Chapter 2
HATCH
The door slams at my back with an unsettling finality. I don’t blame Dorman after I scared the piss out of him—literally, if the acrid scent as I passed was any indication.
The dizzying paint job on the spiral stairwell walls requires me to focus on every black carpeted step as I descend. Bass notes thump up to me, taking control of my heartbeat and rattling the gnarled and hand-smoothed wooden rail under my fingers.
Once I get to the bottom, I spread open heavy, black velvet curtains, and it takes a few beats of the song blaring out of the speakers to understand what I’m looking at.
When I jumped off the Jon boat and onto Wander Isle, the first thing I clocked was that everything here is old as fuck.
Salt water and storms have swollen wood, eaten up plaster, and eroded brick buildings to the point that they’re crumbling before your eyes, yet I didn’t see anything being repaired.
The small town has all but been left to fend for itself against the elements, as if society has tried to forget the island’s existence since the day their sins fled here.
But The Rabbit Hole is a whole other world.
I just left the setting of a Southern Gothic horror movie and descended into a Vegas night club.
Ambient lighting and strobing beams dance like ribbons through the heavy, oddly sweet-scented smoke on the ceiling.
There’s lush leather and velvet furniture, carpet that sinks under my shoes, and sleek woods accented by industrial metal.
Cozy booths line the walls, and the ones that glow red have a black curtain drawn across them with the red neon outline of a suit of cards painted on the fabric, with a door standing between each nook and booth.
Out on the floor, more Edison lamps light small tables draped in black cloths, and surrounding each one are chairs deep enough to lounge into.
Hookahs—no doubt one of the culprits of the haze in the room—sit atop a few of the low tables.
Every high-top holds a poker game that I’d need night vision goggles to see properly, their dealers dressed in white, red, and black with red or black paint over their eyes in the shape of card suits.
The room’s semicircle layout surrounds three separate stages, the most prominent in the middle.
Each one has a pole from floor to ceiling…
and a topless dancer twirling around it. And everyone is wearing masks.
Holy shit.
The Rabbit Hole is a strip club. An anonymous strip club. Which means anyone with something to lose can believe they’re keeping their secrets to themselves, but that’s never how it works in reality.
So what the fuck is my runaway bride doing here?
She’s a daughter from the most powerful crime syndicate in the country.
Her parents had to have taught her that clubs like this siphon information for and from the rich and powerful.
Hell, her family uses all of Vegas to do the very same thing.
If she wanted to stay hidden, a place meant to collect secrets isn’t the place to do it.
Unless that’s exactly why she wants to be here.
Curious.
I mull that over as I take a stroll, scanning the room, cataloguing exits, blind spots, and the masked dancers, patrons, and staff.
Center stage, a young woman with short, glossy white hair and pale skin bathed in body glitter spins around a pole like a mirrored disco ball. Her face is placid and her eyes are bored, a far cry from my happy little bunny with a sweet tooth.
Definitely not Lucy.
My gaze drops from her as I pass by a Black woman with a platinum-blond bob dressed like a sultry mime—wearing a bandit mask, red bowtie, wide-strapped suspenders sans-shirt, boy shorts, and a stunning triumphant smile.
She sits on the lap of a patron with a gray turtle mask covering half his face and a hookah on his table.
As he hands over several bills, the edges of his lips catch in a smile that’s somewhere between knowing he lost a bet and was happy to do it.
A dealer at the poker table waves in my direction, making my steps slow. But I bristle to a halt as a small hand glides down my back and rests on my arm.
“’Scuse me, handsome.”
A woman with long braids threaded with platinum-blond extensions appears at my side. My teeth grit and I freeze at the unwanted touch, only relaxing a fraction when she squeezes before letting go.
“Damn, so strong. And hard.” She gives me a onceover and pats my chest. “Find me after Alice, and we’ll do something about that, ’kay?”
She’s only a few inches shorter than my six-foot-five thanks to her sky-high heels, but she deftly snakes around me, leaving me with a wink before continuing to the high-top. I do a double take between her and Platinum Blonde at the table behind me.
They’re both dressed in the same barely-there mime costume and look like twins—same warm brown skin, high cheekbones, and almond-shaped eyes. But the second woman’s smile is more playful than smug as she sidles up to the player in a pig mask beside the dealer.
The guy teeters on his stool as he turns around, brandishing a silver poker chip like a flag of surrender.
