In the Still of the Night:Sexy Romantic Suspense (Book 2 The Blonde Barracuda's Sizzling Suspense Series) Read online

  In the Still of the Night

  Sequel to “Big Girls Don’t Cry”

  By

  Taylor Lee

  Praise for In the Still of the Night…

  A full length sequel to the Bestselling Sizzling Romantic Suspense “Big Girls Don’t Cry”.

  “Dynamite sequel to the Bestselling Sizzling Romantic Suspense “Big Girls Don’t Cry”. WOW! Didn’t know how anything could be as good as “Big Girls Don’t Cry” but Lexie and Jake up the ante in this super-HOT sequel. Romantic Suspense at its best!”

  ~SMT Reviews

  “Lexie is in full crusader mode, determined to uncover the owners of the infamous San Francisco massage parlors. They call her the Blonde Barracuda. The press loves her, the politicians fear her, and the mob is out to get her!”

  ~RomanceReads

  “Can even Lexie’s and Jake’s red hot passion survive a dark haired seductress and a classy Hapkido fighter out to come between the lovers? Romance as hot as the action. Couldn’t put it down!

  ~Action Junkie

  Main Menu

  Start Reading

  Afterword

  Other Works by Taylor Lee

  About the Author

  Contact Information

  Copyright Information

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  “You foolish girl! You think you can run from me? Escape me? That you can get away? Is that what you think, Sun-ja? Are you that foolish? That ignorant?”

  Chin-hwa’s hot breath scorched her neck. She smelled his fetid odor. He stunk like rotten fish, and sweat. His voice rasped in her ear. He jerked her head back, slamming it against the brick wall. Sun-ja squeezed her eyes shut. She would not let him see her cry. She would not show her fear. Like the mangy dogs that fought for scraps of food in the alley, when Chin-hwa and Wa-jin smelled fear it made them brave. Dangerous. That was when they attacked.

  Looking at Chin-hwa’s glazed eyes, hearing his drunken curses, his fury, she knew she must run, escape this evil man. This was her only chance. She had to be strong, break away, get to the corner. Down the street she saw the lights, heard the music. People were in the club. She heard them laughing, calling out. If she got close enough, they would hear her screams. This time, maybe this time, she would be lucky. Even the junkies and the hookers sometimes paid attention to screams. She had to escape. She would not go back. Then she saw the knife. She stiffened. Chin-hwa wouldn’t cut her, would he? Spoil the merchandise? The Boss would be angry. He didn’t like his girls marked unless by the customers—or by himself.

  But Chin-hwa was right. She was a stupid girl. To believe Madam Lee, the Korean woman who convinced her to go to America. Foolish to think the evil woman spoke the truth, not a hideous lie. Madam Lee flattered her and Min-suh. Told them that because they were young and pretty, they could make $10,000 a month in America. Sun-ja believed her. She knew everyone in America was rich. Soon she and Min-suh would be too. Madam Lee promised her that they would be models, servers in high-class clubs in San Francisco. In American “room salons.” Where there was “no touching,” no “second round,” like the salon rooms in Seoul. Madam Lee even paid the $8,000 required for Sun-ja’s documents and airfare to America, and another $8,000 for Min-suh’s. To a young girl from a poor farming town in South Korea, it was more money than she’d ever seen. She was seventeen years old. It was a dream come true.

  They’d barely landed in America when the dream became a nightmare. Big rough men hustled her and Min-suh into separate cars, shielding them from the watchful policemen pacing the walkway. When Min-suh burst into tears, a big man shoved her face-down into the car, then took off. Sun-ja’s driver told her to be quiet, she would see her friend at their new apartment. So began the endless lies. Sun-ja never saw Min-suh again. And, instead of being a model or serving drinks in a club, she learned that the massage parlor where they took her was in fact a brothel. The first day, she was forced to have sex with eight different men. Her boss was not pleased with her. The customers complained that she just lay on the mattress without moving. She couldn’t move. She was frozen with fear. Her boss told her she needed to smile more. And that she needed to have surgery. Fix her eyes. Make her nose thinner. More American. The surgery cost $4,500. The Boss added it to her debt.

