred to as “the Tombs” body-searched us from head to toe, detaining an infuriated Jackson outside the doors before buzzing me—alone and frankly terrified—into a room that was reminiscent of its name.

  The space was grey, cold and isolating, but it was nowhere near as icy as the man sitting inside it.

  He regarded me with stony, dark eyes—eyes I remembered. Eyes I could practically feel as they quietly assessed me.

  They burned with a dejected but quiet hatred that rocked me to my core. His accent was as thick as maple syrup.

  “Oh, isn’t this rich… Fook are you doing ‘ere?” he asked quietly, his neck turning a color deeper than his orange jumpsuit.

  I sat across from him at the lone chair on my side of the shiny, chrome table. My knees were shaking. Clad in a new suit that Jackson had just bought me that morning, I was sweating through the fabric, trying to ignore the tiny drops of perspiration that were dotting near my brow.

  I sat down my briefcase in pretense and proceeded to put my best business face on. I had to clasp my hands together to keep them from trembling.

  I leaned in towards the Brit’s face.

  “I’m here to help you,” I stated plainly.

  He laughed, but the notes were sour. His eyes were hard, but defeat was etched in their depths.

  He smoothed his hand across his brows, staring at me.

  “You can’t help me.” The senator’s scummy guard hung his head. “No one can.”

  The words struck an interesting chord of fear in me. This was one of the senator’s personal detail, one of the men closest to him.

  He’d been in here ever since Jackson left him stranded and naked on a New York street, and no one came to get him? The senator hadn’t lifted a finger to bail him out?

  What had changed so drastically? I needed to know.

  “We can,” I reassured. “We can get you out of here.”

  He snorted. “Who? You and that fooker at the bahr?” He shook his head. “He’s the one that put me in here.” He counted on his fingers. “Indecent exposure. Public lewdness. Disturbing of the peace and resisting arrest.” He bent over the table, his eyes growing wide. “Do
you know I can get registered as a sexual predator for this shit?”

  I glowered. “Not that you wouldn’t deserve it for what you tried to do to me, but alright…”

  The lesser of the senator’s two evil guards lowered his head. He looked up at me with eyes that were surprisingly guilty.

  “Alright… You’re right,” he declared. “But that doesn’t mean a bloody thing anymore. I’m a dead man.” He glared at me, his black eyes full of fear and something that looked scarily close to grief. “And if you’re not careful, you will be, too. Something big is going down.” He sniffed, looking down at the table. “I know it.”

  Something big was going down. But how much I wanted to tell this man and how much I could trust him with, I didn’t know. And so I gambled.

  This was as close as I was going to get to the senator with Fletcher teetering on the brink of death, and if I didn’t get the answers I needed, I was afraid that Senator Fletcher’s secrets would die with him…

  And no one would ever know the truth of what he’d done to Jordan Chambers.

  I threw every persuasive lawyer trick that I had at the Brit. I bluffed and blew smoke like I had never before.

  I smoothed unruly red strands of my ruby hair, zoning in.

  “Scott?”

  The Brit looked up at me.

  “That is your name, isn’t it? Scotty?” I almost reached for him. Such was the extent of my acting skills. “Look, I know you’re afraid. We tried to find your associate, Gary—you know, the senator’s other guard—and he seems to be missing or… maybe he left town. The senator’s taken a bullet to the chest, and since good news travels fast, I’m sure by now you’ve seen the reports. So, something, or someone, is coming for the rest of you. And unless you cooperate with us, I have no doubt they will succeed.”

  I saw a chill run across his shoulders.

  “Now, be honest with me… because you got deeper in with the senator than most.” I exhaled. “Where can I find Margot Dietz?”

  I felt the room fill with tension as I said her name. Good old Scott looked up at me.

  “I can do better than tell you,” he said, his brown eyes meeting mine for the first time. “I can fookin’ show ya.”

  ***

  JACKSON

  The early afternoon air was cold when we left the Detention House.

  The air inside of Margot’s luxury apartment lobby was even colder.

  Turns out Margot Dietz, D.C. woman of mystery and Senator Fletcher’s notorious mistress, had two addresses—not one, as we had suspected.

  It was a quick bail thanks to my mystery caller’s down payment, and after a short ride to the other side of Manhattan proper, sixty minutes later, I found myself pacing back and forth across the entrance of Margot’s high-priced, high-rise. My nerves were on edge, my pockets were empty and my gun was burning a hole in its uncomfortable holster.

  I raged in silence as the interminable wait and brisk air-conditioning put an unfamiliar chill across my skin.

  I hated anticipation. Hated it.

  And the longer we waited for the previously bare-assed Brit to grab Margot, the more impatient I became.

  I began to dial on my cellphone when I remembered that there still wouldn’t be anybody on the other end of the line to pick up.

  Jeff DeSantos was still MIA.

  A phone call to Sienna earlier had just confirmed what I had feared. Jeff had disappeared last night, and just as I needed him most, he seemed nowhere to be found, seemingly in the same black hole that had sucked in Fletcher’s mistress.

  No one had heard from either of them since the shots rang out at the opera.

  Pea could barely calm me down.

  I was two seconds from sending a trajectory into the tight-assed desk clerk’s kneecaps when the once-naked Brit, Scotty Anderson, came barreling around the bend. He motioned towards us and we pretended to head for the exits before we headed up the stairs.

