“Not that I know of.”
“Fine. Come in. You have five minutes.”
I walk inside Jack’s room, and he locks the door and resecures the chain in place.
All the months Jack and I hung out outside of Aces, he always came to my little apartment. This is my first time in his personal space. The Caterpillar Hotel isn’t exactly a luxury resort, but he’s kept the room clean and the linens pressed. A few knickknacks—mostly Chicago souvenir store finds—adorn his dresser, along with a few framed photos of him with some other Aces waitstaff. No pictures with me, of course.
He crosses his arms. “You were saying?”
I sit on the foot of the bed. I can’t give Jack all the details. If he knows his head is on the chopping block, he might run for the hills. We need him to stay in place for this plan to work correctly, but he also needs to be aware of what we’re doing.
“Rouge is…up to something.”
He rolls his eyes. “No shit.”
“We don’t have all the specifics yet, but?—”
He lifts a hand. “Spare me, Bianca. If this is you coming to apologize, you’re off to a shitty start.”
“I’m not here to apologize, Jack. I’m here to help you.”
“I don’t need your help.” He gestures to his dresser. “I’ve got thousands saved up for when I finish up here. When I’m finally released from my contract, I’ll be getting as far away as humanly possible from Aces fucking Underground.”
“You don’t understand. I don’t think you’re going to have that option.”
He raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
I run my hands through my hair as I try to articulate my thoughts in a digestible way for Jack. “What you think you saw that night—the night our friendship ended—I think it could happen to you.”
He drops his jaw. “No. That can’t be. I’ve been a fantastic server for five years. Rouge would never?—”
“She would, Jack. You’ve known it for years. I imagine you’ve just denied what you saw as a bad trip.”
“I was pretty hopped up that night.” He bites his lip. “It’s not like I could leave anyway. Rouge has had a stranglehold on me for nearly five years.”
“We don’t have a lot of evidence so far”—not technically a lie, but a cooler full of human hearts is pretty damned incriminating—“but my new boyfriend and I want to keep an eye on you as your contract draws to a close.”
“Why would my contract ending be an issue? The girl I saw that night… She was barely through her first year. She broke the rules. I’ve kept my nose clean.”
“Think of all the waitstaff who’ve kept their noses clean,” I say. “The ones who finished out their contracts and went out into the world. Have you heard from any of them?”
He blinks several times. “What are you saying?”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“I haven’t. But I never got super close to any of them. After things fell apart between you and me, I decided to stick out the rest of my time at Aces as a lone wolf. It’s always been discouraged for us to fraternize amongst each other anyway. Half the servers here don’t speak a word of English besides ‘vodka,’ ‘gin,’ and ‘tequila.’ And the ones who do… Well, suffice to say we don’t have a lot in common.”
Of course. Jack said as much when we started hanging out all those years ago. He was a very specific personality type, highly intellectual. While some of the other waitstaff have been intelligent, they were never quite at Jack’s level. The only person he considered his intellectual equal was me.
Which is hilarious, because I never thought I was that smart. Certainly not compared to my sister.
“The people who work at Aces do their time, and then they go out into the world. Why would they want to look back?” Jack scowls as he looks around his tiny room. “I certainly won’t be.”
“You really won’t be looking back if you’re dead, Jack.” I sigh, pace the room. “I think what you saw that night is the fate of all the Aces waitstaff. The waitstaff for all of Rouge’s clubs, and even some of the patrons. It doesn’t matter if you stuck to the rules. I’ve been looking into it. There have been unexplained disappearances—and a few confirmed deaths—for years now.”
Jack swallows. “If you’re saying what I think you’re saying…then all of the people I’ve worked with who have gone on…”
My lip trembles. “They’re dead, Jack. All of them.”
