“Have you visited our website?”
“No. I didn’t even know you had one.”
Jasmine turned, opened the red door with one hand and grabbed Aspen’s hand with the other.
“Follow me,” she said.
They entered a hallway and walked past several doors, each painted in a different cartoon color. Aspen felt weird, holding a woman’s hand, but didn’t pull away. They entered the room with the green door. And Jasmine said, “This is our green room.”
It was a well-equipped dungeon with a hospital smell.
“It’s fully soundproof and totally private,” Jasmine said. “Are you a top or a bottom?”
Aspen knew she better have an answer.
Quickly.
The thought of surrendering control to a stranger terrified her.
“A top,” she said.
Jasmine smiled. “No problem. We have three subs working tonight. None of them have any problem surrendering to a woman. I think you’d especially like Antoinette. She’ll do bondage, light spanking, cum control, obedience training, submissive wrestling, and just about anything else you might have in mind.”
Aspen pictured it.
“The room’s totally soundproof,” Jasmine added. “And totally private. There are no cameras or anything like that. Whatever happens in here is between you and your sub. The rate is a hundred dollars an hour for the room, which goes to the house. The girls work for tips. The minimum tip rate is a hundred an hour. So, would you like to meet some of the girls?”
Aspen nodded.
“Sure. Why not?”
On the way back to Denver, Draven swung by the stripper’s apartment. She scrunched her face as she looked at the Granada and almost didn’t get in, but changed her mind when he handed her the remaining eight hundred dollars.
“Nice ride,” she said, sliding over on the bench seat until she was next to him.
“My Porsche is in the shop.”
Her face brightened.
“You have a Porsche?”
“A 911 Turbo,” he said, which was true. That, his house on the beach, and his whole other existence was in Malibu, all under his real name, Jack Brentwood.
“Red, I hope.”
“That’s the only color,” he said. “If it ain’t red, it’s dead.”
She rubbed her hand on his thigh. “Do you want to know what I have in store for you, for paying me so well?”
He pulled into traffic.
“Sure, why not?”
She moved her hand to his cock.
“Okay,” she said. “But don’t come before we get there.”
He drugged her on the way to the cabin, then carried her into the second bedroom, stripped her down to her thong, and secured her spread-eagled to the bed, double-checking the knots to be absolutely sure there was no way she could escape.
Then he walked into Mia Avila’s room, carrying the logbook that he’d gotten from her tattoo shop, and bitch-slapped her across the face before she could make a sound.
“You screwed with me,” he said. “That was a very wrong career move.”
She mumbled something through the gag.
He could pry the safe combination out of her, but he really didn’t care about it anymore. He already had the logbook, which was the main thing. Without that, the police wouldn’t be smart enough to tie him to the other woman getting the tattoo, Isella Ramirez. And without her, they wouldn’t get a description of him.
Plus he’d had enough of that stupid town.
It stunk.
It stunk with biker heat.
It stunk with cop heat.
Better to just stay away.
His phone rang, and Swofford’s voice came through.
“How you coming on that stripper?”
“Done deal,” he said. “She’s already at the destination.”
“Good. What’d you decide to do with the other woman?”
“She ended up pissing me off, so I’ve got something special planned for her. Something slow.”
“As long as she doesn’t turn into a problem.”
“She won’t,” he said.
Teffinger had been the only one in homicide for some time now. When the windows turned black and started to reflect the fluorescent ceiling lights, and he had to fight to stay focused, he knew the useful part of the day had come to an end.
He headed to Davica’s.
She fed him.
Then they ended up in the garage, sitting in the?67 Vette in the dark, drinking Bud Light from the bottle.
“Heaven,” he said.
“Rough day?”
“Not really,” he said. “A rough day is when I’m the victim and someone else is doing the investigation.”
She smiled.
Headlights came up the street and swept a pattern of light across the garage walls. Then they disappeared and everything returned to black. Teffinger held his hand up in front of his face and couldn’t see it.
“Dark,” he said.
“Sort of weird,” she said.
He agreed.
“Good weird, though.”
Halfway through the second round, he told her about the day.
“This Brad Ripley guy is getting more and more interesting,” he said. “It turns out that the woman he killed, Tonya Obenchain, the real estate agent, disappeared between two house showings, sometime between one and three in the afternoon. Today we found out that Ripley was in a meeting during that time period, all afternoon in fact.”
“So he’s not the one who abducted her?”
“Apparently not,” Teffinger said. “But he’s the one who killed her, the one in the snuff film.”