Winner

by Harley Slate

  Sure. Mel blended in about as well as a diamond in a bowl of broken glass.

  “How does she expect to get away with this?” Lana asked. It was a natural question, and Greta wanted her to act natural. “And where are the feds?”

  “They haven't given me a lot of information. For a cooperative investigation, there sure hasn't been a whole hell of a lot of cooperating.”

  Lana sneaked a sideways glance. Durrell's frown looked real. The guy was a better actor than she ever would have expected. “Sounds like they think somebody from the casino is involved.”

  “Somebody inside here or somebody inside gaming. They're not telling me anything about how high they think it goes.”

  “Sounds like they don't even trust you.”

  “There's definitely not a lot of trust going on.” He was on his feet now, leaning into one of the screens, a hand on either side of it.

  Lana could see the scene on several other monitors. Alva, next to her, was adjusting a camera. A player had suddenly pushed away angrily from her seat, the tense line of her shoulders suggesting she'd lost every penny to the hungry maw of the Dragonshifter. Mel slid gracefully into the open chair, then turned and said something to Delia Grant.

  The older woman laughed.

  Lana adjusted one of her own monitors to focus on Mel's fast hands. She slid a twenty into the reader, waited for the credits to register, then began to tap on the keys.

  “Get all the video you can from every angle,” Durrell said. “That's the extent of our involvement. We're supposed to facilitate payment, get her on her way as fast as possible so the feds can track her back to her associates. No slow-walking this one.”

  Really? That's the way you're gonna play it?

  The sirens went off. For a heartbeat, there was nothing but the shrill of the jackpot. And then everybody was screaming. Some of them were cheering, and many of them already crowding in close to Mel, but others were swearing angrily as they abandoned their own unlucky machines.

  Five million four thousand seventy-three dollars sixty-seven cents.

  Lana spared a thought for the woman who'd left the machine not twenty minutes before it hit. If she hadn't left the casino, if she found out it was her machine that hit, she'd have nightmares about “could have been” for the rest of her life. She couldn't know the magic would have never hit for her.

  The night shift casino host was fighting his way through the crowds to talk to Mel. There was a lot of paperwork for a win this size, and some of it couldn't be completed for several hours. He would offer her the usual perks to hang around, a free hotel suite, unlimited free food and drinks.

  “I'm not comfortable with this,” Lana said. “I think we should initiate escrow.”

  Durrell looked annoyed. “What did I just say? The feds expected something like this, and it's all under control. And it's better for us if they take care of her off-site. There's too many people popping off Instagrams right now. The internet needs to see us paying off, not dragging our feet.”

  “I'd be more comfortable if I saw somebody on the floor I could make as FBI.” All right, she was dicking him around, but if she was supposed to act natural, she'd have to raise the natural objections.

  “For fuck's sake, Jones. What the fuck good would they be if everybody could see them coming? They're in disguise.”

  Their disguise was disquietingly like not being there at all. Lana suddenly wondered if she knew Greta as well as she assumed. Everybody was lying, everybody was playing a part.

  Lana included.

  Her shift went on forever. There was other action on the floor on a Friday night, and she couldn't get away from her bank of monitors. A fight started at the one-two no-limit table, and she had to instruct security to eighty-six both players. The Dragonshifter jackpot reset to fifty thousand dollars, and those seats emptied out as players went in search of the next big thing. Most of them were excited and happy about the possibilities of the win they'd witnessed, but a few of them were angry because they knew their losses had built somebody else's jackpot.

  Durrell folded his jacket over his arm. “Jones, you're in charge. I need to get face-to-face with the GM.”

  Mel and Delia Grant had left together over an hour before. Durrell could be meeting with the general manager, but Lana thought he was probably itching to get over to the comped suite. Either way, the tracker in his jacket would tell Greta where he was going.

  She texted her once, twice, well, maybe three times.

  At last she got a reply.

  ―Stand down, girlfriend. We'll take it from here.