  Sun-ja lived in a disbelieving fog. All the days and nights were the same. The number of men, and the things they did to her, were the only things that made each day different from the one before or the one after. She learned to hide in the moldy cellars with the rest of the girls when the police raided the massage parlor. Once she fell for a trap; she exchanged money with a man who turned out to be a policeman. At the jail, a man who spoke Korean came and talked to her. She thought he might help her. She took a chance and told him her story. Rather than helping her, he arrested her for prostitution. Her boss paid her fine and bailed her out of jail. He beat her so badly that she couldn’t turn tricks for nearly a week—until makeup hid her cut lip and black eye.

  Two days earlier, when she was returning to the massage parlor from an outcall appointment, a small group of unfamiliar young women walked toward her. She knew they didn’t belong in the district, among the drug dealers and pimps. Several of them looked Korean, but more like Americans. Sun-ja’s cheap pink halter and tight short skirt contrasted with their blue jeans, t-shirts and sneakers. Unlike her skimpy, suggestive attire, their clothes covered their bodies. They made Sun-ja feel ugly, dirty. One young woman stepped out of the group and spoke to her softly in Korean. She asked Sun-ja if she needed help. Sun-ja kept her head down and tried to pass by, certain that it was a ploy to trap her, report her. She was confident the women were decoys, working with the police, or pimping for another “Boss.”

  The earnest young woman said, “My name is Ming. Here, take this. We can help you. Come to this address. Ask for Jai Li. She will protect you.”

  Sun-ja was terrified, but took the piece of paper and shoved it in her halter, refusing to answer or look at the woman. She knew what happened to girls who tried to leave their bosses. Two women from her last worksite were burned with acid and dragged back hideously disfigured, as an example to the rest of them. Women vanished all the time. It often took weeks before they became part of the “disappeared,” never to return. Many women told shocking stories of what happened to their families back in Korea, if the girls tried to go for help or left before paying off their debt. Already, Sun-ja owed her latest boss nearly $20,000. Because she only made $50 for each trick, it would be years before she could work off her debt.

  Sun-ja took out the sheet of paper the serious young woman gave her so many times it was ragged around the edges. She thought she knew where the address was. Perhaps four or five miles away. She would have to walk. There was no way she could take a bus dressed the way she was. She argued with herself. Told herself she was foolish. She was finally at the point where she could take twelve men a day. She even had repeat customers. For once, her boss wasn’t yelling at her. She convinced herself she could handle this life. In two years she could pay off her debt and be free. She’d believed that was possible. Until tonight.

  Chin-hwa and Wa-jin told her they were all going to a special party. They both would be with her. They promised there would be food to eat, and the party would be over early. She reminded them she had a one hour rule. Or the Boss charged extra. They both sniggered and exchanged an ugly, knowing look. When the three of them arrived in the dirty one-bedroom apartment on
the edge of the district, she saw six large men drinking beer and snorting cocaine. They were wearing uniforms and talking about baseball. They were too fat and out of shape to be real baseball players. She decided this must be something they did with each other in their spare time. For entertainment. The way they were leering at her, it was clear they did other things for entertainment. When she whispered to Chin-hwa, asking where the rest of the girls were, he gave a harsh laugh.

  “I didn’t have time to get any more. Besides, they cost too much. Tonight it’s all you, Sun-ja. If you do it right you can make as much as $200. Think you can smile for once?”

  The big men got louder, rowdier. They smirked at her and said things she didn’t understand. But the way they laughed and leered at her, she knew they were discussing what they planned to do to her. She huddled in the corner, hoping that they would get so drunk they would forget her. Instead, their comments became more lewd, more frightening. The biggest man clapped Chin-hwa on the shoulder and pulled him aside. While they talked in low tones, the others looked at her appraisingly, their eyes dark with lust. When Chin-hwa returned, he indicated that three of the men had won a bet. As a prize, they all wanted to take her at the same time. She looked desperately to Wa-jin, knowing that she could not survive such an attack. But Wa-jin merely shrugged.

