Chapter One
“Yes,” Katie said, gripping the steering wheel harder. “Uh-huh, yes, I get it.” She glanced in the rearview mirror, signaled left, and changed lanes. The traffic was getting thicker as they approached Louisville.
Her brother kept talking, his voice robbed of its customary power by the cheap speakers of her cell phone, which sat in a cup-holder mount and broadcast Caleb’s warnings upward at her head. “If you have the slightest indication that there’s danger attached to this threat, you’re going to call me, and—”
“Yesssssss,” she droned.
The drama was wasted on Caleb, who was going to give her this lecture for the seventeenth time whether she wanted to hear it or not.
It was wasted on Katie’s traveling companion, too. Sean didn’t react to anything she did. Ever.
Katie glanced at the man in the passenger seat of her Jetta, just to be sure. His expression as he stared out the windshield matched the bleak, featureless expanse of southbound I-71. He was like a human wall of granite, completely impervious to everything about her.
A stern, gorgeous cliff face.
Suppressing a sigh, she tuned back in to Caleb’s speech. “—you to be in charge of anything along those lines, Sean. This is a trial run for Katie. I’m only letting her go because Judah insists she’s the one he wants to work with. You got that, Katie? It’s Sean’s show. I need you to play nice and stay out of his way.”
“Yes,” she confirmed. “I know the deal. I agreed to the deal. I am on board with the deal. Now can we stop talking about it, please?”
She flinched at the way her voice came out, sharper than she’d meant to sound. It was only because she was nervous about this trip. Her palms had gone clammy and slimed the leather wheel cover, so uncomfortable did it make her to venture into an unknown city to do an unfamiliar job with a man who didn’t like her.
She had a tendency to bristle when nervous.
One more bad habit she needed to make an effort to tame. Better to be professional. What Katie really needed to figure out was how to act cool and icy like some kind of Bond Girl assassin, slinking around and poisoning people by slipping strychnine into their drinks.
Except without the poisoning. Her goal was to win herself a promotion from office manager to agent for Caleb’s security company, not to become an assassin. Not unless her ex-husband strolled into town needing assassinating.
“We’ll stop talking about it when I’m positive you’re going to cooperate,” Caleb said. “Right now, you sound like you’re blowing smoke up my ass.”
“I’m not,” she replied levelly. “I promise. I understand that this is your company and Sean’s assignment, and I’m just a companion on this trip. I promise I’ll be quiet and helpful and learn things, okay?”
“I need you to be safe.”
She made a face, then immediately regretted it. Wrinkling her nose and pursing her lips in response to Caleb’s babying only proved she deserved to be babied. Not the way she wanted Sean to see her.
She flicked another glance in his direction. If he saw her at all, he gave no sign.
“I’m safe,” she said.
“I care about you, Katelet.”
“I know you do,” she replied. “I care about you, too.”
“And it’s only because I care about you that I’m going to say this again . . .”
Katie tapped her fingertips against the steering wheel and stopped listening.
She understood his worry. Ever since she’d confessed that she was married and needed to locate her spouse so she could get divorced, Caleb had become all concerned and brotherly. She kept waiting for him to go back to the way he’d been before, but so far, no luck.
Five years older than her, her brother was a born nice guy who had spent most of his adulthood in the Military Police before moving home a year ago to help take care of their parents after their dad had a stroke. Katie had been living in his house rent-free at the time, working as a bartender nights and spending her days in elastic-waist pants, moping and watching daytime TV. Her husband, Levi, had cleaned her out and dropped her like a bad habit, and she’d returned from the life they’d built in Alaska in defeat. She’d practically regressed to adolescence by the time Caleb pulled her out of her self-pity slump.
He gave her a job running the office of his new company, Camelot Security, and after the first month or so, Katie had started to feel useful again. Competent. She’d discovered she had some get-up-and-go left in her after all. That she actually wanted to do something with herself.
Caleb was also the one who’d encouraged her to enroll in a couple of online classes. He’d even appointed himself her personal trainer, helping her whip her body into its best shape in years.
He was a great brother, but Katie was done with the coddling. She’d turned over a new leaf. He needed to get with the program.
