4. Rusty
CHAPTER 4
RUSTY
“ H ere’s my number. If you need a ride home later, get somebody to call me, okay?”
Kina shoved the piece of paper into Erin’s hand, climbed back into her tiny Honda, and took off, leaving Rusty and Erin standing outside the emergency room.
Rusty Bolt had kept his damn mouth shut on the way to the hospital. Understanding the female mind had never been his strong suit—his sisters had told him that a thousand times—and he hadn’t meant to insult Kina. But she had offered him a blow job for fifty bucks, so it wasn’t as if she kept her profession a secret.
He wasn’t looking for a good time, and he didn’t even want to be in Vegas, but someone needed to stop Silas Armstrong from making a big mistake, and that someone turned out to be him.
When Erin just stood there, he moved a hand toward the small of her back, caught himself, and then gestured at the door instead.
“After you.”
But Erin didn’t move. Instead, she bit her lip .
“What do you even do in a hospital? Do you just walk in and ask for a doctor?”
“You’ve never been in a hospital before?”
“Only once to visit a friend, but that was in Hawaii. Do things work the same here?”
“Pretty much. You walk in, they interrogate you about how you’re going to pay, and then they get you a doctor. Do you have insurance?”
“I do, but my brother deals with that stuff.”
“Is your brother in Las Vegas? Should I call him?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to worry him, and he isn’t here anyway. He’s in California.”
“Okay. Okay, I’ll deal with it. We can sort out the details later.”
Once again, Rusty was grateful for the career he’d lucked into. Playing hockey not only meant he smiled going to work every day, but it paid enough money that he didn’t have to worry about balancing his chequebook anymore. Plus he’d been able to help out his family. His parents owned their home free and clear, his little sister was happy in college, and his older sister hadn’t needed to factor in affording a place to live after she left the moron she’d married. If Rusty struggled to understand women, then Penny was the same with men. Why else would she have married a writer who insisted the only reason his screenplay hadn’t been scooped up by a major studio was that he lived in Minnesota rather than Hollywood?
They’d moved to Los Angeles, where he cheated on her with a guy named Philip, and somehow it was all her fault for not being supportive enough. She was back home in Minnesota now, gearing up for a custody battle. Her good-for-nothing soon-to-be ex didn’t want a kid, but he did want control over her.
Anyhow, that was tomorrow’s problem .
Tonight, he had to make sure Erin’s eyes wouldn’t suffer any lasting damage.
“I’ll take care of everything,” he promised as a nurse arrived with a wheelchair. “Just do what the doctor says.”
Rusty handed over his credit card, then spent twenty minutes explaining to the uptight woman with the many, many forms why he couldn’t fill them in.
“Her name is Erin, that’s all I know.”
“You don’t have her surname?”
“No, I don’t. We only met tonight. Her name is Erin, and she’s staying at the Galaxy Hotel.”
The woman’s expression was a mixture of disgust and sympathy, and Rusty honestly couldn’t blame her for that. The Galaxy was a dump. He’d only been there to find out who a friend of a friend’s woman was meeting on her alleged business trip, and then he’d had to leave the bar before Kelsey even arrived. He sure hoped she wasn’t cheating. Silas Armstrong played for a rival team and Rusty had only met him half a dozen times, but he liked the guy.
And that was another problem for tomorrow.
Rusty would have to start over and hope Kelsey Dorrias didn’t wonder why he kept showing up in the vicinity. Should he buy a new hat? He should probably buy a new hat.
Seeing as he hadn’t managed to eat dinner either, he grabbed a bottle of water and a protein bar from the vending machines in the lobby while he waited. Peanut and caramel flavour, according to the label, but it tasted more like syrup mixed with the contents of a vacuum cleaner. He’d just eaten the last mouthful when Erin reappeared with a diagnosis of temporary irritation, a prediction of no permanent damage, and a bill for six and a half thousand bucks.
“Do the doctors here use gold-plated stethoscopes?” he joked, but the nurse who accompanied her didn’t seem to find it amusing.
“She only put stuff in my eye and looked at it with a weird light,” Erin said. “I told you I should have gone back to my room.”
“Eyesight isn’t something you mess with. Do you feel up to filling in these forms? I don’t know anything about you.”
