Dragon Fever (9 page)

Torch cursed. “How did she—?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Piper said. “Find them.”

“Below the mezzanine level, the stairwell doors are marked with fire alarms,” Torch said. “They had to have exited there.”

“Too many cameras to easily track,” Rave said.

“Too many for her to fuck with them all,” Torch said. “Hopefully.”

He called up a dozen inset screens, each of them scanning four.

“There.” Rave pointed. “At the Zephyr entry.”

“Farthest from the Delphi wing,” Torch muttered as he zoomed in. “And the busiest. Should’ve guessed.”

Piper gripped Rave’s bicep. “They’re leaving. But that’s not our limo. Esme’s fiancé chartered a private car for us.”

“Local livery,” Torch said. “We should be able to get the info on it.”

“We need to call the police.” She looked up at Rave.

Torch snorted. “And tell them what? Two young women in town for a bachelorette party decided to drink mimosas first thing in the morning and sightsee Vegas? That’s not a crime. Mostly, that’s a stereotype.”

Piper ignored him, her wide gaze fixed on Rave. “Something’s wrong. You saw those cameras go dark. That’s not by chance.”

Even Torch snorted agreement at that.

Rave put his hand over hers, barely restraining his dragon at that minimal contact. “We’ll figure this out. But Torch is right about the police. As odd as this looks to us, there’s no overt sign of coercion or foul play. Esme gets into the cab second; Anjali doesn’t push or pull her.”

Piper’s jaw jutted. “But—”

“Your best bet is to let us check it out for you.”

She eyed him. “I’m supposed to let a casino boss place my bet for me?”

Torch snorted again, amusement this time.

Rave glared at him. “Track that cab, and let us know what you find.”

He marched Piper out of the room.

She resisted, dragging her thick heels. “I want to help.”

“Torch is our head of security. Let him do his job.” When she opened her mouth to object, he put one finger under her jaw and gently closed it. “Sometimes what he has to do for his job isn’t something other people need to see. If you want him to find your friends, leave him be.”

Piper rolled her lips between her teeth, her eyes welling. “I should’ve let
them
be. Then they wouldn’t have run.”

Rave curled his hand behind her neck and gave her a little shake. “Stop. You don’t know that.”

“Maybe I should call Lars, or Ez’s family,” she fretted as if she hadn’t heard him, couldn’t feel his touch. “They have resources.”

He shook her again until this time she looked up at him with a scowl, a touch of color finally brightening her cheeks. “
I
have resources,” he reminded her. “And we’re using them now. Her family and the police would start with exactly what we’re doing.” He frowned. “Besides, you don’t seem to like them very much.”

She leaned into his grasp with a ragged sigh. “I don’t. But maybe it’s just because I’m jealous, because Ez always had it so easy, because she has everything I don’t…”

He tilted her head back to meet her lowered gaze. “You don’t believe that.”

After a moment, she shook her head and then she pushed him away entirely, straightening her spine. “No. I don’t. I think something weird is going on, and I’m going to figure it out.”

“That’s my girl,” he murmured.

But she wasn’t his, and his dragon roared in defiance.

Chapter 8

Piper followed Rave back to the elevator, wringing her hands. She knew there wasn’t anything else she could do besides, what, run around Vegas herself? She’d have to transfer money to get back home if the private jet wouldn’t take her without Esme.

A worm of unease wriggled up her back and seemed to tighten around her throat so she tugged at the cowl of her sweater. Maybe she should contact Lars anyway. She might not like him, but she knew he’d do anything to get Esme back.

Except, hadn’t her whole plan for the weekend been to get Ez away from him? Well, mission accomplished, apparently.

Had that been Anjali’s plan all along too?

Piper sighed and rubbed the back of her neck where the worry worm had settled in a knot.

“Turn around.” Rave turned her gently away from him and put his big hands on her shoulders.

The strong pads of his thumbs dug into her tense muscles and she let out a whimper.

He froze. “Too hard?”

“Just right. Or a little to the left, actually.”

“I like a woman who knows what she wants.”

Did she? She’d run away from him last night with a quickness when she’d really wanted to stay.

