Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
The plan was falling apart. The mission was going straight to hell.
As the doorman opened the gleaming, glass, entrance doors at the sprawling Vegas hotel, Charlotte was aware that her heart raced too quickly, that adrenaline spiked in her blood, and that guilt was eating her up from the inside.
Harper should not have been taken.
Dammit, dammit, dammit.
Maybe…maybe Charlotte shouldn’t have tried to escape from Ares’s study. Maybe she shouldn’t have fought so hard to reach Logan.
Maybe…
Maybe she should have just let the drug knock her out, right there next to Ares’s big desk. Then, when she’d woken up, she would have been with the killer. She would have been near Harper. Perhaps she could have fought the killer at that point. She could have freed Harper. Saved her but now—
Is it too late?
Her phone rang.
They’d just stepped into the opulent lobby. A hotel that was not quite as big as the one Logan owned. Still certainly impressive, though. Only this one was not connected to a casino. The hotel was just a big jewel in the middle of Vegas.
And her phone was ringing.
Charlotte yanked her phone from the small bag she’d slung across her shoulder and put it to her ear. “Just reached the destination,” she said in way of greeting. No sense wasting time with a “hello” because she’d recognized the specific ringtone that she’d assigned to Jezebel.
“And I’ve just gotten access to the first batch of video footage from Harper Channing’s floor.” An exhale. “Techs say someone tried hard to erase the footage, but they are recovering it, bit by bit.”
“What did you find?”
“Harper received a late-night visitor. Someone who came bearing a gift for her.”
Charlotte grabbed Logan’s arm. Pulled him to the side. Into a little alcove that had been partially blocked by a massive fern.
Logan’s brows lowered as he leaned toward her.
“Want to guess what that gift was? Here, let me help,” Jezebel offered. “I believe you sampled something similar recently with some ill effects.”
“Champagne? Someone gifted Harper with a bottle of champagne?” They were still waiting on tox screen results on the recovered bottle from Ares’s place, and the docs at the hospital still hadn’t given Charlotte back her own test results. But, if Harper had been given a similar bottle…
Then we can all assume the champagne was the source of the drugs.
“That’s exactly what happened,” Jezebel told her. “A big, sealed bottle of champagne was taken to Harper.”
Charlotte’s grip tightened on Logan’s arm.
In her cool voice, Jezebel continued, “I am literally watching a feed of a slender, dark-haired Caucasian woman walk up to Harper Channing’s room with a bottle of champagne.
She knocks on the door. Harper answers. Harper lets the other woman come inside.
” Noise in the background. A man’s voice.
Not Jamar. She knew he was the one who’d been tailing Pierre, so he was probably somewhere in the hotel she and Logan had just entered.
Whoever was talking in the background with Jezebel had to be another operative.
Then after a muffled response to the man, Jezebel told Charlotte, “Nothing happens after that. Five minutes of an empty hallway. Then the dark-haired female comes out, minus the champagne bottle.”
Slender, dark-haired… “Send me her picture.”
“We are running her photo through our database right now but, sure, here you go. Incoming.”
Charlotte’s phone beeped. She pulled the phone from her ear and peered down at the screen. “I know her.” Excitement sharpened her voice. “That’s Evelyn.”
“Evelyn Marteen,” Logan supplied as he stared down at the image on her phone’s screen. “What did she do?” Logan wanted to know.
“Delivered a bottle of champagne to Harper Channing,” Charlotte summed up.
“A drugged bottle?”
“I’d bet on that.” She pulled the phone back to her ear.
“Did you hear Logan? The woman is Evelyn Marteen. She was the one who led me to the study at Ares’s place.
The one who had the unopened champagne brought in to me.
” The bottle had obviously been tampered with before it came into the study.
“She was the one running the game with Ares.”
“They’ve been fucking for a while,” Logan murmured. “In case that’s relevant.”
She relayed that info to Jezebel. Definitely could be relevant. So Ares’s lover is helping him to subdue his victims?
“We’re going to launch a full search for her.
” Jezebel’s immediate response. “This is close to a smoking gun. We have her delivering champagne to the victim. We have it on video. If you and Harper were both drugged because someone added a sedative to your drinks, then the proof will still be in the bottles. The bottle recovered from Ares’s study. The bottle from Harper’s hotel room.”
Evelyn certainly looked guilty, however…“We’re after a man,” Charlotte argued. “All of the profiles pointed to a male perpetrator.” But… “Evelyn could be helping her lover.” It wouldn’t be the first time that a duo killing team had been at work.
