Seventeen
Anton hadn’t seen Vegas from the front seat of any vehicle in years, and it had been even longer since he’d been behind the wheel. But driving was like sex—once you knew how it worked, you never forgot.
He purposefully took backstreets to get to his casino, marveling at the shops he’d never noticed. Little shops, small businesses, a local gym, a hair salon. These businesses and the people in them had been there all along, living their small, insignificant lives while he was pulling in millions by the month. They would never have come on to his radar now but for what was happening. When you live big, you have a very long way to fall, and at the moment he was as far down as he ever cared to go. Even now he wasn’t certain he could pull himself out of the shit he was in, but if he couldn’t, he was sure as hell taking people down with him when he fell.
He saw the bright lights of Lucky Joe’s long before he reached the building itself, and the closer he got, the bigger the knot in his belly became. But by the time he reached the casino he was cold and steady-handed, ready to take back what was his. His old truck garnered little notice as he drove around back to the delivery entrances and parked against the building a good distance from the door.
He put his bag behind the truck seat so it wouldn’t attract some petty thief to bust a window to get to it. Then he grabbed the toolbox from the floor in the front seat, took a pair of cheap, black plastic eyeglasses from his pocket and put them on. They were the final addition to his disguise.
He got out, locked the truck, then pulled the old sombrero down tight on his head. As he headed toward the back entrance, he made sure to keep his shoulders stooped and his walk a shuffle. When he reached the entrance he opened the door and walked in, expecting to be stopped by a guard asking for an ID and what business he had on the premises. But there was no one there.
Frowning, he finally saw his guard down a darkened hall with his back to the door, humping a waitress for all he was worth. The woman was moaning, and he could see that the guard was on the verge of climax, even as he watched. They were too far gone to even notice him, and he didn’t want witnesses to what he was about to do, so he knew they would agree—timing was everything.
He slipped up the back stairs to the second floor and headed down a hall past a bank of meeting rooms, then took a sharp right at the ice machines. There was a small, insignificant-looking door near a blind corner that opened only by a key code. There were no security cameras in this hall because he’d designed it this way, but he still made sure he was alone before he punched in the code.
Immediately, the door slid into a pocket in the wall revealing a small, private elevator. When he stepped into the car, the door slid closed behind him. He had a card key for the penthouse, and once he swiped it, the elevator started moving upward. He put on a pair of latex gloves as he rode, and when the car came to a silent stop, it opened up into the far end of a walk-in closet.
Anton grabbed his toolbox and stepped out as the door closed behind him. He put the toolbox down by the door, took a large hunting knife from his boot and quietly made his way out of the master bedroom, pausing every few steps to listen for sounds that would alert him to Stewart’s presence.
Just when he thought the place was empty, he heard a toilet flush.
Hope you’re done, Mr. Stewart, because real shit is about to fly.
He knew the layout like the back of his hand and was ready for anything. Just thinking how this sorry sucker had walked in and taken over what he’d built drove his bloodlust higher. He shifted the knife from one hand to the other and waited to see which way Stewart went.
He heard the bathroom door open. Stewart exited wearing dark purple lounge pants and a white billowing shirt hanging loose over his belly. He was blowing his nose and clearing his throat as he walked by.
Anton followed a ways behind. When Stewart suddenly stopped, so did Anton, holding his breath as he waited for Stewart to disregard the sound he heard and let go of suspicion.
He watched as Stewart shrugged it off and went into the living room, poured himself a double shot of bourbon, took a sip and then sank down into an easy chair and reached for the TV remote.
Anton had thought long and hard about how he would do this. Was he going to let Stewart live long enough to confront him, to make him answer for what he’d done? Did it matter enough that Stewart knew he’d been caught? And at that moment, Anton decided the answer was no. Swift and efficient, that’s what this needed to be. Enough mess had already been made, and there was no time to risk any mistakes.
Stewart had the sound on the TV turned up loud, which masked Anton’s steps as he walked into the living room. Just as Stewart let out a big burst of laughter at the show he was watching, Anton plunged the hunting knife into the top of his skull.
The glass of bourbon hit the floor and shattered as Stewart’s body began to jerk and seize.
Anton circled the chair for a last look at the traitorous son of a bitch and realized from the wide-open mouth and the tip of the knife clearly visible in the back of his throat that Stewart had literally died laughing.
“Joke’s on you, you sorry bastard,” Anton said and then headed for the media room to destroy the footage captured on the security camera.