He held out the pen, and she just stared at it.
“Can you do it?” she asked.
“Vision still blurry, huh?”
“Nobody can read my writing.”
“All computers nowadays, isn’t it?”
The administrator who brought the forms had explained that they usually used tablets, but their computer system was glitching tonight and they couldn’t access some of the records, so they had to do things the old-fashioned way. A gremlin in the works, she said.
Erin shrugged, and Rusty picked up the clipboard he’d been left with. “Surname?”
“Kealoha.”
“K-E-A-L-O-H-A? Like the surfer?”
“He’s my brother.”
Kai Kealoha was Erin’s brother? He looked for a sign that she was joking with him, but she seemed so serious. In fact, he hadn’t seen her smile once. He wrote down the name.
“Is your brother also your next of kin?”
“Yes, Kai Kealoha.”
A couple of the guys on the team enjoyed surfing in the offseason. Rusty had tried it once and gotten a mild concussion. Since none of them were supposed to be anywhere near surfboards—their contracts prohibited high-risk activities—he’d had to pretend he’d tripped down some steps, and that had earned him the nickname Goofy for the next six months. He’d stick with hockey, thanks.
“Okay, date of birth.”
Erin opened her mouth to speak, but a blonde woman got in first, skidding to a halt in front of her.
“What the hell happened?”
Did they know each other?
“I was watching for the dude like you told me to when a bunch of BuzzHub influencers decided they wanted to sit at my table because it had good lighting.”
“And…?”
“When I said no, one of them threw a drink at me.”
“It splashed in her eyes,” Rusty added, processing Erin’s words. Watching for a dude? What dude?
“So this guy”—she jerked her thumb in his direction—“stuck my head under a faucet, then insisted I come to the hospital to get checked out, and a lady from the bar gave us a ride.”
“Ah.” The blonde didn’t look at all surprised, which was surprising in itself.
“How are you here?” Erin asked her. “Someone stole my phone off the table while my head was in the sink, so I couldn’t call anyone. I need to start learning people’s numbers by heart.”
“I went to the Galaxy, and a bunch of hookers said you’d been taken to the emergency room. Finding out which emergency room was the bigger challenge because the woman that drove you was busy with a ‘friend.’”
“So how did you work it out?”
“Alexa,” the blonde said and didn’t elaborate.
Alexa? Like Amazon’s Alexa? That didn’t make a whole lot of sense. A person named Alexa?
“Can she get my insurance details without calling Kai? I promised him I’d stay safe. ”
“They treated you without asking for insurance information?”
Again, Erin pointed to Rusty.
“I covered it for now,” he said. “Credit card.”
The blonde sighed. “I’ll go and sort it out. Are your eyes okay?” she asked Erin.
“Still sore, but the doctor said there’s no lasting damage.”
“Okay, stay here.”
The blonde went over to the desk, and Erin sank onto one of the hard plastic seats in the waiting area. Six and a half thousand bucks, and they couldn’t even provide a padded chair. Rusty sat beside her and shifted to get comfortable, stifling a yawn. Midnight had come and gone, and he’d been up since six, waiting for Kelsey to show for breakfast in the Neptune’s dining room.
“What dude were you watching for?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“In the bar—you said you were watching for the dude like that lady told you to do.”
“I… No, I didn’t say that.”
“Didn’t your momma teach you that lying’s a sin?”
In a heartbeat, Erin shifted sideways onto a different seat. Rusty got the impression she’d have moved farther if she hadn’t reached the end of the row. Now what was he supposed to do? She’d been nervous at the Galaxy, and maybe he shouldn’t have called her out on the lie, but he hadn’t gotten confused over words she’d said barely two minutes before.
With his sisters, an apology always defused the situation, but he had a feeling that wouldn’t be enough with Erin. She wouldn’t even look at him. In the end, he decided to come clean about his own reason for being in the Library and hope she did the same .
“I’m sorry,” he said, even though she was the one sidestepping the truth. “I was just wondering if we were watching for the same person, that was all.”
Slowly, she turned to face him. “You were watching for someone? Who?”
“I’m not sure. I only know that they were going to meet a woman in the bar at eight o’clock.”
