“With a glass of water,” Zo? said.
She’d snacked during the drive, without a real meal, and she was already feeling the effects of the two cosmos she’d knocked back earlier.
“We’re here for the medical-devices trade show,” Jack said. “You here for it too? I’m thinking you’re a rep. Am I right?”
She was half tempted to tell them she was. It wasn’t the first time she’d lied about her profession during a pickup. No one wanted to hear she was a mall cop. Instead, she told them she was just on a minivacation.
Their faces lit up at this reveal. Zo? knew what they were thinking—no blowback. If something sexual happened, it wouldn’t hurt their working relationships. She should have told them she was part of the trade show. It would have helped keep them at bay.
The champagne came, and Jade made a big fuss of filling their glasses. They toasted their good fortune. The guys drained their glasses, while Zo? sipped hers. Rob poured refills all around.
Zo? drank more from her water glass than her champagne glass over the next ten minutes. She didn’t know what was wrong with her tonight. Normally, she would have been matching the guys drink for drink, but she just didn’t have the thirst for it, in more ways than one. She didn’t know if it was Jack’s and Rob’s dull attempts to impress her with their jobs and big-boy toys back home, or the trip she was on that was bringing her down. She had thought a carefree evening at the casino would give her the respite she needed before her journey, but she was wrong. The idea seemed so tawdry and meaningless. She was here to find a killer’s lair. Getting picked up by a couple of random guys just didn’t play into it. The weight of her stupidity rested heavily on her shoulders.
Smarten up, she thought. This is the kind of shit that got you snatched in the first place.
“You know what, guys?” she said, cutting Jack off in the middle of some story about his boat. “I have to call it a night.”
Both Jack and Rob hit her with a chorus of nos and expressed their general disappointment.
She hopped off her stool. “Duty calls, guys.”
Rob caught her wrist. “Look, stick around. We’ll get another bottle, have some fun, and see where the night leads us.”
Rob said more but she didn’t hear him over the roar of blood rushing through her ears. She went from zero to pissed in an instant. All she saw was his grip on her wrist. His attempt to restrain her. His misguided belief that he had control of her. All she had to do was chop him across the throat with her free hand, and he’d learn how misguided he was.
The simple defense move was in her head, ready and primed to go, but she didn’t unleash it. These guys weren’t worth it, and she didn’t need any trouble. What she needed was to get back to her original plan of retracing her steps. The rage left her in a long exhale.
“Rob, don’t make this unpleasant. We all won some money and we had a drink. Now I want to leave.”
He snorted. “What if I don’t want you to leave?”
She felt the rage bubbling back up. She pushed it down. “If you don’t let me go, I’ll scream, and that will bring the bouncers, then the cops, and finally, a night in jail.”
Rob froze.
“I feel a scream building.”
“Christ, Rob, do as she says,” Jack said.
Rob released his grasp, and she strode from the bar, never once bothering to turn around.
On the way back to her to room, she reexamined what had just happened. She’d put herself in a vulnerable position and walked away without hurting anyone. She knew what Jarocki would have called it—growth.
Marshall Beck slipped into Zo?’s apartment complex unnoticed, helped by the cover of night. He’d been watching the place for the past couple of hours, and he was pretty sure she wasn’t in. No lights were on in her residence, and no one had come and gone.
He climbed the stairs to the second floor and strode up to Zo?’s door as if he had good reason to be visiting. That was where so many people went wrong. They looked as though they were there for nefarious reasons. It was an easy disguise for him to assume. He wasn’t acting nefariously. He was acting with good intent.
He brought out a shave key and slipped it into Zo?’s lock. He’d made it himself and practiced on the doors of his home. He had a pick gun too, but he didn’t need it. The shave key worked its magic, and he let himself in.
He flicked on the lights. The apartment’s floor plan was simple—one bed, one bath, with a living room connected to an open kitchen and dining area. The furnishings, or lack of them, gave the place an uninviting feel. Zo?’s place possessed the bare minimum for making a home. In the living room, there was a loveseat and an armchair separated by a coffee table. A TV, not even a flat screen, sat on a stand. The bedroom consisted of just a bed with no headboard pushed against a corner of the room with a nightstand on the exposed side.