Page 21 of Blind Luck

“Twenty-five bucks an hour, plus an allowance for food and drink.”

“Thirty plus food and drink.”

I suppressed a smile. “The budget would stretch to that.”

Jerry said the budget was generous, didn’t she? I had no idea how much she earned for jumping out of airplanes and shooting people, but I figured the money must be good.

“Okay, I’m listening,” Kina said.

“How much of the day and night do you think you’d be able to cover?”

“All we have to do is sit here and watch for the guy?”

“Ideally, we need a better photo of him, and if it’s safe,you could follow him to his car if he has one and make a note of the licence plate. Unless you can identify him from the photo we have—if you do that and it checks out, I’ll pay you five hundred bucks right now.”

Kina looked at the other two girls, and they both nodded.

“We could cover the full twenty-four hours. There’re usually four of us, but Billie’s working at the moment. We’ll make sure there’s always one of us here. You’re paying cash, right?”

I grinned at her. “Of course.”

“Then you have a deal. Where’s the picture?”

On my phone. I scrolled through to the fuzzy security image Jerry had sent me and handed it over. The three women gathered around to take a look.

Finally, Kina shook her head. “I don’t know him. This is the only photo you have?”

“Unfortunately.”

“You need to send it to me so I can show Billie.”

“Discretion is important here.”

“Hey, I can do discretion. I slept with three Hollywood actors and never told a soul.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Man, that was a night.”

We exchanged contact details and agreed that I’d swing by with cash each day in payment for their services. If they saw Jimmy in the meantime, they’d call me immediately. Then I returned to my room to plan tomorrow’s schedule. Assuming the background check came back clean, I’d team Erin up with Rusty. Usually, she handled surveillance just fine—she’d tailed several cheating spouses with me, both male and female—but when things went unexpectedly wrong as they had today, she panicked and didn’t know how to handle the situation. She’d never been to high school. She’d never had to deal with mean girls before.

But I thought she was ready for this. Over the past few months, I’d watched her change not just physically—she’d begun growing her hair, toned down her make-up, and lost the nose stud—but mentally. She was stronger now. Happier.

Years in this job had made me a good judge of character. My experience with Haven’s sperm donor had been a wake-up call, and I’d learned a lot about people and their personalities since then. I had a feeling Rusty would be a steadying influence on Erin. And by working together, the two of them would avoid arousing Kelsey’s suspicions. A woman would always notice a lone man following her around, especially when he was wearing a dumb disguise like sunglasses and a ball cap and pretending he was doing anything but stalking her. But a couple was non-threatening. All Erin had to do was keep Rusty company and follow Kelsey into any spaces he couldn’t go. She thought she could have a private conversation with her sidepiece in the ladies’ bathroom? Think again. Erin would be there with her listening ears.

And I’d be free to chase down other leads. We had four so far—two good, two not so good. Jerry’s team had identified one of the men who visited Cole’s home as Shane Wallins, a Las Vegas resident who used to make deliveries for a local coke dealer. The Sad Hatter had gone to prison, I knew that much, but where had Shane been between then and—presumably—the morgue? Jerry hadn’t elaborated on his current whereabouts, but I figured if he was available for a conversation-slash-interrogation, we’d have more information than we did currently.

Alexa was still working on the possible-Russian-thug angle, but with no biometric data on file for either of those two men, it was possible they’d entered the country illegally. Plus one of the guns used had been reported stolenin Boise three years ago. The burglary case was cold, the file barely a page of jotted notes.

That left the MC connection for me to follow up…

Tomorrow, I’d pay a visit to a guy who rode with the Diamondback Devils.

CHAPTER 7

RUSTY

“You’re gonna think I’ve lost my mind, but is it okay if a couple of girls stay over in your house?”

Rusty had checked the time difference, and Norway was nine hours ahead of Las Vegas. It was already Sunday over there. He’d spent the whole of Saturday considering his options, wondering whether he’d be crazy to accept Ari’s offer, but there’d been no sign of Kelsey and stress-eating French fries wasn’t helping his fitness levels.

Mav cackled. “Acoupleof girls? Nice work, buddy.”

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