Angel of Vengeance Read Free Page B

she asks.
    I shake my head. “I don’t think you were doing the show last time I was here, but I’d’ve been back sooner if I’d known what I was missing out on.”
    She likes this. It earns me a smile.
    “This seems like your kind of place.”
    “Yeah?”
    It’s her turn to nod. “I mean, this place is old school and you seem like an old school kinda guy.”
    I smile wryly. “Old school. That’s me all right.” Emphasis on the old.
    “I like old school,” Reesa assures me. “It’s a compliment.”
    “Then that’s how I’ll take it.”
    We smile. The drinks come. I enjoy seeing the perfect imprint her full bottom lip leaves on the rim of her martini glass.
    As much as I’d like to make this about pleasure, it’s about business, so I get to the point and ask her how I can help her.
    “I want you to find my fourteen year-old sister, Raya. She’s gone missing.”
    “How long?”
    “A couple months now. She was living with me and my boyfriend, but she ran away.”
    I smell a lie in there somewhere, but I let it go. Everybody lies. I’m more disturbed by the fact that she has a boyfriend, if you want to know the truth.
    “And no one’s looking for her?”
    “The cops say they’re looking, but they haven’t found her. What’s one more teenage runaway to them?”
    “Why was she living with you instead of your parents?”
    “If you knew my family you wouldn’t have to ask. Let’s just say my dad put the fun in dysfunction and let it go at that.”
    I nod. “So she was living with you and your boyfriend?”
    “Ex-boyfriend. I left him a week or two later.”
    Hearing it does my heart good. “Mind if I ask why?” I’m prying. So sue me.
    “You want the short list or the long?”
    “Just gimme the highlights.”
    “Well, on top of being a complete shitbag of a human being, it turns out he was fucking everything he could get that little pecker of his into.”
    “I see.”
    “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk like that. It’s not ladylike.”
    “No one would ever mistake you for anything but a lady,” I say, cashing in on another smile.
    “Anyway, it’s my own fault. I broke my rule about never dating anyone with anything to do with Hollywood. I know better. Of course the icing on the shit cake was his endearing meth addiction.”
    “He was a tweaker, huh?”
    Reesa nods, absently pulling a red curl out and letting it spring back into place as she speaks. “We both were. That’s part of why I left. I was sick of it. I hated living that way. I wanted to clean myself up. So I left. Went into rehab. When I got out six weeks later I tried to find my sister, but... ” She shrugs helplessly, shakes her head.
    “No dice,” I finish for her.
    She shakes her head again. “So, do you think you can help me, Mr. Angel?” Holding her martini glass in both hands, Reesa drinks, watching me with big gorgeous doe-eyes as she does it.
    “I could, but I’ll be honest, I don’t come cheap. I charge five hundred a day plus expenses.”
    “Money I’ve got. A girl can make a pretty good living taking her clothes off, or hadn’t you heard?”
    I match her smirk for smirk and take my notepad out and flip it open to a blank page. “Have you talked to your ex since you left?”
    “Do you call the warden after you break out of prison?”
    “Good point. But I should talk to him. Your sister lived there with you. Maybe she forgot something when she left and went back for it. Maybe she’s tried to call and get in touch with you. Anyway, it’s a place to start. What’s his name and number?”
    Reluctantly she gives them to me. I chicken-scratch the name Vin Prince and two numbers in my pad—one for a cell, the other for his production company. “Address?”
    “I don’t know,” she tells me. “We lived in Los Feliz when we were together, but last I heard he’d moved to some fancy-schmancy place up in the Hills I’m sure he can’t afford.”
    “I’ll find it,” I say. Then I ask for the names