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UNDERCOVER
By
Terri Carnis
© copyright Oct. 2007, Terri Carnis
Cover art by Alexis DeShanks, © Oct. 2007
ISBN 978-1-60394-097-9
New Concept Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events and places are of the authors' imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.
Chapter One
Kyla Cusack rushed to the motel mirror to check herself out, knowing she only had a few minutes before her 'john' arrived, expecting sex.
Wavy red hair framed her pale blue eyes and pouty lips, accented by sapphire-blue eye shadow and ruby-red lip-gloss. Both looked good on her skin, pale as milk, and the black silk bustier acted like a push-up bra, all but putting her breasts on full display. It was too much for her taste, but there was no point in complaining. When you worked as a sex decoy in the Vice Unit, you had to look convincing, playing whatever role you'd been assigned.
The day before, she'd gone to a fashion ball as a high-end call girl, wearing a gold lame´ cocktail dress and two-carat diamond earrings, along with a splash of French perfume that cost $200 an ounce. She'd received the VIP treatment at Seattle's Alexis Hotel then been propositioned for sex in the famous Space Needle, where she'd busted her date … all of which was classier than her current grit-and-grime assignment near Denny way.
She ran her hands over the black vinyl mini skirt. Shifting her weight, she regretted wearing the fuck-me mules, with three-inch stiletto heels. True, they pushed her height to five foot eight-inches. But they also killed her arches.
She glanced at her watch, then rapped on the wall shared with the next motel room. Two reassuring taps came back, which signaled that her partners, Vice Detectives Ruben Morales and Paul Schaffer were ready to protect her and help arrest her client.
Behind her, a tentative knock sounded on the door, followed by a muffled voice. "Hey, Babe. You ready?"
She glanced in the mirror, pushing up her breasts-careful not to disturb the wire concealed in her bustier to record the transaction. Then she smoothed down her skirt, making certain that her badge-hooked over the front of her panties-didn't show. Quickly, she stepped to the door and peered through the keyhole, making sure her trick was alone.
He stood there, a big guy wearing a pin-stripe suit, with perspiration dotting his forehead. He hadn't bothered to take off his gold wedding ring, which reflected the hallway lights. She figured him for a traveling businessman, maybe in town for a convention.
For reassurance, she touched her necklace, with its array of dangling metal rectangles. The longest rectangle held a small, carefully disguised knife blade.
"C'mon, Baby," he said, giving the door a thump. "I don't like waiting."
Usually, she carried a snub-nosed pistol, but its bulge would have shown in tonight's 'uniform', so she made do with the mini-knife and backup from her partners.
Quickly, she manufactured a smile and opened the door, shifting to her sultry voice. "I'm ready," she said, "if you are."
He hesitated at the doorway, his gaze darting about the room. Did he think a pimp was inside, ready to rob him? That happened a lot, so she understood his caution. Or had he made her as a cop?
She gave her breasts a slow squeeze, working them higher in her bustier and then gestured at the bed. "Ready to fuck?"
He bit his lip, and for a moment, she thought his conscience as a married man might win out. Then, towering over her, he focused on her cleavage, where the bustier showed part of her nipples. But he didn't say anything … didn't respond to her offer.
She stifled a sigh of fatigue. Her feet were killing her, and he had to commit, or there'd be no arrest.
"Come on," she said, giving her hips a little twitch. "If you're willing to pay, I'll give you a ride you won't forget."
"Oh yeah," he said, stepping forward, making her retreat to the bed. "A hundred bucks for a half-and-half."
She forced a smile at his use of street lingo, using 'half-and-half' to refer to oral sex and intercourse in the missionary position. "Fine," she said, "a blow job and a straight lay."
He grinned. "How about warming me up, by flashing a little pussy?"
"My pleasure." She lifted her skirt and flashed her badge.
"You're under arrest," she shouted, a cue to her partners, who burst through the door and grabbed the guy's arms.
Instead of fighting like some of them did, this john folded. Blinking, he stammered, "There m-must be some m-mistake."
"Yeah," she said as she cuffed him. "There was a mistake, all right. Bad judgment on your part."
* * * *
Ninety minutes later, she was relieved to be in her condo, no longer wearing her trashy hooker outfit.
As was her usual ritual before taking off her gun and badge, she stood before the small photo shrine to her half-sister, Anna, from her mother's second marriage.
While burning lemon-grass incense, she prayed for Anna's soul as she looked at the three photographs. The first one showed the two of them hugging. The next photo showed Anna reading to children in the library where she'd worked. The final snapshot showed Anna at the Woodland Park Zoo-one of her favorite places-watching a snow leopard that was behind bars, sunning on a rock.
That was the last photo she had of Anna, taken at age nineteen, a week before Anna had disappeared from a movie theater, only to have her nude body turn up a month later. Evidence at the crime scene confirmed she'd been kept a prisoner, tortured, and raped repeatedly before being strangled.
Gently, Kyla reached out and touched the zoo photo as she prayed for Anna's soul, asking that she found goodness and mercy in her afterlife. It had been so hard, losing Anna, because she'd been the center of her universe.
