Devious Minds Read Free

and a woman’s voice cut through, yelling some nonsense from the speakers.
    “No drink… Just here for the keys.”
    She threw me a confused look.
    “Porter, right?”
    Shaking her head, she pointed into the crowd of dancers. “Porter’s over there.”
    I pointed to the crowd. “She’s dancing? I thought she worked here.”
    “She does. She’s the DJ, but she goes by Sinister.”
    “Sinister,” I repeated. Unbelievable . “How do I get up there?”
    The waitress looked up at the bar clock. “She’ll take a break in three minutes. I’ve got a water to take to her. Wanna do it for me? She scares the shit out of me.”
    Nodding, I grabbed the bottle from her tray and braced myself for the frightening beast, DJ Sinister. The waitress was flagged by a table, and I leaned against the bar, studying the crowd.
    From here, I could make out a short person huddled over the DJ booth, but it was dark.
    As cool as ice, the music faded into a seventies lounge song. Guitar twangs erupted through the speakers, followed by a heavier snare drum, and like magic, it eased into an opera tenor’s voice, deep and rich, and fell in line with the snare beat. And a man’s voice with the confidence of the president blew through the speaker, yelling out some Shakespeare quote. It was all very confusing, but the crowd screamed.
    “Gray?” A deep voice came from behind me, and I whipped around.
    “Nick Sharbus? What the hell, man? You work here?”
    Avoiding my question, he turned away from the bar and grabbed a glass. Pouring a micro-draft, he slid it across the counter toward me. Stoic as always, Nick didn’t say a word. He looked off into the crowd and tapped his thumb against the bar rail, admiring the beat.
    “I wondered what happened to you. You just cut out of practice one day, and next thing we knew, you left the team. What’s up with that, asshole?”
    I sized him up. He’d added more tats over the last year, but he still worked out judging by the cords of muscles ripping through his forearms.
    “It’s complicated,” he said, grabbing a towel from behind the bar. “What are you doing in here?”
    “Having a kegger tomorrow night. Borrowing a truck to pick up the kegs. You should come by. The guys think you’re dead or some shit.”
    “SpaceRoom doesn’t have a truck,” he answered, pouring a beer for another patron. When he finished, he resumed his position at the bar rail.
    I was about to mess with him some more when a small voice clipped through the speakers, “Taking a fiver.” Then a premixed beat started.
    “That’s my cue.” I glanced over at Nick, and he eyed the water bottle in my hands. “It’s for DJ Sinister,” I said, making air quotations for effect. Such a ridiculous name . “She’s the one with the truck.”
    Nick frowned. “You dating her?”
    “No, her little brother’s on the team—took your position by the way. Plus, I hear she’s into girls.”
    His eyes widened. “She is?”
    I wagged my eyebrows suggestively and headed across the dance floor.
    Sweat practically leapt off the bodies in the crowd, and I carefully wove past them to avoid contact. When I reached the booth, her head was low and she was flipping through a milk crate of vinyl records.
    A large trucker hat, the kind with a solid front and meshed back, hid her face, but I could see she wasn’t blond and tall. She was brunette and petite.
    A tattoo of a piano keyboard ran down the underside of her forearm. It was an electronic piano, like the kind you learn on when you’re a kid, and she had on a bulky flannel rolled up her arms.
    With her head still low, she whipped the flannel off, exposing a body-hugging white tank. It was a damn shame she played for the other team, because her stomach was tight, leading up to at least a C-cup, and her neck was long and fragile. She took a second to whip her hair back into a ponytail, showing off a guitar fret board tattoo on the back of her neck.
    Instantly, I felt sick. The sight