Dominic met Carlos at Rolando’s, a casual, scruffy hole-in-the-wall gym not far from Downtown. The eponymous owner, an Afro-Caribbean man similar to Dominic in height and build, had been a champion heavyweight boxer a decade earlier, particularly beloved in Las Vegas. He’d opened the gym after he retired, resisting pressure to take it in a fancy boutique direction and keeping it stripped down to the bare essentials.
Carlos was waiting at the door, his lanky body clad in track pants and a zipped-up jacket despite the stifling heat. He was rocking the artful stubble look these days, and he’d recently cut his dark-brown hair into a shorter style.
Knowing that Carlos wouldn’t want to use the locker rooms, Dominic had changed into his own workout gear before leaving his mother’s house. He greeted Carlos with a fist bump, and they headed inside.
They passed a few cardio machines and the boxing area, where Rolando himself was patiently coaching a couple of young men. He gave Dominic a friendly nod, and Dominic returned the gesture. God, he’d had an insane crush on Rolando when he’d first started here. Too bad the guy was hopelessly straight.
He and Carlos stopped in the weight room. There were a few other people hard at work, grunting and sweating through heavy sets. This gym was popular with both veterans and bounty hunters—two communities that tended to have a lot of overlap—which was how Dominic had found it in the first place. People came here to push themselves.
“You gonna take your jacket off?” Dominic asked lightly, as he and Carlos set up by a couple of weight benches.
Carlos hesitated, glancing around the gym. Nobody was paying any attention to them.
A few months ago, Carlos had gotten top surgery to remove his breasts and reshape his chest. He’d been gradually resuming his previous exercise routine over the past six weeks, and now the surgeon had not only cleared him for heavy upper-body weightlifting, but had strongly recommended it.
“You’re safe here,” Dominic said. Even if any of the gym-goers pegged Carlos as trans, they’d know better than to shoot their mouths off unless they wanted Rolando to knock their teeth down their throats.
“I know. It’s just . . .”
Carlos shook his head, unzipped his jacket, and peeled it off. After he set it aside, he went to cross his arms over his chest, then repressed the gesture with visible effort.
Looking down at the flat chest beneath his T-shirt, he said, “It still feels weird to be out like this without a binder on.”
“It looks great,” Dominic said honestly. The surgeon had done impressive work—as well he should have, considering how much Carlos and Jasmine had paid for the procedure. “Plus, remember what the doctor said: the more you build up your pecs, the more it’ll improve the shape.”
“Yeah. But I’m not looking for monsters like these, all right?” Carlos slapped his hand against Dominic’s chest.
Dominic grinned. “Noted.”
He guided Carlos through the upper-body superset circuit he’d designed himself, moving them along at the same pace so the only difference was the amount of weight they were lifting. They were about halfway through it, banging out a set of horizontal dumbbell rows, when Carlos said, “Jasmine told me she ran into Levi coming out of your apartment this morning.”
“Yeah?” Bent forward with one foot propped on the bench, Dominic lifted his enormous dumbbell with a grunt until his arm was perpendicular to his shoulder. He inhaled slowly through his nose as he lowered the weight.
“It was a relief too, because after what we heard last night, we were afraid you might have murdered him.”
Dominic gasped out a laugh. “Sorry about that. He can be pretty loud.” The memory was distracting, and it wasn’t until they’d switched arms and were rowing on the other side that it occurred to him to add, “Don’t say anything to him about it, though. He’d be so embarrassed—dude, breathe out when you lift the weight.”
Carlos, whose face was flushed and sweaty, took a short break to readjust his position and fix his breathing. “So you guys are doing good, then?”
“I think so,” Dominic said with a smile.
The conversation ebbed for a while as they concentrated on the workout. Later, when they were doing side by side barbell curls in front of a mirror, Carlos said, “Do you want to bring him to the Andersons’ party on Saturday?”
Dominic raised his eyebrows. Jasmine’s parents were having a cookout on Saturday afternoon, a casual family reunion sort of thing, and they’d invited him weeks ago. “You sure? I didn’t know if you’d want him there.”
“Of course we do. He’s your boyfriend, right?”
“We haven’t talked about it yet.”
Carlos rolled his eyes. “He’s your boyfriend, trust me.” His speech was ragged, the words punched out between heaving breaths. “I mean, Jasmine and I weren’t sure about him at first, because he didn’t seem like your type. He’s a little . . .”
“Stiff?” Dominic suggested. He squeezed his biceps as he curled the weight toward his shoulders, relishing the burn in his muscles.
“Yeah. He loosens up when he’s speaking to you or touching you, though. And the look on your face when you talk about him . . . anyone who can make you look like that is okay with us.”
“Thanks.” Dominic was touched. “I’ll run it past him, see if he’s free that day.”
