Parker Security Complete Series

by Camilla Blake

  There was a sandwich shop right across the street from Heathens, so whenever we worked a night there, we’d head over a little early so we could stop in and grab a bite. Most of us had mastered the art of eating without spilling it down our fronts, but not Cole, who had positively no qualms about donning a big disposable bib and eating the biggest pastrami on rye that he could manage.

  I always tried to eat light, though. I didn’t want to be lethargic or have a sugar crash midway through the night, but I hated the feeling of a big brick of food sloshing around my gut. I ordered a chicken Caesar wrap and had an iced tea. The five of us sat at a corner table.

  “Will you look at him,” Lena whispered, nudging me with her foot under the table. I followed her gaze to Cole, who was dipping a roast beef sandwich into an impossibly small cup of au jus, and then dribbling it down his front when he brought it up to his mouth for a bite. Fortunately, the bib caught the excess.

  “Give him a break,” I whispered back. “He’s excited.”

  And Cole was. His knee was jumping and his blue eyes were bright as he looked around, his gaze every so often going to the big plate-glass window through which we could see Heathens across the street, and I could practically see him thinking, wondering whether or not Isa had arrived.

  We’d worked some big events before, but it did feel like tonight was going to be different somehow, though I couldn’t quite say why. Maybe Cole’s enthusiasm for the whole thing was rubbing off on everyone—well, except Lena, of course, but that was to be expected; the two were like oil and water.

  When we were done eating, we headed across the street to Heathens. The club had their own in-house bouncers who worked during the week and would be assisting us tonight. It was early, and there were only a handful of people inside the club. The first DJ hadn’t even gone on yet. I took a walk around the club, which was something I liked to do when I first got there. It was a big space, the main entrance letting people into a short hallway where, to the left, was the coat check. The hallway opened into the main room, which was probably ten thousand square feet. There were pillars and a high ceiling, which showed exposed beams and strategically placed disco balls. The amount of lighting and special-effects equipment Heathens had was impressive: LED pars, strip lights, strobes, moving lights, lasers, a jet fogger—they spared no expense. The club scene wasn’t my thing, but if it were, Heathens would definitely be a place I’d frequent a lot.

  I slipped my headset on, which was really just a small, discreet, single-wire earpiece. I went over and stood close to one of the speakers that was pumping out some bass-heavy deep house. “Sound check,” I said, and a second later, Cole’s voice came back, crisp and clear, like he was right there next to me.

  “Gotcha loud and clear, bro,” he said. “Is she here yet?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Holy crap, Cole, keep it in your pants!” That would be Lena.

  I stifled a laugh and headed over to the VIP lounge entrance. You had to go up a stairwell to get to the mezzanine level where the lounge was and then a few smaller rooms that were used as chill-out rooms or dressing rooms, depending on the event. There wasn’t much action up there yet, so I watched as people started showing up.

  Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, though that’s how it usually was when these things first started. I could tell some of the people were on something—E, coke, maybe acid. That was preferable to meth or PCP. Plenty of people were drinking, but so long as the atmosphere stayed like this, it was unlikely we’d have too many angry drunks to worry about.

  And even though the music wasn’t necessarily my favorite, there was something to be said for watching a whole bunch of people having a really good time. Some of them were pretty good dancers, too. As more and more people arrived and things started to get crowded, I moved from the main floor up to the mezzanine, right outside the door to the VIP lounge, which was down a wide hallway. If you turned right, you could access the balcony and catwalk that overlooked the main stage; to the left was a window wall that, amazingly, no one had ever gone crashing through.

  I was standing near the balcony, looking down at the undulating crowd of bodies awash in the kaleidoscopic technicolor glow of strobe lights when a group of people appeared at the top of the stairs and started to make their way to the VIP lounge. I stepped back over to the door, though I could see the purple and gold wristbands that Heathens used as their VIP passes. I held the door open, and they breezed in, all of them laughing about something. At the center of the group was a girl with a half-shaved head, the rest of her hair bleached blond, wavy, stopping just short of her chin. I knew, without having to be told, that this was Isa, that she was the DJ that everyone had come here tonight to see. It was as if she could feel my gaze on her and/or hear my thoughts; she turned and looked right at me, but then I let go of the door handle and it closed, hiding me from their view.

  As the night progressed, people continued to pour into the club, packing the main floor until, from above, they appeared to be one massive, gyrating creature. There were girls wearing fairy wings and platform shoes, faces sparkling with glitter, guys with glow sticks and rainbow-colored hair. The walls and the floor reverberated with sound as I moved my eyes over the crowd, catching a glimpse of a smiling face, or someone dancing, eyes closed, hands raised in the air.

  The door to the VIP lounge opened and I stepped back and grabbed hold of it, pulling it open the rest of the way. It was the blonde with the half-shaved head. “Hey,” she said as she stepped out. I let the door close. She was short—maybe five four at the most. Despite her punk-rock haircut, she was stunningly beautiful, with large, blue-green eyes framed by thick lashes, a wide mouth with lush lips, the sort that you couldn’t help but imagine kissing, even if you knew you didn’t stand a chance in hell. I refused to look lower than her throat, though since I was quite a bit taller than she was, I had to look down, and just out of the range of my direct sight was ample cleavage, harnessed in by a flimsy pink tank top.

