Selling Scarlett (6 page)

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 naked, 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.

As I push through the door and lemon-scented Lysol fills my nose, I'm angry, knowing I'm the only one who comes here more than once a week. Suri came the first two weeks, but she had to stop. All she can do when she sits in Cross's room is sob, and the nurses think he can hear us. Cross's parents—I could skin them both alive. They got him his swanky room at Napa Valley Involved Rehab, but neither Cross's mom nor his dad has visited since the first twenty-four hours.

It makes me queasy remembering that first day. How I couldn't sleep at all and how I itched to be here by him. I even bought a fake ID with the surname 'Carlson' so I could slip into the ICU with him, holding his hand and stroking his dark hair.

For those first few weeks, he looked a lot different. One of the saddest things about right now is that he looks like Cross again.

Today the top half of his railed bed is raised. His head is propped between two pillows. As always, he looks peaceful. Beautiful. His almost-black hair is short—they shaved it for his surgery—and his long, dark lashes make his face seem pale as porcelain. The awful tube that once went down his throat has been removed, because he's breathing on his own. A tube that feeds extra oxygen into his nose is taped to his cheeks, and I know that under his gown, snaking into his abdomen, is a feeding tube. Sometimes I peek because I want to understand what's going on with him. I wish I was his next of kin, so I could truly get all the information, but there's a nurse who likes me—Nanette—and she's told me they think his brain is fine. He sometimes squeezes my hand, and once when I kissed his forehead, he moaned. He just won't wake up. Not yet.

As soon as I make it across the fluffy, olive-colored rug and over to his bed, I grab his wrists and squeeze his hands. They smell like Betadine and are striped with tape that holds IV lines in place, but I don't care.

I lay one of his hands back on his blankets, but keep the other one sealed in mine. I force myself to look at his still face and smile as if he's really here.

"Hi, C. How's it going?"

I imagine him answering, because otherwise having a conversation with myself is just too weird. I kiss him on the cheek and sit down beside him in the cream wing-backed chair I've come to think of as mine.

"When I called the other day, Nanette told me you opened your eyes for a few minutes. I can't believe I missed that! I had a test that day. You'll be glad to know I passed." The machines around him hum their response, and for a second, I get tripped up. It's been two months now, but sometimes it's still too strange to see Cross like this. "So...what else is there? Suri and Adam might be having problems, but she keeps it quiet. I think she likes to pretend they're okay. Probably because she wants them to be. You know she loves her decorating stuff in San Fran and I think Adam is pushing her to move to New York with him again. It is the place for literary people I guess, but it's just not Suri. I think she's coming here tomorrow. If she gives you the scoop, I want to know."