2024-02-12 11:26:13
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362 Hollywood Break
Eleven floors above the street, Ivy Solaris sat alone at one end of a long glass table.She looked exactly the way two hundred thousand dollars of preparation is supposed to look. The pale gold dress. The hair. The diamond studs LOVELIN had loaned her that morning. She sat with her back straight and her hands folded, and she had a folder open in front of her that she had already read four times.Across from her sat three men.All three were somewhere in their fifties. All three were smiling."I have to say it again, because I cannot get over it," the one in the middle said. His name was Curtis Vance, and he had produced eleven films that had made money and two that had made a great deal of money. "That voice. When you sang at the awards in March, my wife cried. I am not making that up to flatter you. She actually cried, right there on the sofa.""That is very kind of her," Ivy said."And the training." The man on the left leaned back and looked at her, and he took his time about it. "
361 Male Escort
The green room was on the second floor, and it was nicer than any room Tyler had ever slept in.There was a long table down one wall covered in food. Cold meats, three kinds of bread, fruit cut into shapes, little pastries lined up in rows on silver trays. There was a fridge full of glass bottles. There were fresh flowers in a vase, and nobody in the room to look at them.Along the opposite wall stood a rolling rack of clothes in plastic covers."Eat whatever you want," Raina Dustin said. "Do not touch the flowers, they are for the photographs."Tyler walked over to the table and started on the cold meat.Raina watched him eat for about ten seconds. He did not stack a plate and he did not fill his pockets, which surprised her slightly, because she had expected one or the other.Then she went to the rack and pulled a garment bag off it and unzipped it.Inside was a charcoal suit."This is yours for the day," she said. "It is a forty-four long, which I am guessing is close enough. There
360 Impostor
The noise of the street cut off the second the doors closed.The LOVELIN showroom was cold and white and quiet inside, all glass shelves and soft lighting, and it smelled expensive in a way Tyler could not put a name to. Somewhere above them a piano was playing through hidden speakers.Ivy walked fast.She did not take his arm and she did not slow down for him. She led him down a long service corridor behind the display floor, past two staff members who flattened themselves against the wall to get out of her way, and she kept four feet between them the whole time.Twice she glanced sideways at him.Both times it was the way a woman looks at a dog she has not made her mind up about.Tyler noticed. He was not offended. He was confused, and confusion was not something he had felt much of in six years."You are keeping your distance," he said.Ivy did not answer."I have been gone a long time and I know that changes people. But you used to follow me around that building like a duckling."
359 He Is With Me
Ivy Solaris did not move.She stood at the top of the steps with one hand still resting on the glass door, and she looked at the man on the sidewalk, and she did not say anything at all.Four hundred people were screaming her name. She did not hear a single one of them.Raina Dustin reached her in four quick steps and put herself directly between the girl and the street."Do not look at him, sweetheart." She was speaking loudly and clearly, and she was speaking for the three news cameras as much as for Ivy. "This man is disturbed. He has been claiming to be your brother for the last twenty minutes. He assaulted two members of staff and he refused money to leave. This is exactly why we have a security team."She took Ivy's shoulder. "Go back inside and let them do their job."The crowd agreed with her at once."She is right, Ivy. Go back in!""He is a lunatic. He burned three thousand dollars right here in the street.""Please, Miss Solaris. Do not go anywhere near that man."Ivy came
358 Lethal Force
Nothing happened.The taser screamed against his chest at full power. Blue light jumped and flickered across the leather of his jacket. The sound of it filled the whole street.And Tyler Grant stood there holding it in place, looking mildly bored, the way a man looks while he waits for a kettle to boil.He held it there for a count of five.Then he took it off his chest and switched it off, and the sudden silence was almost worse than the noise had been."See," he said. "Even at full charge, your toys are worthless."The crowd did not cheer. The crowd did not say anything at all.Four hundred people had just watched a man hold a lethal charge against his own heart for five seconds and then complain about the product quality.A young man near the barricade lowered his phone with a shaking hand."That is not possible," he said, to nobody. "That is not possible. That is not a thing that can happen."An older man beside him had gone the color of paper. "My cousin took one of those at a fo
357 Maximum
"Put that online right now. Are you filming? Tell me you are filming this.""He is insane. That man is genuinely insane."Behind the rope, Marcus Dolan stood with his empty hand still half extended, and his ears turned dark red.But it was Raina Dustin who had changed.She had not moved an inch. Her face had not moved either. But something behind her eyes had gone completely cold.Raina Dustin had grown up in two rooms above a laundry. She had put herself through school on borrowed money that took her nine years to pay back. And in eleven years of managing the most valuable young woman in Sapphire City, she had learned exactly one thing about people who burn money in public.They are not asking for anything. They are making a statement.This man was not a lost soul who needed a hot meal. He was a performer. He had chosen her client's showroom for his performance, and there were three news cameras thirty feet away recording every second of it.By tonight the headline would not say that
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