Page 4 of Logan

Sebastian sighed.

“Sort of. The information is vague, so it’s hard to say. This case is almost ten years old so any leads we could have followed on that angle are cold as ice now. Finding him might be impossible at this point.”

“Give me whatever you got,” I said, with a newfound conviction in my voice. “I promise you, no matter what, I’ll find him. If I’d brought these monsters down two years ago, Clay Dahler might have been found sooner. I’ve already failed once. I’m not failing again.”

CHAPTER 3

Logan

A disorientingatmosphere of loud music and flashing neon lights washed over me when I stepped into the club. Almost immediately, someone’s hand slid across my chest and slipped inside the lapel of my jacket.

“Hey there,” the flamboyantly dressed man said as they sidled up next to me. “Haven’t seen you here before.”

Their voice was hard to hear over the loud music, but they were slurring their words, giving the impression they were drunk, but their blown out pupils indicated they were probably on something harder.

Grasping the man’s wrist and removing his hand from my chest, I pushed past him.

“Be glad that you’ve never seen me before, and I hope I have no need to see you in the future.”

The words were a warning, considering the nature of my job, but I knew the guy would see it as a personal insult. As expected, he shoved me away, shouting “Asshole!” before storming back into the crowd.

I’d been toDinah’s Placebefore on several occasions, none of them for good reasons. On the outside it looked like a typical nightclub, but the backrooms were a different story. It was typical for clubs for dancers to take customers to the back for private shows, but this particular place used it as a cover for prostitution. As a rule, we usually turned a blind eye to it so long as everyone involved was consenting, and of age, but there had been a few instances recently where the “dancers” were of questionable age or were being pressured into something they didn’t want to do.

I was barely there for more than a few minutes before the owner of the club appeared in the crowd. Dressed in a short glittery gold dress, she looked more like a patron than the owner.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she said the moment she was within earshot, which in this establishment was only a foot away.

Dinah was a tough soul, older than she looked, and with plenty of experiences dealing with the law. Rumor was that she used to be a lawyer who got sick of playing by the rules. With how good she was at skirting the law, I was inclined to believe the rumors.

There was no bull-shitting her. The only way to deal with Dinah was to be as direct as possible.

“Do you really want to have this conversation here, out on the floor where anyone can overhear us?”

She glanced suspiciously at the dozens of people around us, who were all trying and failing to hide the fact they were eavesdropping.

“Fine. Come to the back office, but this better be worth my time or I’ll have Jerome throw you out.”

Jerome was the club’s most fearsome bouncer. At six foot five and two hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle, he could easily pick me up and toss me out the door. It had happened before, and I swore I could still feel the bruises hiding under my skin.

As soon as the office door closed behind us, the noise of the club instantly fell silent. Dinah must have invested in some state-of-the-art soundproofing because I couldn’t hear even a whisper of the chaos just on the other side of the door.

It also meant no one could hear anything that happened inside the office, but I tried not to think about that. I had a gun strapped to my hip, if necessary, but I hoped the situation wouldn’t dissolve into violence.

Sitting in the chair behind her desk with the air of a queen, Dinah crossed one leg over the other, so the slit of her dress fell open up to the top of her thigh.

If I’d been into women, I might have been distracted, but I found myself only mildly amused by the attempt.

Frowning when she realized her distraction technique had failed, she tapped her nails on the arm of her chair. “Right, you’re one ofthose.”

The smile on my face remained pleasant, though a little strained at the corners. “I hope you’re referring to the fact that I’m adetective.”

As she pulled a slim cigarette out of its box, she gave me a long, pointed stare. “Of course. What else would I be talking about?”

“Of course,” I repeated. “What else.”

Instead of smoking the cigarette directly like most people, Dinah first placed it into a long cigarette holder. She claimed it was to keep the smoke away from her face, but I suspected she just liked the aesthetic since she had at least a dozen different holders to match her favorite outfits.

She took several long drags, holding the smoke in her lungs for a moment, before breathing it out her nose.

---