Four Seconds to Lose

I’m sure you are. I sip my drink, forcing it back between bared teeth. “She left me a few weeks ago. I have no idea where she went.” I can feel his careful gaze dissecting me. I let him do it. He’ll find nothing but the truth.

She did leave me. It was a few weeks ago. And I have no f**king clue where she went.

“Did she say why?”

I lock eyes with him now. “No, she didn’t. She didn’t tell me a damn thing.”

Sam shifts his attention back to the floor. “You know, you were dating her and then she just up and vanished. If I were to report her missing, you’d become a suspect very quickly. Things could become . . . difficult for you.”

“Please do.” I can’t keep that smirk off my face. “I have nothing to hide.” He’s not going to report her missing and we both know it.

“No?” He tips his head back to finish his drink, an amused smile on his face. “It looks to me like Cain Ford might have a lot to hide. Especially from a girl like Charlie.”

He’s letting me know that he had me investigated. He’s trying to throw me off. Rattle me. Good f**king luck. “Charlie knows everything there is to know about me.” Almost everything.

“Oh?” He’s trying to sound light, but I caught the slight crack in his voice. “What about all of these people here? What would they think of their righteous boss?”

“I honestly don’t care,” I throw out without hesitation, though it’s a lie. If my dirty laundry needs to get aired, I’m the one who’s going to hang it out. I can tell by his tactics that Sam is used to threatening people and getting his way. It may have worked on his teenage stepdaughter, but it’s going to take a lot more than that to get his way with me.

His body shifts until he’s leaning over the table. “You don’t care that they know you’re a killer?”

“Anyone climbing into that ring knew the risks,” I shoot back, though my blood has turned cold. Is he talking about Jones? Or . . .

“Who said I was talking about inside the ring?”

Fuck.

How did he find out?

I hide behind my glass, never taking my eyes off him as he weighs my reaction. When I give him nothing, he continues. “Seems odd, doesn’t it? That the two men suspected of murdering your family turn up dead six months later? Beaten to death?” Cold eyes glance down at my hands. “Rumor has it you were quite the fighter. Unparalleled in the underground world.”

I struggle to school the panic in my eyes from showing. How the hell does he know about my family’s killers? What kind of connections does he have? Who else knows? Surely he’s not being fed this by the cops. Never once did they appear on my doorstep to so much as question me. If they had, I would have come clean. I would have told them how those two followed me through an abandoned warehouse one night after a fight.

How they threatened me. How they aimed a gun at my head. At Nate’s head.

John was right. They came looking for the money that my dad rightfully accused me of stealing while trying in vain to save himself. Apparently they had been waiting in the shadows, knowing they could demand an exorbitant interest rate if they let me live to win a few fights first.

I wasn’t going to give those ass**les a dime, so I truly had only two choices in that moment: fight or die.

Nate knew . . . as soon as he saw my hands flex by my sides, he knew to dive for cover.

They might have had a chance of surviving, had I not seen the bloody crime scene photos, read the graphic reports.

Had I not known what they did to Lizzy.

I called John right away. He instructed me to go home, shut my mouth, and he’d take care of it. I guess he did, because he never uttered a word to me about it again.

“I guess someone finally fought back,” I answer, the hoarseness in my voice impossible to smooth.

“Yes . . . someone did.” He scratches his chin as if pondering his next words, though I know damn well he already had this conversation planned out. “I heard they closed that case. Maybe, with the right anonymous tip, they’d reopen it?”

Dan said Sam was a smart guy. I see the evidence of that now. He may not know definitively what happened, but it’s not hard to paint a picture with my face at the center of it.

“It’d be a shame to lose everything you’ve worked so hard to build here.”

I want to reach out and choke the life out of this manipulative ass**le. “What do you want?” I snap.

“I want my daughter back and I think you know where she is.” All fluffiness in his voice has vanished.

“Well, I don’t, so I’m of no use to you.” Dumping the last of my drink in my mouth, I stand. “If you’ll excuse me.”

He jumps to his feet, and I can tell he’s struggling to keep his composure. I know this kind of guy. He’s not used to having people walk away without his dismissal. “You have a good club here. A lot of nice-looking girls,” he muses, his eyes roaming the floor. To Cherry . . . to Hannah . . . to Mercy . . . to half a dozen other dancers. “I hear you like to keep them safe.” Holding out a card with a phone number on it, he asks, “If you hear from Charlie, I’d suggest you call this number. And very soon.”

I glare at it, silently willing it to burst into flames, but don’t take it.

Finally, he places it on the table and I watch him stroll out.

I’m not stupid. I know what that offhand comment was.

It was a threat.

The rage fires through my body like nerve synapses, making my decision for me.

“You sure you want to do this?” Nate asks from beside me as we head toward the flashing neon lights, a beacon for the city’s perverts.

I heave a sigh. “No, but I don’t see any other choice.”

“He’s not going to like us showing up here,” Nate mutters, but then his face splits into a grin. I have a feeling Nate wouldn’t mind getting into a fight tonight. All this mess with Charlie has made me miserable, which in turn has made him irritable.

Sin City is almost double the size of Penny’s. It’s full of naked women, flat screens, and more private rooms than some motels. Each table comes equipped with a small monitor, where you can watch intro videos of each dancer. All in all, Rick does well for himself.

We skip the line and walk straight to the door. A big bouncer with a goatee removes the black rope and lets us pass with a wary expression. He knows exactly who we are. He came to Penny’s, looking for a job, four years ago. I almost hired him, until John found out that he has ties to a known drug dealer, who in turn has ties to the cartel. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that I’d be inviting the cartel into Penny’s by hiring him. It’s also not surprising that he’s now the head bouncer at Sin City and that members of the cartel are known to frequent here on occasion.

Thanks to a few tips from my connections, I know that the man I want to talk to is here tonight.

While the bouncer may have let us in, he also made sure to flag us to Rick immediately. The hairy f**k is waiting for us as we step into the club, his arms folded over his chest. Even when the guy makes an effort to look presentable, he doesn’t. His dress shirt is wrinkled and hanging out over a pair of ill-fitting pants, which have a prominent yellow stain on the lap.

“Coming for some real ass?” He smirks. “Or to steal more of my talent?” He’s obviously still bitter about losing China to me. If he knew that I let her go, I don’t doubt he’d try to pull her in again.