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“Hey, it makes her happy and it does help with her channel. They love her look,” Miyoko chimed in.
The sisters all nodded and Miwa looked as though she’d been vindicated and charmed Kimberly right down to her toes. Damnit.
She really wanted to hate Michiko. How could she hate someone who came from this?
The meal lasted over an hour as other family members drifted in for introductions and food. The benches were packed elbow-to-elbow by the time Michiko and the three of them excused themselves.
She led them back through the first house they’d entered and into a large family room.
“Have a seat,” Michiko told them as she plopped herself down onto an enormous bean bag chair. “Now that we’ve pretty much summed me up, it’s your guys’ turn.” She eyed them with open curiosity and toggled her finger back and forth among them. “How did this come to be? I mean, I know that her being your sub got your feet in the door—what I don’t know is how she came to be your sub.”
Fair enough,Kimberly mused, reluctantly impressed with her straightforwardness. “One of the kidnapped women is my friend.” Kimberly matched her straightforward approach and answered herself. “When she went missing, I went to the club looking for her, and Dean and Sam were there. Dean tried to scare me off, but I refused to leave. I ended up sceneing with a really bad guy. On my second trip, Dean and Sam topped me to keep me safe. Things escalated pretty fast from there.”
Michiko frowned hard at Kimberly. “What the hell were you doing snooping around a case?” she demanded.
“What do you mean?” Kimberly demanded back.
“What the hell doyoumean? You knew she’d disappeared after going to a sex club, so you decide to go to the same sex club—and what? Get kidnapped too?” Then she said something in Japanese that made Kimberly’s scowl deepen. She was ninety-nine-point nine percent sure the woman hadn’t just told Kimberly how pretty she was.
“That’s exactly what I said, too,” Dean had the gall to utter under his breath. When she turned her death glare on him, he cleared his throat and tried to look innocent.
“Look, Kimbo,” Kimberly told her, “my best friend was missing and the police—”
“Kimbo?” Michiko interrupted and stopped Kimberly in her tracks. “Is that a racial slur?”
Shit.
“No. It’s not a racial slur,” Kimberly muttered, but she’d have to explain now because of the way it sounded.Ugh.“A Kimbo is what I call bimbos who only wish they were me.”
That surprised a laugh out of the men; even Michiko looked as if she had trouble keeping a straight face.
“Okay, then,” she said after a minute with her lips twitching, “go on. You were telling me how you knew better than the entire police force and the FBI?”
“Oh, come on,” Kimberly said, exasperated. “She’s my best friend. Are you telling me you would have sat by and done nothing but wait?”
“No,” Michiko admitted with an incline of her head, “but I’m a trained and licensed officer. I believe the only license you hold is for hair.”
Okay, bitch.
“So, I was naïve,” Kimberly told her baldly. “I was also right.”
Michiko was quiet for a moment and studied Kimberly thoughtfully. “Yeah, you were,” she finally admitted. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt worse than you have been. You were brave to do what you did. Stupid, but incredibly brave. Both those girls are safe now because of you, so I’d say you lucked out big time. Now the mission is to figure out a way to get you out of the line of fire.”
It pissed Kimberly off the way the woman kept flipping the script and saying something reasonable. And kind of flattering.
“I still don’t see how we can get away without you having sex with them,” Kimberly said. “I just don’t see this crowd accepting anything less than everything.”
Michiko eyed the three of them contemplatively for a silent moment. “Well,” she finally said, “that’s where you’re wrong. There are pain sluts who don’t have sex as part of their play. The FBI wouldn’t have brought me in if they didn’t think we could pull this off.”
“Well,” Kimberly retorted, “in my opinion, that’s whereyou’rewrong. We’ve been neck deep with these people. They aren’t going to accept what passes for normal in other clubs. I don’t believe for one second these monsters are going to believe you don’t fuck.”
“I don’t think so.” This was from Sam. “Yeah, this crowd is extreme, but we have more information this time around than we had before. We’ve got the therapist. And we’re already in. I think if we’re careful, we can pull this off.”
“What do you mean?” Kimberly wanted to know.
“Last time, we got in through the club,” Sam said. “This time we get in through the counseling. If we can get her into to see the same therapist that Shawna saw, she will lead us straight to the other missing women, as long as we play our cards right.”
“The Lion’s Den,” Dean added, “has now become secondary. What we have to do there now is keep up a façade so no one gets suspicious. Our focus now is going to be on infiltrating the clinic side of this operation and busting in through the back door.”
