Marchant nods, punching something into his iPhone.
I flip through a few more slides. “Are we still on the ex-boyfriend and the stepbrother?”
We've spent almost two months now paying a couple of Vegas PIs to track people of interest. So far all we've found is Vegas has a total of three decent PIs—and there's no limit to the number of affairs a determined man of means can have. That, and one of Priscilla Heat's screenwriters looks at kiddie p**n . We're hoping Dave, a Vegas local and ex-FBI dude, can help us cover some new ground. Hence this revised list.
“Ex-boyfriend doesn't do anything but a waitress,” Marchant says blandly. “Sarabelle's stepbrother doesn't do anything but Oxy.”
“Tell Dave to keep tracking them. I'll add Michael Lockwood to my list, you add Caleb Zeuss to yours.” Michael Lockwood was one of Priscilla's film crew; he quit his job just a few days after that night; he's come up clean so far, but something about him smells off. Caleb Zeuss is one of the cooks Marchant employs. He was on the clock that night, but no one seems to have seen him. The cameras are useless, because while March was f**king Priscilla for Pimps and Princesses, someone turned them off. The woman working the cameras just assumed the system was down. Naturally, when she tried to convey this to Marchant, he did not want to be interrupted.
I hand Marchant his iPad and pull out my smart phone, blinking at a new text.
“Cumming to your place tonight. Bringing a surprise. ~P”
I squeeze my eyes shut, opening them some seconds later to find Marchant out of his leather chair and standing in front of my desk. He leans over, pressing his palm against the sleek oak. "You doing alright? You look amped.”
I glower. “Thanks.” I'm not doing coke, which March should know, but I'm sure as shit not justifying anything to him.
“You sleeping okay?”
I snicker. Marchant drains his glass and rolls his brown eyes. He slinks back to his arm chair, reminding me momentarily of the Pink Panther. “You gotten any more calls from Smith?” he asks me. Josh Smith is the LVPD's lead detective on this case, and he's been on me like white on rice since the morning we called to report Sarabelle's disappearance.
I toss back the remainder of liquor in my glass and stand, stretching my sore legs. “I think he's finally gotten the hang of calling Lehland," my attorney.
“What about your old man?” Marchant asks.
“His people have stopped calling, too. I guess they've got all their fires put out.” No one but Josh Smith and a few others from Love Inc. and Heat Enterprises know Sarabelle disappeared from my room in particular. Given the political sensitivities, it needs to stay that way.
Marchant, on the other hand, has been all over the news. His business hasn't suffered at all. In fact, he says it's picked up. Bunch of sick f**ks out there.
His phone buzzes, and I feel a jab of guilt. He should be at work. He's busy, week night or not. I should have met him there.
Now I have to get him out of here before Priscilla shows up. He has no idea what's going on between the two of us, and I'd like to keep it that way for a while longer.
Twenty minutes later, I'm on the balcony attached to my room, pretending to read The Financial Times on my tablet and wishing Priscilla would hurry the hell up.
My life has been f**ked up this way ever since that night with Sarabelle. I woke up the next morning stark naked, sprawled out on my back, with a splitting headache, a killer case of dry-mouth, and a lipstick heart drawn around my left nipple. When I sat up, the room tilting around me, I spotted a yellow note stuck to the nightstand by the king-sized bed. Large, feminine handwriting I recognized from the note the night before looped around the page.
“Last night, the Hunter was hunted. Do you remember how hard I made you cum? xo, P”
I didn't remember, but I'd been roofied before, and I knew what the hangover felt like. Not sure what I'd done with Priscilla Heat and hoping to hell and back that the answer was nothing, I slung my clothes on and left without giving Sarabelle a second thought.
I got the call from Marchant on my phone about an hour later. “Did you take Sarabelle with you?”
Now, sitting outside on this dry Nevada night, I take a sip of my brandy, remembering how suffocated I'd felt sitting beside Marchant in the private waiting room inside the LVPD. How ill I'd been, hearing that another escort had gone missing a few weeks before. Ginnifer Lucky, a 22-year-old from Arkansas. Vanished just after her last shift at another brothel. I had an alibi for that night in August, but Marchant didn't. It had been his night off, and he'd spent it at his private home in Summerlin.
Neither of us answered any of their questions. LVPD didn't need to know anything except that Sarabelle fell asleep in my room and I awoke the next morning to find her gone. I was back at the Wynn two hours later, and I was even more worried. I had no idea what had happened to Sarabelle, and the shit I did know didn't add up.
Donnie, the escort who'd brought me the drugged drinks, confirmed they came from Priscilla herself. According to the sticky note I'd found in my room the day after, I had f**ked her that night, but I didn't remember doing so before I got the drinks, and afterward I'd been drugged to f**k and back. I could have performed in my juiced-up state, but it seemed unlikely. Had she really come into my room after filming all night with Marchant for a sunrise f**k with a man she roofied? What would be the point of that, anyway? Some kind of ridiculous fetish?
The biggest question was whether or not I was the only person in my room when she arrived.
If so, then who had taken Sarabelle?
The person who'd tried to send Marchant an S.O.S. about the camera malfunction was an escort named Geneese Loveless. Richard, March's head of security, had been out with the flu, and with Rach away at her sister's funeral and March chasing his dick, Loveless had volunteered. I know Loveless well—I used to be one of her regulars—and I can vouch for her trustworthiness. She wouldn't hurt Sarabelle, and she sure as hell wouldn't have let someone rig the camera system.
It's always possible that Sarabelle got up and walked away on her own, but Bella, who roomed next door to her in the manor where the escorts live, confirmed that Sarabelle never returned to her room that night. She didn't even have her purse when she was in the room with me. She didn't have her phone or her car keys, so she couldn't have left. Clearly, someone took her. Who—and why?
I spent the two weeks after that night trying to track down Priscilla. When she finally surfaced, the shit really hit the fan.
I check my watch and stroll into my bedroom, remembering the night Priscilla surprised me here. I had stepped out of the bathroom, near naked from my shower and planning to hit the hay. I sensed company before I saw her, and I stepped toward the cabinet beside my bed. I keep a loaded