With a perfunctory smile on her face, the mime steadies the drunk guy’s arm as he seemingly decides which one of her in his double vision to hand the chip to, and takes it herself, pocketing it in her tight boy shorts.
She and the dealer do a remarkable job helping ol’ Humpty Dumpty off the stool. Once he’s balanced, he stands at least half a foot shorter and follows her like a toddler as she weaves him through the tables to the only door guarded by a bouncer.
Now this guy is by far the most intimidating dude in here—almost my size and dressed in all black with a hood that makes him look like a fucking executioner.
The outfit alone puts him leaps and bounds above whatever the hell security the doorman was supposed to be.
I mean I still have my Fury knife for Christ’s sake.
The executioner gives them a simple nod and opens the door, letting them pass through to a staircase going up.
Now where does that lead?
I frown and peer up to find a skybox with a heavily tinted picture window, providing a birds-eye view, although smoke swirls so thickly behind the glass it’s a wonder anyone can see out.
I wouldn’t have pegged the drunk guy to be worthy of VIP status, but I’d bet the Fury’s entire farm that’s where the major players are. Maybe it’s even the big boss’s office.
Is Lucy up there?
The thought has me stepping closer, but the bouncer opens the door again and… the mime comes out alone. What happened to the customer?
Huh. Curiouser and curiouser.
The need to find Lucy itches under my skin worse than my nose from this smoke.
The mime doesn’t give me another passing glance, intercepting a flamingo ferrying a hookah on a golden cart. The flaming—
Hold up. What the fuck?
Not a flamingo.
I blink rapidly then shove my mask up to rub my eyes until I finally see straight.
A waitress dressed as a flamingo, obviously, decked out in an all-pink corset and skirt, feathers in her hair, and a mask with a small pink beak.
All the wait staff are dressed just like her, roaming the floor, carrying drinks and hookahs, but apparently these goddamn allergies have me seeing things now.
I’m about to bite the bullet and ask one of the very-real-humans-not-birds if they know where Lucy is, but the executioner-looking motherfucker is on the move in my periphery.
Though his posture is deceptively casual, arms hanging loose at his sides as he moseys my way, a ridiculous flare of panic sparks an annoying tickle in my lungs, and a cough explodes from my chest. The tickle clears, leaving with it only the insane pressure in my sinuses.
Whew. It was just a cough, not panic. Good. I thought I was becoming a scared little bitch there for a second.
But goddamn, do I need a drink, more allergy meds, and to get the fuck outta here.
I pretend not to notice the bouncer, dodging dancers, wait staff, and patrons as I mosey away myself, looking for Lucy in every face as I gravitate to the rich, oak bar.
The top-shelf liquor bottles on the wall are backlit, bathing the stunning glass hookahs on the counter beneath them in an otherworldly haze, beacons in the dark club. The sole woman inside the large U-shape bar works with ease.
From my experience, there are two people who know every little thing that goes on in a club. Sometimes it’s the guy who owns the place, but its always the one who runs it.
And I’m ninety-nine percent sure I’ve figured out who that is as I slide into a high-backed leather bar stool and a rocks glass full of something dark magically appears, sliding into my hand.
“Here, Hatter,” the bartender’s velvet, almost bored voice floats on the notes of the song thrumming over the speakers, “Alice” by Steven Rodriguez and Lena Schaur.
Before I can say anything, she’s already onto the next fella, her movements so fluid and practiced it’s as if she’s got six arms. She’s pretty, with smooth olive skin and bright blue space buns that have small green plastic antennae between them.
The colors match her corset pushing her full, tattooed tits to her chin.
They rise and fall as she sucks from a hookah hose in one hand and pours vodka with the other. Behind her green glitter masquerade mask, her fan of fake blue lashes flutter back and forth, gaze darting over the floor beyond the bar.
Yup. She’s in charge. If Lucy’s here, this woman can tell me. I’ve just gotta butter her up first to do it.
She finishes making the fruity drink and puffs a perfect ring into the air at the same time.
Pretty sure smoking isn’t legal behind a bar, but neither is gambling and full nudity—something the dancer onstage has now fully embraced—so I guess that’s the least of their worries.
After returning the line to its hook, she switches out an empty martini glass in front of a customer that’s more beer belly than man with the new drink, complete with umbrella and cherries.