They finished out the superset and returned the weights. “I’m going to propose to Jasmine at the party,” Carlos said, right as Dominic was gulping a mouthful of water.
Dominic coughed up his water and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “Seriously? How long have you been planning that?”
Wringing his towel between his hands, Carlos said, “I’ve wanted to do it for a while, but I couldn’t afford a ring so soon after the surgery, so I thought it’d be a long time coming. Then I talked to her mom about it, and she gave me Jasmine’s great-grandmother’s ring.”
“Holy shit.” Dominic clapped his shoulder. “Congratulations, man.”
“Thanks,” said Carlos. “I’m freaking out about it.”
“You know she’ll say yes.”
“And you’d think that would make it less nerve-wracking, but it really doesn’t.”
Spending the night with Levi, lunch with his family, now Carlos’s happy news—this day kept getting better and better. Dominic was in high spirits when he returned to his apartment, and took Rebel for a walk before he showered and changed for his internship.
After the Seven of Spades case, Levi had suggested that he consider becoming a private investigator. Dominic, who had been coming to the realization that he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life bounty hunting and bartending, no matter how much he enjoyed both professions, had jumped on the idea and ran with it. He was scheduled to take the licensing exam in a few months, and in the meantime, he’d been learning the ropes at McBride Investigations.
While not the largest agency of its kind in Las Vegas, McBride was by far the most prestigious, with a list of high-roller clients a mile long. Dominic’s years as a bounty hunter had given him an edge; he spent a few weeks proving his worth by using the sly tricks and shortcuts he’d developed, as well as his extensive network of contacts across the Valley, to tie up asset investigations and other research-heavy cases in record time. Tonight, he was being sent into the field for the first time—supervised, of course.
The agency occupied the tenth and eleventh floors in a sleek high-rise right off the Strip. Dominic took the elevator and was shown into Kate McBride’s office at once.
McBride had inherited the business from her father, who had taken it over from his father before him. She was a muscular, stocky woman with tanned skin and short hair. Her croaky voice was roughened from decades of heavy smoking, though she’d recently transitioned to vaping at the insistence of her wife—her much younger, drop-dead-gorgeous, showgirl wife. Dominic had never seen her without an e-cigarette in her hand.
She was holding one now as she waved Dominic into a chair in front of her massive desk. “We’re gonna start you off nice and easy,” she said, nudging a slim file in his direction. “Domestic case, cheating spouse—this shit is our bread and butter.”
Dominic skimmed the file while he listened.
“Nervous housewife in Summerlin thinks her rich hubby is having an affair, and she’s probably right. All the signs are there—staying late at the office, furtive telephone calls, lower sex drive, buying her flowers and jewelry for no reason. These cases confirm infidelity about ninety-five percent of the time.”
He didn’t need to be told that; he’d lost count of the number of married bounties he’d ended up tracking down at the home of a secret lover. “Basic surveillance job?” he asked.
“You got it. Cases like these, we keep the target under constant surveillance during the hours specified by the client, document all activities, and record video whenever legal.” McBride took a drag off her cigarette and exhaled the vapor. “I want to stress legal. All of our evidence needs to be admissible in court if necessary. You’re a bounty hunter, so I’m not too worried about it. You know the laws around trespassing and covert recordings.”
That was true, though he’d also broken those laws when he’d known he could get away with it.
Pointing her cigarette at him, she said, “There is one challenge with you doing surveillance work. Seeing as you’re roughly the size of an elephant, there aren’t many environments where you could really blend in.”
“Thanks,” said Dominic, but he wasn’t offended.
“How do you handle that when you’re out hunting bail jumpers?”
“I usually try to stay out of sight as much as possible—tail them in a car if I can. Or I go the other way and make direct contact under some sort of pretext that lets me keep an eye on them without raising suspicions.”
“Hmm.” McBride tapped the fingers of her free hand against her desk, sizing him up. “Well, it shouldn’t be a problem anyway. Justine Aubrey is the lead investigator, and she can follow the target anywhere you’d attract too much attention.”
Aubrey was a surveillance specialist, as well as one of the most generic-looking human beings Dominic had ever met. He considered himself particularly observant, and even he would be hard-pressed to describe her in any meaningful way.
“She’s downstairs with Isaiah getting her equipment. You’d better run down and meet her so she can explain the finer points.”
“Thank you.” Dominic put the file back on the desk and headed for the door.
“Russo,” McBride said, when he had his hand on the knob. He turned back to see her unscrewing and refilling her vaporizer. “I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen from you so far, and the bail agencies around here have nothing but good things to say about you. Keep on like this, and there’ll be an investigator position waiting for you once you’re licensed.” She narrowed her eyes. “So don’t fuck this up, you got me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dominic said. As he left the office, he felt the strangest urge to salute, which was something he hadn’t done in years.