Chapter 2: Suite 1400

The morning came the way it always does for people who don't want it to, bright and indifferent. Nina dressed in the bathroom mirror, applied her face like armor, and drove downtown with the radio off and her hands steady on the wheel.

Suite 1400 smelled like old money and sandalwood cologne. The man who opened the door was sixty, soft around the middle, balding, a white undershirt visible beneath an open silk robe. He looked her up and down the way a man appraises a car he's already paid for.

"You're the new girl." Not a question.

"Nina."

"Mr. Calloway. Come in." He didn't shake her hand. He didn't step aside politely. He gripped her arm above the elbow and pulled her through the door, and the grip was firm enough to leave a mark, and he didn't let go until he'd walked her to the center of the room and turned her around by the shoulders, inspecting her the way you'd inspect a piece of furniture delivered to your house.

"Turn around. Slowly." He stepped back and crossed his arms. "Stop. Right there. Lift the dress. Let me see."

Nina kept the smile in place, the slow practiced warmth that promised everything and gave nothing, and lifted the hem slowly, showing him the line of her thighs, the curve of her hips. He nodded, satisfied, like a man checking off boxes on an order form.

"On your knees," he said.

Nina let the smile settle deeper, the one she'd rehearsed in the mirror until it looked real. She set her clutch on the dresser, walked to the bed in her heels, and sank to her knees on the plush carpet, looking up at him through her lashes. The part was easy. The woman inside her was already somewhere else, cataloguing the room, the exits, the man.

"Good," Calloway said. He stepped closer, untied his robe, let it fall open. He was already half hard, thick but unremarkable. "Hands behind your back. Don't move them. Use your mouth."

Nina parted her lips and took him in, slow and wet, working him the way men like him expected, hollowing her cheeks, letting her tongue drag along the underside. He groaned and put a hand on the back of her head, fingers fisting in her hair, and pushed deep, holding her there until her throat tightened and she nearly gagged, then pulled her off by the hair.

"Look at me while you do it," he said. "Eyes up. Don't you look away."

She looked up. He watched her face, watched himself moving in and out of her mouth, and his breathing got heavier and his grip got tighter, and he held her head still with both hands and pushed deep enough that she choked, and he didn't stop, he didn't pull back, he held her there and made a sound that wasn't a groan but something colder, something that came from a place that had nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with control.

"Hands and knees," he said, pulling her off. "Face the headboard. Don't turn around. Don't look at me unless I tell you to."

She turned, pressed her chest to the mattress, hiked the dress up over her hips. She hadn't worn underwear. The agency had told her not to. He didn't bother with foreplay, didn't check if she was ready. He put a hand on the back of her neck, pressing her face into the mattress, and pushed inside her in one thick stroke, groaning at the heat of her, and set a rhythm that was all his own comfort and none of hers.

"You feel good," Calloway grunted, thrusting into her, his belly slapping against her hips. "Tight. Wet. Like you were made for this."

He grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, arching her spine, and his other hand came down hard on her ass, a sharp slap that stung and made her gasp, and he did it again, and again, and his rhythm got faster and rougher, and she braced herself against the headboard and let her mind drift to the file waiting in her clutch, the questions she needed answers to, the man with no face.

"You're mine tonight," he growled, his hips pumping against her. "You do what I say, when I say it. You don't speak unless I tell you to speak. You don't move unless I tell you to move. Understand?"

"Yes," she said into the mattress.

"Yes what."

"Yes, sir."

He groaned, pleased, and drove deeper, and Nina closed her eyes and counted the seconds. He finished fast, grunting, shoving deep and groaning as he came inside her, spurting hot, not a word of warning, not a question, just taking. He pulled out, wiped himself on his robe, and lay back on the pillows with a satisfied sigh.

"You're pretty," he said, already half asleep. "Come back next week. Same time. I'll have a list of things I want you to wear."

Nina straightened her dress in the bathroom, locked the door, and washed him off her skin with a cloth and hot water. In the mirror her eyes were steady and cold. She'd gotten nothing tonight. No Sombras. No intel. Just the sticky proof that some men think money buys a woman's silence and her body along with it.

But Calloway had mentioned something. A party. Next month, a private estate in the hills above the city. A place where the real money moved, where the men who ran things gathered behind closed doors.

She filed it away, fixed her lipstick, smoothed her hair, and walked out into the Los Angeles night, the city glittering below the hotel windows.

The hunt had begun.

In her car she sat in the dark a long time, his taste still in her mouth, his handprint still stinging on her skin, his spend still inside her, and she called Marsh from the burner.

"First night," she said. "Nothing. But there's a party in the hills. Next month. Calloway named it."

Marsh was quiet on the line. "How are you?"

"I'm fine, Marsh."

"You don't sound fine."

"I'm sitting in a parking garage with a stranger's come inside me and a bruise forming on my arm where he grabbed me. How am I supposed to sound?"

He was quiet again. "Nina. You don't have to do this. There's still time to pull you. We can run surveillance, we can find another angle."

