Indeed he should. Jack is gorgeous, with his wavy sandy-blond hair that covers his ears. He’s got a slim build, but his pecs and biceps are magnificent, barely constrained by the tight black T-shirt he’s wearing tonight. He’s cleanshaven with a good jaw and enchanting hazel eyes. If he weren’t exclusively into guys, I’d have asked him out myself by now.

  He scratches his chin. “It sounds like you’re thinking about it.”

  I scoff. “Of course I’m thinking about it. That kind of money is serious stuff.” I glance around my modest two-bedroom apartment. “If I were taking a few clients every weekend at that rate, I could get a luxury apartment in a high-rise in the Loop. Be right in the middle of everything.”

  “Plus you could invite your best friend to hang out there,” Jack says with a grin.

  I swallow. “But… I mean, you get this. Once you sell your body, you can’t…unsell it.”

  He exhales sharply. “Seller’s remorse is definitely a thing you’ll deal with.”

  I cross my arms. “Be honest. How bad is it?”

  He shrugs gently. “I mean… It’s not always pleasant. But you learn to… What’s the word? When you remove yourself mentally from what you’re doing physically?”

  “Dissociate?”

  “That’s the one. I go into auto-pilot, letting out a moan every now and then to make the client feel like he’s doing a good job. But every so often a patron I’m attracted to purchases me. That’s always nice.”

  “But nine times out of ten it’s going to be someone you’d rather not sleep with.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then how do you dissociate?”

  He sighs. “I think about lying on a warm, sunny beach. Letting the waves tickle my toes. I listen for the sounds of seagulls and the distant blowing of ship horns. And here’s a little industry secret.” He lowers his voice, even though it’s just the two of us in the room. “They pay for an hour, but most of the sessions are done within fifteen minutes or so.”

  I widen my eyes. “You’re joking.”

  “Of course not. Most of these men are on the older side, and they’ve only got one shoot in them. Once they get there, they’re usually done. The clarity kicks in and they realize what they’ve done. They silently gather their things and head out, leaving the cash on the nightstand. And then I have the rest of the hour to myself before Rouge expects me back on the floor.”

  “They don’t ever want to…cuddle or anything?”

  “Every now and then. But it’s pretty uncommon. Most men want to get their rocks off and then get back to their drinks.”

  I take a deep breath in. It doesn’t sound all that bad.

  Like Jack said, not pleasant. But manageable.

  If I got through that unending tryst with Mr. Shippe at my Reflections callback, I can get through anything. And the reward for these sessions will be guaranteed. Shippe put me through the wringer and then proceeded to not even cast me in his show.

  In a way, I’ve already sold my body. I just got screwed over in the process.

  The toothpaste is already out of the tube.

  What’s a few more times? Just enough to cover rent for a nice apartment in the good part of town?

  It’s just sex, right?

  People enjoy sex.

  Can it really be all that bad?

  I’m not looking forward to this.

  It’s been a little over four years since I’ve spoken with Jack.

  He works in my section, so seeing him is unavoidable.

  Speaking with him, however, is entirely optional.

  He’s not allowed to speak while he’s on Aces grounds anyway. When I do bump into him, I just course correct like a Roomba in a cluttered room, turn the other way and find something else to do.

  The last time we spoke, he was screaming in my face before slamming my own door on me.

  I moved out of that apartment the next day. I’d finally saved up enough money from sucking and fucking the Aces patrons to size up. I wasn’t going to make the official move until a few days later, but after that last night with Jack, I couldn’t bear living in a space I associated so much with him.

  I never played Settlers of Catan or any of our other favorite games again, either. I donated my entire collection to Goodwill and threw myself into furnishing my new apartment.

  Of course, knowing now what I know… Jack was right all along.

  I don’t look forward to that part of the conversation either.

  I get into my car and make the drive out west to Forest Park and the Caterpillar Hotel.