She turned within the confines of his grasp to look up at him. “I’m so, so glad you’re willing to help me,” she said. “I don’t know what I would’ve done…”

His hands flexed and released. “You don’t have to wonder. I’m here.”

She’d never really had that, except from Esme and Anjali. Her family loved her, but they didn’t have the resources to help her. She’d busted her ass in school and at work to make sure she never needed to ask for assistance. And even with her friends, she struggled to make herself
useful
at least since she could never be their equal.

But with Rave, there was nothing she could give him that he didn’t already have, no way he could want her for anything.

Except for herself.

There was something so freeing in that thought.

She leaned into his hands. “I wish there was something I could do.”

“We’re doing everything we can. Torch is the best you could ask for. When he finds them, we’ll figure out the next step.”

She nodded. “But I meant, I wish there was something I could do”—she lifted her gaze to his—“for you.”

He stared down at her, his jaw flexing. What was he not saying?

The elevator door behind her dinged, and he spun her around to usher her out.

The back of her neck burned, from the tension he’d released and from the weight of his glare. Had she disgusted him? Annoyed him? She hadn’t meant that to sound like a proposition—well, she kind of had, but not exactly.

He hadn’t stopped her when she left last night.

He led her down a short hall to a set of double doors and let her through. Embarrassed at his continued silence, she took a few hurried steps away from him. And stopped with a muffled gasp.

She hadn’t realized how high they’d come, but all of the mountains outside the city stretched before them, stark in the harsh light of the late winter sun.

Her heart expanded at the severe desert beauty and she found herself drawn to the window. She reached out as if she could touch it, but at the last moment realized she’d just leave fingerprints on the floor-to-ceiling glass. She made a fist and set her knuckles against the window, letting the coolness calm her fears.

“Summers in high school I worked with my dad,” she said. “I loved being outside with him. And I really enjoy the fieldwork for my job, but I’ve been taking more management tasks to pad my résumé. Sometimes I get so crazy with all the little things that I forget to look up and take a breath.”

She was intimately aware of Rave’s presence at her shoulder. Though he didn’t touch her, she felt the radiating heat of him, and her pulse kicked up again.

“I would like to go out more too,” he said gruffly. “But there is always something that keeps me bound here.”

“Maybe…” She turned slowly toward him, setting her back to the glass. “When all this is over, maybe we could drive up to Black Mountain for the day. It’s only a half hour drive or so, and I’ve heard the view of the Strip is great.”

He looked down at her. “It is.”

Her stomach clenched. “Oh. You’ve done it already. Of course you have. Well—”

“I could show you a secret slot canyon that opens at the end to a view, I swear, almost all the way to the Grand Canyon across some of the wildest land left in this country. Nothing but rock and sky as far as the eye can see.”

A yearning note in his voice struck an answering chord in her soul, and yet he never looked out at the stunning view. Instead, his gaze was locked on her.

“You have so many secrets,” she mused.

She’d meant to be teasing, but he stiffened and took a step back. “True.”

He started to say something else, but his phone chimed and he half turned away to check it.

The austere sun touched him with a silvery sheen, adding metallic highlights to his thick, cocoa-brown hair. In place of the chic dress shirt he’d worn last night, a worn charcoal-gray t-shirt clung to his shoulders and biceps, showing off the faint radiance of his ink. If he worked nights, she’d probably interrupted his time off. She was so lucky he’d come when she asked for him.

She’d come for him again if he asked.

The chill from the glass seemed to reach out and wrap insidious tendrils around her, squeezing through her skin toward her heart. Here she was, lusting after this man, while somewhere out in that grand vista, her friends were missing. She turned away from the temptation of staring at him.

Now that she wasn’t distracted by the view and he’d given her a little space, she observed the rest of the room. She’d thought it was a conference room, as wide and windowed as it was, but now she realized it was a suite like Esme’s, just, oh, a hundred times more opulent.

In the foyer where they’d entered hung a triptych painting, with each of the three panels showing a mountain range and sky under divergent conditions: a peaceful morning of blue and gold, a scorching summer of red and bone-white, a storm of gray and purple. As if the wide views beyond the glass weren’t enough for him.