“Sean, are you hearing all this?” he asked.
Sean nodded. He was invisible to Caleb, but the two of them apparently had a man-telepathy thing going, because Caleb said, “Great. Give me a call after you’ve talked to Pratt. I want to hear the details of these threats he’s supposedly getting. And if you can, find out why he’s brought this case to us instead of giving it to his security team from Palmerston, because—”
“Caleb,” Katie interrupted.
“What?”
“Give it a rest.”
“I just—”
“We’ve been over this and over this. Sean gets it. I get it. We’ll call you. Now let us do the job.”
Her brother exhaled explosively, which made Katie smile a little. “Aren’t you supposed to be taking today off?” she asked. “Go home and help Ellen with wedding arrangements or something.”
Caleb and Ellen had met on a job and gotten engaged about six minutes later. He pretty much lived over at her place now, and he’d become more of a father to her son, Henry, than the two-year-old’s real father ever had.
“God, no. She won’t let me near any of the wedding stuff. But I did tell Henry I’d take him to the hardware store.”
“So why aren’t you doing that?”
Katie spotted an exit and swerved toward it, weaving nimbly through three lanes of traffic. The gas tank was getting low.
“I’ve got payroll to figure out first.”
She caught herself right before the words left her mouth. I can do that when I get back.
It was the kind of thing a self-sacrificing doormat would say, not a slick professional. A decade of specializing in being a doormat had left her rumpled and ground down, with boot prints on her forehead.
Time to stop jumping to the rescue.
“You should hire somebody else to do payroll, now that I have a new job,” she said instead.
At the end of the off ramp she turned—a little too fast, perhaps, because she got distracted by the fact that Sean was looking directly at her. Somehow he made looking look like not-looking. As though he could see her, but he couldn’t be bothered to see her.
How was she supposed to concentrate on Caleb talking about payroll when Sean was not-looking at her that way?
She didn’t know what the guy’s deal was. It seemed as if he didn’t approve of her—though what it was about her he disliked, she had no idea. Her personality, her being on the job, her existence?
Sean had been working for her brother since the summer, and in that time he and Caleb had grown thick as thieves. He spent hours every week in Caleb’s office, a solid panel of pine muffling the mingled sound of their voices as they bent their heads over some obscure security challenge and Katie tried to get her work done at the reception desk a few feet away.
Then he would come out, fix her with that blue stare, nod like a robot, and leave.
She’d tried being nice to him, reminding him they’d gone to high school together and sat by each other in Algebra II and Trig. She’d tried ignoring him. She’d tried glaring at him and even, one embarrassing day, flirting with him. Nothing made a difference.
He didn’t speak to her. Not at all, not ever, not under any circumstances. It was extremely weird, and it drove her nuts.
Caleb was way too casual about it.
Don’t send me to Louisville with him, she’d begged. He hates me.
No, he doesn’t, Caleb had said. I’m positive he doesn’t hate you. You two just need to work it out between you.
She didn’t know how to work it out, but she refused to let Sean get to her. This job was the big chance she’d been waiting for—her opportunity to get out of Camelot and see new places, rub elbows with interesting people, become somebody independent of Levi and Caleb. Her own somebody.
Judah Pratt saw her potential. The singer-songwriter had asked for her specifically. And okay, yes, maybe Judah’s interest in her was largely carnal, but an opportunity was an opportunity. She’d only been in his Chicago apartment for half an hour when it arrived: he’d announced that he would hire Camelot Security, but only if he could have Katie.
He’d said it just like that, too. Only if I can have Katie. A week later, the memory retained the power to send shivers skittering up her spine.
Or it usually did. It was a little hard to get swept up in her Judah fantasies with Sean sitting next to her, emanating stony disapproval of . . . something. Her being assigned to work with him. The way she breathed. Her boots. Who knew?
“Katie?” Caleb interrupted her reverie.
“What?”
“Are you even listening to me?”
“Sure.” She rewound her brain, hoping to locate some phantom memory of what he’d said when she wasn’t paying attention. Nada. “What did you say?”
“When did you stop listening?”
“Uh, payroll?”
“Never mind. The upshot is, you’ve still got your old job when you come back.”
