Undercover Encounter Read online

  “I thought there was supposed to be another guy working here with you.”

  “He’s got the night off.”

  The statement hung in the confined space. Looking around, she asked quickly, “What is this, the Pentagon War Room?”

  He laughed. “Close.” His face immediately sobered. “This stuff might make a life-and-death difference for you.”

  She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “A nice way to put it,” she muttered.

  “I’m trying to get across the concept that we’re not playing games here. Once you go into that bordello, this van will be your only means of calling for help.”

  “If I need it.”

  “Right. If you need it.”

  He gave her a tight nod, then walked to the front of the vehicle, sat down behind the wheel and started the engine.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, sitting in the passenger seat.

  “Not far.”

  She thought he might be heading for Bourbon Street Libations, but he stopped short of the bar and turned the corner, then gestured toward a large, stately-looking building.

  “That’s the McDonough Club, an established men’s club for over a hundred years. Recently it was purchased by a woman named Cynthia Dupré. She runs the operation, but we know she must be fronting for someone else.”

  Gillian stared at the slivers of light at the edges of the window shades, wishing she could see inside. “That’s the bordello?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It looks elegant,” she murmured.

  “It is. Downstairs, businessmen and other upstanding types can relax and have a drink. If they want some intimate action with one of the hostesses, they have to rent a room in what’s billed as a ‘small hotel’ upstairs.”

  Her mind conjured up vivid pictures of what went on in the upper reaches of the club. “How does Dupré get away with running a house of ill repute in the middle of the city?” she asked.

  “Well, as you can see, the operation looks legitimate—if you don’t poke into it too closely. And payoffs to the local cops don’t hurt. When Chief Courville found out about it, he was mad as hell. But my boss persuaded him to go along with us and allow the bordello to operate until they can nail the drug dealers.”

  She nodded, taking it in.

  Alex got up and walked to the back of the van, where he turned on several television monitors. “We had some guys from the power company down here to do ‘routine maintenance work.’ So we’ve already got cameras trained on the front door and the alley,” he said, gesturing toward screens above the windshield.

  She saw a view of the front door of the club.

  “Nothing interesting right now. But we’re hoping to get some pictures of city officials.”

  “Is that part of the mission?”

  “Not originally. But it could be useful.” He turned away from the screens. “Let’s get back to you. Your first job will be to convince Madam Dupré to take you on,” he said, keeping his voice businesslike.

  “We’ve manufactured a background for you. I have the particulars, which you’ll need to memorize before your first meeting with her. Basically, when she checks on you, she’ll find that you’ve worked for the past several years as a very well-paid call girl. Your credentials are excellent. According to your résumé, you’ve serviced politicians, actors, lawyers.”

  “Do call girls have a résumé?” she asked in a steady voice, determined that he wasn’t going to make her lose her cool.

  “Not in so many words. But when Dupré checks some of your references, she’ll find out that you’re just great in the sack. A five-hundred-dollar-a-night pro.” He held her gaze for several seconds, and she couldn’t help thinking about the last man she’d been to bed with. In fact, it was Alexander McMullin. Lucky for her that her new employers didn’t know how little experience she really had. And that wouldn’t matter, anyway, she told herself. She wasn’t going to do the deed with anyone—was she?

  When she focused on Alex’s voice again, he was saying, “And the icing on the cake is a reference from a very high-priced escort service in town. The owner, Tammy Ray Kemp, owes the police a favor, so she’ll say you worked for her. In fact, she’s already put in a call to Madam Dupré, saying that you might be stopping by.”

  “Good,” she answered automatically.

  “I’m glad you approve, because once you get into that house you’re going to be operating in an atmosphere of extreme danger,” he said, enunciating each word carefully.

  “Are you still trying to get me to back out?” she asked in an even voice.

  “I’m just trying to make you aware of the reality of the situation. If anybody suspects you’re in the McDonough Club as a spy, you will be eliminated. And I don’t mean they’ll toss you out on your ass. More like you’ll end up at the bottom of the Mississippi River wearing cement boots.”

  Although her stomach clenched, she kept her gaze level. “I assume you’re here because you have ways to protect me.”

  “Yeah, well, as you probably know, we’d prefer to have you wear a wire so we could monitor your whereabouts and contacts at all times. But due to the nature of your, um, work, it’s too dangerous to attach a recording device on your body.”

  When his gaze focused on her breasts, she felt them tingle. Trying to ward off the sensation, she dug her fingernails into her palms. She didn’t want to react to Alexander McMullin. But she didn’t seem to have any choice.

  He was speaking again, being deliberately raunchy.

  “If some guy starts undressing you, it wouldn’t be good if he found a wire attached to your boob. And hiding it in a body cavity isn’t an option, either, for obvious reasons.”

  “I understand that,” she snapped, thinking that there was another important question she needed to ask. But they should finish with this topic first.

  “The best we can do is bug your bedroom.” He opened a drawer in one of the metal tables and brought out a small box, which he handed to her.

