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Maybe they’d have better luck investigating Aegis Holdings.

She hadn’t heard anything from Evan Matthews, and it sure sounded as if one of the buyers represented by Marcy Talbott or Aaron Sanchez had a better chance of stepping in and scooping up the place, but she figured it couldn’t hurt to do a little looking around just in case Aegis came out the winner in a bidding war or something.

Rather than waste time with her own fumbling efforts, though, she just opened the Messenger app on her computer. It was a weeknight, so Delia supposed there was a chance Pru might be out, but since she didn’t seem to be seeing anyone at the moment, much more likely that she was at home.

Sure enough, she responded almost immediately to Delia’s, You there?

Yeah, I’m here. What’s up?

Not much. Or maybe something. I had a guy from a company called Aegis Holdings tour one of my properties this week. Sounds like he wants to turn it into a vacation rental. Can you try looking them up and letting me know if you find anything?

Sure. Just give me a couple of minutes.

Thanks.

In Pru-speak, “a couple of minutes” could mean anything from just one or two all the way up to a half hour, depending on how elusive the information she was seeking turned out to be.

To amuse herself, Delia bopped around on a couple of different websites, adding a cute pair of sandals to her wish list over on Zappos, dipping into the MLS to see if anything interesting had popped up since the last time she’d checked.

About fifteen minutes later, Pru came back online.

I couldn’t find much. It looks like the company was incorporated about ten years ago. Based in California.

Of course, Delia already knew that because Evan Matthews had come right out and told her the company was located in Santa Monica.

Anything else?

It looks like they run targeted ads on Facebook and other places aimed at people who are upside down in their homes and need to get out. I guess then they go in and scoop them up and turn them into vacation rentals.

A distasteful practice, taking advantage of people who were already feeling desperate, but there wasn’t anything technically illegal about it.

Do they manage the properties themselves?

Delia couldn’t see her friend — although their last get-together had revealed that Prudence had tired of her turquoise blue hair and had switched it over to a gorgeous ombre of deep purple to pale lavender on the ends, which just brushed her collarbones — but she had a feeling Pru’s dark eyes had lit up with excitement right then.

That’s the interesting thing. I dug around and found out that they hire people to manage all their vacation homes — maybe one person handling three here, and another taking care of four in a different location.

All of them are superhosts on Airbnb, and the listings are written carefully to make it sound as if they’re the owners, and not some big property acquisition and management company.

Again, nothing illegal about that. Misleading, sure, because she knew that most of the people who rented those properties wanted to believe they were working directly with the owners.

But adding a layer of obfuscation made it much less likely that Aegis would have to deal with any direct complaints from their temporary tenants while at the same time raking in money hand over fist.

Any idea what they pay their rental managers?

Not really. They don’t have an employment page on their website or anything like that. But I can look into it if you want.

Delia had asked the question mostly because she was curious and nothing more.

On the other hand, it couldn’t hurt to get a little more insight into Aegis’s business model, if only because she could present that information to Caleb in case he got multiple offers.

Most people who didn’t know him would have probably said that he’d just go for the best one without caring who had made it, but she knew he didn’t operate that way.

Yes, he wanted to make some money from the deal, but she had a feeling he would much rather sell to someone who wanted to move into the house with their family, rather than some faceless corporation that would turn it into a vacation rental, a company that quite possibly exploited its workers.

Of course, she didn’t know that for sure. However, Evan Matthews certainly looked as if he was doing quite well for himself, and if his chunky salary came at the expense of the people who did the actual work for Aegis?

She got the feeling he wouldn’t lose much sleep over it.

Sure. And anything else you can find out about them. I suppose they’re just another company operating in a morally gray area, but it can’t hurt to know as much as possible.

Just in case Evan got the winning bid on Caleb’s house after all.

She found herself wondering why Aegis was even interested in the property.

True, it was a very nice house, one that didn’t need any work at all and was move-in ready, but still, if they sponsored a bunch of ads aimed at underwater homeowners, it seemed as if they must do a lot of their business with bargain-basement kind of stuff, which Caleb’s former home definitely was not.

Maybe it wasn’t priced at the top of the market, and yet it still represented a place that would need to pull in a decent chunk of rental income every month to justify paying so much.

Well, Delia had to admit that she didn’t know a huge amount about the short-term rental market.

She’d had a couple of buyers who’d purchased a house through her for that express purpose, but it wasn’t as if they’d gone into any great detail about what they planned to charge or what all their operating costs might be.

Pru’s response came back after a moment.

Working on it…around all my cheating husbands and the other fun stuff.

Because unfortunately, a lot of Pru’s business tended to involve surveilling spouses to get the dirt on their extracurricular activities.

Nevada was a no-fault divorce state, and no one needed to prove their partner had been cheating to get a divorce, but evidence of adultery could affect alimony, so it was still often valuable to gather evidence that someone in the marriage had been straying.

It’s not urgent. Just whenever you have time.

That is, Delia hoped their investigation of Aegis’s holdings wasn’t too urgent. If Marcy and Aaron’s supposedly motivated buyers fell through, then maybe she’d end up having to sell the house to Evan Matthews after all.

She supposed it was kind of funny how completely unthrilled she was about the whole situation.

On that Friday afternoon, the parking lot at the Desert Paradise casino was much more crowded than it had been the day before.

People getting a jump on the weekend, Caleb supposed, although his usual luck kicked in and he was able to snag a prime parking spot right up front, thanks to someone backing out just as he approached.

He could only hope that kind of luck would continue to hold once he was inside. Sure, he’d made it through the first round relatively unscathed, but now he’d be playing against people who’d won at their tables and therefore, he assumed, would be that much more skilled.

Or just damn lucky, in which case he still needed to be at the top of his game.

Today he didn’t need to look at the signs guiding players in, but went immediately to the roped-off area of the gaming floor.

Thanks to the lanyard he wore around his neck, he was let in at once and guided to a table where the three other players were waiting.

He recognized two of them from the mixer the night before — a middle-aged man named Brad Norton and a guy younger than Caleb, maybe not even twenty-five, whose name was Lonnie Briggs.

The fourth at their table was a coolly attractive brunette with no-nonsense dark eyes and the kind of brisk manner that told him he’d better not try even the most harmless flirting.

Not that he’d had any real intention of doing so, not when he couldn’t seem to get Delia Dunne out of his mind no matter how hard he tried, but something about the woman — who introduced herself as Sherene Kruger — indicated he would have been shot down immediately even if he’d been so inclined.

Today, the crowds beyond the velvet rope were proportionally larger than they’d been the day before, but Caleb wouldn’t let all those watching eyes get to him.

No, he had to keep his eyes on the prize…

not to win, necessarily, but to get as far as he could in the tournament without using any of his powers.

Not for the first time, he wished Delia could be here, even though he knew she had plenty to keep her busy this afternoon.

He’d just have to comfort himself with the knowledge that she’d promised to come watch the tournament tomorrow, when she would finally be free of all her responsibilities at the office.

Everyone had taken their seats, so the dealers fanned out to the various tables, somewhat reduced from the day before, thanks to all those players who’d already been eliminated.

Caleb allowed himself an inner breath, hoping it would help steady him for the upcoming play.

No way to know for sure whether there would be any more possible magical intervention today, or whether — now that Ty Carter had been knocked out — everything would run smoothly.

Today’s dealer was a silver-haired man who handled the cards with practiced efficiency, although without quite the same flair that yesterday’s dealer had shown.

Caleb found himself in the middle position, with Brad Norton on his left and Sherene to his right.

That positioning could work to his advantage… provided he played it smart.

Then again, that was exactly what he’d come here to do.