by Brenda Novak
“I take it we’re getting dressed up tonight?”
“Yep,” Kade said. “Put your best duds on, brother. But no twinsies. I’m not going for a Rainman thing.”
“Where are we going?”
“A party,” Kade said simply, then disappeared into his bedroom.
Okay then. It seemed that was all Kade was going to tell him. With a sigh and sense of foreboding, Blane went to shower, shave, and dress. When he met Kade back in the living room, they weren’t twins, but close.
Blane wore a deep navy suit with a white shirt, whereas Kade had bought a charcoal suit and black shirt. Neither man wore a tie.
“I’m starving,” Kade said. “Let’s go.”
They found a good steak restaurant in the hotel and by unspoken agreement, sat at the bar to eat. A couple of glasses of red wine paired perfectly with the steak and Blane was in a pretty good mood by the time they were finished. Even if Kade did have business to do here, at least the evening had begun well.
“So where’s this party?” Blane asked as he tucked away the receipt for dinner into his wallet. He had his suspicions that Kade’s plans would likely be dangerous, and while he wasn’t crazy about that, at least if he was along, he could watch out for his little brother. He didn’t get that opportunity very often.
Kade glanced at his watch. “It should be getting into swing by now,” he said. “It’s not far.”
Catching a cab, Kade gave the name of some nightclub to the driver and ten minutes later they were standing in front of a place that had a line out front and velvet ropes cordoning off the door.
“Are we on a list?” Blane asked, eyeing the line. “Not really in the mood to be begging at the door to get in.”
“Hold on,” Kade said, then turned and headed for the line of people. Blane watched as he stopped halfway down the line to talk to someone Blane couldn’t see. In another moment, Kade was on his way back, two women in tow.
Blane’s brows climbed as Kade stopped in front of him. The women were very attractive, but looked barely old enough to legally drink—or do anything else without breaking the law.
“This is my brother Blane,” Kade said. “Blane, this is Brandy and Liz.”
They were both long-legged blondes, but even with their heels, they were still a few inches shorter than he or Kade. Their cocktail dresses left little to the imagination, not that Blane was going to complain.
“Nice to meet you, ladies,” he said, giving them his practiced smile.
“Brandy and Liz are without escorts tonight,” Kade said, “so I invited them to join us.”
Blane looked at Kade. “Can I have a moment?” he asked.
“Sure. Ladies, we’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.” The women laughed at the teasing note in his voice. Blane would bet by the way they were eyeing him and Kade that they weren’t going anywhere.
Blane pulled Kade aside. “What are you doing?” he hissed. “You just pick up a couple of random girls for the night?” Not that Blane was opposed to a little feminine companionship, but he didn’t need his little brother to pick up chicks for him. He was perfectly capable of persuading a woman to join him for an evening without assistance.
“Trust me,” Kade said. “It’ll look less obvious if they’re with us.”
“Less obvious for what?” Now he was really starting to get a bad feeling about this.
But Kade was already heading back to the women.
“Shit,” Blane muttered, following him. He wasn’t about to ditch Kade, no matter how little he was actually telling him, but he was so going to hear about it later.
“Shall we?” Kade offered his arm to one of them—Brandy?—who smiled widely and took it.
Liz turned to Blane and smiled. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “Your brother said it was your first night in Vegas.”
“It is,” Blane said, settling his palm on the small of her back and following Kade to the door, now guarded by two big bouncers. “And it looks like it’s getting off to the right start.”
Liz seemed pleased by the compliment and Blane focuses half his attention to her and the other half on Kade, who was talking to the doorman. The guy consulted a clipboard in his hand, then spoke into the earpiece microphone he wore. After a moment, he waved Kade and Brandy on inside. Blane and Liz followed.
Kade led them through the masses of people, pass the bar and to the back of the club. A DJ was on a stage playing tunes Blane vaguely recognized, which just made him feel old. If the party Kade was leading them to wasn’t any better, he was going to pull rank and take them elsewhere and screw his “business.” Maybe they’d find someplace where you could actually hear the person you were with when they spoke.
