Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) by Pamela Fagan Hutchins Page B

skimmed my collarbone and a skirt that fell from a nipped waist to below my knees.
    Ava was at the bathroom mirror doing her makeup when I wedged in to get my hairspray. She took one look at me and said, “That dress ain’t gonna save you, Sandra Dee. You ready?”
    What did she know, anyway? She was rocking an eye-popping yellow two-piece outfit, midriff baring and curve-clinging. I couldn’t imagine where she found her clothes. Maybe I just needed to shop somewhere besides Nordstrom’s online.
    “Nearly.” I went back to my room and grabbed my keys and purse, but a search for my iPhone bore no fruit. First my keys, now my phone. I needed to Velcro my hands to keep from losing things. I shouted, “Ava, have you seen my phone?”
    “No, but we gonna be late. You can live without it for one night. Let we go now.”
    Um, no, I couldn’t. I was a victim of a love so new I hadn’t even taken off the price tags yet. I might die if I missed contact. But the iPhone remained unfound, so I had no choice, and away we went.
    The bar was packed. We shoved our way through the noticeably white East End crowd to the stage. Trudy’s reminded me of a stateside club. It had no water access or even an open area, just a bar and a dance floor enclosed by four walls, with a disco ball and piped-in air conditioning. We had cut it pretty close due to the search for my phone, and the natives were restless. We set up quickly and I started to go for a water, but Ava shook her head. She pointed at my spot beside the microphone. Just to drive her point home, she hit Play on the music for our first number. Not an auspicious beginning.
    We made it through our first set with no mishaps. However, when Ava’s producer friend hadn’t shown up by the time we started the second set, I thought Ava was going to unravel. He still hadn’t arrived by our second break. She spent all of it laughing too loud at the unfunny jokes of her bar-side admirers and watching the door.
    He finally showed up halfway through the third set. I knew he was there when Ava did a massive hair toss and the sultry in her deep voice kicked into turbo. The only people entering the bar were a middle-aged white guy whose belly was too big for his low-slung skinny jeans and a Slavic woman a head taller and fifteen years younger than him.
    I’d seen him somewhere before. He had hair that was only slightly more black than gray, and thinning, which his swoop of wavy bangs didn’t do much to hide. He wore black from head to toe and shoulder to wrist. If I’d have worn that outfit, you could have filled a bucket by wringing the sweat out of it. He headed straight for a barstool, where he got busy with his Blackberry.
    “That’s him,” Ava said through her Julia-Roberts smile, like a ventriloquist.
    “What’s his name?”
    “Trevor Weingart. He produce for Slither, you know, the band with that lead singer who carry around a big snake, good-looking guy?”
    I knew who she meant. And he was good-looking, in a malnourished, heroin-addicted, overly-tattooed sort of way. “Joe Slither.”
    “Yeah, him.”
    I squinted to see Trevor in the glare of the lights. I would probably tower over him. Short guys usually put on a show for me, but we’d see.
    I thought he’d make me nervous, but we launched into our next song, Pink’s “Please Don’t Leave Me,” and I felt solid. I even kept in sync with the drop-beat rhythm of our reggae version of “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” that a friend of Ava’s had mixed for her.
    When our set ended, Ava sank a death claw into my upper arm and dragged me to the bar. Before we could get there, Bart materialized. His blue eyes were flat and navy, his mouth set. He was holding a beer in one hand and a Bloody Mary in the other.
    “Hooooh no, mister. She have business with me,” Ava told him, not relinquishing me. A microgram more pressure and my arm would erupt.
    “This will only take a minute,” he said.
    Ava put her finger up,