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I turned a blind eye to most of her work—most of her targets were international criminals outside my jurisdiction. I chose to ignore the fact that she was well within it.
Zali had an effective, if not wholly legal, way of neutralizing the threat from them. The targets who were Australian or committing crimes in Australia were served to us on a platter. She’d dig up just enough evidence from public sources to allow a judge to issue a warrant. Then she’d tear their digital histories to pieces and find everything. She made cyber investigation look easy and had put away more people than every other investigator combined.
But by giving her the heads-up, I would have caused her to break every privacy and anti-hacking law in the country. She would have launched an attack on an Australian institution and targeted an Australian citizen. Those would have been crimes I couldn’t ignore.
It also would have been motivation for Tris. I knew him well enough to know that research disappearing from the university servers would push him to look deeper. A death threat hadn’t dissuaded him. If anything, he’d be even more doggedly determined to find the truth. The stubborn man didn’t scare easily.
Not even a decade of pushing him away had worked.
The gay bar was small and dark, but the beer was cheap, albeit watered down. Music thundered from the speakers, and the queue at the bar was four people deep. Men from every walk of life and in every state of undress were there, grinding on each other, making out and drinking and laughing. Being with my people was a necessity tonight. I needed to get out of my head.
The gay bar was small and dark, but the beer was cheap, albeit watered down. Music thundered from the speakers, and the queue at the bar was four people deep. Men from every walk of life and in every state of undress were there, grinding on each other, making out and drinking and laughing. Being with my people was a necessity tonight. I needed to get out of my head.
I had no idea what I was signing up for when I volunteered for the High Tech Crime Centre. I’d thought it was all international identity-theft crime rings and hacking of government servers, and it was, but there was also a much seedier side. A more evil side. The side I’d been exposed to today.
Countless videos of human-trafficking victims—young men, women, and children, skinny and dirty, naked and bruised, some bleeding and all with blank looks on their faces. I wasn’t sure if it was the drugs they’d been plied with or a coping mechanism. Detaching themselves from the horrors of their reality to protect themselves didn’t seem like a stretch.
The images were burned into my memory. I was desperate for something—anything—to make me forget. It probably wasn’t healthy coming to a club, but I needed to be reminded of what a normal twenty-something’s life looked like. I needed to lose myself in the pulse of flesh pressed together on the dance floor and the high of an orgasm.
I pushed my way through to the front of the line, flagging down the bartender as soon as he lifted his eyes. “Beer,” I shouted, instantly wishing I’d asked for something a hell of a lot stronger, and quite a few more than I’d ordered.
“Make it two, and add four shots of whiskey,” the man next to me tagged on in a deep, smoky voice. Awareness pricked over me. A shiver. A certainty.
I tossed a look over my shoulder, feigning casual, but my breath caught.
Hypnotic green eyes stared back at me. They were captivating.
The man was dressed in a tight black tee. A tattoo peeked out from under his sleeve. His dark hair shone in the dim light, and stubble that was only just longer than a five o’clock shadow dotted his jaw. He screamed sex.
“My shout,” he murmur-growled, leaning in closer. “You look like you need it.”
“Is that your way of telling me I look like shit? Because I gotta say, you’re shit outta luck with a pick-up line like that.”
He laughed, his grin shameless. It transformed his face into something a whole lot more wicked. If he was sexy before, it was danger he screamed now. “Nah, you look pretty fuckin’ edible to me.” His smile slipped, and he became more serious, adding, “But you also look like you’re carrying the weight of the world on those shoulders.”
“Shitty day at work.” My eyes slipped closed, but the memories of those videos lit up my mind’s eye, and I shook my head to rid them.
He clasped my chin, bringing his lips close to mine. “Good thing I’m here, then.”
“Yeah, why’s that?” I asked, nudging his nose with mine, getting close enough to breathe in his air.
“Because I can make you forget.”
Our drinks were placed on the bar before us, and the sexy man before me handed over a few bills. I picked up two of the shot glasses before I could second-guess myself and downed both, the burn of the liquor leaving a trail of warmth down my throat.
Sexy smirked and threw back a shot. Watching the way his Adam’s apple dipped as he swallowed was hotter than hell. I wanted to lick him there.
Fuck it.
“Do that again,” I ordered hoarsely, handing him the final shot glass. He repeated the action, and I grasped his hips, pulling them to mine before leaning in and licking a stripe up his throat. His rumble was like a shot of adrenaline, and my dick bucked in reaction.
“I wanna take my time with you,” he growled. “Take you to pieces over and over.”
I whimpered, a shiver rippling through me.
“Invite me back to your place, sexy.”
“Yes,” I hissed as he palmed my arse and squeezed. “Come back to my place.”
