Selling Scarlett

by Ella James

  Suri agrees to ride home with Adam and loans me Arnold for the night. A butler fetches Mom's worn, white mink and escorts me down the wide, brick walk, to the line of limousines where, years ago, our own driver, Wilson, would have been waiting. The door is opened, and I climb in, feeling weighted.

  I lean forward and give Arnold instructions he doesn't really need.

  "We’ll be there in forty minutes or less, ma’am," he says.

  "Thank you, Arnold."

  The divider wall locks into place, and I'm alone under the starry sky, staring out the sunroof, looking for constellations I can't find because we're moving too quickly down the little vineyard road.

  A computerized refrigerator offers me a bottle of water and I take it, smirking at the green and blue label: DeVille. This is how my great-grandfather made his fortune. It's good water. Almost as good as West Bourbon, which I find in the liquor console. I take a deep swing, remembering the taste of Hunter West's mouth. I wrap the cravat around my wrist. Wrong or right, I'm keeping it.

  I'm ashamed to say my mind is still on Hunter when the limousine slows. Arnold lowers the shield, his face taut as he says, "Miss DeVille, please remain inside the vehicle." The wall goes up, and I feel a weird energy. A kind of darkness.

  I'm not sure what compels me to open my door, but as I step into the road, I think some part of me already knows, because my arms and legs weigh two tons each.

  My good eye blinks and there is Cross, lying on his side in the damp grass just beside the road. At first glance, it looks like he is simply lying down. His arms are raised over his head in the position he adopts sometimes while sleeping. His legs are scissored, his pretty mouth parted just a little.

  I see blood oozing from his lips. The dark spot on the road—that's Cross's blood. His bike, a renovated '73 Norton Commando Mark III Roadster he loves like a person, is smoking in the road beside him.

  Chapter Three

  ~HUNTER~

  I can't go back to Love Incorporated. I know I should, to try to jar my memory, but I can't. So we're at Batshit Ranch, a twenty-thousand-square-foot California red roof on my little patch of sand, just outside the Summerlin community. I own ten-thousand acres out here, and besides grazing some cattle, I don't do much with them. Not that I care. Some things should be for enjoyment only, and I enjoy staying at my country place. It's my Vegas home when I need to get away from the bustle of the Wynn.

  March and I are in my study, and I'm behind my desk, cradling March's iPad as I scrutinize the chart that my friend and his private eye, Dave, put together. I turn the tablet sideways, frowning.

  'To Catch a Criminal'. I flick a withering glance his way. “Enjoying the drama, Radcliffe?”

  “Not enjoying,” he says, his voice faintly defensive as he kicks his feet out and crosses his long legs at the ankles. “Just making do. I figured we should have a project name.”

  “Right.” I look it over, curious to see the revised list of suspects. I note the absence of two names I'd hoped to see: Bill Percy and James Meyers, both deviant little fucks who've bruised some of the girls before.

  “Percy wasn't there,” Marchant says, reading my mind—or more likely, my face. Bill Percy was a prick from college turned prick lobbyist for the gaming industry. He left bruises on Juniper once; he claimed he was drunk, and Juniper decided not to press charges. “His wife caught him boinking the housekeeper that night,” March tells me. “He checked into Bellagio around three. Meyers was at an electronic cigarette convention in Virginia.”

  Marchant takes a swig of his whiskey, then rolls up the sleeves of his button-up, looking serious for once. “All in all there are twenty-six suspects, including you and I. Eleven of the other fucks stand out.”

  I scan the eleven bolded names. “My guy's been on Rutherford and Kriss for going on sixteen days. He says they're both clean as a whistle.”

  Marchant passes his almost-empty glass from one hand to the other, looking moody and restless. “I say we drop Rutherford. He likes it weird, but I think that’s only when he fucks Brad. Everyone seems to like it weird with him. Devotion to the pacifier does not a kidnapper make,” Marchant mutters.

  I lift my head, brows arched. “A pacifier?”

  March shrugs. “That's what Brad says.”

  “That goes on the list of kinks I’ll never understand.”

  “So now it’s a list of one?”

  “Funny. And we’ve got a more important list to worry about.” I bring each name up as a slide, and flip through one at a time. Name. Picture. Possible motive. “Let's keep the tail on Kriss. There’s just something about him.”

  Marchant nods, punching something into his iPhone.

  I flip through a few more slides. “Are we still on the ex-boyfriend and the stepbrother?”

  We've spent almost two months now paying a couple of Vegas PIs to track people of interest. So far all we've found is Vegas has a total of three decent PIs—and there's no limit to the number of affairs a determined man of means can have. That, and one of Priscilla Heat's screenwriters looks at kiddie porn. We're hoping Dave, a Vegas local and ex-FBI dude, can help us cover some new ground. Hence this revised list.

  “Ex-boyfriend doesn't do anything but a waitress,” Marchant says blandly. “Sarabelle's stepbrother doesn't do anything but Oxy.”