  Determined to keep her hands from shaking, she removed the lid. Inside was what looked like an ordinary lipstick tube. And when she twisted the shaft, a bright red cosmetic stick emerged. It was short and stubby, as though it had been used for several months.

  “The microphone is in the bottom,” he said. “It’s highly sensitive. It will pick up a conversation anywhere in the room, and I assume it will pass muster when your effects are checked. In an emergency you can turn it off by twisting the button.”

  “Okay. Good,” she managed to say as she snapped the lipstick tube closed and put it back in the box.

  He took the box from her and stowed it in the drawer, then turned to one of the consoles and began to explain how they planned to monitor the signal from her room. But his words were only a buzz in her head. She couldn’t focus on radio signals when there was something that had been bothering her since she’d accepted the assignment.

  “We need to talk about sex,” she blurted.

  “Aren’t you interested in learning more about how the eavesdropping system works?” he asked, his back still to her.

  “Yes. But the department said there was some drug I could use to avoid having sex with my…clients. Only nobody’s told me how that’s going to work.”

  She knew she’d revealed too much when he turned to face her.

  “Again, it’s not the perfect solution,” he said.

  “Just give me the details,” she almost shouted, then made an effort to look more calm.

  Crossing the small space, he opened a drawer and took out another box. This one was larger and contained two items. One looked like a jar of face cream. Along with it, was a bottle that read Multivitamins. “This is a two-part system,” he said. “The cream is an amnesiac. Have you ever had an operation, and they put you to sleep? Then when you wake up, you don’t remember anything past counting backward from one hundred to ninety-seven?”

  “Yes. That happened when I dislocated my shoulder during a soccer g
ame in high school.”

  “I didn’t know girls played that rough.”

  “Mary Lou Winstead did. Anyway, whatever they gave me made me forget about the whole experience of getting the joint put back in the socket.”

  “Well, this stuff has a similar effect. And it has the added benefit of opening the person getting it to subliminal suggestions. The delivery system is ingenious. You scoop out about a half teaspoon of the stuff and rub it on the guy.”

  “Where?” she asked, then wished the question hadn’t leaped into her mind. From the way Alex tipped his head to one side and stared at her, she was pretty sure they were both thinking about the same body part. But his answer was mercifully straightforward.

  “It doesn’t have to be an intimate place. It can be anywhere you want.”

  “You mean, like his neck? His arm?”

  “Yeah, that will work. It will put him to sleep in about five minutes. Maybe you can tell him you’re giving him a massage to relax him. When he starts waking up a half hour later, you whisper in his ear that his performance in bed was fantastic. And he’ll believe you.”

  “And how do I stay awake while the guy is nodding off, if I’ve got the same stuff on my hands?”

  “An excellent question. You take your vitamins. They’ve got an ingredient that will block the anesthetic. But you’ve got to take the antidote at least fifteen minutes before you use the cream—to be sure you don’t put yourself to sleep.”

  Relieved to finally have the details, she asked, “How long does the counteragent last?”

  “Eight hours. That should get you through the evening. Or you might have to take another dose.”

  “Okay, good.” She took a step back and waved her arm, trying to ease some of the tension coursing through her. Unfortunately her hand hit a folder on the narrow desk bolted to the wall and papers cascaded to the floor.

  “Sorry.” Quickly she bent to pick them up. Since Alex had first helped her into the van, he had avoided touching her. But when his hand brushed hers, she felt another shiver of reaction go through her.

  Casting her eyes down, she focused on the papers, shuffling them together. Mostly she saw closely spaced text. But one sheet caught her attention. On it was a picture of a scorpion.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  Alex’s jaw tightened. “The mark of the devil.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Have you heard of a South American country called Nilia?”

  “Yes. Aren’t they having trouble with a rebel leader named…Gonzalez?”

  “That’s right. How do you know?”

  “I read the news magazines. There was a story about him a few months ago.”

  “Well, Ricardo Gonzalez is also known as Black Death. He’s after the oil resources of his country. And he’s willing to do almost anything to get them—like killing anyone in his way, women and children included.”

  “What does that have to do with this operation?”

  “Gonzalez is the reason the Department of Public Safety opened a confidential agency branch in New Orleans. He’s sent rebels here for reasons unknown, but we suspect they’re here to raise money to finance his operation. It’s our job to track their movements to find out what they’re up to. All the guys who work for him wear this scorpion tattoo.”

  She made a sound of disbelief. “Isn’t that pretty stupid of them? I mean, that tattoo makes them instantly identifiable. If they get caught doing anything illegal, they can’t claim they were innocent bystanders.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. It also makes them absolutely ruthless. They’ll do anything to keep from falling into the clutches of the law because they don’t have an escape hatch. And if they lose their nerve and want to quit the Gonzalez organization, they’re stuck. Their only option is to stand and fight.”

  She thought about the implications. He was right. Those guys would be formidable opponents.

  “That’s what we’re up against,” Alex growled. “Guys who have no choice but to be absolutely loyal to a tyrannical boss.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said tightly.

