And his cohort would definitely look out of place in an expensive suite.
“Give me an update.” He shrugged out of his jacket and neatly placed it on the hanger. Just because he was in a piece-of-crap motel didn’t mean he had to act like an animal.
“She’s got shit on this system, boss. It looks like it’s all crap.” Kyle Nelson’s young face was illuminated by the light of the computer screen. The hoodie he’d worn earlier had been tossed on one of the beds. Kyle had been halfway decent as a purse snatcher. He’d kept his head down and the hood over his brow. Holder was pretty sure Shelley McNamara wouldn’t recognize him even if she was introduced to the man who had stolen her bag. She’d seemed much more upset about the loss of her work than the man who had taken it. She had given the cops only the vaguest of descriptions.
Of course, he’d kept her attention focused on him until the time was right. She’d done exactly what Holder had wanted her to do.
“You have any trouble getting past her password?” Holder asked, opening the mini fridge and pulling out a beer. Shelley McNamara was a pretty little piece of fluff. If that overgrown ape, Wolf, hadn’t shown up, he would have given serious consideration to attempting to seduce her. It had been a while since he’d played a woman for information, but he wasn’t exactly unattractive. Even the scars could be used right. A lot of women loved that “wounded warrior” shit. But Wolf had practically growled at him. The last thing he needed was a former SEAL getting pissed off because Holder had touched his shit.
He needed the Meyer brothers’ goodwill to get into that club.
“The dumb bitch didn’t have one.” Kyle looked up over his screen. “Hey, pass me one, boss.”
Holder popped the top and then smacked young Kyle upside the head. “Watch your language when talking about a lady.”
His eyes went wide. Kyle had gotten the old naval boot for getting too interested in certain websites. Holder didn’t have a single problem with whatever the idiot wanted to hack in his spare time as long as he did the job at hand. But the little shit needed to show some respect. The mercenary business wasn’t what it used to be. The insanely wealthy people they worked for expected their highly paid killers to have some manners. The young man took a deep breath and proved he had a brain in his head. “The very nice lady did not properly protect her computer, sir. I got into it without a single problem.”
“Better. Nothing incriminating?” Holder looked over Kyle’s shoulder. Shelley’s background was a soothing landscape that slowly turned into Manhattan at night and then a sunny, calm beach.
Kyle shrugged. “She does a lot of shopping online, but she doesn’t buy anything. She likes to look at shoes. I mean a lot. What’s up with women and shoes? I mean, you got two feet, right? Why should you have more than one pair of shoes?”
Holder barely managed to not roll his eyes. “Anything besides the shoes?”
“Uhm, she doesn’t clear her cache. Besides her preoccupation with something called Louboutin, her latest searches go to a lot of kinky stuff, if you know what I mean.” Kyle’s voice went low as though he was telling a secret.
“I don’t. Tell me.” God, why had he decided to take care of this himself? He could be in some shithole in Africa getting his balls blown off, but no, he got to hang out with a twenty-two-year-old hacker.
“Bondage and shit.”
Well, of course. They were back to the bondage. It made sense. It’s what Leo Meyer had been into. Everyone had known that. Meyer had a taste for tying women up and playing some kinky games with them. It was what had gotten little Ada into such trouble. It wouldn’t surprise Holder at all to find out baby brother Meyer was into the same shit. “It’s not that mind blowing. Shelley works for that Lodge guy and apparently he runs a very secret club.”
Cross was trying to get into The Club. He had a friend in the Senate with privileges there and would be in town in a few days. Holder didn’t want to wait that long.
Kyle’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yeah. Lodge is into a lot of shit, boss. And hacking into his system wasn’t easy. I couldn’t actually get into his business system. Well, I did, but then I had to do the online equivalent of jumping out of the window of a house I was robbing and running like my pants were on fire. Pretty sure I covered my tracks. But I managed to find out a lot. Rumors mostly, but enough to make me think they’re true. He’s a pervert.”
He didn’t give a crap about the guy’s morality. “Aren’t we all? So he’s personally into bondage, too? It’s not just a business for him?”
“Yes, the club he runs is a BDSM club, and I think he’s got a lot of people in his back pocket. There are rumors that he’s even got some mob contacts.”
Fuck. That was all he needed. Shelley McNamara, wife of an infamous blackmailer, was working for a man with mob connections. Cross was right. They had a serious problem, but if he couldn’t find the files with the taped meetings, it would always be hanging over their heads.
“Anything that looks like a blackmail file?”
Kyle shrugged. “Not unless she’s blackmailing people for their design tastes. She’s got a bunch of weird sketches and something called virtual swatches. What the hell is that?”
Nothing he could use.
“Dig deeper.”
“I’ll try.” Kyle went back to his work, his fingers flying across the keys.
Holder stepped to the window, looking out over the spectacular view of the parking lot.
If he had to bet his life on it, he would bet that Shelley McNamara was exactly what she appeared to be—a sweet, slightly kinky woman with a shoe fetish.
But then there was the problem of Julian Lodge. How did a woman go from a blackmailer/drug-runner husband straight to a boss with possible mob connections? She’d made it out of the investigation into her husband’s practices smelling like a rose despite the fact that she’d placed many of the items that had caught the incriminating activities Bryce Hughes had used against her clients. And yet the feds had bought her “I didn’t know anything” story because she’d had a lawyer she shouldn’t have been able to afford.
Finn Taylor. Julian Lodge’s lawyer.
Appearances could be deceiving. He needed to get into The Club. And he definitely needed to know how Leo and Wolf Meyer were connected to Shelley McNamara. If they were involved in her scheme, then he would need some serious backup.
The sun went down while Kyle worked, and Holder wondered how he was going to kill not one but two former SEALs.
Chapter Six
“Are you sure I have to wear this? I’m not really wild about leather.” Logan Green shifted uncomfortably, his tall body moving in a graceless manner. For once his face wasn’t tight, but instead Leo could see the kid Logan Green really was.
“You’ll get used to them.” Leo himself had spent so much time in leathers he often thought of them as his second skin.
He looked out over the dungeon floor wondering if Wolf would bring Shelley here on their first training night or if he would keep her to the playroom section of The Club. If he knew Wolf, she would be here, and Leo would have to see her in very little clothing.
“So when do I start spanking girls? That one looks like a bad girl. Yeah, she’s probably done something really naughty.” There was a healthy leer in Logan’s voice as he zeroed in on the object of his desire.
Well, at least he didn’t have to deal with the kid’s inhibitions. As far as Leo could tell, Logan didn’t have any. When they’d gotten dressed in The Club’s expansive locker room, Logan had shed his clothes without batting an eye and walked around naked for a while as though he actually preferred to be without the encumbrance. He’d sat his naked ass down on a towel and started asking Leo all kinds of questions.