“Yeah, but after I completely blow your socks off, you’ll need someone else to do my old job.”
“Please don’t try to blow my socks off. Be safe.”
“Right, right.” She turned into the gas station. “I’ve got to go.”
“One last thing.”
“What?”
“I want you to keep your distance from Pratt.”
“Caleb—”
“No, I’m serious. Sean, I need your help here. Keep the guy away from my sister. I don’t trust him not to take advantage.”
Katie pulled to a stop beside a pump, her blood boiling. There was overprotective, and then there was stifling. She loved Caleb and all, but she wasn’t about to let him smother her to death.
Sean had turned to look at her. He had the most astonishing eyes. Dark, dark blue, with thunderstorms in them.
She lifted her chin. “That isn’t necessary,” she told Caleb.
“I think it is.”
“No, it isn’t. If Judah wants to take advantage of me, I’m all for it.”
Sean blinked.
“Katie,” Caleb said, a note of warning in his voice.
“Stop. You don’t want to have this conversation any more than I do, so just drop it, okay?”
Sean got out of the car. Katie watched him go, uneasy but resolved. It was hard enough to defeat her own internal censor. She didn’t need two men dog-piling on to judge her ability to make decisions about her own freaking sex life.
Not that she had a sex life.
“Believe me, I would love to drop it,” Caleb said. “But I don’t think I can.”
“Try. I’m a grown woman. I have condoms. I think I’ve got this under control.”
Sean tapped on the passenger-side window and pointed toward the gas tank. Katie popped the fuel door for him, and he swept one open palm in the direction of the gasoline options. “The cheap stuff,” she said, loud enough for him to hear her through the window. He nodded and turned his back on her.
“I don’t imagine you care,” Caleb said carefully, “but I think your sleeping with Judah is a bad idea.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“It’s unethical.”
Now that was just unfair. Six months ago, Caleb had asked Katie if she thought it would be unethical for him to get involved with a client. She’d thought about it and told him no—that it depended on the situation, and in the situation he and Ellen had been in, it was fine.
She’d come to the same conclusion about this Judah job. It would be one thing if Judah were traumatized by fear, quaking in his boots and relying on Katie to keep him safe, but that just wasn’t the case. She was along for the ride. Why not make the ride a little more enjoyable—especially when Judah had made his interest in climbing aboard more than clear?
Maybe it wouldn’t be the smartest move of her life, or the most romantic, but “romantic” wasn’t what Katie was looking for from Judah. If she had to pick one adjective to describe what she was looking for, it would be “torrid.”
Or “inadvisable.” She’d never had inadvisable sex before. She’d had Levi, the high school sweetheart who’d given her every single one of her firsts: first kiss, first sex, first orgasm, first wedding, first abandonment, first divorce.
Considering that Levi had walked out on her almost two years ago—two long, transformative, sexless years—and the ink had finally dried on her divorce papers a few weeks back, “torrid and inadvisable” sounded like just the ticket. Katie wanted to throw herself headlong into new experiences, skate the edge of recklessness, flirt with disaster.
All while behaving safely and responsibly, of course. No need to get Caleb’s panties in a twist.
Her brother was silent. He seemed to be waiting for a reply to a question she wasn’t sure she’d heard him ask. She tried out another “Mmm-hmm.”
“I didn’t even like the guy,” he said.
“I noticed that.”
“You can do better.”
Judah had unruly black curls and huge, dark eyes. He had a low, sexy voice that she loved to listen to when she was tired, lonely, and in need of a glass of wine.
And maybe it was starry-eyed of her, but she felt as though she already knew him from his music. When he’d said he wanted her on the case, she’d hoped it was because he shared that feeling of familiarity, and their deep, instant connection would lead to awesome conversation and multiple orgasms.
But really, she’d settle for a less-than-mystical experience if it meant she finally got some action.
“I don’t think I want to do better,” she said.
“Fine.” Caleb sounded resigned. “I’ll stay out of it. But I’m going on record as strongly disapproving.”
“Got it.”
The gas pump shut off with a hollow mechanical thump, and Sean turned to the machine to wait for a receipt, shoulders hunched against the January chill. The wind ruffled his short blond hair and turned the tips of his ears red. He had to be freezing his ass off out there.
