Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
A beefy security guard was glaring me down.
“I’m here about Acacia Clarke? There was some video you wanted us to see?”
The security guard crossed his arms. “Do you have any ID?”
Before I could tap dance my way through his doubts, an older man pushed past him. He’d cropped his graying hair short, and he had muddy brown eyes that widened when he saw me.
“Do you have any news about Acacia?” he asked.
“We’re following a few leads,” I said. “Are you her manager?”
“Bret Numburg. She’s worked for us for a couple of years now.”
“What sort of work did she do?” I asked.
“Hospitality. We have a lot of guests who are very particular about their stays, and she was excellent at making accommodations and making all our guests feel valued.”
His enthusiasm made his speech almost impossible to understand, but I realized he was saying she was one of the fixers expensive hotels had for guests with more money than sense.
Need tickets to a sold-out show? Call her.
Need a car to get home from a party? Call her.
Need hookers or booze or some other illicit things? Acacia could get them all for you.
“You said there was video?”
The man nodded, his head bouncing like a bobble-head doll. “Yes. This way.”
He led me into a back room, the security guard trailing us like a storm cloud. In the security office, he pulled up a video and gestured for me to take his seat. Settling in, I said, “What am I seeing?”
“A few weeks ago, Acacia said she was worried someone was following her.” The man wrung his hands together. “It’s happened before, but not with her. Sometimes guests get interested in staff.”
“Was it a guest this time?”
“No. Here, you’ll see.”
I watched Acacia come in through the front doors, looking professional in her hotel-issued suit.
She checked her oversized bag, but from the camera’s angle, you could see she was actually looking out at the street she just came in from.
After a moment, she continued on past where the camera saw her.
We watched for a few seconds and then a very familiar figure came in, sunglasses doing little to hide who he was. Dieter. I shifted in my seat, leaning forward.
“Xavier, here”—Numberg nodded to the security guard—“caught him and threw him out. We almost called the police because he stayed across the street watching the entrance. I drove Acacia home because I didn’t want her having to wait for a bus.”
“Did he come back after that?” I asked.
“No,” Xavier responded.
I leaned back in my chair, eyeing him.
“Do you think you’d be able to get me Acacia’s work schedule?” I asked Numburg. “For the last few months?”
“Her work schedule? Of course. Do you think it will help?” He was already half out the door. “I’ll just be a minute.”
After he left, I spun the chair to face Xavier. “Numburg likes Acacia?”
Xavier said nothing, his face twitching slightly. I nodded. “He like a lot of the girls, or just this one?”
Squinting at me, Xavier said, “No one’s ever complained.”
“Acacia didn’t complain?” I asked.
Xavier shook his head, a mountain moving. “No.”
“Maybe her work schedule was the best one out of all the concierge staff?” I asked.
His linebacker shoulders lifted and dropped. “She could take care of herself.”
“But you still had to throw out her stalker? She tell you what it was about?”
“She didn’t have to,” he said, eyes squinting at me. “My job is to keep her safe.”
Rocking the chair back and forth, I watched him and tried to figure out what he was seeing in the hotel.
“Maybe you fell down on the job. She’s gone, after all.
And she wasn’t the sort to disappear, was she?
On time, every shift. Attentive with guests.
Nice to other employees. I’ll bet Numburg wasn’t the only one who liked her special. ”
Xavier shrugged again.
“What was different about the wolf? Usually you let her fight her own battles,” I said.
“He was big. And he was trying to get her alone,” Xavier said. “He didn’t take any hints.”
“Unlike the hotel guests. Who take her brush-offs without any problems.”
“Yeah,” Xavier agreed.
Because she could use fae magic to muddy the situation with guests. Distract them, give them gifts, until they were under an obligation to her. They’d do what she wanted and not even know why.
What I couldn’t figure out was what Dieter wanted with her. They had nothing in common, as far as I could tell. Their only link was Woolworth. Was Woolworth worried the student who’d gone and tattled about the HAH’er in his class was going to tell on him about his drug dealing?
“She ever talk to you about school?”
“No,” Xavier said. “She’d meet with some classmates here, sometimes, though.”
“Blonde guy?” I guessed. “Tim?”
