The Phoenix Agency: Bare Deception (Kindle Worlds Novella), page 1
Text copyright ©2017 by the Author.
This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Desiree Holt. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original The Phoenix Agency remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Desiree Holt, or their affiliates or licensors.
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Other Books by Tracy Tappan
Available on Amazon
Wings of Gold Series
Award-Winning Military Romantic Suspense
BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY
ALLIED OPERATIONS
MAN DOWN
The Community Series
Award-Winning Paranormal Romance
THE BLOODLINE WAR
THE PUREST OF THE BREED
BLOOD-BONDED BY FORCE
The Phoenix Agency
They served their country in every branch of the military: Army Delta Force, SEALs, Air Force, and Marines. They are pilots, snipers, medics—whatever the job calls for. And now, as private citizens, they serve in other capacities like private contractors training security for defense contractors, black ops eradicating drug dealers, and trained operatives ferreting out traitors. With the women in their lives, who each have a unique psychic ability, they are a force to be reckoned with. Risen from the ashes of war, they continue to fight for those in need.
They are Phoenix.
BARE DECEPTION
A Phoenix Agency Kindle World Novella
Tracy Tappan
Two rival agents. One goal. The clock is ticking, passions are rising… and someone is lying.
A Mafia kingpin stole the formula for a medical miracle and is on the verge of selling it to the highest bidder. Other security firms tried to rescue it and failed. Now the high-risk job has landed with operatives of Phoenix Agency, the best of America’s ex-military, who bring highly specialized skills to every mission.
As a former Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal expert, Tony Santoro’s skills with wiring are needed to break into the complex safe holding the stolen formula. To get in close, Tony will have to work deep undercover with the mob as an enforcer, a ruthless job that daily twists him into moral binds. But when he catches the boss’s physical therapist trying to burgle the safe, he’s faced with an impossible dilemma. The curvy brunette offers to do anything so he won’t rat her out…and wouldn’t a Mafia enforcer take her up on that?
On the same mission from a different security firm, Ronnie Cardenas uses her psychic gift as a Truth Extractor to secretly unearth the safe’s combination. After three long months of dangerous undercover work, she is finally on the verge of success…until she stumbles upon a rival agent. She wants the cocky bastard out—out of her operation, out of her payoff.
Then everything goes wrong, and she needs his help.
As the mission comes apart, Tony and Ronnie work together in a mad race to pull off the heist before they land themselves in matching cement shoes…and in the process, end up stealing each other’s hearts.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Author’s Notes
About the Author
Chapter One
Panama City Beach, Florida. Goldi’s Box Strip Club
Nothing stank quite like the odor of stale fucking.
It was a stench Tony Santoro knew well, unfortunately—like musky, dried-out fish parts or the inside of an oyster shucker’s worn boot. He’d bet ten bucks some guy sitting at this small, round, chipped table had been jerked off underneath it as a happy ending to a lap dance. Wonder what something like that costs in a joint like this? Probably not much. With its exposed wiring, stained floors, and rancid smells—a nauseating purée of toxic perfumes and regurgitated alcohol—Goldi’s Box ranked among the lowest of dives. Perfect for peddling drugs.
Which the people here did.
Tony supposed his job of fighting to make the world a safer, drug-free place made him somewhat of an upstanding guy, but still… He could think of a hundred better ways to spend a Thursday night than working undercover in this shithole.
Music throbbed, making his temples do the same, and a slow-rotating disco ball overhead lasered the occasional beam of light at his sunglasses. Lights onstage, where Candy Pudding—topless but not yet bottomless—sinuously humped the stripper pole, were a muted pink. Lights out here, where the spectators sat, were nonexistent. Made observing the crowd from behind his shades a bitch, but looking wherever the hell he wanted to without anyone knowing it was essential to the job.
Picking up his drink, he tipped the beer so it touched his lips but didn’t go further. He scanned the crowd over the rim of the glass.
