Free Sexual Games [The Heroes of Silver Springs 8] (Siren Publishing Classic) by Tonya Ramagos Page A

jacket hanging over the back of his chair, with a crisp white shirt, she could easily detect every rigid muscle in his sculpted biceps. Broad shoulders and a well-defined chest strained the material of his shirt. Dark hair and chiseled facial features added to the power of his eyes. No doubt about it, for a man in his midforties, her team leader was yummy to the max. Yet, she’d never seen him with a woman, never even heard gossip about him keeping company with a one. What is up with that? She wouldn’t dare ask, so she went with a more relevant question instead.
    “She’s been missing for a month and no one reported it?”
    “Apparently, there wasn’t anyone to report it, unless you count Graham’s kidnapper last night.”
    “What about her family, friends, coworkers?”
    “Her coworkers thought she simply quit. We’re assuming Jackson’s kidnapper is someone close to her, but she appears to be the only one. The girl’s father is serving a life sentence in the ADOC—the Alabama Department of Corrections—for killing her mother when she was two years old. She became a ward of the state after that and was bounced around in the foster system until she did a stint in juvy herself. They released her at eighteen and she hit the streets.”
    “A prostitute?”
    “If she was, she managed to keep it off the books. Her adult record is clean. Employment records put her working at a number of restaurants and bars in Alabama and Mississippi, none of them for very long at a time.”
    “Running from something or someone?” If so and they could determine what or who, they may have their first clue as to what happened to the girl.
    Cooper shook his head and finally gave Mallory his full attention. “More like trying to find herself would be my guess. She settled in Waterston about a year ago, landed a job here and there at fairly respectable diners and a few clubs, and enrolled in the community college at the start of this term.”
    “Enrolled but never attended a class,” Mallory concluded, immediately picking up on the distinction.
    “It doesn’t look like she got the chance.”
    “You might be right. She seemed to be attempting to get her life together. Always having a legit job, keeping her nose clean, and signing up for college… That leads me to think she was working toward making something decent out of a screwed-up life.”
    “The worst strike we’ve turned up against her so far is her job at Stardust.”
    “I’m gathering she was a stripper, not a cocktail waitress.”
    Cooper nodded, pulled a paper from a file on his desk, and slid it across the desktop.
    Mallory leaned forward, her heart aching for the girl who stared back at her in the enlarged driver’s-license photo. The girl wore her blonde hair long and brushed to the left. A few tendrils hung over her left cheek and drew attention to blue eyes that obviously wanted to be happy but still held the haunted secret of a tough past. She had pushed the rest of her long hair behind her left ear for the photo, exposing a thin scar at her temple.
    “She’s beautiful.” Mallory eased back and met her boss’s gaze. “I know I don’t have to tell you this, but you realize what we’re likely up against here? A twenty-three-year-old beautiful woman working as a stripper in a seedy club with no family ties, no friends save one, and no one to miss her if she’s suddenly gone.”
    Cooper’s expression turned grimmer than she’d ever seen it. “Another part to Operation Water Down. Human trafficking and likely sexual slavery.” He tapped the photo of Lexie Stratus. “Given her history, profession, and appearance.”
    Mallory ran her fingers through her hair, thinking. “Our office, along with the WPD, have been keeping tabs on all missing-person cases in the area since we busted the last known ring in Waterston.” A bust in which she’d herself been taken out of a local nightclub by a lowlife looking to break into human trafficking. The guy had been