I’d spent most of my childhood in motels and apartment buildings where rent was paid by the week. Compared to some of the places my mother and I had stayed, the hotel Judd had booked for us looked nice enough—if a bit run-down.
“It’s everything I dreamed it would be.” Lia sighed happily. In addition to detecting lies, she also had an aptitude for telling them. With every appearance of sincerity, she eyed the building’s exterior like she had stumbled across a long-lost love.
“It’s not that bad,” Dean told her.
Like a switch had been flipped, Lia dropped the act and tossed her long black hair over one shoulder. “This is Las Vegas, Dean. ‘Not bad’ isn’t exactly what I was aiming for.”
Judd snorted. “It’ll do, Lia.”
“What if I told you it didn’t have to?” That question came from the parking lot behind us. I recognized the voice instantly.
Michael.
As I turned to face him, I wondered which Michael I would see. The boy who’d recruited me to the program? The raw, unguarded Michael who’d shown me brief glimpses of his oldest wounds? The careless, indifferent one who’d spent the past three months acting like nothing and no one could touch him?
Especially me.
“Townsend,” Dean greeted Michael. “Nice car.” “Aren’t you a bit young for a midlife crisis?” Lia said.
“Life in the fast lane,” came Michael’s reply. “You have to adjust for inflation.”
I looked at the new car first, then at Michael. The car was a classic—a convertible in deep cherry red with a style I associated with the fifties or sixties. It was in mint condition. Michael gave every appearance of being in mint condition, too. There were no bruises on his face, no marks on the arm resting on the back of the passenger seat.
Michael’s eyes lingered on my face, just for an instant. “Don’t worry, Colorado,” he told me, a sharp smile pulling at the edges of his lips. “I’m all in one piece.”
That was the first time he’d responded to something I hadn’t said in weeks. The first time he’d acted like I was a person worth reading.
“In fact,” Michael announced, “I’m feeling like a new man. An incredibly generous, incredibly well-connected new man.” He glanced around at the others, his gaze coming to rest on Judd. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said, “but I made us a reservation of my own.”
Michael’s reservation was at the Majesty, the most expensive luxury hotel and casino in the city. Sloane hesitated as we approached the grand entrance, bobbing back and forth slightly like a magnet repelled by an invisible field. Her lips moved rapidly as she rattled off the digits of pi under her breath.
Some children had security blankets. I was fairly certain Sloane had grown up with a security number.
As I tried to figure out what about the Majesty had triggered this particular episode, our expert statistician forced her lips to stop moving and stepped over the threshold. Lia met my eyes and raised an eyebrow. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed Sloane’s behavior. The only reason Michael hadn’t noticed was that he was several yards ahead, sauntering through the lobby.
As the rest of us followed, I stared up at the sixty-foot ceiling. Judd hadn’t put up a fight about moving. The profiler in me said Judd had sensed that Michael needed this—not the luxury offered by the Majesty.
Control.
“Mr. Townsend.” The concierge greeted Michael with all of the formality of a diplomat greeting a foreign head of state. “We’re so pleased you and your party will be joining us. The Renoir Suite is one of the finest we have to offer.”
Michael took a step toward him. Months after being shot in the leg, Michael still had a noticeable limp. He made no attempt at hiding it, his hand coming to rest on his thigh, daring the concierge to let his gaze drop.
“I do hope the suite has elevator access,” Michael said. “Of course,” the concierge replied nervously. “Of course!”
I caught Dean’s eyes. His lips twitched slightly. Michael was messing with the poor guy—and enjoying it just a little bit too much.
“I believe the Renoir Suite has private elevator access, does it not, Mr.
Simmons?” A blond-haired man in his twenties smoothly interjected himself into the conversation as he came to stand beside the concierge. He was wearing a dark red shirt—silk, from the looks of it—under a black sports jacket. As he raked assessing blue eyes over Michael, his fingers casually fastened the top of two buttons on the jacket—less of a nervous gesture than one that called to mind a soldier readying himself for battle.
“I’ll take it from here,” he told the concierge.
The concierge nodded his head slightly in response. The interplay told me a few things. First, the concierge had no problems taking orders from a man at least twenty years his junior. And second, the man in question had no problems whatsoever giving them.
“Aaron Shaw.” He introduced himself to Michael, holding out a hand. Michael took it. At second glance, I realized Aaron was younger than I’d initially thought—twenty-one or twenty-two.
“If you’ll follow me,” he said, “I’d be glad to personally show you to your rooms.”
My mind arranged and rearranged what I knew about Aaron Shaw. Behavior. Personality. Environment. Aaron had come to the concierge’s rescue. As he walked through the lobby, he nodded and smiled at various people, from bellhops to guests. He clearly knew his way around.
With each step he took, people got out of his way. “Your family owns the casino?” I asked.
The rhythm of Aaron’s stride faltered, just for a second. “Am I that obvious?”
“It’s the silk shirt,” Michael told him in a conspiratorial whisper. “And the shoes.”
Aaron came to a stop in front of a glass elevator. “Outed by my footwear,” he deadpanned. “There goes my future in espionage.”
You expect other people to take you seriously, I thought, but you’re capable of laughing at yourself.
Beside me, Sloane was staring at the hotelier’s son like he’d just reached into her rib cage and ripped out her heart.
“I was joking about the espionage,” Aaron told her with a smile more genuine than any he’d offered Michael. “Promise.”
Sloane searched her store of mental heuristics for an appropriate response. “There are 4,097 rooms in this hotel,” she told him, an oddly hopeful tone in her voice. “And the Majesty serves over twenty-nine thousand meals a day.”
I turned back to Aaron, ready to run interference, but he didn’t bat an eye at Sloane’s version of “conversation.”
“Have you stayed with us before?” he asked her.
For some reason, that question hit Sloane hard. Silently, she shook her head. Belatedly, she remembered to smile at him—the same painfully large smile she’d been practicing on the plane.
You’re trying so hard, I thought. But for the life of me, I wasn’t sure exactly what it was that Sloane was trying to do.
The elevator doors opened. Aaron stepped on and held the door for the rest of us. Once we were all on, he glanced at Sloane. “Everything okay, miss?”
She nodded furtively. As the elevator doors closed, I bumped my hip lightly into Sloane’s. After a moment, she snuck a hesitant look at me and bumped back.
“Did you know,” she said brightly, making another attempt at conversation, “that elevators only kill about twenty-seven people per year?”