Two tables over, some pervert had his hand down his pants.
Three tables over and two rows back, a guy was working his hand up a cocktail waitress’s slinky miniskirt.
Ringside, a rare-in-this-joint businessman type was reaching for his rear pocket, fumbling more cash out of his wallet while Candy Pudding—who was now without benefit of below-the-waist attire—assumed a rear-facing, ankle-grab position directly in front of him, displaying the almighty Grand Canyon of all she had to offer.
Tony took a real sip of beer now. Couldn’t be helped. He was very much not enjoying the taste that’d just backed up into his mouth.
The black backstage curtain crept open, grabbing his attention. His partner, Nicole, peeked out at him. She was playing the part of a stripper tonight, while he was in the role of the smarmy boyfriend who was willing to peddle his girlfriend’s ass for his own benefit. In that capacity, he’d brought Nicole to Goldi’s Box to audition late yesterday morning, when the light of day made this place look even more like a sad, bombed-out hovel.
Nicole was hired at a glance. No dancing required. The excuse she’d planned for why she couldn’t take off her clothes that morning likewise unnecessary. Probably Jay-Jay, the manager, figured Nicole could clomp around onstage like a woman on the German shot put team and it wouldn’t matter.
Because DEA Special Agent Nicole O’Dwyer was staggeringly beautiful.
She was Latina, actually—the Irish last name came from her husband—with exotically shaped eyes, long, flowing, caramel-colored hair, and smooth, lustrous, light brown skin.
And why wasn’t such a stunning woman lighting up the marquee at a high-end gentlemen’s club, the manager wanted to know. Glad you asked, Jay-Jay. Those places frown on drugs, see, and Nicole has a bit of a, shall we say, nose addiction. If you want her, supplying her is part of the gig. She doesn’t work without it.
Tony generally used a little more of the verbal soft shoe when negotiating with drug dealers—an inherently skittish breed—but his instincts had proven sound with Jay-Jay. The man was so eager to bag Nicole as a headliner he didn’t even pretend to have a no-drug policy. That’s gonna come back to bite you in the ass, friend, seeing as you really just brokered a deal with a DEA agent.
“She can start tomorrow night,” Jay-Jay had said, “and my bartender, Dubner, will set her up.”
Jim-fucking-dandy. One-night ops were Tony’s favorites.
Dubner was small potatoes, a peon dealer for the big fish drug lord Tony and Nicole were actually after. But wasn’t it amazing what kinds of information spilled out of a lowlife’s mouth when he found himself on the hook for possession with intent to sell and a long prison term stretching out in front of him? A damned miracle, that’s what it was.
The douchenard just needed to show.
Soon after Tony had sat his ass down at this fuck-stinking table, Dubner scuttled up in a fog of eye-watering BO and assured him that the merchandise was on the way. Then the dickwad disappeared. Tony had been forced to sit through three stripper acts, and now Nicole was raising her brows at him from backstage. She was up next and obviously wanted to know what the deal was. The plan had been to have the bad guys cuffed and headed for the hoosegow before her turn came up.
So, shit, he didn’t know what to tell her. Not with Dubner AWOL.
Tony rubbed a hand over his chin.
In their pre-mission briefing, he and Nicole had worked out a variety of codes to communicate with each other, since they couldn’t be miked up or wear earpieces. Real earpieces—not TV ones—had wires attached to them, which didn’t fly for undercover work. A hand being rubbed over the chin meant the deal is stalled, but not dead.
Nicole blew out her cheeks. Yeah, a difficult decision loomed in front of her now: should she go onstage so she wouldn’t blow her cover?
And if she didn’t go onstage, would it blow her cover? At the audition, they told Jay-Jay cocaine was a very necessary part of Nicole’s contract, but… Hell, they hadn’t specifically said that absolutely no way would she go onstage without first snorting a noseful of feel-good. Without that groundwork laid, it probably would be suspicious if she didn’t go on. So, yeah, her cover would be blown, and then this drug deal wouldn’t go down…if it was still happening.