  “That’ll be a hundred extra.”

  Sun-ja told them she needed to go to the restroom before they started. When she got inside the bathroom she was shaking so badly she could barely lock the door. Her heart was pounding. She leaned against the door, gasping for air. The voices from the other room grew louder, the words uglier. She heard the sound of broken glass and furniture crashing. She knew she had to leave or she would never make it out alive.

  She climbed up on the toilet and struggled to open the small dirty window high above the sink. Her hands were shaking so badly she had trouble twisting the latch. Hearing the angry voices outside the door gave her strength. With a fierce shove she pried open the window. Hoisting herself up, she squeezed her slender body through the opening and dropped to the ground. The rush of cold air against her burning cheeks gave her courage. From the open window, she heard the bathroom door crash. Outraged shouts filled the air. At first she thought she would hide in the bushes, afraid they would see her if she ran—but the sight of the huge drunken men piling out of the seedy apartment changed her mind. She fled down the street, past the garbage-filled gutters and homeless people passed out in the doorways. When she heard the angry shouts behind her, she ducked into the dark alleys, thinking at least in the inky black she would be harder to spot. She ran for what seemed like hours, but couldn’t have been more than ten minutes. When she no longer heard voices or footsteps, she crouched in a dark space under a fire escape. Sun-ja fought to get her breath. Her side ached painfully. It was hard to breathe. She forced herself to take shallow puffy breaths. Her lungs screamed for air.

  Just when she thought she’d escaped, a strong arm grabbed her and threw her against the wall. Chin-hwa’s fury rolled off him in sheets.

  “You stupid slut. Do you know what you did? You cost us over $500, and worse than that, they are all looking for me and Wa-jin, and soon will be after the Boss.”

  He grabbed a handful of her hair and dragged her out of the hole she’d plastered herself in. That was when she felt the knife against her arm. In the cloudless night she saw the blood rather than felt the cut. It was then that she knew if she didn’t get away tonight she would never be free. She would die in an alley like this, just one more piece of garbage for the skittering rats to chew on.

  Remembering the address on the paper, she jerked away from Chin-hwa and fell against his upraised arm. A sudden pain in her chest overwhelmed her. Of all the hideous things she’d endured, this was the most excruciating. Blessedly, numbness quickly followed the agony.

  Wa-jin screamed.

  “Dammit, Chin-hwa, you stabbed her. You fucking stabbed her in the chest. The Boss is going to cut off your balls. He’ll fucking kill you. She was his best trick.”

  Sun-ja sunk limply to the ground. Blood spewed in her throat, bubbling in her mouth. The last thing she heard was Chin-hwa’s furious screams.

  “Stupid girl! Why did you run? Don’t you know, silly slut! You can never get away from us!”

  As darkness closed over her, Sun-ja thought perhaps she finally had.

  Chapter 1

  Girlish shrieks followed by a chorus of laughter filled the air. Lexie shook her head in mock dismay and shared a wink with Master Wan. Even though Lexie did her best to enforce decorum in the dojo, nine little girls between the ages of six and eight were as hard to corral as a herd of frisky ponies. Worse, she thought with a grin. Because it wasn’t often that girls were encouraged to punch and kick and in general act like hoodlums instead of quiet, well-behaved girls. It was clear that given full rein, these girls could be as fierce as any boys who dared to take them on. And that was precisely the point Lexie wanted to make.

  While she trained boys—particularly highly talented fighters whose parents often drove three hours each direction for their son to have an hour of Lexie’s time—her focus was women. The sign over the front of the dojo declared her life’s mission. “Strong Women Survive.” She smiled at Jake’s scrawled addition: “And Thrive.” He’d added those two words, back when Lexie wasn’t sure what it meant to “thrive.” Surviving had been challenging enough. Without Master Wan, it was unlikely either she or her brother Anthony would have survived.

