Eryn sighed and glanced at the time on the dashboard. It was 1:38 a.m. The hours were flying by. “What we need is more time.”
“Not going to happen.” Callan’s voice sounded hollow.
Eryn wanted to reassure him. She didn’t like hearing the echo of defeat in his words. That wasn’t something he was comfortable with. Then she remembered how he’d had to leave his sister behind when he’d turned eighteen. Everything Callan and his sister had been through would have broken most people.
And with this current situation and Callan’s inability to back off, maybe they would still break. Or maybe that relationship Callan treasured so much with his sister would break. Especially since Jenny had gotten the call from the kidnappers.
Eryn thought that maybe if Jenny knew everything Callan was doing, all that he was risking, she might feel differently about her brother. Then Eryn realized that wasn’t true. Jenny was trapped between her fear for two men, and in her mind Callan was safe.
“What’s on your mind now?” Callan glanced at her, then made a smooth lane change that cut off a taxi and left angered honking in his wake.
“I was just thinking that it really sucks to be you right now. Daniel’s missing and Jenny’s angry at you.”
“Jenny’s scared. I’m not concerned about that. Everything she’s going through is normal.”
“It still sucks.”
“Could be worse. I could be out here alone.”
Eryn didn’t know what to do with that, but the thought left her feeling happy.
Looking a little embarrassed, Callan focused on his driving and pointedly didn’t look at her. “What I mean is, if something happens to me, someone knows what’s going on.”
That stung. Eryn knew what Callan meant but putting everything he’d just said in those terms undermined what she’d—briefly—felt. “Koenig knows.”
“If this thing hits the fan, Koenig will evaporate. He might tell Jenny that we were trying to save Daniel, and some of what we did, but he won’t meet her face-to-face. That’s not Koenig’s way in circumstances like this.” Callan paused. “If something happens, something bad, Jenny needs to be told by a person, not a phone call.” He looked at her. “If it comes to it, do you think you can do that?”
The possibility hurt Eryn. She looked into those slate-gray eyes and saw the pain and responsibility and wistfulness in his gaze.
“I know I’m asking a lot.”
Eryn nodded and her throat hurt, but the ice and analgesics helped and the pain wasn’t so much. “You are.”
He turned away from her.
“Callan, nothing’s going to happen to you.”
He didn’t say anything.
She took a breath and hated acknowledging the fact that he could be hurt. “But if something does, I’ll talk to Jenny.”
“Thank you.”
Not wanting to deal with any more emotion and bad scenarios for the moment, Eryn wrapped her arms around herself and sat in silence. They didn’t speak again as they headed for the next club.
When her phone rang, the sudden noise shocked Eryn. She plucked the cell from her jacket pocket and pulled it to her ear. Caller ID showed Renee’s number.
“I found your dancer, but why didn’t you tell me about what happened at the bachelor party?” Renee’s creaky voice was stretched to near-breaking. “You were nearly killed!”
“It wasn’t that bad.” Eryn knew Renee worried about her and felt badly about the situation now. “Renee, I need to know about the dancer.”
“Okay, but when you can, I gotta hear this story.”
“You’ll be the first.”
“Her name is Leslie Harris. She dances under the name Felony. You would not believe how many people I had to go through to get this. The information came from a friend of a friend of a friend. Seriously, I would have to do a genealogy tree to show you what I went through.”
Excitement coursed through Eryn. “I appreciate everything you’ve done. Where can I find her?”
“She dances at the Amethyst.”
Eryn had heard of the Amethyst. The club was one of the largest in Las Vegas and offered private rooms and shows for high rollers. She leaned toward the car’s GPS. “What’s the address for the Amethyst?”
“She’s not on tonight. I called.”
“You didn’t leave my name, did you?”
“No. I’m a junior private eye, remember? I left my name. Told her I had a guy looking for a private party. That’s easy enough to check out. A lot of the dancers know I set up private affairs that are fun and profitable, not sleazy.”
“Good. Do you have a home address?”
“Sorry, Eryn.” Renee coughed and sounded more contrite and not as ebullient. “That’s where the junior private eye thing works against me. I’m not that good. I’m still looking, but information like that—especially about someone in this biz—has gotta be handled with some definite discretion. I’m still working on it. If I get anything, I’ll let you know.”
“I’d appreciate it when you do.”
“What about you?” Renee sounded a lot more serious. “Are you okay?”
“I am.”
“Because Devin would be sad if anything happened to you. So would I.”
“Nothing’s going to happen.” Eryn lied to her best friend and it was surprisingly hard even when trying to keep Renee from worrying. She could only imagine what it had been like for Callan while talking to Jenny.
“Good. Let me know if you need anything else. I’ll keep looking for that address for you.”
“Thanks, but we may have that covered.” Eryn said goodbye and logged off the call. She looked at Callan. “I’ve got a name but no address.”
“We’re back to square one.” Callan rubbed a big, callused hand over his face.
