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out of there.
    As soon as the door closed behind them, Marco started swearing. “That fucking son of a bitch. How dare he treat you like that? I should have knocked his fucking teeth in.”
    “You would be in trouble if you broke your hand.” Tasha hadn’t thought the moody, sexy musician would have a reaction like this. His anger on her behalf was strangely sweet. “It’s fine. I’ve had much worse.”
    They were halfway across the parking lot when Marco stopped her. “What does that mean?”
    She shrugged. “Exactly what I said. I’ve done worse and had worse done to me.” Much worse.
    Marco seemed on the verge of saying more, but Tasha didn’t have time to wait for him to come to grips with her methods.
    “We need to go.”
    Marco blew out a breath. “Back to Chicago?”
    “Exactly.”
    *****
    Damon looked up from the dining table as the door to the condo opened.
    “Hello?” he called out, getting to his feet.
    “Damon? You’re still here?” Marco, wearing jeans and a half-open and wrinkled black dress shirt, tossed his bag into a corner. With his dark hair and stubble he looked rougher than his normal easy polished appearance.
    “Why didn’t you go to Vegas?” Damon asked. “What happened?”
    “We did go.” Marco motioned over his shoulder as Tasha appeared. She was wearing what looked like black riding breeches and a sweater.
    “That was fast.” It was just after eleven. They must have gotten on an early afternoon flight.
    “Why are you still here?” Tasha pulled her phone and a small black box that might have been an external hard drive from her purse.
    “I took some meetings with people from my old firm since I was in town. I have a flight back to L.A. tomorrow morning.”
    Marco went to the drawer in the kitchen where he kept menus. The cookware and utensils Damon had bought when he lived here were still in the kitchen somewhere, but Marco never used them.
    “Persian or Thai?” Marco asked.
    “Persian,” Damon replied, attention on Tasha. She’d slid onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar and was staring at her phone. “Is either one of you going to tell me what happened?”
    Marco tapped Tasha’s shoulder. “What do you want to eat?”
    “We ate on the plane.”
    Marco snorted. “That wasn’t food.” He tapped his phone, keying in the order.
    “Excuse me.” Damon cleared his throat. “I need someone to tell me what happened in Vegas.”
    Marco’s lips thinned. He jerked his head towards the hall. Damon’s nerves were humming as he followed his friend to the stairs and then up to the master bedroom.
    “What?” he demanded when the door closed behind them.
    “We found them—sort of. The redhead’s name is Sandra. She moved right after the party.”
    “And?”
    “She moved to Chicago.”
    “She’s here? Why? That seems strange.”
    “Actually, her roommate wasn’t sure if it was Chicago or Boston.”
    “Boston? Fuck.” Damon ran a hand through his hair. He didn’t want that girl anywhere near the Trinity Masters’ headquarters.
    “And the other girl, the one who took the video—”
    “You found her?”
    “Maybe. Tasha got us in to the place where she worked—a fetish club—and they said that she’d moved to Chicago.”
    “Fuck.” Damon sank into one of the club chairs by the window. Marco took a seat on the bed. “They moved here? Are they stalking you or something?”
    “I was thinking about this on the plane. The video was sent to you, but then they came to Chicago instead of going to L.A. where you are.”
    “None of this makes sense. They didn’t even ask for that much money.”
    The million-dollar blackmail demand was a lot—enough that Damon would have needed Marco’s help to raise the cash—he was a civil servant after all—but it wasn’t unreasonable.
    “Maybe it’s a coincidence,” Damon said, but he knew it wasn’t. There was something very bad going on.
    “I don’t think we have that much luck.” Marco rose and went