“Mr. Skeevy,” Pilar murmured. “Who’s the babe?”

The waitress smiled. “Trophy wife number three.”

“Figures.”

At last they got the band and their booty back to the suite. In short order the hot tub was filled with naked, splashing bodies and lots of streaked eyeliner.

“Champagne!” Randall called. “Pilar, we need champagne!”

“Yes, master.” She rang room service and ordered several bottles of champagne, adding the request for a Hellfire maid’s uniform. “Can you do that?” she said into the phone. “Wonderful! Thanks ever so much.”

“Bet they’ve seen worse,” Loup observed.

“Uh-huh.”

The room service delivery guy handed it over without so much as blinking, studiously avoiding looking at the naked people cavorting in the hot tub. Pilar signed the tab and added a generous tip.

Loup glanced at the neatly folded bundle of scarlet and white material. “Looks pretty small.”

“Mmm. It does, doesn’t it?” Pilar handed her a bottle of champagne. “Open that up to get the boys started; then we can go back to our room and you can try it on. I’m afraid if we leave it here Charlie will do something disgusting with it.”

They left over the boys’ protests.

“It’s early!” Donny said with his wounded look. “Why don’t you stay for a while and join us?” He paddled his hands in the water. “It’s nice in here.”

“You think you’re too good for us?” one of the Goth girls asked suspiciously, eyeing Pilar. “You in your girlie-girl dress? You afraid you might catch something?”

Pilar wrinkled her nose. “Ew!”

“We’re clean,” one of the others assured Charlie.

“No, it’s just that we work for these guys and we have a lot of planning to do,” Loup said diplomatically. She caught Randall’s eye. “For the special promotional event?”

“Right, right.” He nodded, wet hair flopping. “Go ahead, we’ll talk in the morning. Or, um, afternoon, maybe. Could be a late night. You’re not trying to think of pulling off the event tomorrow?”

“No, the day after.”

“That’s a Saturday?”

“Yes,” Pilar said. “So all the wee Kate fans will be out of school. Is it okay if I leak the details to the fan feeds?”

“Yeah, sure,” Randall agreed.

“Thanks.” She grabbed Loup’s hand. “C’mon, baby. We’ve got work to do.”

In their room, Loup unfolded the maid’s uniform and regarded it with disbelief. It consisted of a scarlet bodysuit with capped sleeves and a very short flouncy skirt attached to it, a headband with a pair of satin devil horns, a frilly white apron, and a pair of red ballet flats. “They actually make people clean rooms wearing this? No wonder we haven’t seen any of the housekeeping staff. They’re all in hiding.”

“Try it on.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

“Hey, you’ve got to make sure it fits, right?” Pilar pointed. “Try it on in the bathroom. I want to get the full effect all at once.”

Loup went, grumbling.

It fit, sleek and tight. The skirt barely covered her buttocks. The apron was ridiculously nonfunctional.

Pilar giggled. “That’s so wrong it’s almost right.”

“Oh, please!”

“Thought you didn’t get embarrassed, baby.”

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean I can’t recognize an absurdly cheesy fantasy when I’m wearing it.” She gave Pilar a suspicious look. “Tell me you don’t think this is sexy.”

“On you?” Pilar reclined on her elbows. “Well, let’s just say if you came in here wearing that right this minute, maybe I’d say I was oh, so tired after a night of dancing and gambling. And maybe I’d ask you ever so innocently to help me take off these strappy high heels…” She lifted one leg suggestively, pointing and rotating her foot, then let out a startled squeak as Loup grabbed her by both ankles and yanked her forward, sliding her effortlessly over the slippery satin comforter.

“And what if I said I wanted you to keep the strappy high heels on?” Loup asked in a low voice. “Hmm?”

“Who’s got a fetish now?” Pilar asked, breathless. “I didn’t expect the chambermaid to be so assertive.”

“Complaining?” She slid her hands upward, pushing the fabric of Pilar’s dress toward her hips.

“God, no!”

FORTY

First thing in the morning, Pilar posted the update on Kate’s promotional appearance to their fan feeds, then called Geordie Davies to coordinate. She listened to him with a pained expression. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll handle the limo arrangements, and I’ll book your flights to D.C. and the hotel. But after that—” She held the phone away from her ear. “Sorry!”

