Page 67 of Sapphire Sunset

“Sexuality is a spectrum. I wouldn’t judge.”

“I’m judging myself,” Logan said.

“Well, maybe this isn’t a good idea,” Donnie said quietly.Which meant he was serious. “You working here. With him.”

“I told him.”

“You told him you jerk off to his Instagram?” Donnie barked.

“Shut up!No. I told him maybe I was a distractionand he should let me go.”

“But you put it back on him,” Donnie said. “Made it hisdecision.”

“Yeah.”

“’Causeyou don’t want to quit.”

“Kinda, yeah,” Logan said softly.

“’Causeyou want to work here.With him.”

“Pretty much,” Logan whispered.

“But do you even like this place anymore? With all this shitgoing on?”

“I love this place, always have. And even with all this shitgoing on, I love it even more now that he’s back.”

“Hoo, boy,” Donnie whispered. “Oh, by the way. Bad news.You’ve only got me for twenty-four more hours. Our Mexico shoot got moved upbecause of some bullshit with the rental house.”

“Crap. Can you get me some more people?”

“Yeah, not sure they’ll have the curb appeal of the lastthree, though. Those guys. The metrics we used to get on their scenes back inthe day. Through the roof, man.”

“Thisjob’s not about curb appeal. Unless we’retalking about the actual hotel. It’s about confidence and strength. And I’dlove people with some basic self-defense or fight training, but I’m not goingto be picky.”

“Good to know. Let me make some calls.”

“After we get the rest of the cameras,” Logan said.

“How many are left on this floor?” Donnie asked.

“Five.”

“Jesus Christ.” Donnie studied the length of the corridor asif every foot contained a piece of Rodney Harcourt’s rotten soul. “Was he goingto blackmail every room?”

“Looks like it, yeah.”

Connor managed to get through to theexecutive director of the Lighthouse Foundation right away. The national literacyorganization’s networking conference was still on the calendar in three weeks,and they’d bring the hotel’s occupancy to around fifty percent. Nicole Richterwas professional, but frosty. She repeated the same conditions she’d expressed tothe hotel’s lawyer. They reserved the right to bolt if any more disclosurescame to light. In response, Connor did his best to distance himself fromRodney, to declare it a new day at the hotel and make clear he’d been broughtin after an absence of five years without admitting fault outright. His nextcall was to the Southern California Patent Attorneys’ Alliance, who were set tooccupy almost sixty percent of the hotel two weeks after the LighthouseFoundation attendees vacated. Their executive director’s tone was similar. Buthe wanted dirt. Connor did his best to walk the line between discretion andkeeping a curious, and very important, client happy, mostly by alluding to hisown difficult history with and contempt for his uncle.

Once he hung up, he took a moment to breathe, studying hisuncle’s absurdly big cherrywood desk. It had been swept clean of its contentsby the FBI, save for some water rings left by the rock glasses Rodney favoredfor his morning, early-afternoon, late-afternoon, early-evening, and late-nightcocktails.

He gave himself four seconds an inhale and eight seconds forthe exhale, hoping the breathing exercise would relax him. It did. A little.

But the only thing that would make the phone calls stingless was throwing himself into another urgent task. So he turned to his laptopand logged into the hotel’s server, using the instructions the front desk staffhad given him. A few keystrokes later, he found what he was looking for.

Logan’s emails.

Long, detailed, and diplomatic essays outlining shortfallsand room for improvement in their various security procedures. Proposingsolutions that touched on areas from parking and event management to shiftscheduling. Logan had pitched a more efficient system for receiving and trackingguest packages after a shocking number were lost in a single quarter, a pitchthat had apparently gone ignored. He’d proposed better fortification for astaff entry door on the lower part of the hotel, which, sure enough, a fewmonths later, an abusive husband used to try to track down his wife after shechecked into the hotel under an alias. They’d caught the guy before he got toher, but by then he’d been within a stone’s throw of his terrified wife’s roomand sending her menacing texts. If Logan’s warning had been heeded, the bastardmight never have made it onto the property.

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