Winner

by Harley Slate

  No time for thinking, only for doing. Lana threw herself down that ladder, slamming into Durrell as hard as she could, shamelessly using his soft body to brace her fall. His hand twitched but kept scrabbling for the gun, and she poured every ounce of body weight into the effort of holding him down. Yes! She had him, she had him...

  Except now he'd reached somewhere deep inside himself to find a second surge of raw energy. That Colt. They were both of them very aware that he could almost, almost reach that fucking Colt. It was an inch away. A fraction of an inch.

  They rolled across the dirty ground, fighting like wildcats, first her on top, then him.

  Somewhere, only vaguely somewhere at the corner of Lana's awareness, Mel was making her cautious way down the ladder, her progress slow and shaky because of the way her hands were cuffed.

  Mel was in danger. They were both in danger. Where was that fucking pilot? What or who was he waiting for?

  Lana had to end this. Right fucking now.

  She flipped them again. Her knee knocked hard into his groin. She was back on top, she had the advantage, except he must have finally got hold of the gun again, because it popped off, too close to Lana's ear, too dangerously fucking close, and...

  Mel was there, coming at a run, all her strength and power pouring into the kick she aimed at Durrell's side. Cowboy boots are nice and pointy. His back arched, and he gasped in pain. His fingers spasmed.

  And now Lana had the gun. Snatched it away just that fast. She had it, nice and secure in her two hands, but now the helicopter pilot was coming around and it was hard to hold a gun on two men and wouldn't he have his own weapon and she pointed it first at Durrell and then over at the pilot and then back down at Durrell again...

  Lana didn't remember standing up, but she was on her feet, holding the gun two-handed to cover the pilot.

  Durrell, gasping, tried to sit up, and Mel kicked him in the ribs, then followed up with a kick to the nuts. Good. She was on Lana's side. She knew who her enemies were.

  “Melody, don't,” Durrell said. “You could walk away from this with a lot of money, but you'll never get your cut if you double-cross me here. Jones has to go, she's the fall guy. We talked about this.”

  “Fuck what we talked about. You didn't put me in cuffs because you planned to let me walk away. We had the perfect operation, and you fucked it up because you didn't feel like paying me.”

  Lana held the Colt on the pilot. “You have a choice to make. Fly us out of here, or stay here with...” She nodded at Durrell “That. I'd make the right choice. It'll be over a hundred and twenty out here later today.”

  The pilot must be a good poker player. There was no expression in his eyes. Whatever he read in Lana's face made him decide she wouldn't shoot.

  He turned easily and began to jog away.

  “Where the fuck you think you're going?” she shouted. “You'll die out there.”

  He didn't glance back. Just kept on moving.

  Well, fuck. Lana couldn't shoot an unarmed man in the back. She turned the Colt back on Durrell. “Don't get any ideas.”

  Mel kicked him one last time and then sat down hard next to him. Her cuffed hands destroyed her natural grace, keeping her constantly off-balance.

  Lana hated seeing her like that. “Where's the fucking key?”

  He grunted and kept his arms wrapped around his throbbing body.

  “Don't bother,” Mel said. “It's over.”

  Lana looked up. The light coming from the sky wasn't sunrise. The sun didn't thunder like that.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Two black helicopters. Federal helicopters.

  Lana could breathe again, except she forgot how every time she looked at Mel with her hands cuffed in cold steel behind her. No use fishing around for Durrell's key now. The redhead would end up in cuffs within minutes anyway.

  “Don't put yourself in the wrong.” Mel's green eyes were calm. “It's too late for me. You can't do anything that might be interpreted as helping me get away.”

  Lana knew that. Why did it feel like such a betrayal?

  Durrell tried to push himself up again. Lana pressed the Colt against his ear. “Really? You want to test me now?”

  At the same moment, Mel scooted around to sit on his legs.

  Durrell slumped. Their unspoken teamwork was beyond him. A good thing. The hot wind from the landing helicopters forced Lana to blink her eyes. He couldn't take advantage. Hell, he probably squeezed his own eyes shut as well. They were so close she could smell his stale aftershave. The gun, slotted an inch or so into his ear, never wobbled.