The DJ announced her.
Tony quickly combed the room but still no Dubner. Shit. He flicked his fingers up from the top of the table. It was the only way he could think of to shrug at Nicole. I don’t know. Your call.
A small grimace flashed across her face. But Nicole was tough and ballsy, and after a moment, she got herself under control, arranging a sensual smile on her face as she strutted out from behind the curtain. She was dressed in a yellow sequined bikini that looked dynamite wrapped around a body that was sleek and defined almost to the point of absurd. Nicole held black belts in both tae kwon do and aikido, and in her current getup, her athleticism really showed.
A strange, stunned burp of silence rolled over the crowd. No way had the men in this low-rent dive ever seen a woman of Nicole’s quality before, and the idea that they were about to see her naked made them—
Holy shit! The uproar of applause and shouts that followed the silence-burp jerked Tony in his seat. People in Tallahassee could probably hear these guys going nuts.
Nicole widened her smile, as if loving the reception. But…
The muscles in Tony’s stomach tightened. Was she really going to be fine with this? He scanned the room again, absently fingering the scar on his forearm. Damn you, Dubner.
Nicole grabbed the stripper pole and flung her hair behind her. She arched her spine and at the same time stuck out her booty, creating a sexy arc with her body.
Another roar took the roof off, real deafening shit—Jay-Jay was probably peeing himself—and while every man in the joint was ogling Nicole’s ass, Tony zeroed in on the scar streaked along the left side of her waist.
She’d been grazed by a bullet there, back when she was Special Agent Nicole Gamboa. Back when Tony was working deep undercover as an enforcer for scuzzy drug lord Tavo Jiménez out in San Diego. In that role—and for a lot of complicated reasons, most of which came down to Tony trying to save Nicole’s life—Tony had shot her in an alley.
Yeah, the scar on Nicole’s waist was his fault.
It had to be one of the galaxy’s weirdest cosmic loops that the agent Tony shot would transfer from San Diego to his own home office in Panama City within the same year and then be partnered with him. Turned out there were no hard feelings, and they ended up being a good fit, doing local undercover work together for several months now.
They’d never played roles like this, though, and while Nicole danced onstage, continually casting covert glances at him from beneath her lashes, searching for answers he didn’t have, he got the sinking feeling that he was supposed to be doing more than he was.
Finally, Dubner, the ass-pucker, appeared near the bar.
Tony made a snarl-mouth, letting the man know just how pissed he was. No acting required.
Dubner rushed over. “Sorry, man.” He shouted at Tony to be heard over the racket. “I don’t have anything for you tonight. Tomorrow—”
“What?!” Tony growled.
“—night for sure.”
Tony balled his fist into a brutal knot. He had every intention of decking Dubner—a totally unnecessary part of the job, but satisfying all the same—but the dickhead scurried off before Tony got the chance.
Nicole obviously saw the convo go down, and from the stage, she gave Tony a long, sensual gaze, playing her role while actually asking, What’s up?
Tony was still pretty much in the ballpark of beats the shit out of me. This op wasn’t dead in the water yet. Dubner had said tomorrow night for sure. He and Nicole were still in the running to collar their big fish…but it would require Nicole maintaining her role as a stripper. If Tony signaled her to stop, the op was over.
Cursing under his breath, Tony offered his partner another hand-shrug.
The skin across Nicole’s cheekbones tautened slightly. After a little more dancing, she couldn’t delay any longer. She reached behind her to unclasp her top.
The tight muscles in Tony’s stomach tugged more sharply. How bad was this going to be, exactly?
Nicole flung her top off.
A flash-fire lit up the back of Tony’s neck as the shouts of the crowd pegged the decibel meter. Among the frenzied shadow of spectators, it looked like a hundred hands shot up in the air, sweaty fingers clutching various denominations of money, vying for Nicole’s notice. A bunch of the dickwads surged toward the stage, and the bouncers muscled forward belligerently.
