Sympathy For The Devil by Asha King

the dude with the clipboard looked up at her once, but he returned his attention to whatever he was reading. She’d done this sort of thing enough times that she could move casually without arousing suspicion, but nervousness crept upon her nonetheless. Rarely was she ever in a situation where she had no damn idea where the hell she even was .
    She lifted a case of vodka and swiftly moved down the ramp again. There was no telling how long it would take the delivery guys to return and she didn’t want to risk them seeing her.
    Clipboard Guy said nothing as she passed, and she let out a heavy breath of relief once she’d stepped inside. Quickly her eyes darted around, taking everything in. She stood in a long corridor painted black with lights inlaid along the ceiling. The dull thrum of music pulse in the distance, bass buzzing against the floor. Definitely a nightclub of some sort, then.
    Closed doors ran up and down the long corridor. Tash took a shot in the dark and went right, her heels rapidly clicking on the tile floor. One door lay open at the end, a long storeroom of some sort, and she tucked the vodka off to the side before anyone saw her, then continued on around the hall corner.
    More doors, most of them unlabeled but some with small signs, white lettering painted on the black doors. Staff. Kitchen. Security—and that she ran past without pausing.
    At the end of this hall, the tile was cut off and changed to a red and black, almost marble-pattered carpet. It would at least muffle the sound of her boots. Tash ducked through, finding the lights changed from the ceiling to random wall sconces set far enough apart that the hall was dim and subdued.
    An uncomfortable feeling wormed around in the pit of her stomach. She crept left, listening. There was definitely music, but the farther she went, the more it sounded like it was coming from below rather than above. The beat was slow and seductive, dark and sexy.
    Voices suddenly sounded, a low murmur growing louder—people coming in the opposite direction. Her spine straightened, steps went casual as she strolled down the hall like she belonged there. Moments later a pair of men in business suits turned the corner, talking amongst themselves about something. She didn’t look at them and they paid no attention to her.
    Thank God for terrible security.
    Her pace increased once she was past them and she ducked around the corner, just in case it dawned on them she didn’t belong. Here the music grew louder and the hallway widened. It was a shorter corridor this time, a stout T-shaped one with three steps downward and then branching left and right. Voices murmured and whispered, but not from approaching people—it had to be the nightclub beyond. She treaded carefully down the steps and glanced around. Fresh light invaded the corridor at either end now, shifting shadows playing across the floor.
    She was definitely at her destination.
    Tash went with the right, hoping like hell she could remember the maze she’d just been through if going out the front door wasn’t an option. When she reached the end, she tentatively pressed against the wall and peered around the corner.
    More steps led down, this time to the mezzanine level of some kind of club. She couldn’t see much beyond, as a half wall ran along the mezzanine and above it black lattice work ran up to the ceiling. What she could glimpse was a huge nightclub on the lower level in the shape of a large square—or box. From her position, she saw the bar at the far end, at least, but little else. The bar was backlit, rows of liquor on glass shelves, with a woman in a corset and a lace collar serving drinks to a row of patrons Tash could glimpse the heads of.
    That uncomfortable feeling in her stomach twisted even harder, seeming to know what she would see without her fully looking yet.
    No one else stood on the mezzanine level so she forced herself forward, up to the black lattice work where she could glimpse everything