Prologue
“Are you ordering me to sleep with him?” Shelby Landry asked her smug boss as she stared across the conference room table at him. She loved her job as an FBI agent. It was a lot less messy than working in the garage back home. But in the three years she’d worked for the bureau, she’d never gone undercover alone. And even when she did work on assignment, she’d never been told she had to have sex with a man she didn’t know. What kind of woman did he think she was?
“I’m not saying that,” Rick, Mr. Smug himself, hedged. “The SEC has been cracking down on Ponzi Schemes ever since the Madoff embarrassment. The enforcement division had been investigating Feldstein and Baxter Investments for two years before even asking for FBI support. This is an inter-agency task now, and we’re going to do what we can to help.”
Shelby didn’t like the sound of that. At. All.
“Mason Showalter is the newest partner at the brokerage firm. His connection with Blade Young of the Bang Shift didn’t pan out,” Rick said, practically sneering. It was no secret he didn’t like those guys, not that she fully understood why. He’d been in the bureau a long time, though, so Shelby figured the reasons ran deep. Not that it made it right.
“He’s on the level,” Shelby said, cutting off her boss from whatever he was about to say about Blade. Not only was he a decent man, he was engaged to Anna Sue now, their former teammate who was still an FBI agent.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Rick said but not elaborating. “We need to kick this investigation up a notch.”
“So because the SEC has identified Showalter as a Dom, you want her to go undercover as a sexual submissive? I might lead a pretty vanilla sex life, boss, but even I can guess what happens at a sex club,” Darrell said as he leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. Shelby could always count on Darrell to have her back. He’d mentored her from day one since joining the bureau.
Rick took a sip of the thick, black coffee he always drank and placed the Styrofoam cup next to his notepad. “Her objective is to gain his trust and see what intel she can garner. We don’t know if he’s privy to the illegal behavior at his firm. If he is, we can’t tap his house or office without enough evidence against him. If he isn’t, then maybe he can become an asset to us by getting information from the inside.”
“Because someone going in to get info has already worked so well,” Carson said, referencing Anna’s last role as part of their unit.
Without acknowledging Carson’s comment, Rick turned toward Shelby. “You’re to obtain just enough to get a warrant. The SEC will do the rest. This is still their operation. We’ll do our part to make the directors happy and then get out. We’ve been working on this too long already. We have other stuff to do.”
“Bet you’re glad you are a blonde, eh Viola?” Carson muttered. Carson Childers and Viola Lane rounded out the FBI investigative team Shelby worked on. Lucky for her, the enforcement division hadn’t only discovered Mason’s need for sexual domination, but also that he had a penchant for brunettes.
With long, flowing locks of the stuff, it was easy for Shelby to understand why she’d been chosen for this task. She’d been singled out for this particular assignment from the beginning. And not because of her mental assets. Hell, her specialty was linguistics. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have been considered unless the investment firm under the microscope had documents in Mandarin Chinese the F.B.I. needed her to translate. That, or they could use her mechanical skills like they had when they sent her to work at the Bang Shift Garage.
“Yeah, that, and I’m married. My husband was all kinds of pissed when I participated in that massage parlor sting op. How would I explain to him that I have to get nasty with a suspect?” Viola shivered.
God, Shelby didn’t know if she could do this. She wasn’t a virgin, and was definitely used to hearing and telling all kinds of dirty jokes, but she was also the type of person who had no qualms with the basic missionary position. What had Darrell called his sex life? Vanilla? Yes, she was a big ol’ bowl of vanilla. Not even with sprinkles.
Rick sighed. “Let’s keep this professional, Lane.”
“There’s a word for a sex professional, sir,” Shelby finally said. “And prostitutes make a hell of a lot more money than me. Jeez, what if he wants to do this all in public?” It wasn’t really a question she expected an answer to, more of a fear she hadn’t known she’d had until right this second.
“I know this will be uncomfortable for you, but you don’t have to have sex with Showalter. Would it make things easier? Maybe. But he and some of the other Doms help with sexual awakening when a woman thinks she might be a submissive. They have been known to engage in activities that do not involve intercourse. This is the angle we are playing.”
“That’s a big gray area,” Darrell said as he glared at Rick.
“I know. But this is our best shot. She can’t go in one evening with a wire and hope to get what we need. The man is very private, and it will take time to find out what he knows. If he knows anything, and that’s a seriously big if.”
“So she wears a wire, has some meetings with the man, and we analyze everything first before she gets too involved,” Viola said, shrugging. “No need to go in guns blazing yet.”
“Won’t work,” Carson said, frowning. “What if he wants to see her naked? We don’t know how he decides to work with a submissive. It’s the same reason why she can’t wear a wire at all. At anytime she could be asked to strip. We have some very high-tech, inconspicuous devices, but they’re not foolproof. Hell, for all we know, he could have some top-notch security measures in place to scramble the frequency, and that’s if she doesn’t get caught with one on her. The only way I see this working is going in undercover. She’d have to be the eyes and ears for us. Sorry,” he added, looking at Shelby sheepishly.
“Agreed,” Rick said. “We need Shelby to gain his trust so he’ll let her get close to him and maybe even the more personal areas of his life. We only need enough to decide to bring him in to help us out or if we have to play hardball with him.”
But the phrase personal areas of his life lingered in her mind. “How personal are we talking here?” she asked, gaping at her boss. Sure Carson had just teased about sex, but as the conversation went on, she got the sinking feeling her boss expected more from her than just showing up at the club.
He shrugged. “If you could get a date out of him, get him to take you someplace public, away from the club and any security measures it possesses, that would be a good start. We can record any conversation he has with you without needing a warrant. If you’re someplace public, you could be wired without the fear of getting caught. That’s just an idea, an option we’d have if it comes to that.” He took another sip of his coffee. “The closer you get to him, the better our chances are of getting intel directly from the source.”
“So I can’t just come right out and ask him if he’s involved or if he wants to help,” she said with an edge of sarcasm, though it’d be a heck of a lot easier on her if she could do just that.