Katie was hoping Louisville would be warmer than Camelot had been lately. It was only a four-hour drive, but Kentucky was the South, right? Gray skies and freezing rain had been haunting central Ohio for so long, she could hardly remember what the sun looked like.
All week, she’d been dreaming of Kentucky bluegrass. Totally unrealistic, given the time of year and the fact that she was about to spend the weekend in some dank, beer-piss-smelling nightclub, but she couldn’t turn the daydreaming off. Her mind had a mind of its own.
“Let me talk to Owens,” Caleb said.
“What for?”
“None of your business.”
“Is it about work or my personal life?”
“Also none of your business.” His voice had gone all clipped. She wasn’t getting anything else out of him.
She tried anyway. “C’mon, Caleb. It’s my phone.”
“Put him on.”
“Yeah, fine. Okay.” She jimmied the phone out of its cradle and leaned way over to open the passenger-side door a crack. “Caleb wants to talk to you.”
Sean took the phone, and she closed the door, not wanting any more cold air to get into her toasty car than necessary. He walked ten feet away and lifted the phone to his ear.
She imagined what he’d sound like if she could hear him. He had an unusual way of shaping words. Every syllable came out perfectly enunciated, as if he had nothing better to do than tumble the sounds around his tongue.
She liked listening to him talk. Yet another reason it chapped her hide that he wouldn’t speak to her.
After a minute, he disconnected the call and folded himself into the car. He was too tall for a compact. Too broad, too. He brought the cold air in with him, and she could feel the chill coming off his black leather jacket and soaking into her right shoulder.
“You good to go?” she asked, putting the car in gear and releasing the emergency brake.
He nodded, eyes straight ahead.
“You wanna drive?” They’d already begun rolling toward the exit. “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”
If he thought she was funny, he didn’t show it. Instead, he waved her on, settled back in his seat, and closed his eyes.
Sean Owens: World’s Most Boring Copilot.
One of her favorite Judah songs came up on the stereo, so Katie cranked the volume and started to sing along, bouncing gently up and down in a low-key car dance.
Caleb couldn’t spoil this for her, and neither could Sean. Nervousness be damned—she was on a mission. She had sixty miles left to drive, a job to do, a future to claim.
Plus, if everything went according to plan, she was going to get laid this weekend.
This trip was the single most exciting thing to happen to her in a long time.
Chapter Two
If Sean had put himself in a dumber situation in his life, he was hard pressed to remember it.
Driving to Louisville with Katie Clark was beyond dumb. It was such a bad idea, it deserved its own category.
Lost Causes Sean’s Dick Talked Him Into, maybe.
They hit a light, and Katie squeezed the phone between her shoulder and ear so she could downshift and steer at the same time. She’d given up on the speakerphone when Ellen’s call came in. Probably wanted to avoid further embarrassment.
She changed lanes rapidly without signaling, laughing at something Ellen said on the other end.
“I did not say that. Huh? Oh yeah.” She glanced over at him, her brown eyes dancing with amusement. “It’s been a lot longer than that. Nope. Uh, no. I’m just saying—Yeah, well, long enough that I’m hoping everything still works.”
She listened, then laughed.
She put her foot to the accelerator and ran her car right up the ass of a Ford pickup that was going too slow for her taste.
It would be a miracle if they made it to the job in one piece—a fact that only served to highlight the idiocy of his presence in the car. He was escorting Katie Clark to Louisville so she could have sex with another guy. Why not just cut off his balls and hand them to her?
Of course, he wouldn’t be able to tell her what he’d done or why, since he couldn’t fucking talk around Katie. He’d have to convey the message telepathically. You might as well take these. I’m not using them anyway.
Sean swallowed a laugh and looked out the side window. They were inside the clogged interstate perimeter of the city now, the traffic heavier and the scenery more obviously urban after hundreds of miles of rolling fields covered in a blanket of dingy snow.
His own phone buzzed in his jacket pocket, a nagging reminder of other claims on his attention. His best friend and business partner, Mike Anderson, had been trying to call him all morning. Something was going down in California. That, or Mike was panicking for no reason. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Sean’s fingers itched to whip out the phone and tap a quick message to Mike. Fuck off, I’m on leave.