  He gave her a direct look. “You sound pretty calm. What—do you have a death wish?”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Like when I came up behind you the other day?”

  “You weren’t exactly playing fair.”

  She didn’t know how the argument would have ended, but a flicker of movement on one of the television screens caught her attention. It was from the camera that was trained on the back door of the club.

  A woman had come out of the building and was standing in the alley. She was turned toward the camera, and Gillian got a good look at her. She seemed to be in her fifties, with wavy hair dyed a soft blond, a full figure encased in a draped satin dress, and a rounded face that went from calm to fierce as she stared down the alley.

  “That’s your new boss,” Alex said, his tone sharp.

  “Madam Dupré?”

  “Yeah.”

  Gillian watched her, thinking that she looked pretty hard and ruthless.

  “You’re late,” the madam said, and Gillian realized there was also sound with the picture.

  A man walked into the scene. She heard Alex suck in his breath. “Well, well. Jack Smith,” he muttered.

  “Who?”

  “Don’t you recognize him?”

  Gillian studied the man. “The bartender from the other night?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jack looked up and down the alley to make sure that he and Dupré were alone.

  “You have some stuff for me?” he asked.

  “If you have some money for me,” she answered, her voice sharp.

  He pulled several bills out of his pocket. She riffled through them, then opened her black leather purse and took out a plastic bag. Jack stuffed it into his pocket. The whole transaction was over in moments and the bartender disappeared into the shadows.

  “Those are the kinds of people you want to live with for the next few weeks?” Alex asked.

  “Of course not. Who would? But you aren’t going to get me to back out,” she said, her voice rising in the confines of the van.

  Chapter Five

  Just after Alex turned onto Tchoupitoulas, heading toward the Crescent City Transports buildings, a tractor trailer came around a curve too fast, forcing him to brake and narrowly avoid a collision. He hurled a string of curses at the driver, when what he really wanted to do was to take out his foul mood on Gillian Seymour.

  She was the reason for his sleepless night. After his session in the van with her, he’d lain awake, his stomach churning. A double dose of the antacids he kept in the medicine cabinet hadn’t helped.

  He’d wanted to reach out and shake some sense into Little Miss Rookie Undercover Agent. She’d been trying to act so cool. But he knew she was scared. Any woman in her right mind would be. But he hadn’t gotten her to admit it, even when she’d seen that scorpion picture.

  He fought to repress a shudder. He was hoping she’d never encounter the thing in real life. That is, on the body of one of the very dangerous creeps who worked for Gonzalez. Like the Latin men who had made themselves at home in Bourbon Street Libations the week before.

  Well, they didn’t seem the type to frequent the upscale McDonough Club. But then, they hadn’t seemed like the type to climb into a limo, either.

  As he came around another curve, he slowed. He’d driven this particular stretch of Tchoupitoulas for weeks now and was aware of every pothole in the road and every feature in the warehouses and vacant lots that lined the stretch of roadway.

  He passed the old washtub that had been sitting on the curb since Moses had come down from the mountain and headed for the weed-choked field enclosed by the crumbling brick walls of a partially demolished warehouse.

  An abandoned car had been parked in the weeds about as long as the washtub. It was a rusted-out junker with the tags removed so nobody would know who’d dumped it. T
oday it had a friend, a late-model Toyota that looked like it might have been recently stolen.

  From the road, the newer vehicle didn’t appear to have been stripped. Maybe some kids had taken it for a joy ride and left it sitting in the weeds. But this was a pretty out-of-the-way location. How had they gotten back to civilization? And why had the latch on the trunk been popped?

  Alex might have driven on by. An abandoned car wasn’t really his business. But his cop’s training wouldn’t allow him to just let the mystery go.

  Easing up on the gas pedal, he slowed, then turned into what had once been a driveway leading to a warehouse. Much of the structure had been demolished, leaving piles of old bricks and a roofless courtyard where the two cars rested, the newcomer’s front end at an angle facing the wreck.

  He pulled to a stop about eight feet behind the new car and sat for a moment, surveying the scene. Then he climbed out into the sunlight. The whole site seemed to be abandoned, but he supposed that somebody could always pop out from behind one of the still-standing brick walls.

  His attention was focused on the cars in front of him. He’d taken a couple of steps forward when the sound of tires crunching over rubble alerted him to the fact that he was no longer alone. Cursing his own stupidity, he whirled around to see that another car had pulled in behind his, effectively blocking his exit from the area.

  He would have reached for his Glock, but he wasn’t wearing it. Protocol for his undercover assignment dictated going without a weapon.

  So he stood with his muscles tensed as he waited to find out who had blocked him in.

  The man who climbed out of the car was solidly built and over six feet tall with silver-gray eyes and thick chestnut hair.

  Tanner Harrison’s voice was conversational as he asked, “Need some help?”

  “What are you trying to do—give me a heart attack?” Alex countered. He’d been so focused on the truck and then the newly abandoned car that he hadn’t even known the other confidential agent was behind him.