Free Thrill Kill by Brian Thiem Page B

avoid the freeway since it was approaching rush hour. Braddock stared out the window silently as he drove.
    “I was pretty hard on you,” she said, breaking the silence.
    “I know. Why’d you set this up, anyway, if that’s how you feel?”
    “Matt, I love you like a brother. I trust you with my life.”
    “But not with your best friend?”
    “You’re an awesome guy. You just don’t know how to do relationships. I don’t want to lose either one of you. And I don’t want to see either of you hurt.”
    “Maybe this was a bad idea.”
    “She hasn’t been with anyone since her divorce and isn’t ready to date. She enjoys outdoors stuff—running, kayaking, hiking. When we get off standby, and if this rain ever lets up, maybe the four of us can go hiking or something.”
    Braddock went back to staring out the window.
    Sinclair remembered hiking up Mt. Diablo years ago with a group of cops and nurses, watching Alyssa’s tight butt in a pair of hiking shorts. Although Alyssa might be all goodness, as Braddock said, she was still damn sexy.

Chapter 9
    Sinclair listened in as Braddock placed a call from her desk phone. She was much better at getting people to talk to her on cold calls than he was. When Sinclair did it, people all too often got pissed off and hung up on him.
    “Special Ladies Escorts,” said a woman with a husky smoker’s voice.
    “This is Sergeant Braddock, calling from the Oakland Police Department,” she said, pausing to let the woman take in what she said and reconcile it with the caller ID that surely appeared on her phone.
    The woman’s tone changed from friendly and flirtatious to cold and professional. “How may I help you?”
    “One of the women who works for your agency was murdered in Oakland Saturday night, and I’m trying to gather information on her.”
    “Do you have a name?”
    “She’s known as Blondie on your website. Her actual name is Dawn Gustafson.”
    Sinclair heard the clicking of keys on a computer keyboard. A moment later, the woman said, “I can’t confirm or deny that Dawn Gustafson is an employee of the company.”
    “Is there someone there who can?” Braddock asked.
    “Hold please.” A Rihanna song, “The Monster,” beat over the phone for several minutes until the voice came back. “I’m sorry, but there’s no one here with that authority.”
    “Do you have a number where I can reach the owner?” Braddock asked.
    “I can pass on a message to her.”
    “What’s her name?”
    “I’m not at liberty to reveal that. Would you like to leave a message?”
    Braddock gave her the office phone number and repeated her name. “When can I expect her call?”
    “I wouldn’t know. I will pass on your message.” The woman’s voice lost a touch of its edge. “If I may ask, how was she killed?”
    “She was murdered and hung naked from a tree in East Oakland.”
    “I’m very sorry to hear that. I’ll pass your message on immediately.”
    Braddock hung up. “Do you think she’ll call?”
    “I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Sinclair said. “These escort services are tough to crack.”
    “Didn’t vice used to work them back when you were there?”
    “We worked a few, but they were labor intensive. I was one of the UCs on a few operations my first few months there, but then I went over to narcotics.”
    “Undercover in an escort operation. Every guy’s fantasy.”
    “Yup. Sitting in nice hotels, drinking room-service wine, and waiting for sexy women to come to my room, take off their clothes, and tell me what kind of kinky things they want to do to me.”
    “And then you’d arrest them,” Braddock said.
    “And offer them a way to stay out of jail if they flip on the higher ups that make all the money.”
    “Did vice ever make any cases?”
    “A few actually got some prison time,” Sinclair said. “But most cases fell apart somewhere along the way. Usually, theagency shut down and reopened under a different name. When the department