“For some reason,” he growled in her ear, “around you, I’m as wrinkled as I’ve ever been. Metaphorically.”
“I metaphorically wrinkle you,” she puzzled with her eyes closed. It wasn’t exactly a compliment, but an acknowledgment that she affected him in a fraction of the way he affected her—
—and then his hand moved from her waist down to her hip and rubbed there, the same hard strokes he’d used on her neck, lending her comfort at the same time he lit her on fire.
“Now tell me why Colton bothers you,” he coaxed her. “You promised.”
She didn’t want to go back there. But she felt so comfortable under Daniel’s hands that she almost didn’t mind telling him. Almost. She sighed, “In high school, I had this boyfriend. He was the reason I left West Virginia. Colton reminds me of him, though I understand that makes no sense. It is so annoying to turn human and have normal, illogical emotions right in the middle of a case.” She laughed nervously. “You wouldn’t know about that.”
His hand never stopped rubbing her hip. “Tell me what happened,” he said.
“I was eighteen. Rick was twenty-one. He had a friend who ran a club in town and gave me a gig stripping, even though I was underage.”
“What?” Daniel asked sharply. His hand gripped her waist.
“I know.” She didn’t like admitting any of this, especially to Daniel. But he deserved to know why Colton made her crazy. And she had promised. Besides, it was easier to talk when she faced away from Daniel, staring at the far wall. And easier still when his hand moved along her hip again.
She explained, “I always wanted to be part of Hollywood. So did Rick. He told me I was beautiful. He wanted me to try stripping. From there I would get discovered. I would be the next Anna Nicole Smith. This was after she was a model, but way before she died. She was kind of staggering around her reality show, and I pointed out to him that she wasn’t the best role model. But I danced for a week and we made more money than we’d ever seen before.”
“We,” Daniel repeated.
“Right. I’d gotten a scholarship to college in New York. Rick didn’t want me to go. He wanted me to strip for a while longer and see how it went.”
Daniel interrupted her, disgust in his voice. “That is—”
“I know,” she stopped him. “You don’t have to tell me. It seems ridiculous to me now. But I can remember how I felt then, like it was yesterday. My dad was always either at work or drunk. When he didn’t have a job, he was just drunk. Rick paid attention to me. I thought he listened to me. He said he loved me. And stripping wasn’t so bad. I didn’t mind dancing or taking my clothes off. I guess I’ve always been a little Lorelei-esque. Not ashamed of my own body. I did mind that men called me names while they were stuffing dollar bills in my garter. Maybe I believed them a little bit. And when Rick said that I couldn’t handle New York, that I wouldn’t stay in school, that I was too much like my daddy and I wouldn’t be able to keep a job, that I’d just end up stripping there anyway but it would be darker and dirtier and soon I’d be dead . . . I almost believed him, too.”
Daniel let out a pained sigh, his warm breath blowing chills down Wendy’s neck. Wendy’s heart broke. He was acting like a concerned friend, ready to talk her out of self-destruction. But that friend hadn’t existed for her back then, when she’d needed him.
“You left, though,” he said.
“I did. Despite our heady week of profits, I took the bus to New York the next day. I guess I was thinking in the back of my mind that he might follow me, but after a few days at college, I felt safer and more at home than I’d ever felt.”
“And then he followed you?”
Suddenly Daniel’s body was too hot against her back. Sweat pricked her forehead, and the air in the room was suffocating. She rolled away to face him, then sat up on the bed. Blinking at her, he sat up more slowly.
She took a deep breath. “He was standing outside my dorm room when Sarah and I came back from our first dinner together at the caf. He said he wanted to talk with me in private. I said no, of course, and Sarah and I tried to slip into the room without him, but he pushed her out and dragged me in and chained the door. He put his forearm on my throat.” She balled her fist and reached up to put her arm near Daniel’s neck, not touching him, just showing him, as full of rage as Rick had been. “He told me I was only good for one thing, and I would fail at everything else, because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. That I was a worthless slut and I deserved to be raped and left to die. I mean, he—” She squeezed her fist tightly because she couldn’t press down on Daniel’s neck as hard as Rick had pressed hers. He’d choked her until her legs collapsed beneath her. His body had been a blur as sirens sounded outside the dorm and he ran out of her room.
Beyond her arm, Daniel stared at her, steady and unmoved as ever. The room was bright with desert sunlight. She was safe.
“Sorry,” she said, putting her hands in the air near his chest, not quite touching him. “I didn’t mean to—” She swallowed. “And I’m sorry about the way I acted toward Colton. He looks so much like Rick that I didn’t want the Lorelei gig in the first place. I knew I’d be dealing with him sooner or later. I wouldn’t have taken this account if my job hadn’t been on the line.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Daniel seethed.
Wendy frowned at him. She’d felt she owed him an apology for blowing up at Colton, but she hadn’t thought he would be this angry. “Why would I tell you Colton looked like my boyfriend from ten years ago? I didn’t think I would have that much of a problem with it until—”
“I saw that guy,” Daniel insisted.
“Who?” she breathed.
“Your boyfriend. Rick. He was in the casino playing blackjack at the same table as Colton when I got here Monday.”
“No,” she protested. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes perfect sense,” Daniel said grimly. “There was a disturbance in the Big O on Monday night because fans thought they’d seen Colton, but it wasn’t him. Right after that, a lock of your hair went missing.” He reached out to touch the side of her head where one of her curls was gone, even though she’d trimmed the jagged ends and tucked them into the rest of her hair. “Last night, the bouncer at the museum wouldn’t let Colton in because he was allegedly already inside. That must have been Rick, too, making his way in before Colton did. Another lock of your hair disappeared. He knocked you out and took Colton’s camera.”
