“You trust this friend of his?”

“Yeah. Chris and Matt have been friends forever, and Matt’s been over before. He’s okay.” Dare leaned back against a thick tree trunk. “I take it Priss has you tied up in knots?”

There wasn’t much point in denying it. And maybe admitting things to Dare would help him get them under control. “I want her.”

“No shit. Tell me something I don’t know.”

Trace had trusted Dare forever, as a good friend, a partner in the business and as an honorable man. He knew Dare had uncanny instincts and deadly skills.

But he thought he had covered his reaction to Priss.

“Damn.” Trace ran a hand through his hair. “Do you think Molly and Chris picked up on it, too?”

After a short sound that might have been a stifled laugh, Dare said, “They’re neither blind, deaf or stupid. So…yeah. I’m betting they noticed.”

Trace frowned.

With a shake of his head, Dare dismissed his concern. “It’s not a big deal, Trace. Don’t sweat it.”

The mild, even amused reaction to his predicament surprised Trace. “She’s off-limits.”

“You think so?” Dare looked down at the dappling of sunshine through tree limbs, then back at Trace. “Why’s that?”

“What do you mean, why’s that? Hell, Dare, I barely know the woman.”

“You knew her well enough to take her picture.”

If Dare smiled, he was going to flatten him. Period. “She’s somehow involved with Murray, claiming to be his damned daughter while plotting…something. From what I can tell, she’s hiding more than she’s sharing.”

“Hmm.” Dare turned his head, studying Trace. “You know, she sounds a lot like you, except you claim to be Murray’s bodyguard. Maybe Priss has her reasons, just like you do.”

God, Trace hoped so. He wanted her to be…righteous. “Until I know what those reasons are, I have to leave her be.”

There was no disguising Dare’s laugh this time. “Good luck with that.”

Trace bunched up as he faced his longtime friend. “You don’t get it, damn it. Murray wants me to f**k her. The prick told me so. He even made it a damned order.”

Dare’s expression went taut. “What reason did he give?”

“You know Murray’s type. It’s probably twofold. He says he wants to know if Priss is as innocent as she tries to portray.”

“Innocent? Are we talking about the same girl?”

“Woman,” Trace corrected, because even though Priss was young, only twenty-four, he couldn’t bear to categorize her as a kid, not when his thoughts were usually mired in lust. “But yeah, one and the same.”

Disbelief had Dare shaking his head. “I’d say ballsy, proud, even conniving. Definitely contrary. But innocent?” He looked more than dubious. “Of what?”

Trace made a lame gesture. He believed Priss to be sexually innocent, or at the very least, inexperienced. In Priss’s defense, Trace said, “You should see how she is with Murray. The charade is convincing.”

“Didn’t convince you.”

“No.” If it had, he wouldn’t have “felt her up,” as Priss put it. And he sure as hell wouldn’t have taken her picture. But what she lacked in sexual experience, she made up for with shrewd cunning.

Dare drew him back into the conversation. “Then there’s the possibility that it didn’t convince Murray, either.”

“I’m better than he is.”

“No doubt. But it’s risky.” Considering things, Dare pushed away from the tree. “Want me to check out her background?”

He did, but…

“Anything I find will go straight to you, no one else.”

Trace nodded. “I know. But I have her driver’s license, so if it’s valid, researching her should be easy.” And then Trace would know if anything she’d told him was true.

“We can get started right now. We’ll use the computer in Chris’s house.”

“You can access the departments we’ll need from there?”

“Are you kidding? Chris’s computer is better equipped than mine.” Pointing a finger at him, Dare said, “In the meantime, don’t make a misstep until we know everything.”

In other words, don’t get in too deep until he’d dug through Priss’s past and knew more about her than she knew of herself. “You use that rule when going after Molly?”

Dare grinned. “No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

The grin faded and Dare looked away. “The minute I found Molly in that goddamned shack, drugged and mistreated, I knew she was different from the other women who would be sold, and I was lost.”

Since “lost” was exactly how Trace felt about Priss, he commiserated.

Neither of them could remember that awful time without going cold in rage. It was for Trace’s sister, Alani, that Dare had gone into Mexico. The bastards had known Trace—his face, his style—and it was because of him that Alani had been taken. Since they could identify Trace, it made more sense for Dare to go.

But that hadn’t made it easy.

That sense of helplessness was something that would always eat at Trace; he’d desperately wanted to go after his sister himself.

Dare had brought Alani out, just as Trace had known he would. But he’d brought Molly out, too. And somewhere along the way, he’d fallen in love with her.