“You didn’t need to be there!” he exclaimed, aware of the horror in his voice. “For God’s sake, Morganna. Merino is going to get you killed.”
She stared back at Clint in determination, defiant courage lighting her eyes. “I’m good at what I do.”
He turned to Merino. “And what made you think you could place her in this kind of danger?” he snarled. “Reno will take you out for this, Joe, and you know it.”
“Reno will accept it the same way you will—”
“Exactly, because I’m going to kill you first.” Clint clenched his fists as he fought to restrain the need to kill the bastard now. “Slowly. Reno can have what’s left.”
Merino snorted mockingly. “Give it up, Clint. We approached you months ago about working this case because of your experience and your reputation on the BDSM scene. You turned it down, so your opinion doesn’t carry any weight here.”
“I have a job, remember?” Clint pointed out sarcastically. “It does kind of require a steady amount of time.”
Merino grimaced. “You’re on leave for six more weeks,” he pointed out. “We could wrap this up within that time with your help. Your reputation as a powerful Dom, combined with the reputation Craig has gained from chasing after Morganna this year, could give us the ace we need—”
“Forget it.”
“Everyone knows her; they know you. Craig is considered new on the scene. He’s barely been in a year—”
Clint swung his gaze to Morganna. “How long have you been involved in this?”
She lifted her chin, her eyes glittering in challenge. “The club scene, for more than three years now. The agency, six months.”
Fuck. Fuck. “And I missed you at those clubs, how?” he demanded.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and drawing his gaze to the hard-tipped mounds. “I guess you just weren’t at the right club at the right time, Clint. Or maybe you just weren’t paying enough attention to me.” Her eyes rounded in mock innocence. “I guess it could have been either one.”
Either one? He turned from her slowly. He needed to kill; since he would never consider hurting so much as a hair on her head, that left Merino.
“Forget the insurance,” Clint said softly. “I won’t leave enough of you to bury.”
Chapter 4
The setup was enough to make Clint clench his teeth and fight back an explosion he knew would land him in prison. Killing a cop was bad, even if the cop did deserve to die. And no one deserved it like Merino did.
Morganna had been working the case more than a year.
Fresh out of a Law Enforcement Academy that Clint hadn’t even known she attended; hell, he’d thought she was in secretarial school. After graduation, she had gone to Joe and requested to be part of his task force. She knew the scene, knew the people, and she had the training he needed for an agent.
Clint was aware of the case. Two years ago, a new, specially synthesized date rape drug had come onto the market. A stimulant with the capabilities of rendering victims unable to remember anything but the haziest details while turning them into sex machines for hours at a time. It affected men and women; the powerful aphrodisiac also had the unfortunate side effect of killing the victim in many cases.
The sale of the drug had been controlled by the suppliers, resulting in the inability to identify where it had come from or who was using it. The majority of the women dosed with it disappeared for days at a time and, if they lived, turned up brutalized.
Many hadn’t lived. But the videos made of their rapes had turned up to make millions on the black market. The sexual exploitation of those women was horrendous. Those who survived lived a waking nightmare of knowing the crimes committed against them were being sold, enjoyed. The resulting suicides hadn’t been a surprise.
Not that women had been the only victims. There had been a few men, though those occasions weren’t as numerous.
Clint managed to drag the details out of Merino once the other man understood that death was in his immediate future. Morganna’s part in the case had been small. She had already been part of the club scene, evidently had been for years. She had been careful, though, staying home when Clint was in town or going to the less extreme clubs that he didn’t associate with.
Diva’s, Merlin’s, and the Roundtable were his favorites. They were also the upper-scale, more expensive BDSM clubs on the eastern seaboard and just happened to operate in the same general vicinity of Atlanta.
Morganna didn’t confine herself to the BDSM clubs until she began working with Joe’s team. She played a very careful game of a woman hovering on the edge of submission. Or one fighting her Domme tendencies. Morganna was a dare to every male Dominant in those clubs.
Clint watched Morganna keep a careful distance from him as Merino and the others provided the details of the case. And through it, he learned that Morganna was the bait.
Several of the Doms who inhabited the clubs were sniffing around her. She hadn’t settled on a lover yet, hadn’t used the private rooms, other than Craig’s for meetings, and she played the untouchable challenge. Eager to step into the lifestyle of a sexual submissive, but unwilling to settle on one man to do so.
She kept a close eye on the dealers suspected of handling the drug, as well as informing Merino and his men if any of the women acted drugged or seemed to need help leaving.
In the months Morganna had been working with the team, two women had disappeared, turning up days later, dead. Several more had been rescued from their fate by the team’s intervention, with only three arrests, and those just here lately.
So far, Morganna had been personally responsible for the arrests of the three men suspected of drugging and kidnapping the women and was now on the lookout for their supplier.
“They’ve targeted the BDSM community because of the more unrestrained sexual atmosphere and the participants’ general secretiveness about the double lives they lead,” Joe finished up. “If we could get the group drugging and raping these women here, then we could find the location of the lab or labs being used.”
“The Fuentes Cartel created the drug.” Morganna spoke up then. “Their stronghold was destroyed last year, but we suspect several of the family members survived. We do know from the intel we’ve received that the cartel is fractured now and only one lab is currently working. The drug hasn’t hit the streets yet; so far, it’s just being used for the underground rape videos and, we suspect, is being perfected.”