“So I’m supposed to help with a task and not know what exactly the task is?”
“Perfect. You understand.”
“No, not perfect!” I sat up straight, swallowing hard. “Is it something illegal? You don’t really work for a government agency, do you? I mean, now that I think about it, why would the government need to hire a hooker for any of its operations?”
“I never said I worked for a government agency.”
“You never said you didn’t either.”
He tapped his fingers on his knees. “Is this going to be a problem? We need to know now before we go any farther.”
I gripped the couch on either side of me. Maybe I should have thought this through some more before I’d agreed to this. He’d made what I had to do seem so easy, but now, with our first “mission” approaching, it was becoming all too real.
“What if we get caught?”
“We’ve been doing this for over a decade, and we haven’t been caught yet.”
“Almost a few times,” Liam said just when I’d just started to relax. “Not that that means much, since we weren’t caught. That was the question.”
“Look, what we do might be dangerous, and I want you to be aware of that before we go into this. Do you want some time to think about it? I can perhaps get someone else to accompany me this evening.”
“No, I’ll do it.”
“Are you sure?” Sully asked.
“Yes. I’m positive.” It wasn’t as if prostitution was legal, and I’d been doing it anyway.
“All right, then. Liam, you’re up.”
Liam turned on the television and did something with his laptop that projected his screen onto the TV. He opened a folder, and a middle-aged man appeared on the TV beside a young woman who looked only slightly older than me.
“They are the Youngs.” Liam introduced the couple at whose home the party was being held. He was the owner of a hotel chain and had his hand in some profitable investments. In other words, he was stinking rich. I filed that away in my brain as he showed me a few more people who were equally “important,” meaning they either had money or held some public office. The mayor was to be in attendance. How cool was that? I would never have thought I’d be rubbing elbows and eating with moneybags like these people.
“Question.”
Both men turned their attention to me.
“Shoot.”
“Are these the kind of people we’ll interact with while I work for you?”
“Mostly, yes,” Sully replied.
Now it made sense, the way he’d stressed teaching me all the social and dining etiquette.
“And you believe I can do this?” What if I messed up and then he got caught? Because of me.
“If I had even one percent of doubt, I wouldn’t have hired you. From what I’ve observed, this is one of the areas where you will shine. You light up a room, Bait. You have the ability to charm men and women alike.”
Sully’s words buoyed my self-confidence. No one had ever spoken to me this way before and made me seem important to a cause. He believed in me, and I wouldn’t let him down. I straightened my shoulders. “All right, then. Let’s go seduce some men!”
“Well, no actual seducing tonight,” Sully said. “Just be my charming date.”
“And people actually believe you’re gay?”
“No one has ever questioned me before on that front.”
Hmm. How far was he willing to go with the charade? “Does this mean you’ve kissed a guy before to keep your cover?”