Mine To Protect (Mine #6)(30)

Victor was getting a real bad feeling about Michelle Lane. He’d sent a few agents to look for her before but the guys had turned up nothing, fast.

How do you vanish so completely?

Maybe the question wasn’t how, though. Maybe it was…

Why?

Sometimes people vanished when they needed to hide their sins. In his line of work, he sure knew one hell of a lot about that.

***

Most tourists would miss Dice. The little club wasn’t flashy like the places on the strip. It didn’t have big, neon signs. It was tucked far away from the traffic, a small place with dark brick and tinted windows. A bouncer waited at the door, sitting on a bar stool, but he wasn’t exactly stopping people from entering the place.

In fact, no one was lined up to get inside.

“You sure this is the right club?” Victor asked, as he scanned the street. To him, it sure didn’t look like the kind of bar that would attract showgirls.

“I’m sure. Michelle…she even had a thing going on with the bartender. I want to talk to him. If anyone knows where she went, it should be him.” She strode toward the bouncer. A big, muscled guy with tats on his shoulders. His dark hair was long, a little shaggy. The guy’s hard gaze swept over her and he jerked his thumb inside.

Victor followed her. When the bouncer’s gaze darted to him, assessing, the guy seemed to stiffen. For an instant, Victor hesitated. The bouncer’s stare was too aware, too intense. It didn’t go with his casual pose.

“Victor?” Zoe pushed.

Victor shoved a twenty at the bouncer and kept walking.

Inside, Dice was like a cave. Candlelight sputtered on a few of the tables. There was no music playing. Just silence. The occasional clink of glasses.

This scene is wrong. The place is wrong.

All of Victor’s instincts were on high alert. Zoe had made her way up to the bar. She put her hands on the old, scratched surface. “Excuse me,” she said.

The bartender turned around. The bartender was a male, had to be pushing seventy, with a grizzled jaw and a bald head.

“I’m looking for Roy. Is he working tonight?”

The bartender’s face hardened. “Don’t know any Roy.”

“Uh, yeah, you do,” she replied, leaning toward him. “I’ve seen you…here…with him. He worked the bar.”

The bartender’s stare slid to Victor. “Better get your girl out of here. She’s confused.”

“She is not confused,” Zoe snapped right back at him. “I’ve been in here at least a dozen times with Michelle! She was dating Roy. Roy who worked here, with you. He’s a big, blond guy. She’s a tall, slim, gorgeous African American woman with—”

“Get her out.” The bartender pointed at Victor. “And don’t let her come asking about Roy again. Roy didn’t work here. He was never here.” He turned away. Went back to clinking the glasses behind the bar.

Zoe whirled around to face Victor. “What is happening here? How is this happening? First Michelle, now Roy. They can’t both vanish.”

Yeah, they could. He caught her hand in his. “We need to go.”

“No! We need to find them—both of them! That was the deal, right? That was—”

“We’re going.” From the corner of Victor’s eye, he’d just seen the bartender pull out his cell phone. The guy was talking fast now, whispering into that phone. Oh, hell, no, this scene wasn’t good. “And we’re going fast.”

He made sure to position Zoe so that he could still easily reach for his gun. He was worried he might be needing it soon.

They hurried for the door. He could feel the rage practically pouring off Zoe. She thought he was letting her down. Going against their little plan.

Screw that. He was trying to keep her alive.

When they burst out of Dice, the bouncer was gone. “Another f*cking bad sign.”

“What’s a bad sign?” Zoe whirled and put her hands on her hips as she glared at him. “What are you doing? You know that guy was lying to us! Let’s go back in there and make him tell us what’s happening—”

“We’re getting out of here.” Only there were no taxis nearby. “Come on.”

“Victor—”

“Trust me. We have to go, now.”

She kept glaring at him. He thought about picking her up and just hauling ass. The silence stretched too long. Time they didn’t have to waste. He stepped toward her. Sorry, baby, no choice here.

“Fine,” she gritted out before he reached for her. “But I am not happy about this crap.”

Then they were both rushing away—pretty much running—and they hurried toward the narrow alleyway on the right. He could see the flow of traffic on the other side of that alley. Once they got through that little space, they’d burst out on one of the main roads. They’d get a taxi. They’d get their asses to a safer place, then he could figure out exactly what had just gone down in Dice.

He could—

A man appeared in the mouth of that alley, a guy wearing a big coat, gloves, and with a thick scarf wrapped around his neck. Even before that stranger lifted his right hand, Victor knew—

Gun.

He pushed Zoe to the side even as he threw his body down on top of hers. He heard the sharp blast of the gunfire, but he didn’t feel the burn of a bullet hitting him—a good thing. He’d slammed hard into Zoe, and he hoped like hell that she was all right. He grabbed for his weapon, ready to return fire.