Velvet Ropes Read online

  Even now Dermot was bound to silence.

  WISHING SHE WERE A FLY on the wall inside the interrogation room, Detective Stella Jacobek paced the chipped, old ceramic-floored hallway outside. As an Area 3 detective, she had no business being here, even though she’d known Tony Vargas for most of his scummy life.

  But how could she not be here when Dermot O’Rourke was in trouble?

  She’d hardly been able to believe it when she’d heard Dermot was being brought in for questioning for something they’d found on his laptop. She’d used her contacts to find out when he would be in the station. He might have been a hellion in his youth—how many times had she heard older parishioners say he’d been bad to the bone and were still shocked he’d become a priest?—and she might not have seen him for nearly a dozen years, but she owed him and meant to cover his back.

  No matter how torn she was about seeing him again, she would put her doubts aside.

  Even if Dermot had means, opportunity and a so-called motive—not to mention a violent past—Stella didn’t believe he would kill anyone. Though he’d turned in his collar, he was an activist for social change and a therapist, and as such, continued to help people, even as he had helped her get through the darkest hours in her life. Now their roles were reversed and she could do no less for him.

  Dermot O’Rourke was not a killer—on that, she would stake her life.

  The interrogation room door snapped open and a voice drifted out to the hall. “You’re free to go, Mr. O’Rourke. For now. In the meantime, don’t leave the city.”

  And whether or not she was ready for him, Dermot was suddenly there. He didn’t see her at first as he gathered himself together after what must have been an emotionally exhausting session, but she saw him, all six foot one of lean muscle encased in a tailored taupe suit, his dark reddish-brown hair punctuating a scowl that hardened his otherwise handsome face.

  Her insides fluttered and she did her best to tamp down the old longing, with little success. Pushing a strand of golden-brown hair back into its loose knot at the nape of her neck, she wished she were wearing something other than her usual slacks and jacket with an open-necked blouse. Something more feminine. Attractive.

  And then he saw her. Recognition instantly hit him, and he did a double take.

  “Star Jacobek, is that really you?”

  “Detective Stella Jacobek,” she corrected him, though she didn’t mind him calling her by the old nickname.

  “I’m impressed.”

  He appeared impressed. His thick burnt-brown eyebrows arched over amazing green eyes. “It’s good to see you, if not under these circumstances. Your boys made a mistake.”

  Just then, Norelli and Walker left the interrogation room. She knew them well enough to know they weren’t going to like her getting cozy with their only suspect. Walker spotted her with Dermot and whacked his partner in the arm to look. Both detectives glared at her.

  Ignoring them, she concentrated on Dermot. “Can we get outta here? We need to talk in private.”

  They agreed to meet at Brew Station, a café a few miles east, near the University of Illinois Chicago campus, a location on the way home for them both.

  The ten-minute drive down the Eisenhower Expressway and through the expanding university area gave Stella some time to pull herself together, to remind herself she wasn’t nineteen anymore. That’s how old she’d been when Dermot had come to St. Peter’s as a young priest and first heard her confession.

  And that’s how old she’d been when he’d literally saved her life.

  Though he’d been from the neighborhood, he was older than she, so Stella hadn’t known him before he’d come back as a newly ordained priest. She’d heard about his youthful reputation and his stints in juvy—older parishioners hadn’t kept the gossip to themselves—but she’d never actually seen that side of him. Not at first. He’d been a little rough around the edges compared to the other priests she’d known, but he’d come through for her when she’d needed help.

  Now she was a cop. A new detective. And this time Dermot needed her help rather than the other way around.

  All she had to do was convince him of that.

  It wasn’t going to be easy. Not convincing him. Not dealing with the renewed connection for her, either. She’d put the past behind her and just seeing Dermot stirred it all up again in her mind.

  But she had to do it. Had to pay her debt.

  Norelli had the reputation of being like a dog with a bone. He thought he smelled a murderer and he would do his best to get Dermot convicted unless they found another viable suspect.

  “So what’s going on with you, Star?” Dermot asked once they settled into the café. “How has life been treating you?”

  She heard the concern in his voice. That aspect of him certainly hadn’t changed. And he was the one with the problem.

  “A lot better than in the old days,” she told him. “Police work agrees with me.”

  “I can see that.”

  The way he looked at her made her flush.

  But then he asked, “So what is this? A little undercover work? You getting me to confess?”

  The heat in her face doubled. “You can’t believe that, Dermot.”

  “Then what is it you want from me?”

  “The truth.”

  “And that differs from getting a confession…how?”

  “I want to hear it from you that you didn’t murder Tony.”

  Dermot stared at her evenly and said, “I didn’t have anything to do with his death.”

  “Okay.” She’d told herself he couldn’t have done it, but having him say it made the tightness she’d been feeling inside relax. Her gut instincts made her a good detective, and she was going to trust them now. She would swear he was telling her the truth. “Then I want to help you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I owe you.”

  “You owe me nothing.”

  Before she could argue, the waitress came and took their orders.

  Then, before Dermot could try to dissuade her, she asked, “So what did Norelli find on your laptop?”

