He sat at a circular table in the last row of the Limelight showroom. Other people squeezed around him, clinking ice, talking too loudly, coughing, and passing gas. It was hard to see faces with the lights low and bodies shifting in their seats, blocking his view, but he had already pegged the security before the show began. Two bulky detectives squirmed at a table in front of the stage, painfully obvious in suits and ties. A Hispanic cop, a smooth piece of work with slicked black hair and a permanent leer, hovered in the back, constantly scanning the crowd. He was almost close enough to touch. On the east and west walls, standing, were two of the boys from Premium Security. Blake knew them. Enormous, probably part gorilla. Walnut-sized brains. He had actually waved at one, and the man just stared dully back, not penetrating the disguise. Blake couldn’t help but laugh.
Claire was onstage. It was her second show, and midnight had already come and gone. He didn’t usually care about music, but he enjoyed her voice. She had a throaty country drawl, and there was something sad about the way she sang that made him remember the suffering he had experienced as a boy. He rarely visited that room in his soul, but Claire’s voice made it seem like a good thing to do, as if she could march you inside and make you believe that loss was what made you alive, that yearning for something could be more beautiful than having it
Not that he really believed it
He thought about his adopted mother. Bonnie Burton. She could still make his flesh crawl two decades later. It was crazy back then, how he had loved her and wanted to please her. He had actually hated his adopted father more, because he was the one who let it all happen and did nothing to stop her. Blake even enjoyed cuckolding him at first, when he began having intercourse with Bonnie. He could still feel her hands. It infuriated him that when he thought of her, he sometimes got an erection. That she still controlled him like that. She used to tell him that he was her best lover, that she would never hurt him, that her body belonged to him. Her body with its drooping breasts and doughnut-shaped middle.
Once, she told him what a good idea it would be if he killed his father and the two of them could be alone. His father, who knew what went on in the bedroom, who didn’t care or was too scared to do a damn thing.
He said yes, that would be a good idea, and didn’t add that the best idea of all was to kill them both. A month later, he stood in the dark yard and watched the fire consume them.
He thought about the boy in the Summerlin street. Peter Hale. That was a lesson for him-that he wasn’t the rock he imagined himself to be, that the fury could come back and temporarily blind him. He had watched the boy throwing the ball against the garage door. Hypnotic, the ball going back and forth, bang bang, over and over. It wouldn’t be hard to smile at the kid, go inside, slit Linda Hale’s throat and go back to the car. Maybe toss the ball a couple of times with the boy. Then he thought about leaving this kid with no mother, and he realized he couldn’t do that. He sat there, paralyzed. Bang bang, back and forth. Happy kid. A kid who had everything Blake never had, for no reason at all, who didn’t have any Bonnie in his life, who hadn’t had his real mother stripped away and killed by Las Vegas. The anger rose up like a dust devil, spinning out of the sand. Insane jealousy. Disgust. It grabbed him so hard he thought he would break the steering wheel in half. That was when, without any more hesitation, he put the car in gear and slammed the accelerator down, gunning for the boy, wanting to erase him, wanting to see him disappear into nothingness under his tires.
Sometimes nothingness was a blessing.
In the Limelight showroom, Blake blinked. He had been gone for too long, not concentrating. The memories did that to him. He blamed it on the seduction of Claire’s voice, which was somehow both lazy and still as sharp as a razor blade on his wrist.
Focus, he thought to himself.
Amira.
Blake had to move quickly. He had been to Claire’s show several times, and he knew there were three songs left in her second set. He had to go now or risk getting caught in the sweaty mass of fans elbowing their way for the exits. In a few minutes, he could use the chaos of the crowd to spring Claire loose from the blanket of security protecting her.
He knew how to do that. With Claire’s help.
When she finished her next song, a searing cover of Mindy Smith’s “One Moment More,” Blake stood up during the applause and picked his way through the tables to the nearest door. He wore a sport coat, shirt and tie, jeans, and dress shoes. Back in the casino, he stubbed out his cigarette at one of the slot machines and proceeded to the glass doors that led to the parking lot. He surveyed the small lot quickly. The Boulder Strip was on his left, and a two-way middle lane in the lot led to a series of rows where the cars parked diagonally. His own brown sedan was in the rear, where he could jump the divider and head straight to the highway.
A plainclothes cop was leaning on the hood of a red Caprice Classic near the middle lane, eyeing the people who came and went from the casino. Blake felt their eyes meet and experienced a moment’s uneasiness, wondering if the man recognized him. With a friendly nod, Blake sauntered past him, heading for his sedan. He didn’t look back, but he listened carefully for the sound of footsteps following him. None did.
He got in his car and took out his cell phone. He waited ten minutes until he saw people flowing out of the casino, exiting the showroom, then dialed a number. Claire answered immediately. Even when she was talking, not singing, he loved her voice.
“This is Detective Jonathan Stride,” he told her. “I work with Serena.”
He could hear her breathing and imagined her still flushed from the show. “I see,” she said calmly.
“We need to get you out of there right away, Claire.”
“Where’s Serena?” she asked. “I thought the two of you were coming to pick me up.”
Blake frowned. He didn’t have much time and had to think quickly. “Serena’s tied up. We don’t think we should wait. I’m outside in the casino parking lot now. It’s a red Caprice Classic in the second row. The sooner you can get here, the better.”
“Is that safe?”
“We’ll have people watching your every move.” He added, “Candidly, if this guy is here, we want to flush him out, not scare him away.”
“In other words, you want to put me on a hook and let me wriggle like a worm?” she asked.
Blake smiled. “Something like that”
Claire waited a few beats before replying. “Okay. If that’s how you guys want to play it I’ll see you in five minutes.”
Stride pulled into the crowded porte cochere in front of the Limelight. He drove past the convoy of cabs and parked at an angle on the sidewalk.
“The show’s out,” he said.
They got out of the Bronco. Stride used his shield to wave off a valet, and they marched inside, pushing past people who were on their way into the hot night air.
“Are you sure about this?” Serena asked him.
Stride knew what she meant. Sawhill had suggested that Claire stay with them while they hunted Blake. He thought: Sure about letting Claire into their home? Sure about letting her seduce his girlfriend in front of his face? No, he wasn’t sure.
“We need to babysit her,” Stride said. “Sawhill’s right. It’ll be easiest to do it at our place.”
“I didn’t think she’d agree,” Serena said. “She’s pretty independent.”
“It must be your charm,” Stride told her, and watched Serena flush.
The showroom was almost empty. Waitresses were gathering half-empty wineglasses and wet napkins from the tables. Serena flagged down Cordy, who was onstage near the performers’ door. He was talking up a member of Claire’s band, a two-tone blonde with a nose ring and a tattoo of an eagle on her upper arm.