the folio with deliberate movements, he looks back up at me with those oceanlike orbs.
“Your hour is up, Ms. Quill.”
Chapter 12
Doc
Monday morning, before I go to my office, I stop by the Imperium Security office to check on updates for our cases. Seth is sitting at the front desk, tapping away on the computer, and when I enter through the glass door, he looks up and gives me a big grin. He pulls off his reading glasses and comes around the desk, giving me a giant man-hug with a slap on the back.
“It’s about damn time you staked your claim, bro,” he tells me cheerfully. “I mean, not that she goes anywhere for her to get snatched up or anything. But still. I’m a proud papa.”
I roll my eyes. “We’re working on that. She enrolled at my gym and has gone to two group exercise classes in the past two days, and she’s planning on going again today during my lunch break so she can work out with me.”
He nods. “Probably a good idea. Our Quill girls are hot. I’d tell you to look into getting a home gym, but that kind of defeats the purpose of getting her out of the house, huh?”
“Any news on any of our cases?” I ask to change the subject, not wanting to think of the book cover beefcake lookalikes at our gym checking out my woman while I’m not there, and make a mental note to always try to go when she does.
“Actually, yes,” he tells me. “That mansion just outside of town that Brian had a bad feeling about? We’ve been watching it more closely ever since he set up surveillance on it, and there seems to be something very fishy going on over there.”
“Really? Do tell. I thought he was just being his normal paranoid self,” I reply, knowing our man Brian, aka Knight when at Club Alias, has been extra precautious around town, since his woman Clarice finally lives here. They’d been long-distance best friends for years, so he was never this bad at home before. He saved his crazy for our mercenary missions, and his were usually out of state.
“What seemed at first to be like a rich kid party house has suspicious activities happening.”
“Like what?” I ask, taking a seat in one of the chairs in front of the desk, and he takes his seat behind it.
“Well,” he begins, “no one comes as couples. All the women show up first, and then about two hours later, all the men start to arrive. And for some reason, I don’t think it’s because there’s wallflower gender segregation going on at the school dance.”
“So what are you thinking?”
Seth leans back in his chair and puts his glasses back on. “Well, looking a little more closely, all the girls come in street clothes and end up leaving all dolled up. The men show up already lookin’ fly. I hate to say it, because it’s not the 1800s anymore, but I’m thinking it’s a brothel. Some real Westworld shit happening. Or in our century, some kind of escort service or prostitution ring.”
“I mean, that’s not really our forte. We deal in justice and retribution and usually leave this kind of thing up to the police,” I remind him.
“Yeah, well, you know how sensitive Brian is about anything dealing with human trafficking after the bust he had to make in Nashville. So we’re just gonna keep a close eye on it and hope nothing bad happens.”
“Good idea,” I say, “and the second anything looks more than suspicious, as in substantial evidence we could turn in to our buddies at the station, you let me know.”
“Will do, Doc,” he replies.
I scrub a hand down my face then look at my watch. I have to get to my first appointment soon. “Anything else on our mercenary side?”
He shrugs. “We got paid for the Johnson case. Oh, and I’m still going through the databases looking for a few new men. Now that all our field guys are married off with women who don’t want us to put ourselves in danger, with kids and babies on the way, we have got to find some good fits for both the security side and the merc side to handle the ones our ladies deem too risky.”
I nod. “Use that magical technological genius brain of yours to line me up a stack,” I tell him, standing from my chair.
He cracks open a premixed protein drink and tears off the seal. “And