Chapter 1609 Moonlighting
“At Vamped.”
That drew a pause and an extended silence from Evan before his eyes narrowed.
“What’s she doing there?”
“She’s working… as an escort.”
Evan was shocked.
Nina? An escort?
“We can’t be sure if that really was Ms. Nina, Mr. Seet. Please give us a little more time to verify this.”
Evan hung up outright and turned to ask Murphy about the bar.
“Vamped? I don’t know too much about it, but allow me to make a few calls.”
Per his investigations, the revelation that it was a very unremarkable bar left Murphy baffled as well. Why would Nina show up in a place like that?
“Could it be that she was duped into it?”
Evan shook his head in disagreement. “It may not be that simple, as even Draven and the others are uncertain whether it was really Nina. If it was her, she must surely be in disguise… Perhaps something else has happened in between.”
Disguise? Being as proficient at advanced makeup techniques as Nina was, putting on a disguise would be child’s play to her. But why would she want to do that?
Neither Murphy nor Evan could wrap their heads around it.
Evan decided that he would look into the matter personally. He was about to make his way out when he bumped into the returning Levant, who seemed in an equal hurry.
“What are you so worked up about?”
“I have news about Nina.”
“What?”
Levant was very surprised. “Okay. I couldn’t manage to track her down over several days, yet you managed to do so the moment you stepped in. Is there some sort of mystical paternal bond at work?”
Evan eyeballed him and made no comment before he hustled for the door. Out of curiosity, Levant followed suit.
En route, Evan shared Draven’s hypothesis with Levant.
After he listened to it, Levant’s face was a picture of disbelief. “Are you telling me that Nina is in disguise?”
But when he factored in how the sheer number of people they had sent out failed to locate her, the notion of Nina altering her own appearance did not seem that far-fetched.
Why would she put on a disguise to do escorting at a bar, though?
Like a streak of lightning, the car tore down the road and had them brought to Vamped in a jiffy.
Stepping out, Evan examined the bar’s signboard and found it to be as unremarkable as Murphy described. He then strode through the doors with Levant in tow.
Inside the bar, the pulsating rhythm that blasted overhead threatened to burst their eardrums. Colored lights of five, six vibrant shades dazzled across his field of vision, illuminating the bodies of the men and women hobnobbing in close proximity of each other.
He cast his gaze back and forth within the bar but found none who resembled Nina.
“What brought you here, Mr. Seet?”
Evan turned around to regard Damien when he heard the latter’s voice ring out behind him. “Which is the one you suspect could be Nina?”
Damien paused before he turned his head to a woman at the bar counter who was swirling and sampling a drink from a wineglass.
“Check her out, Mr. Seet. Doesn’t she remind you of Ms. Nina?”
After some careful scrutiny, Evan concluded that the woman’s height and build did bear some resemblance to Nina’s, though her choice of outfit and style of makeup bore no similarities to the type Nina favored.
A titillating black miniskirt paired with a rose-colored cropped top exposed the translucent whiteness of her midriff. Dangling from her earlobes were a pair of over-the-top lip-shaped earrings in an eye-catching scarlet, while her fingers around the wineglass featured nail polish in varying hues encrusted with jewels that sparkled like diamonds.
Her entire get-up from tip to toe permeated with tackiness!
Although Nina loved to dress up, her fashion sensibilities were a world apart from that of this woman. In Evan’s opinion, the discrepancy was simply too jarring.
“What makes you think she’s Nina?”
Damien went on to break it down for him.
“After chasing down the lead from whatever bits of information we were able to put together earlier, we discovered that Ms. Nina was kidnapped while she was paying her respects to Chris Sanders. Later on, it seemed that she managed to escape while her captors were drunk. Afterward, there were some witnesses who confirmed that she moved into a hotel. The trail, however, came to an end there. This Rose, though, frequently makes purchases for makeup. That is something that Ms. Nina does often as well.”
“Were there no surveillance equipment set up at the hotel?”
“There were, but the system broke down the very day that Ms. Nina fled there. That sort of coincidence seemed a little too convenient; hence, we wondered if it was Ms. Nina’s intention to mask her own identity.”