"No. If I pull out now, before I've gotten anything, it's a waste. And if Calloway talks to the agency, they'll wonder why I left so fast. I stay. I keep going. Maybe the next thread holds."

"You're sure."

"I'm sure. Check the party. Estate in the hills. See if anything pops on permits, security firms, catering. Someone's hosting it. Someone's paying for it. Money leaves a trail."

"I'll dig. Nina. Be careful."

"I'm a cop, Marsh. I know how to be careful."

She hung up, knowing she wasn't being careful at all. She was already in too deep, and she'd only just begun. But she'd gotten a thread, the first one, and tomorrow she'd pull it, and she'd see where it led, even if it led her somewhere she wasn't ready to go.

The next morning she met Marsh at a diner in Highland Park, the kind with sticky menus and a counter where cops ate free and nobody looked twice. She slid into the booth across from him, ordered coffee she wouldn't drink, and talked low while he took notes on a napkin he'd burn after.

"Calloway's a dead end for Sombras. But he's connected to the party circuit. The hills estate, next month. He mentioned it offhand, like it's routine. That means it's regular. Annual, maybe. Whoever hosts it has done it before."

Marsh wrote: hills estate, recurring, high-net-worth. "We pulled permits. Nothing. The address doesn't exist on any city filing. Catering's done in-house, no outside vendor. Valet's a private firm, shell company registered in Delaware, filed three years ago, no officers listed. Whoever this is, they've scrubbed the paper trail clean."

"So how do I get in."

"You don't get in. You get brought." Marsh looked at her. "The only way onto that guest list is through a client who's already on it. Calloway isn't. He's outer ring. You need someone in the inner ring, someone who goes every year."

"Then I need to climb." Nina slid the napkin back toward him. "Calloway named the party. He didn't name the host. But he knew about it, which means he's been. Outer ring. The agency has other clients above his pay grade. I pull my file with the madam, find out who else is booking high-end this month, and I work my way toward someone who's been inside that house."

Marsh's jaw tightened. "You're talking about sleeping with more of these men. Climbing a ladder one bed at a time until one of them puts you in front of Sombras."

"I'm talking about doing the job you sent me to do."

He didn't have an answer for that. He never did. He slid a burner phone across the table in a foil packet, fresh. "New phone. Rotate the old one in forty-eight hours. Check-in code stays the same. You see anything that feels wrong, a car that sits too long, a face that shows up twice, you call me before you call anyone. Understand?"

"I understand."

"And Nina." He held her eyes. "Calloway finished inside you. He didn't ask. That's assault, by any definition. The bruise on your arm. The way you described him holding you down. That's not a transaction, Nina. That's a man who likes hurting women and pays for the privilege. If this starts to cost you more than you can carry, you tell me. We pull you. The case isn't worth what it's taking."

"That's not your call, Marsh. It's mine." She said it, and meant it, and hated that she meant it.

She left him at the counter and drove to the agency's office on Wilshire, a discreet front that called itself a concierge service, all brushed steel and locked filing cabinets. The madam, a woman named Greer who never raised her voice and never forgot a name, sat Nina down across a glass desk and studied her.

"You did well with Calloway. He asked for you again."

"Happy to hear it." Nina kept her voice easy. "But I'm looking to move up, Greer. The higher end. The ones who travel, who go to the private events. I can handle it."

Greer looked at her a long moment, the kind of look that weighed a person and found the price. "Those men don't take referrals. They request. And they request women who've been vouched for. Calloway vouching for you means something. Give it a week. I'll let the right names drop that there's someone new worth meeting."

"And the hills party. The one next month."

Greer's expression didn't change, but something behind her eyes went very still. "That party isn't something you ask about, Nina. If they want you there, they'll send for you. Pushing for it is the fastest way to never work in this city again."

"I'm not pushing. I'm patient."

"See that you stay that way." Greer leaned forward, and her voice dropped to something almost maternal, which made Nina trust her less. "I've been in this business twenty years. I've seen women push for the hills party and I've seen what happened to them. One ended up in rehab. One ended up in the morgue. The men who go to that party are not your Calloways. They're not your Sloans. They are men who own things. People. Property. Laws. You understand the difference?"

"I understand."

"Good. Then be patient, and be smart, and maybe they'll send for you. And if they do, you come to me first. Not the other way around. I know those waters, Nina. Let me be your compass."

Nina left the office with her heart hammering and the shape of the case sharpening in her mind. Someone hosted that party. Someone with enough power to keep their name off every filing in the city. Someone whose threads got cut the moment a cop touched them.

And Greer knew more than she was saying. The way she'd gone still when Nina mentioned the party, the way she'd warned her. That wasn't general caution. That was specific knowledge, the kind that came from having seen the inside of that world and barely gotten out.

She'd climb. She'd be patient. And when they finally sent for her, she'd be ready, and the ghost in the hills wouldn't know what was coming for him until it was too late.