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As I jived around the floor, my pantleg must have shown flashes of my brightly colored prosthetic. A woman who was bobbing with the music next to a couple of friends pointed toward it. “You can really move even with that thing,” she said over the music.
I flashed a grin and performed a little swift footwork to show off. Hey, I’d never claim I was modest. “Lots of practice. I’ve had it for a long time.”
Her face fell a little, like often happened when I said something like that. “I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “No big deal. The Great White could have taken a lot more. I consider myself lucky.”
Her eyes widened. “Wow.”
As she turned away to murmur to her friends, I had to suppress a laugh. The real story of my leg—that I’d been born missing the lower half—was so mundane that I’d started making up tall tales about it when I was little. Crocodiles, woodchippers, ax murderers—they all got a turn in the spotlight. It was amazing what people would believe if you delivered the story without any sign of pretense.
I wasn’t here to spin fables, though. When the current song wound down, I decided it was time to try my hand at getting answers.
I strolled over to the bar and hopped onto one of the stools. The bartender handed a drink to a guy a few seats down and came over. “What can I get for you?”
Since Logan wasn’t here, I didn’t feel the need to avoid alcohol. “I’ll take a Tom Collins, if you don’t mind.”
She dipped her head. “Coming right up.”
She mixed the drink with deft movements and slid the glass across the counter to me. I took a gulp and raised the glass in a gesture of appreciation. “Nice! Hey, can I ask you a question about the clientele here?”
Her head tipped to the side. “What about them?”
“Just wondered if you recognize this guy—whether he’s a regular. Maybe you even know his name.”
I pulled up the zoomed-in image Dexter had sent to Logan and me that showed Beckett in the club and turned my phone so the screen faced her. “I was here on the weekend and ended up bumping into him, and a paper fell out of his pocket. But by the time I’d picked it up for him, he’d walked off and I couldn’t find him again. I don’t know if it’s important or not, but I realized he was in a photo I took so I figured I might as well ask in case I can get it back to him.”
The woman’s eyebrows rose. She definitely recognized Beckett. But even with that reaction, I wasn’t at all prepared for what she said next.
She raised her chin toward the photo. “Yeah, I know him. Heownsthis place.”
I blinked at her, so startled a stupid question dropped from my mouth before I could catch it. “Are you sure?”
She laughed. “Of course. He came around my first day on the job and introduced himself. Beckett. He usually drops by a couple of times a month to check up on things. If you’ve got that paper, I can make sure it gets back to him.”
I had the wherewithal to pat my pockets and then shake my head at myself. “Crap, I wasn’t expecting something like that. I think I left it back in my dorm.”
The bartender smiled. “Well, bring it around another time, and it’ll be easy enough to pass it on.”
“Thank you,” I said, and sipped my drink as she walked away, my mind spinning.
Beckett didn’t just have a role in a family business that involved real estate. He outright owned one of the most happening clubs in the city.
Was he aware of the criminal element that liked to make use of the place for covert meetups? Could he be tangled up inthatside of the business that went on here?
And if so… what else might he have been getting up to that he hadn’t mentioned to Maddie?
CHAPTERTWENTY
Madelyn
Ispent a couple of days going to all my lectures, doing the lab work, and working on a long research paper, but I couldn’t say I was paying as much attention to any of it as I should. As soon as the weekend came, I drove back home to see Mom.
She was still in the hospital, but I knew from our last call that she was supposed to be released on Sunday. I arrived around noon on Saturday, walked through the same halls as last time, and found her alone in the room, watching something on TV.
I rapped my knuckles lightly against the door before stepping inside so that I didn’t startle her. “Hey, Mom.”
When she turned her face toward me, I had to restrain a flinch. The fresh bruises I’d seen there before had turned a nasty shade of purplish brown, mottling more skin than I remembered. The cut on her forehead was no longer bandaged, stitched up but still uncomfortably stark against the unbroken flesh around it. She looked like she’d gotten into a fight with a Mac truck, which I guessed wasn’t that far from the truth.