It would probably do the trick, but on the whole, he preferred to know what was going on in San Jose. Just because he’d relinquished control of the company seven months ago didn’t mean he’d fallen out of the loop.
Besides, he liked fixing problems. Bring him a problem, and Sean solved it. It was the way he was wired.
Katie was the exception—a problem he could neither solve nor enjoy.
He’d been studying her for almost four hours, trying to compile a list of everything that was wrong with her so he could use it as a weapon against the way she made him feel.
Unwillingly compelled. Trapped.
He’d climbed into her car this morning intending to crack her open like new code. No matter how well it was written, he could always find a hack. Finding the perfect hack had been his obsession once. He’d built his whole career on it.
But after a few minutes in her tiny Volkswagen, all he’d been able to think about was the way she smelled.
In high school, she’d come to class in a cloud of watermelon Jolly Ranchers and whatever lip balm she was wearing that day—root beer, cherry, wintergreen. Grown-up Katie still had a thing for lip balm. Today she wore something minty, and it mixed with another scent from her hair or her skin that reminded him of fresh grass and lemons and filled the whole car, making it impossible for him to keep a clear head.
Four hours wasted reminding himself that there was nothing wrong with that straight, shiny black hair skimming her shoulders and moving like water when she turned. Nothing wrong with those warm, lively brown eyes or her olive skin. And her body . . . she had slim hips and small breasts, and she shouldn’t have caught his attention every time she moved, but damn it, she did.
Katie wasn’t stunning. She wasn’t even beautiful. She was cute in an ordinary sort of way, but she got to him. She had this energy, this bright, shiny presence that drew him in.
Katie Clark made him weak. He almost hated her for that.
Sean pointed to the right, signaling that she should take the exit for Bardstown Road up ahead. Katie was too busy riding the brake pedal to notice. Sean waited for the car that had been tailgating them for half a mile to slam into the rear bumper, but the crash didn’t come.
She laughed again. “You’re just jealous,” she said. “What? No way. He’s too hot to be disappointing. He’s going to be—”
Sean plucked the phone out of her hand and disconnected the call.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
He pointed to the right again, and she whipped the wheel around. The club was just a few blocks down on the left, a nondescript place called the High Hat.
“I can’t believe you did that,” she said. “That was so rude.”
He gestured left, and she entered the lot and parked.
She turned fully toward him, her nostrils flaring with outrage. She had a great nose, long and straight, like some kind of aristocrat. Princess Katie demanding he apologize for insulting her royal person. “Aren’t you even going to try to explain yourself? I’ve been putting up with the silent treatment from you so far, but we have a job to do together, and it’s not going to work if you refuse to talk to me. Particularly if you’re going to pull shit like that. That was way out of line, Buster.”
It had been, but when he tossed the phone in her lap and got out of the car, he couldn’t help feeling pleased with himself. They were here, they were alive, and he no longer had to listen to Katie talking about her plan to seduce Judah Pratt.
He checked out the club with his back to her and a smile on his lips.
Even in high school, she’d called people “Buster.” Where had she picked it up? Old movies?
Katie came up behind him. “Seriously, can you at least write me notes? Send me emails? I don’t see how this is going to work otherwise.”
She had a point. He didn’t see how it was going to work, either. How to interview Judah Pratt with Katie as a sidekick and manage not to stutter?
He’d have to improvise.
He took his phone out of his pocket and tapped out a text message. Shall we go in?
Katie’s phone chirped. She checked out the screen. “Very funny.”
She stomped across the gravel lot toward the building’s entrance, leaving him to trail along behind her, trying to keep his eyes off her ass.
From the outside, the High Hat looked like any other seedy club that hosted college bands and past-it rock acts—just a windowless one-story stucco box with floodlights on the corners.
Not the kind of venue where Pratt belonged. The man hadn’t had a hit in years, but he was still too well-known to be playing a dive like this.
Except that when Sean followed Katie through the battered steel front door, he discovered the High Hat wasn’t a dive at all.