He not only sabotaged the cameras, but removed the discs and backups and took them with him.
Now that the deed was done, he was anxious to leave. He made a quick run through the rooms back to the master bedroom, then into the walk-in closet. He grabbed his toolbox, keyed in the code, and then while he was riding down in the elevator he put the security discs into a plastic bag, took a hammer out of the toolbox and beat everything in the bag until nothing was left but shards. Then he wrapped the bag and the latex gloves in a handful of paper towels and put it all in his toolbox.
When he exited again on the second floor, he shuffled out into the hallway, retraced his steps to the stairwell exit and went down the same way he’d come up.
The guard was on duty now and seemed surprised to see the worker come down the back stairs, but as Anton passed him, the guard chose to ignore him.
Anton nodded politely to the guard anyway and exited the building with his shoulders in a slump, his feet shuffling. He walked out into the sunshine, got into his truck and drove away.
In less than an hour, he’d found himself a nondescript motel, whipping out a driver’s license with his picture and the name Manny Petrova beneath it. He signed the register without a hitch, paying for two nights in cash, then took his bag and toolbox inside the room. Once there, he flushed the contents of the plastic bag down the toilet, then went back into the room.
“One down, two to go,” he said and crawled into bed and closed his eyes.
* * *
Quinn wanted to look nice for dinner at the Chavez house, but didn’t have much in the way of clothes that fit the event. She finally opted for her best pair of jeans and a simple yellow top. After she had figured out her clothes, she went looking for Nick and found him in the garage filling up the tank in her Harley and checking the oil.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Checking it out for you.”
“Are you running me off?” she asked.
Without warning, he swept her into his arms and pushed her back against a wall.
She saw a glint of hunger in his eyes just before he centered his mouth on her lips and kissed her breathless.
He let her go as abruptly as he’d grabbed her.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Quinn mumbled.
He shook his head.
“You are a smart woman who persists in asking the dumbest questions. I thought maybe you needed show-and-tell.”
She shrugged.
“I almost forgot why I came looking for you. I have a favor to ask.”
Nick stroked the side of her cheek with the back of his hand.
“What do you need, baby?”
“I want to wash my hair.”
“Okay. You have plenty of time. Wash away.”
She sighed.
“I can’t...uh... I don’t want... It’s not possible to wash my hair in the shower.”
The realization of what she was saying swept through him in one horrifying memory of her falling to pieces during the hospital fire alarm.
“Oh, hell, Quinn, I’m sorry. I forgot. How can I help you?”
“So, I have two options, both of which involve your participation because of my shoulder.”
Nick put his arms around her and pulled her close to him, then rocked her where they stood.
“I will do anything to make that easier for you. What’s your plan?”
“You wash my hair at the kitchen sink so I can keep a towel over my face, or you get in the shower with me and wash it there. I can cope if I have my back to the water...if it’s not coming down at me, or in my face, but I have been taking baths not showers since my back got infected.”
“Which would you rather do?” Nick asked.
“You wash it at the kitchen sink.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do. You go get whatever you need and I’ll be in the kitchen waiting.”
Quinn hugged him.
“Thank you, Nick. You’re the best.”
He kissed her again, but this time slow and softly, brushing his mouth across her lips in a featherlight touch.
“We’re partners here, right? So that means we do the hard stuff together. Go get your towels and shampoo.”
“I’ll be right back,” she said and hurried out of the garage and into the house with Nick following behind her.
It didn’t take long for them to get set up. Quinn covered her face with a towel and then leaned over the kitchen sink while Nick proceeded to shampoo her hair. Just before he went to rinse, he stopped.
“Honey, are you doing okay?”
She just nodded, her face still covered with the towel.
“Right now I’m going to rinse it, then put the conditioner on it and rinse it again, and we’re through.”
She took a breath and readjusted the towel.
“I’m ready,” she mumbled.
Nick turned the water back on and worked as quick as he could, but her hair was long and curly and getting all of the soap and conditioner out was time-consuming. By the time he was finished, he noticed her shoulders were shaking.
“All done,” he said and wrapped a dry towel around her hair.
She stood up and put the wet towel aside that she’d been holding over her face. That’s when Nick saw she’d been crying.
“Quinn...baby...why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you tell me to stop?” he asked, as he took her into his arms with wet hair dripping all over both of them.
“I couldn’t stop the tears, but I didn’t get scared. I knew it was you,” she said.
Nick was sick with knowledge that he’d been the cause of her tears.
