But I didn’t believe any of that. Candy had been more than seven months pregnant when Amy moved to Chicago, full of promises to come back loaded down with presents for the baby and, most important, to be there for the birth. Assuming the kid came on schedule, that was just over two weeks away.

I hoped to hell she’d just gotten carried away with a guy and would surface any day now with stories of hot nights and wild sex. But I worked homicide, and it was in my nature to fear the worst.

While I was making the drive from Indiana to Chicago, I’d put in a call to a friend in the Chicago PD, and he’d confirmed that she wasn’t cooling her heels in a Cook County cage. I was somewhat relieved to know she was either staying clean or playing it smart, but I’d secretly hoped that she’d gotten arrested for shoplifting and was too proud to call Candy for bail.

I’d rolled into Chicago just after seven on a Wednesday night, and I’d made Destiny my first stop. The place was clean and classy, with drinks that weren’t watered down, girls who looked happy to be there and not at all used up, and a clientele that skewed heavily toward the professional end of the spectrum. The place had a full bar, including Guinness on tap, and a decent menu that included some rather delicious cheese fries.

I’d certainly seen worse places, and as I sat at the bar and looked the joint over with a cop’s eye, nothing wonky popped for me.

Enter the Second Truism: No one is what they seem. Or, in this case, no place is what it seems.

I learned that when I met Agent Kevin Warner, an FBI buddy, for breakfast the next morning and he laid out a whole list of bad-ass shit that he thought was going down in that club. He tossed allegations around like candy. And when he hit the Mann Act charges—prostitution, white slavery, and other nasty felonies—my ears perked up.

“Slow down, cowboy,” I’d said. “They got busted for that shit?”

“Fucking immunity,” Kevin said. “They helped shut down a white slavery ring that was working off the West Coast and spreading all the way toward our fair city.”

“They?” I repeated.

“Black, August, and Sharp,” he said, naming off Destiny’s three owners—three celebrated businessmen who were the toast of Chicago. I mean, hell. I’m not even from Chicago, and I knew all about those guys. “They’re slick, those three,” Kevin continued. “Slick and smart and as dangerous as sharks in dark water. Got the immunity deal to hide behind, and that cut my investigation off at the knees.”

I nodded. Immunity was part of the game. The whole point was to protect a suspect from prosecution. If there wasn’t guilt there in the first place, that protection really wasn’t necessary. In other words, it was a rare suspect who was given immunity without being dirty.

Frankly, the whole idea of giving a suspect immunity irritated me, but I knew it was a necessary evil. Besides, I figured that justice would find a way. At least that was what my dad always said when one of his defendants pulled a technicality out of their ass and shot the finger at the law.

Karma really could be a raving bitch, and I wondered if she was baring her teeth in the direction of Black, August, and Sharp. Were they as dirty as Kevin said? Were they simply good citizens who shared their knowledge with the Feds? Or were they somewhere in the middle?

I didn’t know, but I figured the odds ran toward the first or the last. “How broad’s the immunity?” I’d asked.

“If I have my way, they’ll wish it was broader. I’m dead certain they’re neck deep in all sorts of shit. Gambling, smuggling, money laundering. Bribery, kickbacks, fraud. You name it, they’re in it. But they’ve got powerful friends, and I’m not authorized to officially pursue any of it.”

I heard the frustration in his voice. He wanted these guys—wanted them bad. I got that. There were a lot of reasons I’d become a cop, but in the end it all boiled down to protecting the innocent and stopping the bad guys. To making sure the system worked and that those who crossed that line paid for the breach.

I lived and breathed my job. It was both my redemption and my salvation. And I was very good at what I did.

“I can’t push on this,” he’d said. “But you can.”

He was right. My mind was already turning over options, trying to figure the best way to slide my pretty ass into Destiny, chat up the girls, and get a line on Amy. Once I was in and poking around for information, there was no reason I couldn’t poke around for more.

Frankly, that would be my pleasure. Immunity might be a necessary evil in the world of jurisprudence, but I was more than happy to give Karma a little push. And if I found out that those guys were into other shit, bringing them down would be a damn good way to balance the scales of justice.

All of which explained how my mission to get one missing dancer back to Indiana had morphed into a full-fledged, albeit off-the-books, undercover operation. At one point I might have considered waltzing into Destiny and boldly announcing that I was looking for a friend, but once I knew that the owners could be dirty, that plan went right out the window. I wanted to know what they were up to—and if the white slavery allegations turned out to be true, I wanted to kick a little ass.

It was that whole “undercover” thing that was my current sticking point. You’d think it would be easy for a genuinely pretty woman—that would be me—to get a job as a cocktail waitress in a Chicago-based gentleman’s club, but you’d be wrong. Despite my camera-ready face, nice tits, and tight ass, the application I’d submitted yesterday had been politely declined. And that despite the fact that I have honest-to-goodness waitressing skills.

Thus illustrating that First Truism: Nothing is ever as easy as it should be.

And that brings us right back to the Second Truism: no one is what they seem.

Take Evan Black, for example. This was his party that I’d crashed. A formal affair to celebrate his engagement to Angelina Raine, the daughter of vice presidential hopeful Senator Thomas Raine.

I saw him standing across the room, a movie-star gorgeous man with his arm around an equally stunning brunette that had to be Angelina. She was leaning against him, looking giddy with happiness, as they chatted with two other couples. All clean and shiny and polished. But if Kevin was right, Black wasn’t the man he appeared to be.

Or what about Cole August, Black’s business partner, who received so much adulation from the press and the public for the way he’d pulled himself up out of the muck of his Chicago South Side heritage to become one of the most respected and influential businessmen in the city? He might look positively drool-worthy as he stalked the far side of the room with a cell phone pressed against his ear, the very picture of the entrenched businessman.

But I happened to know that August hadn’t left that shady heritage as far behind as he liked to pretend.

And then there was Tyler Sharp.

“That’s the one,” Candy had said when I ran the name by her. “Amy was head over heels for the guy.”

“He feel the same?”

“Don’t know.”

“But she was fucking him?”

“Yeah. At least, I think so. I mean, wasn’t like she was posting pictures on Facebook. But no way would she have walked away from that, and from what you’re saying …”

We might have been talking on the phone, but I could still picture the way Candy shrugged as she trailed off. I knew what she meant. I’d done additional homework on Tyler Sharp, much of which I’d relayed to Candy. To bottom line it, he had a weakness for women, and I fully intended to capitalize on his womanizing ways. If I couldn’t get into Destiny through my stellar waitressing skills, I’d get in close through the man.

In other words, I was planning a seduction.

All things considered, that was a better approach than my first plan. Waitressing only gave me access to the club. But sex opened all sorts of doors. Pillow-talk. Computer access. Who knew what else. Play the game right, and I’d have a box seat to the best show in town, whether it was gambling, smuggling, or something much more heinous.