  “Session notes with Tony. My observation that blackmail could get him killed. They suggested it was personal. And before you ask, it wasn’t.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask.” If she’d thought it possible that Dermot could be guilty, she wouldn’t be here. “Any idea of who Tony might have been blackmailing?”

  “His associates were criminals.”

  Stella remembered Tony liked to dance around the truth. “What about this secret Wollensky said you had?”

  “Wollensky was just mouthing off like Tony did to him. Trust me, there is no secret. You remember how Tony liked to puff up his importance.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  So why did she get the feeling there was more to it? That Dermot wasn’t telling her everything?

  Or maybe being this close to him simply unnerved her and she was imagining things. She whiteknuckled her coffee mug and prayed her weakness didn’t show.

  They sat in upholstered chairs before the unused fireplace—it was warm for late October and the air-conditioning was still on. A buzz surrounded them, voices of laughing and talking patrons, mostly students, but it was white noise to her, stuff she could let fall into the background, while she made her proposal clear.

  “You don’t really understand what Norelli and Walker are gonna do to you, Dermot. They’ll probe every aspect of your life.”

  “I already feel probed.”

  “They’ve barely started. They’re already talking to your friends, your neighbors, your relatives. They’ll go through your finances to see if there’ve been any big additions or withdrawals lately. They’ll be looking for anything to tie you in personally to the victim.”

  “But they won’t find anything, because there’s nothing to find.”

  “Even the implication of guilt will make headlines, and what do you think that’ll do to your professional life?”

/>   Stella had done her homework and knew Dermot worked for a national activist organization that helped people in low-income communities repair their lives and improve their communities. His work depended on grants, and grants depended on goodwill, and goodwill depended on reputation. If his went south, then so would his job.

  “Before the people you work with realize you’re innocent, your counseling program at the Humboldt Park Center for Change will be in shambles.” She knew that particular program was his baby.

  “Don’t hold back, tell it like it is.”

  Stella started, then recognized the irony for what it was. An admission. She was preaching to the choir. He already knew how this was going to go down. Of course he would. Though it might have been another life as far as he was concerned, Dermot had been through the system, something she was sure he could never forget.

  “So what do you suggest?” he asked.

  “Let me help you.”

  “And ruin everything you’ve worked so hard to get? I don’t think so.”

  “I wouldn’t even be a cop if not for you.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know it. You saved my life.”

  “I don’t think he meant to kill you.”

  Stella swallowed hard. Even after all these years, the details of her attack were clear in her mind. Her rapist had been carrying. He might have used the weapon…after…if Dermot hadn’t come to her rescue.

  Closing her eyes, she remembered the expression of pity on Dermot’s face while he’d gathered her clothes around her and helped her off the ground. Though she had known her rapist, she’d refused to press charges against Rick Lamey. He’d threatened that if she did, her younger sister would be next. But Dermot had assured her everything would be all right, had promised he would see to things personally.

  Later, she’d heard Lamey had been found beaten and bloody in an alley the following night, and she’d known—priest or not—Dermot had done what she hadn’t been able to do.

  Had that been the moment she’d fallen in love with him? Or had it been when he’d convinced her she could find her way to taking power over what hap pened to her? She’d done that by applying to the Police Academy.

  Soon after that, Dermot had removed his collar and disappeared from her life. She’d heard he was back some months before, volunteering with the ex-cons at Heartland House, though she hadn’t seen him until now.

  Stella opened her eyes and realized Dermot was staring at her. Was he remembering, as well? How could he not? How could he forget seeing her so vulnerable? Stella’s throat tightened. If there was one thing she didn’t want from him, it was pity. Any attraction she’d been feeling fizzled at the thought and left her nerve endings raw.

  Not that it changed what she had to do.

  “If not my life, you saved me in another way, then,” she said. “You gave me direction. Purpose.”

  “You were a strong girl, Star. You would have found all that without me.”

  “Maybe, but we’ll never know.” She wanted to prove that she was strong now. That there was no room for pity in her life. “Let me help you.”

  “It’ll cost you.”

  Perhaps with her job, she knew. If she turned her back on the law she served…but Dermot was innocent. And innocent men were sometimes convicted. No matter how difficult this was going to be for her, no matter the personal or professional cost to herself, Stella couldn’t take the chance that he might go to jail for a crime he didn’t commit.

  “I know the chances. My decision. Let me do this for you.” She thought he would continue to fight her, but his hesitation showed her a slight chink in his armor. “Dermot, please. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t help prove you’re innocent.”

  “How?”

  “I’m gonna call in a favor from some people I know. A really big favor.”

  HOPING HE WASN’T MAKING a big mistake, Dermot followed Stella toward the century-old building with a restored pale-green-tiled facade and a neon sign identifying it as Club Undercover. The entertainment destination was in the eclectic Bucktown-Wicker Park area on Chicago’s north side. Along with restaurants and boutiques, bars and cafés, the club sat on Milwaukee Avenue, an angled street with a distant view of the downtown Chicago skyline.

