I sent what I had to Tripp yesterday, so he should be momentarily satisfied. I also said I was close to something else. Something big. Hopefully, that buys me some time. But even though the dress shop provides a hide-in-plain-sight space to observe members, my first order of business has nothing to do with what the client wants and everything to do with my survival.
While Amy is showing me some dresses and jumpsuits she thinks fit my style, I swipe her computer-access card. I’ve got eyes on me at all times, but security rarely expects people to act boldly in the open. At night, they likely scrutinize everything I do, diligently watching my every move. But here? In the late afternoon with cameras on me? The risk I pose becomes equivalent with everyone else. We’re all just part of the terrain of La Lune Noire right now.
This boutique is primarily by appointment, so Amy works alone—one-on-one personal service. I showed up early, hoping she’d be busy. And she is. When she escorts two women to anexclusive area, reserved for the most prominent members, who are searching for gowns for the Prohibition Ball in two weeks—the ball I realize my father must’ve been referring to on our last call—I decide to access the reservations to see when Shep booked his room.
The computer is set in a recessed area, shrouded by clothing racks, which keeps me hidden from the shop entrance. Although there is a security camera pointed at it. I thwart that by piling clothing in front of the computer to obstruct the view of the keyboard. Then I scour through my purse and spill my makeup all over the counter. It stages a clumsy-girl scene for the cameras and in case I’m caught. As I pretend to frantically pick up items, I prop a mirror on the counter, angling it so I can see the entrance to the shop, and another facing the door to the exclusive area—which is camouflaged by a full-length mirror.
This entire resort is like a funhouse.
With a smidgen of foundation on my index finger and a tissue in hand, I move to the keyboard. There’s a woman perusing the dresses in the window as I scroll to the nameShepherd Langeand search for booking dates and any notes. Apparently, Shep is a bit of a diva. He likes herbal tea and an everything bagel with low-fat cream cheese at precisely eight thirty a.m. when he finishes his morning workout, Evian water bottles stocked in his room, dinner reservations at a senior-citizen early-bird hour, and a seat at the poker tables by seven, among other things. To think they do this for every member is mind-boggling.
It takes about fifteen seconds to sift through it, my heart hammering and my gaze flitting between the screen, the lady shopping, and the full-length mirror that Amy could pop out from at any minute.
My stomach bottoms out when I see that Shep made the online reservation this weekend, which means it had nothing to do with Claudia. He used her to throw me off his scent.
Fuck.
In his warning, he mentioned something like, “… if orders come in.”
He must only be expected to observe me, to gain a pattern of life on me and resort security. He’ll have to establish a way to neutralize me in a place swarming with mercenaries who are willing to defend and adhere to Noire membership rules—the most notable being that an act of violence is punishable by death.
Poison.
I close out the program, stuff Amy’s access card in my pocket, and round the desk just as she emerges from her cave of luxury.
“Oh no. I spot an organization issue,” she sings. “Do you need me to get you a purse with more pockets so you can find things easier?”
“Maybe.” I huff, blowing a strand of my messy hair out of my eyes. “I was looking for my lipstick, and everything went flying. I even got makeup on your computer keys, but”—I hold up the dirty, crumpled tissue—“I got it all cleaned up. I’m so sorry. And I think you have another customer.”
She peeks around me and watches as the woman leaves. “It’s fine. It takes her days to pick anything. She’ll make an appointment when she’s in a decisive mood.”
After I scoop up the last of the makeup, I follow her gaze. But it isn’t a woman I see. It’s Axel in a navy-blue suit. I bet his eyes are piercing with that on. He smiles at someone who is just beyond my vantage point, but I already know I hate whoever it is. Whoever is the recipient of that smile—the warmth and fire and crisp scent of autumn retreating—while I’m left out in the cold.
I wasn’t prepared for this. The frostbite.
“No wonder there are rumors,” Amy interjects with a teasing lilt. “After the way he stormed the Underground to get you and now that look on your face.”
Shooing away that presumption, I launch the fabricated story—Cash setting Axel up so he came down there to get me and ended up owing him money, all because I was needed to translate a section of a legal document from one of the new properties.
“And I’m not sure what you think you see on my face. The man looks good in a suit, but that’s not the Noire I went on a date with,” I conclude.
A pang of guilt strikes me because Axel seemed so sensitive about that, but if we’re avoiding suspicion, that’s a logical way to do it in girl talk.
“Are you getting all of these?” Amy asks, sorting through the mess of clothes I piled on her computer. She must think I’m the biggest slob.
“Yes, please. Put them all on the card on file.”
She checks each garment, hanging them and determining whether they should be steamed after the way I rumpled them, but eventually, she returns to my cover story while she works. “That’s pretty much what Axel said on Friday night.”
Friday night?He said he was meeting with someone. Why would he meet with Amy?
“Where’d you see him on Friday night?”
Her face brightens as she tucks her caramel hair behind her ear. “Vander and I—that’s my husband—were at Magie Noire Friday night, and we had a drink with Axel while he was waiting for someone.”
Magie Noire—the sex club.
For the second time since I arrived at the dress shop, my stomach somersaults. I try to steer us in a direction that will tellme what I want to know while acting like a woman who isn’t flayed open by the possibility that a man had his mouth on my pussy an hour before he buried his cock in someone else’s. “I didn’t realize employees could go there.”
