Black Light: Exposed (Black Light Series Book 2) Read online

  Black Light: Exposed

  Jennifer Bene

  Contents

  Black Light: Exposed

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  End Notes

  SNEAK PEEK

  Books by Jennifer Bene

  About the Author

  Black Light: Exposed

  By Jennifer Bene

  Text copyright © 2017 Jennifer Bene

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published under Black Collar Press.

  ISBN (e-book): 978-1-947559-99-8

  ISBN (Print): 978-0-9982191-9-6

  Cover design by Eris Adderly, http://erisadderly.com/.

  Created with Vellum

  This book is dedicated to all of my amazing readers who always lift me up with their comments, messages, and reviews. To my fantastic friend and co-crazy confidant Livia Grant, who came up with the idea for Black Light and let me be a part of this fun world, and a special shout-out to Nanette who helped me name this wonderful book.

  Without all of you, lovelies, my life would be so, so boring.

  Chapter One

  Thursday Night

  “Come on, let me hear you!” DJ Elixxir’s voice poured like honey out of the speakers, and the crowd of college co-eds screamed on command while Maddie yawned and rolled her eyes. She just wanted a real drink, a fucking nap, and a goddamn story – but ‘People Enjoy Dancing at Popular Dance Club’ was absolutely not a headline anyone would care to read.

  “Everyone’s already written about this fucking place anyway,” she grumbled to herself. For the seventh time in two weeks Maddie was perched on a chair, watching a sea of writhing bodies as they had way more fun than her. Runway was the new it club in DC, and while she could understand the dense crowd of Georgetown students and tourists rocking it out to DJ Elixxir’s latest set, she could absolutely not figure out where all of the random politicians, lobbyists, and other social elite were going after they arrived.

  That was the story she needed, but for all her efforts she wasn’t getting anywhere. Taking another sip of her diet coke she winced and rubbed at her temple as the pounding headache started to creep down her neck from the base of her skull.

  “Fuck.” Maddie tried to block out the flashing lights and moving laser show that seemed to bob and weave with the bass line, but that was a futile effort. No amount of caffeine, or head massage, or magical fairy dust was going to make up for the lack of sleep she’d been rocking for over three weeks. But giving up and sleeping wouldn’t change the fact that Antoine was going to shut her out completely if she didn’t give him something soon, and this was the only interesting lead she’d found after months of nothing.

  Come on, Maddie, you can do this. Prove the assholes wrong.

  With a deep breath she tried to shake off all the bullshit and lifted her head to glance back at the VIP area again. It was cordoned off from the main floor by a wall, as if the city’s elite needed any further reminder that they were above the rest of the population, and while it held some barely dressed women who were also in the barely eighteen category, there was no one of interest. At least, no one she’d googled.

  Tapping her phone she scanned her thumbprint and watched her iPhone come to life on the little counter in front of her. In another moment she had her list up, the one that held every single person of importance she’d seen pull up outside of Runway in the month it had been open. Black, shining town cars that dropped off some of the top A-list of Washington, DC for them to come party inside the club – and yet? She’d found nothing.

  Nada.

  Zilch.

  Maddie was draining her meager savings coming to the club almost every night it was open, and she knew she should stop, but the little puzzle kept pulling her back. If you watch someone enter a building, and then you go inside and they aren’t there, then where are they?

  It was the million-dollar question, or at least the seventy-two thousand dollar a year question if she could finally land a job at the Washington Post as a reporter. Antoine would have to give her a position if she could just figure out where everyone was going. Every part of her knew something was up. That tingle buzzing through her bloodstream with each new name she added to her list, and Maddie knew that this was it. This was the story that would let her finally work for a real newspaper, doing real reporting.

  She just had to figure it the fuck out.

  Finishing off her soda she tucked her phone back in the little black purse and abandoned her seat. She hadn’t taken more than a step before some waif-thin blonde had snagged it, and Maddie could only sigh as she pushed past people to get to the coat check. The little ticket earned her the thick wool coat, and the bottle of Advil hiding in the pocket.

  Tipping the last two dollars in cash she had on her she sought out the bathroom, praying there wasn’t a line of chattering girls waiting to make her headache worse. As she navigated her way through the packed room she tried to remind herself that at twenty-four she was probably in the middle of the age range of the room, but she felt much older than the twenty-somethings grinding against each other on the dance floor. She’d never been interested in partying, never been the one to do keg-stands at Penn State, and being surrounded by drunk co-eds was not exactly one of her fantasies.

  A Pulitzer? That was a fantasy she could sink her teeth into, and one that was currently way too far off working at her shit copy editor job.

