32. Tulsa

32

"Stop breathing on me."

Echo had set herself up in Monroe's office with Chase standing guard at the door. When Romeo realised where I was going, he'd insisted on coming too, and Monroe had followed. He might have been adequate at running the security team day-to-day, but give him a minor crisis to deal with, and he was way out of his depth. Monroe had been coasting in his job for too long, and controls were lax. I'd seen it a thousand times before. Taken advantage of it nine hundred and ninety-nine of them.

"I can't stop breathing," Romeo griped. "Do you want me to suffocate?"

"If that's an option, I wouldn't say no."

We started running footage from the beginning of the day. Luna had ordered breakfast at five minutes to seven, and the call to room service had been recorded. Somewhere over the Atlantic, Ryder Metcalfe had already confirmed that during the conversation, she'd sounded normal—a little tired, a little polite. Now we watched the waitress wheel a cart out of the staff elevator on the twelfth floor, exchange a few words with the guard, and head for Luna's suite.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

She returned sans cart four minutes and seventeen seconds later, checked her watch as she waited for the elevator, and went back to the kitchen.

Another hooker showed up for the guys in 1209. A pretty brunette.

"Smart girl," Romeo said. "When I checked the room, she tried to give me a business card."

"Did you take it?"

"Would it matter to you either way?"

I didn't dignify that with a reply.

The guard was bored. This was the beginning of his shift, but he fidgeted, and when no one was in sight, he leaned against the wall. Honestly, I couldn't blame him because there was fuck all going on, and he undoubtedly got paid shit. But he didn't leave. Occasionally, he checked in over the radio.

The couple in 1208 left for breakfast hand in hand, smiling at each other. A group of four moved to get out of the elevator, realised they were on the wrong floor, and stepped back inside. A family arrived, but they turned left instead of right out of the vestibule, nowhere near Luna's room, as did everyone else who exited on the twelfth floor.

The same waitress returned at eight thirty-six, and eleven minutes later, she wheeled the cart back into the elevator.

Eleven minutes.

Hmm.

Why did it take her less than five minutes to serve breakfast and twice that to clear it away? Luna only had croissants and coffee, and the woman said they didn't have much of a conversation.

What else happened in that room?

"Her." I tapped the screen. "Nola Jiminez. I need to speak with her again."

Monroe nodded. "I'll try to find her, but her shift finished. She probably went to pick up her kid."

"Why do you need to speak with her?" Romeo asked.

I ignored him. "Play it again."

Nola pushed the cart out of the hallway, through the blind spot—which only took two seconds—and waited for the elevator. Made small talk with the guard. Checked her watch again. When the elevator arrived, she leaned forward and shoved the cart into the car.

Leaned forward.

Shoved.

Fuck.

How much did those carts weigh?

"Get me one of those room service carts."

"Are you hungry?"

"Yes," Echo told him. "Do you have macarons?"

"We don't need food, just the cart. Make sure it has a cloth over the top like that one." I pointed at the screen. "Quick, quick. The service is shit in this place."

Monroe hurried off, and Echo looked at me.

"Ah," she said.

"Right."

Five minutes later, Echo bitched as I hauled her off the chair in Monroe's office and stuffed her onto the bottom shelf of the cart. She didn't make things easy, and when she relaxed, her arms kept falling off the edge and trailing along the floor.

"Nola must have secured her in place. Either she came prepared with rope, or she improvised and used something from the room. She could have wedged the dog in on top."

Monroe had turned ashen, and Romeo didn't look much better. But I was feeling hopeful. We'd solved the first part of the puzzle. Now we were getting somewhere.

"What did she do, hit Luna over the head?" Romeo asked.

"She didn't need to. Jiminez served the food, remember? All she had to do was sprinkle sleepy dust on the top and pick Luna up afterward."

"That still doesn't explain how the waitress got her out of the building."

Monroe shook his head, incredulous. "Nola? I can't believe she'd do this. Her whole world revolves around her son—there's no way she'd risk going to prison. Kobie would wind up in foster care."

"How much do you pay her?"

"Uh, I don't have that information."

I turned to Romeo. "Minimum wage? A buck or two more?"

"She also gets tips."

"Which are unpredictable. Is she married? Does she have a serious boyfriend?"

Monroe shook his head again. "It's only her and Kobie now. Her husband went to prison."

"Prison? For what?"

And could it have any link to the mess we were dealing with at the moment?

"A bar fight. The other guy had some kind of seizure and died. Nola's a good person—she just made the mistake of marrying an asshole."

Okay, so probably no connection.

"Other family? Brothers? Sisters? Do her parents live close by?"

"Not that she's ever mentioned."

"So she's a single mom who has to pay for childcare. And how much is rent in Las Vegas? Do you see what I'm getting at? Luna's stalker isn't living paycheck to paycheck. He was sending her gifts and buying her dinner every night. So maybe he offered Nola enough to cover the bills for six months, and she took it." Now Romeo had paled a shade too. "We're gonna need her address and phone number."

While Monroe went to find that information for Echo, I took another walk through the building with Romeo. For once, he kept his big, talented mouth shut. In the video, we'd watched the elevator numbers tick from twelve down to one without stopping, so we knew where Nola had exited. The doors opened in a short hallway with the kitchen at the far end.

"We checked all the storerooms," Romeo told me. "She's not in there."

"What about this?"

"The fire exit? It's alarmed. We'd know if anyone left that way."

"A silent alarm? Or an audible one?"

"Audible."

I kicked the crash bar, and the door flew open. No bells rang, no siren blared. Priest could stand down and Connor Lowes could put his shirt back on—the shitbird definitely worked at the Nile Palace. Had Mark Antony paid her to do his dirty work?

"You were saying?"

Romeo cursed liberally, in both Italian and English, as I took a look outside. The fire exit led to a corral full of dumpsters. Great. Come join my new special ops team, Priest had said. We'll have the best toys, a generous budget, and the leeway to innovate on challenging missions, he said.

And now I had to search through trash.

Fucking fantastic.

"We need to check all these."

Romeo looked about as happy as I felt. "You think the perp might have dumped her body?"

Honestly, no. If Mark Antony had reversed a vehicle into the corral, it would have made the perfect handover point for his victim. But I wasn't about to cut corners, unlike some people.

"You realise nobody outside of TV uses the term ‘perp,' right?"

"So what would you call him?"

With Emmy Black involved? A dead man walking. "You start on the left; I'll take the right. And do it fast."