Blane’s gaze swiveled around the place, making automatic note of the location and number of exits, the type of crowd, how many security or bouncer types milled about the edges. Some habits became ingrained, and knowing the path of least resistance for a quick escape was one of them.
There was an obvious VIP area with a raised dais, couches, and more ropes. The guy standing in front of one of them saw Kade and motioned him in.
Since Kade said he’d never been to Vegas before, Blane thought that a bit strange, though he didn’t think Kade would outright lie to him.
It wasn’t as crowded up here as the rest of the club and he felt like he could breathe. People stood around or were sitting on the couches, and Blane’s eye was drawn to one man in particular.
He sat on a couch, two women flanking him, though he didn’t seem to be paying much attention to either of them. Dressed in a suit and tie, he looked a bit old for this crowd, too, and bored. Then he saw Kade.
He stood, a smile breaking out on his face as he motioned Kade over. Blane followed, figuring this must be the “business” Kade had said he had to do while here.
“Blane, this is Raymond Hoff,” Kade introduced him. “Ray, this is my buddy Blane.”
Blane shook Raymond’s hand, giving him an easy smile. He wasn’t offended that Kade hadn’t introduced him as his brother. It was a secret Kade had insisted on years ago, once he’d learned that Blane was eyeing a political career in the future.
“No way am I going to be the skeleton in your closet weighing you down,” Kade had scoffed. “The illegitimate reprobate brother? I don’t think so.”
Blane hadn’t had a choice but to agree to keep the fact that they were related private knowledge that few possessed.
“Sit down! Sit down!” Raymond said, shooing away the women on the couch.
Kade sat next to Raymond, pulling Brandy down beside him. He began conversing in a low voice with Raymond while Brandy looked bored. Blane sat on the end of the couch and Liz perched on his lap. His arm went around her back to steady her.
“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked, resting her hand on his shoulder.
“Not at all,” Blane said, half his attention on Kade and what he was doing. He saw him hand something small to Raymond, who smiled and pocketed it.
“Let’s have a drink to celebrate,” Raymond said, gesturing to a cocktail waitress hovering nearby. He said something to her and she nodded.
“What are we celebrating?” Blane asked Kade in an undertone.
“My genius, of course,” Kade said, with a wink.
Blane rolled his eyes at Kade’s cocky grin.
“So you’re a genius and hot?” Brandy teased, draping herself against Kade’s side.
“That’s right,” he said. “Lucky you.”
She laughed in delight and Blane had to stop himself from another eye roll.
“He seems quite full of himself,” Liz said in his ear. Blane noticed she smelled nice. Very nice.
“It runs in the family,” Blane said. Defending Kade was an automatic response.
Liz smiled. “Confidence is a turn-on.”
The cocktail waitress returned with five drinks before Blane could respond. They both took one and Blane slid a hand up Liz’s thigh. Her skin was smooth and warm
and she didn’t seem to mind.
“To what happens in Vegas,” she said, clinking her glass against his.
Blane relaxed a bit. The “customer” of Kade’s seemed pleased and it looked like the deal was done. Maybe he’d been worried for nothing. “Sounds like the start to a great night,” he replied, a slow smile curving his lips.
Tipping up the shot glasses, they both emptied them. Kade and Brandy were doing the same. And that was the last thing Blane remembered.
Chapter Two
Blane woke slowly, the pounding in his head worse than he’d felt in a decade. His mouth tasted like he’d been chewing sawdust, it was so dry. Sunlight burned his eyelids and his jaw ached.
His jaw ached? That was odd.
Forcing open his eyes, he struggled to remember where he was. At the moment, he was face down on a couch.
Pushing himself up, he saw he was back in the hotel room. Vegas. That was right. He was in Vegas with Kade—
Kade.
Now he sat fully upright, ignoring the nausea and wave of pain through his head. Where was Kade?
