Afterglow (8 page)

“Everyone’s still at the hotel. Several under doctors’ care. Two people had mild heart attacks, and Dunham’s grandmother put her back out. Although,” Rand’s lips quirked, “she admitted to me that she’d never had such great sex in all her eighty-plus years, and she could now die with a smile.” He shrugged. “She was the only humorous moment in the whole mess. What are the long-term consequences if this is what you think it is, Dakota? Am I going to have a hundred people die on me?”

She rubbed both hands over her face, then dropped them back into her lap. “It depends on the dose. One wafer won’t do much more than make them horny and have zero inhibitions. You can tell the dosage by how much bloom they have on their eyes. Anyone—”

“Bloom?”

“Looks like a cataract. Did you notice anyone’s eyes afterward?”

“Groom’s stepfather got falling-down drunk. If anyone had a problem, he’d be the one.”

“Have him checked again.”

“Half of them are users of some sort of illicit drug,” Rand pointed out. “I’m leaning toward somebody doing this to blackmail half of Hollywood’s fucking elite.” The embarrassment up in that hotel suite stuck with him, profound and palpable.

“I imagine it was terrifying for everyone when they finally recovered.” Sympathy—guilt?—filled her voice. “Since the drug is lethal, you’re fortunate nobody died. There’s a dangerously fine line between pleasure and death. A microgram too much, and you’d be telling a different story this morning.”

He glanced at the clean lines of her profile as she looked at the scenery whizzing by, then turned his own attention to the road as she glanced at him. “Will they keep this quiet, or is someone going to blab to the press?”

“Frankly, it’s unlikely that everyone
will
keep their mouths shut. We’re talking about
actors
here. This isn’t like old Hollywood where scandal was kept hush-hush. These days, if Lohan gets a hangnail, it’s front-page news. It won’t remain a secret. Not for long.”

“Then we’d better work fast and get them answers. Did someone happen to check the dead man’s eyes?”

“No need. He was murdered. I don’t have the details, but it wasn’t Rapture. Let’s hope there’s something in the room for you to hold, because otherwise we’re as screwed as the groom’s stepfather, who did half the people in that room last night.”

They were out of the center of town and the traffic moved at lightning speed. Dakota glanced at the GPS on the dash. “At this velocity, our ETA is two minutes. I’m taking a power nap. It was a long flight, and I didn’t get any sleep. Wake me when you need me.”

His eyebrows rose at that loaded statement. “White-knuckle flyer?” Another thing she’d never told him. One more he could add to the list.

She wedged her back more comfortably between the seat back and the door frame, and closed her eyes. “If God wanted us to fly, he would’ve given us wings.”

“He gave us planes instead. There’s no time for a nap, we’re almost there.”

“Hmm,” she murmured, already drifting. Within seconds, her breathing indicated sleep.

Rand glanced over at her. “You’re a complication I don’t fucking need right now, Dakota North.” His lips curved into a thin, humorless smile. “Thank God I’m immune.”

THE HOTEL WAS TUCKED
away in a cul-de-sac on the edge of town, too far away from the tourist destinations to offer much trouble for anyone but the locals. This was the kind of low-rent dive where casino losers came to lick their wounds as they counted their euros before going back to try their luck one last time. Night and day compared to where the wedding had taken place.

Rand parked the rental in a patch of shade under a stand of spindly palm trees in the weedy parking lot and glanced at his sleeping ace in the hole. He’d never met anyone who could fall asleep so fast, and so deeply. He knew a hundred ways to make Dakota wake up smiling.

He didn’t plan on using any of them ever again.

Right now, there was no point waking her. She needed, according to her, something tangible to hold, so until they found something the waiter might have left behind, he preferred she stay where she was. It was unlikely they’d even find anything. In which case, he’d have one of his men return her to the airport.

He was torn between the desire, no, the
need
to believe her tracking claim and the urge to be as far away from her as possible. The shadows of his once-frozen emotions were once again a tight, hot knot in his belly.

He peered through the window as he locked the car doors. Dakota flipped an arm over her eyes to block the sunshine but stayed asleep. He shook his head. How could she look so bonelessly comfortable curled in the seat like that? How could she look so
normal
? The liar that she was didn’t show on her sleeping face. Instead, she looked beautiful and achingly innocent.

