Page 10 of The Devil Wears Nada

Coincidence. It's gotta be a coincidence. Rich men close deals every day of the week, and rich men blow their winnings on girls. I’m sure of it. That's the entire business model we’re working with here. The city is packed with men who had a good day today. Half of them probably typed closed the deal to some girl on some website within the last hour. It means nothing. It's a Tuesday in a city of millions of people.

Yeah, right. I'm good at telling myself things.

But my eyes keep going back to the three handles at the top of my board, and they will not leave.

HouseMoney: YOU GOT QUIET, GORGEOUS. HouseMoney: EVERYTHING OKAY UP THERE ON THE THRONE?

"Perfect," I say. I smile, and I give them the show. "Just counting my blessings."

I finish the night. I take their money, every celebratory crown of it, because I'm not an idiot, and debt is debt, and I’ve got a shitload of it.

But when I sign off, I don't lie back and float the way I usually do.

I open a new tab and log into the Ardent Capital scheduling system where I see every partner's meetings, dinners, and flights, all of it mine to manage. Most boring part of my day job.

But tonight, it might be the most interesting thing I do, because there's exactly one person on earth who can sit here with Diablo's tips in one window and three powerful men's private calendars in the other.

Me.

Let's see if the nights line up.

I tell myself I'm doing this to prove I'm crazy.

That's the plan.

It’s one in the morning, and I’m cross-legged on my bed, with two windows open on my laptop. On the left, the Ardent Capital meeting schedule of the last few weeks, including every partner's meetings, flights and dinners. On the right, CamALot's earnings dashboard. Every night I've gone live, every tribute, every timestamp, down to the minute.

I'm going to lay them side by side, find nothing, just coincidences, feel stupid, and go to sleep.

Tonight's no good for proving anything. Tonight, the guys were all together, all celebrating, all in town. If I want to know, I need the nights they were apart.

So I start there. And the first thing I check blows it up.

Last Thursday, Beck flew to Chicago on the six p.m. I booked it; I remember the aisle seat he demanded. Red-eye back the next morning. So Thursday night, Beck Cross was on a plane, then in a hotel bar, then asleep in a Marriott six hundred miles away.

I pull up Thursday on CamALot.

HouseMoney? Didn't show.

In two weeks, he hasn't missed a night. Loud, front and center, first to tip, every single time. Except the one night I can prove he was on a plane.

Okay. That’s one data point. Coincidence is still a possibility. Rich men fly places all the time.

So I go for the throat. Elias.

Elias was in London last week, Monday through Wednesday, for the Harrington deal. I booked that too. I know his hotel, I know his car service, I know he flies British Airways because he told me once in the closest thing to a full sentence he's ever thrown my way, as well as his opinion, that American airline carriers are garbage.

Anyway, London is five hours ahead.

NoComment, my silent one, the shy, intense guy I made up in my head, tips on a schedule. I never once thought about it until right now, but I know it the way you know a song; he comes on around eleven, my time, every night, and fades out by one.

I pull up Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday.

All three nights, NoComment came on at midnight my time and was gone by one.

Midnight here is five a.m. in London.

I do the math three times, because I need it to be wrong. It is not wrong. For three nights, my quiet watcher kept London hours. He logged on at London wake-up time and signed off in time for breakfast, in a city five hours away, the exact three nights I booked Elias Thorne into a suite at the Connaught.