Page 56 of The Devil Went Down to Laughlin
Pru blinked. “How?”
“I just heard her in my mind. She said she’s under one of the towers at the Aquarius Hotel.”
In any other sort of circumstances, saying such a thing out loud probably would have prompted an uneasy chuckle from the other party, along with a query as to whether he was feeling all right.
Now, though, Ty and Pru both understood they were working with forces that couldn’t always be easily explained.
In fact, Ty gave a nod, as if this bit of information had provided an important piece of the puzzle.
“Of course,” he said. “We just discovered that the hotel was built on top of one of the river’s power centers. Even though demons have a difficult time with the river’s energy, if August Sellers has been able to harness it somehow — even partially — then he would have been able to create an effective prison somewhere on the hotel’s grounds.”
“Delia said she was under the hotel,” Caleb told him, and the other man shrugged again.
“Then we’ll have a better idea of where to start.”
“How will we know which tower, though?” Pru asked.
Again, a valid question…although Caleb thought he already knew the answer.
“Sellers would want to keep her close,” he said. “So I’m pretty sure she must be underneath the tower where his office is located.”
“Let me check on that,” Pru said.
She pulled her laptop out of her satchel, which she’d slung over the back of one of the chairs in the dining area. A few seconds of typing, and then she gave a satisfied nod.
“All the corporate offices are in the north tower,” she announced. “So I guess we know where we’re going.”
Yes, now they knew where they were headed…even if Caleb had absolutely no idea what they’d do once they got there.
They’d been to the Aquarius just the day before, but it still felt as if a hundred years must have passed since then. Now they knew where Delia was — well, a ballpark idea, anyway — and Pru thought she had a notion as to what they should do next.
“I’m sure the lower levels are off-limits to guests,” she said. “Most of the time, though, those sorts of places only have keycard access, which should be easy enough to circumvent.”
“How?” Caleb asked. They’d gotten a table in a corner at the Cove Bar, figuring they needed to have some sort of base of operations, although they knew better than to order anything stronger than some iced tea or soda. “Or do you have some computer hacking experience I don’t know about?”
For all he knew, maybe she did, although he’d mainly gotten the impression from Delia that Pru’s main private detective superpower was knowing which databases to access to find a particular piece of information. None of it was illegal, but quite a few of them required a P.I. license before you could go poking around in there.
“Unfortunately, no,” she said. “I was thinking of something a little more hands-on.”
“Such as?” Ty responded. His expression was both dubious and wary, as if he’d guessed what she was probably up to but was sort of hoping it might turn out to be something different.
“Ye olde ‘bump and snatch,’” she said. “I dated a guy for a while who was a pickpocket. You would not believe how much money he made off tourists who were careless with their purses and their wallets.”
Caleb grinned. “Oh, I can guess. Considering how crowded the streets in Las Vegas usually are, he probably did around low six figures, right?”
She smiled back at him, pointedly ignoring the outraged look on Ty’s face.
Well, angels — and half angels — tended to be a bunch of goody two-shoes.
“Sometimes more than just ‘low,’” Pru replied. “He had a fence who would help him get rid of the watches and the jewelry. You’d think a person would be smart enough not to be walking around in a crowd wearing a Rolex worth twenty-five grand, but people’s cluelessness continues to amaze me.”
“And the plan?” Ty asked, now sounding positively testy.
“I’ll go out in the casino and look for people wearing lanyards. If they’re ID-ing themselves that way, then I’ll know they must work for Aquarius’s corporate offices in the north tower. All I have to do is brush by one who looks like they’re really not paying attention, and voilà! I’ll have instant access to the lower levels.”
She stood up then and straightened the hem of her shirt.
“Be careful,” Caleb warned her. “The last thing we need to deal with right now is bailing you out for petty larceny.”
