by Diane Capri
“I told you, we’re working on it. I don’t know all the details yet,” Clayton’s tone was unsure, which Jordan took as floundering.
“You don’t even have a Plan B, do you? You’re just telling me that, aren’t you?” Jordan heard her pushy, demanding tone and felt good about it. She deserved answers and it was time he knew it.
“We will have one. We haven’t figured out how to deal with you not showing up at the rave. But we’ve got a few options and as soon as we narrow them down to the right one, we’ll share it with you. I promise, Jordan. We will.” Clayton’s speech didn’t ring true to her.
They were letting this chance slip right through their fingers.
“You do that, Clayton. You’ve got my number.” She hung up.
She didn’t care what Plan B was. Flynn was expecting to see her at Ecstasy tomorrow night at ten, and see her he would. She was tired of being Flynn’s target and the longer he remained free, the more dangerous her life was. If Clayton and his team couldn’t figure that much out, how could she trust them to handle the situation? Sal had been right all along. Going to the police was a waste of time.
Jordan would go to the rave and get video evidence when Flynn paid her off. She was a qualified MMJ and that much she knew she could do. The cops could take it from there. If they felt like it.
There would be a crowd of people at the rave, tripping on who-knows-what, but a crowd nonetheless. Which meant Flynn couldn’t kill her on the spot. That would have to be enough insurance because now it was all she had.
She thought through her own plan and identified two big obstacles to solve before the rave. She needed a believable costume so she could move around inside the rave unnoticed. More importantly, Flynn wasn’t going to just stand there and let her take video of his criminal activities. She’d need a secret video camera for that and she was sure neither the cops nor Channel 12 would give her one.
After about twenty minutes of serious memory work, she managed to recall exactly where she could find both.
CHAPTER 12
Jordan pictured what she should wear to infiltrate the rave—something like a short leather miniskirt and a tube top. Nothing remotely like her current style.
The situation required a trip to Claire’s closet. And it was a perfect reason to see with her own two eyes how Claire was holding up. Persuading Claire to meet her was easier than she expected, which made her suspicious, too.
“Remind me what you wore to that club you went to when Trevor took you to Vegas?” Jordan asked Claire from the soft, plush armchair in Claire’s bedroom.
She was pretending to lounge at Claire’s apartment, taking a break from Hotel Life and trying not to freak out about tonight. They’d been flipping through old yearbooks and laughing. Now that Claire was all but living at Salvador’s estate, they didn’t spend as much time here at Claire’s apartment as they once had, and Jordan was a little surprised to realize how much she missed simple evenings like this with her friend.
Trevor had been Claire’s rebel boyfriend in college for a couple of semesters. He took her on a wild trip to Vegas once, and they broke up almost immediately afterward for reasons Jordan had never wormed out of Claire, but she could guess. Trevor didn’t exactly come across as monogamous.
Jordan remembered Claire telling her about the outrageous rave they went to, and how she wore a ridiculous neon outfit that she grabbed in a last drunken hour of shopping before they went out.
Claire laughed. “Oh my god, I think I still have that outfit.”
She jumped up and rifled through her huge walk-in closet. She doubled over in laughter. She must have found it.
Jordan nudged Claire out of the way so she could take a look for herself. It was a shiny lime green tube top and hot pink pleather mini skirt. Hideous.
“Could I have found anything tackier?” Claire asked, still laughing.
“That’s very…Vegas,” Jordan said.
“It’s very Trevor.” Claire rolled her eyes as she pulled the outfit off the hanger and threw it into a trash can by the door. “Yeah, that outfit is never seeing the light of day again.”
“Don’t throw it out!” Jordan said jumping over to rescue the thing from the garbage where it truly belonged. “That’s going to make a great Halloween costume someday.”
“I don’t think so. It had its moment of glory already. There’s a reason they say nothing should ever leave Vegas.”
