“That’s fine,” she said, surprised that her voice came out normal, not a croak. “Come in.”
“Anyone else here?” Travis asked as he followed her into the dark room. Their footfalls echoed in the space, Eve’s faster, more in time with her racing heart as she went for the light switches and turned on every light on the main floor. Normally she preferred to work by lights over the bar, especially when Chad stood beside her, but with Travis, she wanted as much light as she could get. At the same time, she turned on the video cameras, the ones she normally left off until the doors opened.
“Not yet,” she said. Chad would show up in a while, Natalie shortly after. She needed to get Travis out of the bar before either of them appeared. “Where’s Lyle?”
“Busy. How’s your dad?”
“Fine,” Eve said absently. Not good. Her contact at the police department, Lieutenant Hawthorn, made it very clear that they needed evidence of Lyle’s involvement, not Travis’s. She’d failed to get that evidence the night Lyle showed up, and she wasn’t going to get it today either. She’d counted on seeing Lyle personally. If he started using a middleman to deal with her, this could take months, if not years.
Long haul, Eve. Stay calm, and focus on the long game.
“Your brother? What’s he think of all this?”
Travis knew perfectly well how Caleb felt about Lyle. “Like I told him anything,” Eve scoffed, then wondered if she was playing it too obviously. “What Caleb doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
Travis flicked a glance at the wall of liquor behind her. Eve realized he expected a drink. “What can I get you?”
“Vodka rocks,” he said, nodding at the Ketel One.
Eve splashed a healthy amount over ice cubes and handed him the drink. This was precisely why clubs like hers were great for laundering money. Liquor ordered was easy to quantify coming in, but harder to quantify going out. As long as Lyle kept his deposits reasonable, she could explain the high take with a good client base and watered-down drinks.
Travis slid a slip of paper across the bar to her, followed by a black plastic bag wrapped in a rectangle and duct taped. “Account numbers and your first deposit.”
She picked up the paper and looked at the account and routing numbers, then took the bag and used a knife to slit it open. Her eyes widened at the stack of bills, smoothed and neatly stacked. “Tell Lyle he’s got to do this more frequently than once a week,” she said. “I can’t up my deposit by this much one day a week, even factoring in a Saturday night bump.”
“He knows,” Travis said, once again looking around the bar. “Spread that out over a couple days if you have to. We’ll even things out next week.”
Bank, routing, and account numbers were good, but Hawthorn had told her they needed more. “Any chance I’ll see him again?” she asked, trying for casual as she shoved the dirty drug money under the counter.
Travis huffed air through his nostrils. “Miss him?”
“Of course,” Eve said. “We were good friends. I want to catch up, you know. He got a girlfriend?”
Travis’s smile shifted into an oily smirk. “Lots of girls. No girlfriend.”
She almost choked on her next words, forcing them through her tight throat, because the last thing she wanted was to get personal with Lyle. They had been friends, when they were kids, back before Lyle made his choices. She hated everything he’d become, what he did to people and communities, knew the lies and betrayal were absolutely necessary, but it went against her grain to pretend she felt something she didn’t. “Well, tell him I miss him and I’d like to see him one of these afternoons.”
“What about you, Eve? Got yourself a man?”
His tone was silky, as intimate as the way his gaze slid over her. She was used to men looking at her like that; most of the time she ignored it, but right now, she didn’t like it. But she bit back her automatic withering response. “Nothing serious,” she said, trying for a coy smile, knowing she probably looked like a simpering idiot. God. The cops should give acting lessons. “Just a little something to tide me over until I find someone who’s got the same interests I do.”
“He said if you do a good job for him, he can do a good job for you,” Travis said with an oblique nod at the back of the room.
It took a second for Eve to get it. The abandoned warehouse behind Eye Candy. Lyle must have friends at the county records office. “Oh,” she said. “Oh! He could do that for me? That would be great!” The surprise was real, but the delight was totally fake. If Lyle bought that building and the operation worked, the land would be tied up with the court case, leaving her high and dry. More importantly, she got what she had on her own. She didn’t want help from anyone. Not her family, who couldn’t afford to help her. Not Caleb, who could. Especially not a drug dealer.