She shook her head. “I don’t really know. All I know is he’s some sort of director or something, and he was always hanging around Vanessa. And Bill too, but more Vanessa. He always kind of creeped me out, so I stayed away from him. I think Ruby called him Mr. F once, but she said it stood for Mr. Fuckface.” She giggled. “I doubt that’s his real name. Why do you ask?”

I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “No reason. I think he knows my parents or something.”

“Your parents are friends with the Hollises?”

Yes. No. Depends on who you ask and when.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“I would tell you to ask Jetta about him. She seemed to know him a little better. I think sometimes he was her john.”

“Jetta?”

“New girl. Came around after Dreams shut down. We figured she was one of the girls and we just didn’t know her. She’s not around here anymore either, though.” Blue pulled a cigarette out of her pocket and tucked it, unlit, into her mouth. It seemed strange to me that she would come outside to smoke in front of a hookah lounge. “I think Mr. Fu—Mr. F got her a job at some film studio in Vegas or something,” she said around the cigarette. She pulled it from her mouth and held it between her fingers as she scratched her head. “Something like Mad Cow?” I jolted as orange and pink lit up in my mind. Totally not the colors I would associate with Mad Cow. But I knew what colors I did associate them with.

“Angry Elephant?”

She snapped her fingers. “Yeah. That’s it. Angry Elephant. I think he must have connections there or something.”

So maybe that was why the man was always in the background of the photos with my mom and dad. He was connected to the studio Mom worked for. But he was also Luna’s accomplice—of that, I was positive. Which could only mean one thing.

I had to go to Vegas.

16

LAS VEGAS WAS a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Brentwood. That meant four and a half hours of either trying to entertain myself, or of trying to get Mr. Personality to entertain me. The old Nikki would have preferred to entertain herself a thousand times over spending that length of time trapped in a confined space with sunshine-yellow Detective Martinez.

So I had no real explanation for why I asked him to go with me.

“Why?” He was already irritated that I’d dragged him to igNight and had left him inside wondering where I’d gone while I went outside to talk with Blue. Suggesting an impromptu road trip only served to exacerbate his bad mood. Fortunately, I was really good with exacerbation.

“The guy who Luna escaped Tesori Antico with is connected to a film studio out there.”