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“Fuck. Did you catch them on the cameras?”
“You mean the brand new cameras I just spent a mint on to have installed? No. I didn’t.”
“What happened?”
“Fuck if I know. I didn’t see anyone tampering with them on the feed, but they were offline.”
“Shit,” I hissed, exhaling hard. “Alright. Show me,” I invited, following him into the motel.
The other guest was right. The room had been tossed. Not that there was much to toss. But the sheets were thrown all over, the bed stripped, every drawer and the closet opened. Nyx’s weekend bag was on the bare bed, all the contents spilled out, the inside panel of the bag gutted.
“Stupid,” I mumbled, touching the slit. “There wasn’t even enough room to stash something in here.”
“What the fuck did Nyx get into?” Jack asked, looking around the room that would likely sit empty and a mess until the maid came in to put it to rights.
“Someone else involved her in something,” I said, tossing her shit back into her bag, then closing it up.
“You handling it?” Jack asked.
“Yep,” I agreed, exhaling hard.
“Good. She clearly needed some help,” he said, nodding toward the belt I had picked up. “That’s mine,” he told me, and when I shot him a look, he held up both hands. “I gave it to her to use to lock the door,” he said, gesturing up toward it.
“Right,” I said, handing it back, surprised by the intensity of the jealousy that had surged inside me.
“Where you off to now?” he asked.
“To handle shit,” I told him, reaching into my wallet to hand him the money for a few nights, plus a little extra in case something had gotten ruined.
I actually felt a sizzle of uncertainty as I parked my bike on the main street in town and made my way toward the pool hall.
It was closed most of the day, but that didn’t mean people weren’t going in and out. Just not patrons. Members of the family. Of the organization.
“I need to talk to the brothers,” I said to the guard standing at the door, sizing me up like he hadn’t seen me in town a thousand times before.
“I’ll see if they’re in,” he said with a thick Russian accent.
The Novikoff brothers themselves only had slight accents, moving to the US when they were young teens and living here since.
“They say you have ten minutes,” the guard said, holding open the door so I could walk in.
Pool halls in most towns were usually kind of old and rundown, cheap-looking.
Despite the low fees to play at The Shady Valley Pool Hall, though, the place was as upscale as it could get.
Likely because the Novikoff brothers ran their other business out of the hall, and were allergic to shit that wasn’t good taste.
They liked the color black.
The walls were painted a matte black. The tables and felt on the tables was also black. Hell, even the hardwood floors were stained a black color.
What was keeping it from feeling oppressive, though, was all the lighting. Each table had its own long, rectangular chandelier casting light down on it. Then along all the crown molding in the place was carefully concealed strip lighting that warmed the space up.
Toward the back was a snack bar that, when the business was open, was usually being manned by a gorgeous redhead in a tight dress. But it was abandoned at this time of day.
To the right of the building was a room that had once been a smaller billiards space, but had been gutted and turned into the brothers’ personal office and recreation area with desks, chairs, and couches, and their own personal bar, even though the place didn’t have a liquor license.
Standing in the doorway, both while the place was open and right then in the middle of the day, was another guard in a suit.