Anna's mother had left her father when Anna was a child, remarried and given birth four years later to Kyla. When the next divorce came, Kyla's father had moved to the east coast and her mother had had a nervous breakdown-spending most of her time in mental hospitals. So Anna had raised Kyla, giving her the love and inspiration she had missed as a child.
With Anna's death, Kyla-at age 15-had been forced into a foster home. That was when she had vowed to become a police officer. She wanted the chance to find her sister's killer and bring him to justice. And if she couldn't do that, to at least prevent other women from falling prey to crimes of sexual violence.
Finished with her prayer and incense ritual, Kyla placed her gun in a bedroom drawer then stepped into the bathroom and got the bath water running. After chasing pimps and perverts, she liked to scrub herself clean and remind herself that the 'real her' wasn't someone who hustled in bars and nightclubs.
While the bathtub filled, she saw her nude reflection in the mirror. She wasn't quite centerfold-caliber, but close to it. More importantly-as a sex decoy-she had a talent for turning men's heads. Mostly, she had learned her allure came from her sensuality and attitude, as much as her looks. Somehow, she produced a steady sexual undertow that pulled men toward her. That was her 'gift'.
It sounded desirable, attracting men. But she got paid to attract the wrong kinds of men-bastards who broke the law and liked to take advantage of women … sometimes, savage men with twisted desires. Definitely that part of the job had aged her, and it showed in her eyes.
Eager to forget about work, she poured in some bath oil then lowered herself into the tub. She let her body relax as she soaked. Then she stood and cleansed herself with scented soap. Then she used more soap and did it again.
Finally, she got out, toweled off and slipped into the baggy flannel pajamas she found so comfortable. For a moment, she paused, considering the irony of her situation. Here she was, sexy as hell and using all her charms on the job, but her own love life was a disaster. Downright pathetic.
Most of time she was too tired to even play the dating game. And whenever she took a chance, she seemed to be a magnet for jerks-attracting alpha males who were so full of themselves that they only saw her as a prize or sexual conquest … not a person. And to make matters worse, most men-given her effect on them, expected her to have a ravishing appetite for sex. Not that she was against that, but the truth was, she had yet to find any man who stirred her passion to the boiling point … not since her disastrous affair the year before with FBI Agent Nick DeStassio.
As she combed out her hair then blow-dried it, she thought back to when they'd met at a crime conference that focused on the connection between victims and serial killers. The theory put forth by the conference was that a better understanding of how serial killers selected their victims would lead to a better arrest rate. In turn, such arrests would prevent further serial killings and, hopefully, provide a sense of closure for survivors of those whose family members had fallen victim to such horrible deaths.
Despite the grim topic, Kyla had done well until the very last day of the conference, when-during a slide show that focused on how some serial victims were posed by their murderer-she'd seen a crime scene photograph of her half-sister, Anna. Illuminated by the stark strobe light of a camera, the photo showed her body as it had been discovered at dawn-nude, tied to a pine tree, with her pantyhose still wrapped around her neck.
Kyla recalled how her stomach had clenched as the voice of the speaker had fallen away. But she hadn't remembered standing up and walking out in a daze, because the next thing she knew, a man with sun-bleached brown hair was talking to her, touching her wrist…trying to get her attention … his deep brown eyes filled with concern.
After a moment, she realized he was introducing himself as Special Agent Nicholas DeStassio and asking if she was all right. She remembered noticing him earlier in the conference, good-looking with a big shoulders and a quick smile. But at the moment-still reeling from the shock of seeing the graphic photograph of her sister's body-she felt compelled to apologize for her reaction.
"It's just … I haven't seen that photo for a few years," she said. "I wasn't ready for it."
He nodded. "I'm sure it's painful."
"My half-sister," she added, her voice breaking, tears filling her eyes. "I'll be all right in a moment."
He'd taken her by the elbow and said, "Give yourself a break. You don't have to do that to yourself. Don't deepen the hurt, thinking you've got something to prove."
Surprised by his compassion, her tears began to fall. "It hurts," she said, "more than I like to admit." Her legs suddenly felt unsteady and she leaned on him, further embarrassed, but he didn't pull back.
"Maybe a stiff drink would help?" he offered. He pointed toward the bar at the other end of the hall and she nodded.
Once they found a quiet booth at the back of the bar, he ordered drinks and she found herself telling him about Anna … how much her half-sister had meant to her. In turn, he'd sketched out a little about his own life, from being raised on a horse ranch in the empty reaches of Montana, to growing up as a loner…finding it harder to open up than to buckle down and work in law enforcement, first as a Deputy Sheriff then getting his masters degree in criminal justice and being recruited by the FBI.
She took comfort in trading shoptalk, explaining that she worked as a sex decoy, while he said most of his assignments were undercover … assignments he wasn't at liberty to discuss.
From the trauma of seeing her sister's body, and the tenderness DeStassio had shown in consoling her, the strength of their unspoken attraction had quickly intensified, and they'd ended up spending the night together in her room. And what a night it had been.
