“To leave,” she added, and a smirk brightened her eyes.
“Smart ass.” He smiled.
To his surprise, she smiled back. His chest warmed and he held her gaze while they breathed in unison. He could get damn used to staring at her. “You’re doing great.” He opened the bottle and handed it to her.
“Thank you for helping me.”
She looked too sexy lying on his bed. There was only so much torture he could take. “Ready to work?”
Emerson drank down some water. “Gloria Stanton was murdered a month ago. Also posed on her bed in a white wedding dress. Can you tell me if she’s a member here?”
This was a good sign. She was moving past her fear. “Yup.” He squeezed her hand before pushing off the bed. “I’ll put her name in the database. If you’ve got a pic, I can use my facial recognition software.”
She rose up on her elbows. “I didn’t know you have that.”
“Mine’s proprietary. I call it IDware.” He sat in his well-worn chair and typed the victim’s name into his club’s database.
“Not only that, it’s available, which is half the battle,” she said. “The crime lab was hit with budget cuts. Requests take forever to get completed.”
He scanned for a Gloria Stanton, but her name didn’t appear. When he turned back, Emerson stood beside him. He admired her determination. “Problem is, a lot of members use fake names. The only real form of ID is their name on a credit card. That’s not something I can easily find.”
“I understand.”
“But together, we can try.”
Her hands shook as she pulled up a chair and rolled beside him. She sat on the edge, her back ramrod straight. Before he could check himself, he caressed her back. “You’re doing great, Easton.”
She put her hand on her chest. “My heart rate must be a hundred and fifty.”
“You can do this.”
She offered a tight smile. “You got me this far, let’s keep going.”
* * *
Emerson was struggling to keep it together. Before he’d laid her on the bed, she wasn’t sure if she was going to vomit or pass out. Focusing on him and his steady breathing had helped. Staring at him was easy. He was sick handsome, but it was his inner strength that had saved her from really losing her shit.
Stryker’s basement was a full-on command center. A black keyboard sat within his reach. Three laptops waited on the oversized console. Six monitors hung on the wall. The dungeon looked more like an FBI tactical center than the basement of a members-only kink club.
He dragged over a laptop and got busy. As his fingers flew across the keyboard, the monitors reflected the computer code he was keying in. “I’m scanning for her name, but the program needs us to manually request a new set of names.”
After scanning for Gloria’s name, he tapped the down arrow and the six monitors refreshed with a whole new list of names. You’ve got A through L. I got the rest. I’ve only owned the club for a few years, but this is the master list.”
They worked side by side in silence, save for the sound of her heart still pounding away in her chest. But she had to give herself props. She was still sitting there. The real reason she hadn’t fled the scene was the brick of a man beside her. She glanced over at him. He met her gaze.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I thought you didn’t like me.”
“Who says I do? The sooner we find the killer, the faster I can get you out of my life again.”
She glared at him. “And here I thought you were a nice guy.”
“Me? No,nota nice guy.” Exasperation rolled off him. The air turned turbulent.
Staring into his eyes made her quiver for a completely different reason. Desire started deep in her belly. An aching, throbbing need she could not ignore. The push and pull were making her crazy. She wanted to kiss him so badly, press her mouth against his, and ride him for days.
He broke eye contact and continued scrolling.
