Page 81 of Double Down

We don’t havelong to dwell on the debacle with Beavis and Butthead Cop. As soon as I emerge from the kitchen, the lawyers enter and begin running interference.

At the same time, Con’s phone rings, and whoever’s on the other end tells him something that makes him rake a hand through his hair in frustration and utter a clipped, “Be right there.”

He gives the guys a loaded look and speaks low, so the cops can’t hear. “A group of kids is having another of those fucking parties on eighteen. I’m headed to shut it down.”

Maverick rubs his wrists. “I’m coming with you. If I stay here another second I’m going to pick someone up and toss him over a balcony.”

I follow as they stride toward the door. Maverick glances back and opens his mouth to say something. I give him a pleading look, and he closes it after a brief flick of his eyes toward the asshole who took me in the kitchen. “Stay close.”

Con agrees with a single clipped nod.

We pile on to the elevator.

We ride in silence, floor numbers blinking by. When the doors part on eighteen, sound hits—bass thudding, laughter too loud, glass clinking, the stale-sweet bite of spilled liquor and vape pens. Kids who should know better, and some who clearly don’t, tangle in the rooftop common area. Con and Maverick split without a word, each angling toward a different cluster to start putting out fires.

I hang back, scanning.

A girl in a glittering, too-short dress wobbles on heels that aren’t hers. I catch her arm before she kisses the tile and steer her to a couch and press a bottle of water from a nearby cooler into her hand.

Another is crying about a lost phone, her mascara streaking down her cheeks. I set a house phone on the bar for her, ring the concierge extension, and tell her not to go anywhere alone.

My heart’s still hammering from the kitchen encounter with the cop, but busy hands beat replaying that scene on a loop.

There’s a rip of cooler air as someone props open the service door near the ice machine and air conditioning floods the area. The smell changes—bleach, metal, something mechanical. I glance over.

Two men move through the crowd with their heads down, broadcasting the kind of anonymity you only get by careful practicing. They’ve got a girl between them, their arms hooked beneath hers, her feet dragging, her shoes skittering and catching on the floor.

She’s wearing the Titan Wynn housekeeping polo under a cardigan that’s slipping off one shoulder, the hem of her uniform peeking below a too-short skirt. Her head lolls. For a second I don’t place her, and then I do—she’s one of our junior housekeepers, Katie.

Katie’s cute, but I always had the impression that she didn’t like me for whatever reason.

Her mouth now is slack. Her eyes barely open to slits. Her knees knock when the men holding her try to quicken her pace.

My stomach drops. Roofied, doped—whatever it is, Katie didn’t do this to herself. The men angle her toward the service door like they’re very familiar with it.

I don’t think. I move.

“Hey.” My voice comes out sharper than I expect as I stride toward them, pitched to be heard over the music and hum of conversation taking place all around us. “Hey! What are you doing with her?”

The men continue, opening the door into the service hallway and stepping through. The door begins swinging closed behind them.

One of the men acts like he doesn’t hear me. The other flicks his eyes at me, then past me, already calculating. I plant my hand on the service door handle and hold the door open, wedging my foot so it can’t latch. The common area stays at my back—noise, witnesses, light. I keep my shoulder inside the party, not the hallway.

I’ve seen this corridor before, in daylight with a coffee in hand, pushing a laundry cart, naked with Conrad. I’ve idly mapped blind spots because this place has them like scars. The cameras don’t catch the patch between the corner and the service elevator at the other end for a good twelve feet.

“Go back to the party, little girl” the taller one says. He has some kind of accent—Russian, maybe? He smiles like he wants me to think this is a completely unnecessary scene. “You don’t need to worry about her.”

Little girl.My blood ices in my veins, but I don’t take my eyes off of them. “She’s not going anywhere with you.”

“No, no…it is work accident,” he says. “She sick.”

“Funny,” I say, but I don’t feel funny at all. “She didn’t punch out.”

The girl lifts her head, a sluggish attempt to focus. When she sees me, something like recognition stirs and fades. Her knees buckle again. The man on the right jerks her up too roughly, fingers biting into the tender inside of her arm. She mewls.

“Let her go.” My voice goes low. I’m not Con. I don’t have his authority. I’m not Mav with his growl and his power. All I have is me. “Let her go, now.”

Behind me, movement ripples through the crowd. I don’t look away from the men, but I feel it—the change in the air when my men notice I’m not where I’m supposed to be. Con’s attention is a weight when it lands. Maverick’s is heat.