Wendy’s heart beat painfully. She didn’t believe Daniel, but the story made a certain kind of sense, sort of like when she started with a new client and a lot of strange things happened and she finally figured out the star’s mother must be smoking crack, which explained everything. But she didn’t want this story to be true. It couldn’t be. “Rick’s not paparazzi,” she said.
“But he’s an opportunist,” Daniel said. “Right?”
“Right,” Wendy said faintly. “No. Why would Rick be here?”
“For you.”
Her blood went cold.
“When was the last time you saw him?” Daniel persisted.
“That night at college.”
“Did the police catch him?” Daniel prompted her.
“No. He’d stolen his uncle’s truck to drive up there. They found it ditched in New Jersey. There was never another trace of him. A couple of years later when my dad died, I was terrified he would be waiting for me in West Virginia, but he wasn’t there, and nobody had seen him.”
“You said he always wanted to go to Hollywood,” Daniel reminded her. “Maybe he went. He became a photographer, and now he’s followed the stars here to Vegas.”
A job with the paparazzi was exactly what Rick would be doing with his life now. But she couldn’t wrap her head around it. “No, Daniel. That’s too crazy. I spent a couple of years in New York staring out the front window of my dorm room, terrified that I would see him walking up the street. I’m not going to do the same thing in Vegas. I’ll be careful because whoever hit me is a crazy person who’s collecting for a wig, but he’s not Rick.”
Daniel stared at her, face hard and immobile. “Just in case,” he said, “don’t go out at night by yourself.”
“All right.”
“Call Detective Butkus. Did he give you his card? Tell him what you told me about Rick.”
Wendy made a face. “He’s not going to do anything about that. He’s going to scoff at me.”
“Maybe,” Daniel said, “but they should have that information on record. Promise me.”
“I promise,” she grumbled.
Sinking down to lie on the bed again, he let out a long breath. “On the bright side,” he said, “I doubt we have to worry anymore about Colton coming on to you.”
She laughed. “I don’t know. Some men like strong women.”
Daniel reached out to touch a long tendril of her hair, winding it slowly around his finger. This had turned her on when he did it in the club two nights before. Now her cheeks flamed, and her heart went wild.
He said, “Yes. Some men do.”
11
Late that night, Wendy was down a hundred dollars at poker in the casino. Lorelei was down two hundred. Franklin was down fifty. Two actresses from a wildly popular sitcom were down seventy-five and three hundred, respectively. Wendy wished Sarah were there. Her parents were bridge players, and she cleaned up at poker. When she played, she tried her best to give Wendy advice and drag Wendy along after her.
Wendy’s phone rang, giving her an excuse to back away from the sad table. She saw it was Daniel calling, and her heart did a dance to the jaunty rhythm of the slot machines nearby. She took a moment to close her eyes and take a calming breath through her nose so she wouldn’t answer the phone in the tone of an eighth grader with a crush. Then, afraid she’d waited too long and Daniel would hang up and she’d miss him completely tonight, she hurriedly answered.
“What’s up, lovah?”
“Hello, Wendy,” he said. “I need your help.”
“This should be good.”
“I’m at the Horny Gentleman.”
“The strip club? Or is this a personal problem?”
He laughed for a long time, which made her suspicious, because it wasn’t that funny.
Sensing that this conversation was going to be longer than a quick check-in to decide where Lorelei and Colton should hook up, Wendy glanced at the crowded poker tables, then headed across the floor toward a chocolatier storefront that had closed for the night, where she wouldn’t be overheard. “Oh, honey,” she said as she walked, “not again. What’s the matter? Do you need some money to pay your tab?”
“Listen,” he said. “I want you to know I did everything I could to prevent this. Judging from what you told me this morning, I figured strip clubs are not your favorite thing.”
“Perspicacious.”
“Colton was insistent,” Daniel said. “Of course, I couldn’t explain what my reservations were without telling him more about you than I would ever want him to know. And my turning down the invitation on some sort of moral grounds would not be a manly man thing to do, because duh.”
It was her turn to laugh at his appropriation of her language. He was in rare form. Possibly drunk.
When she stopped laughing, she warned him, “Colton’s going to get seen there at best and videoed there at worst. It’s going to look like he’s not interested in Lorelei at all. Obviously he needs an outlet for his misogyny.”
“Actually,” Daniel said, “Colton and Lorelei came here together on their first adult romp through Vegas last year. So it will be like an elderly couple retracing their steps on their first date.”
Wendy shouldn’t have been surprised anymore at much Lorelei and Colton did. “That’s sweet.”
“That’s why I need you to bring Lorelei down here. Right now Colton looks like a reject at a strip club. When she comes in, it’ll look like a fun, bawdy night they’re enjoying together. We’ll get Lorelei on the pole.”
“We’re not getting her on the pole,” Wendy protested.
“I’ll bet she can do it. Wasn’t that a fitness craze in Hollywood recently?”
“That was before her time. Now it’s boxing, remember? How much have you had to drink?”
“I was trying to have fun on the job, like you said. Too much fun.” He paused. “Look, just bring her down here, unless you have a better idea. That’s the only way I can think of to solve this right now. Reason only works with Colton when he’s not drunk yet. Now that he’s plastered, even if you have trouble with Lorelei, it’s going to be a lot easier for you to get her in here than for me to get him out of here. We won’t stay long, though. It’s so late already. Just come, let the paparazzi take pictures of her arriving and the two of them leaving the club together, and we’ll all call it a night.”
Wendy bit her lip. Her stomach turned flips at the thought of venturing into a dark strip club again—this time through the front door.
“Wendy,” Daniel said gently. “Seriously, is this going to bother you? I didn’t intend to make you feel uncomfortable. Surely to God I can figure out something else, or we can start over tomorrow—”