  “Tell Dave to keep tracking them. I'll add Michael Lockwood to my list, you add Caleb Zeuss to yours.” Michael Lockwood was one of Priscilla's film crew; he quit his job just a few days after that night; he's come up clean so far, but something about him smells off. Caleb Zeuss is one of the cooks Marchant employs. He was on the clock that night, but no one seems to have seen him. The cameras are useless, because while March was fucking Priscilla for Pimps and Princesses, someone turned them off. The woman working the cameras just assumed the system was down. Naturally, when she tried to convey this to Marchant, he did not want to be interrupted.

  I hand Marchant his iPad and pull out my smart phone, blinking at a new text.

  “Cumming to your place tonight. Bringing a surprise. ~P”

  I squeeze my eyes shut, opening them some seconds later to find Marchant out of his leather chair and standing in front of my desk. He leans over, pressing his palm against the sleek oak. "You doing alright? You look amped.”

  I glower. “Thanks.” I'm not doing coke, which March should know, but I'm sure as shit not justifying anything to him.

  “You sleeping okay?”

  I snicker. Marchant drains his glass and rolls his brown eyes. He slinks back to his arm chair, reminding me momentarily of the Pink Panther. “You gotten any more calls from Smith?” he asks me. Josh Smith is the LVPD's lead detective on this case, and he's been on me like white on rice since the morning we called to report Sarabelle's disappearance.

  I toss back the remainder of liquor in my glass and stand, stretching my sore legs. “I think he's finally gotten the hang of calling Lehland," my attorney.

  “What about your old man?” Marchant asks.

  “His people have stopped calling, too. I guess they've got all their fires put out.” No one but Josh Smith and a few others from Love Inc. and Heat Enterprises know Sarabelle disappeared from my room in particular. Given the political sensitivities, it needs to stay that way.

  Marchant, on the other hand, has been all over the news. His business hasn't suffered at all. In fact, he says it's picked up. Bunch of sick fucks out there.

  His phone buzzes, and I feel a jab of guilt. He should be at work. He's busy, week night or not. I should have met him there.

  Now I have to get him out of here before Priscilla shows up. He has no idea what's going on between the two of us, and I'd like to keep it that way for a while longer.

  Twenty minutes later, I'm on the balcony attached to my room, pretending to read The Financial Times on my tablet and wishing Priscilla would hurry the hell up.

  My life has been fucked up this way ever since that night with Sarabelle. I woke up the next morning stark nake
d, sprawled out on my back, with a splitting headache, a killer case of dry-mouth, and a lipstick heart drawn around my left nipple. When I sat up, the room tilting around me, I spotted a yellow note stuck to the nightstand by the king-sized bed. Large, feminine handwriting I recognized from the note the night before looped around the page.

  “Last night, the Hunter was hunted. Do you remember how hard I made you cum? xo, P”

  I didn't remember, but I'd been roofied before, and I knew what the hangover felt like. Not sure what I'd done with Priscilla Heat and hoping to hell and back that the answer was nothing, I slung my clothes on and left without giving Sarabelle a second thought.

  I got the call from Marchant on my phone about an hour later. “Did you take Sarabelle with you?”

  Now, sitting outside on this dry Nevada night, I take a sip of my brandy, remembering how suffocated I'd felt sitting beside Marchant in the private waiting room inside the LVPD. How ill I'd been, hearing that another escort had gone missing a few weeks before. Ginnifer Lucky, a 22-year-old from Arkansas. Vanished just after her last shift at another brothel. I had an alibi for that night in August, but Marchant didn't. It had been his night off, and he'd spent it at his private home in Summerlin.

  Neither of us answered any of their questions. LVPD didn't need to know anything except that Sarabelle fell asleep in my room and I awoke the next morning to find her gone. I was back at the Wynn two hours later, and I was even more worried. I had no idea what had happened to Sarabelle, and the shit I did know didn't add up.

  Donnie, the escort who'd brought me the drugged drinks, confirmed they came from Priscilla herself. According to the sticky note I'd found in my room the day after, I had fucked her that night, but I didn't remember doing so before I got the drinks, and afterward I'd been drugged to fuck and back. I could have performed in my juiced-up state, but it seemed unlikely. Had she really come into my room after filming all night with Marchant for a sunrise fuck with a man she roofied? What would be the point of that, anyway? Some kind of ridiculous fetish?

  The biggest question was whether or not I was the only person in my room when she arrived.

  If so, then who had taken Sarabelle?

  The person who'd tried to send Marchant an S.O.S. about the camera malfunction was an escort named Geneese Loveless. Richard, March's head of security, had been out with the flu, and with Rach away at her sister's funeral and March chasing his dick, Loveless had volunteered. I know Loveless well—I used to be one of her regulars—and I can vouch for her trustworthiness. She wouldn't hurt Sarabelle, and she sure as hell wouldn't have let someone rig the camera system.

  It's always possible that Sarabelle got up and walked away on her own, but Bella, who roomed next door to her in the manor where the escorts live, confirmed that Sarabelle never returned to her room that night. She didn't even have her purse when she was in the room with me. She didn't have her phone or her car keys, so she couldn't have left. Clearly, someone took her. Who—and why?

  I spent the two weeks after that night trying to track down Priscilla. When she finally surfaced, the shit really hit the fan.

