Big Ben (See No Evil Trilogy #1) - Nana Malone Page 0,35
I need your help for a thing if you’re up for it.”
He lifted a brow. “Great, let’s get it over with then. Where are we going?”
I took a deep breath, sighed, and released it slowly. “On a Jack the Ripper tour.”
He blinked. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. I am.”
“What’s to keep me from going back on my word?”
“Well, my research on you tells me you tend to keep your word. You don’t make any bargains that you don’t intend to keep. That’s your reputation anyway.”
He nodded slowly. “So, you finally decided to look up who the hell you were working for.”
“Well, if I was going to make a devil’s bargain, I wanted to know who I was getting in bed with.”
He shook his head. “You’re stubborn. I like that.”
“Can you come, or can’t you?”
His gaze narrowed as it swept over me. “I wonder what it is about you. You’re a complete mystery, yet somehow you have me by the blue balls.”
I blinked. “I do not have you by the balls. Besides, they wouldn’t be blue. I haven’t done anything to you yet.”
“That, my dear, is debatable. What time?”
“Eight. We’ll meet at Traitor’s Gate.”
“Why can’t we just go together after work?”
“Well, I need to go home and change.”
There it was again, that slow perusal of my body that made my skin feel tight and too hot. As if he’d just put his nose all over every inch of my skin like he had in the closet. His nostrils flared as he if he was inhaling deep.
I swallowed hard.
No. Fantasies about this man are not on the menu. Dexter.?Remember him?
He chuckled. “You know what?? I’m curious. So, I’ll come.”
“Really?” I was surprised.?I had expected him to put me off with plans until I had to browbeat him. I never expected him to comply.
“And here is a piece of advice, sweetheart. When you have the upper hand, act like you know it. Don’t ever show weakness. Don’t ever back down. Don’t ever be surprised that someone is willing to do what you demanded. Act like you knew it was going to be that way all along.
“That’s excellent business advice.”
“It’s excellent life advice. Follow it, or you’ll get eaten alive.”
Ben
“Okay, gentlemen. What we have here are proposed candidates for the Five. There is a list of ten names, so we’ll need to vet each one. We don’t want to waste time chasing our tails.”
I stared up at those ten men on the screen in front of me. Men I’d known since I was in secondary school.
East continued. “We know that Rowan Downs is in fact one of the Five.” East moved his image down into our roster.
Bridge walked over. “That’s Adam Hilton. He’s been a senior member of Intelligence for the last fifteen years. He’s my vote.”
Drew nodded. “We should put him down on the list. Even if he isn’t one of the Five, he’s still influential in the Elite.”
I considered the list. We didn’t have time to approach them all. “How do we narrow this down?” I glanced at Bridge. “We’ve got to make our best educated guesses. Bridge, you’re on Van Linsted. You’re our eyes in the street. East you’re our background and tech guy, so your job is finding us some leverage we can use. Drew and I will handle the approaches. Does that make sense?”
Bridge rubbed his jaw. “Yeah, divide and conquer. That way we don’t have to do everything.”
I nodded. “East, how quickly do you think you can find us some information?”
He grinned. “Please, what am I, some kind of amateur?”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t be a show-off cunt.”
He grinned at me, and I realized I hadn’t seen a smile like that from him in years. Somewhere in the last decade, we’d all grown a little shrewder, a little less open. Each of us more reserved. But the change had been most notable in East.
I didn’t even notice the changes in myself, but I was sure they were there.
A few quick taps on his keyboard, and we were looking at just a photo of Adam Hilton. “All right, so Adam Hilton. He likes the ladies. Frequents several escort agencies. But primarily, he has a dominatrix called Trix Lagrange. She’s been in business fifteen years. She’s very unlikely to roll on a client, but I might be able to hack her system unless she’s analog.”
“I guess everyone has their thing, don’t they?” I muttered.
East shrugged. “True. Hilton is married. Old English money. While he and his family were already wealthy, it was his wife’s