Raising the Stakes

by Sandra Marton

  “If you really believe that pawing through glowing reports of how well she’s done here, or how much she’s liked, is going to change my mind—”

  “For God’s sake, stop being so self-righteous! Read Dan’s handwritten notes at the very end.”

  Jesus, he was having a tough time holding his temper. If he’d been alone with Coyle, he’d have let it blow sky-high. The ex-cop knew better than to let shit like this happen. Nobody ran a casino in Vegas in a vacuum. There were rules to follow, Gaming Commission rules, if you expected to hold on to your license. His mother damn well knew better, too. What was the matter with the two of them?

  “Read it,” she said, and something in her voice made him pick up the file, open to the back of it and do as she’d asked.

  Long minutes later, he lifted his head and stared at Mary. “Christ,” he said, his voice low and thick and filled with the kind of controlled masculine rage Dan Coyle recognized in a heartbeat.

  “Yeah,” Dan said. “That was pretty much my reaction, too.”

  Keir looked at Coyle. “Where’d you get all this stuff?” He almost tore the page, turning it so he could read the reverse side. “A broken collarbone. Two broken ribs. A concussion…”

  “From a little shopping mall clinic in the town she came from, and no, she never reported any of it to the police, just said it was an accident every time. And no again,” Dan said, reading the next question in Keir’s eyes, “you don’t want to know how I came by any of it, not her real name or the medical stuff or anything else. Just take my word for it, Keir. It’s all true.”

  “She’s not from Phoenix?”

  “Not unless you count the time she spent there in a women’s shelter.”

  “She was married to this—this piece of—”

  “She still is.”

  “And…” Keir looked at the paper in his hands again. “And she has a kid?”

  “Yes. A little boy. He’s in a school somewhere outside Vegas.”

  “Somewhere outside Vegas covers a lot of territory.”

  “I know. I’ve deliberately avoided zeroing in on the kid.” Coyle nodded at Mary. “Your mother and I decided that might spook Dawn, if she got word somebody’d come poking around to get a look at him. Your mother was afraid she’d pick up and run.”

  “She would,” Mary said with conviction. “Any woman would. And then she probably wouldn’t be lucky enough to land in a place where people would try to protect her.”

  “You don’t know it, Mother. Not for a fact.”

  “For as good as a fact,” his mother said coldly.

  “How? I mean, Jesus, you know hotels. Casinos. You don’t know—”

  “Your father and I had a neighbor years back, in Boston. Lived right next door to us, a sweet little thing with two babies. She was shy. Quiet. Kept to herself, though I’ve often thought how differently things might have turned out if I’d taken the time to try to get to know her…” Mary took a breath. “One night—one perfectly normal summer evening—a man came to her door. When she opened it, he shot her dead. Then he shot her babies. It turned out he was her husband, that she’d fled after years of abuse but she made the mistake of not changing her identity.”

  Oh, hell. Keir put his hand on his mother’s arm. “Mother,” he said softly, “Ma—”

  “This girl, Dawn, had the presence of mind to change hers. I had a feeling about her, that she was a good person, a decent young woman, and I told Mr. Coyle to seal this report. I haven’t regretted it for a moment.”

  “Yeah, but…” Keir ran a hand through his hair. But what? Legally his mother had done the wrong thing. Morally she’d done the right thing. And what the hell had he done? A strange man was in the hotel, someone who called himself Gray Baron, someone who had conveniently turned up just when Dawn needed help.

  Something had flashed across Baron’s face when Keir introduced him to Dawn. Shock, maybe. Surprise. That’s what Keir had thought but maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe it had been satisfaction at finally finding her…

  “Keir?”

  He looked up. Mary was staring at him.

  “What’s wrong? What’s this problem with Dawn you wanted to discuss? Does it have anything to do with what you just read?”

  Did it? He didn’t think so. What had happened, really? Nothing, when you came down to it. A man had stopped to help Dawn when nobody else had. He’d registered at the hotel where she worked. He’d spotted her and asked to meet her. Dawn hadn’t wanted to meet him; she’d gone from white to pink when Keir had insisted on making the introduction. Normal stuff, all of it. The guy was a Good Sam; Dawn was a shy woman.

  Keir put down the file, jammed his hands into his pockets, rocked back on his heels and stared at the skyline visible through the balcony doors. But there had been that one quick moment when he’d seen something in Gray Baron’s eyes. A flash of—of what? Confusion? Distaste?

  “Keir?”

  Keir looked at his mother. “You haven’t answered me,” she said softly. “What’s the problem that concerns Dawn?” She hesitated. “You don’t think… Do you have reason to believe her husband’s looking for her?”

  A thousand questions but no answers. Keir told himself to calm down. The report hadn’t contained much information about Dawn’s husband except that he’d been arrested in the past, that he got pleasure out of beating his wife, and that he lived on an Arizona mountaintop. Could such a man, would such a man, hire someone to find her? Someone like Gray Baron? Looks didn’t mean a thing; this business taught you that. But there was no ignoring the designer watch, the expensive clothes, the soft, well-educated voice.

  No, he wouldn’t be her husband’s point man. Besides, the man he’d just read about in that file would surely take pleasure in finding his quarry and dealing with her himself.

  “Keir,” his mother said urgently, “is Dawn Carter in danger?”

  Keir shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said, because, really, it was the only possible answer. “Dan, I want you to check out a man named Gray Baron. Graham Baron. He’s registered with us, so it should be easy enough to learn what we need to know.”

  “Which is?” Dan asked.

