Rain-Soaked: A Marti Starova Erotic Thriller

Rain-Soaked – Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

“What the fuck was I working on again?”

Marti glared at the screen like it had personally offended her. Smoke curled from the cigarette clinging to her lip, trailing up past her eyes before disappearing into the yellowed ceiling tiles. The cursor blinked. Mocking her.

Falls City PD’s gold shield felt like a lifetime ago. Private investigating paid more, and nobody cared if she showed up hungover. Or still drunk. Or riding the chemical wave of Shadow that made everything sharper and softer and nothing better.

She rubbed a thumb over one temple, trying to scrape off last night: the sex, the shots, the Shadow hit she hadn’t needed but took anyway. Her brain felt as if someone had filled it with wet socks.

The ashtray was clean. Which meant she’d actually done something productive this morning, probably during one of those weird bursts of guilt-fueled energy that came between hangover cramps and lighting the day’s next cigarette.

“Jesus, Marti. Seriously?”

That voice. Sharp, familiar, laced with exasperation. Lori Harring walked in like she owned the place; technically, she at least paid the rent. Fifth secretary in four years, and the only one who’d lasted longer than nine months with Falls City’s most disgraced ex-detective.

Heels clicking against scuffed hardwood, Lori stopped behind her chair: too close to be innocent, not close enough to give Marti what she wanted. Her hot-but-don’t-touch-you’ll-fuck-this-up secretary. Exceptionally competent, tragically clothed.

Marti didn’t look up. She could feel Lori’s body heat curling at her back, smell that maddening perfume: clean floral with a bite underneath, like lilies hiding switchblades.

“Here,” Lori said.

She reached over, fingers brushing Marti’s hand as she took the mouse. That single drag of skin sent a tremor down Marti’s spine and straight between her legs. Fucking hell.

She pulled her hand back as if it had been burned. Thank God there was no HR here.

Lori swiped through the holographic displays with calm efficiency. “While you were out with God-knows-who doing God-knows-what, I made some progress on the West Insurance case.”

Images. Charts. A timeline of someone else’s bullshit organized into neat little lies. The only thing messy in the room was Marti’s brain and maybe the things she wanted to do to Lori across the desk.

“You listening?” Lori asked, turning enough for Marti to catch a flash of cleavage and annoyance in equal measure.

“I’m always listening,” Marti lied.

“Focus.” Lori crossed her arms. “Tobias West hired us for this fraud case, remember? You were there when he cried about his precious insurance empire.”

“Right,” Marti muttered, trying not to sound like she’d rather be handcuffed than doing data analysis.

Lori leaned in again, her hair brushing against Marti’s cheek as she pointed at overlapping charts on the screen.

“Look at these spikes in claim activity,” Lori said. “There is a sudden increase right here, and then a sudden drop-off. Someone needed quick cash for something big, then backed off three weeks ago.”

Marti tapped the screen. “And here: geolocation metadata is off by miles. I’ve been working on this all week.”

Her fingers moved across the keyboard, pulling up a map that plotted reported locations against actual incident sites. “See? Miles apart. Not just once, but repeatedly.”

Marti squinted at what looked like meaningless squiggles and numbers. “So?”

“So someone’s tampering with it,” Lori said. “I texted you about it three times.”

Marti’s eyes flicked to her comm unit, unread messages blinking accusingly.

“Tobias thinks it’s Juanita Valenzuela,” Lori added. She leaned close. “Someone wants these claims approved fast and for a shit ton of money.”

Marti’s heart did something unpleasant and fluttery: either from Lori’s breath ghosting along her earlobe or from how tight her jeans felt.

She tried for cool detachment. She failed. Marti’s eyes raked over her desk, hoping to land on something more interesting than Lori’s hips. A couple of sticks of StimGum, a PulseSpec, a wireless charging pad.

Lori’s hips won.

“Keep talking dirty about metadata,” Marti murmured before catching herself and snapping back toward the screen. Lori pulled away with a smirk sharp enough to cut rope.

“I spent time going through the employee directory and access list,” Lori continued, clicking to a profile on screen. “Valenzuela has admin access. Full server privileges. She can change records, modify data, change timestamps. Even alter the video.”

“Alter how?” Marti lit another cigarette.