“Fine, then I’ll take it,” Jordan said, holding it up to her body. “I’ll build my Halloween costume around it. It will be a fun challenge.”
Claire chuckled. “What’re you gonna be, a rave girl? Not very Jordan-like, is it?”
Jordan forced a smile and stuffed the clothes into her bag. “You bet. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”
Jordan couldn’t wait to get tonight’s ordeal over with and relay the adventure to Claire after the fact. Once everything was safely finished.
“I’ve got to go. But before I head out, how’s Sal holding up?” Jordan asked.
All of the fun and laughter disappeared from Claire’s expression and her eyes welled up with tears. “I don’t know what’s wrong, Jordan. He’s still worried about Flynn. And there’s something else going on, too, but he won’t say.”
Jordan gave Claire a quick hug and tried reassuring words, but without revealing her plans for handing Flynn over to the police on a silver platter, she couldn’t do more. For now.
When Jordan returned to the hotel later that afternoon, she dug through the bag of stuff she’d swiped off her dresser at home after the explosion. She hoped she’d collected everything. Her memory of Bomb Night, fuzzy from all the chaos, served her correctly.
After ten minutes of searching, she hadn’t found it. The locket. She’d kept it on her dresser for months. It should have been in the bag. But it wasn’t. She tried to visualize her dresser, the locket, where was it?
And then she remembered. She’d dropped it in her bag before she went to the shrimp docks Sunday morning. She grabbed her bag and dumped everything out on the bed and shuffled through it all.
Bingo. She grabbed the locket necklace Claire had given her for graduation off the bed. She opened it and admired it. This wasn’t just any locket. It had a hidden camera in it. Claire had told her that an important journalist like Jordan might need a hidden video cam someday.
That day was now.
Jordan tested the locket. It worked. All she had to do was press the sides and it would start recording. The locket could record up to six hours of high quality video. Impressive for a necklace the size of a dime.
After a shower, Jordan put the locket on. The solid weight nestled at the base of her throat made her feel safer than it should have. This was probably insane or stupid or insanely stupid.
She was squeezing into the rave clothes for a trial run when her hotel room phone rang.
Jordan’s nerves were stretched so taut she jumped. “Hello?” Her voice sounded breathless in her own ears.
“Father Fox here,” Nelson answered, playfully. Jordan’s mouth lifted in the first genuine smile she’d felt in days. She loved that he actually seemed to be enjoying their hotel staycation, courtesy of Salvador Caster. If Sal ended up being arrested, they might have to pay their own bills after all. But she’d worry about that when and if she had to.
“Hi, Dad.”
“May I treat you to a steak dinner in the hotel lobby restaurant this evening?”
Nelson had taken her out to dinner maybe three times since her mother died. Between his grieving, the stroke, lack of extra money and his mobility issues, eating out was usually an impractical hassle. But Nelson’s mobility was improving. Sal had told them to charge anything and everything to the room and he’d pick up the tab. And they had something huge to celebrate. They’d never survived a bomb before.
Jordan couldn’t say no and she didn’t want to. If things went south tonight, at least they’d have this last meal as a pleasant memory. Besides, she had to eat.
She checked the time—6 p.m. She was meeting Flynn at Centro Tampa by ten. If she did her hair and most of her makeup before dinner, she could make the timing work.
“I’d love to.” It would be her first date since Paul and she was sure her dad would be a much better companion.
“Meet you in the lobby at seven-thirty?”
“Perfect.”
Jordan tested her locket again, and finished squeezing into the hideous neon outfit. It was tight, which meant it was a perfect fit. The best way to avoid calling attention to herself tonight was to be as outrageous as everyone else.
She peeled the neon outfit off her body and stuffed it into a bag she’d grab after dinner. For now, she changed into a comfortable loose black top and white pants, slipped her feet into sandals, and grabbed her key.