“Whoa,” Katie said. “This place is swanky.”
Swanky as hell. The club boasted a long, gleaming hardwood bar, high-backed velvet booths, and cherry tabletops inlaid with peacocks wearing top hats.
A fresh-faced blonde rose from one of the booths. The room was otherwise empty.
“You must be the folks from Camelot Security,” she said as they approached. “I’m Ginny Wainwright, Judah’s assistant manager.”
She stuck out her hand. Katie shook it and introduced herself, then added with a quick glance over her shoulder, “This is Sean Owens.”
Sean clasped Ginny’s fingers. She was very short and very young, with hair that didn’t match her eyebrows and a cheery smile that didn’t reach her eyes. They were bright green, a color concocted in a lab.
“Nice to meet you both,” she said. “Have a seat.”
“Where’s Judah?” Katie slid her long legs into the booth. Sean sat beside her, careful not to touch her.
“He’s not coming in until later on. He sent me ahead to meet you.”
Pratt had dragged them across two states in the middle of the winter for this meeting, and he couldn’t even be bothered to show up for it. What a dick.
An absent dick. Too bad for Katie.
“When will he be here?” she asked.
“Around seven, I think,” Ginny said. “In time for sound check. He said he can meet with you before the show, if he has a few minutes.”
Three or four hours to kill. At least he’d have time to find out what Mike wanted.
“What are we supposed to do until he gets here?” Katie asked.
“Judah had me reserve rooms for you at the Quality Inn down the street.”
“Thanks. Is he flying out?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Are you at liberty to tell me how to reach him?”
Sean glanced at Katie, impressed with how placid she sounded despite her disappointment. Placid wasn’t a word he normally associated with her.
“You’re welcome to ask me any questions you have.”
Katie folded her hands on the table. Her index finger found her thumbnail and poked at it.
One of her nervous habits. She usually wore a silver ring on that thumb. In the office, she would avoid his eyes and twist her ring around and around.
Ask her where Judah’s staying, he thought.
Silence.
Ask her if she knows anything about why we’re here.
She looked at him with an uncertain frown between her eyebrows.
Katie didn’t know what to say next because she wasn’t supposed to have to know. Her brother had told her repeatedly that this was Sean’s show.
But what the hell kind of show was it? Pratt had been getting threatening messages from a fan. Sean and Katie weren’t supposed to protect him from whatever danger might be associated with those threats, whatever they were. Pratt had made it clear to Caleb that his regular detail would handle his security.
All Camelot was supposed to do was get to the bottom of the problem. Somehow. For some reason.
Sean couldn’t trust any plan with such sketchy outlines, and it didn’t help that Caleb felt the same way.
Pratt’s evasive, he’d said. I don’t know what his game is. And I don’t want him sleeping with my sister—not that I have any control over that. Just keep an eye on him, okay? And keep an eye on her. Keep her out of trouble.
Sure.
“I can show you the way over there if you like,” Ginny said, rising from the booth.
This wouldn’t do. He had to talk. He had to cheat.
The trick was to pretend Katie didn’t exist.
Closing his eyes for a second, Sean put himself at the head of the mahogany conference table in the Anderson Owens boardroom. He flattened his palms on the polished wood and leaned forward. Twelve expectant faces waited to hear what he’d say. Waited to be told what to do.
Ginny’s was one of them.
A sense of purpose settled over him, of power. In the conference room, Sean was perfectly in control, steering his company in accordance with the vision that had driven him from the day he and Mike hacked into a Syntek server and Sean took command of his destiny.
He didn’t stutter in that conference room. Not ever.
Avoid hard consonants. No sibilants. Concentrate.
When he opened his eyes, he asked, “Where will he be?”
Perfect.
Visualization was a cheap gimmick—one of the first he’d learned in speech therapy—but it worked.
“Judah?” Ginny asked.
Sean nodded.
“He’s staying at the 21c Museum Hotel downtown.”
After a beat, Sean said, “Us, too.”
