“No, I didn’t. I…” Oh shit. She heard the crack in her voice. Do. Not. Cry. You are not allowed to cry. Fury and frustration clogged her mind. She wanted to scream. She wanted to hit someone. She wanted David Martin to come back to life so she could strangle him. She cleared her throat, tried again.

“David Martin is the last person in the world that I would want to keep for posterity.” She tried to smile, knew her lips were crooked. Holy shit. What were they 198

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going to do? Something like this could ruin her. Think, girl. Her mind felt like sludge, all she could see was the image of her getting off the bed and David Martin’s smug, dead features as he watched her walk away.

“We’ve been running backtraces all afternoon. I think I found the name of the company that manages the site, though they are buried, and I mean deep. It’s a firm out in California.”

Her head was clearing a bit. “Okay. What was the connection to Tony Gorman?”

Marcus took over. “He’s a member of this online club. From what we can tell, the members pay a fee, go through a background check, and are then voted into the membership. Once they are in, they can upload, download, watch anything. There are five levels of membership, each with its corresponding site archives. The more money you put in, the deeper you can go. These videos were in the third level of membership. We looked at some of the others. The first two tiers are all homemade, poor quality kind of stuff. The third was better quality, but still not fantastic. We assume that the higher up the chain you go, the better the footage.”

“My God.” Taylor sat back in the chair. “Are all these videos labeled Taylor Jackson?”

“Well, there’s the good news. They don’t have your real name. They call you Tawny from Nashville. So that’s where Gorman saw you, no question about that.”

“Have you found the son of a bitch?”

Marcus finally smiled. “Yep.”

Taylor’s cell phone rang, making her jump. She glanced at the caller ID, saw it was Corinne Wolff’s therapist. She held up a wait a minute finger to Marcus and answered. A crisp British accent greeted her. Judas Kiss

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“This is Ellen Ricard. I understand you’re looking for information on Corinne Wolff.”

The no-nonsense greeting wrestled Taylor’s emotions back into place. “Yes, I am. Would you be willing to talk with me?”

“Yes. I can’t until day after tomorrow. I can see you in my office at eight o’clock Friday morning.”

Taylor glanced at her watch. “Are you sure we can’t do it tonight?”

“Yes, Lieutenant, I’m sure. I have a speaking engagement this evening, then a late flight out of town. I’ll return too late tomorrow evening to meet. I will see you Friday morning. You know where to find me, I presume?”

“I do. Thank you. I’ll try not to take too much of your time.”

“Until then, Lieutenant,” and she was gone. Taylor hung up the phone. “Leads on the Wolff case. I need to bring you both up to speed.” She ran her palm against her forehead, making decisions. “Okay. First things first. Where is Tony Gorman?”

“Antioch. He lives on Blue Hole Road. We can go pick him up, if you’d like.”

“I think the sooner we get tapped into this underworld, the better we’re going to be. I appreciate you guys trying to insulate me. I don’t know if that’s going to work for long. We have to find out how these tapes were made, who uploaded them, everything. I don’t know if we can keep it quiet, it’s going to take man hours. I will cover you as long as I can without Price catching on.” The nausea returned with a vengeance.

“Has Fitz seen this?”

“No,” they both answered in unison.

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“Thank God for that. I don’t know if I could ever look him in the eye again. You two are bad enough.”

She stood and turned her back on them. How in the world was she going to work this?

“We didn’t watch them, Taylor. As soon as we realized it was you, we stopped, and started digging. I promise.” Lincoln was reaching for her now, his arms around her in a massive bear hug. The urge to weep was overwhelming, but she bit the emotions back again. Crying wasn’t going to accomplish anything. She hugged him back.

“Well, it wasn’t much of a show, if I remember correctly. You guys are wonderful.” She broke away from Lincoln and squeezed Marcus on the shoulder. “Go get that fat fuck and let’s have a little discussion with him.”

Nineteen

Taylor kept on her feet after the boys had left. She was overwhelmed with the urge to pace, then had to stop herself from calling Baldwin. Despite wanting the reassurance of his voice, that was a conversation she would rather not have. Hello dear, how was your day?

By the way, there are some videos of me having sex withmy old partner on the Internet. No, she didn’t think Baldwin would be too thrilled. She’d never gone into any detail about the David Martin shooting, much less disclosed that they’d slept together. Great. This was going to be a huge mess. Damn him! And wasn’t it just typical of David, fucking her from the grave. The bastard.

Think, she commanded herself. She cued up the video again. How had David done this?

David Martin had been an uncharacteristic series of mistakes. They worked together, that was mistake number one. He was a dirty cop and Taylor hadn’t known until she was deep into the affair. He oozed Southern charm, called her names that annoyed her 202

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like sugar britches and sassafras. He wasn’t formally educated, was ex-military like so many others on the force. He didn’t call his mother on Sundays, drank too much, and as she found out later, dabbled in recreational drugs. She wondered for the thousandth time why she’d ever slept with him in the first place. Even Sam had raised an eyebrow when Taylor admitted to the relationship.

It was destined for failure from moment one, and that, she decided, was why she’d entered into the affair. She didn’t want a husband. At the time, she just wanted to have some fun. David was attractive, there was no doubt about that. There was a base chemistry between them from the beginning. The affair had begun after an intense night where they’d been shot at, narrowly escaping being hit. The two of them had been holed up in an improvised bunker, completely pinned down in a weak defensive position behind a series of metal trashcans, taking fire from some stupid gang-banger they’d been pursuing. They’d barely made it out alive. That first encounter was a pure adrenaline rush. The result of coming close to death, the urge to reach out and feel something, anything. Common enough among law enforcement.

Then David had seduced her. Cheesy attempts at romanticism—flowers, candy, dates at nice restaurants—

the whole she-bang. And she’d let it happen because she was bored. When she realized he was starting to have feelings for her, she broke it off immediately. Soon after, she was promoted to Sergeant, then just as quickly, Lieutenant. David remained a detective. The resentment began there and continued to grow. When Taylor uncovered David’s role in an opera- Judas Kiss 203

tion that was highly illegal, found out he was working with a couple of vice detectives who were running methamphetamines through the city, she’d been ready to take him down. David knew it, came to her house and confronted her. Taylor had been forced to shoot him to save her own life.

Now he was finding yet another way to screw with her, this time in the most literal of senses. He’d been dead for more than a year. How had he managed to upload videos of them having sex to this Web site?

She hit play. This time, she turned up the sound fractionally. Nothing came through the speakers. Clicking the stop button, she thought for a moment. She needed to hear the tapes as well as see them. Offsite was the only safe way to do it, but she couldn’t leave at the moment. But she did have her iPod. She opened her top drawer, disconnected the earplugs from her Nano, and plugged them into the jack on the side of Lincoln’s laptop. Then she stood and did something she’d never done before. She locked the door to her office.