Holden found the office two blocks off the Strip, wedged between a bail bondsman and a shuttered pawn shop.
The sign read Aaland Concierge Discreet Event Management in letters that had seen better summers, and the storefront window was clean in a way that suggested someone cared about first impressions even when the neighborhood didn’t.
Until this moment he’d had no on-the-ground ally no one in Vegas who owed him a phone call, let alone a favor.
He pushed the door open.
A bell chimed, thin and bright against the hum of a window AC unit fighting a losing war with June.
The woman behind the desk looked up from a stack of invoices.
Mid-twenties, sharp hazel eyes, good blazer over a white shirt, dark blonde hair pulled back tight enough to mean business.
He sized her up the same way he sized up anyone he might need fast, clinical, filed under useful or not.
She had a phone in one hand and a pen in the other, and she finished the note she was writing before she acknowledged him.
“Help you?” she said.
“I need to book a service,” Holden said.
“Bachelor party. Four guys. Vegas. This weekend.”
She set the pen down.
“This weekend.”
“I know it’s short notice.”
“Short notice is Wednesday for a Friday event. This is Thursday for a Saturday disaster.” She leaned back in her chair.
“What kind of disaster are we talking?”
He’d practiced this part twice, actually, in front of the hotel bathroom mirror, working out how much honesty would sound careful and how much would sound insane.
The balance mattered.
Too little and she’d lowball the prep; too much and she’d show him the door.
“The kind where things get loud,” he said.
“Expensive. Probably illegal in at least two ways I haven’t thought of yet. I’m trying to get ahead of it.”
Her expression stayed flat, but her shoulders squared half an inch a professional recalibrating scope.
She picked up a clipboard.
“Name?”
“Holden Cross.”
“Party size?”
“Four. Five counting me.”
“Venue?”
“Caesars. We’ve got a villa.”
She wrote that down.
Looked up.
“And you’re booking damage control before the damage happens because…?”
“Because I know my friends,” Holden said.
“And I know Vegas. And I’d rather pay someone who’s good at this than spend Sunday morning trying to negotiate with hotel security myself.”
A good answer the kind a responsible guy with irresponsible friends would give, with the advantage of being completely true.
She studied him for a beat longer than comfort allowed, and he let her.
“Most guys don’t think that far ahead,” she said.
“I do events logistics for a living. You learn to plan for the worst.”
“What kind of events?”
“Corporate. Conferences. Trade shows. The kind where if something goes wrong, you’ve got three hundred people standing in a hallway wondering why the ballroom’s locked.”
She nodded slowly.
The pen moved across the clipboard a rate, or a risk assessment, or both.
“All right, Mr. Cross. Here’s how this works. I don’t judge the mess. I clean it. I’ve got relationships with hotels, hospitals, chapels, and bail bondsmen. I can make a problem quiet, or I can make it go away, but I can’t do either one if you lie to me about what I’m walking into.”
“Understood.”
“Good. My rate is two hundred an hour, four-hour minimum, plus expenses. Expenses means anything I have to pay to make your problem my problem. Bail, medical, property damage, expedited anything. I bill for what I spend, and I don’t pad it, but I also don’t eat the cost if your friends wreck a penthouse.”
Holden did the math.
Eight hundred base, plus whatever the weekend decided to charge.
It was more than he’d wanted to spend, but less than the weekend would cost without her.
“That’s fair,” he said.
She tilted her head slightly.
Most clients, Holden guessed, argued.
“You haven’t asked what’s not included,” she said.
“I’m assuming felonies and kidnapping.”
“And fires. I don’t do fires.” She said it like she’d learned that one the hard way.
“You’ll need to sign a contract. Standard liability waiver. I’m on call from Friday six p.m. through Sunday noon. You text me when something happens, not after. I can’t fix what I don’t know about.”
“Agreed.”
She pulled a printed contract from a drawer, slid it across the desk with a pen.
Holden scanned it two pages, dense but clear, the kind of document someone had paid a lawyer to write once and now printed on demand.
He signed at the bottom.
Dated it.
Slid it back.
She counter-signed without reading it.
“One more thing,” she said.
“Tell your friends to behave.”
Holden smiled.
“They won’t.”
“I know. Tell them anyway.”
The moment hung there, and Holden felt something shift not attraction, not yet, but recognition.
The sense of meeting someone who understood that you planned for disasters not because you were paranoid but because you’d seen what happened when you didn’t.
“I will,” he said.
She stood, extended a hand.
“Stella Aaland.”
“Holden Cross. Though you already wrote that down.”
Her grip was firm and brief.
Professional.
“I’ll see you Friday,” she said.
Holden turned toward the door, and that was when he noticed the man.
Mid-forties, forgettable build, forgettable face, standing on the corner across the street in a jacket too warm for June.
Not looking at the office.
Not looking away from it either.
Just there, the way a man is there when he’s waiting for something and doesn’t want you to know he’s waiting.
Holden’s stomach did the thing it had done at the bar.
Not nausea.
Just a faint wrongness, like a note played flat.
He tucked it away the same mental drawer where he kept Phil’s tells and Alan’s patterns and the shape of a night about to go bad.
A man on a corner.
Probably nothing.
Probably.
He pushed the door open.
The bell chimed again.
The man on the corner didn’t move.
Holden walked two blocks back toward the Strip, checked once over his shoulder the man was gone and decided he’d been reading threat into coincidence.
It was Vegas.
People stood on corners.
People waited.
People noticed things.
He caught a cab back to Caesars, paid the fare, and didn’t think about the man again until much later, when it would turn out he should have.
By then, Stella’s card was in his wallet, the contract was signed, and the weekend had a plan.
Or at least, Holden did.
The pack had never needed one before.
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TL;DR —
Silver / $6 / 10 ahead
Gold / $9 / 15 ahead
Platinum / $15 / 20 ahead, no weekly wait
That’s it.