Arrow's Rest, Joel Scott [best book club books TXT] 📗

that, mate. Since that last photo shoot every weirdo in the fucking universe wants a piece of me. You wouldn’t believe the stuff I hear from some of the assholes out there. I’ve even got a minder now. Me, Sally Owens for fuck sake. My mates back home would die laughing if they knew.”

The big scarred man with the buzz cut who’d been staring at Jared winked.

“You race her then? Did a lot of that back home on the Fourteens. I was damn good too. You should take me out on her sometime. I’m a winner.” She patted Jared’s shoulder, grinned, and looked even younger. “I’ll be sure to clear it with Cat first.” She downed her drink and stood up and grabbed her bodyguard’s arm.

“C’mon, you ugly mother, dance with me. You’re making everybody else too scared.”

Jared turned back to the table and met Cat’s amused look.

“She’s something, isn’t she?” she said.

“No kidding.”

“Just nineteen years old, and if I told you what she makes for a single day’s fashion shoot, you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Oh she’s the absolute tops,” the man in the plaid vest said. The group accompanying Sally had pulled up a table alongside them and settled in with assorted colourful drinks with miniature umbrellas.

“I’ll bet she gets twenty covers this year,” the rake-thin purple-haired woman under the beret said to Danny.

“Wow,” Danny said, not having a clue.

“Never mind that when the Vogue interview comes out she’ll be swamped by even more offers,” granny glasses uttered solemnly.

“Double wow,” Jared said.

The conversation stalled.

“So,” Danny said, “the husband comes through the kitchen door, slams it shut behind him, the wife looks up and he’s cradling a sheep in his arms. And he says, ‘See the pig I’m with when I’m not with you?’”

Cat hung her head.

“And the wife says, ‘That’s not a pig, you pathetic imbecile, it’s a sheep,’” Jared contributed.

“And the husband says, ‘I wasn’t—’” Cat’s glass suddenly tipped and red wine spilled everywhere. Shrieks and scrambling, frantic dabbing and apologies, and the visitors got up and left mumbling about places to go and people to meet.

Cat frowned. “Under the circumstances, I suppose I have to forgive the pair of you,” she said. “Now let’s try and look like we’re having fun.”

Two hours later, nothing had changed except the size of the crowd and the level of the noise. The dance floor was packed with gyrating bodies, and you had to shout to be heard above the din. Masked men could have pulled little brown bottles embossed with skulls and crossbones out of their pockets and poured them into glasses and it would have been difficult to detect in the melee. Dancers were bumping into tables, drinks were spilling, and two fights had been broken up by the smoothly efficient bouncers. Cat had been scooped up by another friend from her workplace and was now out on the floor and part of it all.

“Now I remember why I avoid these places,” Jared said.

“You have to work at it harder, drink more and get into the spirit of it,” Danny said. He was downing two drinks to Jared’s one and looked exactly the same as always. Drink never affected him the way it did most people.

“I am trying, really, but I’m just getting a headache.”

“Uh-oh, brace yourself. Here comes the conga line back again. And this time Cat is leading it.”

Jared leapt to his feet, and started for the men’s room when he was picked up from behind, turned around, and propelled forward.

“You treacherous bastard,” he hissed.

“Reconnaissance, old buddy,” Danny said. “Swing those skinny hips, you tight-assed little whitey.”

Chapter 7

Jared opened his eyes and gazed about the room, disoriented for a moment before the evening came flooding back and he remembered he was at Cat’s apartment. It had been a late evening; a pretty good one, considering. He could remember almost all of it. Somehow he’d gotten into drinking shots of tequila one-for-one with Danny, a contest he was never going to win. They’d gone to Chinatown for food after quitting the Sergeant at Arms and arrived back at Cat’s flat in the early hours of the morning.

As far as gathering information about the attacks on the West End women, which was the main purpose of their night out, the evening was less successful. Danny had talked to his nephew’s friend Raina over the course of the evening, and she told him she thought she might have seen one of the other women who had been assaulted in the club. She hadn’t told the police when they showed her the pictures of the other victims at her interview because she wasn’t one hundred percent sure. It wasn’t much of a lead, given that the Sergeant at Arms was the most popular nightspot in that part of town, but Danny said he’d follow up with Clarke and see if the department had looked at tapes from the Sergeant at Arms for any of the earlier incidents involving the other victims. He promised to keep Raina’s name out of it.

Jared considered getting up, but he could hear Cat was still in the shower and decided to grab a few more winks. He closed his eyes and settled in under the blankets. The apartment door slammed and the next moment he was lying naked, scrabbling for covers.

“Up and at ’em, partner. There’s work to be done. I’ve brought coffee.”

Danny. The son of a bitch didn’t know what a hangover was. Jared sat up cursing and pulled on a pair of sweatpants.

“Keep your voice down, for God’s sake,” Cat growled, emerging from the bathroom in a robe with a towel wrapped around her hair. Among the many things that endeared Cat to Jared was the fact that her morning-afters were almost as rough as his.

“Ah, the lovebirds are a little tetchy this morning, huh? Here, coffee for you as well, my dear. I’ve got some video for us to watch.”

He took a flash drive from his pocket and set it