“Even if I did, why the hell should I do anything for you?” he asked.
“Why do anything for Piper?” Cade asked.
For a second, Lance looked like he didn’t know the answer to that question. He started to answer, changed his mind, and took a drink instead.
“He pays me,” he said. “Why else?”
Cade raised his eyebrows. “Is that all?” He leaned back in the chair and reached into his jacket for his wallet. “I can pay you. How much will it take? Ten grand? Twenty?”
Behind Lance, the dancer on stage drained the bottle of champagne and wrapped up the act to whoops and applause. The DJ lowered the music to a distracting background drone and announced it would be ten minutes till the next act.
Lance licked his lips and stared at the wallet as if Cade had that much in actual twenties stuffed into the leather folds.
“I don’t know. I mean, Piper’s basically got me on retainer. It’s, like, steady employment… I mean, if he finds out—”
“I won’t tell him,” Cade said. He pulled a business card out and pushed it over the table. “Give me a price.”
Marlow provided the pen, rolling a black ballpoint over the table. It bumped to a stop against Lance’s fingers. It took a moment, but he picked it up and clicked it twice in nervous succession.
“I get the money?” he checked. “Whether what I know is helpful or not?”
“As long as you answer our questions the best you can,” Cade said. He tucked his wallet back into his pocket and smiled wryly. “As long as I think your quote is reasonable, of course. I want to know what Piper is up to, but there’s a limit to what any information is worth.”
The tip of the pen hovered over the paper as Lance tried to work out how far to push it. He started to write, the scrawled loop of a dollar sign carved into the shiny card, and then paused as he looked up at Cade.
“He’ll never know, right?” he said. “I know he’s in jail, but he still—”
Lance stopped mid-word as he looked at something over Cade’s shoulder. His face went slack and then flushed, a quick tide of color that didn’t touch his scars.
“Did you see—?” He stopped mid-question and gave Marlow a quick, hard stare. “I know you. You’re Night Shift. I know you. You work for Piper!”
For a bright, suspicious moment, Cade considered the accusation. It would explain… absolutely nothing. In fact, it would raise more questions. The only thing that theory had to recommend it was the punch of adrenaline that paranoia released into the bloodstream.
“Trust me,” Marlow said. “He’d not have me, even if I’d have him.”
He sounded the way he always did when he talked about Piper—the familiar protective guard of his dry humor laced through with something astringent. Regret? Anger? Unresolved sexual tension? Cade wasn’t sure he could tell, with his own emotions in the way of practicalities.
Lance crumpled the card in his hand and threw it at Marlow.
“Fuck you,” he blurted as he bolted to his feet. The backs of his legs hit the chair and knocked it over backward. Lance clutched the pen in his hand, his knuckles white through the taut skin, as he glanced over Cade’s head again. His eye flickered as he tracked something. “I never told youshit. You tell him that. I didn’t tell you anything.”
Cade started to turn around to see if he could pick out what was so interesting. Before he could, Lance snatched up his glass and tossed the dregs of it into Cade’s face. Cheap liquor stung his eyes, and Cade recoiled with a spluttered “Fuck” as he tried to wipe it away on his sleeve.
Through the blur of tears and booze, Cade saw Lance back away from the table.
“Nothing!” the scarred man repeated, his voice cracked with tension. “You tell him that!”
He turned on his heel and bolted toward the back of the club through the maze of scantly occupied tables.
“You get him,” Marlow said as he stood up. He stretched up onto his toes as he scanned the dimly lit club and the clots of customers clustered around the bar. “I’ll see if I can find who spooked him.”
The hem of his T-shirt rode up. The narrow slice of pale skin, drawn taut over lean muscle, made Cade’s mouth go dry. He grimaced at himself—there was a time and place, and this was neither—as he gave his eyes one last scrub.
“The way Lance reacted, the connection he made,” he pointed out. “Whoever he saw—”
“Is Night Shift,” Marlow finished for him. “We already knew that, though. It’s fine.”
“Is it?” Cade asked.