  The city had been blessed with a bout of Indian summer—unseasonably warm days and crisp but comfortable nights. Standing on the corner, a threadbare man hawked Streetwise, the newspaper of the homeless, to anyone who would come up with a buck. On an evening walk, a Mexican family strolled past them, the grandmother swaying to the music oozing from the club. Twenty-somethings with wild hair and tattoos and body piercings waited in line to get inside along with thirty-something professionals in designer wear.

  And Stella walked right past them all, ignoring protests that she wait her turn.

  Dermot followed, his discomfort at pushing through the crowd vying with his discomfort at putting his life into the hands of some secret organization she jokingly called Team Undercover. She’d told him that, a few months before, an old friend from the old neighborhood who worked here had played bodyguard to a stalking victim. Blade Stone, bartender and former military man, and a few others had helped Stella keep the woman safe and nail her stalker.

  What would make people who didn’t know him want to help him, perhaps in defiance of the law? the therapist in Dermot wondered. What would make him trust them? He certainly didn’t trust the system.

  Stella. She made the difference.

  He trusted her.

  “Stay with me,” she said, grabbing his hand and plunging down the staircase.

  As Dermot followed her downstairs toward the lower-level entrance, he couldn’t help but admire the view before him. The golden-brown hair demurely coiled at the nape of Stella’s neck didn’t minimize her attractiveness. Tonight she wore a print skirt, whose thin material fluttered around her long legs, and a soft gold sweater that revealed her neck and shoulders and accentuated her full breasts. Her body was buff due to her physical training, but in a womanly way that made Dermot’s mouth go dry when he thought too closely on it.

  He had to stop this. She was helping him as a friend. Friends were all they could ever be.

  She glanced back at him, and her lips, softly blushed with a pink-gold luster, were curved in a smile. “Almost there!” she shouted over the music blasting out of the club.

  Raising his voice, Dermot said, “I forgot how noisy it is to be young.”

  “I’ve simply forgotten how to be young,” Stella admitted.

  Undoubtedly it was difficult for her to remember she’d been young once, considering she’d lost her innocence in a dark alley a dozen years before.

  The reminder clenched Dermot’s gut.

  Was she healed now? he wondered. Really healed deep inside? Or did she put on a good front during the day, while her sleep was still filled with nightmares?

  Hopefully time had worked its magic on her. Not that she would ever forget.

  Nor would he.

  Stella pulled him right up to a woman at the door, whose black hair was striped with electric blue, saying, “We’re here to see Blade.”

  The hostess stepped aside and waved them into a cave of glowing neon and music that vibrated the floor beneath his Italian leather loafers.

  They skirted the red dance floor awash with gyrating couples and headed for the blue glow of the bar. There, a big man wielded a martini shaker like a weapon. How appropriate, Dermot thought wryly, considering what Stella had told him about Blade. If his long, dark hair pulled back from high cheekbones and a straight-bridged nose and tied with a leather thong were any indication, the man had claim to some Native American ancestry.

  The bartender spotted them and grinned. “Hey, Star, good to see you. This your date?” he asked as they settled on stools before him.

  Stella neatly avoided the question, merely saying, “Blade Stone, meet Dermot O’Rourke.”

  “O’Rourke,” Blade ech
oed. “As in the priest?”

  “Ex-priest,” Dermot said, shaking the other man’s hand and wondering how much Stella had told her friend about him.

  Blade’s dark stare got to him. The big man was taking his measure…as if judging him…not that he could possibly know all about the past…

  “I heard about you growing up. And now I finally get to meet the man who saved my best friend’s life,” Blade said. “I’ll always regret I was in the military when she was targeted. But you were there for her. Thank you.” Then he turned his attention back to Stella. “What can I get you?”

  “A few minutes with your boss. We, um, need all of your help.”

  Stella had told him about Gideon, owner of the club and a man with an enigmatic past; Logan, security chief and ex-CPD detective; Cassandra, hostess and former magician’s assistant; Gabe, another man of mystery.

  Blade’s gaze drilled into him. Apparently understanding Stella’s vague request, he nodded.

  Dermot felt as if he’d earned the ex-military man’s seal of approval and wondered if he would have to pass a similar inspection with all members of Team Undercover.

  Chapter Two

  Gideon was dealing with the books—his least favorite task as owner of Club Undercover—when a knock at the door got his attention.

  “Come in,” he said, glad for the interruption.

  He closed the ledger and slid it to a corner of his black-lacquered desk as Blade Stone walked in followed by his childhood friend Detective Stella Jacobek and a man Gideon had never seen before.

  “Blade, Stella.” He glanced at the stranger.

  “Dermot O’Rourke,” the man announced himself.

  “I need a favor,” Stella said.

  Gideon could tell she wasn’t happy having to ask. “Maybe we should get the others in here.”

  As Blade said, “Already done,” John Logan and then Gabe Conner strolled through the door.

  “Cass’ll be here in a minute,” Logan said, flicking some invisible speck off his impeccable suit lapel.

  Gideon made the introductions, ending with “Gabe is taking over as my security chief. Logan finally agreed to take back his detective shield.”