Vicki Pettersson - The Given

Eric and Larry laughed and clinked glasses. Larry downed his drink, while Eric merely sipped. Grif remained still.

“You’re with me,” Justin said, angling himself behind Zicaro. “You two, get him.”

This was not going as planned. Grif looked around, but their backup hadn’t arrived yet, and the waitress—a friend of Kit’s—was long gone. So he reached out to stop Justin himself . . . exactly what the man was expecting. Justin swung to backhand Grif, who dodged just as Larry stepped between them. Justin immediately whirled away with Zicaro, and Larry grinned as he reached for Grif’s arm.

He stopped grinning when he wobbled.

Realization struck Eric’s face just as Grif’s fist struck Larry’s jaw. Eric was so shocked that he, too, dropped his glass, and though he tried to grab Grif’s forearm, he swayed as well. “You fucking—”

A voice interrupted, causing him to jolt. “Is there a problem here?”

The police officer stood directly behind Eric.

“Yes,” Grif said to Dennis, though his gaze darted in the direction that Justin had disappeared with Zicaro. How could they have vanished so quickly? “These men are inebriated.”

“Intoxicated?” asked the officer.

“And assholes,” Grif said.

“Intoxicated, inebriated assholes at a casino in Vegas?” Dennis’s eyes went wide and he lifted a groaning Larry from the ground. He turned him toward the exit. “We can’t have that.”

And Dennis couldn’t carry Larry and control Eric at the same time. So, despite his worry over Zicaro—despite spotting an empty wheelchair parked at the elevator banks—Grif looped his arm around Eric as if they were buddies.

“Anything happens to him,” Grif whispered, steering Eric toward the garage, “and I’m going to take it out on you.”

And finally, rightfully, Eric looked scared.

Ray DiMartino was the infamous Sal DiMartino’s only son.

Ray DiMartino was the man who, just last year, had told Kit and Grif about Barbara, saying that she hated Griffin Shaw, though he couldn’t say why, or where she was now.

Ray DiMartino would also know about the three jumbo diamonds that went missing from his mother’s dressing room fifty years earlier.

Which meant that Ray DiMartino hadn’t just been holding out on Kit and Grif when they questioned him earlier this year . . . he’d been out-and-out lying.

And that was why Kit was going to question Ray while Grif and Zicaro were busy returning the flash drives. Kit knew she’d surprised Grif when she’d agreed to let them handle the meet, but she just couldn’t get the phone call out of her head. The one that’d come through Barbara’s phone on the same night of her murder. Is it done?

“They were working together,” Kit muttered, jaw going tight as she squinted up at the sign of the Masquerade strip club. It was only two in the afternoon, so the rest of the lot was near empty, with only a few cars pocking it like a disease.

Kit wished she had Grif’s ability to bypass any alarm system with nothing more than a flick of her wrist. She’d rather have done that than call to make an appointment under a false name, claiming she wished to audition for a job. She’d once asked him what it felt like to be able to enter any secured structure without obstruction, and he tried to explain to her as best he could what it felt like to be angelic.

“The power starts behind my shoulder blades,” he said, and she nodded. She knew there were two feathers from a Pure angel buried back there. It had been meant as a form of punishment. Just like his forced return to the Surface. “It spreads to my shoulders from there, then shoots through my veins to whatever part of the body I’m thinking of.”

“Does it hurt?”

“It’s . . . uncomfortable. Warm and thick and sluggish, like salsa in the blood. But it’s also powerful, quick as a solar flare.”

But Kit didn’t know what that felt like, either . . . and she didn’t care. To a woman with relatively little physical power, it sounded . . . well, divine.

Checking her image one final time in the rearview mirror, Kit sighed. She’d just have to use what she had. Unfortunately, she’d curated her retro look so rigorously over the years that she could do little to alter it now. She simply didn’t fit the modern standards of female perfection. Her skin was too pale, her hair too dark, her curves too aggressive.

So she’d chosen to go boldly in the opposite direction with her appearance. Instead of trying to camouflage the things that made her different from the other girls, she overstated the pitch-black liner of her feline eyes. Instead of pale pink, she’d chosen the most vibrant red lip color in her palette. She’d thrown on a vintage swing coat that likely made her appear coy, but that was more to hide her vintage clothing than the curves beneath. She’d been inside Masquerade before and knew she already stood out against the throng of rail-thin blondes.

“Well, at least you’ll be an original,” she muttered to her reflection in the rearview mirror before locking up the car and heading inside.

The hostess said almost the exact same thing before leading Kit to Ray’s office, located at the back of the building. The club music pulsed through the walls like some druggie’s cranked-up heartbeat, and the strobes and blackout curtains turned day back into night. Some people, and some things, were just meant for the dark.

“Mr. DiMartino will be out in a moment,” the hostess said, then offered what might have been an apologetic smile. “He’s just showering, but he knows you’re coming.”

Kit couldn’t keep her mouth from falling open as the door shut behind her. Showering? She looked at the black leather sofa, then glanced up at the cameras, eyes glowing red and recording everything. Then she indeed picked up the sound of water running from the adjacent room.

“Gross,” Kit said, shooting one of the cameras a dirty look as she tossed her handbag on a side table. It didn’t matter. Ray would know as soon as he saw her that she wasn’t there to dance.

They’d still go a few rounds, though.

Ray’s office was not exactly a den of iniquity. The walls were off-white and sterile, with only one picture to break up the monotony, an amateur painting of two women kissing as a man looked on. “Glad to see you’re keepin’ it classy, Ray,” Kit muttered, moving back to the center of the room.

Other than the door leading to the room where Ray could be heard singing in the shower—again, gross—there was one other exit, sporting a bright red sign above announcing the same, and a lockbox that meant business. It likely led to the parking lot, allowing Ray—and whomever he summoned through that back door—a quick and private getaway.

Two long, lacquered desks were pushed together to form an L-shaped command center where paperwork was haphazardly piled and cabinets were shoved underneath. A small bookshelf was tucked beneath the desk’s far end, and Kit scanned the titles with raised eyebrows. Wine for Dummies. Spanish for Dummies. Finance for Dummies.

Either Ray liked to take shortcuts, or he didn’t think very highly of himself.

Outside of the heavy desks and long leather sofa, the rest of the room was aesthetically forgettable but for one thing: the raised platform with a shiny pole spearing from its middle. Giving the makeshift stage a dismissive glance, and listening to Ray struggle to find a tune as he showered, Kit crossed the room to riffle through his mail.

He didn’t seem to be living the life of a big mobster, Kit thought, spotting two delinquent notices addressed to another location, likely his home. She wrote the address down for reference. Maybe he was just getting back into the game. A strip club, and the way cash moved through these doors, was certainly a good jumping-off point. And lack of funds meant he might be desperate to lay his hands on a bigger con. Like a half-century search for diamonds.