Page 126 of Blue Moon

“You don’t want to find out.”

“Maybe I do.”

Priest chuckled.

“Fuck you,” I told Romeo.

“I’m sure I can find a slot in my schedule for that.”

This man made me want to throw things. Preferably him. Off a cliff. We’d first met a year and a half ago when he tried to poach Suzi Quade from the Nebula. She’d all but signed the contract to perform there for a month when Jezebel got wind of the fact that Romeo had arranged a tête-à-tête with her manager. I’d agreed to take one for the team and stop it, which had involved fucking Romeo Serafini into exhaustion, winding his fancy watch back two hours, setting his phone to Honolulu time, and high-fiving Jez when he slept right through the meeting.

The two of us had been indulging in occasional hate sex ever since. Me and Romeo, not me and Jez. Every few months, I’d stagger out of his bed bruised, pissed off, and annoyingly satisfied, swearing I wouldn’t go back for more, but my inner masochist still hadn’t gotten the message.

“Great, how about we take a nice trip to Lake Tahoe?” I swerved around a Prius with Washington plates driving slowly in the passing lane. Fucking tourists. “I’ll be in your office in ten minutes, and I need Monroe there. We’re looking for a big guy on the security team. Echo will have a list of names for you.”

“And what will you have for me?”

“A right hook.”

34

TULSA

“His name is Anton Hebert.” For once, Romeo didn’t open the conversation with an innuendo or a comment about my ass. “He’s been working here for nearly five years.”

Behind him, Monroe was sitting in a visitor chair, looking faintly nauseated but alive, and also in better shape than I usually ended up after spending time with the biggest dick in Nevada.

“Are you sure about that? The name isn’t on the list of control centre staff.”

“Ninety percent sure. The pieces fit.”

Monroe spoke up. “He was never permanently assigned to the control centre. Just a few days here and there. We needed to keep him out of Ms. Maara’s way this month.”

“Why? She had an issue with him?”

“Not personally. There were a couple of gifts sent here for Ms. Maara. One of them showed up in her dressing room, and we believe somebody entered the backstage area through an internal staff door.”

Romeo huffed. “Hebert put the bag in the dressing room. It’s obvious now.”

“He was meant to be watching the door at the time,” Monroe explained. “When we looked into the matter, another member of staff said that when she walked past, he wasn’t there. So we reassigned him. Ms. Maara’s bodyguard was satisfied with that.”

“Shoulda fired him,” Romeo muttered, and for once, I couldn’t disagree with his high-handedness.

“Luna’s bodyguard probably figured that you vetted your staff.”

“We did. He never put a foot wrong until now. Anton came over from the Luxor, and they gave him a good reference.”

“How long was he there?”

“Eighteen months,” Monroe said. “And before that, he was in the Army.”

The Army? Great. That made a rescue more difficult and also meant he had survival skills.

“Why did he switch jobs?”

“From the Luxor? He mentioned a breakup. I think his ex worked there.”

“Do you have a name?”

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