“Not if Koenig is as good as you say he is.” Eryn counted off points on her fingers. “As an exotic dancer, she has to be licensed through the Clark County Sheriff’s Office. If Koenig can get into their database—”
“He can get an address.” Callan pulled out his cell, punched in the number and put the phone on speaker function.
“Here, dude. What’s shaking?”
“We think we have the name of a woman associated with the people we’re looking for. She’s an exotic dancer.”
“Getting into the sheriff’s database is shaky. It’ll be heavily covered, which is not a problem, don’t get me wrong, but the license could be a year old and your girl could have moved.”
Eryn’s hopes dwindled. She hadn’t thought about that. She’d done skiptracing before, but she didn’t have a lot of experience in the field.
“You did a good job coming up with this, girl detective.”
“Not if the address turns out to be old.”
“Ah, but lemme teach you something else. You see, people move and they don’t always keep up their addresses on things like driver’s licenses, and in this case an exotic dancer license, but they can’t get far without utilities. Of course, this girl could be in an all-bills-paid place, but that would be low-rent in Vegas. And…voilà! I have an address. Got a pen?”
The utility address led to a condo unit on Harmon Avenue. High-rise buildings towered over the city, looking like a stand of concrete and brick sequoias. Palm trees lined the street and framed the outer perimeter of the grounds.
Callan found a parking area a few blocks down. He left the car and they walked back to the condo. A Sig Sauer P220 rested in a holster in shoulder leather and he felt more at peace with the weapon there. He’d been incomplete without it. The .45 caliber was his round of choice and Koenig knew that. It was a manstopper.
Eryn walked at his side and got around much better than he’d thought. Dark bruising showed at her throat, but she hadn’t been incapacitated by her injuries. At times her voice seemed strained, but she didn’t appear to be getting any worse. Fatigue showed in her eyes. She’d replaced her pistol at the small of her back and put the extending baton back in her boot. An
xiety showed on her face and in her movements.
Eryn brushed hair back from her face and he watched the natural movement with interest. She was tough and Callan respected that. He hadn’t thought so when he’d first seen her and knew she’d be coming out of a cake a few minutes after that, but he knew it now. But she was a woman. The way she looked, her mannerisms, the way she smelled, all of those things constantly reminded him of that. And it was foolish that he was so aware of it.
“The building has security, electronic and guards.” Eryn shoved her hands in her pockets and looked cold. “How do you propose we get in?”
“Wait outside till we see someone headed inside, then join them.”
“I thought maybe the process would be a little more high-tech.”
“We’re not geared for high-tech.”
Eryn shook her head. “Seems too easy.”
“It is too easy. That’s the problem.” Callan nodded at the building. “Probably got top-of-the-line electronics, but the problem is that the homes have visitors. Not everyone gets logged in and out. You start asking everyone going in what their purpose there is, you’re really close to a police state. People don’t like that. Especially in police states. Freedom makes you vulnerable because you are open. You have to recognize a threat, and the threat has to be a threat, before you recognize it. The people inside that building are the greatest danger to themselves.”
Callan took up a position not far from the front door. Twenty minutes passed painfully slowly before three people—two men and a woman—got out of a car in the parking lot and approached the doorway. They were busy talking, totally involved in whatever they were doing.
When he touched Eryn’s shoulder, she nodded but looked tense. “Don’t sweat it. All they can do is ask us to leave.”
Eryn reached up and adjusted his hat, pulling the bill lower. “Unless they recognize you. We really should dye your hair.” She slipped her arm through his and they walked in behind the trio.
Feeling her arm linked with his, Callan suddenly realized how much he liked having her there. He breathed in her scent and felt her breast occasionally press against his bicep. His blood pressure rose and his air got tight.
They entered the building without a hitch and took the next empty elevator, letting the trio go up alone.
In the elevator, Eryn was acutely aware of Callan’s presence. She knew she could have released his arm, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to. If he’d asked, she would have told him that she’d forgotten, or that she was hanging on to him to keep up the pretense. She was afraid that if she released him, they would go back to being two individuals. At the moment, hanging on to him, she felt they were something more.
You need to get a grip. Crushing in the middle of something like this is not only stupid, it’s potentially dangerous as well. For both of you.
Although she tried hard not to, she studied Callan in the reflective surface of the stainless steel covering the doors. Callan was handsome, but he wasn’t movie-star handsome. He had that knocked-around look, but he was clean and took care of himself. She liked the way he looked.
The doors dinged and opened on the twentieth-eighth floor. Eryn started forward, but Callan took a small step in front of her and blocked the way. Before she could protest, he was in motion again, striding down the hallway.
He stopped in front of 2814 and reached under his jacket to slip his pistol out of its holster. He held the weapon at his side, the safety off and his forefinger extended along the muzzle. He glanced at her and the lights danced off the aviator lenses. “Ready?”
Her own weapon in her hands, Eryn nodded. Her breath hammered at her bruised throat. She’d never gone into someone else’s home under circumstances like this. Her nerves stretched tight, she nodded.
Callan rapped on the door with his free hand, then waited, calmly facing the fish-eye lens.