  Two-thirty. Three o'clock. At last, Lana could clear out. Greta would expect her to go home, but she couldn't be left out of the endgame. Instead of heading for the employee lot, she walked the passageway into the hotel tower. It was a two-star budget place, not a glittering gold box like you'd get on the Strip, but there were a couple of nice suites in the penthouse for the benefit of some wandering big winner.

  She hesitated before she stepped foot in the lobby. Something about the night didn't sound right. Was that a helicopter? Shit. A helicopter hadn't taken off from this tower in years. Maybe not in this century.

  She badged herself into the delivery entrance. A guard sat there frowning at a bank of monitors. “Help you?”

  “I'm assisting with the incoming.”

  “Ah. The big bird. I didn't even know we had a chopper pad up there.” He was a talker.

  Maybe Lana could use that. “You happen to see Durrell come by?”

  “Not supposed to comment on who I see coming or going.”

  Lana took that as a yes.

  As she rode the service elevator to the roof, she asked herself what she was doing. Dragonhoarde didn't issue her a weapon for her job, which mostly involved staying behind the scenes. She should have brought a uniformed employee along. Except they wouldn't have gone along like a little lamb, they would have phoned ahead to other employees or even Durrell himself. She didn't have time to get mired in an extended discussion.

  The helicopter could be FBI.

  Sure, it could. Like those sneaky undercover agents in their perfect disguise would blow up their whole play at the last minute by bringing in a noisy chopper. That wasn't the way to sneak up on a bad guy.

  Did Lana still believe in the FBI? Did she still trust Greta?

  She didn't know if she still trusted anyone.

  Hell, even sweet Delia Grant, eighty-seven, best known for losing twenty bucks a day at poker, was starting to seem pretty questionable to her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The service elevator reached its destination. With a ping, the door opened to reveal the short flight of stairs leading to the roof.

  ―That bird yours?

  No answer. Not that Lana had expected one. Greta wasn't talking to her, Greta was busy with her big important FBI business.

  Well, Lana had big important business too. Before she stowed the phone away, she tapped on the voice recorder.

  The door at the top of the stairs weighed a ton. Pure steel. She struggled briefly, fearing it was locked, before it swung open hard. A gust of air, shockingly hot for the hour, knocked her down a step or two before she caught her balance.

  The fucking chopper was already taking off. She was too fucking late.

  But no.

  It was landing. The noisy air blowing around didn't feel quite as hot or quite as hard, or maybe Lana was already used to it and not really feeling it. She was all the way back to the top stair, but she didn't climb out onto the roof until the rotors stopped spinning.

  A door opened. A ladder descended from the door.

  An invitation.

  Probably Lana should have cut and run, but there was no run in Lana. She stepped forward even as Durrell was already scrambling down the ladder.

  She'd had it right the first time. The chopper had been leaving. And then he'd looked down to see that door come open.

  To see that unfinished business.

 
“I told you to leave it for the professionals,” Durrell said. “I gave you every opportunity to walk away.” He flung a crumpled scrap of green paper in Lana's direction.

  She didn't pick it up. She knew what it said.

  FIBBIES KNOW. WALK AWAY.

  She looked back at the dark windows of the chopper. At the pale face peeping out of one of those windows.

  Oh, Mel.

  “You couldn't have expected to walk away from this,” Lana said. “Not when it's all on camera.”

  Durrell was smiling. “On camera, on your phone, on the records from...” He said the name of the gay hookup app, a name Lana would have believed he didn't know. “On the GPS records of your car traveling back and forth. The testimony of the shuttle driver who dropped you off and picked you up from your meet at the Nugget.”

  Lana stood flat-footed.

  “You were perfect. Failed FBI who thinks she's smarter than she really is. And your pretty friend is there to be the face who picks up the cash.”

  “No. No.” She needed to leave. This was a set-up. Had always been a set-up.

  One step back toward the door.

