18. Ari
CHAPTER 18
ARI
S ix thirty in the morning, and someone knocked on the door of my hotel room. Was that Erin? She was a painfully early riser and always way too cheerful with it. Didn’t she realise Sunday was supposed to be a day of rest? I rubbed my eyes as I stumbled out of bed, ready to give her a lecture, only to find a brunette I’d never met before standing there.
“Hi, I’m Dusk. You must be Ari?” She held out a cup from the fancy coffee bar down the street and smiled brightly. “I brought caffeine.”
Dusk… Dusk… Another weird non-name. “Are you part of Jerry’s crew?”
“Jezebel? Yes. Can I come in?”
Did I have a choice? I opened the door wider, still in my pyjamas as she brushed past me in tight jeans and a plaid shirt.
“I take it this isn’t a social call?”
“Not really. I’m here to let you know that there’ll be a few changes to the way the investigation is being run.”
“Huh?”
“Jez has gone on vacation. ”
Jerry had what ? We’d eaten lunch yesterday, and she hadn’t said a word about going away. Although she had been slightly subdued, probably because she’d split from Cole. Oh, sure, she said the breakup had been planned all along, but it was obvious she still liked him. And equally obvious that a long-term relationship was doomed from the start. From what I’d heard, Cole was a walking green flag of a man, and Jerry was a probable assassin who lied more often than she told the truth.
She’d brushed away my attempts to dig and stuck strictly to business as she picked at the burger she’d ordered. Apparently, T-Rex—whose name was actually Dylan Rodwell—really didn’t know anything more than he’d divulged already, and nor had he been paid. Amber Road held the money in escrow until the job was completed, and they took twenty percent no matter what, so AceInTheHole had lost out too. AceInTheHole—that was the username of the person behind all this, which made me think he was here in Vegas because that was a poker term. An ace dealt and held face down. A hidden advantage. Jerry wondered whether any poker players had lost big at the Galaxy recently, which was another lead for Rennick and Alexa to look into. I wanted to interview the hotel’s general manager, but Jerry was adamant that the investigation had to remain on the down-low.
“Jerry didn’t mention any trip.”
“No, well, until Priest bundled her out the door this morning, she didn’t truly think she was going on one.”
Priest was her boss, I knew that much. I’d met him once when he flew me to Hawaii after an attempt on Zach’s life. Unbeknown to me at the time, I’d first seen Jerry that day too. Hmm. Priest. Was that where the Church Group name had come from?
“So this is an involuntary vacation?”
“She needs a break. First, she fell down the stairs, and then she got stabbed in the leg. And she broke her cast, kicking that guy in the— Oh, maybe I wasn’t supposed to mention that part.”
“Relax, I already know about the cast. She got stabbed in the leg?”
“Some deranged bitch thought Jez was hitting on her boyfriend and cut her with the stem of a champagne glass.”
“She didn’t jump out of the way?”
“As I said, she really needs a break. She hasn’t slowed down in years, and she’s tired, even if she won’t admit it.”
True, she was. I’d seen the fatigue in her yesterday.
“So, where’s she going? Somewhere nice?”
“She doesn’t know that part yet.”
“How does that work? Did you blindfold her and stuff her into a helicopter?”
“Oh, no, she’s on a regular commercial flight. She thinks she’s going to meet Echo in Florida, except Echo came up with a new plan—which between you and me, I’m not sure I totally agree with because Jez is gonna lose her shit—and no one argues with Echo.”
“Let me guess… She’s going to the Caribbean?”
Putting Jerry on a collision course with her ex was exactly the type of stunt Alexa would pull. She was single-minded in her approach to life, and if she’d decided that Jerry had made a mistake in dumping Cole, then she’d smash them together again.
The trouble was, I couldn’t see a happy ending.
Dusk grimaced. “Either she’s going to San Gallicano with Cole, or she’s going on a murder spree. I was thinking that maybe I could hang out here this morning in case she comes back. Oh, and Echo will be incommunicado for a while. She’s travelling too.”
“And where is she going?”
“As far away from Florida as she can get.”
“You truly think Jerry would hurt her? ”
“Like put a bullet through her head? No. But Jez would put a bullet through Echo’s computer, and for Echo, that’s almost as bad.”
“Doesn’t she keep backups?”
“Backups of backups of backups, but she’s still unnaturally attached. You ever have a pet dog? Echo has a pet laptop. Which is just as well because she’s terrified of dogs. If Saint goes in the same room, she freaks out.”
“Saint?”