  I check my watch and stroll into my bedroom, remembering the night Priscilla surprised me here. I had stepped out of the bathroom, near naked from my shower and planning to hit the hay. I sensed company before I saw her, and I stepped toward the cabinet beside my bed. I keep a loaded

  .45 inside. I don’t think she knew that, but she must have guessed, based on the way I moved.

  “It’s just me, Hunter.”

  I turned to find her in a form-fitting trench coat and high-heels. "What the hell are you doing here?"

  I can still see the determination on her Botox'd face as she smiled. “How many people know about your mother?"

  My gut clenched, but I held my poker face. "Rita?"

  "No. Roxanne. The escort who worked for Lotti Bleaufont at the Hartland Casino in the early '80s. She died in child birth. Some big-headed boy." She grinned wickedly, and I felt my heart constrict.

  She held out a folder, and I looked inside. It was mine. It came from my safe—or from my financial planner's office. Inside were all the papers. My birth certificate. The certificate of adoption, when my father's high school sweetheart and second wife, Rita, adopted me. This shit was kept under lock and key—mainly because no one knew my upstanding paps had once been head over heels for a Vegas escort.

  "This would be such a lovely story for Page Six, don't you think? Your father would be known for something besides pissing off North Africa."

  "What do you want, Priscilla?"

  She'd smiled coyly. "I just want to get into your bed. I think you’d enjoy it." She shrugged. "If you disagree, I think you will agree that your story is just too salacious, given what's happened lately. Mother was a prostitute. A prostitute disappears after you fuck her. Sounds kind of creepy, kind of kinky, doesn't it?"

  I feel a tingle down my spine. “Sounds like you know a lot of things you shouldn’t.”

  Her eyes widened, and she smiled widely. “Of course it sounds that way to you, silly man…”

  I inhale deeply, returning to the here and now. I hear the sound of fabric swishing on the other side of my bedroom door, and seconds later, Priscilla strolls in.

  “Hunter.”

  I hate the way she says my name. Like she's talking to a puppy. Like she owns me, for a secret I don’t give a shit about, personally. It’s other things I need kept quiet—things more likely to come to light if people start snooping around my family's past—but I know Priscilla doesn't know those things. Almost no one does.

  Priscilla reaches behind her back and the long, suede robe she's wearing tonight falls dramatically to the floor, revealing...only skin. She's on me, has me stripped and on my mattress in seconds. Her hand slides around my cock, and I can't help but respond. I grit my molars as I harden and throb, forced along by nimble fingers and a warm, damp palm.

  “Cum for me, Hunter. Cum for Mommy.”

  I slit my eyes open, and the glare of the bathroom light on her face causes them to shut again. I'm having trouble finishing. I squeeze my eyes shut more tightly, think of another face instead. I'm done in no time, cumming into Priscilla's hands.

  "What a good man. If you want to keep your mommy happy, we'll do chains tonight. It's your night to wear them. I hit you."

  I shut my eyes again. Truth be told, I like that best.

  “I brought your surprise.” It’s E, and I roll my eyes at the little pill. “I’ve never been a fan.”

  “I think you’ll like it.”

  I pretend to take it, we fuck, and when Priscilla leaves, I follow her. I catch up with her a few blocks later, and follow her another thirteen miles to a small brick home with a familiar address. It's the home of Michael Lockwood, the film assistant who recently quit working for Priscilla. The one who used to work security for Governor Carlson. Drake Carlson—the political heavyweight Priscilla used to fuck.

  I park down the street and dial our new guy, Dave. "I've got a change of plans. You remember Lockwood? Lives on Anderson? I want him followed, night and day. Priscilla Heat, too.”

  Chapter Four

  ~ELIZABETH~

  "I already told you, I'm his sister." I look the evil nurse right in the eye and lock my jaw, like I mean business, because I do.

  "Mr. Carlson doesn't have a sister," she says after glancing at her clipboard.

  I reach into my worn Coach bag and grab a fifty, shamelessly sliding it across the high-gloss counter. If I had more, I'd offer it all to her. But the only rehab I could get Mom into this time is seriously pricey, eating up our meager allowance from the DeVille Trust, and my fellowship money only goes so far. If Suri didn't let me live at Crestwood Place with her for free, I'd never make ends meet.

  The nurse raises her right eyebrow and looks from my money to me, and I cross my arms in front of my chest. "How many visitors?"

  "Excuse me?"

  I meet her pale brown eyes and hold her gaze. "How
many visitors has he had since I came Monday?"

  Her lipsticked mouth twists, and her eyes flicker down the hardwood hall, toward Cross's spacious, private room. "Thirty minutes," she says, shoving the fifty back at me. "That's all you're getting. And I know you're not his sister."

  I slide the fifty into the pocket of my pea coat, where my iPod Mini is, and hold my contraband-filled purse close to my side. I walk quickly to Cross's room, the way I always do, because I truly am eager to see him, coma or not.

  For the first four weeks, it was medically induced, but when he began healing from his skull and leg surgeries, they decreased the sedatives so he could wake up. But he hasn't. I think I might know why, and I can't stand how much that knowledge hurts. But Cross's complicated secrets are safe with me.