Fallen Angels 01 - Covet Read Free Page A

toes.
    Everything was black. Black was the Iron Mask's signature color, and it had been the other club's as well.
    She never wore black when she was away from work. About a month into this nightmare, she'd thrown away every thread of clothing she had with any black in it—to the point where she'd had to go out and buy something to wear to the last funeral she'd gone to.
    Over at the lighted mirror, she hit her five tons of brunette hair with some spray and then weeded through the palettes of eye shadows and blushers, picking out dark, sparkly colors that were about as girl-next-door as a Penthouse centerfold. Moving quickly, she went Ozzy Osbourne on the eyeliner and glued on some fake eyelashes.
    The last thing she did was go to her bag and take out a tube of lipstick. She never shared lipsticks with the other girls. Everyone was properly screened each month, but she wasn't taking chances: She could control what she did and how scrupulous she was when it came to safety. The other girls might have different standards.
    The red gloss tasted like plastic strawberry, but the lipstick was critical. No kissing. Ever. And most of the men knew that, but with a coating of the grease, she cut short any debate: None of them wanted their wives or girlfriends to know what they were doing on “guys'
    night out.”
    Refusing to look at her reflection, Marie-Terese turned away from the mirror and headed out to face the noise and the people and the business. As she went down the long, dim hall to the club proper, the bass of the music grew louder and so did the sound of her heart pounding in her ears.
    Maybe it was one and the same.
    At the end of the corridor, the club sprawled out before her, its deep purple walls and black floor and bloodred ceiling lit so sparsely it was like walking into a cave. The vibe was all about kinked-out sex, with women dancing in wrought-iron cages and bodies moving in pairs or threesomes and trippy, erotic music filling the thick air.
    After her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she sifted through the men, applying a data screen she wished she'd never acquired.
    You couldn't tell whether they were prospects by the clothes they wore or who they were with or whether they had a wedding ring on. It wasn't even a case of where they looked at you, because all men did the breast-to-hip sweep. The difference with the prospects was that they stared at you with something more than greed: As they ran their eyes over your body, the deed had already been done as far as they were concerned.
    It didn't bother her, though. There was nothing that any man could do to her that was worse than what had already happened.
    And there were two things she knew for sure: Three a.m. was going to come eventually. And like the end of her shift, this phase of her life wasn't going to last forever.
    In her saner, less depressive moments, she told herself that this rough patch was something she was going to get through and come out of, kind of like her life had the flu: Even though it was hard to have faith in the future, she had to believe that one day she would wake up, turn her face to the sun, and revel in the fact that the sickness was gone and wellness had returned.
    Although that was assuming it was just the flu. If what she was putting herself through was more like a cancer...maybe a part of her would always be gone, lost to the disease forever.
    Marie-Terese shut off her brain and walked forward, into the crowd.
    Nobody ever said life was fun or easy or even fair, and sometimes you did things to survive that would seem utterly and completely incomprehensible to the home-and-hearth part of your brain.

    But there were no shortcuts in life and you had to pay for your mistakes.
    Always.

CHAPTER 2
    Marcus Reinhardt Jewelers, est. 1893, had been housed in the same gracious brick building in downtown Caldwell since the mortar in its deep red walls had been set. The firm had changed hands in the Depression, but the ethos of the business had