“Sin’s Malinois.” A Malinois? Okay, I could understand why Alexa might be nervous. They were like furry missiles. “Anyhow, Jez and Echo are gone, but you have Sin and me at your disposal, provided nothing more important comes up. You know—bombing, gassing, a little light execution.” She caught my look of horror and shoulder-bumped me. “Relax, I’m kidding.”
I was pretty sure she wasn’t kidding.
“Well, I’m waiting on Alexa to finish gallivanting around the dark web, and my financial analyst is still reviewing the Galaxy’s accounting system.”
“Okay, so in the meantime, why don’t we get breakfast?”
“You really don’t want to go back home, do you?”
“I think it’s better to wait for the dust to settle.”
We stayed at the Galaxy for breakfast because Dusk said it was the absolute last place Jerry would go. The Library was empty apart from one guy eating alone by the door and a bored-looking host-slash-bartender, plus the staff would serve a platter of pastries with endless cups of coffee so we could continue our caffeine fix. I’d settled up with Kina yesterday. She seemed disappointed that the job hadn’t lasted longer, but I’d added a nice tip to the final amount, and she offered her services in the future if a similar project came up.
“We can probably relax for now,” Dusk said. “If Ace follows the pattern, the next attack—message, whatever—will come in two weeks. There’s no ad on Amber Road yet, so either he hasn’t gotten around to posting it, or he’s planning to do the job himself. It might not be a ‘he,’ of course. It could be a woman.”
“Because women are just as dangerous, huh?”
“Exactly.”
“How did you get into this job? I’ll understand if you can’t tell me, but I’ve been curious how women like Jerry and Alexa ended up doing what they do.”
Dusk shrugged. “Joined the Army, surprised myself by actually enjoying it, and then got headhunted.”
“Why would you join the Army if you didn’t think you’d like it?”
“Because my father was an asshole.” She sighed. “An asshole, a misogynist, and a patriotic American.”
Was?
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
Another shrug. “I’m ambivalent.”
“Then I’m sorry you didn’t have a father you could love.”
“Love wasn’t a priority to him. Money came first. And like his father and his father before him, he set up a trust fund to pass down to his sons after his death, but there was a clause that said at least one member of our generation had to serve their country for a minimum of three years in order for everyone to inherit.”
Damn, that was harsh.
“I hope you got a good amount of money.”
“Oh, I didn’t get a bean. ”
“You didn’t serve the three years before you got headhunted?”
“I fulfilled the service requirement, but as I said, only sons could inherit.”
“Then why did you…?”
“I had two brothers. Booker served almost two years before he died in the car crash with Dad, and Huck… Huck’s autistic. He hates loud noises, and he doesn’t do well in crowds. Dad would never accept it. No formal diagnosis, no accommodations, no allowances. He said the Army would make a man out of him.”
Wow. Dusk’s family made mine look functional, and my mom dumped me with my grandma when I was six years old.
“So you volunteered as tribute?”
“Exactly. Only boys got a share of the money, but the ‘serve your country’ clause didn’t specify a gender. So I served, and Huck inherited. Our stepmother is a real sweetheart who my father absolutely didn’t deserve, and she looks after Huck.”
“That was pretty selfless of you.”
“It was an easy decision. I’ve had to make far harder ones. How could I sit by and watch two of the three people I loved suffer while Daddy’s millions got donated to his favourite political party?”
She crinkled her nose in disgust.
“A political party? Not even a charity?”
“If it was an animal shelter, maybe it would have been easier to stomach, but politicians are assholes.”
“We can agree on that.”
Before I could ask about the third person she’d loved—her mom?—Erin appeared. She’d gotten up late today. Usually, she sprang out of bed at half past five, scattering perkiness in her wake like Legos.
“What happened? Didn’t your body clock go off? ”
“I couldn’t sleep again. Somebody stopped outside my room.”
“What do you mean, stopped?”
“I heard footsteps approaching, and then they stopped for, like, a minute before whoever it was walked away.”
“Did they try the handle again?”
“No, but it still freaked me out.”
Our rooms were next to each other and close to the elevator, but mine was farther from the vestibule. A high-traffic area. Honestly, I didn’t think anyone was out to get Erin, but when someone had rattled the handle, that had rattled her too. Now she was sensitive to any noise, and the doors at the Galaxy were hellishly thin.
“Do you want to change rooms?”
“What if I end up on the other side of the hotel on my own?”
“Okay, do you want to swap rooms?”
“Then you’d end up with the cold shower.”
“Share rooms?”
She wouldn’t do that. Erin valued her privacy too much. As predicted, she shook her head, then took a croissant and began picking off tiny pieces.
“Getting no sleep isn’t ideal.”