  He must wonder if she would really shoot him. After all, she'd let that pilot jog off. But Lana didn't wonder. As long as he was fighting, as long as he was scrabbling for the gun, she would act without hesitation. Defending Mel, who was cuffed and helpless, was even more important than her own self-defense.

  As if she could hear what Lana was thinking, the allegedly cuffed and helpless Mel kicked a tender place on the back of Durrell's knee. That put a stop to the latest attempt at squirming away.

  The first agent out of the first chopper was Greta London, but several others, all wearing their FBI flak jackets, jumped out after her.

  “I'm not even going to ask what you're doing at my crime scene,” Greta said.

  “Of course, you're going to ask.”

  They all would. Over and over again. Lana knew how it worked.

  Mel let a couple of the agents help her up. They were men, big men, and they looked bigger with their large hands clutching her graceful arms. Somebody was reading out her rights, and Mel was nodding, a tired expression on her face.

  “Do I need an attorney?” Lana asked.

  “I'm not going to arrest you,” Greta said. “Start talking.”

  “There's not a lot to it. I got off work, I heard the chopper, I was afraid they were getting away, and well, I tried to text you but...”

  “Like I told you before, we had it under control. Nobody was getting away. You really shouldn't have inserted yourself into an FBI operation, Lana. You know our feelings about vigilantes and people who want to play cowboy.”

  Someone was already jogging back out of the shadows. Oh, for fuck's sake. It was the helicopter pilot. He was their inside man. He was the one tracking Durrell.

  “Fucking hell,” Lana said. “You had me drop that dime just to keep me busy. To make me feel like I was doing something. You were humoring me.”

  “Guilty as charged.” Greta shrugged. “Thought it would keep you out of trouble. My bad.”

  More big men cuffed Durrell and dragged him to his feet.

  “You're making a big fucking mistake. You're arresting the wrong person.” He'd found his second or third wind, and now he was bellowing like a trapped hog. “I'm the security manager for the Dragonhoarde casino. I was acting on a tip these two had fixed my machines and were running away with a whole lot of casino money. I was about to bring them in when they jumped me.”

  “Tell it to the judge,” Greta said.

  Lana looked past Durrell to where the agents were stashing Mel in one of their big helicopters. Mel never looked back.

  Lana had saved her life. The team wanted Mel dead so she couldn't be tracked back to the rest of them. Lana had guessed right about that.

  Amazing how miserable she felt to be right. Amazing how little she felt like a hero.

  GRETA AND LANA WERE in a separate helicopter from the one that transported the prisoners under heavy guard. The silence left behind after the prisoners departed seemed as momentous as thunder.

  The pilot was performing a series of checks because some light on their instrument panel had come on. Just one of those things, but it felt sinister after all the other events of the night.

  Lana remembered something then. “Durrell said he planted a bag of cash at your house. Said you were in county lockup.”

  Greta chuckled. “I'm FBI, Lana. My house is wired, has been ever since I started work in the Vegas fiel
d office. We got him on video planting the money. We just let him think his little plan worked.”

  “You really did have it all under control.” Lana felt like an idiot. Maybe she hadn't saved Mel, maybe she hadn't saved anybody. “I fucked it all up. Didn't I? You were going to follow Durrell to the rest of the team. That was your whole plan. And now it's blown.”

  There was a silence, Greta debating whether to say something. They were standing apart from the remaining agents on the scene. If she wanted to share information, it was now or never.

  “My boss would say I shouldn't be telling you this, but you've earned the right to know.” Greta smoothed her hand in front of her face. “It looks like maybe our plan had some issues. It looks like now that Durrell was never leading us to the rest of the team. He was leading us to a dead end. He was going to kill you and Mel, set up you two up as the fall guys, come back and play innocent. This could have been a serious fuck-up that left us with two more dead bodies on our hands.”

