Darkness Devours (Dark Angels 3)

“Not every woman who has large tits works in a strip club,” I said dryly.

“Oh, I know, but she has the look.”

“There’s a look?”

He nodded. “It’s mainly reserved for those who have been in the business for a while—there’s a world-weariness evident in their eyes.” He indicated her picture. “She’s young here, but she’s got it, which suggests she’d been working at the game for quite a few years before she married Nadler.”

I remembered the impression I’d had that Jacinta Nadler had never been the innocent she made out to be—even at eighteen. “So how do you know so much about strippers and their game?”

He grinned. “Hacking into strip club security cams is an entertaining way to keep the skills up, not to mention have a bit of fun.”

I snorted softly. “Why would a well-to-do businessman risk his reputation by marrying a stripper?”

Stane laughed. “Are you kidding? Look at her. I’m betting Nadler was in his forties when the two of them were hitched. She’s blond and big-breasted—the classic type of woman men like him seem to go for when their midlife crisis happens.”

“Yeah, but they don’t often marry them.” And I’d never thought to ask her how she’d met Nadler, which was stupid because it might have given us another means to find him. I frowned. “Don’t suppose you could do a search on her, and see if you can pull up a bit of history?”

“Tax file records are probably our best bet if we want to know where she worked.”

That had me raising my eyebrows. “You can get into the tax office records?”

He gave me the sort of look a teacher might bestow on a bright but inattentive student. “If I can get into the Directorate records, why would you think I couldn’t get anywhere else? Trust me, the Directorate has the latest and greatest anti-hacking features.”

“But it hasn’t stopped you from accessing their system.”

“Well, no. But it does take me longer these days.” He wheeled across to the other screen and typed for several minutes.

I leaned forward and hit another of the images loading onto the screen. And there, standing beside a glowing Jacinta, was the man who had to be John Nadler.

He wasn’t what I’d expected. He was tall, with thick black hair, an arrogant sort of nose, and lips that were little more than pale slashes in his thin face. His eyes were a cold, hard gray, and his body slender but wiry. He looked mean, I thought, and I wondered what the hell Jacinta had seen in him. Or was he merely a way out of a life she’d hated—a life she’d been forced to return to after he’d all but destroyed her?

“Okay,” Stane said, wheeling back to my side of his bridge. “Search under way. It shouldn’t take that long.”

I indicated the picture on the screen. “Meet Mr. Elusive himself.”

“If his eyes are any indication, he’s not the sort of man you’d want to run into on a dark night.”

“You don’t need to see his eyes to guess that,” I murmured. “Anyone who’d set a soul stealer onto a little girl is someone with very little in the way of compassion or humanity.”

He grunted, flashed the photo onto another screen, then opened it in an app and began to work on it. Within a couple of minutes, we had several different photos of just what Nadler might look like now.

“That one,” Azriel said, pointing at the third image on the screen, “is the Nadler Logan saw. Only he had a small scar near his left temple.”

The image he pointed to was basically a more lined, silver-haired version of the younger Nadler. “Jacinta didn’t mention a temple scar, so Nadler must have acquired that after he’d divorced her.”

Stane glanced at us. “I gather the Logan you’re talking about is Nadler’s lawyer?”

I nodded. “He was murdered last night.”

“Shit.” Stane scraped a hand across his jaw. “This fucker means business.”

“We already knew that.”

“Yeah, but to kill off someone so closely involved in his current business dealings could make a bit of a mess of said dealings.”

“Not necessarily. Logan’s practice wasn’t a solo one, was it?”

“Well, no—”