Infected: Shift (42 page)

Roan had no answer for that. Did anyone?

He put in a call to Holden, who said he thought he had some leads, but until he tracked a solid one down he was not going to get his hopes up. Holden was being elusive for some reason, and Roan really didn’t trust it. Trying to pry it out of him turned out to be wasted time, as he claimed a client at three and begged off. Roan bet there was no client. What was that bastard up to? Yes, he was a surprisingly good investigator, but he'd just got stabbed going off on his own. Did he want history to repeat itself?

Before totally committing to this course, Roan tried to get in touch with the Brewsters again. No dice. He couldn’t get past the receptionist, no matter what lie he tried on. He found that Hatcher had called and left him a message. The bank had called to say that Jordan’s card had been used last night (yes, he had a credit card at his age—unbelievable), and the place it was used at was Club Amsterdam. Huh. What was going on there? Roan felt better about this deception now.

Grey picked him at five thirty, after Dylan was gone—Roan hadn’t wanted to tell Dylan what he was up to. To his surprise, Tank was in the car as well. “You need at least two,” Grey said, referring to bodyguards. “Scott woulda come, but he promised his girl he’d take her out tonight.”

“His girl?” Roan repeated. He had a girlfriend, all this time? The little slut.

“Aria,” Tank said. “Fucking hot. He gets all the hottest tail.”

“Well, he’s hot,” Grey replied. “He would.”

There was no arguing with that logic.

Club Amsterdam was far away from the part of town sometimes known as “strip row”—there were three strip clubs and ten bars within an eight-mile radius of each other. It was a sad part of town. But Club Amsterdam was downtown, near the business district, trying very hard to put on airs. Which truly baffled Roan, because it was a titty bar—guys came here to see tits. How exactly did you class that up?

In the parking lot up the street from the club, he briefed Grey and Tank on everything again. It wasn’t that he thought they didn’t get it; he just didn’t want to get them hurt. He told them that the guys were ex-military and had guns, so he really didn’t want to start a fight. This was all about fight prevention. “Is that why you’re wearing a Butthole Surfers T-shirt?” Grey asked wryly.

“I just grabbed a shirt,” Roan lied. Okay, no, he didn’t. When going into aggressively heterosexual places, he always liked to wear something gay. The Butthole Surfers weren’t gay to his knowledge, but their name kind of was.

“Do you have your gun?” Grey continued, the tiniest of smirks on his face. He was wearing a Seattle Falcons T-shirt, navy blue and a little too tight so his well-defined pecs were showing and you got some hint of the six-pack abs hiding beneath. In a sense, he had dressed gay, but mostly he dressed just to show what guys who wanted to start shit with him would be getting into.

“No. I’m not getting into a gun battle in a crowded place. Even drawing a gun in such a situation is idiotic, but I wouldn’t put it past these assholes.”

“Guns are pussy weapons,” Tank proclaimed. “You wanna fight, just fight. Don’t hide behind shit like a dickless wonder.”

“Says the goalie,” Roan teased.

“Hey, he starts shit sometimes,” Grey said. “I think he has the most penalty minutes of any goalie in the league. It’s well known if you encroach on his crease he’ll send you flying. He’s the Ron Hextall of French-Canadian goaltenders.”

“I love how you say that like I know what it means,” Roan said, getting out of the car. Grey just chuckled at that. He also shucked off his jacket and left it in the car, exposing his well-muscled arms, another bit of fair warning to any opponent, but really, shouldn’t the scars on Grey’s face been warning enough?

They walked into the club, which was disappointingly pedestrian: metal, neon, clear acrylic, spotlights on small stages centered around long poles, which women who were predominately blonde wrapped themselves around. There was a bar off to one side, long and wooden, with mirrors behind it reflecting light and bodies, and near the back, hidden by shadows, was a doorway. Standing in front of the doorway, which was cut off by a velvet rope, was a huge Samoan man, maybe six four and three hundred pounds, with a blue flame tattoo crawling up the side of his neck. As they neared, Grey suddenly took the lead, and said, “Hey, remember me? Grey Williams of the Seattle Falcons.”

The bouncer looked unmoved—perhaps the Britney Spears song was too loud—but then he said, “The soccer team, right?”

“Hockey. Sounders are the soccer team.”

He shook his huge head, a dismissive gesture if there ever was one.

Grey went on, regardless. “That’s Tank Beauvais, goaltender, and this is Ron Hextall, our center.”

Oh good. He was now the butt of some hockey joke, he was sure of it.

The Samoan pointed at him. “You look familiar.”

“I’m legendary,” Roan replied, deadpan. Grey was grinning at him in the spastic light, almost laughing.

Tank suddenly exclaimed something in French, his words tumbling together so fast Roan had no hope of understanding any of it. (Not that he actually spoke French.) Grey made a calming gesture with his hand and told the bouncer, “Tank wonders what’s up.”

Tank added something else in French emphatically and pointed at one of the nearest dancers. “Dude, chill,” Grey said, then added, “Elle ressemble à ta mere.”

“You speak French?”

Grey shrugged. “You play hockey, you gotta speak some.”

