An hour later, the moment she and Jordan stepped through the back door of The Silver Palace, Charlie knew it was going to be a long night.

Everybody was crying.

Jordan looked about as nervous as Charlie felt at the sight. The dancers could be an emotional bunch on the best of days.

“You don’t think all their cycles have lined up, do you? It would be like the perfect storm of PMS,” Jordan said, looking around at the smeared mascara everywhere.

Charlie barely stifled a laugh. She grabbed Cinnamon, who tended to be one of the more levelheaded and unemotional women, despite her constant taunts to the audience to take the “Cinnamon challenge.” “Hey, what happened? What’s everyone so upset about?”

“Jade,” Cinnamon said, between her tears. “She died this afternoon in a car accident. We just got word.”

“Oh, my God.” Charlie hadn’t talked to the woman much since that night with the scary guys, but it was hard to believe she was gone so suddenly.

That’s when she remembered where she’d seen the symbols Aiden had shown her on the napkin. Those exact ones had been what she’d seen then. The same night where Jade had been dancing and had gotten Charlie out of trouble.

“She was drunk or high or something,” Cinnamon said. “I’m not sure what.” She shrugged one naked shoulder, her robe loosely tied and starting to fall off. “Of course, Jade was a user, so nobody can be too surprised.”

Charlie was trying to wrap her head around what it all meant as she and Jordan made their way through the group of women—all reminiscing about Jade—to the back rooms. They changed into their uniforms and headed out to the bar to set up for the night ahead.

“Some of those girls are crying and I know for a fact they hated Jade’s guts,” Jordan said as she moved behind the bar.

Charlie nodded absently. “This place is just like high school, except with less clothing. There’s a hierarchy, cliques, everything. Nobody hates the dead girl, no matter how they felt about her yesterday.”

She grabbed a pad of paper and began to make a list of what she needed from the storeroom in the basement. “Hey, I don’t guess you’re going to see or talk to Henry anytime tonight, right?” Maybe Jordan could get a message to him about the code she remembered. He could let Aiden know when they met up at The Lion’s Den.

A dreamy little smile fell over Jordan’s features.

Charlie couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh dear, looks like you’re a little smitten.”

“I had totally forgotten what it’s like for someone to want me for me. You’d be amazed how many guys have shown up at my house since I got out of prison and offered to be the ones to help me out of my ‘dry spell.’” She put the phrase in air quotes, rolling her eyes. “The other half just wants to screw the town’s bad girl.” Jordan shook her head. “Henry doesn’t know about any of that. And he doesn’t care.”

Finn had talked about their jagged pieces fitting together to make a beautiful whole. She hoped that would be true for Jordan also. The other woman probably didn’t even know Henry was working undercover to stop the traitors. Once she knew he was all but a hero, she would like him even more.

Charlie pulled Jordan in for a quick hug, surprising them both. “I’m happy for you.”

Jordan grinned as they broke apart. “But to answer your question, no. Henry is working tonight. So, I’m not sure when I’ll talk to him.”

“No worries.” She didn’t have Aiden’s number, but she would call Finn and let him know what she remembered.

She ran downstairs to fetch the alcohol they’d need to get through the shift. It was hard to tell how this night was going to turn out. If the girls were truly upset, that sometimes sent a weird vibe through the club. The audience members picked up on it and it made for a slow night.

But who knew? Maybe the dancers would decide to celebrate life, and the energy would be contagious. Lots of tips.

She hefted a crate of champagne to move it and almost didn’t see the paper as it fell out.

But she damn well recognized it once she had.

The same pattern Aiden had shown her, plus another line of code the napkin hadn’t held. The symbols that in Ethan’s language meant fire his pretty chair horse.

She stared down at the paper. She doubted anyone else would’ve even paid attention to it, and she knew they wouldn’t instantly have memorized it. She only did because she worked with symbols like these all the time.

What did it mean? Should she take it with her? Leave it? She needed to get this paper—or at least a picture of it—to Aiden and Finn. They could check with their military guy and figure out if it was important.

She was turning to run and grab her phone in the dressing room to take a picture when the door to the storeroom opened. She stuffed the paper back into the crate where she’d found it.

“Charlie? What’s going on?” Mack’s voice boomed out. “We need that liquor.”

“I’m coming. It’s a lot.”

He came down the steps. “I’ll help you carry it. We got a last-minute call a few hours ago. VIP group in the back. They don’t want anyone in there. Just want everything set up before they get here. And they specifically asked for every bottle of Armand de Brignac we had.” He reached down and grabbed the crate that held the code. “Fortunately, this came in today, even though we didn’t order it.”

They didn’t get much call for a three-hundred-dollar bottle of champagne at The Silver Palace. “You didn’t order these?”

“Nope.” Mack popped the p. “When I called the distributor to cuss him out about the mistake, they gave me such a good deal on it, I decided to keep it. Hell, I would’ve drunk it myself for that price. But I’ll more than gladly sell it to the VIPs for a huge profit. Let’s get them set up.”

A crate of expensive champagne that just happened to be a wrong order and had a paper with some sort of code in it? Charlie may not be an undercover guru like the Linear guys, but even she realized that was highly suspicious.

They were coming tonight.

Finn would want her to call. She would just let him know what she had found out. Even if it was just the code. She probably should’ve told him the whole story about how nervous she’d been the last time.

She dropped the liquor off at the bar. When Mack took the bottles of Armand de Brignac toward the back room, she rushed to the dressing area to get her phone. By the time she returned to the bar, Mack was looking for her.

“Can you set up the back?” he asked. “I have to keep an eye on the girls tonight, make sure no one gets too hysterical over what happened to Jade.”

“Sure, no problem.” It would give her a chance to call Finn. “How long before the group gets here?”

“Twenty minutes.”

They could hear yelling from the direction of the dressing room and Mack headed that way with a sigh. Charlie immediately rushed to the back. She didn’t bother to start setting it up. She just wanted to call Finn.

Her phone didn’t work inside the building, but she could step out the side door from here and get a signal. She reached up and unhooked the fire alarm attached to the door and opened it, phone already in hand.

She had a bad feeling about all of this.

She was only one step out the door, not looking where she was going, when she ran straight into Rocco.

“Look who it is.” His face was drawn into a sneer. “The lady with nine lives. I heard your house burned down.”