Page 93 of Direct Action

“I’m fine.”

“Brother—”

“This guy’s a motherfucker, but I’ve dealt with worse,” Beck returned, then added, “It feels good being back in the game.”

After months of isolation, I hoped Beck being back to the land of the living meant he was healing. The man played his cards close to his chest. I knew he’d opened up to Jack, but that opening was more of a crack in the fortress he’d built around himself.

“Anything else for us?” Pete inquired.

“Yeah, one more thing. Blackwell had an intense call with Len Taylor.”

That spiked my interest. “Intense how?”

“Didn’t hear the conversation. Blackwell walked away when Taylor called, but whatever he had to say pissed off Blackwell in a big way. Body language was tense, and when the call was finished, Blackwell was agitated.”

“And he didn’t mention a Dex while you were with him?” I asked even though I knew the answer.

“No Dex. Blackwell’s not stupid. He’s playing this smart, feeling me out, not taking calls in front of me, only letting me in on piddly shit. He called the porn girls entertainment, which could mean just having pretty women walking around his party as eye candy. And he stepped away to talk privately to the producers about the girls he was interested in. The three he propositioned aren’t bad looking, but not the prettiest, and all three looked to be high.”

“Seems he’s got a type,” Gavin put in. “Lisa Peters, otherwise known as Chantilly Luxx, has five arrests, all drug related, two stints in rehab, and over thirty film credits. I’ll run Porsche, Moxy Witherspoon, and Diamond Rough and see what I can find.”

What Gavin left out was, Lisa Peters’s family lived in Florida and, from what we could dig up, they were estranged. Something Lisa had in common with Lucy Macmillan and Amber Sadler. Neither the missing bartender nor the coat check girl had family nearby, and both had fucked-up childhoods. Cynthia was an orphan who regularly complained about her sister, which could easily be misinterpreted as them not being close.

Easy targets.

No family to miss them.

“Tonight, we’re meeting with Mercer at the Vault,” Pete told Beck. “Membership’s approved, money’s been transferred, all we need to do is sign the NDAs and we’re good.”

“I don’t know what Blackwell’s plans are. I’m meeting him at the hangar at five,” Beck returned.

“Shep sent two watches for you. One’s a Fēnix, the other’s a Rolex. Both are chipped with tracking devices. Aiden’s going to drop them in the alley behind your Airbnb.”

Since part of Beck’s cover was that he was new to the area, he was staying at a rental owned by the brother of a former Team Guy and his wife. He’d given us access to the security cameras he had around the property. So far Blackwell hadn’t sent one of his men to sit on the house and watch Beck, but to be safe, Aiden would still use the alleyway.

“Right. Tell Aiden to text me after the drop.”

There was a soft knock at the office door before it slowly opened, and Chloe’s face appeared. I waved her in while Pete told Beckett, “We’ll check in later, and Aiden will text.”

Beck grunted his farewell and disconnected.

Chloe set my coffee down. I caught the flush on her cheeks and her pinched brows. “What’s wrong?”

“I ran into a woman I work with at the Vault while I was at The Daily Grind. Naomi accused me of trying to . . . seduce Sterling to get a spot at a feast.” Chloe sounded more pissed than freaked out she was confronted. But not as pissed as I was some woman had cornered her at a coffee shop. “She went on to tell me that Sterling didn’t fuck his hostesses and warned me to back off because it was her turn. Oh, and she called Cynthia a bitch . . . and doesn’t believe she’s missing. She said she thinks Cynthia took her twenty grand she earned working for Sterling and ran off to Vegas, where Cynthia had been saying she wanted to move to. She also said the girls get paid five K plus tips at these feasts.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gavin grab his phone. I opened my mouth to thoroughly explain how I felt about some bitch getting in my woman’s face, but Pete beat me to it. “Has this woman hassled you before?”

“No. But I did hear her complaining to Muriel the night Sterling came in with Beckett. She wanted the table, but Muriel told her Sterling had requested my station.”

“We already looked into Cynthia’s account,” Gavin put in. “And all transactions in and out have been consistent until the day she went missing. Cash deposits four times a week. Those were consistent, too, between two and three thousand. No savings account. No investment accounts.”

“Could she be hiding it under her mattress?” Chloe tossed out with a shrug.

At the moment I didn’t give a flying fuck what Cynthia had done with her money. “Let’s go back to Naomi. What else did she say?”

“That was it.”

“Nothing else? She didn’t threaten you or—”