Page 66 of Daddy P.I. 3.0

I bounce in his lap. “Always up for those, Daddy.”

“That’s my enthusiastic little girl. Let me clear off the desk, then my amazing little love is going to bend over and get her ass up so Daddy has a good, clear target.”

“Yes, Daddy!”

Laughing, soft and wicked, Daddy helps me off his lap and starts moving everything off his desk.

nineteen

LOGAN

The second stakeoutstarts off the same as the first. Me and Mac in a darkened, empty club with our overnight bags under our arms.

I’m determined this stakeout won’t end the same as the first one. I have better tools this time. In my bag, there’s a care package from Max with fancy equipment nestled carefully in foam. I’m not even sure what all the little machines do but Max is already yapping away in my ear. He’ll talk me through them all.

Mac and I set up in the kitchen: unfolding cots and unrolling our sleeping bags. I check the locks, which don’t look tampered with. It’s been a few days since anything’s been stolen but even before that, the few locks at the club never looked forced. Joker’s B is either getting in some other way or has a Master’s degree in lock-picking.

“What the fuck is that?” Max asks in my ear.

I look up from the bags I’m unloading on my cot. Mac is standing in the middle of the room, panning his phone around so Max can see the room’s details.

“What?” I ask.

“That huge fucking vent in the ceiling,” Max says.

I look up at the white slat-covered vent. “Oh, yeah, Sacrum’s HVAC system dates back to the Victorian era.”

“Lo, do the HVAC vents run to every part of the club?” Max asks.

“Most of it. Definitely the dungeons, changing rooms, bathrooms, and hallways. Not sure about the office. I don’t think there’s a vent in there, actually, because it has a window-unit air conditioner.”

“Take the wizard wand out of my toolkit and hold it up toward the vent,” Max says. Keys clack in the background.

“Maxie, there’s no way a person could get through those vents.”

Mac rubs his chin. “Could if they were a child. Or a very small woman.”

I eye the vent. He’s crazy. The vent cover is maybe one foot square. You’d have to be part cat to get your shoulders through it.

I unpack Max’s box o’ tricks and find the wand. If it’s a wizard wand, it’s the world’s shortest wizard wand. It’s maybe five inches long and an inch around, tapering slightly at one end. It’s matte black. I swear, Max must custom-order all his cool toys from the same supplier. I bet he and De Leon jerk off together over the catalogue.

I pick it up and a ring of blue light runs around the fat end of the wand.

“Hold it up to the vent,” Max says.

When I do, beeping erupts in my ear.

“Fuck,” Max says. “Get a ladder and get that vent cover off. There’s something with a localized signal broadcasting from the vent.”

I look at Mac. Mac looks back at me. We both grimace. If there’s a camera up in that vent, no wonder Joker’s B knew exactly what we’ve been doing. They were watching us the whole time.

I hand the wizard wand to Mac and trudge off to get my ladder.

When I remove the vent cover and a hundred years of dust lands in my face, I find a square white box taped to the vent cover with electrician’s tape.

“Damn,” Mac says.

“Mommy cam,” Max says. “Cheap. Good range of vision. Bad news, I can’t trace the signal back to a phone number because it runs through a cloud app. Potentially good news is that those things chew through batteries, so Joker’s B would need access to it frequently to replace the batteries. That means they’re moving around through the vents, Lo.”

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