by Nick Harrow
“Easier?” A dark chuckle spilled out of Ray. “You took off in the middle of the night so I wouldn’t have a choice. That wasn’t your decision—”
The sound of screaming brakes killed the brewing argument before it could gather a head of steam. A tremendous crash rattled the windows of their suite, followed a split second later by the unmistakable churning light of a fireball.
Gunnar hooked an arm around Ray’s waist and dropped her off the side of the bed away from the windows. “Get down,” he whispered. “I need to see what happened.”
The bodyguard slithered off the bed and onto the floor, careful to stay to the left of the windows. He peeked around the edge of the blackout curtains and cursed. Someone had driven one of those Hummer limos through the crowds in front of the Bellagio. Traffic on the Strip was too dense for the driver to have built up much steam before the collision, but the oversized vehicle was massive enough to plow through the stone railing that surrounded the fountain’s basin. It had made it a few more yards, smearing pedestrians along the ground beneath it like meaty crayons before it rolled to a stop a few feet from the pool.
And then it blew up.
No. Judging by the crown of twisted metal that jutted up around a hole in the middle of the limo’s roof, something inside had exploded. The bodyguard’s mind went to a bomb, then discarded the idea. It could have been an explosive, but it was more likely a party bottle of nitrous combined with some idiot’s blowtorch of a bong lighter.
Still, he didn’t like the coincidence of a freak accident happening so close to Rayleigh’s room. He glanced at the bed and saw her peeking over the top of the rumpled sheets. “No one knows you’re here?”
“I took two days’ vacation from work and drove into Vegas in a rental,” Ray said. “I dropped it at the airport, then took an Uber to the MGM and rode the monorail up to this end of the Strip.”
“You did good,” Gunnar said. Rayleigh had covered her tracks as well as an untrained person could manage. But if YmirRe knew she’d made a run for it, they had the resources to dig in deep. He and Ray had to move.
Now.
“Grab your stuff,” he said. “It’s time to get the hell out of Vegas.”
Chapter 2
GUNNAR DRAGGED THE heavy blackout shades closed and grabbed his clothes off the floor.
“What did you see?” Rayleigh asked as she hustled toward the bathroom.
“Car accident,” Gunnar said. He could be overreacting, but his years as a bodyguard had taught him to pay attention to the cold fingers of dread when they brushed the back of his neck. The limo plowing through the crowd had been weird, but he couldn’t shake the feeling it was only the tip of a much nastier iceberg of trouble headed their way. “But it’s got my spider sense tingling. Time to move.”
Gunnar threw his clothes on and dropped onto the foot of the bed to get his boots on. He double-checked his firearm to the sound of Rayleigh tossing her toiletries and makeup into a bag. They met at the suite’s entrance a few seconds later, and Gunnar raised a finger to his lips to hold off any questions from Ray.
He stifled a cough and pressed his ear to the door to listen for sounds of trouble. He heard muffled shouts from the opposite direction of the elevator banks. Gunnar eased the hotel room’s door open and took a quick peek up and down the hallway. He took Ray’s hand, pulled her down the hallway to the elevator banks, and jabbed the “Down” button with his thumb. He eased her back against the wall and stood in front of her, his hand in the small of his back. If anything went wrong, the bodyguard wanted to be between danger and his charge. And if things went really wrong, he wanted easy access to the semi-auto.
Dual chimes rang out from the elevators as the doors to the car next to Ray and the one across from her opened at the same instant. A family of five spilled out of the nearest elevator, the three kids yelping in surprise as they tried, and failed, to swerve around Gunnar. The youngest girl, who couldn’t have been more than ten, bounced off his knee and caromed into her older brother. The pair of them went down in a confused tangle, and the mom screamed bloody murder. The dad, a fireplug of a guy in his middle years with a beer barrel for a gut, shouted something in a hoarse voice, took a good look at Gunnar, and shut his piehole to hustle his family away from the blond giant.
“Why do people bring their kids to Vegas?” a familiar voice asked as a trio of black-suited men stepped out of the elevator across from Gunnar. “Ridiculous.”