“Look at this dashcam footage,” Lori said, pulling up a video file. “The audio cuts out mid-word, an imperfect slice of silence lasting three seconds before resuming. When I checked the timestamp against the metadata…” She paused dramatically. “Another mismatch.”

A distinct meowing sound from outside caught their attention. Lori glanced toward the window.

“That black cat’s back again,” she said. “It hates me. Hisses every time I go near it.”

Marti ignored the obvious pussy joke, and stared at the footage. But all she could think about was how Lori looked when she was angry: lip curled slightly, brow tight.

“You good?” Lori asked without looking up.

“Nope.” Marti dragged on her cigarette while pretending to care about metadata anomalies instead of how she wanted her secretary bent over this desk.

The streetlights flickered on schedule. There would be full brightness in the Financial District, dim yellow in the residential blocks, and complete darkness in areas where authorities had written off the population.

Three. Two. One. Darkness outside until lightning lit up the sky.

Outside: thunder. Inside: unresolved tension and claims fraud.

“User access patterns show multiple log-ins to the same evidence files by different employees across departments,” Lori said, tapping her tablet. “That’s not standard protocol. It might suggest tampering. Maybe collusion.”

Marti forced a nod. “Great. Cyber-fraud with teamwork.” Her fingers drummed on the desk. “Someone would need serious technical skills to pull this off so cleanly.”

She stared at the doctored footage, a nascent thought forming through her hangover. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing. The kind of precision that spoke of experience and expertise.

“Get me a list of those users and timestamps,” Marti said. “Let’s see who’s been getting curious.”

Lori hesitated just long enough for it to register. Her eyes flicked down to Marti’s mouth before snapping back up. “On it.”

She retreated into her office next door, hips swaying in that rhythm that made Marti’s mouth dry.

Marti stared after her for a dangerous second, then turned back to the altered footage. Something about the clean edit nagged at her. Very professional. Expert.

She shouldn’t be thinking about Lori like this, not while their client’s servers were bleeding secrets and someone with dangerous technical skills was manipulating evidence.

She needed a distraction. From everything.

Fuck it.

She reached into the desk drawer and pulled out her Shadow inhaler like it was communion wine. Salvation in aerosol form.

One hit. Just one. It might be good. It might be a nightmare. What wasn’t these days?

The drug slid into her lungs like silk dipped in lightning. Vision fractured into prisms of color: ultraviolets humming against grayscale memories. Time peeled outward until even the sound of rain seemed like an afterthought.

Gone.

Just for a minute.

Until Lori’s voice crashed through the kaleidoscope.

“Marti,” she called from next door. Urgent now. “I’ve got something.”

Marti blinked hard. Reality elbowed its way back in as Shadow receded into background static.

“What?” Her voice came out thick and sticky, like honey poured over gravel.

Footsteps approached fast until Lori emerged, Holo-Tab in hand.

“Dashcam footage,” she said, sliding back into Marti’s space. “Someone altered it using old software: Cinemagic Editcraft.”

“Sounds fake,” Marti muttered, rubbing at her temples.

“It’s not.” Lori shoved the tablet under her nose. “The program’s obsolete, fifteen years at least, but it still slips past current authentication software because no one bothers coding filters for antiques.”

Marti squinted at the footage. “So what you’re saying is… someone used decades old tech to cover their ass?”

“Exactly.” Lori dropped into the chair opposite her. “It passed verification until I ran my tweaked version of VideoTruth through it and found this.” She jabbed the screen. “Graph spike right here.”

Marti stared at a colorful blip on a line graph.

“The day after the accident,” Lori added.

“Of course it was.” Marti dragged another long sip from her coffee, which tasted like burned regret. “And let me guess: whoever pulled this off knows their way around codebases older than I am.”

Lori gave a tight nod. “Yeah. We’re talking someone with vintage IT knowledge and access; probably worked inside government systems or big-money insurance mills.”

“Great fucking detective work, Sherlock,” Marti said with mock enthusiasm. Her gaze dropped without permission to where Lori was leaning forward now, cleavage framed by silk buttons.

Temptation pressed against restraint, hard enough to bruise.

She looked away before she embarrassed herself further.

Lori noticed anyway. Her smirk had teeth.

But instead of calling Marti out or pulling away, she stayed where she was and locked eyes with her boss.

Outside: more thunder, closer now.

“I still can’t tell exactly what was altered in the footage,” Lori said. “Could’ve been something cut, spliced in, or just morphed so clean it passes for original.”