He got to his feet, taking stock of his own condition. His knuckles were raw, like he’d been in a fight. His shirt was half-tucked in, both cuffs missing their buttons, but that wasn’t what caught his attention the most. No, that was the mountain of poker chips on the glass coffee table.
“Holy shit,” Blane breathed. Glancing at the pile and denominations, a rough guess would be there had to be at least two hundred, maybe three hundred, grand sitting right there.
How the hell…?
A groan came from one of the bedrooms, jerking Blane’s attention away from the money. He hurried to the door, relieved to see Kade lying in a mound of blankets and pillows.
“Oh God, what the fuck happened to my head?” Kade slowly sat up and Blane saw he was in worse shape than himself. Kade’s shirt was torn and his face sported a bruise on his cheek and dried blood on his lip.
“I have no idea, but there’s a pile of—” Blane stopped as the mound of covers moved. He watched in disbelief as a kid threw off the covers.
Wait, not a kid. He had a full beard. Was it…? No, no way. It couldn’t be. But it was.
A midget was in bed with his brother.
Kade saw him at the same time and leapt from the bed. Well, he would’ve if he hadn’t been caught up short by the handcuff on his wrist, leaving him lying half on and half off the bed.
“Who the hell are you?” Kade burst out, yanking on his arm. Unfortunately, the other end was locked around the midget’s wrist. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Ow! Knock it off,” the guy growled, his voice an octave lower than it looked like it should be. He pulled back on his arm. “That hurts.”
It was one of the few times in his life that Blane was left speechless. His first reaction to an unexpected stranger in the room was to reach for his Glock. Unfortunately, he didn’t have it. He hadn’t thought he needed to bring a gun on a weekend trip to Vegas with Kade, though those last two words should’ve warned him.
“Who are you?” Blane asked. “How did you get in here?”
“You brought me here,” the guy said, looking back and forth between them as though it were obvious. “We made a deal.”
“I’ve never seen you before in my life,” Kade retorted. “Why would I make a deal with you?”
“Because at the time, you didn’t have a lot of choices.”
“Wait, stop, just hold on,” Blane interrupted them. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Just, start at the beginning, okay?” He was struggling to remember what had happened last night, but everything after that drink with Liz was a complete and utter blank.
“I work at Cirque de Soleil,” the guy said. “And my name is Maniak, if you don’t recall.”
“Maniac?” Kade asked, his expression incredulous disdain.
“My dad had a sense of humor,” Maniak said, his tone defensive. “Call me Manny.”
Kade rolled his eyes and Manny looked like he was heading right into a hissy fit.
“Great. Manny,” Blane interjected, wanting to head off an impending temper tantrum. “Keep going.”
Manny’s petulant gaze shifted to Blane. “You guys came running backstage, wanting a back way out of the place. Said you had someone following you. I agreed to show you where the employee exit was if you’d do something for me.” He glanced back at Kade. “This one made the deal, but I didn’t trust him. So once we were out, I slapped on the cuffs so I’d be sure he held up his end of the bargain.”
“What bargain?” Kade asked. “Did I offer you money or something? And get this damn cuff off.”
“Screw you,” Manny snarled. “I don’t want your money. You promised me an audition.”
“A what?” Kade’s surprise was an echo of Blane’s.
“An audition,” Manny stubbornly repeated. “You said you knew the guy who was head of casting for Lord of the Rings. You promised you’d get me an audition.”
Blane locked eyes with Kade in a look that clearly said Really? Kade slowly nodded.
“Yeah, that sounds like something I’d do.”
Blane shook his head. “I can’t deal with this right now,” he muttered, turning and heading out of the bedroom.
“Hey! Wait!” Kade called, but Blane ignored him.
Digging in the mini-fridge, Blane pulled out a bottle of water. Twisting off the cap, he took a long swig. God that tasted good. A few swallows later and he’d emptied the bottle.
Heat rose from the asphalt outside in waves as he looked out the window, the view overlooking the Strip. The only explanation for his complete blackout from last night was that he’d been roofied, probably Kade, too, by his “customer.”