  Durrell raised his right hand. Gestured impatiently with what Lana instantly recognized as a Colt Defender subcompact.

  Shit.

  “Not thinking of leaving us so soon?” He laughed. “I got news, hon. You're not leaving until the last dance is over. I hired a fuck-up like you for a reason.”

  Lana touched the phone in her pocket. How much was the voice recorder picking up? Even if the sound quality was shit, the techs at the FBI could probably clean it up with the right software. She had to believe that.

  Mel was trapped in that bird.

  Keep him talking.

  “This is crazy. You can't shoot me.”

  “Girl, you're already dead.” He gestured toward the ladder. “Get in.”

  She braced her feet apart. Lowered her center of gravity to make herself harder to push around. Folded her arms over her chest. “No. You're never shooting me. That's murder. You can come back from a casino robbery, but you don't come back from cold-blooded murder.”

  He walked right up to her and jabbed the barrel of the gun into the base of her spine. “It doesn't matter to me if I carry you out of here alive or dead. It all ends in the same place. You and your little friend rob the place, you ship the money out to Antigua, it disappears, you disappear. End of the line. Nobody's looking for anybody else.”

  Up here on the roof, the lights of downtown and the even more glittering lights of the Strip seemed very far away. There were a decent number of aircraft in the sky, but the only other helicopter was a dot over the south Strip. Probably one of those tourist choppers. Everything else appeared to be commercial jets whisking people back and forth between Vegas and less garish, more serious cities.

  If the FBI was anywhere around, she had no evidence of the fact.

  He's wearing the jacket. They're tracking him. No way Greta London is letting that money flee the country on her watch.

  Mel's pale face in that window.

  Lana couldn't die just yet. Couldn't leave Mel trapped there at Durrell's mercy.

  At last, she climbed the ladder, always aware of Durrell right behind her with the Colt. Was that a legal weapon? Handgun permits weren't exactly hard to come by in Clark County. Durrell pushed in next to her, and there they were― Mel shoved back against a window, Lana trapped in the middle, Durrell on Lana's other side, the Colt still at the ready.

  The rigid set of Mel's shoulders told Lana to glance down at the cold steel cuffs that secured Mel's hands behind her back. Then Lana looked higher into wide green eyes.

  Impossible to read the expression in those eyes. Sadness? Apology?

  Maybe Lana was the one who should apologize. She'd said she was going to report what she knew, and she thought she had. Mel shouldn't be here on the wrong side of a criminal's gun and handcuffs. Why did the FBI think it was a good idea to let this helicopter take off? What was their strategy?

  Greta knew Durrell was in on it. She knew if there was a way to get the money out early, he was the man in place to do it.

  How far did she intend to let him go?

  Or was she too in it all along? Was it exactly what Durrell just said? The whole thing was a set-up from the get-go, and the only person who didn't know Lana was the fall guy was Lana herself. It was easy to see how a reporter would describe the heist on the news.

  Mel and her partner, an insider who works in the casino's security, conspire to take down a five million dollar jackpot. The two of them meet afterward to fly off together into the sunset. Mel and Lana disappear, and the money disappears. The trail is at a dead end, there's nowhere for the feds to go to complete their investigation. After a time, the story drops out of the news as journalists turn their attention to other, newer headlines.

  The perfect fucking crime.

  “You ship the money to Antigua, it disappears, you disappear.”

  If they were alive, they wouldn't stay disappeared. No way Durrell planned to let them walk away from this. The only question was where he'd hide their bodies.

  Shit. Greta, if you plan to send in the cavalry, now might be a good time.

  They couldn't be going too far out. After all, Durrell couldn't vanish without falling under suspicion himself. He'd have to show up for work right on time on Saturday night, have to keep working the job for a few months or even a few years. Hell, he'd have to play the part of another victim― maybe even a victim Lana had tried to set up for her crime.

