Tracking the Terrible Threesome

Rhiannon apologized again for not somehow stopping the Terrible Threesome from bolting out of the tour bus because Jonas looked furious for just a moment and then deflated, all his anger turning to defeat as he sagged against the pole for the stairs leading to the bus’s door.

When Jonas had been pissed for those few seconds, she had almost run and locked herself in the bathroom to get away from his rage, just in case he started grabbing people and slamming their heads into walls, but his anger had dissipated so quickly that she had barely drawn a breath before it was gone.

She should have found a way to stop them. She should have hog-tied them or blocked their way with her gargantuan ass or something, but she hadn’t.

She was useless again. She had been useless her whole life.

“I’m so sorry—” she started.

“Not your fault. Their decision.” Jonas waved off her apology and rubbed one hand up the side of his face. “We can’t chase them in this bus. I’ll get a rental car, and we’ll go find them.”

Rhiannon looked out the window at the long real estate of the Strip, a blinking cornucopia overflowing with half-dressed women and opportunities for drunken debauchery. The fountains in front of the Bellagio shot into the warm blue sky. People thronged the sidewalk, elbowing past each other, rushing to the next casino where their luck might change. She asked, “How on Earth will we find them?”

Jonas chuckled when she looked back, probably at the horror on her face at trying to find three people in Sin City. He said, “I put tracking software on their phones months ago. I’ve found them all sorts of places, even in police stations when they used their one phone call to yell at their girlfriends instead of calling someone to bail them out. If you could drive,” and she nodded quickly, trying to make up for her lack, “I’ll go inside to wherever they are, round them up, and roust them out. Cadell, you’re with me.”

Cadell sighed and picked his earbuds out of his ears. “Fine.”

Xan Valentine said, “I’m coming, too.”

“Sorry, Xan,” Jonas said. “You’re a liability. We’d get mobbed with you along. Besides, we can’t have you yelling at them, or even talking at them, really. I’ll chew them a new one for both of us.” He grinned, even though his smile looked kind of forced.

Xan smiled with one side of his mouth, the first time that Rhiannon had seen him crack any kind of a smile since his voice had choked the night before.

Jonas handed Xan a room keycard and had the driver pull around to the back. Early spring heat hung over the pavement at the rear entrance and was so thick that Rhiannon nearly gagged on it when she stepped out of the bus. Xan flipped a hoodie over his head to dash the few yards to the door and then up the private elevator.

A dark blue minivan with heavily tinted windows drove up to the entrance, and the driver handed off the keys to Rhiannon. Jonas rode shotgun, navigating with his phone, while Cadell sat in the second row and looked out the window, watching the crowds milling on the sidewalks in the heat.

All three phones beeped their location from a strip club just a few blocks away, and Rhiannon followed Jonas’s navigation through the cramped streets to the squat building.

She waited in the van, engine idling, watching the pale blue sky and far-away horizon. The air conditioner forced freezing air at her face and the sun pricked the skin on her arm for ten minutes until Jonas and Cadell returned, along with a very sullen Terrible Threesome.

Actually, Tryp and Rade glared and stuck out their lower lips. Grayson was watching something crawl up the side of the minivan that no one else could see.

They used the rear entrance at the Bellagio and rode up a private elevator, and Rhiannon watched how Jonas swiped the keycard in the elevator’s reader.

Cadell shared a two-bedroom suite with Xan, as they always did, evidently, while the three-bedroom suite was reserved for the Terrible Threesome. Jonas and Rhiannon each had a room down the hallway.

As Cadell swiped his card and opened the door, he grabbed Jonas’s arm, and his light brown eyes widened. “Jonas. Listen.”

Jonas stopped walking, and the rest of them all stayed with him. Rhiannon almost bumped into Tryp as she stumbled. Rade caught her hand and steadied her.

Inside the suite, Xan was singing.

Loudly.

Jonas muttered, “Goddamn him,” and pushed open the door. Rhiannon peeked into the room from behind his arm.