by Beverly Long
Royce had been very specific—she was not to leave the hotel. And she’d promised him. “I don’t know,” she hedged. “It’s complicated.”
“Isn’t everything?” Charity said, sounding resigned. “Never mind. I’ll figure something out. I’ll call you—”
“Where are you?” JC interrupted. She just knew that if she failed Charity this one time, the woman might never call her again. She could not risk that.
Charity rattled off an address. JC scribbled it down, then read it back.
Since the day she’d discovered her dead mother’s diary and realized that everything she’d believed to be true might not be, she’d had so many questions.
And Charity might be the only one with the answers. “I’m on my way,” JC said. “We’ll talk when I get there.”
* * *
Royce called Trey from the car and got him started on the contract. Then he swung by his apartment and packed enough dress shirts and slacks to get him through a couple days. He added a few more casual things and his toiletries. Before zipping up the bag, he added boxes of ammunition for the Glock he carried. He hoped like hell he wouldn’t need it, but he believed in being prepared.
Then he was out the door a second time. When he got to Wingman Security, the paperwork was ready.
“Rico is going to be impressed,” Trey said. “You wrapped this one up fast.”
Royce debated telling Trey that he had known the client years before. The partners didn’t keep secrets from one another.
But he just wasn’t ready to talk about it. Wasn’t ready to admit that seeing Jules had been a blow, almost taking his breath away. He folded the papers and stuffed them in his jacket pocket. “I’ll be at the Periwinkle for the next few days. Suite 1402.”
“Nice digs,” Trey said. “Have you had a chance to check out the hotel?”
“Some.” He’d looked on his way out. “Main entrance is on ground level. Both an elevator and an escalator gets you to the lobby, which is on the third floor. Elevator from there goes to floors four through forty. No key-card access required for any floor.” That meant that anybody could access any floor, which was not good. “On the fourteenth floor, there are six suites—three on each side of the elevator bay, which is in the middle of the hotel. Stairs at both ends of the hotel. Those do require a key card to open the door on any floor, including the first.” That was better news. That meant that people couldn’t simply wander in off the street, find the stairs and get anywhere in the hotel. “Hotel connects via overhead walkway to a separate three-story conference center.”
“Sounds good,” Trey said. “Stay in touch.”
“I will,” Royce said, and walked out the door.
When he got back to the Periwinkle, he pointed at the spot where he wanted his car parked and gave the valet an extra hundred bucks to convince him. Nothing impeded a quick getaway like having to wait for a car to be brought around. That was a beginner mistake.
He hadn’t even been a beginner when he’d started the agency four years ago. Not with his military experience.
He liked to think that he always had a plan, a backup plan and an it’s-going-to-hell-fast plan.
Twenty feet inside, remembering Jules’s love for dark chocolate, he extended his arm toward the sterling silver tray, only to draw it back fast. His job wasn’t to bring her candy. His job was to ensure that the CEO of Miatroth stayed safe while in Las Vegas.
He got to the fourteenth floor, walked down the hallway and rapped on the door. And waited. Just like before. This was getting old.
He knocked sharply, loud enough to make most everybody on the floor take a look out their peephole to see if it was their door getting assaulted.
When that didn’t get a response, he yanked his phone out of his pocket, jabbed his index finger on Barry Wood’s telephone number and took a deep breath.
“Hello, Royce,” Barry said.
“Are you going to open the damn door?”
“What?”
“I’m standing in the hallway. I’ve been standing in the hallway for five minutes.”
“Royce, I’m back in my room on the twelfth floor. JC had some work to do. I made sure she locked the door behind me when I left.”
A chill spread across the back of his neck, as if someone had slapped an ice bag on it. “Call the front desk. Get somebody up here with a key. But text me her cell number first.”
Royce hung up and waited for the text. It came and he dialed. He heard it ring, then switch to voice mail. He swallowed. “This is Royce,” he said fast. “Call me. Please, just call me.”
He called twice more before Barry and somebody in a navy blue suit wearing an assistant manager name tag showed up. He waited impatiently while the man used his key to open the door. Then he was into the suite, moving swiftly through the rooms.
She wasn’t there.
Her clothes were still in the closet. Her sundry items still on the bathroom counter. Her stupid phone on the bedside table.
No signs of struggle.
He turned to the manager. “I need to know if Ms. Cambridge left this hotel and I need to know it five minutes ago.”
“Can you describe her?”
Right down to the heart-shaped tattoo on her left inside thigh. “Five-six. A hundred and twenty pounds. Dark hair, above the collar. Fair complexion. Very dark blue eyes. She’s...beautiful.”
The man relayed the information to whoever he’d dialed on his cell phone. From what Royce could tell, the call got transferred a couple times. Finally, the man nodded. “She got into a cab about twenty minutes ago. By herself. Seemed fine. Gave the valet a five-dollar tip.”
At these kind of places, the valet gave the cab driver the instructions. “Does he remember the address?”
