Chapter 18
Chapter eighteen
The Trap
Aiden
The Velvet Stag is a deviant’s dream tonight.
Every surface throbs with it, red and amber light that strobes across the main floor, shadows bristling in velvet alcoves, the sound system’s bass so heavy it rattles the screws and the glassware.
The air smells like sweat, and whatever synthetic pheromone the club’s HVAC system pumps in at peak hours.
We’re not the only ones running a play tonight, but we’re the only ones here who know every angle.
Cat walks in ahead of me, and if there’s a single head in the club that doesn’t swivel to track her, I haven’t found it.
The dress is blood-red, sleeveless, so tight and mercilessly low at the back that it looks like it’s poured on.
Her hair is wild, curls set loose to frame her face and graze her collarbones, and she’s done her lips in the exact shade of arterial.
She doesn’t look at me, but she doesn’t need to, the effect is entirely for my benefit, and we both know it.
I wear my usual, tailored black, open collar, cuffs unfastened.
For the first time, I’ve left the Weaver’s mask at home.
I choose something simpler, a minimalist slip of matte black that covers my upper face and nothing else, letting the crowd see the line of my jaw and the tightness in it.
Vulnerable, but not naked. Cat’s idea, and I’m still not sure if I hate her for it or not.
We move separately, per plan. Cat slices through the crowd, heels making no sound on the obsidian tile, until she finds her mark at the long bar that bisects the room.
It’s a deliberate pose, one elbow on the black stone, stemmed glass of red in hand, back to the room.
She doesn’t turn, doesn’t fidget, just lets the world orbit her.
I keep to the edges, shadowing a column near the wall where the sightlines cover every approach to her position.
My own glass, whiskey, neat, sweats on the side table, untouched.
I scan the perimeter, the faces all masked, the way people’s bodies lean and tilt when Cat is in their field of vision.
There’s always an audience, but tonight she’s a stage.
The earpiece is snug in my right ear, barely visible under my hair.
Voss insisted on full comms for everyone involved, Cat and me, plus the four security operatives posted at the corners, each with a discreet badge and a less-discreet gun under the suit jacket.
Even the bartender is looped in, his wire running behind the left ear like a custom accessory.
“Team One, check.” The voice is flat, professional. Security guy by the entrance, posted with his back to the curtain.
“Team Two, green.” That’s the balcony.
“Team Three, all clear.” That’s the bar’s left wing, covering Cat’s side.
“Main, eyes up,” I say. My voice is dry gravel. Cat doesn’t respond. She never does unless she has something to say.
The crowd tonight is a zoo. The club’s been at capacity since nine; every table taken, every alcove stuffed with bodies in every permutation of desire and depravity.
There’s an art show on the mezzanine, part of some charity auction, but the real action is at floor level, and everyone knows it.
Even here, in a room of perverts and millionaires, Cat manages to look both out of place and absolutely at home.
She laughs at something the bartender says, flashing white teeth and a V of throat, and if I didn’t know she was acting I’d be worried.
Her body language is textbook, open, hips angled to invite, but feet set just apart, one hand always on the bar.
She wants to look like easy prey, but she’s giving every signal that she’s not.
It’s a nuanced performance, one I’ve seen her pull off in boardrooms and on black-leather couches alike.
I count the number of people who get within three feet of her.
Six in the first ten minutes, not counting staff.
One leans in for a whisper, gets a flick of her eyes and a lazy smile, and then peels off, properly rebuffed.
The second is a woman in a white tuxedo and mirrored mask who offers Cat a cigarette.
Cat accepts, lets the woman light it, but never returns the flirt.
She’s waiting for someone, and the regulars can smell it.
I check my tablet, the feed from the manager’s back office running in a four-screen grid.
Each camera is a different vantage: the entrance, the bar, the east alcove, the service corridor.
I keep my focus on the bar. The suspect’s profile is up in another window, Hale, Brenden, 32, five-ten, lean build, probable nervous tick in left hand.
Last seen in a charcoal button-down at the Starbucks across from Vantage Systems. I have his full resume, his online purchase history, and every access badge he ever used at PDI.
What I don’t have is a motive beyond pure spite.
