Page 89 of Blind Luck

“Latex and make-up,” she said. “Assuming he isn’t allergic to latex.”

“So you’d let him in on the secret?”

“Latex and make-up and propofol.” Sheesh. “We need a stand-in,” she continued. “All we have to do is find a guy with the right build, transform him into Cole, break into Uncle Mike’s house, and make the video.”

“Oh, that’s all?”

She either didn’t pick up on the sarcasm or chose to ignore it. “And I’ll add a little surprise to the file when I upload it to Amber Road.”

“What kind of surprise?”

“A Trojan. We’ll have access to his IP address, his webcam, his whole hard drive.”

“If he’s good enough with computers to know his way around the dark web, won’t he spot a Trojan?”

“People use the dark web for different reasons. I don’t think Ace is a hacker.”

“Oh?” Ari asked as my spidey senses tingled. “So why is he there?”

“I’ll keep that to myself for now. Believe it or not, I actually hope I’m wrong on this one.”

Ari stiffened beside me. “Is it worse than hiring thugs to beat up an innocent man?”

The cat nodded.

“And if Erin’s theory is correct, we think Ace is a member of the Fuller family, right? Is he dangerous? Because Selene’s stuck in an apartment with Jace Fuller until we can get her out of there.”

“Do you have a plan for that?”

“We’re working on it, but she rarely seems to leave the hotel, and it’s not as if we can storm in and drag her out of there.”

“I mean, you could.”

“Okay, we’re not going to. For her sake, we have to do this with as little drama as possible.”

We’d spent the day researching Jace’s and Selene’s movements, the types of places they went together, and we’d earmarked three possible events where Jace might take his wife along as arm candy. Then we could free her from his clutches. The soonest took place on Friday, the opening of a new show on the Strip. Kelsey would try to glean more information from Jace about their movements.

On-screen, the cat shrugged. Did actual cats shrug? I wasn’t too sure.

“Up to you,” Alexa said, and then she disappeared. Was a goodbye really too much trouble?

Ari turned to me with a hopeful smile.

“So… How do you think Rusty would feel about latex and make-up?”

“No propofol?”

“No propofol.”

***

Rusty said yes. Of course he said yes.

Kelsey was okay with doing architect stuff around Jace, but she drew the line at staying at the Neptune overnight. Not when Jace had access to a master key. Even with the chain on her door, she couldn’t sleep, so after one restless night, she’d begun coming back to Mav’s house. Which meant Rusty was sleeping in the race car bed. Yes, he could have moved permanently into the master suite, but Kelsey would probably think that was weird, seeing as we were dating, and nobody wanted to land Rusty in the doo-doo. We’d told her most of the truth, but she didn’t need to know he’d originally come to Vegas because of doubts over her fidelity.

And I didn’t mind sharing a room with Rusty. Maybe I even liked it.

I liked curling against him on the princess bed while we watched a movie. I liked having his arms around me. I liked the soft kisses as I fell asleep.

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