Royce waited impatiently while the question was asked again and answered. The manager nodded. “Bell Street and Howard Avenue.”
Royce knew Vegas like the back of his hand. There could be absolutely no good reason for Jules to be in that part of town. Drugs were sold there. But not the kind you bought with your prescription card.
Add in the guns and the human trafficking and you had all the things that tarnished Sin City’s sparkle.
He was running for the elevator when he heard Barry call from behind.
“What are you going to do?”
“Whatever it takes,” he said.
Chapter 4
Sweat was running down the back of JC’s neck by the time the cab came to a complete stop. She’d wanted to ask the driver to turn down his heater, but for the last fifteen minutes she’d listened to the man, who was probably fifty in a world where fifty didn’t look like thirty, quietly beg the person on the other end of the phone to please let his mother keep her dog. He’d promised repeatedly to replace the carpet that said dog must have ripped up.
Her own mom had loved her little Yorkie. And after she’d died, the dog had never been the same, even though JC had watched her father try to woo the dog over. Instead, the animal had seemed to mope around her parents’ home for months until one night the little guy had fallen asleep and never woken up.
She’d figured he’d died of a broken heart. She’d understood the feeling. The loss of Lara Cambridge had been sudden and very horrible.
“Twenty-six fifty,” he said.
She gave him a hundred and got out of the cab.
He rolled down his window. “I don’t have change, lady.”
“I don’t want any,” she said.
It was enough that for a brief second, the man’s tense posture, the stiff way he held his head, it all seemed to relax. He rolled his window up. Stopped halfway.
“Best be careful in this neighborhood,” he said. Then he pulled away, leaving her alone. Cars, mostly old, were parked on both sides of the street
. There was little grass and only a few trees to soften the rough appearance of the small wood-framed houses that lined the road. A big dog running behind a chain-link fence barked, startling her. She saw a swing set in one yard with a rusty slide that couldn’t possibly be safe for a child.
Across the street, several houses up, she saw an old woman wearing a housedress, her back to the street, sweeping her sidewalk. She glanced again at the scrap of paper where she’d written down the address and Charity’s brief directions. Apartments on the corner. Had to be the three five-story brick buildings that were bunched together as if there might be safety in numbers.
She’d been so distracted after talking to Charity that she’d run out of the hotel without her phone. Hadn’t realized it until she was already blocks from there. If she had it, a quick call to Charity would have made it easier. Instead, it took her several minutes to identify that apartment 302 was in the middle building. She walked across the yard that was more weeds than grass, grateful that she’d pulled on her flat-heeled boots before leaving the hotel. She was almost at the door when she saw a police car cruise by.
It was the kind of neighborhood that likely required regular patrol. There were two officers but neither seemed to glance her direction. Eyes were focused straight ahead.
She reached for the handle of the glass door that looked as if someone had thrown a slice of pizza at it, hadn’t been happy with their aim and tried it again. That or it was dried vomit.
She was sticking with pizza.
Inside, there was a very small lobby, maybe five feet by five feet. Mailboxes, thirty of them, lined one wall. Directly across was the elevator that looked a hundred years old, which she thought was likely not possible, since the building had probably been built in the seventies or eighties. But the painted doors were scratched and dented and when they opened, the smell of urine was oppressive. She got in and pressed the three with her elbow.
The idea that Charity was living in the place made her sick. And the knowledge that if circumstances had been different it might have been her instead made her arms feel heavy as the elevator slowly climbed to the third floor.
When the doors opened, the heat hit her. How could it feel as if it was eighty-five in the hallway when it was fifty degrees outside? She quickly glanced both directions. All five doors were closed.
She found apartment 302 at the end of the hall. Stood outside the door, her fist raised to knock.
She had some idea what to expect. Charity had no social media accounts, at least that she’d been able to find. But the private investigator she’d hired had unearthed a senior class picture of the girl taken six years ago.
She’d stared at that photo for weeks that had turned into months, working up her nerve. The idea that she was opening a door that might never be fully shut again was a bit terrifying. She could be inviting trouble into her life, into her father’s life. Maybe unnecessarily.
She’d almost managed to convince herself that it was too great a risk, that it didn’t matter. But in the end, she’d realized that she had to know. She had to know if what her mom had believed to be true was indeed fact.
Had to know the extent of her father’s betrayal.
She pressed a hand flat against her stomach, which was rumbling with nerves. What was Charity going to think of her? If she’d done any searching, she’d have seen plenty of JC. Miatroth’s recent clinical trials in the war against pancreatic cancer had gone amazingly well, and in the last month, JC had been interviewed many times.
She’d have preferred to orchestrate a meeting, to set it up just so to give her and Charity the optimal opportunity to get to know each other. But Charity’s admission that she was in trouble had changed all that.
Her plan was to meet Charity, find a solution to whatever trouble she was in and get back to the hotel before Royce returned so that he never had to know she’d left in the first place.
Otherwise, he was going to have one more reason to believe that she couldn’t be trusted.
JC knocked sharply on the door.
It swung open. And there she was.