  “Good evening,” I said.

  She smiled. “What’s your name?”

  “Jason.”

  “I’m Isa.”

  “I figured.”

  “Did you?”

  “Well... I saw you come in with your entourage.”

  She giggled. “Entourage. That’s a good one. Do I know you?” she asked, squinting up at me, making the skin at the corners of her eyes wrinkle. “You look familiar.”

  “Guess I just have one of those faces.”

  “That’s one way of putting it.” She took another step toward me; any closer and we’d have made physical contact. I took a step back and she laughed.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “Are you afraid of me? You shouldn’t be, no matter what you’ve heard. No one should be afraid of me.”

  “I’m not afraid. Just trying to be respectful of your space.”

  “Who says I’m looking for respect?”

  This sort of banter might have delighted me at one point, but now it just made my stomach clench. I stared straight ahead, glad that I had my sunglasses on. At least they offered me the illusion of some semblance of protection.

  The floor underneath my feet pulsed. God, this sort of music was awful. I didn’t get how people could listen to it, but I was certainly in the minority.

  “My set starts in about half an hour,” Isa said. “Which means I’ve got twenty-five minutes to go enjoy a smoke and an energy drink.” She started to walk by me.

  “Where are you going?”

  She stopped and turned to face me. “I just told you. To enjoy a smoke and an energy drink. It’s like my ritual. I do it before every set. Try to find a quiet place to just have a moment before I have to get out there in front of everyone and give it my all. Is that going to be a problem?” She bit her lower lip as she said this and gave me a coy look.

  “No,” I said. I didn’t have any orders to not let her leave.

  “That’s good,” she said. “Because I wo
uldn’t want there to be any problems. And I do always get what I want.” She laughed and then kept walking. I watched her go.

  Chapter 2

  Emmy

  It was Sunday, which meant the farmers’ market first thing, and then back home to try to do a little work, and then I’d go over to my parents’ house and we’d have lunch together. I had my routines and I liked to stick with them, because it gave some order to my days, and that was important. Especially if you worked from home, and could theoretically spend entire days never bothering to get out of your pajamas, or brushing your teeth, or even communicating with the outside world.

  I had the alarm on my phone set, as I always did, but I awoke before it went off. I couldn’t actually remember the last time that I’d needed the alarm to wake me up, but I still kept it on anyway, just in case. As I picked up my phone to turn the alarm off, I saw a most unusual sight: the screen said I had a number of missed calls, as well as several text messages from numbers I did not recognize. I was about to dismiss it as someone simply getting the wrong number and being too drunk to realize it, but then one of the texts caught my eye:

  THIS IS EMMY’S NUMBER, RIGHT??!!!

  I blinked and brushed a few stray wisps of hair from my face. I read the message again. The other messages were about my twin sister. Specifically, asking if I knew where she was.

  Obviously, the sender of these messages didn’t know my sister very well; otherwise she would have told them that we didn’t really have much of a relationship. I saw my sister more on pages in magazines or on websites than I did in real life. This wasn’t intentional—was it?—it was just how life sometimes worked out. Isa was an extrovert, I was an introvert; Isa was outgoing, I was shy; Isa was a success, I was less so.

  I listened to the voicemails. They were hard to understand, but it sounded like they were from Warren, who was my sister’s manager. I’d met him exactly once, and that was enough for me. He reminded me of a weasel, and the way he grinned when he realized Isa and I were twins made me want to run out of the room. From what he was saying, though, it sounded like Isa had not been where she was supposed to be last night, and did I have any clue where the hell she was?

  No.

  I wasn’t about to call him back, though. Before I got out of bed, I did send her a quick text: Hey. It’s Emmy. Just wanted to check in. Isa would probably roll her eyes and laugh when she read it—she’d say I was starting to sound more and more like our mother. Except our mother didn’t have a cell phone and had therefore never sent a text before. It had been a while since my sister and I had last talked, and I did feel a little bad about that. Our last conversation hadn’t gone so well; it had actually ended when Isa had hung up on me. She had called, out of the blue, to tell me she’d bought me a ticket to Ibiza because she’d decided it was time that I finally came out to see her there. It was supposed to be over our birthday, in early April, but what Isa had failed to take into account was: one, I didn’t like to travel, and, two, I had a huge deadline I needed to meet and couldn’t just leave for two weeks to visit some tiny island off the coast of Spain.

  “Come on—live a little,” she’d said, in that singsong sort of voice she used when she was trying to convince someone to do something she wanted. “Your work will be waiting for you when you get back.”

  “You’re exactly right, because I don’t have someone who can just cover for me. I’ve got a deadline, Isabel. I’m sorry.”

  The conversation had gone on like that for a while; it was apparent that she’d assumed I’d be elated with her surprise offer and would just forget everything else that I’d had planned. I was a freelance illustrator, though, and I had a deadline I had to meet for the children’s book series I’d been working on for several years now. It wasn’t something I could simply push back the schedule on.

