Chapter 35 #2
Leaving him to it, since he has an excuse, I head to the table and take the coffee Kane’s stirring and hand it to Bexley as I walk to the bathroom. “Clothes are being delivered soon. I’ll wash up first. We’ll leave as soon as Zayn is good to go,” I call.
“Look at you, taking charge,” Kane teases as he starts making another coffee without complaint.
“Someone had to since you were both too busy fucking,” I grumble as I shut the door in their faces, not at all feeling left out.
Not one bit.
The organizer and hotel manager apologized profusely before we could get in our cars and drive home.
I think they were just scared of what Kane would do.
They should be. I know he’s already making plans, since he’s been on his phone all morning.
If there’s one thing you don’t do, it’s fuck with his family.
When we are back, Bexley heads off to do who knows what, but she finds us twenty minutes later in the security office with a glass in her hand. She thrusts it at Zayn, who looks confused. “It’s good for you, trust me. I accidentally took LSD, and this shit saved me the next day.”
“How do you accidentally take LSD?” I ask.
“You don’t want to know,” she dismisses as she sits in a chair and starts to spin before the screens. “What are we doing?”
“Reviewing security footage from the hotel, hoping to see who the bartender met,” I admit as I load up the next hour and start scrolling through it, looking for a familiar face.
She wheels closer, resting her head on my shoulder.
My attention is split between her and the screen, so I almost miss him.
“There,” she says, so I rewind it and press play. She’s right. It’s of the loading bay yesterday afternoon. The bartender is there with someone else. Their hood is up, covering their face, but they hand over a vial. “That has to be the drug. Is there a clear shot of his face?”
I scroll through the other cameras until we get lucky, and when he lifts his head to cross the street, we get a look at him. “Of course.” Bexley laughs, and we turn to her.
“You know him?” Kane asks, and she wheels back. I instantly miss her warmth and want to drag her closer.
“Who doesn’t know Fletch? He’s . . . an appropriator of all things weird and wacky.
The weirder the better. He’ll do anything for money.
I once heard he stole a monkey for someone, but when I asked, he wouldn’t free the lions from the zoo for me.
Asshole. Let me make some calls and see where he is, and we can find him later and ask who employed him. ”
I watch her call until someone answers, and she puts it on speaker, still spinning in the chair. “Fletcher, you weasel,” she greets, but her voice sounds amused.
“Goddamn it. It’s been quiet. I thought we got lucky and you were dead,” a grumbling voice responds.
“You aren’t that lucky. I need help.” She stops spinning for a moment as we watch her.
“I already told you, I’m not breaking into the president’s office and setting up deep fake nudes of him. I don’t want to be sent to unknown places for life. Just give it up.”
She laughs. “Not what I want this time, but good to know you’re still a pussy. You gave a man a drug yesterday at Hotel Opulence, a new fancy street drug. Who paid you?” she asks.
“Shit, Karma, you know my clients are confidential. I didn’t go spilling when you tweaked out that entire law office just because they called you and Taylor an unfit guardian.” My eyebrow rises, and she mutes him as she looks at me.
“Don’t judge me. They were being condescending assholes by trying to take Lauren from us.
I just taught those limp-dick fuckers not to mess around.
” She unmutes him. “Yeah, well, I also didn’t let the cops get you that time you crashed our car into a police horse, so spill.
Don’t make me find you. We both know you wouldn’t last through one minute of torture. ”
“I bruise easily.” He sighs. “Fine. If they find out, my cred is gone—”
“Fletcher,” she warns.
“Alright, alright, Jesus, hold your tits,” he concedes.
“I don’t know his name. He had a distinctive face though.
Blue eyes and a scar on his neck under a tattoo of a moth.
Scary looking motherfucker on a Harley. He told me where and what he needed.
He wanted something that wouldn’t kill but would be embarrassing as hell.
For blackmail, I think. That’s all I have. ”
“Good boy, go back to playing chemist.” She hangs up and looks at us, but I’m already thinking. “You know him?” she asks.
“We have a lot of staff,” I say as I turn to the computer and load the files, scanning through them. “But he doesn’t seem to be here.”
Another dead end. Great.
“If there’s no one here who looks like that, he could be a paid middleman.
Your staff can’t leave at the moment, it would raise too much suspicion, which means they would have to come here somehow to get the order and money.
They wouldn’t risk this over the phone or online, not even on a burner.
They would be paranoid since we are looking for them,” she reasons.
“We need to investigate everyone from the last two days and see who came and went.” Sitting back, she stares at the screens showing outside.
“Wait, that van . . . it was here the last time I snuck in.”
“Oh, those are the cops. They’ve been watching us for years. It’s their mobile unit,” I explain, and she grins as she stands.
“Wait, where are you going? Bexley!” I call. I have a bad feeling, and when I look at my brothers, I know they share it.
“She’s definitely going to need a lawyer,” Zayn teases, toasting us with the green smoothie he was forced to have.