  “Two more dead bodies.”

  “And that's all I can tell you right now. When you're FBI, caring is not sharing.”

  Lana didn't need it spelled out. Greta London knew somebody in the operation had killed before. “You know they're killers, but you didn't think he'd kill Mel.”

  “She seemed like a useful person to keep alive. Obviously, we were wrong. It's highly likely if you didn't climb in that chopper last night, she'd already be dead. Lucky for her, Durrell got greedy. He was too clever for his own good when he tried to put you in the frame.”

  “He figured it would look like I was the casino insider.”

  “I see that now.” Greta lifted her hand to her mouth, perhaps to make sure none of the agents milling around could read her lips. “You saved her life, you know. And you did it without a weapon or a badge. My boss would be telling me to lecture you about vigilante activities and to watch your step in the future, but you did save a life tonight.”

  “Yeah,” Lana said. “Thanks.”

  Her emotions kept seesawing all over the place. She didn't like to think of all that life and easy grace locked away in a cage. What else could she have done? If she'd walked away, ignored her knowledge of the crime, said nothing at all to anyone in the FBI, Mel Lysander would be dead now, her limp body hidden in some old mine shaft never to be seen in daylight again.

  At last, the pilot finished his checks, and they were in the air. Lana closed her eyes. If she slept, it was a nightmare sleep, orange light against her eyelids, the steady chop-chop of the blades roaring in her ears.

  Chapter Seventeen

  A day and a night and another day. Answering questions but not getting any answers to hers. Lana was a witness, but she was involved with a suspect.

  Was she involved, or was she just kidding herself?

  No, she decided. She was involved. Whether Mel liked it or not.

  If you save somebody's life, you're responsible for that person forever. Wasn't that the old superstition? She needed to phone her brother to arrange for Mel's bail. The equity in the house in Henderson probably meant she could await trial in her own home, wearing an ankle monitor, instead of rotting in jail for the months before she got her day in court.

  Drunk with exhaustion, Lana wandered into the blast of afternoon heat in search of where she'd parked her car. The day seemed just as bright whether she closed her eyes or forced them open.

  “Let's grab a late lunch.” Greta's fingers curled into Lana's arm. She walked fast but easily, steering Lana like a toy boat.

  Someone had Greta's black SUV unlocked and waiting, the open passenger door allowing the cold blast from the air-conditioner to blow out into the hot desert.

  Lana got in without an argument and buckled herself into the shoulder harness. “Are they holding her in county?”

  Greta pulled out into traffic. “You planning to bail her out?”

  “I thought my brother...”

  “Yeah, your brother the defense attorney. Must be strange, having a brother on the other side.”

  She looked at the side of Greta's Viking face. “I guess I don't think of it as being the other side. We're all looking for the same thing.”

  “Are we?”

  “Truth, that's what we're looking for.”

  Greta smiled. “And the truth will set you free.”

  Whatever that meant. Lana once thought she knew. Now?

  Greta parked in front of a shiny, square restaurant surrounded by a large, mostly empty parking lot. It was the quiet time of afternoon, too late for lunch and too early for happy hour. Lana didn't care where they ate and didn't even know if she was hungry. The place had the most important amenity you needed in Vegas, a powerful air-conditioning unit. The counter was empty. Most of the booths were empty too.

  Then Lana spotted a glorious head of red hair in a seat facing away from the entrance.

  She stopped cold. Looked at Greta. Looked at the booth.

  There was no need to speak.

  Anyway, she wasn't sure if she remembered how to breathe.

  Mel must have felt Lana standing there, a tickle on the back of her neck. She turned and smiled, and then somehow they were flinging themselves into each other's arms. It was a complicated embrace. All that good warmth and grace was there, but all the lies were there too.

  “You should have told me,” Lana said. “Do you know how worried I was? One of you could have told me.”

  “You've had enough training to know how it works,” Greta said. “You know the rules.”

  “You were undercover.” Lana touched the corner of Mel's mouth. “All this time. You let me wonder and worry.”

