It was one thing to believe that someone you worked with—that you might be close with—was corrupt. It was another to come face-to-face with the evidence. Cade had been there, back in Alaska on the private-security circuit. He’d not even bothered to learn half of their names, and it had still been unsteadying.
Marlow hitched the corner of his mouth up in a wry shrug. “Close enough.”
He headed toward the bar. People got out of his way. Even when he wasn’t dressed for the Night Shift, Marlow moved like someone who knew their own body. Cade filed that away for later and went after Lance.
The floor was sticky underfoot as Cade wove through the tightly placed tables. A waitress in high-waisted short-shorts and a furry bikini top dodged back to get out of his way, one arm crooked protectively around the champagne some mug had paid for. Her eyes widened as she checked him out, and she tossed a worried glance over to the barman.
Angry men in expensive clothes didn’t bode well in a place like SKINNED. Or anywhere, for that matter.
Cade ignored her. He didn’t plan to hang around long enough for them to have to deal with him.
The DJ kicked the volume of the music up. The first beatboxed kick drum notes of “Mrs. Officer” pumped out of the speakers, undercut by a static buzz from one, while the stripper crawled onto the stage. Cued by the song, other dancers got up from the tables with whoever had bought their time to writhe to the music. Dark hair flicked against Cade’s face as one of the dancers tossed the long rope of a ponytail over their shoulder. He batted it out of the way and pushed past her.
“Fuck off,” she hissed at him through glossy red lips. “I’m working.”
He ignored her and craned his neck to catch a glimpse of Lance. From the back, without the scars to set him apart from the crowd. Cade cursed under his breath as he tried to remember what color Lance’s hair was.
It hadn’t seemed like something he’d need to know.
The hard crack of the flat of someone’s hand against his ass made Cade jump a moment before he felt the sting of the slap through his trousers. He turned sharply, grabbed the man’s wrist before he could retrieve it, and squeezed.
“Don’t touch me,” Cade warned him flatly.
The baby-faced man—razor burn on his throat and body paint on his shoulder—had the good sense to look uneasy. It passed, drowned in the fumes of whatever he’d drunk that night.
“Free world,” he said.
Cade brought the man’s arm down against the edge of the table. The sharp line of it caught him just under the joint of his thumb. Something cracked—loud enough to hear over the music—and the whiskey-flush blanched from the man’s face. His mouth opened, but whatever strangled shriek came out was drowned under the police-siren vocals of the song.
Asshole.
The man doubled over, clutching his wrist, and Cade left him to it. He loped over to the heavy double doors that led backstage and stiff-armed them open. The kid on the other side yelped and swung his mop up.
“Where’s Lance?” Cade asked. He let his old accent out from under a decade’s worth of elocution lessons. It sounded more hick than ever to his ears, especially with the punch of anxiety he put behind it. “He’s in trouble. There’s someone looking for him.”
Sometimes the most believable lie was just the truth… as if you weren’t part of it. It kept things simple, and it always fit the situation.
The kid gawped at him for a moment and then turned to point down the hall.
“He went that way,” he said. Cade shoved past him and loped along the grubby carpet. Behind him, the kid raised his voice and called after him, “He went outside. I heard the fire door slam.”
Cade broke into a proper run. He rounded the corner and scanned the hall. The fire door was halfway down, two heavy metal doors painted a dull red. He slowed to a stop in front of them and gave them a shove. The safety bar depressed under his hands, and the doors started to open—until they hit something on the other side.
“Fuck,” Cade muttered under his breath.
He took two steps back and rammed the door with his shoulder. The doors scraped open a couple of inches, and the sound of Lance’s voice, pitched thin and nervous, filtered in from outside.
“I didn’t speak to them. I swear. All these years, I’ve kept my mouth shut. Okay? Why would I talk now?”
“I’d think of a reason,” a rough, unfamiliar voice said, “before I give you one. Get in the car.”
Whoever this new player was, they weren’t Piper’s man, then. Cade threw himself against the door again. He could see the grubby yellow paint of the dumpster that Lance had pushed in front of the door. Luckily it wasn’t full, and it scraped reluctantly over the ground as he put his weight to it. It almost drowned out the sound of the scuffle in the alleyway.
“Get away from me!” Lance yelled, his voice muffled. “Who do you work for? Piper will kill you for this!”
The other man laughed. “Piper couldn’t kill a cat in a sack,” he sneered. “Open the fucking trunk.”
Cade squeezed through the crack in the fire doors and boosted himself up over the edge of the dumpster. Cheap black plastic bags puffed and split under his weight, the reek of burned oil and cheap liquor sour in the air.