  Harrison wanted to come with me, but he’s working today. He’s been playing hooky enough as it is. But while he’s at the hospital, he can also look into the St. Charles patients’ organ donations, see if any evidence points to a connection to Rouge.

  If he can find that connection, we can avoid tracking Jack to see if anyone is going to try to kill him at the end of his contract. But I know my sister. She’ll have buried her involvement in this beneath several layers of scapegoats and red herrings. I doubt Harrison will uncover anything damning, but we have to attack this from all angles.

  I told Harrison that, while Jack and I have some bad blood between us, he would never lay a finger on me. Harrison wasn’t wholly convinced, but I promised him I’d be safe doing this on my own. Even so, he insisted I text him at every juncture on my outing today.

  I pull out my phone. Just parked, I text him.

  Good. Let me know when you’re safely back at the car.

  Will do. Thanks for looking out for me.

  Of course, babe.

  The Caterpillar Hotel parking lot is empty, so I parked a few blocks away to remain inconspicuous. Rouge isn’t supposed to do her weekly check-in at the hotel for a few more days, but just in case she makes an unplanned visit, I don’t want her to see my car in the lot. We did the same thing the night we rescued Maddox and Alissa, and we got away with it then.

  Speaking of which, I check their rooms first. We broke down the doors to each room, but Dinah discreetly had a handyman who owed her a favor replace each of them after we got Maddox and Alissa to the hospital to cover our tracks. They don’t quite match the rest of the doors of the hotel, but they’re close enough to look the same from a distance.

  The doors are unlocked, and I peer into each room. Everything is the same as how we left it. As far as I can tell, Rouge hasn’t been here. Neither has Chet or any of her Kings.

  I let out a sigh of relief and then head up to Jack’s room on the fifth floor. I take a deep breath in and knock.

  A moment later, the door opens. The chain is still on, so it only opens a few inches. I catch a fleeting glimpse of Jack’s hazel eyes and wavy blond hair before he slams the door back shut.

  I knock again. “Jack, please. It’s important.”

  “I have nothing to say to you.” From the other side.

  “It’s been four years, Jack.”

  Silence.

  I knock a third time. “Hear me out. What you told me about Rouge… I… I think it’s true.”

  No response for a few minutes. I’m about to knock again, beg him to answer, when he slowly opens the door. He’s wearing a striped tank top and fleece pajama bottoms with bare feet. His gaze is narrowed. “I’m listening.”

  I swallow. “Can I come in?”

  He peers out the door. “Did anyone follow you?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Fine. Come in. You have five minutes.”

  I walk inside Jack’s room, and he locks the door and resecures the chain in place.

  All the months Jack and I hung out outside of Aces, he always came to my little apartment. This is my first time in his personal space. The Caterpillar Hotel isn’t exactly a luxury resort, but he’s kept the room clean and the linens pressed. A few knickknacks—mostly Chicago souvenir store finds—adorn his dresser, along with a few framed photos of him with some other Aces waitstaff. No pictures with me, of course.

  He crosses his arms. “You were saying?”

  I sit on the foot of the bed. I can’t give Jack all the details. If he knows his head is on the chopping block, he might run for the hills. We need him to stay in place for this plan to work correctly, but he also needs to be aware of what we’re doing.

  “Rouge is…up to something.”

  He rolls his eyes. “No shit.”

  “We don’t have all the specifics yet, but⁠—”

  He lifts a hand. “Spare me, Bianca. If this is you coming to apologize, you’re off to a shitty start.”

  “I’m not here to apologize, Jack. I’m here to help you.”

  “I don’t need your help.” He gestures to his dresser. “I’ve got thousands saved up for when I finish up here. When I’m finally released from my contract, I’ll be getting as far away as humanly possible from Aces fucking Underground.”

  “You don’t understand. I don’t think you’re going to have that option.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  I run my hands through my hair as I try to articulate my thoughts in a digestible way for Jack. “What you think you saw that night—the night our friendship ended—I think it could happen to you.”

