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She clears her throat. “Excuse me?” There’s nothing but kindness in her voice. “Haven’t we met?”
Oh, yes. We’ve met.
She’s Stacey Evans, the unfortunate wife to Senator Gentry Evans—the man I’m going to ruin—if not kill.
I turn her way with a genuine smile, “Why yes,” reaching out to gently shake hers.
Southern women don’t shake hard; we merely touch to gauge the climate between us. It’s warm. Stacey’s innocent. I know it like the sun will come up.
“But I can’t place where we met,” I say.
Bullshit. We met at Luca’s golf resort months back when Redix and I were there for dinner. Stacey wet her panties at the sight of Redix, even though she was standing beside her husband, Gentry. He had to watch her public orgasm while I watched it with delight.
Every chance I get, I’ll stick a pin in Gentry Evans like a voodoo doll. But I can’t take him out. He has my friend Pamela Ryan, the young woman who disappeared almost nine years ago, and I will find her.
“We met at the golf resort,” Stacey offers. “I could never forget. You’re too pretty to miss.” She’s a rare society woman, one who dares to be sincere. “You’re Cade Bryant, right?”
“Yes, and you’re Stacey Evans, Gentry’s wife.”
A tight wince pulls her face, but she turns it into a grin. “Yes, Gentry’s wife.” Then her smile lights up real. “You were with Redix Dean, and my word, you two are a stunning couple.”
I hide it, the flinch of my heart. “We were a couple. But we’ve been friends since we were kids, so there’s always that.”
“Just friends with Redix Dean?” She leans back in her massage chair. “Girl, I don’t know how you do it. No offense, but your friend is hotter than Georgia asphalt.”
I like her too. Why a funny woman like Stacey Evans is married to a piece of shit like Gentry Evans? Maybe I’ll find out because befriending her is part of my plan.
Stacey holds answers she doesn’t know.
Think about it. If one person can access files, accounts, and hidden places. If there’s anyone who knows your habits, like where you go and when; it’s your partner. And Stacey Evans is more than Gentry’s wife. She’s his political golden ticket. Her grace blinds everyone so they can’t see the dark world Gentry hides.
She’s a beautiful decoy.
Because that man is running a human trafficking ring, I know it. He started small, trying to take me, then he took Redix, and then he took almost a dozen women who looked like me. All those crimes were for the worst night of our lives.
In that time, he’s honed his crime.
He’s gotten good, so fucking good that we can’t catch him. We got close with Sarah Matthews, his last victim. He and TJ and Derek—his former foul trio—forgot the vials of their drug, the GHB that fuels their violence. They used it on the victims to get them to comply, to erase their memories and any evidence of their crime.
But I found those vials. One I submitted as evidence, and it linked Derek’s fingerprints to the crime. The other vial, well, I used it for justice, for revenge against TJ.
I had to end his spree. TJ was the impulsive one. The most dangerous in the short game because he was ramping up his attacks.
Gentry’s the long game. I gotta play him differently. This is a mind game. He’s woven his fabric of political power and family money into a wicked empire. It’s gonna take time. It’s gonna take more than me to take him down.
Derek’s the wild card. He’s Gentry’s cousin. He drove Gentry’s car the night they took Redix. He held him down, laughing while TJ scarred Redix for life.
But why did Derek stick around? You’d think he’d run. But he came back until he had warrants out for him.
The search for Derek is on while I figure out how Gentry’s getting away with this, where he’s hiding Pamela Ryan and Cam Le, the two missing women.
Being Stacey Evans’s new friend? It may be a double win for me.
“No offense taken,” I reply to her compliment about Redix. Shit, statues get horny when he walks by. “Redix Dean is hot.”
“I can’t imagine.” The nail tech starts removing Stacey’s old polish while she swoons. “I mean, I can imagine. Millions of women do.”
“And men.”
