“Absolutely.” She turned and walked ahead of him out of the lobby to the Yukon parked out in front. She didn’t think he’d noticed her heavy makeup or the way she had teased her hair, or if he had, he was too polite to mention it.
“I don’t think it’s going to rain,” he said, eyeing the trench coat.
“I’ll leave it in the car.”
He didn’t ask why she was wearing it. He would certainly figure it out when she took it off. Kate grinned.
They got into the Yukon and started the fifteen-minute ride to Old East Dallas.
“I dug around a little more on the internet,” Jase said. “Didn’t find anything useful.”
“I didn’t come up with anything, either.”
As they closed in on their target, the area began to degenerate further and further. Run-down strip malls, seedy motels, mini-marts whose windows hadn’t been washed in years. Every third building was a liquor store: Johnny’s, Rueben’s, an Express drive-thru beer mart. The Puff and Stuff Smoke Shop sat next to J.B.’s Pawn Shop.
Her stomach tightened as she began to notice the girls standing beneath the lights at intersections, quietly displaying themselves for sale. Every age, shape and skin tone, all dressed scantily to catch the buyer’s eye.
Her heart beat faster. Her sister had been one of these girls.
“We’re almost there,” Maddox said.
Mean Jack’s was a stand-alone, flat-roofed building with a dirt parking lot out front and a sign above the door. A gas station and convenience store with a motel behind it were the closest nearby structures. Beneath the overhead gas station lights, a couple of women strutted up and down the pavement.
The lot was full of cars when they pulled in, not all of them beaters as she had expected. A couple of motorcycles sat off to one side, older models, the paint faded and the bodies dented. There were a couple of women out in front, both dressed in short tight skirts and low-cut tops. One wore a see-through blouse that showed bare breasts under the gauzy fabric. Another wore a pair of cutoff jeans too short to cover the pale globes of her behind.
Looking at them, a customer pretty well knew what he was getting.
Jase turned off the engine and got out of the Yukon. Kate took off the trench coat as he walked around to her side of the vehicle and opened the door.
With a steadying breath, she climbed out, tugging her skirt down as her heels hit the ground. She swallowed. Another inch shorter and her butt would be showing. Her cleavage bulged over the top of her bra. For the first time, she felt uncertain.
Maddox zeroed in on her, and those blue eyes turned hard as steel. “What the fuck!” His outrage pinned her where she stood. It was the first time she had ever heard him use that word. His gaze ran over her head to foot, so sharp it could have sliced through stone.
“So I guess you don’t like my outfit,” Kate said with a stab at humor, hoping to diffuse the situation.
“Goddammit, Kate.”
“We need answers, Jase. I’m going to help you get them.”
He just stared at her, his jaw tight, fighting to control his temper.
“Give me a chance. I can do this.”
He studied her face, must have read how important this was to her. Some of the tension eased from his powerful shoulders. “All right, fine, we’ll try it your way. But you need to stay close and don’t fight me, no matter what I say or do.”
She nodded. She could do that, let Maddox establish his claim, which would hopefully be enough to protect her. But as they shoved through the door into a dark, smoke-filled interior that smelled like sweat and sour whiskey, she got her first real glimpse of the customers inside and her courage wavered.
Maddox wrapped a big hand around her waist and pulled her to his side. When they reached the bar, he lifted her up on a bar stool, caught her jaw, leaned over and kissed her, deep and hard. Shock hit her, followed by a rush of heat and a curl of pure lust.
The kiss went on and on, a hot, wet kiss that left no doubt she belonged to him—at least for the night. When she looked into Maddox’s eyes, she saw that same heat and lust reflected—the instant before he turned away.
“Jack rocks for me. Tequila for the lady.” Her drink of choice at the Sagebrush Saloon. In the background she heard one of the men whisperladyas if it were a joke. She turned to see which one, spotted a big man with a thick, square body, shiny bald head and tattooed arms bulging with muscle. He sat at a table across from a man with coal black hair, a dark complexion and a pockmarked face.
“Do not be insulting, Cueball,” the black-haired man said. He was ugly. Really ugly.
“Keep your mouth shut, Paco,” the bald man said.
A jukebox played but no one danced. The bar was full of hard, tough-looking men like Cueball and Paco. A bunch of leather-clad bikers sat around a table in the corner, another group huddled nearby, men who lived one step up from the gutter. There were women there, too, worn and tired from the hard life they led, but Kate didn’t think they were prostitutes.