  “I couldn't tell you, I couldn't tell anybody. Nobody knew how high it went or who might spill the wrong beans to the wrong person.”

  “You let me worry myself sick all night,” Lana said. “Both of you did. I thought you were in jail.”

  “I was.” Mel shrugged. “It had to look like I was talking, like I knew some stuff I was ready to share. Durrell had to think he was in a race to tell what he knew if he wanted to cut a deal while the offer was still on the table. It's the only way to get guys like him to talk. Convince them the gig is up, the other guy's talking, there's no more secrets, there's just telling what you know first so you can get the better deal.”

  “I know how it works.” Lana wanted to be angry, but she couldn't. “I wish you could have trusted me though.”

  “Lana...”

  “It's the rules.”

  Mel and Greta spoke together. Of course, Lana knew it was the rules. It was unreasonable to blame Mel, even though the thought still lingered.

  You could have trusted me. You should have known you could.

  They remembered where they were and slid into the empty booth. A waitress came up with a notepad. “You all ready to order?”

  “Maybe give us a few more minutes,” Mel said.

  They watched the waitress walk all the way back to the counter.

  “They wrapped up the video of his confession two hours ago,” Greta finally said. “He knew more than the organization thought he knew. They're supposed to run on a need-to-know basis, to limit the damage caused by any one person's arrest, but he's been working security for a long time. He knew how to find things out, and he couldn't resist snooping around. We've got a lot. Names, dates, times. Other hits, other jackpots. Not just in Vegas but out east too.”

  The waitress returned, and Mel ordered a hamburger plate.

  “Sounds good,” Lana said. “I'll try it too. Extra fries.”

  “Nothing for me,” Greta said. “I've got to head off.”

  So that was a ploy too. A plan to leave the two of them alone. There was another brief silence as the FBI agent slowly walked away.

  “Was anything true?” Lana asked. “Anything at all?”

  “I was undercover. I was playing a part. So...”

  “Mrs. Grant. Is she even your great-grandmother?”

  “Mrs. Grant?” Mel's eyes went inwar
d, making it obvious she wasn't even sure who that was. “Oh, you mean that old lady who likes to hang off my arm. No, she's just a chatty Cathy who likes somebody young to talk to when she's in the casino. My real great-grandmother doesn't get out much anymore.”

  “You used Grant to look more like a regular. To fit in.”

  “I'm pretty sure she thought she was using me for the free drinks.”

  This wasn't a fight worth picking. Lana was glad Mel was FBI. Wasn't she?

  They ate in silence for a while. Their relationship, if you could call it that, was built on lies.

  “I feel like I don't know you at all,” Lana said.

  “Ashton, I do know the feeling.”

  Lana had to laugh. “All right. Point taken.”

  “You were trying to catch me in a crime. Trying to have me put in jail.”

  “It could look like that.”

  “Because it was like that.” Mel didn't seem much offended by the fact. “Hell, we're both one of the good guys, and we can both admit it now. Maybe we can start over. What do you think?”

  “You know what?” Lana realized she was smiling again. “I think you're right.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  You can talk away your feelings sometimes. Women do that a lot. The hamburger plates had arrived at the right time, forcing them to eat or at least to pretend to eat for several moments.

  Lana realized she was tapping her spoon on the side of her coffee mug. The dull ring did nothing to call her thoughts to order.

  Mel dropped her fork.

  They looked at each other. Yes, it was time to start over, but they'd have to start as they'd begun, by trusting the language of their bodies. Somebody signaled for the check, and somebody tossed a stack of green bills on the center of the table, and somebody plopped the salt shaker on top of the bills to keep the cash from blowing away in the lazy breeze from the ceiling fans.

  And then they were in Mel's Fusion, Mel's hands white and graceful on the steering wheel as they turned into one of those bright, well-lit neighborhoods that make a generous investment in desert landscaping. There was a quail-sized water feature in the front yard, complete with a covey eager to investigate the steady drip, drip, drip. The birds scattered only when Lana stepped out of the car.