  With a push at the swinging door she found herself in the cool, insulated space of the women’s room, and for the first time in hours she felt like she could breathe. Whoever had designed this place had clearly known how miserable it was to try and find a toilet at a club, because Runway was the first club she’d seen with eight stalls and a fucking sitting area with two full-length mirrors. It was paradise inside chaos, and the instant reduction in sound made her head a lot happier – even if her ears were still ringing.

  There was only one girl at the sinks, applying eyeliner one-handed with the skill of a master, but Maddie didn’t even have the energy to feel jealous. In the mirror she saw the silvery dress that clung to her hips, with a neckline that draped just low enough to reveal her moderate cleavage, boosted by Victoria Secret’s best. It wasn’t the nicest thing she owned, but she was running out of outfits for the club – which meant she really needed to do laundry. Just one more thing for her never-ending to-do list. Great. Stepping forward she turned the water on and rinsed her hands before pressing the coolness to her cheeks.

  Wake up. Come on.

  Meeting her blue-gray eyes in the mirror she took a deep, steadying breath as she stared at her reflection. There was not enough make-up in the world to hide the exhaustion she felt, it was drawn like an undeniable map in dark circles under her eyes.

  “Perfect,” she muttered, an
d the beautiful woman next to her glanced over. Maddie offered a slight smile as the girl started applying lipstick. The woman who was now pouting at the mirror had sleek, pin-straight dark hair, while Maddie’s own fiery red waves were frizzy, and even though she’d spent twenty minutes carefully blow-drying it that morning around six am the effort was long dissolved.

  As was her make-up, her ability to think, and her patience for the night.

  Fuck it.

  It was almost two am, and that meant if she could catch an uber back to her apartment quickly she might get two and a half hours of sleep. Another night wasted with absolutely nothing to show for it.

  Popping open the Advil bottle she tossed three of the pills back and leaned down to the faucet, taking a few sips of water out of her hand to swallow them down. Ignoring the other girl’s sideways glance, Maddie headed to the back of the bathroom. After so many nights inside the club she’d picked up on the second door off the sitting area that led to the rear exit of the club. Much less chaotic and easier to get to the street for the uber pick-up since the front of Runway would still be lined with people trying to get inside at this hour.

  Tugging on her coat she dug her phone out of her little purse, and headed into the short hall behind the dance floor. Just as she pulled up the app to ask for a car, her eyes caught something out of place.

  There was no security by the curtain for backstage, and the curtain itself wasn’t pulled all the way across and latched to the wall like it usually was. That could be something interesting.

  Locking her phone she moved quietly towards the curtain, suddenly grateful for the overwhelming music that felt like it was trying to vibrate her bones. It was a remix of Bad Romance, and Maddie sent up a silent prayer of thanks to Gaga as she leaned against the wall to peek into the backstage area. She couldn’t see anyone, but light spilled from an open door just inside the curtain, and she slipped through to get a closer look. Three people were standing in what looked like a supply closet for the club, complete with shelves of cleaning products, and toilet paper, and other random stuff.

  That would have been strange enough, but one of the big security guys was talking to a man in a suit, handsome with silvering hair at his temples, and in a flash she recognized him. He was one of the bigger lobbyists in D.C., David Alchert, and he was definitely on her google list. Next to him was a gorgeous woman, probably in her mid to late thirties, and wearing a black dress so short Maddie wondered how she wasn’t flashing her underwear.

  What the fuck are they doing in a closet?

  They all started laughing, the woman wrapping herself around Alchert’s arm, and then the security guy went to pick up a mop in the back corner – except it didn’t move. He pulled it towards him, then pushed it forward, angled it to the side, and a door popped open.

  Holy. Shit.

  The couple waved at him as they stepped through into some room with pale purple light, and he waited there until the door snapped back into place. From where she stood there didn’t even seem to be a seam to mark the door’s existence, and there definitely wasn’t a handle. Before he could turn, she darted back past the curtain as a smile spread across her lips, stretching them so wide her jaw ached, but she could feel that tingle. The same one that had appeared when she’d first caught sight of all those distinguished members of society hungrily lining up to gain entrance to Runway. A dance club started by a pair of male models embroiled in a messy sex scandal that had been front-page political news for an entire week. None of it had made sense, not one bit of it, but now there was a secret entrance frequented by some of the city’s most affluent and influential people?

  That had headline exposé written all over it, and Maddie O’Neill was going to be the one to break it wide open. Antoine would be positively begging her to work for the Post.

  The sound of a door closing made her stumble back a few steps, unlocking her phone as she leaned against the wall a yard or two from the curtain. A gruff voice sounded a second later, “Hey, what are you doing back here?”

  “Huh?” Maddie glanced over at him, playing the confused girl act as she navigated back to the Uber app with her thumb. “I’m calling a ride, why?”

