Page 74 of Darcy
“Gabrielle sent a message telling you to be ready for a photoshoot hours ago, and instead I find you’re all playing around in some stupid science park for kids! I have a hundred bricks to drop into the Puget Sound before midnight, and I can’t do that without some spoilt rich pricks goofing around above deck to distract attention.”He pauses.“You’re all behaving like you’re not here to do a job. Don’t forget, I fucking gave you that stage. I can rip it all away with a snap of my fingers if you fuck this up for me.”
“We get the point,”Dodger says, tersely.“We’re here now. Let’s just get it over with.”
“I don’t think youdoget the point,”Miguel argues.“Because this is the second time you’ve decided to piss off and do your own thing on this tour. Third strike means blood,cabrón, and yours is too valuable.”
The car goes quiet, and I have to remind myself to keep moving.
“The girl was there,”Gabrielle’s voice is small, almost a squeak in the quiet.“Our man saw her leave the building after we left. What would you like him to do?”
Shit. I have a tail? Usually I’m sharper than this!
“She’s just my latest fuck.”Dodger’s voice echoes from my phone, but I’m too busy rummaging in my bag to pay much attention.“She’s nothing.”
“Good job scaring her into our beds with your little trashing her room stunt,”Slate says.
“If you want to get rid of her before she gets clingy, I’d appreciate it,”Dodger finishes.
That’s a lie. It’s got to be, right? I shove the tiny, insecure voice that wants me to believe otherwise into the depths of my mind and focus on my tail.
Slipping my phone into my bag, I draw out the compact mirror, stop, and pretend to check my makeup. It takes a minute of filtering through people to find the one focused on me. When I find him, he’s little more than a slim shadow lurking behind the ice cream stand on the other side of the fountain.
Keeping him in my sights, I take a path around the edge of the water, skipping between groups as I head for the busy pavilion. Once I’m inside, it’s a simple matter of ducking into a staff-only area, pulling my sunhat and sunglasses out of my bag and ditching my jacket while I search for an exit.
I keep my steps purposeful and don’t draw any attention.
There. Fire exit.
I shove through it and out into the courtyard beyond.
Good luck finding me now, asshole.
I order an Uber back to the hotel, ignoring my chatty driver in favour of keeping my attention on the guys. Once I’m in the suite, I switch to monitoring the situation from my laptop.
As payback for whatever Miguel did to Arlo, I carefully track the boat they’re on until it stops in the bay and then report the location straight to the feds.
I don’t have long before I have to leave for the arena, but as an extra fuck you to the cartel, I include a list of suspicious locations where Gabrielle’s phone has been in the last day or so. Most of them are warehouses by the docks, and I’m willing to bet more than one of them contains narcotics.
I’m so distracted by my petty revenge that I’m late for setup, but Sully says nothing as I rush through my work and then speed through the safety talk. The boys are uncharacteristically silent and glum as they follow me silently across the stage, and it worries me, but when the lights go down and they take to the stage for real, you’d never know they were feeling off.
They’re professionals who love their fans. They’d never give the crowd anything less than they deserve.
I try to speak to them as they come offstage, but they’re whisked off to the VIP meet and greet before I can get close. Grumbling at how hard it is to get a hold of any of them, I send the group chat a message instead and switch my focus to packing up as fast as possible. As I work, I devise a plan to cheer them up when they return to the hotel.
When I make it back to our suite before them, I change quickly into my pyjamas, order pizza, and start up my laptop. When they get back, we can play MarioKart. I’ve got enough controllers, and no one can be mad after a few rounds of Rainbow Road.
Well, maybe Prophet can…
I don’t know how long they’ll be, but I make use of the time while I wait. Poor Gabrielle has no clue that her phone is my key to wiping every single fund from the Rosales brothers’ ludicrously fat bank accounts. I won’t do it yet, but I want to have everything in place for when I finally blow the assholes sky high.
She’s had contact with all of them, phone numbers, email addresses; it’s all there. Everything I need to quietly take over their digital lives. Sure, they have firewalls, security, all the usual stuff, but since I already have my access point, those things are meaningless.
She even has a list of all their properties, including a certain villa east of El Paso.
That’s got to be the place where they’re meeting. It fits with the tour plan and all the subtle references in their emails.
While my programs are running, I start checking out the stage for my mission. It’s an old, privately owned villa in the hills. The lighting looks spotty, given the hundreds of unanswered maintenance requests, which means plenty of places to hide. The building is so old that the tiles are falling away from the roof, and the paint on the walls is peeling. The windows are grimy, and a quick check of the records shows it’s registered under one of Roberto Rosales’ aliases. It’s also far enough from the city that I’ll need to drive.
I send Man a quick email, letting him know I’ll need a car delivered to the arena on that day, then settle into creating more back doors into the Rosales’ network. I don’t want to risk accidentally getting shut out on the day of a mission and going in blind.
