Rumor (A Renegades Novella) Read Free

schedule. If he wasn’t going home for Christmas, he could take the opportunity to clean up his town house—one in the same development as Grace and Beck’s—now that the renters had moved out. He needed to get that thing up for sale. But he also needed this holiday with his family.
    “Thanks, man.” Relief rang clear in Beck’s voice, even eight thousand miles away. “I owe you.”
    “No.” A flash of memory tightened his throat—Josh lying on a pile of rubble drenched with his own blood in Aleppo, the deadliest city in Syria. Over eighteen months later, and he could still remember the feel of Beck’s body weight hitting him as his friend provided cover against enemy fire after the IED had exploded. He released a long exhale. “You’ll never owe me.”

Josh tapped his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of Nickelback’s “Feelin’ Way To Damn Good,” wishing he could agree. But he was sick. And worried. And anxious .
    Swish-swish.
    The wipers cleared a path across his rain-spattered windshield, allowing the pink neon advertising Allure, a gentlemen’s club, to flash against the black sky, mocking him. He’d never believed he’d get this far. On the drive here, he’d convinced himself that this was all a misunderstanding. That this would turn out to be a case of mistaken identity. That Grace was still doing nothing racier than coaching high school cheer teams and was perfectly fine.
    But when he’d reached her town house, he’d discovered Grace didn’t live there anymore. And when he’d swung by her forwarding address, he’d found himself in a neighborhood where young men loitered on the corners in small groups.
    Swish-swish.
    The realization that he was only yards away from Grace inside that club turned him inside out. There were ways he could get out of the duty while accomplishing the end goal, but the truth was, he craved the sight of her again.
    He scanned the parking lot, searching for the high-end Jeep SUV Beck had given Grace their last Christmas together. The fact that it wasn’t anywhere in the lot meant one of two things—she either wasn’t here or she’d sold the car just like she’d sold the town house.
    With stress building, Josh turned off the engine and pushed open the car door. The wipers stopped midswish, and the music cut out. He stood, locked the doors, and slipped the keys into the pocket of his blazer. Traffic raced past on the freeway with a soft whoosh, and the club’s music thumped through the evening mist. The chill December air swept in, turning his nervous sweat to ice, and Josh shivered as he started toward the club’s front door.
    The parking lot was filled with high-end sedans, sports cars, and SUVs. Christmas lights lined the club’s eaves. He paused at the front doors, painted with sexy female caricatures in skimpy elf costumes, and replayed his cover story while dragging cash from his wallet. He’d only been to strip clubs three times in his life—all three for bachelor parties—but he’d only needed to go once to understand how they operated. He folded the bills and pushed them into his front pocket.
    As he gripped the cool metal door handle, his muscles coiled tight, and his mind focused on the mission. But he sure as hell wished he were breaching a dozen terrorists with AK-47s in a Taliban stronghold instead of the lone, pretty, little Grace Ashby at a strip club.
    He stepped into a foyer thumping with the sexual beat of My Darkest Days’ “Nature of the Beast.” Two walls were painted black, two covered in smoke-colored mirrors. A man who could have passed for three guys stuffed into one suit turned toward Josh. He looked Hawaiian or Samoan with a round face, dark skin, black eyes, and a buzz cut. And he was huge . At least three inches taller than Josh’s six foot one and tipping the scale at over three fifty.
    “Welcome.” His voice was deep and flat and serious. “There’s no cover charge, but we have a two drink minimum. We ask that