Looks, he knew, were deceptive.

Resolutely, he turned away and headed for the portico of the small hotel. The sun felt good on his shoulders, but back here in the alley there was no scent of ocean, just a sense of desperation and the stifling pressure of lost dreams. There was a reason the lavish casinos didn’t allow Monaco residents inside to gamble.

He didn’t gamble for money. Hell, Rand didn’t gamble at all. He’d bet everything on love once and lost his ass. Lesson learned. Case closed. He didn’t need her, he needed her skills.
If
she really had them.

He wasn’t into woo-woo. He’d tried to keep an open mind when Stark talked about the strange new sixth sense he’d developed the year before. While traveling in Venezuela, Zak and his brother, Gideon, had been kidnapped by terrorists. The details were grim. Rand could only imagine the burden Zak carried over his brother’s death. When Zak sold ZAG Search on his return and started Lodestone, he’d tried to persuade Rand to join forces, thinking their two companies complemented each other. Security and tracking.

Probably would too. However, Rand had declined the partnership offer. He savored his independence. As a stuntman, then stunt coordinator he’d known to check every trick himself, seven ways from Sunday, no matter who told him it was safe. He was used to relying solely on himself, and he’d been slow to hire people for his company as it grew; it was difficult to find people he could have that kind of faith in. The kind of faith he’d had in Dakota.

Until yesterday, he’d been riding the wave. If he didn’t find who was responsible and mitigate the damage before things spun even more out of control, he’d lose it all.

Still, Zak Stark was a good man and he trusted him. He’d kept meaning to wander by, knock back a few beers, and catch up, but Zak lived in the same city as Dakota, and Rand had let the friendship lapse because he hadn’t wanted to be anywhere near her. Even his home in Los Angeles was too damned close to the Pacific Northwest.

With no leads and even fewer clues, he and his people needed all the help they could get. As much as he didn’t want her around, he had to admit, he might need her to stick around after all.

Mark “Ham” Stratham and Derek Rebik waited for him just inside the front doors. Both wore black chinos and black T-shirts—no insignia. They didn’t need uniforms or identifying badges to lend them a sense of authority.

“You made it in good time.” Stress lines were carved deeply around Rebik’s mouth.

“I’m motivated,” Rand replied. “I left the Lodestone agent sleeping in the car. Go keep an eye on her, would you?”

Rebik raised a brow. “Sleeping?”

“Red-eye flight,” was all Rand trusted himself to say.

The agent nodded and took off.

“This way.” Ham led Rand across the empty lobby, past the unmanned front desk, and into the open cage elevator. He pulled shut the concertina-style door. “We’re on the third floor.” A chain-smoker, he smelled of cigarettes and the spearmint gum he used to disguise his smoking habit. It didn’t fool anyone.

Rand pushed the button. Ham was a more than slightly overweight ex-cop with thirty-five years’ experience on the Seattle homicide squad. Lines of strain tightened the skin around his eyes. His brown hair was buzz-cut, military style. Like Rand, he had no sleep in more than twenty-four hours. “How are our charges?”

“How do you think?” Rand stepped to the back of the elevator, crossing his arms over his chest. “Pissed, embarrassed, and a nanosecond away from a lawsuit against me, the hotel, and whoever else they can think of. What do we have?”

“Room was registered to a Daniel Perry. Fifty-three. Tempe, Arizona. US passport, been here a week,” Ham said briskly. No fluff. “Hit the casinos hard, lost his shirt. Skipped early last night. Dead guy is Denis Brun. Twenty-five. Native Monegasque with a local address. Worked for the catering company for seven years and change. A couple of run-ins with the law over the years, minor drug busts. Clean for three years.”

Rand frowned. “That was all on the guy’s security clearance. Until his behavior changed … ?” Because he was using again and/or because he’d made new friends. Rand’s educated guess was both.

Ham cocked a brow in acknowledgment. “A month ago.”

The men’s eyes met. “Bank account?” Rand asked, knowing there’d be a payment sitting there. The guy hadn’t had time to spend it. Now he never would.

“Ten thousand euros deposited day before yesterday.”