Chapter 16
A minute passed. Then two. Eryn caught herself holding her breath and forced herself to breathe. Her pulse thundered at her temples and she felt echoes in the bruises around her neck.
Callan rapped again, with the same results. This time, though, he stepped back and raised a foot.
Not believing what she was seeing, Eryn stepped in front of the door. “What are you doing?”
An impatient look on his face, Callan lowered his foot. “We need to look inside.”
“If you break the door down, don’t you think that’s going to get security up here?”
“We’ll have a couple minutes before that happens.”
“What can you possibly expect to learn in two minutes?”
“All we need is a Rolodex. A handful of mail. You can get a lot of information from that.”
“And what if it’s not enough?”
Callan thrust his face toward hers and bristled. “I’m not walking away from here. Not without a lead.”
Eryn leaned back at him. “Neither am I. Not after we’ve come this far. But you don’t have to break the door down.” She holstered her weapon and turned back to the door. Then she reached into her jacket and took out her own lockpick kit.
Callan peered over her shoulder. “You can pick that lock?”
“Hopefully.” Eryn took out her lockpicks and knelt in front of the door.
“The locks on your makeup case were simple. Where did you learn to pick locks like these?”
“Before I got the job at CyberStealth, I worked as a recovery agent for an agency that specialized in car repos.”
“How does repossessing cars teach you to break into homes?”
“You get assigned a repo, the bank or the car dealership gives you a duplicate key to get the vehicle back.” Eryn jiggled the picks, sliding through the mechanism with less skill than she would have liked. Lockpicking was a talent that required constant practice. She was going to feel pretty stupid if she couldn’t pick this lock. At that point she felt she might be frustrated enough to kick the door in herself. “Sometimes people get cute with their vehicles and change out the ignition so another key is required.”
The tumblers fell into place, maybe not as smoothly as she would have liked, but they went all the same.
“Hotwiring some of the newer cars is almost impossible because of the locking transmissions and the security. You need a key. The best way to get one is to break inside the owner’s house and retrieve it.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
Eryn looked back over her shoulder at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Do you think something like that could possibly be any more dangerous than what we’ve been doing tonight?”
“Yeah.”
Staring at him, Eryn tried to figure out if he was joking, but she couldn’t tell.
He nodded at the door. “Are you going to be able to handle that?”
In response, Eryn turned the doorknob and pushed the door inward. Callan put a hand on her shoulder to move her to the side, then he went through with the pistol in both hands before him.
The condo was a small single-bedroom with one bath, but the location made it expensive. By the time Eryn got to her feet, Callan had already zoomed through the rooms.
“Nobody’s home.” Callan sheathed the pistol. “There’s a desk and laptop in the bedroom.”
Eryn followed him back to the bedroom and discovered that Leslie Harris wasn’t a neat freak. She kept house more befitting someone named Felony.
The bed was round and lush, with pillows piled high, and it immediately brought to mind some of the thoughts Eryn had been having about Callan. With a bed in the room with them, thoughts of sex were unavoidable.
The mirrored tiles on the ceiling over the bed and the mirrored wall made a bold statement about what Leslie Harris enjoyed in her private life.
“Well, I don’t think she’s the shy, retiring type.” Eryn stared at the reflections of her and Callan in the mirrored wall. They were totally overdressed for the mirrored bedroom. That thought made her smile. Callan, however, looked distinctly uncomfortable.
A second later and she realized that he was embarrassed. “At least there’s not a trapeze. A trapeze would have made the possibilities even more interesting, don’t you think?”
Callan avoided the question. He pointed to the desk over in the corner. “Maybe you can find something on the computer.”
The laptop came to life and the glow bathed Eryn. The screen immediately asked for a password. The cursor sat there winking at her.
Callan tapped the wall next to him, adjacent to the mirrored wall. The opposite wall had a sliding door that let out onto a small balcony. Framed posters and playbills covered the wall. All of them featured Leslie Harris in a G-string and pasties, dancing on a stage amid rolling clouds of fog.
Eryn couldn’t believe it. “I guess she’s really in like with herself.”
“Try her stage name. Felony.”
Putting her hands to the keyboard, Eryn typed in the name. The password was accepted and the computer chugged to a screen that showed more of Leslie Harris’s favorite person. “I’m in.” Then she started to cruise through the exotic dancer’s life.
Thirty minutes of searching through Leslie Harris’s email revealed that trying to find out anything that wasn’t pertinent to Leslie Harris’s life was a futile pursuit. The woman lived and breathed Felony, her stage persona.
“I don’t think we’re going to get anything out of this. If it’s not about Felony, it’s not on here.” She leaned back in the chair and tried to stretch the kinks out.
“Evidently she pays her bills online. I didn’t find anything in her mail.” Callan stood at the balcony looking out. “Everything here is personal. She doesn’t share her world much.”
“After seeing what she has to offer on the internet, I’m tempted to argue with you. If anything, I think she overshares.” Eryn tried to roll her head but her neck filled with painful twinges.
“Can I help?”
Callan’s voice sounded really near. She was startled to look back and see him standing behind her. “Help?”
Best Man for the Job Page 16