  He drops his jaw. “No. That can’t be. I’ve been a fantastic server for five years. Rouge would never⁠—”

  “She would, Jack. You’ve known it for years. I imagine you’ve just denied what you saw as a bad trip.”

  “I was pretty hopped up that night.” He bites his lip. “It’s not like I could leave anyway. Rouge has had a stranglehold on me for nearly five years.”

  “We don’t have a lot of evidence so far”—not technically a lie, but a cooler full of human hearts is pretty damned incriminating—“but my new boyfriend and I want to keep an eye on you as your contract draws to a close.”

  “Why would my contract ending be an issue? The girl I saw that night… She was barely through her first year. She broke the rules. I’ve kept my nose clean.”

  “Think of all the waitstaff who’ve kept their noses clean,” I say. “The ones who finished out their contracts and went out into the world. Have you heard from any of them?”

  He blinks several times. “What are you saying?”

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  “I haven’t. But I never got super close to any of them. After things fell apart between you and me, I decided to stick out the rest of my time at Aces as a lone wolf. It’s always been discouraged for us to fraternize amongst each other anyway. Half the servers here don’t speak a word of English besides ‘vodka,’ ‘gin,’ and ‘tequila.’ And the ones who do… Well, suffice to say we don’t have a lot in common.”

  Of course. Jack said as much when we started hanging out all those years ago. He was a very specific personality type, highly intellectual. While some of the other waitstaff have been intelligent, they were never quite at Jack’s level. The only person he considered his intellectual equal was me.

  Which is hilarious, because I never thought I was that smart. Certainly not compared to my sister.

  “The people who work at Aces do their time, and then they go out into the world. Why would they want to look back?” Jack scowls as he looks around his tiny room. “I certainly won’t be.”

  “You really won’t be looking back if you’re dead, Jack.” I sigh, pace the room. “I think what you saw that night is the fate of all the Aces waitstaff. The waitstaff for all of Rouge’s clubs, and even some of the patrons. It doesn’t matter if you stuck to the rules. I’ve been looking into it. There have been unexplained disappearances—and a few confirmed deaths—for years now.”

  Jack swallows. “If you’re saying what I think you’re saying…then all of the people I’ve worked with who have gone on…”

  My lip trembles. “They’re dead, Jack. All of them.”

  The color drains from his face. “And you think I’m next?”

  I nod slowly. “After your last shift. Which I’m guessing is pretty soon.”

  “Oh, it’s soon.” He gulps. “My last shift is tomorrow.”

  14

  HARRISON

  Back to work.

  I’ve taken the last few days off. And my God, so much has happened since I last clocked in to a shift at St. Charles.

  I’ve been here several times, of course. Just two nights ago, I sneaked in the back way wearing barely anything. Before that, I was smuggling in Maddox and Alissa, both of whom were on the brink of death.

  Now they’re doing all right, and if I took another day off, it would have started to look suspicious.

  Rouge is on the board of this hospital, after all. I’m sure she’s kept an eye on me since I grifted my way into Aces the night I met Bianca.

  I’m not going to be doing a lot of work today. I’ve delegated a lot of my regular duties to my interns and nurses, because the real reason I came in was to find out if we’ve been receiving black-market organs from Rouge.

  The timing is undeniable. Carol and Lou got organs almost instantaneously after that poor girl’s head was found in the nature reserve by O’Hare.

  But we’re still missing our smoking gun. We need to collect as much evidence as possible to get Rouge convicted of what she’s doing. The cooler of human hearts was a start, but Rouge could simply deny having any knowledge of it. She’d throw one of her Kings or someone else under the bus, and because of her power and influence among the city elites, she’d get away with it.

  No. We need to build a rock-solid case against her. That’s the only way to ensure she’ll see justice for what she’s done.

  I sit down in my office, out of the way from the day-to-day hustle and bustle of the hospital. I pull up a list of our most recent organ recipients. There have been a few since Carol and Lou, but they’re still near the top of the list when I sort it by date. I try to track down where their organs came from, but that leads me to an error page.

