Page 90 of Velvet Vaughn

Chapter Nineteen

The Tap Room reeked of spilled beer and forty years of cigarette smoke that had never quite aired out, even with the state’s smoking ban a decade in the rearview. Remi crossed to the bar and claimed a stool across from the corner booth where Brad Hatton had parked himself, alone and hunched over a shot glass.

“What’ll it be?” The bartender was a heavyset man with a faded tattoo sleeve and the flat, unbothered expression that told Remi he’d seen every version of trouble a dive bar had to offer.

“Whatever’s cheap and on tap.” Remi passed over a folded bill and let his gaze wander the room, sweeping past Brad without lingering.

“Are you in position?” Anja’s voice came through the earpiece.

“Yep,” Remi murmured into his beer, lips barely moving. “He’s alone. Booth in the back corner. Two shots in and working on a third. He ordered them at the same time.”

Brad waved the server over and ordered another round without glancing at a menu. The bartender poured without comment, sliding the shots across the scarred wood to the server, who placed them in front of Brad. He knocked the first back in one motion, wincing at the burn.

“He’s drinking the hard stuff and putting them away fast,” Remi reported.

“Keep watching,” Anja told him. “If he’s meeting someone, it should be soon.”

Twenty minutes passed with nothing but Brad finishing the other two shots and staring into the middle distance. Remi had the impression he was trying to drink his way past something that wouldn’t stay down. Nobody joined him or so much as glanced his way beyond the server’s periodic check-ins. Remi nursed his beer and let the room’s low murmur wash over him.

“No contact yet,” he reported. “Might be a solo night.”

“Or the meeting already happened somewhere else,” Anja replied, “and this is what it looks like when he tries to drown whatever he did to get that money.”

Remi used the dead time to pull his phone from his jacket pocket and thumb it open. Hollyn’s text sat at the top of the thread, four days old now.

Ribs still complaining, but the ER doc says I’ll live. Also, I asked if I could sue the guy who hit me for emotional damages. Apparently that’s “not how insurance works.” I remain unconvinced. Thanks for strong-arming me into the ambulance. You were annoyingly right. Please enjoy this victory because it’s the last one you’re getting.

He read it again, as he had a dozen times since it arrived, and found himself smiling before he could stop it.

Turquoise eyes. He hadn’t managed to shake those either, not in four days of case-board updates and Leo’s steady stream of near misses. He tucked the phone away before anyone in the bar could clock him grinning at nothing and dragged his focus back to the booth in the corner, where Brad was three shots deeper into whatever he was trying to drown.

By the time Brad finished his next round, his voice had climbed several notches, loud enough to carry across the half-empty room. He tossed a remark at the server that made her flinch, though Remi couldn’t catch it over the jukebox. The bartender’s expression shifted from bored tolerance to alert.

“He’s getting loud,” Remi murmured.

A man at the pool table near the back, built like he spent his weekends doing manual labor and enjoying it, called over to Brad. Again, Remi couldn’t hear it, but Brad’s response carried clear across the bar.

“You don’t have any idea who you’re talking to.” Brad’s words slurred together, but the venom underneath them came through sharp and clear. “I could buy this whole sorry building and everyone standing in it, including you, bud, so step back.”

“Yeah?” The pool player calmly set down his cue. “Then buy yourself some manners while you’re at it.”

“Screw you.” Brad shoved up from the booth, swaying, and jabbed a finger toward the man’s chest. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

“Heads up,” Remi muttered. “This is about to get real ugly.”

It got real ugly real fast. Brad threw the first punch, more stumble than strike, and the bigger man barely had to do anything to send him sprawling into a neighboring table, glasses shattering across the floor as the table splintered in two. Three other patrons grabbed their beer bottles and scrambled back. The bartender reached under the counter for a baseball bat and deftly vaulted over the bar. Yeah, this wasn’t his first fight. He’d probably broken up dozens like it.

“Out.” The bartender had Brad by the collar before he’d fully found his feet again, hauling him upright with a grip that brooked no argument. “You’re done. Get out and don’t come back.”

“You can’t—” Brad’s protest dissolved into incoherent muttering as the bartender frog-marched him toward the door past Remi’s stool, close enough that Remi caught the sour reek of whiskey and sweat.

“He’s coming out,” Remi mumbled under his breath as he slid off his stool and dropped a few bills on the bar. “Here’s our opening. Get ready.”

The night air outside hit hard after the bar’s stale warmth. It was sharp with the promise of rain. Brad stumbled off the curb, catching himself against a parked car and muttering something venomous about small-minded people who didn’t understand what real money looked like. Remi fell into step behind him, closing the distance with the patience of a predator who already knew how this ended.

“Hey, buddy.” Remi draped an arm over his shoulder. “Let’s have a chat.”

Brad turned, blinking against the streetlight, confusion crossing his face for half a second before Remi steered him hard and fast toward the Escalade idling at the curb, its rear door swinging open.