Doc - A Club Alias Novel

“Really? Do tell. I thought he was just being his normal paranoid self,” I reply, knowing our man Brian, aka Knight when at Club Alias, has been extra precautious around town, since his woman Clarice finally lives here. They’d been long-distance best friends for years, so he was never this bad at home before. He saved his crazy for our mercenary missions, and his were usually out of state.

“What seemed at first to be like a rich kid party house has suspicious activities happening.”

“Like what?” I ask, taking a seat in one of the chairs in front of the desk, and he takes his seat behind it.

“Well,” he begins, “no one comes as couples. All the women show up first, and then about two hours later, all the men start to arrive. And for some reason, I don’t think it’s because there’s wallflower gender segregation going on at the school dance.”

“So what are you thinking?”

Seth leans back in his chair and puts his glasses back on. “Well, looking a little more closely, all the girls come in street clothes and end up leaving all dolled up. The men show up already lookin’ fly. I hate to say it, because it’s not the 1800s anymore, but I’m thinking it’s a brothel. Some real Westworld shit happening. Or in our century, some kind of escort service or prostitution ring.”

“I mean, that’s not really our forte. We deal in justice and retribution and usually leave this kind of thing up to the police,” I remind him.

“Yeah, well, you know how sensitive Brian is about anything dealing with human trafficking after the bust he had to make in Nashville. So we’re just gonna keep a close eye on it and hope nothing bad happens.”

“Good idea,” I say, “and the second anything looks more than suspicious, as in substantial evidence we could turn in to our buddies at the station, you let me know.”

“Will do, Doc,” he replies.

I scrub a hand down my face then look at my watch. I have to get to my first appointment soon. “Anything else on our mercenary side?”

He shrugs. “We got paid for the Johnson case. Oh, and I’m still going through the databases looking for a few new men. Now that all our field guys are married off with women who don’t want us to put ourselves in danger, with kids and babies on the way, we have got to find some good fits for both the security side and the merc side to handle the ones our ladies deem too risky.”

I nod. “Use that magical technological genius brain of yours to line me up a stack,” I tell him, standing from my chair.

He cracks open a premixed protein drink and tears off the seal. “And you use your magical psychology brain to weed out the crazies. I mean, you did a pretty good job the first time around.” He grins.

“Did I though?” I eye him.

He just chuckles, and I wave over my shoulder as I head out the door.When lunchtime rolls around, I grab my gym bag from the back seat of my truck I put there this morning and head inside. I see my Audi in the parking lot, which means Astrid beat me here. When I walk through the door, Johnna and a new employee greet me, and as she teaches her how to scan my card, I look around, not seeing my girl.

“If you’re looking for your lady, she’s already upstairs, Doc. She’s been here for about an hour already,” Johnna tells me.

“Oh really?” I flip my phone to my messages, not seeing anything from her since the one of her replying Okay :) to the one I sent telling her I’d be taking the 12:00 lunch hour instead of 11:00 because of an appointment that ran over.

“Yeah, I think she said she was going to try a yoga class today to stretch before y’all work out,” she replies.

“Nice. Thanks.” I walk around the reception desk and climb the steps, my eyes scanning the second floor. I’ve never taken a yoga class before, but I know the studios are somewhere to the left past all the cardio machines.

Spotting the double fogged-glass doors etched with Yoga Studio, I head that way, and when I reach them, I open one just a crack to peek in, not wanting to disturb the class. But what I find is this super Zen waiting area, and I step inside. At the back of the dim room is a curtained wall with a big glass lantern set on the floor that’s full of tall off-white battery-powered candles. On either side of the twelve-foot wide space are cubbies for people’s bags and shoes. There are cushioned benches with pillows that match the black-out curtains over the windows, and there are more fake candles and a diffuser on top of a shelving unit full of towels. There are two more frosted doors, one on either side of the room, each etched with Yoga Studio 1 and Yoga Studio 2, and there’s another cabinet next to the second door that says Cold Lavender Towels for Hot Yoga on a placard, which means it must be a refrigerator or freezer.