“Then keep digging.” Marti stubbed her cigarette and leaned over the desk. “Start with who accessed the system that day. Full list. Names, log-ins, timestamps. I want to know who breathed near that file.”

“No shit,” Lori muttered, already heading back to her desk with that catwalk sway she claimed was unintentional.

Just another Wednesday at Starova Investigations. With ass, lies, and microdoses of hallucinogenic escapism.

Marti stayed behind, alone with the rain drumbeat and the scent of scorched tobacco. Water chased itself down the office window in frantic rivulets, like it couldn’t get out of this damn city fast enough.

She stared through the downpour, watching Lori’s reflection hammer keys like she was exorcising something.

“You’re staring again,” Lori said without looking up.

Marti turned slowly and lied badly. “Just thinking.”

“About the case,” Lori said, one eyebrow arched like a dare, “or about me?”

That smile, barely there, made Marti want to commit crimes worse than surveillance tampering.

She cleared her throat. “This insurance gig stinks. Whoever doctored that dashcam footage wasn’t doing it for shits and giggles. They’ve got a constant stream of willing clients. Someone in sales who signs them up. And a need for money.”

Lori snorted but didn’t argue. Instead she reached for a sheet fresh from the printer and held it out. “Cross-referenced system access logs with our tampered timestamps. Here’s everyone who touched those files when they shouldn’t have.”

Warm paper brushed warm fingers; brief contact, but electric enough to light up Marti’s spine.

She took it, eyes flicking down columns of usernames until something ugly jumped out.

“Jv491?” She tapped it hard. “That one doesn’t match company naming formats. Everyone else is initials plus last name.” Her gaze snapped back up. “What the fuck is this?”

Lori nudged Marti out of her chair and got to typing.

Marti watched her work: the way her bottom lip caught between her teeth when she focused, how that little wrinkle appeared above her brow.

“Oh shit,” Lori breathed, sitting back fast.

Marti was moving. She stepped behind her desk and leaned in close enough her breath ghosted against Lori’s cheek.

“That user,” Lori said, pointing at the glowing screen, “is Juanita Valenzuela.”

“The adjuster we were hired to look at?”

“The very same,” Lori confirmed.

“Son of a whore.” Marti straightened up and crushed what remained of her cigarette. “We’ve got her.”

Lori hesitated. “Because she has a weird user name?”

Marti barked a laugh and started pacing. “Yeah, that’s stupid.” She stopped and stabbed a finger at the screen.

“I want everything on Valenzuela: her files, contacts, where she buys coffee and who she fucks after hours.” Her voice dropped an octave lower.

Lori leaned back in the chair and looked up at Marti through lashes thick with implication.

“I’ll start with a financial overview,” Lori said, moving quickly to her own chair.

Marti yanked her leather jacket from the coat rack. “Send me screen grabs of the locations of the accidents that she touched. I’ll hit the street, see if they match locations. If I can figure out angles and shit.”

“Be careful,” Lori called after her. “If Valenzuela’s our girl and she’s wired into someone higher up—”

“I’m never careful,” Marti tossed back, giving a wink filthy enough to be its own liability.

Two hours later, Marti slammed back into the office drenched through: hair plastered down, boots soggy, mood fouler than a septic tank in summer. Four locations, two drinks, and one punch to a guy who got grabby. Zip. Zilch. Fuck-all.

Lori hadn’t moved. Judging by the half-eaten sandwich, empty coffee cups, and the glow of obsession in her eyes, she probably hadn’t even blinked.

“You need to see this.” No hello, no kiss-my-ass. Just Lori’s voice sharp as a syringe.

Marti peeled off her soaked jacket and let it fall in a wet heap as she stalked over.

Lori gestured to the screen with all the triumph of a cat dropping a dead bird at your feet. It was a digital altar to Juanita Valenzuela: glam shots pulled from social media feeds, slices of public record arranged like a menu of sins.

“I couldn’t get her actual financials,” Lori said, flipping through tabs, “but I didn’t need ‘em. Look at this string of posts: eighteen months of showing off like she’s auditioning for Rich Bitch Weekly.”

She clicked through photos. Valenzuela leaned against a luxury nuclear hybrid N-Car; draped across some oligarch’s yacht; flashing labels so high-end they probably had fewer human rights violations than she did credit cards.

