Agent Sterling stood in the middle of the Renoir Suite’s sprawling living room, her eyebrows arched so high, they practically disappeared into her hairline. “This is your idea of low-key?” she asked Judd.
Judd walked into the kitchen and started a cup of coffee. He’d known Agent Sterling since she was a kid. “Relax, Ronnie,” he said. “No one is going to connect five spoiled teenagers and an old man in a four-thousand-dollar-a-night suite to the FBI.”
“Given the average yearly salary of an FBI agent,” Sloane interjected before Agent Sterling could say anything, “that seems true.”
Michael strode into the room, dressed in what appeared to be a swimsuit and a fluffy white robe. “Agent Sterling,” he said with a tip of an imaginary hat. “So glad you could join us.” He made quick work of studying her. “You’re annoyed, but also concerned and a bit peckish.” He crossed the room and picked up a bowl of fruit. “Apple?”
Sterling gave him a look.
Michael took the apple for himself and crunched into it. “You don’t have to worry about our cover.” Dean entered the room, and Michael gestured first toward him, then toward the rest of us. “I’m a VIP. They’re my entourage.”
“Four teenagers and a former marine,” Agent Sterling said, folding her arms over her chest. “That’s your entourage.”
“The fine folks at the Majesty don’t know they’re teenagers,” Michael countered. “Dean and Lia could pass for early twenties. And,” Michael added, “I may have led them to believe Judd was my butler.”
That got nothing more than a slight eyebrow raise out of Judd, who poured himself a cup of coffee without responding.
“If anyone asks,” Michael called to him, “your name is Alfred.”
Agent Sterling seemed to realize that she’d lost control of the situation. Rather than argue with Michael, she crossed the room and perched on the arm of the sofa. She nodded to the seats and waited for us to follow the unspoken order. We sat. The position she’d taken up meant she was seated higher than the rest of us, looking down.
I doubted that was an accident.
“Persons of interest.” Agent Sterling laid a thick file folder down on the coffee table in front of her, then reached back into her briefcase. “Schematics of the first two crime scenes.” She passed those to me, and I passed them to Sloane. Finally, she held up a DVD. “The Desert Rose’s security footage from the casino floor for the hour before and the hour after Eugene Lockhart was shot.”
“That’s it?” Lia asked. “That’s all you brought us?” She leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on the mahogany coffee table. “It’s like you want me to entertain myself.”
The evidence Agent Sterling had just handed over gave Sloane plenty to work with. Dean and I could weave through the information they’d collected on the persons of interest. Even Michael could scan the security footage for any emotional outliers.
But Lia needed witness interviews—or at the very least, transcripts.
“We’re working on it,” Agent Sterling told her. “Briggs and I will be conducting interviews of our own. I’ll make sure they’re recorded. If there’s something we need a consult on, you’ll be the first to know. In the meantime”—she stood up and glanced around the massive, sprawling suite—“enjoy your accommodations, and stay out of trouble.”
Lia’s expression was all innocence—and all too convincing.
Sterling headed for the door. She stopped to talk to Judd on the way out. After a quiet exchange, Sterling called back to me. “Cassie?” she said. “A word.”
Hyperaware of the fact that the others were watching, I met Agent Sterling at the door. She pressed a USB drive into my hand. “That’s everything we have on the developments in your mother’s case,” she said softly.
No matter what. I hadn’t let myself think those words in years. And now, they were the only thing I could think. Forever and ever, no matter what.
“You’ve been through the files?” I asked Agent Sterling, my mouth going dry.
“I have.”
My hand closed tighter over the drive, as if part of me was afraid she’d take it away.
“Judd said he told you not to look at the files alone. If you want me with you when you look at them, Cassie, you have my number.” With those words, Sterling slipped out the door, leaving me to face the inquisition alone.
I forced myself to ignore the looks I was getting from Michael and Lia, the look I was getting from Dean. Part of me wanted to walk past them, shut myself in my room, and look at the contents of the drive in my hand, to read it, memorize it, devour it whole.
Part of me wasn’t sure I was ready for what I would find.
Trying my hardest to keep those thoughts from my face, I made my way back to the others and to the files Agent Sterling had brought us on the current case. “Let’s get to work.”