Page 105 of Blue Moon

“Wish I could. We don’t know where she is.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know where she is?”

“I mean, we can’t find her. I was just about to call you.”

Ryder heard voices in the background, but none of them were Luna’s. His chest began to tighten.

“Either she’s in her hotel suite, or she went somewhere with Randall.”

“She didn’t leave with Randall, and I’m in her hotel suite. She’s not here.”

“You’ve spoken with Randall?”

“No, but I have a man stationed by the elevators, and he said they didn’t come past.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time one of your men missed something. I’ll call Randall.”

Randall was in the office. He hadn’t heard from Luna since the day before, when he’d driven her back to her apartment to pick up a toy Rocky had left behind. Nobody else at Blackwood knew where she was either, but she couldn’t have left the hotel, right? She’d promised she wouldn’t, and Ryder trusted her to keep her word. But if Rocky had been desperate to shit, he could have seen her stepping outside without wanting to bother anyone. He called Romeo again.

“Randall doesn’t have her. Where’s the dog?”

“We don’t know that either.”

For fuck’s sake. “Then she probably took him outside to do his business.”

“I have people searching the grounds, and Derek is checking the cameras.”

“She can’t just disappear.”

“You say that, and yet…she has.”

29

RYDER

When Luna first disappeared, Ryder hadn’t been too worried. More mildly concerned. But after a full sweep of the hotel and grounds had taken place with no sign of her, he was panicking. So was Frank Serafini. Luna’s show that night was sold out, and the star was nowhere to be found.

Romeo had knocked on her door twice, once at ten forty-seven with Alessia, and again at eleven nineteen. When he didn’t get an answer the second time, his gut told him that something wasn’t right, and that was when he’d opened the door with a master keycard. The suite had been undisturbed.

And silent as a grave.

Now Ryder was sitting on Blackwood’s jet, high over the Black Sea as they headed back to join the search. The only person happy with the situation was Elene because she was going to Vegas, just as she’d wanted, albeit in handcuffs. With the money situation still unresolved, Emmy had told him to load her on the plane and they’d worry about the details later. They’d collect Emmy when they stopped in London to refuel, so she had a few hours to come up with a plan.

“We’ll find her,” Ana said, sipping her coffee. “She didn’t vanish into thin air.”

“She isn’t on any camera leaving the hotel, and they’ve pulled the place apart looking for her.”

Luna’s suite was at the end of a hallway, a dead end, and the only way out was through the vestibule that contained the elevators. There was a camera in front of each elevator bank, which also covered the entrance to the emergency stairwell, and she hadn’t left that way. Romeo and his team were checking every room along the hallway, just in case another guest had pulled her inside as she passed, but so far, they’d found nothing. Nobody had heard Rocky’s strange whisper-bark either. Where the hell was the dog?

Information trickled in as they flew over Europe. The last person to see Luna was a waitress, who reported that when she’d collected the breakfast dishes just after eight thirty, Luna had been sitting on the couch, watching TV with the dog beside her. Luna had offered a “Thank you” but hadn’t continued the conversation. And at some point in the two hours between then and Romeo bringing Alessia to see Rocky, she’d vanished.

The police had been called, but despite all the evidence of a stalker combined with Luna’s public profile, they still weren’t taking the report seriously. It didn’t help that Velvet Jones had gone AWOL from her hotel room two months ago, only to reappear beside the Hollywood sign in a bikini, promoting her new fragrance with the slogan “When you’re wearing Velvet, it’s hard to disappear.” Gina was pushing her contacts to help.

Emmy had sent two investigators from the Vegas office, plus Dan, Knox, and Slater were on their way from Virginia. Caro had insisted on coming too, for moral support rather than for any practical reason. Priest-slash-Pale had stepped up, and he was at the hotel with Tulsa. He’d also facilitated a landing slot for the plane and offered to stash Elene out of the way at the Cathouse while everyone else joined the hunt.

Fear clamped around Ryder’s guts. Mark Antony had been threatening for weeks to reclaim Luna. What if he’d been successful?

Five hours since they’d departed Tbilisi, and Emmy was waiting when the jet landed at Northolt in pouring rain. She ran up the steps, dripping water all over the cabin when she got inside.

---