“Then it wasn’t the same person.”
“How can you be sure?”
“My person wasn’t going to meet anybody for drinks.”
“And how do you know that? Are you a private investigator or something?”
She didn’t look like a PI or even act like one, but damn, he needed pointers on how to tail a suspect because he’d already lost Kelsey three times. Once when he got stuck at a stoplight, once when she visited the ladies-only spa in the Neptune Hotel, and once when she disappeared into an office building. He’d waited for hours in a café across the street, but she must have used a different exit.
“I’m the private investigator,” the blonde said, reappearing beside them and offering a hand. “Ari Danner.”
They shook.
“Rusty.”
“Good to meet you. So anyway, the administrator realised they made a mistake with the bill. It was meant to be six hundred and fifty bucks, not six thousand five hundred. They’ve refunded your card, and I’ve paid the balance on mine.”
“That’s a pretty big mistake to make. How does that even happen?”
“Computer systems move in mysterious ways.”
At least he wasn’t out six and a half thousand bucks. “So, uh, I’d better go.”
“Do you need a ride home? ”
He knew he should go back to the Galaxy to pick up his vehicle, but if he was going to be back on Kelsey-watch first thing tomorrow morning, what he really needed was sleep. Running a one-man surveillance detail was harder than he’d imagined—even bathroom breaks took military-style planning. He could take an Uber to the Galaxy in the morning, find his borrowed truck in the parking garage, and drive next door to the Neptune. If Kelsey followed the same pattern, she’d eat breakfast at seven a.m. and then head out for meetings or whatever else a successful architect did on a trip. And maybe, just maybe, she’d hook up with a secret lover.
“I’m staying over in McNeil, but isn’t that out of your way?”
“McNeil? How are you finding the area?”
“In truth, I haven’t spent much time there. I came to Las Vegas as a favour to a couple of buddies, and they arranged the place for me.” The house belonged to a guy who played for the Nevada Storm, but he was in Norway to visit with family and attend his cousin’s wedding. “I would’ve been better staying in a hotel.”
The Neptune, specifically. Rusty had thought about booking a room there, but there were only suites left, and even though he had money now, growing up with little meant he still watched the pennies.
“Turns out we were both looking for somebody in the Library tonight,” Erin said, and Ari gave her a sharp look. “Not the same guy, though.”
“Oh?” Ari turned to him. “Who were you looking for?”
Did it matter if she knew? Not really. Hell, he needed those tips.
“A defenseman for the Richmond Raiders—Silas Armstrong—has been dating a woman for almost a year now, and he just bought her a ring. ”
“So you’re scouting for a wedding chapel? The Galaxy doesn’t have one of those.”
Not even close. “His teammates are worried. Kelsey isn’t like the other girls—she travels a lot for work, and she’s real quiet. Secretive. She skips most of the social activities, she leaves the room to take calls, and last month, my buddy Hendrix swears he saw her eating lunch with a man who wasn’t Silas.”
“Did anyone ask her about it?”
“Lamar’s girlfriend did, and she said she was working the whole day.”
“So maybe it was a work meeting?”
“The other girls think it’s weird that she works at all.”
“Heaven forbid a woman has a career.”
“Could be nothing, but nobody wants to see Silas screw up his life. She spends most of her time in New York, and Silas has started talking about moving to the Big Apple. Asking for a trade. He’s one of the best defensemen in the sport, and nobody in Richmond wants to lose him, especially if the relationship isn’t going to last.”
“So Kelsey’s working in Vegas this week, and you volunteered to follow her around?”
“Not volunteered, exactly. The Raiders made it to the playoffs, so nobody else could come.”
“Has she hooked up with any other men?”
“I don’t know. I overheard her on the phone at breakfast this morning”—Rusty glanced at his watch—“yesterday morning, I guess, and she arranged to meet someone in the Library bar at eight p.m. But she walked in as I was escorting Erin out, and I didn’t see anyone accompanying her. Whoever it was probably arrived after we left.”
“You have a picture of Kelsey?”
“Yes.”
“Send it to me, and we’ll keep an eye out.”
“You will? ”
“We’ll be working surveillance in the area anyway. So, about that ride home tonight? Going to McNeil is no problem.”
“If you’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”