“Sometimes I can’t sleep, and Marcel makes me special cookies,” Dusk said. “You want me to bring you a batch?”
Special cookies? “Do you mean weed cookies? And who’s Marcel?”
“Marcel is our assistant. Don’t tell me you’re one of those anti-narcotics zealots? Marijuana’s barely even a drug.”
“I guess I’m surprised you’d risk impairing your performance. I mean, with your job.”
Surely, she wouldn’t want to be sleepy while she was out playing Superwoman? Did she go out playing Superwoman? Jerry and Tulsa wore capes for sure, and probably Sin, but Alexa seemed to spend her entire life indoors.
“The alternative is me running on two hours of sleep, which is worse.”
“You suffer from insomnia?”
“Something like that.” Dusk downed the double espresso she’d ordered and set the dinky cup back on its saucer. “We’re here to talk about your investigation, not my sleeping habits. Erin, just swap rooms with Ari. Sleepwalking through surveillance is suboptimal.”
“But—” Erin started.
“We’re changing rooms,” I told her. Otherwise, we’d have this same conversation every day we spent in Vegas. “And is the surveillance going to be necessary for much longer? Haven’t you more or less confirmed that Kelsey Dorrias isn’t a cheater?”
“Rusty says we don’t have a definitive answer yet, so he wants to stick around for a couple more days. Although I think his willingness to stay is connected to his reluctance to go back home to Minnesota.”
“Why doesn’t he want to go home?”
“Because he’s still in love with his ex-girlfriend, and she’s engaged to another guy.”
Dusk frowned at the same time as I did. If his ex was the prom queen he’d been photographed with, then she was part of the friendship group he’d grown up with, and Savigny wasn’t a town you could hide away in. No wonder he couldn’t face going back there.
“Yikes,” Dusk said. “What happened? Do you know?”
“Not really. I think it was something to do with him signing a new contract for the Commanders.”
“She didn’t want to stay in California?”
“I don’t think she ever moved there. She just expected him to quit at the end of his entry-level contract and move back home. And when he didn’t… ”
He’d surprised her with a new contract? Yikes indeed.
“She moved on? Oh, no, sweetie. He signed his new contract at the end of March, and the woman’s engaged in May? She was cheating on him, absolutely.”
“You think?”
“How many people do you know who got engaged two months after they started dating?”
“My friend Kelly. And also Loranne, who played piano during services. And Christine—she only met her husband on the morning of the wedding. Then there’s…” Erin trailed off. “That’s not normal, is it?”
“Rusty has his head in the sand if he thinks she didn’t cheat. Maybe deep down, he knows, and that’s why he agreed to come to Vegas to stalk Kelsey?”
“Maybe.”
Cheating had brought him to Vegas, and cheating was keeping him in Vegas. But if Rusty was drawing out the surveillance for personal reasons, that wasn’t fair to Erin.
“Do you want me to talk with him?” I asked. “Tell him we need to finish up on the job?”
She hadn’t wanted to do it in the first place, so I was surprised when she shrugged rather than nodding.
“I don’t mind staying on. Now that Alexa’s tracking Kelsey’s phone, we only follow her if she leaves the hotel or work. And I’m worried about her. Does that sound weird? She doesn’t seem happy to be here, and what if Galaxy Guy comes back?”
“It isn’t our place—” I started, but Dusk interrupted.
“You think she’s with him under duress?”
Erin bit her lip. “I’m not sure? She just didn’t look happy, that’s all.”
“Watch them. If she’s being pushed into anything she doesn’t want to do, you tell me and we’ll deal with it.”
“What do you mean? ”
“I mean, we’ll deal with it. But we do need to find out who the guy is.”
“I took photos and sent them to Alexa.”
“She hasn’t run them yet?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I’ll give her a nudge. She got sidetracked with the AceInTheHole thing, plus she’s been hopping around the globe, so she’s limited as to the amount of work she can do right now.”
“What’s AceInTheHole?”
“The crackpot who’s waging war against Cole. That’s their dark web handle.”
“I guess that’s more important.”
Dusk smiled at her, and it was a genuine, friendly smile. She seemed the most likeable member of Jerry’s team I’d met so far, although I’d never say that out loud. Even thinking it was risky because Alexa seemed as if she could read minds sometimes.
“Don’t worry, we’ll find him, and if Kelsey needs help, we’ll solve that problem too. I know what it’s like when a man abuses his power. Does anyone want more coffee?”
Oh, really?
She waved a server over, ending the conversation before I could pull on that thread. Yes, she was nicer than Jerry, but every bit as mysterious.