“Yeah, I just ran into him.” I shake my head.
“What happened?”
“He freaked out,” I say. It’s the only thing I can manage. “I guess I should go find him.” He’ll be at Mom’s, alone. At least I think he will be. Cross isn’t the type to hit the bars when he’s upset, much as he’d like everyone to think the opposite.
Suri agrees to ride home with Adam and loans me Arnold for the night. A butler fetches Mom’s worn mink and escorts me down the wide, brick walk, to the line of limousines where, years ago, our own driver, Wilson, would have been waiting. The door is opened, and I climb in, feeling weighted.
I lean forward and give Arnold instructions he doesn’t really need.
“We’ll be there in forty minutes or less, ma’am,” he says.
“Thank you, Arnold.”
The divider wall locks into place, and I’m alone under the starry sky, staring out the sunroof, looking for constellations I can’t find because we’re zipping too quickly down the little vineyard road.
A computerized refrigerator offers me a bottle of water and I take it, smirking at the green and blue label: DeVille. This is how my great-grandfather made his fortune. It’s good water. Almost as good as West Bourbon, which I find in the liquor console. I take a deep swig, remembering the taste of Hunter West’s mouth. I wrap the cravat around my wrist. Wrong or right, I’m keeping it.
I’m ashamed to say my mind is still on Hunter when the limousine slows. Arnold lowers the divider, his face taut as he says, “Miss DeVille, please remain inside the vehicle.” The wall goes up, and I feel a weird energy. Also, have we been in the car forty minutes?
I’m not sure what compels me to open my door, but as I step into the road, I think some part of me already knows, because my arms and legs weigh two tons each.
My good eye blinks and I see someone lying on his side in the damp grass just beside the road. Within a heartbeat, I recognize…Cross. At first glance, it looks like he’s simply relaxing. His arms are raised over his head in the position he adopts sometimes while sleeping. His legs are scissored, his pretty mouth parted just a little.
I see blood oozing from his lips.
The dark smear on the asphalt—that’s Cross’s blood.
His bike, a renovated ‘73 Norton Commando Mark III Roadster he loves like a person, is lying in the road beside him.
Chapter 3
Hunter
A few weeks later – Las Vegas
I CAN’T GO back to Love Inc. I know I should, to try to jar my memory of that night, but I can’t. So we’re at Batshit Ranch, a fifteen-thousand-square-foot California red roof on my little patch of sand, just outside the Summerlin community. I own ten-thousand acres out here, and besides grazing some cattle, I don’t do much with them. Some things should be for enjoyment only, and I enjoy staying at my country place. It’s my Vegas home when I need to get away from the bustle of the Wynn.
Marchant and I are in my study, and I’m behind my desk, cradling March’s iPad as I scrutinize the chart his private eye, Dave, put together. I turn the tablet sideways, frowning.
To Catch a Criminal. I flick a withering glance his way. “Enjoying the drama, Radcliffe?”
“Not enjoying,” he says, his voice faintly defensive as he kicks his feet out and crosses his long legs at the ankles. “Just making do. I figured we should have a project name.”
“Right.” I look it over, curious to see the revised list of suspects. I note the absence of two names I’d expected to see: Bill Percy and James Meyers, both deviant little fucks who’ve bruised some of the girls at Love Inc. before.
“Percy wasn’t there that night,” Marchant says, reading my mind. Bill Percy was a prick in college who is now a prick lobbyist for the gambling industry. He got rough with one of Love Inc.’s employees; he claimed he was drunk, and she decided not to press charges. “His wife caught him boinking the housekeeper,” March tells me. “He checked into Bellagio around three. Meyers was at a vaping convention in Virginia, so they’re both in the clear.”
Marchant takes a sip of his whiskey, then rolls up the sleeves of his rumpled button-up. “All in all there are twenty-six suspects, including you and me. Eleven stand out.”
I scan the eleven bolded names. “My guy’s been on Rutherford and Kriss for going on sixteen days. He says they’re both clean as a whistle.”
Marchant passes his almost-empty glass from one hand to the other, looking moody and restless. “I say we drop Rutherford. He likes it weird, but I think that’s only when he fucks Brad. Everyone seems to like it weird with Brad. Devotion to the pacifier does not a kidnapper make,” Marchant mutters.