Kiss Me Awake by Julie Momyer Page B

house, but I wasn’t expecting anything quite this…posh. Are you moonlighting or what?”
    “Or what,” she said with a wink. It was another one of her vague non-answers. It was deliberate, this ambiguity. Just as it was the last time he’d probed.
    He gave her a half grin. Don’t you worry little Miss Jaida, I have ways of getting what I want.  
    She picked up a stack of magazines from an end table and unloaded them into a cabinet. “Carina asked me to host a little get together here for her friends tonight. You’re welcome to stay.”
    She was fast tracking him to another subject but he played along. “I thought you two weren’t on speaking terms?”
    “We weren’t, but Carina apologized. That’s just how she is.”
    Lance sat on the couch, propped a throw pillow behind his head, and patted the seat beside him. “There’s plenty of room.”
    He frowned when she shook her head and moved away. “I need to rinse off and change. I don’t want to be caught looking like this.”
    “Looks all right to me,” he called after her, but she was already halfway up the stairs. 
    Lance chugged down half the Pepsi then set the glass on the table. Carina knew how to work Jaida. He had her pegged as a user the first time he laid eyes on her, and she had proved him right.
    His own motives could be misconstrued as such, his actions placing him in the same category as Carina, but for him it was different. It was business. You did the job you were hired to do.
    The sound of running water reached his ears. It was his signal to move. Lance stood and took himself on an unguided tour of the mock Italian villa.
    Gale was convinced Jaida had his money, but he wasn’t. Not until today. From what he’d seen, it wasn’t looking too favorable for her. The offshore account opened in Gale’s alias was emptied, the full sum electronically transferred to another offshore account with a bogus name and no valid contact information. The second account was emptied as soon as it went from the clearing account to the recipient’s. And Jaida was sitting pretty, rolling in the dough.
    He moved down the hall, heard the low hum of the dryer and found the laundry room right where he thought it would be. And across from that was…what? He pressed his palm on the half-open door, swinging it open. Bingo.
    He switched on the light and sat down at the desk. Sweet. Constructed of solid mahogany, it was a work of art. The woman had impeccable taste. He opened the top drawer and sifted through the contents but found nothing of import. He went on to the next one.
    The tape was equal priority. Gale wanted his money, but he also needed assurance that he wouldn’t be linked to his advisor’s death. A scandal would ruin his shot at the governorship. Lance had personally deleted the video footage on the agency’s computer and destroyed the disc it had been burned to, but he had yet to track down the original.
    Marcus Dennison, Gale’s advisor, was the subject of that tape. Before he died, he’d forwarded all account numbers and passwords to Gale’s offshore accounts to the Baseel Agency, and more specifically, to Jaida Martin.
    Dennison had been on a mission to expose Gale and take him down for money laundering.  The man lay six feet under, but if Lance didn’t get the job done, Dennison could still destroy Gale from the grave, taking his fifteen percent commission right along with it.
    Quietly, he rolled the second drawer closed and reached for the third. His breath hitched at the neatly organized cache before him. Bank statements, checkbook registers. He switched on the desk lamp then flipped through Jaida’s financial records noting the fat balances at the end and the beginning of every month. If this was Gale’s money keeping Jaida so comfortable, he would be happy to know that she hadn’t spent all of it, but unless she had the rest stashed somewhere else she had devoured one hefty chunk.
    He unfolded the deed to the house and held it under