Page 62 of Villains Series

TWO HOURS UNTIL MIDNIGHT

THE THREE CROWS BAR

ELI tapped his phone awake, tensing when he saw the time.

Still no Victor, and Dominic seemed to be an installation at the bar.

Eli frowned, and dialed Serena, but she didn’t pick up.

When her voice mail kicked in, he hung up, eager to click End before her slow, melodic words could issue any instructions.

He thought of Victor’s threat: It’s clever, using the police database to find your targets.

I’m a bit insulted I haven’t shown up on there yet, but give it time.

I just got here.

Eli logged on to the database, hoping for clues, but it was after ten, and the only flagged profile belonged to the man currently stationed at the counter, nursing his third Jack and Coke.

Eli frowned and put the phone away.

His bait didn’t seem to be drawing any fish.

The seat beside Dominic emptied—it had been taken up and subsequently abandoned three times over the course of the hour—and Eli, tired of waiting, finished his beer and slid to the edge of the booth.

He was about to make his way toward the target when a man appeared, approached the counter, and took the stool.

Eli stopped, and hovered at the edge of his booth.

He had seen the man before.

In the lobby of the Esquire, and even though his presence here was less surprising—he fit in much better with the customers of the Three Crows than the suit-wearing clientele of the four-star hotel—his appearance still jarred Eli.

There was something else about the man.

He hadn’t thought of it when he saw him before, but here, on the heels of the presentation to the Merit Metro Police Department, it seemed obvious.

No photos existed of Mitchell Turner, Victor’s partner in crime, but there had been generic thug descriptions: tall, burly, bald, tattooed.

Dozens of men would fit the bill, but how many of them would cross Eli’s path twice in as many days?

Eli had long since abandoned the notion of coincidence.

If this man was Turner, then Victor couldn’t be far away.

He scanned the bar, searching for Victor’s blond hair, his sharp smile, but he didn’t see anyone who fit the bill, and by the time he turned his attention back to the counter, Mitchell was talking to Dominic Rusher.

His hulking form leaned in over the ex-soldier like a shadow, and while the noise in the bar drowned out the conversation itself, Eli could see his lips moving quickly, could see Dominic stiffen in response.

And then, mere moments after he sat down, Mitchell stood back up.

Without ordering, without another word.

Eli watched him scan the bar, watched the man’s eyes pass blankly over him and settle on the sign that read RESTROOMS in neon yellow light.

Mitchell Turner made his way, stepping between Dominic and the rest of the room, his massive form for a moment—a blink—hiding the man from view.

By the time he’d finished the stride—crossed from one side of the ex-soldier to the other—Dominic was gone.

And Eli was on his feet.

The bar stool that had, for the better part of an hour, held his target was now suddenly empty, and there was no sign, to any side, of Dominic Rusher.

Not possible, Eli’s brain might have thought.

Only Eli knew it was entirely possible, it was too possible.

Where the man went took a backseat in Eli’s thoughts to the question of why he went, and that was a question with only one answer.

He’d been spooked.

Warned.

Eli’s gaze swiveled across the room until he saw the door to the men’s room swing shut behind Mitchell Turner.

He dropped a bill on the table beside his empty glass, and followed.