“Fingerprinted?”

“Yeah, and sent to our lab. We should have ID confirmation by the time we get upstairs.”

“Where’s Perry?”

“We’re holding him at the airport, but it doesn’t look like he had anything to do with this. Spent the night with some chick he met at a local bar. Went straight to the airport from her place.”

Rand glanced at a man in nothing but his shorts who peered at them from his cracked-open door as they passed his floor. “Without his luggage?” Rand asked as his door snicked closed and the elevator rose.

Ham nodded. “Couldn’t pay his tab and skipped. His shit is still in the room.” He shrugged. “Happens all over the world.”

“Didn’t they hold his passport in the hotel safe?”

“Perry said he needed it to cash a check yesterday.”

“So all they have him on is the Monegasque equivalent of defrauding an innkeeper?” Not that Rand cared. If Perry had nothing to do with what happened at the wedding, he was a nonissue.

But it was an
if.
Ham shrugged his beefy shoulders. “Pretty much. The locals are dealing with him. Our perp used his room to draw the waiter here. Did the deed and split. Nobody saw anything. No surveillance cameras, no fingerprints, no trace evidence. Nada.”

“A professional?”

“Oh, yeah.” The ex-cop was practically rubbing his hands with glee. The murder was right up his alley. Unfortunately, it just presented more questions. At least they had somewhere to start, and Rand knew this piece of the puzzle was in expert hands.

“Doesn’t explain how the killer knew Perry wouldn’t return.” Rand leaned against the cheap paneling as the small box jerked upward in fits and starts. “That the hotel room was available while he gambled and lost, then went home with some woman to screw instead of returning to pick up his luggage.”

“My thoughts exactly. I’ll tell our guys to squeeze Perry some more.” The door wheezed open on the third floor. The corridor had garish red-flocked wallpaper from the seventies and closed doors on either side of a black-and-red runner that looked worse for wear. The whole place reeked of strong French cigarettes, garlic, and death.

He acknowledged Becky Murry, another of his people, who waited directly outside the elevator as the door opened, weapon drawn. On seeing Rand, she relaxed and gave a curt nod, stepping aside.

Yesterday’s incident affected everyone on the security detail. An unidentified drug had been administered to the clients under their protection. That the drug in question turned out to be an aphrodisiac was immaterial; it could just as easily have been a fast-acting poison. Then instead of embarrassment to deal with, Rand would have had more than a hundred deaths to explain to the authorities and the world at large.

His people all had a vested interest in apprehending the perpetrator, as quickly as possible. Their asses were on the line just as much as his. The two agents who’d partaken of the tainted champagne at the reception instead of doing their jobs had been fired. Not for fucking but for leaving their posts to drink on the job. Rand had zero tolerance. He had to be able to rely on the professionalism of every one of his employees at all times; no exceptions. Humiliated, they’d been sent home on a commercial flight at dawn.

“We haven’t moved anything.” Ham shoved the door to the room open. “But we went through it all with a fine-tooth comb.”

Two more of Rand’s men were inside; on seeing him, they relaxed and holstered their weapons as they stepped aside to give him room. They’d opened the window, and a muggy breeze moved the stink around and fluttered the cheap curtains. The body was on the bed.

Brun had been stabbed in the back, falling facedown across the tossed mattress, the knife still in him. Blood stained his shirt and saturated the covers and sheets. Not a pretty sight.

Pinkner took out his handheld computer. “ID confirmed. Denis Brun. We sent Shank and a couple of guys to his home address. See if we can find anything worthwhile there.”

“Straight into the kidneys,” Rand mused out loud. “Killer knew what he was about. Nice and quiet for the neighbors.”

The hotel room was trashed. No defensive wounds, at least not at first glance, and most of the blood seemed fairly contained. No splatters, no spray over the scattered objects.

Deduction of the day: the poor bastard knew his killer.

“I suppose it’s too much to ask for clues,” he said without any real hope.

“Nothing, unless we can ID some viable prints we managed to lift from this.” Using latex gloves, Ham offered Rand a second pair, waited while he pulled them on, then handed him a gunmetal-gray aluminum case the size of a paperback book. The outside still had traces of the fingerprint dust.