Cat sets her wine down and glances up at the mirror behind the bar. For a second, our eyes meet in the reflection. She does a subtle little tilt of her chin, not enough to register as a signal, but I catch it. She knows I’m watching.
The air in here is hot, not just from the bodies but from the current of anticipation.
Cat thrives in this kind of environment, but for me it’s a special torture, all these people, all these hands, all these eyes crawling over her, and I have to do nothing.
I have to let her play the part, even if every cell in my body is screaming to take her out of the line of fire.
At minute sixteen, I see him.
It’s not the face because I can’t see his face.
It’s the way he moves, the hesitation before entering, the half-second it takes to reorient, the deliberate path along the wall, never exposing his back.
He’s wearing a mask, cheap plastic, half-matte and half-gloss, as if he couldn’t decide which side to show.
His shirt is charcoal, sleeves rolled, collar open.
He’s thinner than I remember, but the walk is the same, too self-conscious, like every step is being recorded.
He doesn’t look at Cat right away. That’s smart.
He works his way up the bar, three bodies at a time, scanning the bottles and the staff, never once letting his eyes settle on her for more than a second.
But every loop brings him closer. I watch his hands, the way they twitch and fidget, once in his pocket, once at his throat, once tapping a slow pattern on the glass when he orders.
Cat is playing it perfectly. She gives nothing, no sign she’s noticed him, just laughs and drinks and smokes and lets the crowd envelope her. The bartender is in on the play, keeping the wine coming at a controlled drip and never once leaving Cat’s glass empty.
At minute twenty, the suspect is two seats away. I see him look at her reflection in the mirror, then away, then back. His hand goes to his pocket again, a little too deliberate. I key my mic.
“Approach, right side. Target at bar, three o’clock.”
“Copy,” says Team Three. “Do you want intervention?”
“Negative. Observe only.”
The man shifts, gets up, and moves to the empty seat beside Cat. He doesn’t speak right away. Just sits, orders another whiskey, and waits.
I’m so tuned into the moment that the rest of the club vanishes.
There’s just the bar, Cat, and the man beside her.
My own hands are steady but my breath is shallow.
The world distills into microseconds, the spill of her hair over her shoulder, the glint of his watchband, the way the bartender pretends not to listen.
He finally turns to her and says something.
I can’t hear it, not from this distance, but Cat’s body language shifts a degree, shoulders relax, hand moves from glass to cigarette, lips part just a hair more.
She gives him a glance, then goes back to her wine.
He tries again, and the moment I hear him speak the hairs on my neck snap to attention.
His voice is lower than I expect, the syllables soft but precise, like he’s trying to teach her a secret handshake.
“Nice dress,” he says. “It looks custom.”
Cat lets the line bounce off her, arching her eyebrow in the mirror and replying with a perfectly bland, “Thank you.” Her hand never leaves the wine glass.
The other the one I told her to keep free rests open on the obsidian, red nails splayed and ready.
From here, I can read her pulse in the vein at her wrist.
He tries again, leaning in just a little. “You’re new here, aren’t you? I’d remember seeing you before.”
This is the dance. She does the “shy but flattered” routine, laughs and looks away, and then glances up with a smaller, more private smile.
He mirrors it, angles his torso so that he blocks her from the crowd.
If I didn’t know him, I’d almost be impressed.
His hands are steady on the bar, but his left thumb taps an irregular triplet, exactly the nervous tick in the profile.
I check the security feed on my tablet. Team Three is watching, but not close enough for physical intervention. I edge up the wall, halfway between shadows and the hot pulse of the dance floor, and focus on the suspect’s hands.
He slides his phone closer to Cat, tilting the screen so only she can see it. She glances down, then lifts her eyes back to the mirror and finds me. Her jaw tightens for a split second, and the signal is clear. This is it.
I push off the wall, pace quickening, eyes never leaving the suspect’s pocket. I’m ten feet away when I see his hand dip, slow and deliberate, to the inside of his jacket.
Then everything stutters, there’s a flicker in the crowd, and I see her, a woman in a black slip dress, full mask, standing up from a barstool two seats down.
She’s pale and careful, all liquid movement as she edges closer to Cat’s left, close enough to touch.
I hadn’t clocked her before. I feel my blood run cold.