“He’s pissed that we’re bailing?” Loup asked when she was done.

“Uh-huh.”

“But he’s gonna go through with it?”

“Yep.” Pilar rubbed her ear. “I think he knows this could be big.”

They ordered breakfast from room service and pored over the hotel’s security specs, putting a plan together.

“Wish the guards weren’t armed,” Pilar murmured.

“Yeah, me too.” Loup caught her look. “What? I’m thinking. I can think.”

She kissed her. “Yes, you can. And frankly, I don’t want to think about the part with the armed guards anymore or I’ll get all freaked out. Baby, can I give you a few errands to run? We need a few things and I need to do some research for our cross-country adventure with Miguel fucking Garza.”

“Sure.”

Loup ran errands.

Pilar made arrangements.

The band woke up, hungover.

“What?” Pilar said irritably into the phone. “Charlie, you’re just dehydrated. It’s too soon to be anything else. Drink more water. If it still burns at the end of the day, we’ll call a doctor. And for fuck’s sake, stay out of that hot tub! It’s a breeding dish for germs.” She hung up.

“Our heroes,” Loup commented.

“God love ’em,” Pilar agreed.

That night there were paparazzi—not many, but a few. They photographed the members of Kate in the casino. One in particular identified Loup.

“Hey! Aren’t you their cult bodyguard? Over here!”

She turned her head away from the camera.

“Get her out of here,” Donny muttered to Pilar. “It’s too soon for her to be getting this kind of exposure here, eh? We’ll be okay without you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He shoved her. “Hurry.”

They went to Heaven.

Heaven was lame.

“Tell me again what you do?” a businessman in a pin-striped suit asked, sidling close to Pilar on an overstuffed white satin settee. He pushed a drink in her direction and peered at her cleavage. “I’m very interested.”

“Secret agent bodyguard.”

He blinked. “Secret what?”

She ignored him and stood, holding out her hand to Loup. “Fuck this. You want to call it a night and go to bed?”

“Definitely,” Loup said.

The next morning they went over their plan a final time and packed all their things in a single duffel bag. Loup was calm; Pilar was anxious and jittery.

“I feel like I’m gonna throw up,” she complained. “How can you be so fucking calm? Oh, don’t answer that! I know, I know.”

“Did you call the boys?”

“Yeah, they’re conscious and upright.” She looked at the clock and sighed. “I just hate waiting.”

“Why don’t you go scope out the casino for Kate fans?” Loup suggested. “See if it looks like we’ll have enough to make a mob?”

“You’re just trying to distract me, aren’t you?”

“Well, yeah.”

Pilar sighed again. “Fine.” She went and came back looking marginally calmer. “Yeah, it looks good. I counted at least forty or fifty wearing Kate T-shirts. If we can double it, that’s enough to disappear into.”

At one o’clock when the band was scheduled to begin signing, the number had swelled to hundreds.

“Okay.” Pilar took Loup’s face in her hands and kissed her. “I’m gonna go help get this show started. Go ahead and put on your uniform. I’ll be back in a little while.”

“Don’t wait long enough for the crowd to thin out,” Loup warned her. “A lot of them might leave as soon as they get their autograph and free shirt.”

“No, no. Randall’s gonna ask them to stick around. He’s got a speech about the new album and civil rights. He’ll start five minutes after I take off.”

“Okay. I’ll be ready.” As soon as she left, Loup put on the ridiculous maid uniform and stretched out on the bed. She watched TV for half an hour or so, feeling her calm give way to a sense of anticipation and collected excitement. She looked up with a smile when Pilar burst into the room. “Go time?”

“Uh-huh.” Pilar whipped her hair into a ponytail and flung an oversized Hawaiian shirt over the Kate camisole she was wearing, then hoisted the duffel bag with an effort. “You don’t have to look so happy about it.”

Loup grabbed a stack of folded towels from the bathroom. “Sorry!”

They hurried to the elevator. Donny’s keycard got them access to the restricted fifteenth floor. No one got on the elevator. In the hallway, they passed a nicely dressed couple who ignored them.

“Fifteen-thirty,” Pilar whispered outside the door to the suite, her face pale.

Loup motioned her back out of sight. She knocked on the door, holding up the pile of folded towels. “Housekeeping!”