  “Yeah, okay,” Isa had finally said coolly when it became clear I wasn’t going to be dusting off my passport and packing my bags. “Enjoy being a hermit.” And then she’d hung up. It stung now, a little, to think about it, that being the last conversation we’d had. But I also knew Isa was the sort of person who usually wouldn’t hold a grudge, and certainly enough time had elapsed since that conversation that she would have gotten over the fact I didn’t take her up on her offer.

  I tossed the phone on my bedside table, fully expecting to hear back from Isa in several hours or several days. You never knew with her. If, for whatever reason, she was still harboring some sort of resentment toward me because I hadn’t taken her up on her offer, I’d apologize and tell her that maybe we could plan it for another time, but maybe it could be something a little more low-key, a little more local.

  I made myself some tea and had a piece of toast with peanut butter and then changed and got out my reusable bags and my purse. I opened the front door and was about to take a step out when I stopped short. There was a bouquet of smashed pink carnations on my front step. I sighed and stepped over them. I’d deal with them later. There was probably a note embedded in there somewhere, but I didn’t need a note to know who they were from; they were from Silas, this guy I had met online and foolishly gone out on a few dates with. I’d been feeling lonely, and I’d let those feelings get the better of me. I should’ve known better though—the last date I’d gone on, my friend, Carolyn, had arranged, and the night ended with both my date and me in the hospital after an attempted mugging. My date had tried to play the hero, which might have turned out in our favor if the mugger hadn’t had several friends with him who attacked us like a pack of wild dogs. That was two and a half years ago, and the police had never arrested anyone.

  Carolyn felt awful, my date felt even worse, but I told them it wasn’t either of their faults and they shouldn’t feel guilty. I figured it was probably the universe’s way of telling me that I just wasn’t supposed to be dating.

  Unfortunately, though I liked my quiet little life, I did find myself getting lonely and logging on to the dating site Carolyn had signed me up for. Silas had been one of the first matches that came up, and he sounded like a decent enough guy.

  Obviously, he’d thought things had gone better than they actually had, and he’d spent the past few weeks leaving me cryptic text messages and weird little presents. Carolyn told me that I needed to change my phone number, but it seemed like if I did that, I’d need to move, too, and I liked my little cottage nestled in the redwoods.

  I got into my trusty Subaru and drove the four miles to the farmers’ market. It was held on the village green, and there were rows and rows of tables and tents with all sorts of delicious things to buy. On days when I felt more ambitious, I’d ride my bike, but I wasn’t feeling that ambitious this morning. My right knee was also feeling sore, and I knew from experience that if I tried to get on the bike and rack up any mileage, my knee would be all but immobile for the rest of the day. Plus, if I drove, I’d get home sooner, and that meant I could try to get to work earlier and then head over to my parents’. Hopefully Isa would have made contact by then.

  I made my usual rounds at the farmers’ market, filling my reusable shopping bags with loose-leaf lettuce, green beans, heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers... basically what I lived off of during the summer. I also got some figs, Asian pears, and peaches that were the size of grapefruits.

  “Wow,” a voice said next to me. “Look at these peaches.”

  I glanced to my left. A short guy, maybe a few inches taller than I was, stood next to me. He was probably around my age, but it was hard to tell. He had short, dark hair and a beard, and was wearing a light-pink T-shirt and cream-colored shorts.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen peaches so big before.”

  “They’re very good,” I replied. I felt as though I was supposed to say something else, but I didn’t have a clue what. Unlike Isa, I had no game whatsoever when it came to bantering with the opposite sex. It had always been that way and didn’t seem as if it would change anytime soon.

  “This place is great.” The guy gestured around, a
look of wonder on his face. It didn’t surprise me much when he said, “I just moved here.”

  “Oh,” I said, which came out sounding surprised, like he’d just told me something particularly shocking. Another beat of awkward silence. “Well, I better get—” I started to say, right as he said, “Are you a local?”

  “Um, yeah,” I said. “Something like that.”

  He nodded. “Great, great. So maybe you could show me around sometime?” His face flushed a little; he was obviously nervous, which was a little better than being presumptive, the way so many guys were, but his nervousness seemed to be rubbing off on me. I stammered, trying to think of a polite way to decline his suggestion.

  “I... I... uh, I don’t... I’m really busy,” I finally said. “I’m not a very good tour guide, either. I’m kind of a homebody.”

  He tilted his head. “But I thought you just said you were really busy.”

  Shoot. I did just say that, didn’t I? “What I meant was—”

  He held up both hands and said loudly, “Look, if you don’t want to hang out, just say so, okay? You don’t need to make up some lie and then contradict yourself in the next sentence. I’m new to town and just trying to make some connections, okay? Not a big deal. If you’re not interested, just say so.” Several people near us had stopped and were watching. My own face was probably bright crimson. The mesh bag of peaches hanging off my arm felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

  “And I thought California girls were supposed to be friendly,” the guy muttered, shooting me a glare before turning on his heel and stalking off.

  I all but fled the farmers’ market after that encounter. There were a few more things I had been thinking of picking up, but I didn’t want to chance running into him again. I hurried to my car, tossed everything on the passenger seat, and drove away.