Arthur Drake, six feet of snake oil shoved into a tanned hide, gave Gunnar a broad, insincere smile. It was the same expression the dark-haired man had worn five years before, when he’d ended Gunnar’s cushy corporate security gig at YmirRe with a single lie.
“Well, look who it is,” Arthur said. “Prince Charming came back to rescue his damsel in distress. It’s a twofer!”
The men on either side of Arthur went for the guns holstered inside their jackets, but Gunnar was faster on the draw. He whipped his pistol up and squeezed off a trio of shots. One of the guards stepped forward and caught a bullet meant for Arthur square in the chest. The second round slammed into the left side of his moving torso, and the third drilled into the wall between the guards.Gunnar cursed when he saw the man take a stumbling step forward, bruised and unwinded.
Great, the bad guys had body armor.
Despite his size, the bodyguard was quick on his feet. He grabbed Ray’s shoulder and dragged her into the open elevator car. As soon as he was inside, he gave her a gentle shove to the far side of the car and hunkered up tight inside the door. He punched the “G” on the elevator’s control panel and fired another wild shot through the open doorway. A single shot from outside rang out as the car’s door slid closed, and the bullet tore a hole through the cabin’s expensive wooden interior.
“Get the ground teams moving on the first floor,” Arthur shouted. “I want Gunnar and Rayleigh taken. Alive.”
The instant the elevator began its descent, Ray threw herself across the car and buried her face in Gunnar’s chest. She curled the fingers of her left hand around his and trembled against him as the elevator headed for the hotel’s ground floor. “They know,” Ray said. “They found out I planned to blow the whistle.”
“Probably.” Gunnar watched the numbers above the elevator’s control panel count down. The pungent stink of burned nitroglycerin clawed at the back of his sinuses like the beginning of a bad cold. He wrapped his free arm protectively around Ray and drew the H&K. If Arthur or one of his goons pointed their noses into the elevator, they’d earn themselves an express lobotomy courtesy of a hollow-point round between the eyes.
Their luck held, and the elevator only stopped twice. The first would-be passenger was a surfer dude so blazed on overpriced Vegas weed he didn’t register Gunnar until the bodyguard pressed the pistol’s barrel against his suntanned forehead hard enough to leave an angry red dent. “Sorry, man,” the stoner said, belatedly realizing his mistake and shuffling back into the hall.
The second person who tried to shove their way into the car was a casino dealer, who instantly ducked her head and backed away, Caesar’s gold medallion flopping against her spotless white shirt as she hurried off without a word. She’d worked in Vegas long enough to know it was far healthier to avoid dangerous guests.
And then the elevator reached the ground floor, where all hell was breaking loose. Someone out of sight let loose with the blood-curdling screams of the mortally wounded. The elevator bank was mercifully clear of threats, but the splashes of blood on the walls and red smears on the floor warned of nearby danger.
Gunnar put a hand back to keep Rayleigh inside the elevator while he took stock of the situation. Sounds of violence exploded from somewhere nearby, and the screams escalated into full-throated howls. The strobing emergency lights added their startling flashes to the chaos, throwing eerie stop-motion shadows across the floor. The bodyguard gestured for his charge to stay put, then hustled up to the corner.
Utter madness reigned in the hote
l’s lobby. A chubby college kid grabbed one of the velvet rope stands from the waiting line and slammed its heavy base into a howling old man’s chest. A pair of housewives rolled around on the floor, ripping chunks of hair from each others’ heads. A handful of the badly injured were slumped against the reception desk, eyes glazed, blood drooling from their mouths.
He couldn’t take Ray through that mess, but the hallway that led to the pool was still clear. Good. Gunnar had to get Ray out of the casino and to somewhere safe before the world came down around their ears.
The bodyguard rushed back to the elevator, took Ray’s hand, and guided her down the empty hall. He kept his gun lowered at his side, ready for action without threatening anyone. Security hadn’t shown up, but the last thing the bodyguard wanted was a showdown with a bunch of freaked-out casino cops. He didn’t want to put a bullet through some unfortunate bastard just trying to do his job.
“Where are we going?” Ray asked as Gunnar brushed her back against the wood-paneled wall and peered outside the car. “And what the fuck is going on out there?”
