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Thane blinked. It would be funny, it really would, if it didn't pose a huge breach of client privacy. He nodded slowly, his thumb still stroking his lip. “So, you eavesdropped on a private conversation, then snooped through your dad's car to get the directions. That leads me to my second question: how did you get into the club without a membership card?”
Number one, the girl with the bright blue eyes, was evidently Amy. She slipped her hand into her purse and pulled out a black credit card-sized piece of plastic that was identical to his own. Waggling it at him, she crooned, “I was a bad girl and borrowed my stepmom's. She won't mind; we share everything anyway.” That last part held a belligerent tone that stirred his Dom into waking.
Liam strode across the room and behind the bar, looking a little frazzled at the edges. He slapped the shelf down, picked up his polishing cloth, and headed straight for Thane. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Reinforcements have just arrived, so our regularly scheduled activities can get right back on track. What can I get you, Thane?”
Thane leaned forward and snagged the stolen membership card out of Amy's fingers. All three girls started to protest, but he shut them up with a hard glare of disapproval before turning on his stool to hand it to Liam. “Might want to make sure this gets back to its rightful owner, Liam. Big blue eyes over here has just admitted to stealing it and using it to access the club.”
Even as Liam's face lost all its color, his gray eyes darkened to damn near black. “I beg your pardon?”
“What's your stepmom's name?” Thane asked the girl.
Looking as though she was ready to claw his face off, Amy muttered something under her breath. The other two were now incredibly quiet as they pondered how much trouble they were in.
“I'm sorry, I didn't hear that. Repeat yourself.” An edge of hard authority laced his words.
“Amy Potterman,” she snapped.
“Fuck,” Liam groaned. He stared at the card in his hand thoughtfully, then lifted his gaze to the girl and scowled. “You showed me your ID when you signed yourself and your friends in. Your ID says Amy Potterman. The address matches the one we have on file. What the hell?”
“Apparently the stepmom is the same age as the daughter,” Thane murmured, not at all envious of the shit falling on Liam's head. “Did the birthdates match?”
“Same month, same year. Different goddamn day. Fuck, Braun is gonna kill me.” Liam shoved the card in his pocket and jabbed a finger at a corner booth across the room. “You three, go sit your asses down over there while I…Jesus, whose neck do I wring first?”
At the mention of wringing, the three girls dashed across the room as though Liam had threatened to spank the living shit out of them. They deserved it, Thane admitted, and he hoped they got a punishment that deterred them from pulling a stunt like this again. “Kids will be kids, Liam. Once they find something they're not supposed to know about, they'll come up with ways to get into it.”
“Yeah, I guess. Doesn't stop me feeling like a dick. Thanks for catching on to it, there'd be hell if they'd gotten into the next barn.” He rubbed his forehead. “Oh good, Jasper's here. Let me get you a drink, on the house, and then I'll have to go call the Pottermans, I guess.”
Jasper, Thane thought, searching his memory banks. Avalon's resident sadist, recently taken off the market by a little blonde sub who adored him. Had walked with a cane the first time Thane had seen him—which Thane sympathized with—but seemed to be fully independent now. “I'll take a rain check if you don't mind. I wanted to go take a look at some of the equipment in the next building.”
“Sure, go for it. Make the most of it before the place gets busier.” Nodding, Liam took off toward the end of the bar with a sharp shout of, “Jasper! Need you for a sec.”
After that, Thane was entertained by the sudden revolution of people changing stations. The sadist sent his sub to wait for him in the seating pit near the stage as he and Liam got deep into conversation. A dark expression crossed Jasper's face as he glanced over at the three women huddled into the booth, then he nodded and exited into the foyer. A moment later, the man Thane knew as Saul—not a Master, as far as he was aware—came through to speak with Liam.
They were joined by a grinning man with shaggy brown hair that didn't suit his face. The club joker, Loki. That grin soon faded as the situation was relayed, and Thane was fascinated by how the chain of command wasn't topped by one person. So far, the four Doms seemed to have split the responsibility of handling the matter between them.
Loki nodded and spun on his heel, his face hard as he stomped over to the booth and slammed his hands down on the table, making the girls jump and shrink back. Delivering one hell of a lecture, Thane realized. Not loudly, not with anything that could be construed as shouting, but harsh enough to make the petty thief at the heart of things cry.
More people approached the bar, filing through the doors steadily. It was going to be a busy night. Liam finished talking to Saul and had just moved down the bar to start serving customers when a high-pitched alarm whined from somewhere underneath the bar, sounding three times in quick succession.
Liam groaned and thumped the heel of his hand against his forehead. “God, I don’t need this headache right now.”
“Don’t worry about it, Liam. Handle this, and I’ll go scope out the safeword situation.” Moving fast, Saul made an abrupt change of direction and hurried toward the walkway.
“Oh, that won’t go down well,” Liam muttered, giving his forehead another smack before he plastered on a smile, already turning to the waiting patrons requiring his services.
Curious, intrigued, Thane slid off his stool and stretched. Anytime he stayed in a position for a little too long, his goddamn leg seized up. Three years of physical therapy had helped, but not enough to bring him back to his former physical glory.
Saul was already out of sight down the walkway as Thane limped after him, exaggerating the movement to stall. He knew he was being nosy, understood he was crossing a line, but years of active duty had taught him that information was the key to everything. Something was telling him to follow the Dom, and he'd listened to his gut instincts for too long to ignore them now.
Thane stepped into the walkway, paused as he heard low voices echoing in the long, slightly curved space. He pressed his hand against the wall and pretended to be resting his leg as he strained to hear the conversation, cursing as the words were lost in the echo. He eased along the wall until he was only ten feet away from where Saul stood, his back to him as he spoke to someone through a barely-open door.
Bending over, he began to massage his thigh like he had a cramp.
“It's not that I don't trust you, Atticus.” Saul said, then said something so quietly Thane couldn't catch it. Both men laughed, but not unkindly. “Let me get this over with so you can get back to things.”
Atticus called something out, something about a color, but Thane couldn't hear the reply from inside the room. From the corner of his eye, he saw Saul's back go ramrod straight.
“You know, it’s none of my business, Atticus, but she sounds an awful lot like—” Saul's voice was shocked.