“Darren Brewster is expecting us,” Roan added, realizing that the guys were actually doing a decent job of buffaloing this guy. He was a bit confused, and Tank’s French outbursts—which he was beginning to suspect were nonsensical and/or insulting—were making it worse.

The bouncer raised his eyebrows. “Really? He mentioned he was expecting someone… huh.”

“Is Jordan with him?” Roan added, trying to keep it casual.

“Who? Oh, you mean that skinny rich boy? Naw, I ain’t seen him in weeks.” He lifted up the velvet rope and said, “C’mon. He’s three doors down, on the left.” As they crossed beneath the rope, the bouncer added, “What is it with hockey anyways? You skate around, you hardly score, and it’s kinda dull, ain’t it?”

“Not from our perspective.”

“Mangez moi,” Tank told him. Roan was fairly certain he just told the guy to eat him. But in French it sounded classy.

“Huh?”

“It’s not for everyone,” Roan told him, mimicking sympathy, but in all honesty he was clamping down hard on the urge to laugh.

“Guess not. I prefer football.”

Once they were in the back room, a maze of underlit corridors, Grey said, “Yeah, guys who shoot ’roids in their ass until they’re too big to fit through a normal doorway, with their junk shrunk to the size of raisins. Sign me up for that.”

“I know you told him to eat you, Tank, but that’s the limit of my French. What else did you say?”

“I was complaining,” he admitted. “I said the place was cheap and ugly, it smelled bad, and expecting ten bucks for a soda was a joke.”

All fair points. “When you pointed at the stripper…?”

“I said she looked like his mom.”

Grey laughed then but tried to stifle it. “You bastard, I almost lost it then.”

Tank just smiled in a pleased, slightly unbalanced way. Again, Tank seemed like the mellowest guy in the world, but he gave off an energy that suggested that was a trap. Both he and Grey exuded the quiet confidence of men who never had to worry about anything, but Tank still had an edge to him that made him harder to read. Either he was honestly just a bit nuts or really liked people to think that he was.

Roan led the way to the room, one door among a few, none particularly indicative of what was inside. But he could smell sweat in the air, arousal, frustration. What was that Chris Rock joke? Something about there never being sex in the champagne rooms? Well, these were the equivalent of the champagne rooms, and no, there was no sex, although there was anticipation and disappointment.

Roan opened the door without knocking, not sure what he was going to see. What he saw was a sleazy/cheesy-looking lounge, with velvet sofas in a semicircle, mirrors on the wall, and some kind of pop style R & B music blocking out the sounds of the club or any noises from the other rooms. A scantily clad brunette waitress in a gold bikini (Really? Tacky.) was serving drinks off a silver tray to Darren and his “posse.” The posse consisted of three steroided-out muscleheads—one shaven headed, one with a crew cut, the last with a type of protomullet (he mentally dubbed them, in order, Curly, Moe, and Larry)—and a stacked blonde in a skintight purple sheath dress who probably worked for the club. Darren was unimpressive, your average frat boy type with a soul patch and unruly dun brown hair that suggested he was vain and trying hard not to come off that way. Something in his eyes had the smug arrogance of the terminally bored, but he looked sour at their entrance. “Dudes, occupado,” he said. Wow, that just made Roan hate him more.

“I’m Chelsea Yamamoto,” Roan told him. “You were expecting me.”

Darren’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

Larry, Moe, and Curly all stood up, and Grey and Tank took a couple steps forward, as if ready to charge them. The fact that there were three of them and that at least two of them outweighed Tank by a hundred pounds didn’t seem to faze them. Grey was physically relaxed, a total lie (no good fighter ever really tensed), and Tank seemed almost semiconscious, save for his eyes, which seemed to eat up the room with every glance, sorting details and tossing them aside based on irrelevance. His laser-like focus was impressive; he was a sniper waiting to happen.

“I’m a private detective, and I’m looking into the disappearance of Jordan Hatcher. I wanted to talk to you, but all I seemed to get was the runaround. Which I think I understand now. So why are you using his credit card, Darren? Surely your dad’s loaded.”

Darren was holding a beer bottle, which he rested on his knee as he looked at him with contempt. “What? What the fuck? Get out of here or I’ll have you removed.”

“You’re welcome to try,” Grey said casually. A threat that didn’t sound like one.

“Who are these fucks?” Darren demanded.

“I thought Jordan was your best friend. What happened?”

Darren looked confused and pissed off. “I don’t hafta talk to you. I can have you arrested.”

“And get yourself arrested? You’re seventeen. You can’t drink; you can’t legally be here. You’ll get the club shut down, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want that. Now, what did you do to Jordan?”

Belligerence flashed through his gaze, as if it had never occurred to him that there was something he couldn’t do. The woman in the sheath dress suddenly looked nervous—she hadn’t known he was seventeen? Yeah, it was kind of shitty of him to put her job at risk.

“Get them out,” Darren said to the Three Stooges. He then, with almost no telegraphing, flung the beer bottle. “Fucking asshole.”

Roan saw it coming and wasn’t concerned, he knew he could duck it, but he never had a chance. Suddenly a hand snapped out and snatched the bottle out of midair, and in almost the same motion flung the bottle back with double the force. It was Tank, showing off nearly super-human reflexes of his own.