“Nothing good,” Gunnar replied. He stifled a sneeze in the crook of his elbow. “Looks like somebody kicked off the Royal Rumble.”
“Now that Arthur knows I’m here,” Gunnar explained to Ray as he paused at the exit, “he’ll have his eyes open for my bike. We need another ride. Time to head to the parking garage.”
Gunnar stopped at the exit door and peered through the tinted glass at the world outside. Multicolored lights speared through the night air to reveal a mixture of people bizarre even for Vegas thronged the pool area. Bikini-clad Instagram models gathered in fearful clumps, their makeup streaked with tears, hair matted with blood and other fluids. Seasoned gamblers, their fingers knotted with lucky rings, howled like rampaging maniacs as they pummeled anyone who got too close. Tourists wearing Crocs and Hawaiian shirts clashed like cavemen, clubbing at one another with cabana chairs and beer bottles, the stink of coconut-scented suntan lotion wafting from their flushed skin. The worst of the fighting was around the Neptune pool at the center of the open aquatic plaza. Stunned witnesses and those too injured to wade back into the raging battle had staggered to the relative safety of the perimeter, where they watched the mayhem with unfocused stares.
“Stick close,” Gunnar said. “We’ll follow this wall around. If anyone gets between us or touches you, scream like your life depends on it.”
The instant Ray nodded that she understood, Gunnar threw the door open and took off. His long strides ate up the distance, and he had to remind himself to slow down so Ray could keep up. At just over five feet tall, she’d have to jog to match his walking pace. Gunnar stuck close to the outside wall, kicking empty beach chairs out of his way so his charge wouldn’t have to deal with them as she hurried along in his wake. The smell of roasted prime rib, bone marrow, spicy crab legs and wanton soup, and a dozen other delectable dishes wafted from the Bacchanal Buffet overlooking the pool area. Gunnar’s stomach growled at the distant memory of his last meal there. It was almost enough to distract him from the danger that appeared ahead.
Almost.
The fire department had shown up, and Gunnar felt a momentary sense of relief at the sight of the familiar fluorescent-striped khaki firefighter gear. But that same relief burned away a split second later when an enormous fireman, wielding an axe in each hand, cut down his entire team and started in on the tourists who ran screaming out of his path. The guy was nearly as tall as Gunnar, and his gear made him look much thicker. He howled with homicidal glee, his beard stained with blood, his eyes rolling in their sockets. The fireman scarcely noticed his targets as he buried his axes in anyone and everyone within reach.
Gunnar had no idea what was going on and no desire to find out. He focused all his thoughts on the only thing that mattered: getting Rayleigh away from the maniac mosh pit. He could read about why the world had lost its goddamned mind when they were snuggled up in a safehouse far, far from Vegas.
“Good god,” Ray groaned behind Gunnar. “I’d never have called you if I’d known it would be like this.”
“I would have come even if I knew what a shitshow it would be,” Gunnar said. If Ray had called him from the center of an active volcano, he would have figured out a way to drive his motorcycle to her. “It’s not like you had any idea the whole city would go crazy.”
They had half the pool area to cover, and then, if Gunnar’s memory served, they still had to cross through the ground floor of the Palace Tower before they got to the parking garage. That was a couple hundred yards of crazy to navigate, including Berserko, the Barbarian Fireman. The mob scene was a bodyguard’s worst nightmare, and an iron band of tension squeezed tight around Gunnar’s brain. He had to find a way out of this insanity before the lunatics cut off their escape route.
Gunnar stopped and turned to hold Ray’s chin in his hand. “Watch my back, nothing else. Whatever happens, follow me.”
Gunnar had hoped the pool area would be open enough to avoid the insane crowd. If his plan had worked out, they could have skirted the worst of the disaster. The fighting had shifted to block his chosen exit, though, and the axe-wielding fireman had planted himself in the second-best option. With no way around this mess, Gunnar did what he’d always done when he ran into an obstacle.
He tucked his chin and bulled right through it.
The fireman saw the bodyguard coming when he was twenty feet away. The helmeted loon threw his head back and roared, as if spotting a worthy challenger. He whipped his axes around in vicious figure-eights, their gleaming heads powerful enough to cut down anyone who came within range.
