Page 45 of Lucky or Knot
Sean produced a lighter, eyed me with his brows furrowed, and said, “Okay, we’ll come back to the favors, but I really don’t know much. I think they went to the house last night after the chair thing. His limo left. And your guy’s not around this morning. I guess he went too.”
Just hearingyour guy, Raven referred to by someone else, made my heart skip a beat. Gods. I needed to get a grip.
Raven had been moved, okay, that sucked, but I’d suspected as much. Of course, that was the best case scenario, that he’d been sitting tight-lipped and frightened in that limo. Worst case…
I couldn’t. Not if I wanted to function. I pushed it back, pushed it down, forced myself to focus on the here and now.
The lighter clicked, Sean inhaled deeply, and a plume of smoke trailed past me, borne on a fitful little breeze that whistled mournfully around the corner of the garage.
“He hasn’t canceled the party, as far as I know,” Sean said after another deep inhale, in that weird, suffused, holding-a-lungful stoner voice. “Still happening tomorrow night. And—”
He broke off in a raw-sounding coughing fit, smoke exploding everywhere, and I winced, ground my teeth together, and felt my eyes begin to glow.I will not shake it out of him. I will not rip his fucking face off.
“I can’t get you in,” he said at last, right as I thought I might burst into flame myself. “There’s no way. Everyone’s ID gets checked. You talk to MacKenna about that job yet?”
Fuck.
“I will in a minute,” I said. What the hell. Now I’d need to ask Declan if he could get me into the party, anyway, since I knew from the tone of Sean’s voice that if I pushed him any further on this, I’d lose what little help he’d still be willing to give me. So I might as well annoy Declan once instead of twice. “Right now I need the first favor. A smaller one,” I added, as he shot me a look. “I need you to make a call from your phone.”
I took out my phone and pulled up Raven’s number, messaging it to Sean. “Call the number I just sent you and say you’re a scheduler needing to change a massage appointment,” I said. “Put it on speaker. And then ask if he has a minute to talk to a manager.”
Hopefully the tone of Raven’s voice and his response to that would let me know if it’d be safe to take the phone and talk to him myself. Not the greatest plan, but it was all I had. Calling him from my own phone was too damn risky.
Sean shook his head, but he got his phone out and poked at the screen.
“I’m calling your guy, aren’t I,” he said. “Fuckin-A. Youowe me a job. And those drinks.”
He dialed, hit the speaker button, and took a hit off his joint.
One ring. Two. My heart thrummed, and I held my breath.
Click. “This mobile customer is not available,” said a bland, tinny recording. “Thank you.”
And the line went dead.
I nearly keeled over dead myself, the sun-baked asphalt of the alley and Sean’s concerned face and the condoms on the fence flapping in the breeze all going spinny for a second.
Cunningham had taken Raven’s phone. Somehow, I hadn’t expected that, even though I should have.
“You think he switched providers?” Sean said, and I choked on something between a laugh and a groan. “Or, you know, not?”
“Not,” I ground out. “Thanks for trying. Give me a minute, okay?”
“Okay,” he said dubiously.
Okay. Another sign that Raven was now an actual prisoner changed nothing. It simply meant I’d have a harder time getting to him, and I’d never expected it to be easy.
I switched over to a new message to Declan. He’d say no. But I still had to ask. Anyway, if I ended up storming Cunningham’s mansion after all, I wouldn’t have another chance to keep my promise to Sean, so no time like the present.
Hey, sorry to bother you. Cunningham’s having a big party at Audacity tomorrow night. Are you invited? Any chance you can get me a plus one? I need to get in there. It’s urgent. Also, a dude I know needs a valet job. Is the Morrigan hiring? I owe him. He’s all right, just kind of a stoner.
The message went through, Sean lit up a second joint, and I breathed shallowly and waited.
Within a minute, much sooner than I’d expected given Declan’s busy schedule, the phone buzzed in my hand.
Let me guess, that valet works at Audacity and already tried to get you in, and that’s why you owe him, Declan sent, proving once and for all that he was a lot smarter than me—if the fact that he owned a major casino hotel and a successful strip club and I worked on the stage of said strip club hadn’t already made it clear.Every valet in Vegas is a stoner. I was when I was one. Tell him to send his resume to my attention, it’ll go on the top of the interview pile.
After a second, another message came in.
