11. Erin
CHAPTER 11
ERIN
T he signal had been non-existent after we dropped below the rim of the Grand Canyon, but as the helicopter rose, my phone buzzed with a message from Alexa on the app she’d installed without asking, one email from Ari, and another telling me I’d won a five-star luxury vacation in Hawaii—all I had to do was send the insurance fee to claim it.
I deleted the vacay spam and scanned the contents of Alexa’s message.
“Okay, good news.” Kind of. I tried to stay upbeat. “The guy with Kelsey is called Chris Clemente, and he definitely isn’t having an affair with her.”
“You’re certain?”
“The short answer is a colleague found his Grindr profile.” Alexa wasn’t exactly a colleague, but I didn’t know how else to describe her. “The longer answer is that Kelsey works in the New York office of Miller, Sigmund, and Pace, and Clemente works in the Las Vegas office along with Amber Cassidy. She’s the brunette who was also in the helicopter. They’re all architects.”
“So this is a work trip? ”
“I think they’re just showing Kelsey the sights while she’s in town.”
“So we wasted an entire day?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘wasted,’ exactly. I mean, the Grand Canyon was awesome. Like, bucket list awesome. I don’t have a bucket list, but if I did, visiting the Grand Canyon would definitely be on it.” Hey, if I started one, I could tick off the first item already. “Do you have a bucket list?”
Rusty shrugged. “There’s not much left on it.”
“Hey, Sin. Do you have a bucket list?”
“You don’t want to know what’s on my bucket list.”
Huh. That was probably true.
Until I reunited with my brother, I’d never been on vacation, and even when we did travel, we only went places he could surf. Which was rad and everything, but perhaps I should expand my horizons? I’d always wanted to visit Alaska. Snow, glaciers, the northern lights. I’d seen pictures on TV, but I’d never been anywhere colder than California in my life.
I opened the update from Ari, and hey, that threw us right back into the mystery.
“There’s more news,” I told Rusty. “Clemente wasn’t the man Kelsey ate dinner with in the Library last night.”
His head snapped around. “How do you know that?”
“Okay, so it’s better if I don’t tell you, but here’s a picture of the guy. Do you recognise him?”
Rusty took my phone and zoomed in on the picture of Kelsey eating opposite a clean-shaven dude with light brown hair and a pinkie ring. It wasn’t just the hair colour that didn’t match Clemente. He was thinner with a runner’s physique, and Clemente had the beginnings of a paunch.
Rusty replied in the negative. “I don’t know this guy. Never seen him before in my life.”
“Then I guess it’s still possible that Kelsey is having dirty sex on the side, but she’s not having it with Clemente.”
Ugh. Dirty sex. The thought of any sex turned my stomach, but I pushed memories of my husband out of my head. Ex-husband? We’d never gotten divorced, but after I left the Promised Land, I found out polygamy was unlawful in the United States, so I figured my marriage was a sham, right? I was wife number five. But the Prophet said I was the blessed one, the one who would finally bear Elvis a child, and I remembered having to talk with a judge before we got marriage papers. Then Ari found out there was a marriage licence filed with my old name on it. Joy Kealoha. There was nothing joyous about life in that place, nothing at all, and the worst part? She couldn’t find licences for my sister wives—I’d given her their names—and it turned out religious marriage and legal marriage were different things.
Don’t think about it, Erin.
At least I’d only had to share his bed once or sometimes twice a week, although that was still one or two times too many. Now I had a single bed in my own room at my brother’s house, and he’d put a lock on the door when I asked.
No more sharing.
“So we need to find this guy,” Rusty said, tapping the phone screen and bringing me back to the present.
“Yup, to start off with.”
“What do you mean, ‘to start off with’?”
“We can’t rule out a third guy.”
Never get fixated on one lead, Ari always told me. The unexpected could—and did—happen.
“You mean as well? Kelsey is hooking up with Silas, the guy from the Library, and someone else?”
“I was thinking of ‘instead,’ but ‘as well’ is also possible. Although isn’t it usually the other way around? Men like to have a whole harem of women?”
“Not this man. A one-to-one ratio works great for me. Or it did until… Never mind. What kind of assholes have you been hanging out with?”
Oh, I did not want to go down that road. Fortunately, Sin saved me from avoiding the question by joining the conversation at the perfect moment. Did she know about my past? I figured there was a good chance she did if she was friends with Jerry and Alexa because they knew almost everything.
“Hey, homies. You want to take the scenic route back?”
“We can’t. We’ll lose Kelsey.”
“There’s a better-than-average possibility that somebody who will remain nameless might be tracking her phone right now. You can just catch up with her later.”
“What?” Rusty said. “You’re tracking her phone? Is that even legal?”
Sin turned and flashed him a grin. “Pretend you didn’t hear that part.”
“How did you even get her number?”
I could guess the answer. “It’s probably on the company website. If she’s here on a work trip, she’ll be carrying her work phone.”
“I see. But I’m still not sure?—”
“Are you two going to make up your minds?” Sin asked. “There are some neat rock formations to the south that look great from the air, and we can fly past the Hoover Dam if you want.”
Wasn’t Sin supposed to be busy doing top-secret security stuff? “Don’t you have to get back to the Batcave?”
“I’d rather not. Our house-elf is on a cleaning jag, and if I show up, he’ll only put me to work.”
“You have a house-elf?” Rusty asked. “Is that a southwestern thing? ”
“He prefers the term ‘estate manager,’ but he has delusions of grandeur and way too many shoes. He won’t let us swear, so that rules out most of the other nicknames we might have chosen, and he vetoed ‘houseboy’ as well. Even though he’s the only boy in the house. The rest of us are women, apart from our boss, and he’s all man.” She cut me a sideways glance. “If you ever meet Priest, don’t tell him I said that. It’ll go to his head—the big one, not the little one.”
“Priest? Tell me you don’t live in a cult?”
“It’s just a nickname.”
“Do you want to go the scenic route?” Rusty asked me.
“You’re the client.”
“Am I?”
“Well, what else would you call yourself?”
“Partner in crime?” he suggested.
“We’re not doing any crime.”
“What do you call phone stalking, then?”
“Crime adjacent?”
He sighed. “Let’s take the scenic route.”