“Come on!” he howled, axes singing as they sliced through the air. “Give me a challenge!”
The man was a true freak of nature. For one thing, he was taller than Gunnar, which was extraordinarily rare. For another, there was a faint blue-black sheen to his skin. It was the weirdest thing Gunnar had seen in a very weird night.
Gunnar didn’t change his course or his decision. He marched toward the axeman, curled his hands around his weapon, and raised it. He squeezed the H&K’s trigger and drilled a bullet straight through the crazy’s heart, then pumped another into his left lung, and a third blasted through the man’s forehead and knocked his helmet into the crowd. The bodyguard wrested a fireman’s axe from his fallen foe’s hand as he passed the body, cocked the weapon back over his left shoulder, and flung it at the wall of glass that separated the aquatic plaza from the sumptuous buffet.
Though there were bodies scattered across the white tile floor and more slumped in their seats, the buffet area was surprisingly clear of maniacs. Gunnar hauled Ray up through the broken glass and beelined through the dining hall and down a broad corridor with shops on one side and a swanky bistro on the other. Cubes of shattered safety glass littered the floor and crunched under the soles of his riding boots.
The screaming had only gotten louder, and now there were eerie, bestial roars in the mix. It sounded like someone had yanked the gates open on Siegfried & Roy’s Secret Garden to let the lions run riot.
Gunnar stopped at the edge of the casino floor and held Ray against the wall with one long arm. Craps and blackjack tables had been hurled onto their sides. Bodies were strewn across the red-and-gold carpet, chips scattered around them like the world’s most expensive confetti. The gamblers and tourists had broken into small mobs and fought one another with mindless ferocity. A woman clawed an old man’s eye right out of its socket and was immediately flattened by a backhand from an overweight cowboy with a hatband ringed in diamonds. She lay still on the floor for only a second before her back bowed and she rose again, blood drooling out of her mouth in ropy crimson strings. Her scream of rage sent a shiver racing down Gunnar’s spine.
“Shit,” Ray groaned and grabbed her bodyguard’s left hand. She jabbed a finger across the crowded casino floor. Gunnar’s eyes followed her direction and spotted the black suits pushing through the crowd from the hotel’s lobby.
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There were six of the bastards, wireless radios plugged into the ears, black sunglasses hiding their eyes. All of them carried compact submachine guns as if it were the most natural thing in the world to perform paramilitary maneuvers in the middle of a crowded Vegas hotel. Gunnar knew those punks were YmirRe, hunting for him and Ray.
“Just one break,” he muttered, then ducked his head. The security team from his old company was off to his right, and he was sure they hadn’t seen him yet. All he had to do was get to the garage, and they’d be home free. But that meant crossing the casino floor. If the goons spotted him, there’d be a bloodbath in seconds. Even if they didn’t see him, Gunnar and Ray could easily be sucked into the vortex of violence raging across the gaming floor.
But standing around wouldn’t do him any good, either. He pulled Ray along behind him and forged a path through the crowd. He kept his chin tucked tight to his chest, hunched his shoulders to hide his face, and ducked lower to reduce his height. That move made it harder for him to see threats, but it also camouflaged him from the assholes on his tail. That was a trade Gunnar was more than willing to make.
To Gunnar’s surprise, the fighting mobs scattered around the casino’s floor were so intent on tearing each other to pieces they didn’t notice the walking wounded staggering around them in shock. Men and women with grisly injuries leaned against one another as they sought refuge, more than a few of them coughing or sneezing. The urge to grab some of them and usher them to safety was almost overwhelming. If he’d been alone, the bodyguard would have done something, anything, to help these people find safety.
But Rayleigh needed him. He had to get her out of this madhouse.
Halfway to the parking garage, something slammed into Gunnar’s right arm. His gun hand went numb, and he nearly lost his grip on the pistol. Gunnar willed his hand to clamp tighter around the weapon, then turned his head to the side just in time to see a skinny dude with wire-rimmed glasses and a pawn shop’s worth of gold chains around his neck swing a golf club into his shoulder. A lightning bolt raced down Gunnar’s arm, leaving numbness in its wake. The impact and the sudden jolt knocked the wind out of the bodyguard’s lungs, and red spots danced in his vision.