“This is never happening again,” he muttered as he helped towel-dry her hair. “You’re going to find a hair salon and never put yourself through this misery another time.”
“I will,” she said and then stopped him with a kiss. “I’ll finish it from here. You are forever my knight in shining armor. I just wanted to look pretty for you at dinner.”
Again, the naïveté of her need, and what she was willing to go through just so he would be proud of her, made him sad. She was warrior-strong in some ways, and in others, so fragile she broke his heart.
Oblivious of what Nick was thinking, she gathered up the wet towels and took them all to the utility room and put them on top of the washer, then hurried back to her bedroom to wet-comb her hair before it became an unmanageable mess.
Nick was still rattled, and he hadn’t told her the truth about why he was checking the Harley. He needed to know that if she was ever here alone and needed to get away that she had the means. Until Anton Baba was behind bars, he wasn’t going to rest easy.
A couple of hours later they were dressed and on their way to Juana and Tonio’s house.
“Santino and his wife will be there, too, right?” Quinn asked.
“Yes. Her name is Lara, remember?”
Quinn nodded, but she was too quiet.
Nick sighed. There were only so many ways he could show her she was loved. The acceptance would have to come from her, so he started talking about the family.
“I think I told you already, but in case I didn’t, Juana and Tonio have two children. Melina is younger than Santino but they’re both older than me. She and her husband, Aidan, live in Bakersfield, California. He works at a body shop repainting cars. She teaches school.”
“So there are no babies in the family?” she asked.
Nick threaded his fingers through hers.
“No. No grandbabies for them yet, although we all get less-than-subtle reminders now and then.”
Quinn thought about little Nicks running around, and her heart fluttered. She glanced at him.
“How do you feel about babies?” he asked.
“You mean do I want children one day? The answer is yes. But I didn’t want to have any without setting up a place to call home first,” she said.
Nick gave her another glance, but she was staring out the window with a sad look on her face, and he didn’t want to ask her what she was thinking about.
He slowed down for a stop sign, and then as soon as he stopped, he lifted her hands to his lips and kissed them.
“When you were little, you had a baby doll you called Mary. Mary went everywhere with you. Even when our foster mother told you to leave her at home, you still took her. Do you remember that?”
Quinn nodded.
“Why wouldn’t you leave her at home?” Nick asked.
“Because she was my baby, and I promised I would never leave her behind like my mama left me.”
Nick was silent for a couple of blocks and then next time he had to stop for a red light, he got up the courage to ask.
“Did you ever know your mother, or why she left you?”
Quinn shrugged.
“Not until I was older.”
Nick stayed quiet, waiting to see if she would elaborate on her own.
“When I was in high school, one of the case workers let it slip that my mother was dead. She thought I knew the story, since it was the reason I’d ended up in care. I pretended I did know so she would keep talking, but she clammed up pretty soon afterward.”
“Did she say what happened? If you had any family anywhere? Stuff like that?”
She shrugged. “All I know is she committed suicide. The man she loved dumped her. She killed herself out of grief. I was two.”
Nick shook his head.
“That’s horrible.”
“I guess,” she said and looked out a side window as he began slowing down.
“So you had no other family?” Nick asked.
“I guess not. None that ever came looking for me, anyway,” Quinn said bitterly.
Nick realized he’d ventured too close to a touchy subject.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get so personal.”
“No worries. If we’re going to make this work, you have to know what makes me tick,” Quinn said.
“And what hurts you,” Nick added. “I have to know what hurts you so I’ll know how to protect you.”
“I appreciate knowing you will always be my backup, but I’m not a baby. I know how to take care of myself,” she said.
Nick smiled.
“Duly noted, and here we are,” he said, as he pulled up into the driveway of a gray stucco house with white trim around the windows and white shutters. The landscape was typical Vegas, tiny gravel, sand and cactus—one of those water-saving touches that mattered when people built a city in the middle of a desert.
“Santino is already here,” Nick said. “That black Camaro is his.”
Quinn was getting nervous butterflies again but managed to hide her anxiousness.
As Nick helped her out of the car, he was more than a little mesmerized by the bright yellow shirt she was wearing and the way the setting sun highlighted the long red curls framing her face.
“It’s going to be a beautiful night, but not as beautiful as you,” Nick said and kissed her. “Mmm, your hair smells like oranges and lemons.”
She grinned.
“I have a great hairstylist. If you want, I can give you his number.”
Nick laughed as they went up the steps and knocked at the door. Uncle Tonio welcomed them inside with a grin and a hug.