Charity had big dark eyes that seemed to fill her narrow face. Her straight hair was almost black, much darker than it had been in her senior class picture, and hung down past her shoulders. There was a silver ring at the edge of her right eyebrow and her nose was pierced. Those were also new in the last six years. She was wearing a shapeless olive green cotton dress with a drawstring waist and flip-flops.
Too thin, almost waiflike, and JC’s first impulse was to feed her. “Hello,” said JC. Should she hug her? Nothing about Charity’s body language told her that would be the right move. She settled for extending her hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you. I’m JC...uh...Juliana, but I go by JC.”
Charity didn’t move. Instead, she glanced at JC’s extended arm, then settled her gaze back on JC’s face. The silence stretched on.
And JC silently lectured herself not to fill it. She sometimes did that when she was nervous.
“I guess I wasn’t sure you would come,” Charity finally said.
JC tried not to take it personally. Trust had to be earned. Basic tenet of doing business. “I was concerned,” JC said. “May...I come in?” she asked.
Charity shook her head. “We’ve got to get out of here before Bobby comes back.”
“Who’s Bobby?” JC asked, already knowing the answer. The investigator that she’d hired had unearthed the name of the man she was living with. But she couldn’t let Charity know that. She looked over the girl’s shoulder. She was at least three inches shorter than JC’s own five foot six.
Charity tossed her hair. “Just this guy. He can be a real jerk sometimes.”
She turned and that’s when JC saw the open suitcase on the couch. Wadded-up clothes were hanging over the edges of the inexpensive luggage. Two pairs of gladiator sandals, one black, one brown, seemed to be taking up most of the room.
“You said you were in trouble,” JC said. “The kind of trouble where you need to leave?”
“The kind of trouble where I think it’s possible that I’m going to be that poor girl on the ten o’clock news,” Charity said, her voice low. “Bobby’s got some anger issues and I don’t feel safe. It was probably a mistake for me to move in here.”
In the information that had been gathered about Charity, there’d been no mention of violence involving her and Bobby. “How long have the two of you been together?”
Charity ran a hand through her long hair. “Not that long. A few months.”
“Where were you planning to go?”
Charity shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve got a couple hundred bucks. Should get me a place to stay for a week or so until I figure things out.”
Not a nice place. But they could have that discussion once she was safely out of the apartment. “Maybe you better finish packing,” JC said. She looked around. The apartment was very sparsely furnished with just a couch and two folding chairs. A flat-screen television was perched on top of two stacked red plastic crates. A counter separated the kitchen from the living room and it was loaded with dirty dishes, potato chip bags and empty ice-cream-sandwich boxes. There was a big orange cat lying on the far end, its head lifted, perhaps interested in the visitor but not quite enough to be concerned.
Charity wasn’t moving. Just standing there, watching JC.
“Can I...help you with anything?” JC asked.
It took Charity a minute to answer. “I guess I’ll need Hogi’s food,” she said finally, her head moving in the cat’s direction. She walked toward her suitcase.
JC had no idea whether or not the Periwinkle allowed cats. But if not, she suspected that a special damage deposit might take care of the problem. “Do you have a cage for him?”
Charity looked at her as if she might be stupid and used her elbow to point at th
e top of the fridge.
Well, of course. JC set her teeth. Now wasn’t the time to get into an argument. She wanted to get out of there before Bobby decided to come back.
She found the cat’s food in a bag near a filthy litter box that caused her to breathe through her mouth. She grabbed the small bag of food and backed away. Then she reached for the cat cage on top of the refrigerator.
The cat turned his head, saw what she was doing and, showing more energy than she’d expected, bolted off the counter and down the hallway.
“Oh, my God,” Charity screamed. “Don’t let Hogi see that. He’ll think he’s going to the vet.”
“I’ll get him,” JC said.
Charity held up her hand. “Just wait here. He’ll be under the bed. You’re a stranger. He’ll never come to you.” She picked up a photo album that had been wedged behind the suitcase. “I had these pictures. I thought you might want to see them. Since my mom is in them, you know.”
“Thank you,” she said. She took the album.
Charity ran down the hall, leaving JC alone in the squalid little living room. The cover of the photo album was a brown padded vinyl. JC flipped it open. Inside were ten or twelve plastic sheets, most of the four-by-six slots filled.
Baby pictures. They had to be of Charity. The eyes gave it away. Unable to resist, she flipped a couple pages, looking for the woman who had been Charity’s mother.
There. Holding Charity.
Pretty, with long blond hair. Not as thin as Charity but still slender. She was slumped in a chair, like she might be exhausted.
Had she already realized by that time that she’d be raising Charity alone? Or had she known that from the minute she’d gotten pregnant?
So many questions.
But maybe now she was finally close to getting answers. She could hear Charity calling to the cat. “Come on, Hogi. Come out right now.”
Her sister had a hint of the South in her voice. JC was so intent upon listening to it that it surprised the heck out of her when the apartment door suddenly swung open.