  How good were these people? Damned good, if they thought they could get away with that. Taking five million out of a well-defended casino took a little more planning than knocking over your neighborhood gas station.

  Hell. It wasn't about the five million. They'd do it again and again. How much would they end up taking out of Vegas? Hundreds of millions, if they kept working the scheme over a number of years and a spread of casinos.

  Durrell must have had only one set of cuffs. Lana's hands were still free, and she slipped one into her pocket to feel around for the phone. Maybe she could remember how to text without looking from her school days. Nine one...

  He calmly leaned into her, the Colt jabbing hard into her side. “Give it up.”

  She had no choice.

  He caught the phone one-handed at the same time his window opened a crack. She didn't see or hear a signal to a pilot. This little charade had been talked about ahead of time. The sound of the rotors was painful now, and the wind blew inside to threaten her eyes. She felt more than saw the phone go flying.

  Then the window snapped shut again.

  Down and down, falling without a parachute. Would her phone ever be found again, would the GPS survive? Perhaps, but not in time.

  The tracker, though.

  Durrell, sneering, turned out the pocket of his jacket. A wordless gesture, but louder than words in the noise of the chopper.

  His pocket was empty.

  He leaned in close, his breath hot on her ear like an unwelcome intimacy. “I dropped it in the back of a recycling pickup truck. Your federal friends should enjoy digging it out of its final resting place in Racine, Wisconsin.”

  He'd been ahead of her every step of the way. Every fucking step. Who else was ahead of her? Everybody?

  Mel wiggled where she sat, the long length of her leg warm against Lana. Time was running out. The world beneath them was dark. The city was gone, even the glow on the horizon was gone.

  The dark below was a harsh desert where few could survive at night and none could survive by day. Not in August. A good place to leave a body if you wanted the vultures to find it first.

  They were only alive because he wanted to hide their bodies, and it was easier to walk them into some old mine or cave mouth than to carry them. Lana turned to speak directly into Durrell's ear. “Greta London knows it's you. The FBI knows. You're going down for murder if you kill us.”

  He snorted.

  Lan
a turned, whispered almost the same words into Mel's ears. “The FBI knows. I told them everything. It's going to be all right.”

  But Durrell was laughing his raspy laugh. “Greta London is off the board. Metro got a tip about where to find a bag of cash money. She's in county lockup even as we speak.”

  Did she believe him? Maybe, maybe not.

  Bottom line: She had no evidence the FBI was on its way.

  She had to assume they were all alone out here.

  The chopper was descending, its lights already reaching far enough to illuminate the barren ground. This part of the Mojave desert was very far from the touristy parts of Death Valley that Lana had visited from time to time as a child growing up in Las Vegas.

  A very final destination indeed.

  They landed. The rotors slowed, then stopped. The sudden silence seemed to ring in Lana's skull.

  Lana braced herself. The Colt couldn't deter her anymore. If she was going to be shot, she was going to go down fighting.

  “Out,” said Durrell.

  He was closer to that open door, and there was no time for thinking now, only time for pushing. He was twenty-five years older and spent most of it riding a chair and a bank of computer monitors. Lana, who still dreamed of being FBI, put in her time at the gym. The Colt was supposed to be the equalizer, but she knew where to hit and how, and his arm jerked as she connected with that soft spot of the inner elbow. Oh, the Colt went off, of course it did, but it went high and ricocheted noisily around, as much a danger to him as to her. If he had any sense, he wouldn't fire it again inside the chopper.

  She put a grunty laugh into her heavy breathing, a psychological trick she'd learned from the Muay Thai. Her contempt for his weapon would play on his mind, especially when he was already off-balance. She was his physical superior, and they both knew it. She forced herself to laugh louder as she pushed him even harder, and he tumbled out the open door to land hard on his back.

  In a better world, he'd be knocked out hard, but this world was imperfect, and he was already gasping for breath, stretching out his arm to feel around for the weapon he dropped when he fell.

  Where was the pilot? Was he armed too?