“Good idea,” Kade said, coming up behind Blane and sucking down his own bottle of water.
Blane glanced around and saw Manny standing by the couch, an ill-tempered scowl on his face and the handcuffs dangling from his wrist.
“You got out of the cuffs?” Blane asked, impressed in spite of himself.
Kade shrugged. “It’s a talent. Comes in handy.”
Blane really didn’t want to know when else being able to unlock handcuffs had “come in handy” for Kade.
“Do you remember anything from last night?” Blane asked in an undertone.
Kade glanced sideways at him. “Negative, Ghostrider.”
“Fuck.”
“Yep.”
“It was that guy,” Blane said. “Your customer. He ordered the drinks. They must’ve put a drug in them.”
“Something he’s going to regret.” Kade’s voice was cold.
“Holy shit! Where’d you get all this money?”
They both turned to see Manny eyeing the pile of poker chips, his eyes wide. He glanced back at them, incredulous.
“You won all this and they haven’t thrown you out yet?”
A noise from the second bedroom made them all turn to look.
“What the hell was that?” Kade asked.
Blane waited, listening. Was someone else in the suite with them?
The noise came again…kind of like a…honk.
Blane watched in disbelief as a goose waddled out the open door of the bedroom.
“Holy shit,” Kade breathed. “It’s like we’re in that movie.”
“What movie?”
“You know. The one where they wake up in Vegas and all this shit happened to them, but they don’t remember any of it.”
A vague memory came to Blane. He remembered that film. It’d been really funny. However, this situation was decidedly not.
The goose spotted them, its feathers ruffling as it waddled by, keeping a distance and an eye on them as it meandered over to the windows and pecked at the glass. That’s when Blane noticed a thin leash around its long neck. It trailed behind the goose as it walked.
One problem at a time.
“What happened to the girls?” he asked Mannie. “Were we with two women last night? Brandy and Liz
?”
Mannie shook his head. “Nah. But I saw you making out with one of the trapeze artists, though,” he said, nodding toward Blane.
“Nice,” Kade said with a smirk, slapping Blane on the back. Blane shot him a look.
“Maybe you should call your wife,” Mannie suggested. “Is she here with you?”
Both men stared at him in confusion.
“What wife?” Blane finally asked.
Mannie pointed to Blane’s left hand. “You’re married, right? Figured your wife could help you out.”
A cold wash of ice seemed to crash over Blane as he looked at the gold band on his finger.
“Aw man! And I don’t even remember your bachelor party,” Kade quipped.
I’m gonna kill him, Blane thought. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath, forcing away the urge to throttle his little brother.
“Guys! Guys! You gotta get in here!”
“Now what?” Blane rushed to where Mannie had disappeared into the bathroom. He’d stopped short in the doorway, but Blane had no problem looking over his shoulder.
Kade’s “customer,” Raymond, was in the bathtub, which would’ve been fine, except he was a) very naked, and b) very dead.
“Okay, I did not see that coming,” Kade said from behind Blane.
“You think?” Blane exploded, rounding on him. “What the fuck, Kade? This guy roofies us, and now he’s in our room. Dead. Do you have any idea how deep a shithole we’re in? Not to mention that apparently I’m married. And I don’t even know to who!” He was seething, his hands clenched in fists at his sides.
“To whom,” Kade corrected.
Blane advanced on Kade, who took a few steps back, holding his hands up, palms out, to slow him down.
“Hold on there, bro,” Kade said quickly. “Just take it easy. We’ll figure it out, okay? Ray’s dead, but there’s not a mark on him. Maybe it was just natural causes. You know, a heart attack or something. Just let me take a look.”
“Even if it was a heart attack, or stroke, or what-the-fuck-ever, he’s still in our room, dead. And we have no idea how he got here.”
Mannie had crept closer to the tub and now spoke. “Yeah, you’re right. There’s no wounds anywhere or like marks around his neck or anything. He probably just had a stroke or something. Or like you said, a heart attack.”