  “You shouldn’t be back here.”

  Rolling her eyes with practiced annoyance, she showed him her phone screen. “Like I said, I’m about to leave,” she pointed at the back exit, “out that door.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead and leave then?”

  “Oh, thanks for your permission!” Maddie pushed off the wall in a huff, stomping in her heels to the door to shove it open as she wrapped her coat around herself to fight the chill of early January – but the moment she was outside she couldn’t stifle the grin any further.

  She had a lead. A real, solid lead, and now she just needed to figure out how the fuck to get past Mr. Questions to that entrance so she could find out what secrets Runway was hiding.

  Chapter Two

  Friday

  The next morning wasn’t just brutal, it was post-nuclear blast destructive. Maddie felt like she’d been shoved into a meat grinder and then reformed into some shape that resembled a human being. Even as she slumped over her desk at the Daily Saver D.C. office, she couldn’t make sense of the text on her screen.

  It was like some evil eye test, and she was failing badly.

  “Morning, Ginger!”

  “Fuck off, Gilligan,” she growled.

  Jamar laughed as he took his seat at his desk, glancing back at her as he swiveled around to unlock his computer. “Bad night?”

  “I’m going to shove a pen through your eye if you keep talking to me.”

  “Hungover?” he mused, looking over his shoulder. “Or did you just get laid and spend all night making an ‘O’ face?”

  “Neither,” she hissed and waited for him to turn back around, but she wasn’t that lucky.

  “Seriously, are you sick? If you’re sick you should leave.”

  “Yes, I have the flu, and I licked all of your stuff before you got here.”

  “Always thinking of others, that’s my Ginger.” Flashing a wild grin at her he turned to his inbox, which was already full of ads and short articles to be edited before the eight o’clock print deadline.

  “You’re such an asshole.”

  “Hey, I’m not the one that looks half-dead. Has Brenda seen you yet?” Jamar’s casual question made her flinch. Brenda had already commented once that she needed to pick up her pace, and on Monday she’d suggested that Maddie looked unwell – the last thing she needed was another chat with their taskmaster of a boss.

  As if some shitty daily coupon paper was going to make or break the news cycle inside the Beltway.

  “Why don’t you pay attention to your own work, Gilligan?” As she snapped at him Jamar seemed to give up and tune into his screen with the kind of focus Maddie wished she could summon. She also needed to tone down the bitch-o-meter about ten notches. As snarky as she could be to him, she was grateful to have him and his playful jabs. Their nicknames for each other had formed her first week there, after she’d applied to every real newspaper in the D.C. area and finally settled for a job that would just pay the bills. Jamar had taken one look at her red hair, pale skin, and freckles, and immediately started calling her Ginger.

  As in the soul-sucking-creepy-red haired kind.

  By the end of the week she was fed up with the term, so she started calling him Gilligan. The dopey, accident-prone idiot from the show Gilligan’s Island, the same show where Ginger was actually one of the hot girls on the island and not some rude Irish stereotype. But, instead of being bothered by it Jamar had loved the banter, and they’d quickly become friends – which would have actually made work pretty nice if they weren’t both currently trapped in career purgatory.

  A four-year journalism degree, top marks, and all she had earned was two years as a copy editor for a free daily ad paper. So. Fucking. Glamorous.

  The Daily Saver wasn’t doing much more than providing a shitty
studio apartment, cheap food, and transport in and out of the city every day – but it was a job, and it meant she wasn’t moving back home. That was all Maddie could hope for until she earned her a chance at a real job.

  “Don’t stab me in the eye, but do you want me to make you some coffee?” Jamar asked, hovering at the edge of her desk with his hand poised over her Penn State mug.

  “For caffeine I will forgo the stabbing for now.” She managed a small smile, but he just chuckled to himself as he wandered away with her coffee cup. Reaching into her giant sack of a purse she fished around until she found the hand mirror she wanted and opened it to look at herself. Somehow she actually looked worse than she had at the club the night before. Her skin was waxy pale, her eyes bloodshot, the bags under her eyes even darker, and when she tried to look back at her screen she knew she was fucked. A lead or not, she needed a night or two of sleep before she tried to unlock the mop-triggered secrets of Runway.

  And if she planned on affording groceries this week, she’d need to make sure she got through the crap in her inbox before Brenda had more reasons to fire her and hire the next hungry, college grad looking for a job in the District.

  Just as she opened the first email of the morning, an ad for one-hour phone screen repair, Jamar returned with her coffee and set it beside her. Cream and sugar filled ecstasy, the liquid inside looked closer to milk than coffee, and she practically groaned as she picked it up and took a sip. “You’re too good to me.”