My eyes widened in surprise.

He continued, “You play it straight with them when they come. No need to pretend. Be exactly who you are. And once they start to ask why you’ve started to look into Allegra, just tell them that you’re interested in having someone escort you tomorrow night. You’ll explain there’s a big concert tomorrow, and you plan to go to the glam-type parties after, so you don’t want to go to all of those events alone. You’ll admit that, ok, the way you went about it was different from the usual way, but you did that based on my advice.”

I nodded my understanding, “So that’s where you’ll come in?”

Jack nodded again, as he continued to scan our surroundings. “Yeah. I’ll step in and take over the conversation from that point. I’ll be your security — we left that bit of information with the concierge, too. Once Allegra’s people get a hold of that, and they check on me, they’ll see that that will ring true, too.”

“Our first objective is to find out if Allegra and her outfit was set-up by friendly organizations. Or not. If not, then I’m to call Brom right away, and get you out of here.”

“But what about Harley?” I asked nervously.

He licked his lips and then gave me a friendly but firm look. “We didn’t work that angle into this plan, Aerin, I’m sorry. But your safety is the priority here. You have to realize that it’s possible that years ago, your friend could have been part of the set-up, right? Or not, of course. But who knows?  She may have been an innocent player in all of this while she was part of Allegra’s outfit, and was really only playing the adviser. Either way, if Allegra and her outfit turn out to be enemies, we’ll need to get you out first, and then try to sort out everything else later.”

I shook my head from side to side agitatedly. “No … no … no. That is not ok. By my inquiring about Allegra now, who knows what that outfit could do, when it comes to Harley?   What if they didn’t want to be probed this way, in the first place? They may go after Harley and think that they’ll need to tie clean up that mess, right? They may know all about her life in LA, because her friend Annie did some digging into Harley’s time here in Vegas, and was the one who first made contact with Allegra in the first place. And I’m not sure if Annie told them about where Harley is today. We’ll need to find out more, Jack, about what they know about Harley today, or could be up to, when it comes to her.”