When the elevator door opened at the lobby, Nelson Fox waited for his daughter, dressed in the best clothes he owned. He must have asked someone to bring them from home because Jordan hadn’t grabbed that suit and tie from his closet the night of the bomb. He was freshly showered and shaved. He seemed so happy that Jordan almost burst into stupid tears again. Her lips quivered and her eyes watered. She bent down and gave him a quick hug and kiss so he wouldn’t notice.
He was the most important person in the world to her now. She couldn’t lose him. Not to a killer like Flynn. Not to anyone. He’d already suffered more than enough, and so had she.
Nelson said, “Come on, Freckles. I’m starving. Let’s push this wheelchair up to a very expensive steak. What do you say?”
“Sounds like a perfect plan to me.”
She gripped the handles and gave him a quick ride into the steakhouse.
At dinner, she paid total attention to her dad. She refused to speak, or even think, anything remotely unpleasant. Somehow, he sensed her mood and did the same.
He was chattier than usual. He offered unlimited advice about how to turn her internship into a job and she listened to all of it and took it to heart. No one wanted more for her than he did. He was her dad and she loved him and he loved her back. What could be better than that?
They pushed back their chairs at 9:10. Now, she was hyperaware of the time. She pushed his wheelchair down the hallway and into his room and made sure he was set up for the night.
“It’s past your bedtime, Party Animal!” Jordan kissed him on the head. “Goodnight. I’ll check in with you in the morning.”
She boarded the elevator, made it to her room by 9:15, and quickly squeezed her body into the neon rave outfit. It had fit better before that big dinner. Time was tighter than she would like, too.
She added gobs of bright, sparkly makeup to her face, and mussed up her hair. She looked in the mirror. She looked completely outrageous. Perfect.
Jordan slipped into one of the many taxis waiting downstairs at the hotel and asked for a ride to Centro Tampa.
The driver let her off at the closest intersection to Club Ecstasy. She strutted off toward the club in four-inch heels, acting as confident as she could manage on shaky legs she attributed solely to the stilettos.
She ran through the plan one last time.
Keep it simple. Get in the door. Go to the bar. Pretend to party. Make my way to the second floor lounge nearest the men’s restroom where Flynn will be waiting. Approach. Angle locket toward his face. Attempt to angle him facing the light so his features are visible. He hands me money, I put it in my purse, I give him a reassuring nod of approval, and pretend to party for a few more minutes. Take a cab back to the hotel. Mission accomplished. Simple.
The moment she got through security and into the door, things weren’t simple anymore. She felt assaulted against all of her senses at once, as if she’d run inside a blinding, throbbing, pulsing mass of heat, noise, and odors strong enough to gag a wall of maggots.
The place was much, much bigger than she remembered. Purple and yellow lights streaked all four levels of the venue. By rave standards, the night was still young, yet a massive glob of partiers danced like they were already higher than the moon. Music, if that’s what it was supposed to be, blared from surrounding speakers and filled her head to bursting. Sweat, booze, tobacco and marijuana smoke, and dozens of personal fragrances combined into eau de stink.
Jordan had never felt more sober.
Maybe she should leave.
It would be hard to get good video here, and audio would be next to impossible. Besides, if she blew this, the police could lose their Plan B, whatever that was. Flynn would escape. Which was not tolerable.
She should leave. Her dad wouldn’t want her here. And her mother would smite her from heaven if she could. What had Jordan been thinking to even try this stupid idea? The mission wasn’t worth the risk.
Jordan turned to push through the crowd to the exit when she saw him.
And he saw her.
Decision made.
No turning back now.
CHAPTER 13
Jordan walked deeper into the club, toward Flynn, who also approached her. He hadn’t waited at the agreed meeting spot. Already her plan was off track.
Stick to the plan as much as possible.
She squeezed the sides of her locket, setting it to record.
She pushed through the crowd. People were moving frantically, bumping into one another and jostling her, making it hard to stay upright. Men in skin-tight shirts and revealing pants, women in slutty skirts barely covering anything, quite a few of indeterminate sex dressed even more outrageously than the others. Some were dancing. Some were doing what could easily be described as vertical sex acts. Pulsing sound, flashing lights, so many voices she couldn’t separate them maintained the physically painful cacophony that never let up.