Quinn was just getting her first glimpse of the house Nick had grown up in when the room erupted with noise. Juana came out of the kitchen, Santino and his wife, Lara, behind her, and everyone began hugging and kissing and talking at once. She vaguely remembered being introduced to Lara in the midst of it all.
Later, as they were getting ready to sit down to dinner, Nick leaned down and whispered against her ear.
“So, how do you like my family?”
“They’re wonderful,” Quinn said.
Nick put his arm around her waist.
“You asked me once what it felt like to belong to a family. Well, this is it,” he said.
Quinn leaned against him for a moment, yielding to the pull of their physical attraction.
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” she said.
He smiled.
“Yes, baby, it’s pretty wonderful.”
* * *
Paco Cruz was pissed.
He’d been picked up for nothing more than drunk and disorderly. He should have already been arraigned and bonded out. But he was still in jail, and all they would tell him was that he’d been turned over to the FBI.
So he’d demanded a lawyer and been told one was coming, but still none had shown up, and he was about to spend his second night in jail. Furious, he demanded his phone call, claiming he hadn’t asked for one last night when they jailed him, and if they were keeping him again without arraignment, then that phone call was his right.
Surprisingly, they let him have it, and now he was about to enact his own little version of payback for that asshole cop’s stunt. But he didn’t call a bondsman or a lawyer. He called his brother.
The phone rang three times, and just as Paco was starting to panic, his brother picked up.
“Hello?”
“Jesus, it’s me. Get a pen and paper and hurry. I don’t have much time.”
“Paco? Where are you, bro?” Jesus asked.
“Jail—being held by the Feds. Don’t ask. Just do this for me. Please.”
Jesus didn’t argue.
“I’m ready. Tell me what you need.”
“I need you to call a number and this is what you say. Tell them you’re my brother, then say ‘Paco’s last message was from the cops—it’s a trap. She’s not there. The woman you want is at this address.’” Paco carefully recited Saldano’s address, the place he knew the redhead was really holed up. Then he gave him Baba’s phone number.
“Madre de Dios,” Jesus said. “Brother, what have you gotten yourself into?”
“It doesn’t matter. But I’m being fucked over by the cops and the Feds, and I don’t want Baba to think I ratted him out.”
Jesus gasped.
“This number belongs to Baba?”
“Yes. You need to give him that address—it’s the house of a cop named Saldano—and tell him to ignore the other text. Don’t mess this up, Jesus.”
“Yeah, okay. I wrote it all down. I promise,” Jesus said.
“My time is up. Gotta go,” Paco said. Then he hung up and smiled to himself. He might still be fucked, but at least now so was Saldano.
* * *
Anton was dreaming he was in the pool playing with Sammy. Star was reclining on a chaise watching them, and he was about to toss Sammy up in the air when the dream shattered around him. It took him a few moments to go from the dream to the realization that what he was hearing was his phone.
He rolled over, fumbling for the phone on the bed behind him, and finally answered with a muffled hello.
“Mr. Baba, my name is Jesus Cruz. I’m Paco Cruz’s brother. He gave me a very important message for you.”
Anton sat up. Paco had just broken protocol by giving someone else his number.
“And why the hell wouldn’t he give me the message himself?” Anton said.
“He’s in jail, sir. Paco called me in a panic and gave your number to me. He said to tell you that the text you received earlier was from the cops...and the Feds, I think. Paco said to tell you it was a trap. He said the lady you’re looking for is someplace else—”
“Where is she?” Anton snapped, and he heard Jesus swallow nervously before reciting a new address.
“Apparently it’s a house that belongs to a cop named Saldano?”
Anton stifled a gasp. He knew Saldano was responsible for Dev Bosky’s death. He threw off his covers and hurried to the nearby desk.
“Give me the cop’s address again,” Anton said, writing quickly on the motel notepad as Jesus read it off.
“If this is a trap, you will be sorry,” Anton said, then heard the tears and panic in the caller’s voice.
“No, sir, no, sir, I swear on the name of the Holy Mother that I am Paco’s brother and this is the message he asked me to give you.”
“And he’s in jail?” Anton asked.
“Yes. He didn’t say why and that’s all I know. He used his one phone call to warn you.”
“Is this all?” Anton asked.
“Yes, sir, this is all,” Jesus said, and as he was listening, the line went dead.
He was shaking when he hung up. He didn’t want to be on the wrong side of Anton Baba. People died who crossed this man.