  Anthony was fifteen years old when he met Master Wan, and was facing high security confinement, following his fifth arrest for violent behavior. The schools and social service agencies had given up on him and the correctional system was about to do the same. As a last resort, and needing a place to park the angry young boy until he was old enough to go to prison, they sent Anthony to Master Wan’s dojo to learn “discipline.” Each year, Master Wan took in two or three incorrigible young people whom the courts had labeled potentially salvageable. Anthony was one of the lucky ones. Watching the young man fight, Master Wan saw beneath the veneer of rage, and began to teach the violent boy how to profitably harness his fury. Three years later, Anthony left the dojo to join the U.S. Army, a trained mixed martial artist the likes of which the U.S. Army rarely saw.

  After a six-year search, Anthony finally found the little sister who he’d last seen when she was ten years old. Separated by the social service system, it was unlikely the two orphaned children would have found each other without Anthony’s determination and Master Wan’s support. While Anthony’s teenage years were marked by violence he initiated, Lexie’s young life was one of violence perpetrated upon her. Eight foster homes and countless abusive situations later, she ran away for the last time. Following a tip from a social worker who remembered the striking young girl, Anthony found Lexie in a strip joint on the outskirts of San Francisco, a mere twenty miles from Master Wan’s dojo. Now a Green Beret on leave from Afghanistan, Anthony turned the drugged out, deeply cynical sixteen-year-old over to the man who had saved his life. He had one request of his mentor. “Teach her to protect herself.”

  Master Wan did that and more. He saw Lexie’s potential and built on it. Harnessing the indomitable spirit that had allowed Lexie to survive, Master Wan initiated a rigorous training regimen. Three years after Anthony found her, Lexie was an acknowledged master in five different martial arts disciplines. Master Wan always said, the only fighter he’d trained in thirty years more talented than Anthony was his sister.

  When she graduated from college, and Master Wan asked her what she wanted to do next, she’d said with a smile, “To become your partner of course.” And she had. At Master Wan’s insistence they named their center Jai Li’s, Lexie’s Chinese name which meant “strong leader.” While Lexie never forgot her past, she buried her personal pain in a deep dark hole, only rarely letting it raise its ugly head. Instead she took those hard lessons and used them to create her women’s self-defense program, “Stron
g Women Survive.” It was so effective that at the young age of twenty-six, Lexie was becoming an acknowledged expert sought after by law enforcement agencies and women’s groups across the state of California.

  And then, tragedy struck. The unimaginable happened. Anthony, her hero, her beloved brother, and the closest person in the world to her, was brutally murdered. Tired of being overseas for long stretches of time and wanting to be closer to Lexie, Anthony left the Army and joined the Yuma Police Department. He was about to expose the mastermind behind an international drug cartel when he was murdered. Lexie had always considered herself a survivor, but after Anthony’s murder, she wasn’t so sure. That she did survive, and was even toying with the notion of thriving, could be summed up in one word. Jake.

  Lexie broke out of her reverie when she saw Master Wan in the doorway. He spoke softly. “Jai Li, you have visitors. They are waiting for you in your office.”

  Seeing Master’s Wan’s serious expression, Lexie turned to her assistant. Ming Tong, a young Korean woman, was one of Lexie’s star pupils. Like many of Lexie’s followers, Ming came from a hideous family situation and shared Lexie’s passion for the Strong Women Survive program. Lately, Ming had been helping Lexie with some of the classes, particularly for the youngest pupils.

  “Ming, will you please finish the class? Remember girls, before you get to go to the punching bags you need to do at least ten minutes of stretching.”

  Lexie laughed at the outcry from the little girls. She agreed. There was nothing quite like driving your fists and feet into a hard bag to relieve stress and take out your frustrations. The first time Master Wan had her spend ten minutes pounding the bag she was hooked. Even today, she sometimes spent as much as an hour tormenting the leather-wrapped opponent with her fierce fists, elbows and feet. The only thing that compared was breaking a hundred blocks in a steady barrage of shrieking punches and kicks. She had instilled her love of this challenging outlet in all of her students, to the point that even the six-year-olds complained when they had to stretch rather than punch and kick.