  Along with Scott, the senator’s personal security—the only one among us to be cleared for entrance—we treaded very carefully to Margot’s place.

  I knew by the look in his eyes that she wasn’t inside, but I never expected what I found when we opened her unlocked front door.

  Her place was a mess.

  Clothes were strewn about. A glass of red wine stained the expensive white carpet under our feet, and when I looked towards the noise from the kitchen, I found the faucet running.

  Papers were scattered everywhere.

  Upon first glance it seemed clear that the loft had been ransacked.

  But after taking a closer look, it became clear that things were not just messy; they were missing.

  A file cabinet was open. The bedroom door was cracked and when we went inside, the room was practically empty. The closets were snatched clean.

  Clothes hangers were dangling at odd angles.

  I knew it. I knew it before I looked for the suitcases.

  Fletcher’s floozy had cut and run.

  And what would make a pampered mistress leave her lavish lifestyle…? I turned to Scott when the sound of the front door opening caught my attention.

  I motioned for Penelope to stay put and ran to it, drawing my gun and pointing it between two brown eyes. Sienna opened her mouth for a silent scream.

  “Damn it, Sienna.” I holstered my weapon. “I could have shot you.”

  The pretty brunette in jeans took slow steps in. She held out her hands.

  “No big deal…” she stammered, her eyes wide. “This isn’t the first time I’ve had a gun aimed at my forehead.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “It isn’t?”

  “Oyé.” She placed her hand on her hip. “You haven’t seen a rumble until you’ve run out of plantains at your family’s Puerto Rican Day fiesta.” She shrugged. “I came as soon as you guys called.” She inhaled a stream of air through her nostrils. “You wouldn’t believe what Javier told me.”

  “Javier?” I squinted. “Don’t you mean ‘Jeff’?”

  “No,” she waved a hand at me. “Not him. My friend, the bartender.”

  “Bartender?” I rubbed a hand across my brow. “Christ, Sienna,” I waved a hand at our surroundings. “We’re, uh, dealing with a bit of a crisis here.”

  “And nothing’s better in a crisis than tequila, right?” She smirked knowingly. “Pene—I mean, Miss Castalano gave me the skinny on Margot Dietz. She’s a regular bad mama jama, huh?”

  I exhaled. “So, it would seem.”

  “Seems Miss Dietz wasn’t immune to tequila’s charms, either. Javier said she was a regular at the bar.”

  I glanced up, stopping. “She what?”

  “Yeah, guess I wasn’t the only one hanging at Tino’s Bar for the hot guys. Says she came in often, venting about her love life problems.”

  I heard Penelope enter the room.

  “What woman hasn’t?” Pea said.

  She walked directly up to her secretary, hugging the sassy assistant within an inch of her life. “Wasn’t too long ago that we’d done the same exact thing.”

  I looked at Pea. “Yeah, but your boyfriend isn’t a senator of the state.”

  “Boyfriend?” Sienna looked between the two of us, lifting her eyebrows. “You know what? I’m not even going to go there… but catch this. Javi says she once came in crying, something about a loss of a lover.”

  “Whoa, whoa.” I stopped Sienna. “When was this? This was before senator was shot?”

  Sienna bit her lip. “Well, I don’t know. Javi isn’t exactly a state witness here. Just the local gossip mill. I got what I could out of him.”

  She glanced over my shoulder, taking note of Scott. She stepped in, whispering.

  “Who’s the hobo?”

  “Hey!” Scott called from behind me. I looked over.

  Hell, she had a point. After all, he was swimming in the clothes that Pea and I had taken to him after we’d gotten him released from jail. The man was naked when he was arrested.

  I made a note to w
ash every stitch of clothing he had on. I threw a thumb in his direction, smirking.

  “He’s not a hobo. He’s a…” I searched for words. “Helper.”

  She pursed her lips. “Looks like your ‘helper’ is helping himself to some goodie bags.”

  I turned around, and Scott was rummaging through Margot’s belongings, casually placing things in his pockets. Or, rather, my pockets.

  Penelope was gaping when I crossed the living room in a flash, snatching the smaller man’s hand mid-grab.

  He tried to jerk from my grasp… and failed. I snapped.

  “The fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  “I—I don’t know,” Scott stammered. “I saw Margot fumbling around in here when the ol’ fuck-up Fletcher wasn’t looking.”

  He jutted a finger at a small latch behind the TV.

  “He was always buying her expensive gifts and things. Thought she might’ve stashed ‘em here.”

  I leaned in. The small latch wasn’t behind the TV. It was attached to it.

  The fifty-inch plasma was stacked in the back and, instead of streaming devices and cords, there was a small opening where one shouldn’t be.

  I turned the side of the latch and a small black compartment opened and revealed folded slits of papers hidden inside.

  I pulled them out. I unfolded them and began to read the handwritten words neatly inscribed.

  My hands were shaking so badly by the time I finished reading the text I’d nearly ripped the cleverly concealed notes in two.

  I reached my hands into the back of the TV. I groped around, searching for anything else that might be hidden but there was nothing. No jewelry. No cash. And Scott was just shit out of luck…

  But then again, so were we.

  These secret notes had changed everything.

  And just where the flying fuck was Margot Dietz…?

  ***

  JACKSON

  The drive to Penelope’s was dark in more ways than one.

  Evening fell like a dampened blanket over the skies, and through the rain, driving past the slickened, wet streets, I kept glancing out of the side of my eye over at her.

  It was more than just her beauty.