“Now,” Lori purred, switching tabs, “this is her reported salary from West Insurance.” The screen filled with numbers that barely scratched six figures.

“Claims adjuster money doesn’t buy fucking yachts,” Marti muttered as she leaned close enough for their shoulders to brush.

“There’s more,” Lori said.

She flipped to a calendar visual studded with colored points like bullet wounds across time.

“The dates on these posts? They line up with certain claims: big ones. Every flashy purchase happens within two weeks of Valenzuela signing off on something big.”

“And these?” She pointed to sets of beach selfies and luxury resort check-ins. “Each vacation hits right after fat settlements landed in someone’s account.”

Lori tapped again, zooming in on metadata Marti hadn’t noticed. “See this? The accounts getting those settlements? Some of them aren’t even in the claimant’s name. Shell companies. Payouts routed through firms that didn’t exist six months earlier. This one is weird too: a single payment to a place called Crimson Crown. Twenty crisp three weeks ago. But the claimant’s name was Samuel Barajas. A Crimson Crown employee, maybe?”

Marti narrowed her eyes. “No, I think you’re onto something. She’s laundering the settlements.”

“More than that,” Lori said, voice flattening. “She’s not subtle enough to have done this. This set up takes someone who is good at staying hidden, under the radar. These LLCs are too clean, and they’re front-loaded with legal insulation. Someone else built the machine. She’s just pushing the buttons.”

Marti ran both hands through her short black hair until it stood up like static shock.

“Well fuck me sideways,” she murmured around another cigarette already lit between her lips.

“You see where I’m going with this?”

Marti exhaled slow. “Valenzuela isn’t driving this train.” She tapped ash into an overflowing tray. “Someone else is laying track and paying her just enough hush money to keep posting selfies.”

“Exactly.” Lori zoomed into another photo: a club shot so overpriced you could hear champagne fizz through pixels. A man hovered behind Valenzuela in three different images.

Same man each time. Blurred face, generic build that screamed government-issued mannequin. Suit too neat, skin too smooth, no personality traits aside from ‘camera-phobic bastard.’

“No ID yet,” Lori said. “But he keeps showing up wherever she does when the money flows.”

Outside, rain battered the window harder.

Marti took another drag and flicked ash onto the carpet.

“This is sophisticated. Probably even more money being taken than we can prove so far,” she said finally.

Her voice was low, ragged and dangerous: the kind you only hear just before everything goes to hell. It was only a matter of time.

* * *

Hours passed, the kind that came with bloodshot eyes and sticky keys, where the clock mocked you and the coffee stopped working. Digital records piled up like bodies; messy, incomplete, hiding something rotting underneath.

Then Lori sat up. Her chair screeched across the floor.

“Marti,” she breathed. “It’s Stirling.”

Marti leaned in, breath catching as the screen lit up with the old Thornfield murder file. Ari Stirling—second-in-command and grief-stricken—had hired her to find the killer. She found him. Stirling paid. So did Bruce Garrison, the man who pulled the trigger.

Garrison paid with his life.

Stirling paid with digital cash.

Lori’s fingers tapped and spread across the monitor, pulling two windows side by side. On the left: a large settlement payment, authorized last month by Juanita Valenzuela. On the right: an archived transfer from Stirling to Marti, funds paid after the investigation.

Same bank. Same account. Same routing number: 0874920216.

Marti blinked.

“Shit,” Marti muttered, eyes wide. “That’s it. That’s…fuck, that’s the jackpot.”

It wasn’t metaphorical anymore: the connection was right there in glowing white text. Ari. Juanita. The money overlapping both like a bloodstain.

“What’s the deal?” Lori asked under her breath. “What’s his motive? This is way outside of his wheelhouse.”

Marti sighed, still staring at the screen. “Diversification. But if Stirling finds out we know? We’re dead before we can finish printing.”

“So what do we do?” Lori murmured. “This isn’t airtight. Not yet.”

Marti leaned back, rubbing her temples with nicotine-stained fingers. “We got a skeleton key and half a map drawn in piss.” She exhaled. “Yeah, alright. Let’s figure out his angle before we tell Tobias West anything.”

“Let’s burn his whole rotten operation down,” Lori said, mock-heroic voice engaged.

Marti snorted and waved her off. “Sure thing, babyface anarchist.” She flicked ash toward yesterday’s sandwich and grinned.

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