Absolutely Captivated by Kristine Grayson Read Free Book Online Page B

the
month-long summer session at his school.
    Travers wondered if
this weren’t all a plot. After all, Kyle had mentioned the Wyrd
Sisters and the Star Trek
Experience nearly a week ago. All the way
here, he was reading travel guides like they were the
Bible.
    The approach to 515 came
up faster than Travers expected. Somehow he had gotten it into his
head that Las Vegas was the same size as L.A. Nothing in North
America was the same size as L.A. Maybe in population, but not in
sheer sprawl.
    He whipped the SUV into the correct
lane, making his passengers gasp, and then, on two wheels, somehow
managed to slide in front of a very large truck without anyone
hitting the brakes.
    Travers turned on 515, and
told Kyle to watch for Las Vegas Boulevard South, which would take
them to Fremont Street. The signs were telling Travers that he was
heading toward Downtown Vegas and the Fremont Street Experience,
whatever that was. Apparently everything in Vegas was an
experience.
    The women were chattering
behind him, but thanks to Charlie Pride (Wow! A station that played
Charlie Pride couldn’t be all bad), Travers couldn’t hear what they
were saying. He didn’t really want to know, anyway.
    His plans were pretty simple. He would
escort them into the private detective agency, make sure this
Zanthia/Zoe Sinclair actually existed, and then walk back out,
leaving her with the most naïve group of women Travers had ever met
in his life.
    Then he would find a
hotel for him and Kyle, maybe one close to this Star Trek thing—if it was for kids
and not for adults. (Travers had his doubts.) They would do
whatever an eleven-year-old and a grown-up could do on a weeknight
in Las Vegas, and then, in the morning, they would drive home and
return to their normal, everyday Wyrd-Sisters-free
life.
    The turn onto Las Vegas Boulevard put
the sun directly in Travers’ eyes. He swerved slightly to avoid
something shiny in the road, then made the relative quick turn onto
Fremont.
    At that moment, his complacency
ended.
    Everything he had imagined
about Las Vegas—everything he had feared—was right here in front of
him. Women in short skirts, fishnets (how clichéd was that?), and
teased hair walked the streets, eyeing the cars. A drug deal was
clearly going down on the corner, and a group of young men walked
in a pack toward a parked car.
    “Oh, Dad,” Kyle said. “This isn’t
good.”
    “No kidding,” Travers said. Maybe the
neighborhood would clean up closer to the detective’s
agency.
    In L.A., neighborhoods
sometimes changed quality from block to block.
    “How much farther we got to go, Kyle?”
Travers asked.
    “Not much,” Kyle said,
squeezing the Internet map so hard that the paper he’d printed it
on made rustly sounds of protest.
    Well, this was a twist. And once he
reached the address, Travers would have to determine the best
course of action besides the one he really wanted to
take.
    He really wanted to dump the Wyrd
Sisters onto the sidewalk and run.
    But he wasn’t that kind of guy, as
Kyle kept reminding him. And Travers had already brought them this
far.
    He might as well finish the
trip.
     

 
     
Five
     
    Zoe Sinclair took a washcloth from the
cupboard above the sink in the extremely small private bathroom
next to her office. She turned the water on cold, and listened as
it clanged through the rusty pipes.
    Never again. Never again would she try
to find someone’s familiar. That damn dachshund had led her around
all of Vegas before Zoe finally figured out how to trap the
obnoxious little creature.
    Sausages. She bought lots and lots of
sausages, created a trail from the dachshund’s last known site, and
baited a trap. Only she couldn’t use a real trap on a familiar
(rules, rules, rules—Zoe was nothing if not diligent about
following the Fates’ rules), so she had to catch the thing
herself.
    That little dog snapped
and snarled and bit, its teeth as sharp as any real dog’s teeth—not
that a familiar wasn’t a