A huge, U-shaped couch in a sunken living area at the corner convergence of the windows framed a gas fire pit—unlit at the moment—with a hanging hood, like a ski lodge on steroids. The galley kitchen beyond was all gleaming black marble and stainless steel with a wine rack and wet bar extensive enough to keep an army of après skiers drunk off their asses.

In the other direction, through a half-open door, her gaze froze on a glimpse of a gigantic bed.

Unlike the décor in the rest of the high-end suite, the bed looked positively medieval, with carved wood posters draped in dark, velvety curtains.

She had a flash of erotic imagery: her hands clutching the thick wood while Rave took her from behind…

Like her wayward thoughts, pillows had tumbled off the high mattress and lay strewn on the deep shag carpet.

So, he wasn’t the sort to make his bed, but he didn’t let anyone else make it either.

And apparently he’d had a rough night too.

Just like that, she remembered why she’d left him last night.

This was not her world. She didn’t have secrets of her own. She wasn’t rich like Ez. She wasn’t an artist like Anj. She was just plain old Piper Ramirez, hard worker and frequently clueless friend.

She sidled away from Rave, trying to find a spot to stand where she didn’t feel lost in the big space. “I should be out there looking for them,” she fretted when he looked up from his phone.

“Torch and his people are doing everything,” Rave reminded her, hefting the phone as if it were proof. “I have faith in them. We just need to give them time.”

She eyed him ruefully. “If it was your friends who were lost or AWOL, would you be patient?”

Lips quirked, he inclined his head to acknowledge her point. “But if my presence was making things harder, I’d get out of the way.”

She twisted her hands together, remorse corkscrewing even deeper. “I did make things worse.”

He strode up to her. “This wasn’t your fault. You were worried for your friends. Rightly, it seems.”

Having him so close made her want to just burrow into his arms and hide forever. But she knew that wasn’t an option. Had never been, not for her. “Still, I need to do
some
thing.”

“You can stay here with me, so I know you’re safe,” he said.

She stiffened. “Safe? What do you mean?”

“Your friends vanished under peculiar circumstances and aren’t responding to calls. I don’t want that to happen to you.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “No one’s after me,” she insisted. “Esme and Anj are the ones everybody wants.”

Rave stalked a slow circle around her. “You have no idea—” Then he brought himself up short and waggled his phone. “Torch sent an update. His people went through all the security footage since your limo pulled up to the front door. There is nothing unusual—unless you count not gambling, shopping, or eating, all of which we have here in five-star abundance—until they blacked out our cameras and disappeared. They didn’t talk to anyone besides you. No one approached them. Where they did have very brief interactions with staff, our employees say everything seemed fine. Whatever trouble they found, it seems they brought it with them.”

Piper frowned. “Trouble? But this was just a fun little getaway with way too many spa appointments.”

He eyed her. “You don’t like our spas? Every woman leaves glowing reviews about our spas.”

Had she hurt his feelings? Her mind spun, trying to keep up with his quicksilver moods. “I’m not every woman.”

“No,” he said softly. “So you aren’t.” His tone sharpened again. “Torch is heading to the livery company to do some of his persuading in person. Also, he sent someone to talk to the jet company and the limo driver. And he has a team looking at Esme’s family and fiancé. And at Anjali. I’m betting he’ll find your friends before half that intel comes back.”

Piper sagged. All those people trying to help her, when she couldn’t even be sure she just hadn’t pissed off her friends so much they ditched her. “I won’t be able to repay you.”

“You won’t,” he agreed. “Because I won’t ask you to.”

She tilted her head to look up at him. “Why are you doing this?”

For a long second, she thought he wouldn’t answer her. He was facing the window, and his gaze—the blue-gray of a turbulent ocean—seemed farther away than the mountain peaks.

“There is something you can do,” he said. “For me.”

She perked up. She worked hard to earn her merit scholarships, and she’d cleaned that college apartment bathroom more than her fair share to make up for the fact that Ez bought all the wine and ice cream and Anj scored all the weed. She never wanted to owe anyone.