“It makes sense,” Jezebel mused. “A female accomplice would be one who could slide past the guard of the other vics. They wouldn’t be as vigilant when faced with her.
She could seem like a friend, when all the while, her intent is to weaken them.
” Then, as if talking to someone else, probably to the agent she’d addressed before, “I want her found. Call in local law enforcement. Get a team to rush over to the building Ares owns. Find Evelyn Marteen.”
Charlotte waited a beat. She was sure the agents near Jezebel were jumping to carry out her orders. “Jezebel?”
Jezebel’s throat cleared. Her focus seemed to shift back to Charlotte as she said, “We’ll get Evelyn to turn on her boss. Ares must have been the one getting her to make that delivery to Harper. This is what we needed.”
Was it? Would it be enough?
“I’ll have my team keep recovering and reviewing the video feeds. We’ll discover how Harper was taken out of that room, and we will find Evelyn.”
Unease slithered just beneath Charlotte’s skin. “We’re going to find Harper, too, right?”
“Yes, yes. We will find them both.” Rushed.
“Alive, though,” Charlotte clarified because this was a very important point for her. “We’re getting Harper back alive.”
No response from Jezebel.
That lack of response worried Charlotte. “Jez…”
“He keeps them a week.” Brisk. “That’s been his MO in the past.”
Logan’s watchful stare never left Charlotte’s face.
“But his MO is changing, isn’t it?” Charlotte understood the unspoken part. “By drugging us both. Two vics. Not one. That has never been the way he operated in the past. And if his MO is changing, she may not have a week.” In fact, Harper might not have any time at all. She could already be dead.
“The mission’s goal is to find him,” Jezebel reminded her. “Evelyn is the key right now. We get her. We make her roll on her boss.”
“The goal is to save Harper.” To stop another woman from dying. “She’s been taken, and we have to help her.”
“You know what the mission is,” Jezebel fired back. “You know the perp is the target. He has to be stopped.”
Yes, he did, but Harper—
“Jamar says that Pierre is coming your way.” Quick words from Jezebel.
“The guy just left the gym, and he’s heading toward the elevators.
With this footage of Evelyn, Pierre is certainly not our lead suspect any longer, but I still don’t want that man hopping on a plane to Paris.
He could have intel we could use against Ares. Do your job. Stop him.”
Logan had already spotted Pierre. She saw the way his head angled to the right. She noted the narrowing of Logan’s eyes and the hardening of his jaw. Logan pulled away from her. He began to stalk toward the other man.
“Finish watching that footage,” Charlotte whispered into her phone. “We need to see who takes Harper out. How she’s getting out. A woman doesn’t just vanish from a hotel room. There has to be more.”
She ended the call because Logan had just parked himself right in front of a slightly sweaty Pierre. Charlotte shoved her phone into her bag and rushed toward them.
“Logan?” Pierre blinked at him. Then he noticed her barreling toward him. A half-smile curved his lips. “Ah, and la belle femme! Glad to see that you’re up and about again. You certainly gave Logan quite a scare.” His eyebrows wiggled dramatically.
“I hear you’re leaving town,” Logan snapped. No charm. No grin in response to Pierre’s smile. Just hard fury.
Pierre’s smiled faded as he cocked his head. “How did you hear that?”
“A fucking little bird told me.” Logan’s hands were loose at his sides. “What’s the rush, Pierre? Why you flying back to Paris so soon? I thought you were staying in town longer this time.”
“You…seem to know a great deal about my plans. You also seem oddly angry.” Pierre shrugged.
“Whatever. I’m leaving because I didn’t feel like this was quite the party place any longer.
Not with you fighting Ares one night and then…
” A flicker of his gaze toward Charlotte.
“With other unfortunate situations occurring. Seemed like it would be best to remove myself from an unpleasant situation.”
“Oh, really?” Logan challenged. “That what you thought?”
But Pierre had just spied someone else. His head craned to the side as he locked his eyes on that individual. “Is that Sebastian? What are you both doing at my hotel? What’s happening?”
Charlotte looked back. Sure enough, Sebastian had just entered through the hotel’s double doors. No surprise, really. She’d known the marshal was tailing them. As directed by Logan, he’d hopped in a taxi pretty quickly.
With bulldog determination, Sebastian marched straight for their group. No subtle approach. Far too furious and intent. And, when he was still about five feet away—
“Where is Harper, you bastard?” Sebastian blasted.
That loud question certainly attracted plenty of attention.