Jordan approached Flynn from the side, which would cause him to turn to where the light would better brighten his face. Her heart beat so fast she felt her locket was pulsating. Hopefully the locket was capturing his face, or at least his lips. The locket contained a tiny microphone, not adequate for much more than one-on-one interviews in a small room with closed doors. The intense bass beat of the pulsating music was probably all it would capture in here. Some level of lip-reading would be necessary for police to use any of his words against him.
He stared down at her, his face lit up in flashing shades of purple and yellow. The cartoonish colors, paired with that bird’s nest of hair, reminded her of the Joker. She zeroed in on that tattoo on his neck and got the chills.
Right here. Right now. She stood face-to-face with the man who tried to kill her once and would try again. Unless she stopped him.
Flynn reached his hand out, palm side up. What did he want? He was the one who was supposed to be giving her money. Apparently she paused too long and he grew frustrated. He grabbed her hand and yanked her across the club to a far corner.
She understood now. He wanted a quieter spot. It was still ear-piercingly loud, but there was at least a chance of being heard in the corner.
“I didn’t think you’d show up.” His naturally booming voice overwhelmed the abrasive sound waves.
It was an unfair match of voices, but Jordan attempted to channel hers toward him without getting too close to his disgusting body. “I’m here. Now give me the cash.”
She hoped her public reference to money, though barely audible, would scare him into speeding up the exchange. She wanted to get out of here T minus five minutes ago.
“I thought for sure you’d bring cops with you. I don’t see any undercovers. And trust me. I know how to spot them.”
He guffawed, and Jordan shivered. This was one fearless dude, which terrified her even more.
She tried to focus on the simple plan. “I told you, all I want is to leave town. I don’t wanna deal with the cops. We have no place to live now, thanks to you. Too many bad memories here. We want a clean start. Get me the freaking cash.”
“So you want something from me now, is that it?”
“I want my house back. But I’m only asking for five thousa
nd dollars. That’s a bargain, Flynn.”
“Tell me why you’re so sure I’m the one who destroyed your home.”
“Oh, come on. No more games.”
“Or else what? What’s the little junior reporter girl gonna do? Publish a picture of me on the internet?”
She wanted to kick him where he’d feel it for years. She didn’t. She gritted her teeth instead, which wasn’t nearly as satisfying. “You have no idea the evidence I have on you. I’ve got you on video, destroying my phone.”
The statement surprised him. His temper seemed to drop a couple degrees and his voice turned cold. “All right, all right.” He smirked. “I’ll give you what you’ve convinced me that you absolutely deserve.”
He reached deep into his pocket and fidgeted. This was the part Jordan most needed to get on camera. She casually adjusted her necklace, aligning the camera with his pocket. What was the holdup? Finally, his hand emerged. It was dark, but with some video enhancement she’d probably be capturing the handful of cash.
Instead, a cold piece of metal pushed against her side. “Come on, little girl. Let’s go.”
Jordan was shaking so hard she could barely stay balanced on her ridiculous heels. Wherever he wanted her to go, she wasn’t sure she could physically get there. She could no longer feel any of her limbs. “Go where?” The words choked her.
He grabbed her arm and jerked her roughly, letting the gun in her ribs guide the way.
CHAPTER 14
He was behind her. The pounding music pulsed in her veins. Her entire body vibrated with it. She considered yelling, but no one would hear. He could probably shoot her and they wouldn’t hear that, either.
She frantically skimmed the room for police officers. Security guards. Even a bouncer. Nothing.
She’d had to pass through a metal detector to enter the club. The same setup blocked all the exits in case people tried to crash in that way. Flynn wouldn’t be able to pass through with the gun. They’d never get out with him holding her hostage.
