Page 19 of Baby One Last Time
I held up one finger to the thug and took a long gulp of my martini while Cade watched. When I picked up the swizzle stick full of olives and sucked one of them into my mouth, he licked his lips. I probably enjoyed it a little too much, but my self-imposed dry spell had gone on too long and had left me a little needy. Cade wouldn’t be meeting those needs for me, but it was fun to play.
“You better not be doing inappropriate things with a swizzle stick,” Derek said in my ear. The comms clicked and his voice came back, this time on the shared channel. “Everything okay, Kessler? You’ve gone dark.”
“Thank you, Cade,” I said. “That was delish.” I slid off the barstool, smiled at Doppler’s beefy minion, and spoke the words to inform the team I was about to meet the target. “Lead the way.”
I followed the man away from the bar and along the edge of the dance floor, where laser lights illuminated gyrating bodies in sporadic, colorful bursts. The bass was deafening on this side of the club. You could commit bloody murder and no one more than three feet away from you would hear it. Good to know. Not that murder was part of the plan, but sometimes things went pear-shaped. It was good to have options.
We exited the dance floor through a door that blended into the high-gloss black walls and emerged in a different world. The walls were the same color, but the floor went from black marble to plush, white carpeting. We were in a hallway that ran parallel to the back of the building. According to Penn and Sparks’s floor plans that we’d studied, the three doors in the hall led to a communal office to the left, a fancy bathroom suite directly in front of me, and Doppler’s office to my right. The bass reverberated through the shared wall, but it was surprisingly muffled. This area looked more like an upscale office building than a trendy dance club.
My escort turned to the door on the right, knocked twice, and held the door open for me.
Once I entered Doppler’s office, I knew the job would be easy. My guide retreated, pulling the door closed behind him. Even the pounding bass didn’t leak into this space, which had the same black walls and white carpeting, plus black-and-white prints hanging on the walls, and an imposing black desk with two oversized black leather chairs in front of it.
Doppler sat behind the desk, which held a computer, papers, pens, and other ordinary office paraphernalia. His two body men sat in office chairs by the wall to my right, playing cards over a small table. The door to the outside was situated on the back wall between him and them, so anyone storming it would face fire from both sides.
Doppler stood, gave me a none-too-subtle once-over, and offered me his hand. I shook it but didn’t sit in the chair he indicated.
“I’ll get right to the point,” I said, using the code to let Mai know she should come in aiming for the part of the room that would be on my right, her left. “Our mutual friend sent me.” Meaning Leary.
He nodded his understanding.
“She’s taking some serious heat,” I continued.
“I got the bat signal,” Doppler said, referring to the code Leary had devised if she ever had to go underground to escape the law.
“Then you can understand she needs to reallocate some assets.” I leaned over his desk, giving him a good look atmy assets before opening my small bag. I was a little offended that the bag got more of an ogle than my cleavage, but 10 mil in diamonds is a pretty damn stunning sight, and a lot rarer in Hollywood than tits on parade. “Your cut is ten percent.”
There was movement behind me. I sucked in my breath as my pulse kicked up, but I casually glanced over my shoulder. Doppler’s door was open and two more men stood just inside his office, behind me and off to my left.
“You needed to see us, boss?” one of them said.
Shit. Either I was made or I had lousy timing tonight.
“Shit,” TJ said in my ear. “Kessler, can you tell us how many just joined you?”
“Are you two boys the ones I met out front?” I asked, batting my lashes in the hopes of distracting them at least a little bit.
“No, miss,” one of them answered.
“I’ll be with you in a minute, Hobbs.” Doppler shooed them off to the side of the room with his other men. He turned back to me. “You were saying?”
Just shit timing, then. Too bad for the new guys, as everyone who was in the room when Mai joined us would not be going home for the holidays.
“You okay with four, Lee?” TJ asked in the comms.
“Yes, sir,” she answered, and TJ didn’t correct her.
“Back door is unlocked,” Jensen said.
“A minute thirty-eight,” Alder told him, and he groaned.
I bent down to scratch my leg just above my boot, hooking my finger on my tiny tranq gun. “Let’s do this,” I said, giving Mai the go signal.
The back door flew open and instantly I heard thethwack, thwackof Mai’s darts hitting their mark. Two of his men dropped to the floor. Doppler’s expression didn’t change for the first split-second. Then his eyes widened and his face flushed. He reached under his sport jacket for his holstered gun, but he was way too late. I pierced his neck with my tranq dart as thug number three hit the floor to my right.
Number four was still standing and pointing the pistol at me. Mai and I both fired at the same time and neither of us missed our mark. He fell forward on his face.
“Oops,” I said. “A double dose. He’ll be out for a while.” Luckily for him, our doses were milder these days. I had to step over him because he’d fallen into my path. I locked Doppler’s office door to prevent any other thugs from joining the party and spoke to IT on the comms. “Send Doppler’s message to his men that he’s left the building for an emergency meeting.”