Up until then, her experience had been that men, once they got you in bed, were willing enough to get you aroused-but mostly for the purpose of gratifying their own urges. With him, however, it had been the opposite.
His gentle touches, caresses and kisses had surveyed every inch of her body, sparking her passion then nurturing it until it had blossomed with a richness and fullness she hadn't thought possible. Urging each other onward with kisses, embraces, and thrusts that seemed to melt her from the inside out, until the heat and urgency of their lovemaking all but consumed them, triggering a series of climaxes, each more intense than the last … leaving her so pleasured and exhausted that she had slept without any sense of time passing … without even the barest trace of a dream.
But then next morning, soon after she woke to the sound of the shower running, all of the beauty and trust they'd shared had been shattered.
Intending to brew coffee for them in her hotel room's kitchenette, she had seen his briefcase on the counter, partially opened. Curious, she hesitated then decided to take a peek. She expected to find maybe notes from the conference and some inter-office FBI memos. Instead, she found a spiral notepad, its pages crowded with a form of shorthand she couldn't decipher, next to several closed packets of photographs, each bound by a rubber band.
She knew it was none of her business, but couldn't resist the urge to look. So she picked one packet of photos and removed the rubber band. As she rifled through the photos, she was stunned to find crime scene shots of her half-sister, her body posed by whoever had killed her and tied her to a tree. Then, adding to her confusion and sense of alarm, she saw a photo of herself, in a newspaper article about her sister's funeral.
Suddenly, her sense of alarm turned to anger. DeStassio had known exactly who she was when she'd gotten upset and run out of the crime conference. And he had known about her half-sister. So last night's lovemaking hadn't been at all what she'd thought. Instead of being about tenderness and genuine passion, it had been about something so strange that she couldn't understand it, even as nausea began to grip her.
Stunned, she opened another set of photos. These were also crime scene photos, showing a different victim, a young woman found nude in a creek running through a thickly wooded area. Again, there was an article with a photo of a family member-this one indicating this crime had occurred thirty years ago. In the next packet, she found crime photos and another article-even older. Forty-two years ago … a crime that had occurred before she or DeStassio had even been born.
Here she'd poured her heart out to DeStassio, telling him how much Anna had meant to her, and he'd soaked it all up as if it was brand new to him. Yet he already had some awareness of Anna's death, probably in connection with other cases he'd been assigned. In her eyes, that made him a complete creep who had taken advantage of her grief and vulnerability.
As she gripped the photos, her hands shaking with rage, she sensed someone behind her and turned, finding him with his hair still wet from the shower, wearing a hotel robe.
His expression was one of anguish. "If you'll let me explain ...."
But instinct had taken over and she punched him-a right cross to the jaw, then kneed him in the groin. As he folded over at the waist, she threw the photos and articles back in his briefcase, slammed it shut, and pitched it into the hallway outside her room, shoving him after it as he tried to straighten up, struggling to talk.
"Please, wait," he'd urged, but those were the last words she'd heard as she slammed the door.
She checked out of the hotel an hour later, wanting to forget every moment of contact she'd had with Nicholas DeStassio.
So she had chosen not to report his photo of her, or his actions at the conference. Bottom line-she hadn't wanted to do anything that would have forced her to think about him, face him, or ever talk to him again.
Now, as she smoothed out her flannel pajamas and entered her condominium bedroom, she tried to push DeStassio from her mind. She had sworn to herself that she wouldn't let her experience with him affect her, but it did, nonetheless. She had begun to distrust her own feelings and passion. Ever since that night with DeStassio-whenever she made love to a man-it had become more and more like her job as a sex decoy, with her becoming an expert at faking it. She learned to keep herself distanced from what was happening, and her feelings about it, never surrendering to her true urges and impulses.
Her experience with DeStassio had toughened and hardened her, at the expense of her emotions, until she realized she'd taken on more than a passing resemblance to some of the stony-eyed hookers she met on the street.
Realizing that, she felt a sharp pang of loneliness as she sat on her bed and hugged herself, then sighed. Bone-tired, she yawned and stretched her arms overhead. Her digital alarm clock read 2:10 a.m. Thankfully, sorting out the shambles of her personal life could wait. Exhausted, she fluffed up her pillow. But before she could crawl into bed, her cell phone chimed.
Cursing, she picked it up and saw by the readout it was Captain Williams.
"Yes, sir," she answered. "Detective Cusack."
"Kyla," he said, "we have a chance for a major arrest. Take a cab to the corner of 33rd and Stanton."
"Sir, I ...."
"I know. You just pulled a long shift. But lives are at stake. Some young women have been kidnapped. We need you as a sex decoy, undercover."
She found a pen and jotted down the license plate and description of the vehicle he'd be waiting in. "What clothes should I wear? My decoy wardrobe's at the station."
"No time for that. We've brought one of your costumes for you."
"I'll get there as soon as I can," she said, already getting dressed.
She hung up, then thought of her sister, Anna, her hope crushed, dying at the hands of her abductor. Moving quickly, determined to help the kidnapped women, she grabbed her gun and badge.
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