With his insides tangling up, Tony looked at his partner’s breasts. They didn’t strike him as sexy—even though they were—but, rather, the bare flesh was a demonstration of her vulnerability.
The bottom of Tony’s esophagus dunked in bile. What the hell was he doing, just sitting here letting Nicole strip naked? He grabbed for his beer but moved too aggressively and sent the glass flying off the table. It bounced across the floor and whacked some guy in the ankle. Dude couldn’t have cared less.
Nicole slid her thumbs under the straps of her thong, preparing to do the full monty, and the strangest, most unwelcome thought came to Tony.
Had Nicole dyed her pubes blond?
It was required of all the strippers who worked here—to go along with this club being called Goldi’s Box. Haha, get it? Yeah, well, the double meaning wasn’t exactly subtle. Had Nicole figured the op would go this far and prepped for it?
Was it going to go this far?
Tension constricted the muscles between Tony’s shoulder blades. The familiar odor of stale fucking assaulted his nostrils again, and this time it hurled him back to his childhood, landing him on his living room couch—where the odor had been the strongest—at about the age of ten. His mother sauntered by on the arm of a faceless man, smiling widely at the guy. But even though her smile was big, it wasn’t like the smiles she gave Tony, the ones that reached her eyes and lit them up. Only years later had Tony figured out that his mother didn’t like those men. She didn’t want to do what she did…and ten-year-old Tony had just sat on the couch and let her do it.
And now the same dead look was entering Nicole’s eyes. She was about to do something she didn’t want to do, and he was just sitting on his ass.
She started to tug her bottoms down, and—
Tony slammed out of his chair and rushed the stage.
A bouncer who could’ve been the progeny of Ronda Rousey and Arnold Schwarzenegger charged him.
Tony snarled, “I’m her boyfriend, you fuck,” and rammed his shoulder into the guy’s chest with his full body weight behind it. The man stumbled back far enough for Tony to reach Nicole. He grabbed his partner by the arm, and, to a loud chorus of boos, propelled her off the stage. Heading into the dressing room, they nearly plowed into the night’s first act, Pearl Necklace.
The naked woman yelped and lurched aside.
The second act, Daisy Chain, was smoothing on lip gloss in the mirror. Tony saw her eyes widen in the reflection at his sudden appearance in this Dancers Only area.
“Put your clothes on,” Tony barked at Nicole, playing the role of alpha-hole boyfriend, but also…also…feeling desperate and weird and tangled and fevered.
Lounging in a nearby chair, Candy Pudding dragged on a cig and inspected his zipper.
Nicole hurried into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
Jay-Jay arrived, his face flushed. “Dammit, man, you are outta here. Boyfriends aren’t allowed at performances if they can’t handle other men seeing their old ladies buck-assed.” He jabbed a warning finger at Tony. “For the second show, you’re fucking going to—”
“There won’t be a second show.” Tony slapped aside Jay-Jay’s offending finger and went toe to toe with the manager. “You didn’t keep to our bargain. So you can go blow yourself.” He again grabbed Nicole, now fully clothed, and hustled her out the rear employee exit.
“What are you doing?” she hissed once they were out of earshot. “We can’t leave before the deal goes down.”
He started across the parking lot in long, ground-eating strides, towing Nicole with him. “There is no deal. Not tonight.”
“What?” She tugged against his hold. “Wait, when did you find out?” As they reached his car, she wrenched her arm free. “Was it when Dubner talked to you?” she snapped. “Mierda, you could’ve saved me from exposing my tits to a bunch of beer-guzzling pendejos, and you didn’t? Why the hell…? Or maybe”—her tone changed, grinding out like an over-cranked car engine—“you didn’t want to miss the chance to take a gander yourself.” She glared at him like he’d just betrayed her in the worst way possible.
