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I limped up to the threesome and Lance glanced at me. “God, woman, you are out of shape.”
I ignored him and made eye contact with Rick, who nodded at the stranger. “He’s a private eye. Won’t say who he works for.”
“It’s not against the law to follow someone.” The old guy spit on the ground, then looked at me as if I was the criminal.
Lance stepped closer to the vehicle. “I’ve got his name and tag number. I’ll make some calls.” He yawned, obviously disappointed. No doubt he’d wanted a fight, a chance to liven up his Wednesday with something more than a senior citizen with a saliva problem. He opened the Tahoe’s passenger door and the old guy whirled around.
“Hey!”
“Easy.” Rick caught the man’s arm and held him in place, his fingers biting into the man’s leathery flesh. “Just stay right there.”
Lance leaned inside the vehicle. When he straightened, he held an insurance card in his hand, satisfaction stamped on his face. “MJS Holdings owns this car.”
The name meant nothing to me. I turned to Rick, who still had one hand clamped around the man, the other on his phone, his thumb working over the display. “Give me a minute... Got it.”
He looked up. “MJS Holdings is an asset management company.”
Lance shut the car door, the insurance card still in hand. “What assets do they manage?”
“Looks like real estate across the state and casinos.” Rick’s last word caught my attention, the tightness on his face held it. “They own The Majestic.”
“The Majestic,” Lance repeated. “So... Dario Capece.”
Rick nodded. “Dario Capece. Or maybe… his wife?”
They turned to me, their eyebrows lifted in question. Between them, the old geezer smirked.
* * *
Rick put his hands on his hips and looked at me as if I had the key to the Dario Capece vault of understanding. “This is fucking bullshit. Following you? What the fuck for?”
Lance ran a rough hand through his hair. “You think this is about us? Or her?”
I sank into Rick’s couch. “It can’t be about me. I walked him in and brought him a drink. That was it.”
“He hasn’t contacted you since?”
I frowned. “Since a couple of days ago? No.”
“You are pretty sexy.” Rick leaned against the stone column that helped divide the living and dining room. “Maybe he’s smitten.”
I coughed out a laugh. “Smitten? What are we, in eighteenth-century England? No. But thank you for the compliment.” I blew him a kiss and he tipped an imaginary cap in response. Prying off my sweaty heels, I flopped my bare feet up on the couch. “Is this a valid excuse to be late to work? Because I still need to eat and shower.”
Lance frowned and completely ignored me. “Maybe he’s trying to get dirt on us. Maybe we’re all being followed.”
The room fell silent in the face of this new possibility. I shifted against the leather, half-pleased at the possibility that I wasn’t the main target. I was also half-disappointed, which made no sense, as there was no good situation that involved me being the sole focus of a surveillance operation.
Rick shifted his attention back to me. “Bell, you said you were coming from a friend’s house, right? Who, specifically?”
I lifted one shoulder and freed my hair, which had gotten pinned underneath me. “A guy I’m sleeping with. My stats professor.”
“Wow.” Lance looked down at his hands. “We just dived right into that.”
I shrugged. “It’s the age of sexual empowerment, Lance. I’m not ashamed of it.”
Rick shook his head. “Dario Capece doesn’t care about a college professor, so it’s not about that.”
In the back of my mind, something nagged at me. I tried to capture it, but Lance’s phone rang, and it was gone.
* * *
I laid in bed, my hair still damp from my shower, wide awake at four a.m. Somewhere else in the house, I heard the quiet sounds of a sitcom, one which would probably play all night.
It had been a good shift at work. Some big winners, the sort who tipped heavy and laughed a lot. Some big losers, but the kind who didn’t bitch about it and could afford the loss. I’d earned just over three hundred bucks and had forgotten—for those ten hours—the creepy smile of the private investigator. Dario Capece. Or maybe… his wife? When the PI had smirked, I’d wanted to shove him against the car, wrap my hands around his neck, and force him to tell me everything. I’d almost lost control and ignored the fact that I was such a tiny, vulnerable kitten in a city full of beasts.
I thought of Dario Capece’s loose and confident stance, the way he had stood at that railing and watched me approach, his eyes moving over me and stopping at my eyes, holding his gaze there. I couldn’t get that look out of my head, the moment between us, the pull of that contact.
