Every attempt at a question was cut off as we drove to his home. Again we slid into the underground garage and were shut into the dark.
He undid my cuffs but growled as I looked around and contemplated escape. "After your friend's last stunt I let the staff go for vacation. It's just you and me here, Aileen." With that he jammed the cuffs back into the glove box, surprising me.
I shivered, scared while wondering what came next, and slowly opened my own door. He waited for me until I followed him into the house, his hand outside his pocket, covering my gun menacingly.
"P-"
"Not one word," he said as he had done with every attempt of mine to speak in the last fifteen minutes. I sighed and followed him down a hall and waited as he pressed a button by some French doors and then opened a security panel.
The code was entered and secured, it was too dark to see it. I felt trapped, and then the doors parted. I'd been expecting perhaps a dungeon but what I got was a large personal elevator.
The marble was rose and gold, there was a marble-tile-topped table in the middle. He pushed the button for three and the doors closed leaving us in dim romantic light.
For a wild moment I couldn't help but wonder at the number of women who'd taken this ride before me. This was posh, well designed, and hell if I liked him better I probably would have hopped up on the table and demanded he take me there.
I caught his reflection in the mirror trim and he was smiling. Bastard.
The doors opened and we emerged on the top floor. The lights were off, casting shadows as he took me to his bedroom. The walls were dark wood paneling, very Edwardian I knew, and hid shadows too well. I couldn't outrun him in the hall, so I was going to have to wait.
Inside his room he turned on the light and again I felt lost just as I had the last time I'd been inside. The light came from a large chandelier, clearly crystal, and it hung over the center of the room. The cream carpeting was plush beneath my boots, the navy walls looked satiny.
His dark mahogany furniture was sparse in the main room, merely a bed, a bench at the foot, a chest of draws supporting a bar, and two chairs beside a table under the large picture window.
The window was open to the city noise and if I had to, I could go out it down twenty feet to the porch roof.
There was a large arched doorway leading to a dressing room and his bathroom, no escape there.
Patrick locked the door behind me and I turned to see a shiny new lock, one that required a key on the inside to lock it. He stretched up with his arms onto the tips of his toes and slid the key onto a ledge too high for me to reach. He turned down the lights and went from being a demon in moonlight to a devil.
My phone joined the key on the ledge, my gun he stuck in the chest of draws and locked it tight. The message was clear; I was fucked.
So when he came towards me I dug in my heels and tried to look bigger, prepared to fight my way out. "You kn-know what happened to the last asshole who tried to f-fuck me without consent. I'm not p-playing around." Shit, my voice broke.
Without speaking he stepped past me, peeling off his leather jacket as he went. It landed on the plush bench revealing a holster over his navy shirt. The gun in it was large, and flashed as he crossed back to the chest and poured himself a scotch, neat.
He swallowed it one go and didn't bother to offer me anything. "I joined the Marines at seventeen. I didn't go to college, much to my family's shame. Wanted to work my way up, didn't want to start as an officer."
I leaned against on of his bed's posts and took a deep steadying breath, unsure of what the rules were to this new game. "What do I care?"
He sighed and gave me a withering look. "I was at Pendleton as a recruit. Long story short, I found out some guys on base were selling weapons. I tried to stop one, we got into a fight, I won, he died. I got pinched for murder and trafficking weapons. I did three years of a fifty year sentence when I got a deal.
"They thought I had contacts which I didn't, and offered me a clean record if I tracked down the buyers for them. I got that clean record, put away twenty scumbags, and came up with a recommendation.
"When I got home I joined the force, severed contact with my family. The money I have is mine, left to me by my grandfather, the rest I've earned. I've worked my way up to detective undercover, the shop has let me into many worlds; drugs, extortion, gang activity. I'm well decorated."
"Bully for you," I said but inside I was softening. This wasn't the spoiled rich kid I'd assumed. He was no nice guy, but he wasn't a total bastard. Didn't matter; he was still a cop. And cops always wanted something from people like me. Usually my friends, or worse, my enemies.
"I guess I'm supposed to feel sorry for you, promise to help you collect all the LC in town."
"No."
I almost laughed at his expression. Serene, arms folded, eyes tired. "No?"
He shook his head and his dark hair tumbled. "No. The cops and everyone else think that's what I'm after, but I'm only after one person."
Fear for my freedom began to crawl up my spine. "Who?"
"Someone is working for the LC, feeding them department information. This got my last partner killed just three months ago. Gunnar, his replacement, is helping me."
I almost choked. "You don't think I have anything-"
"Not you, Aileen. You're clean. No, but every attempt we've made to penetrate the LC has met with failure. My orders were to get into the racing scene, see who would take on the LC. When it was you Gunnar was supposed to get close to you, no one knew we'd already..."
"Fucked?" I said callously. "Gee you sure do plan ahead."
"Hey, you raced me, you made the challenge sexual, all right?" His jaw was ticking, a sign I'd learned meant he was on the edge. "That's not the point, the point is we're wrapped up in some dangerous shit."
"Well how the fuck would I know who's working for them? All I know is they send a few scouts out, and when they take over a town drugs triple. It wasn't like that when I ran, and no one I ran with is still alive."
"Aileen I'm not going to lie to you but that tattoo on your back says someone there has to be willing to talk to you. Listen these people, Aileen, do you know why they let you join?"
I rolled me neck and wished I could take my boots off, the spike heels were killers. "I'm called a cover. Nice, clean cut, good looking, white. Cops usually don't suspect us."
He nodded. "Exactly. Aileen their current cover somehow knows all our moves. We've got dead DEA agents, and the Bureau is breathing down our necks."
I raised my eyebrow. "Why aren't they out there racing? This is organized crime, not a matter for local cops."