She frowned and sat back down. “Judah’s manager, Paul, asked me to put you up at the Quality Inn with the rest of his staff. I don’t think he’ll be willing to pay for—”
“Don’t worry ab-bout that,” Sean said. He fumbled a little on the b, one of his trickier sounds, but it didn’t matter. In his imagination, he could smell the furniture polish the cleaning crew used to make the conference table shine, and his throat was loosening up. Katie was gone. If he took it slow, he could say whatever he wanted.
He inhaled. Important to breathe. It had been years since he had to do this—ten years?—but it was all coming back.
“We stay where he stays. Do you have the number for the hotel?”
She did. She pulled it up on her phone, and he programmed it into his tablet.
“Now tell me, what do you know about what, ah—”
His throat seized up. Visualization or no, Sean couldn’t say her name. Anything else, but not her name. That hard c at the beginning had once been his least reliable sound. K-k-k-katie C-c-c-clark. A stutterer’s nightmare.
He’d work around it. “What do you know about what my partner and I are doing here?”
Ginny smiled, giving him the same false one she’d used on Katie, and said, “You’re here because Judah wants your help with a personal matter.”
“Which is?”
“Personal.”
“Don’t you know what it is?”
She crossed her arms, her smile souring. “Judah wouldn’t say.”
Sean leaned back in the booth. If she didn’t know why they’d been hired, it wasn’t his business to tell her. Caleb had presented Katie and Sean with a confidentiality agreement they’d had to sign before they left town. They weren’t supposed to discuss the details of the case with anyone unless Pratt okayed it.
They had no details to share.
“What about tomorrow night? Are we still going to Lexington?” They’d been told Pratt would play two shows this weekend, one in each city.
“As far as I know.”
“Where are we staying there?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Find out. If we’re not all in the same place, move us to wherever Judah’s going to be. I want rooms on the same floor.”
“He’ll be in the penthouse.”
“Then I want rooms nearby.”
“Fine.” Ginny’s tone had grown peevish. She hadn’t expected him to push her around. Sorry, kid.
“Why doesn’t he have a poster out front?”
“He’s not advertising these shows. All the locations are a surprise.”
“So how do fans find out about them?”
“Two hours before the show, I’ll send a message to the people who run his fan clubs, plus put a bulletin up on Twitter and on his Facebook page. Word will get around.”
You had to love the Internet. In the age of social media, a guy as famous as Judah Pratt could put on a concert with two hours’ notice and attract a crowd. “How many people does he expect to draw?”
“He’ll get capacity.”
Sean looked around the room. It would hold about four hundred people packed tight. “In two hours?”
She shrugged. “He has some pretty dedicated fans.”
One of them was sitting next to him. The thought broke Sean’s concentration, and he had to close his eyes again and force himself to go back to the boardroom. “How long will he play?”
Ginny shrugged. “Ten minutes? Four hours? As long as he wants.”
Sean ran his hand over his jawline. “I don’t get it. Why the secrecy? If he wants to do a show, why not just do a show?”
“He’s got some new songs he wants to test out. This gives him an audience, but a friendly one—small and responsive—and he likes to do some of the songs acoustic. It works better for him than trying new material for the first time on a crappy sound system in some huge amphitheater.”
Ginny made it sound like a logical move, but Sean wasn’t getting logical vibes from any aspect of this situation. From what he’d read online, Pratt’s career was in trouble. He hadn’t put out an album in three years, and there were rumors of a drinking problem. An industry website said his studio had been putting a huge amount of pressure on him to produce something. Yet he was wandering around Middle America giving impromptu concerts.
Add that up with his calling Caleb and Katie to Chicago to meet with him, then failing to show today, and Sean got error messages all over the place.
“How did he pick the High Hat?” he asked.
“Oh, I think he played here once, a long time ago. Fifteen years, he said?”
Pratt was thirty-four. Sean surveyed the room again. The guy must have been a decent musician once, to get a gig like this as a nineteen-year-old.
The whole setup was hinky. Outside consultant, vague instructions, run-down club with lavish interior, missing musician. A puzzle.
Sean liked puzzles.
Extending his hand to Ginny, he stood up. “Thanks for your help. Give us a call when he gets in.”
Maybe it wasn’t a bad thing that he and Katie had a little time to kill. He could find out a lot in a few hours.
Getting information from people who didn’t want him to have it was his specialty.