He laughed. “For the right price, hell yeah, I’m selling. I’ll make my own damn club. From the ground up,” he huffed.
“How much?”
He wrote down a number and handed it to me. “You offer me that much, and hell, I’ll read the entire damn attendees list to you in Japanese. Tell you what their favorite colors are and where their mothers live. I don’t care.”
I studied the number, then stood. It was overpriced, but it wasn’t out of my reach. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He waved me away. “Don’t make me dream, man.”
I texted Zaid to let him know I was on the way. The drive was long, but with the lack of traffic this early in the morning, I arrived at Mount Charleston quickly. It had been a few weeks since I had seen the house, a place I had called my home for years. The succulent garden out front looked bigger than I remembered, but that was my imagination.
I knew I could walk in, but I knocked instead. It wasn’t my home anymore. It was theirs.
Heather, Zaid’s girlfriend, opened the door. Though Heather and Hazel were sisters, the two were opposites physically. Heather had a toned, athletic frame from her hiking hobby. Hazel was naturally thin, despite her apparent obsession with candy. Heather was a brunette with long barrel curls. Hazel had shoulder-length platinum blond hair. But the sisters had the same blue-green eyes.
“Grant!” she said. She gave me a hug. It was disorienting to observe such a change in her demeanor. The last time I had truly spoken with her, we had driven mostly in silence to visit Hazel at the clinic. I pat her back once. “Zaid’s in the fireplace room. I’ll see if Donna can fix you something.”
She disappeared into the house, and I went to find Zaid. A large room on the second floor with bookshelves, art, and a small bar sat overlooking the woods. A cardboard box rested on the chaise lounge. Zaid was standing next to the fireplace, tending to it.
He gestured at the box. “The surveillance equipment is in there. How’s Hazel?”
“Someone has been sending her anonymous messages,” I said.
“The nature?”
“Non-threatening.” That was my automatic response. Technically, they weren’t threatening. There were no words attached to the messages. Only photographs of Hazel from varying distances.
But the fact that some of the pictures were taken inside of Club Hades disturbed me. Someone was hunting her from within our group. Toying with her.
“It unnerves you,” Zaid said, reading my expression.
“The person was inside of the club,” I explained. Which was part of why I was here. Not only to pick up the equipment, but something else. “This is your last chance to take back the money.”
“Every last cent of that sum is yours,” he said, his tone stern. “What’s the purchase you’re undertaking?”
I told him about buying Club Hades from Larry, showing him the sum Larry had requested, explaining Larry had stated thatthatwas the only way I could get the list of attendees.
“That’s overpriced,” Zaid said, “but you’ll still have a significant portion leftover.”
Which was the only reason I was even considering it. My mom would never need to ask for anything, and Hazel and I could live in that apartment for decades if we wanted. Or have the means to buy elsewhere.
Buying a house wasn’t on my radar. But with the money Zaid had given me from the sale of Veil Security Services, I could buy Hazel a house, and my own too, in prime Las Vegas real estate.
“Ask Lily for help getting the place running. She’s good at management,” Zaid said. “And Kiley can assist in going over the list of attendees.” I had seen the two of them at Club Hades, sitting at a table by Hazel and her friend; I wondered if either of them had seen anything strange. Kiley and I tolerated each other, but Lily had always been kind to me. It would be interesting to work with them.
Heather entered, carrying a tall glass of lemonade, one of my favorites from living here with Donna as the house manager. She handed it to me, then took her place by Zaid. He motioned with three closed fingers towards the ground, and she kneeled by his side. He rubbed her neck, and she leaned into his touch.
“How’s my sister doing?” Heather asked.
“She’s…” I wanted to saysurviving, but I doubted that was the word Heather wanted to hear describing her sister. “She’s sleeping.”
“Ah,” she said. She looked up at Zaid, then turned to me. “We were thinking that school might be a good option for her.”
“School?”
“College. That sort of thing. Whatever the local university is around here,” Heather said. Zaid beamed down at Heather, his fingers dancing along her collar.
“I have a friend who can tutor her,” Zaid said.
