This was why the bill in my hand was a hundred dollars and the bill I’d hand him when he took me home in a few hours would be the same.
This was also why he had no choice but to accept it.
I used him only for the club.
My car had a tracker on it and my home randomly had someone watching it.
Dad had a long memory.
Harry knew how to spot surveillance. He also knew how to avoid it. He’d taught me both and utilized both for me.
We were good at our game. We’d had practice.
In the end, when it mattered most, not good enough.
But good enough to get me to the club.
“Harry,” I said in my soft voice. “They have cameras in this alley and Mr. Revere is right there to open the door for me.” I didn’t move my head to indicate the big man standing under the lone light in the alley, his eyes on Harry’s shiny, well-kept but not-near-new black Lincoln Town Car. I didn’t have to. Harry knew he was there. “You don’t have to walk me to the door.”
Harry continued to look at me for half a second before he turned and opened his door.
I sat back on a sigh.
He came around and opened my door. He shut it after I climbed out.
His hand to my elbow, his head turning this way and that to scan the empty alley, he walked me to Mr. Revere.
“Ms. Lincoln,” Mr. Revere greeted as we got close.
I nodded to him.
Mr. Revere jerked his chin up to Harry and moved to open the door of the club.
I turned to Harry, his hand dropped from my arm and I grabbed it. Pressing the bill into his palm, I gave him a squeeze and let him go.
“I’ll text you when I’m ready for a pickup,” I told him what I always told him.
Like much of what I said, these were wasted words.
Harry jerked his head to the side. “I’ll be parked down the way.”
He didn’t need to be close. He didn’t need to have my back. No one was going to charge into the building with tommy guns and shoot the place up, whereupon Harry had to be close in order to rescue me and/or provide a quick getaway.
“You can go have a drink,” I said. “Something to eat. Go home and catch a program. You don’t have to—”
He interrupted me. “I’ll be down the way, Olivia.”
Wasted words.
I didn’t know why I bothered.
I needed to learn to stop doing that.
I nodded. “Thank you, Harry.”
He nodded back, jerked his chin to Mr. Revere and didn’t move until I was through the door Mr. Revere was holding open for me.
I walked through the narrow, dark vestibule of the private VIP entrance to the club where Mr. Paine was lurking in the shadows.