Exotix was a small building compared to the size of its overpopulated parking lot. It sat in the heart of Winchester, an interstate off-ramp at its corner.
Pink and purple neon flashed at Kellen through the pitch darkness of the early morning hours as he sat in the driver’s seat of a rental Hyundai and surveyed the building. Double doors formed the main entrance. A sidewalk wrapped the perimeter. There was a balcony on the second floor.
There must be a back exit somewhere. Likely at least two, judging by the size of the building.
A wave of cold air met Kellen just beyond the double doors of the front entrance. The beat of obnoxiously loud music could be heard from the low-lit space of a foyer. Kellen could feel the vibrations in the floor.
A bouncer slumped off the reception desk he was leaning on and straightened to his full height in front of Kellen. “House closes in an hour,” he said.
“Okay,” Kellen replied. He met eyes with the man for a moment.
A second or two went by. The bouncer’s chin pressed, and he held out a hand. “ID and entrance.”
“How much is entrance?” Sixty, he knew from the small sign on the reception desk. But observational people stood out, and it was already too late to pretend he had been here before.
“Entrance is sixty.”
Kellen took three twenties from his wallet and passed them to the bouncer along with the Jay Sandler ID.
“Dude looks good for his age,” the bouncer muttered. He passed the cash over his shoulder to a woman behind the reception desk, then handed Kellen’s ID back. “Enjoy.”
It was even colder inside. Pounding music hit Kellen’s ears like pure noise. Strobe lights wandered a floor full of tables and chairs. Long tables with dance poles at their centers. And inevitably, clothed in the revolving shadows and little else, dancers.
The clientele was heavily imbalanced in older men. Kellen passed numerous graying faces momentarily highlighted in multicolor as he made his way to the right side of the building.
A full bar lit the floor like a centerpiece. Glittering glass bottles on LED thrones shone out with glaring brightness into the surrounding dark.
There was a line of booths strung across the right wall, and almost every one of them was empty. There were no poles on these tables, Kellen gathered the reason was. In fact, any view of any pole was poor from the line of booths.
Someone was trying to have a phone conversation a few seats down from the booth Kellen chose. It was a little quieter here. And dark. Almost too dark to tell for sure which booths were empty.
I need to be visible, Kellen told himself, consciously choosing the front part of the bench where a little more light fell.
But in the minutes that followed, he moved closer to the wall and deeper into the shadow. There was enough light on the floor to see anyone approaching. And vague though it was, the sketch art was enough to identify the informant by.
4:15, Kellen’s phone read when he checked the time. He blackened the screen and leaned back against the wall.
There was a dancer talking to one of the bartenders. A short dark skirt, something like a cropped vest, open at the front—
Kellen’s head lifted off the wall. Is that a guy? He blinked. Can’t tell. His head rested back against the wall.
4:32, the time on Kellen’s phone read when he checked it again.
I’m being stood up. Or tested. Or the informant hadn’t been able to scout Kellen from a distance, so he had chickened out. Then why pick the darkest spot in the building to meet?
4:40. The music briefly halted for a twenty-minutes-till-closing announcement, then resumed at a lower volume.
Kellen swiped a finger across the cracked screen of his phone and pulled up Marcus’s contact. De’Angelo. Kellen’s fingers poised over the touch keyboard, mind stalling for a moment before tapping out two words: “No show.”
He never sent that message.
Soft tapping from startlingly nearby made Kellen look up. Out of nowhere, there was a figure standing there, silhouetted like a ghost against the bar lights, hand posed on the table it had just knocked on.
Female, Kellen immediately judged by the fine lines of the figure. There was a small dip in its shape where a skin-tight crop-top ended. Softer lines where there was bare skin. Then the outline of tight jeans. The figure was wearing some kind of headband or fabric hairdressing. The ends of it hung free over one shoulder.
The silhouette lifted its knuckles off the table, and two nicely toned arms returned to its sides. “Jay?”
Not female. But a soft voice, nonetheless.
And suddenly, Kellen’s skin was prickling. A feeling seized his core—something he hadn’t felt with such intensity since the first time he had taken a bullet.
He knew that voice.
The silhouette moved into the seat across from Kellen. And for a brief moment, light from the bar rimmed the side of the figure’s face.
A blindfold. The fabric was a blindfold, exactly like the sketch art. Just like the dream.
Did I dream his voice? Kellen sat like a stone, eyes pinned on the person wrapped in darkness across from him. No. Impossible. I never dream voices. The dreams weren’t real. They weren’t real. This was coincidence.
“You’re surprisingly quiet,” the shadow spoke.
An eruption of chills dove down Kellen’s back, again in reaction to that voice. He passed his tongue across his dry lips. It was too dark for the stranger to see his face, so expressions wouldn’t matter. It was his voice that would matter. “How do you want to do this?”
“Ah, so you’re just not one for small talk, that’s all.” A short silence. “Okay, let’s talk business, then. Do you have a grand on you?”
Lack of facial expression went both ways. And suddenly, it started feeling to Kellen like a crippling disadvantage. “A grand?”
“That’s my hourly fee.”
He was joking.
A moment of silence passed.
He wasn’t joking.
Confusion welled up in Kellen’s chest, temporarily clouding coherent thought. He couldn’t see the stranger’s face, couldn’t read into what was happening. He may as well be blindfolded himself. You’re a prostitute? The question almost came out of his mouth. Kellen stared through the darkness until his vision hurt.
Was he afraid?
Kellen’s eyes lifted upward toward the ceiling, but he couldn’t see it. Not even the wall right beside him. Pitch black. Wetting his lips again, “This place have a good sound system?”
“Yeah, it has a great sound system.” No hesitation. Not even a split second to determine what Kellen meant by the question. “I’m serious. Do you have a grand on you or not? It saves me a lot of trouble if I don’t have to chase my customers down for payment afterward.”
One second. Two. Three. “You would have to chase me down for payment afterward.”
“It is what it is. Start a tab at the bar. You can pick the place afterward.”
“I pick the place?”
An amused breath sounded through the darkness, nearly swallowed by the noise of the music. “Yeah. But an actual place. I don’t do vehicles.”
Kellen’s hand twitched on his thigh. His lips parted—maybe to give an affirmative, maybe to reach for more clarification. Whatever it was, it evaporated from his mind seconds before it came out. The music ceased a second time, and the voice announcement came on again: “The house closes in five minutes.”
And with a heavy electrical click, the lights came on.
Kellen didn’t even process his eyes’ need for adjustment to the sudden brightness. All he registered was the figure seated across the table from him, suddenly carved out of the shadow. A black halter crop top. A three-layer silver chain necklace with a narrow bar-shaped pendant hanging from it. A vertical piercing through the center of the lower lip. Silver rings in his ears.
And a visage Kellen recognized with every fiber of his being. The perfect complexion; defined jawline just barely more masculine than feminine; full, softly chiseled lips. Deep red fabric concealing the eyes, cheek bones, and part of the forehead. Young, Asian, rivetingly beautiful.