“Yeah, him. On her lunch break.”
“Numburg didn’t mind?” Maybe the overly helpful manager did have a reason to kidnap her.
“Nah,” Xavier said. “He’s married.”
Snorting, I said, “Of course he is. You know anything else?”
Xavier appeared to be weighing my words. “I expected the werewolf to come back. He was heavy when I threw him out.”
“And persistent,” I said. “But he didn’t show up?”
“Just the one day. After I tossed him out, nothing.” I considered his words. It wasn’t like Dieter, who’d stalked me through the city, tortured me, and lied about me to his pack, to give up after one setback.
The door rattled as it opened, Numburg returning with a handful of papers. “This is her schedule for the last year. You think it had something to do with the guy following her?”
“We’re following up on leads,” I said. “Someone will be by later to take the video back to the station.”
The look Xavier gave me made it clear he didn’t buy I was a cop for a second, but at least he seemed to believe I was trying to find her. And I certainly had more motivation than the cops did, since I’d made a binding promise to the four courts to protect their people.
Plus, I was pretty sure Thistle would skin me alive if I tried to shirk my duties.
Walking me out, Numburg couldn’t stop talking about what a valuable employee she was, and I hoped his wife knew how much he valued his much younger female employees. Not my business, though, and I shook his hand as I left.
On the street, I slid on sunglasses and considered my options. In order to talk to Dieter, I’d have to go through Malik. Malik was going to want an update on the case, and I didn’t want to risk my relationship with Nick by letting anything slip. Plus, it was just bad business.
My stomach rumbled, and I thought about stopping for a snack before deciding what to do next. No good decisions came on an empty stomach. At least that’s what the five-year-old in me said. Plus, after the week I was having, I deserved some empty calories.
The temptation was there to call Nick and see if he’d be willing to go out right now.
Maybe have the long-promised date that wasn’t at a morgue.
He’d asked for space, though, and I wouldn’t intrude when it was so clear my presence was unwanted.
In fact, he hadn’t contacted me at all yet.
That had to be his way of saying he could deal with a PI who had a fridge like a graveyard, but he couldn’t deal with a fae changeling who lied to him all the time.
I decided to kill two birds with one stone by having Malik take me out to an early lunch. My phone was dialing him when a familiar white van pulled up in front of me. I looked around, catching sight of two men standing at the corner, suspiciously still as they stared at me.
Clutching my phone, I turned and sprinted down the street.
As I got to the corner, my hand rummaging through my bag for anything I could use, another car came barreling through the intersection, heading straight for me.
There was just enough time to throw up my hands and thicken the surrounding air before it slammed into me.
The impact threw me back, the air acting like a pillow that took the brunt of the crash.
Unfortunately, I got hit hard enough I struck the building behind me.
The blow knocked my breath out and I couldn’t get any air back into my lungs.
My vision grayed at the corners, and I struggled up to my hands and knees.
To my left, I saw Xavier running towards me from the hotel lobby, a gun drawn. No, I realized. A taser. That would be about as useful as a Nerf gun against a werewolf.
I pushed up, crawling away from the car, even as I heard a door open.
“Get him,” a woman’s voice said from the driver’s seat.
One-handed, I blocked a boot aiming for my head, and reached with all my magic to sink their SUV into concrete.
For a moment, the ground wavered, but then I felt fifty thousand volts of electricity enter my body.
Xavier had fired his taser from a good fifteen feet away, somehow missed the wolves standing over me, and hit me instead.
Laughing, the one closest leapt, lifting Xavier up by his throat and throwing him ten feet. The poor guy went down hard. On the sidewalk, I twitched, drool coming out of my mouth. I probably could have shaken off the taser, but coming so close after being hit by a car, my body was still in shock.
With a groan, I pushed myself up to my hands again, and the woman in the driver’s seat said, “Jesus, get him down.”
A boot came straight for my face and that was the last I remembered.
I woke up in a frighteningly similar situation to a couple of days prior, when the only thing that had saved me from death by werewolf was that at one point, Malik and I had been friends.
By the tattoos these guys were sporting, I wouldn’t have as easy a time in this round of Parker-the-torture-victim.