  The data must be in here somewhere. It’s just encrypted, and I don’t have access to it.

  I pick up the phone and call the hospital’s IT department.

  “Yes, Dr. O’Rourke?”

  It’s Kit. She’s one of the newer IT hires—only a year out of college—and normally gets saddled with the department’s bitch work while her superiors get the more complex jobs. She’s the one I call when I need to recover a patient’s file that accidentally fell through cyberspace.

  I was hoping she’d be the one to pick up. She’s the youngest, the hungriest for approval.

  “Hi, Kit. Can you swing up to my office? I have an unusual request.”

  “What is it?” Papers shuffle over the line.

  “I’d rather discuss it in person. I’ll buy you a coffee for your trouble.”

  She chuckles. “I’m more of a tea person, Doc.”

  I smile. I knew she’d see eye-to-eye with me. “Even better. I’ll owe you a tea.”

  If she pulls this off, I’ll buy her a first-class ticket to the UK to get her all the tea she wants.

  Ten minutes later, she knocks on my door.

  “Come in,” I call out.

  She opens the door. Kit is cute in that hot-librarian way. A messy bun of curly red hair on top of her head, horn-rimmed glasses, and bursts of freckles on her cheeks. She’s wearing a fitted blue cardigan over a slightly wrinkled blouse, khaki pants, and sensible dark shoes.

  She crosses over to my desk. “What can I help you with today, Doc?”

  Kit is the only person who has ever called me “Doc.” She’s probably too young to have watched any Bugs Bunny cartoons, so I’ve written it off as a quirk. If she weren’t so young, I’d have asked her out before I met Bianca.

  “I’m having trouble tracing the identity of an organ donor.”

  She purses her lips. “Well, Doc, that’s probably because you’re not allowed access to that information.”

  Of course. Kit plays by the book. I was prepared for this.

  “Normally I’d agree with you. But unfortunately one of our organ recipients is exhibiting symptoms of HIV. We did the standard testing when we received the heart, but it must have slipped through. I need to know the identity of the donor so that any other people who received the organs know they should get tested.”

  Flimsy reasoning, I’ll admit. But Kit isn’t a doctor. She might not know this explanation is bullshit.

  She frowns. “I’m not sure if I’m allowed to pull up those files on that rationale. I may have to phone my supervisor.”

  I stand quickly. “Kit, let’s not bother Barry with this. Time is of the essence when an issue like this pops up. I’ll smooth it over with IT myself if anyone gets their panties in a twist.”

  She pauses. “You sure this is okay?”

  “Of course. Come on, Kit.” I offer a smile, hoping my good looks will be enough to charm her. “You’ve worked here a while now. Would I ever ask you to do something you’re not supposed to do?”

  Her face softens. “I suppose not.”

  “Thank you.” I pull out my phone. “Where’s your favorite tea place? I’ll order a gift certificate for you.”

  “That’s very kind.” Kit’s cheeks flush. “I love the Flamingo Tea Room just around the corner.”

  “Done and done.” I gesture toward my desk chair. “Have at it. The patient who received the transplant is Lou Chambers. The surgery took place a little over a month ago.”

  Kit sits down at my computer and clacks away on the keyboard. After a few minutes, she’s able to bypass the privacy server that keeps me from seeing where the organs come from. “Looks like the heart in question came from a Shinzo Life Center, a non-profit procurement organization. Their address isn’t too far from the hospital, in fact. Makes sense, I suppose. Organs are only viable for a few hours after the death of the donor.” She frowns. “That’s funny.”

  “What?”

  “There isn’t a name listed for the organ donor. Just Shinzo Life.”

  That tracks, based on how Rouge operates. If the donors are waitstaff who have no identifying documents, their names wouldn’t be included on the file. Rouge herself makes them identify only by their number and suit.