  A muscle clenched in Keir’s jaw. “Which is,” he said, “everything from where he was born to what he eats for breakfast. I want to know all there is to know about this guy, and I want to know it pronto.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  GRAY knew he’d blown it.

  Ten minutes of smiling and doing his boyish best to convince Dawn that that he was Mr. Terrific got him no place.

  He shoved his hands into his pockets as he walked through the gardens along a pebbled path that curved like the blade of a scimitar around the Desert Song’s enormous pool.

  He’d wasted half a night searching the casino for a woman who wasn’t there…and the other half thinking about an elusive stranger with a shy smile who had gotten under his skin in, what, less than two hours? It was crazy, and even crazier now that he knew who that stranger was.

  He’d imagined Dawn Carter as a flashy blonde, but she wasn’t. Not on the outside, anyway, and what did that prove except that you couldn’t judge the package by its cover? He’d known that for years. Every man knew it. It was like a little gift that came with puberty. Your voice changed, you sprouted hair on your face, and you figured out that women were never what they seemed.

  But this particular woman was more complex than he’d anticipated. That was going to complicate things. He’d have to ditch plan A and segue into Plan B…and that wouldn’t work, either. The Dawn he’d come to see had just made it clear she’d sooner sip hemlock than have a glass of wine in his company, and he sure as hell couldn’t see her swallowing a story about her grandfather leaving her a music box in his will.

  Now what?

  Gray drew a deep breath, then blew it out. It was quiet here. No ping ping ping of the slots, no sound of voices like the distant roar of the sea in the background. He was pretty much alone: the gard
ens were all but deserted at this time of day. A hot breeze carried occasional laughter from the pool. At least someone was having a good time, he thought grimly, and kicked at the small white stones that made up the path.

  This whole mess was Jack Ballard’s fault. If he’d sent a decent picture of the girl instead of a blurred faxed copy, Gray wouldn’t have spent the best part of an afternoon with the woman he’d come to see without knowing it and somehow offending her enough to make her want to freeze him out. Or maybe it was because of Keir O’Connell. If the man was, in fact, her lover, maybe she believed in being loyal to him…and what twist of fate had put O’Connell into the picture at the worst possible moment? Gray figured he must have looked as if he’d been hit in the head with a two-by-four when he read Dawn’s name tag. Life in the courtroom had taught him how to fake a fast recovery and that was what he’d done.

  “Nice to meet you,” he’d said.

  “Nice to meet you, too,” she’d replied, but the lie had been in the sound of her voice, in the look in her eyes. She didn’t think it was nice to meet him; he had the feeling she’d have been about as eager to shake hands with a snake as with him, but he’d made some inane remark about what a small world it was, yadda yadda yadda, and she’d said yes, it was, and all the time O’Connell had gone on standing there, watchful as a mastiff on alert.

  Was it because he didn’t like the idea of someone hitting on his woman, or had he picked up on something? And what the hell did it matter?

  Gray parked himself on a teak bench, tucked his chin on his chest, stretched out his long legs and folded his arms. O’Connell or no O’Connell, he wasn’t going to get near Red. She’d made that absolutely clear. He’d gone on talking, saying nothing, really, just waiting for her to pick up her end of the conversation, but she hadn’t. Her eyes had been cool and flat and he’d thought about how much he’d wanted to see what they looked like yesterday, about how he’d stared at that blurry photo and wondered if she’d have her grandmother’s sad, mysterious look, and then he wondered why in hell it should matter. That was when his brain went dead, his mouth went dry and he shut up.

  Red had taken that as her cue to withdraw her hand from his. “Well, it’s been nice meeting you, Mr. Baron,” she’d said. “I hope you enjoy your stay with us.”

  Yeah, he’d said, thanks, he was sure he would.

  “If there’s anything special I can help you with,” she’d added, but he knew she was on automatic, that it was part of her job to make that meaningless offer to VIP guests at the Desert Song and now, as a matter of courtesy, to him.

  She’d smiled again and then she’d turned to O’Connell and murmured that she needed five minutes of his time. O’Connell had stuck out his hand and said it had been nice meeting him and he hoped he’d see him around…

  Gray’s mouth twisted.

  What crap. Bull patties, Jonas would say. Two brush-offs in twenty-four hours, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He had to talk with Dawn, size her up without her knowing she was being sized up, although he still couldn’t imagine what he’d gain. Nothing he’d seen here changed his original estimation of her.

  A high-pitched buzz sounded just beside him. Gray turned his head and saw a hummingbird, a brightly jeweled blaze of crimson, hovering over a crimson flower. His mind flashed to a client he’d had years before, a woman who had been into what she’d called birding and never mind that she’d also been into eliminating her rich as Croesus, old as Methuselah husband. He remembered walking through Bryant Park with her on a hot summer afternoon while she explained that she’d shot her husband five times in the chest and once in the face in broad daylight at a distance of no more than five feet because she’d thought he was an intruder, and while he’d been trying to digest that, she’d suddenly made a little sound of delight and pointed at a bank of flowers and the tiny bird working the blossoms.

  “A hummingbird,” she’d said. She’d told him the exact kind, too, but Gray couldn’t recall it. All he remembered was that she’d said the fragile creature had flown a couple of thousand miles to reach its destination and then she’d gone back to calm recitation of the facts, including a description of how she’d had to toss out her favorite silk dress because her husband’s blood ended up all over it.

  Gray had figured the hummingbird was lucky, not because a greedy woman with a .32 wasn’t interested in blasting it to smithereens but because it had the ability to get out of the way and keep on going. He felt that way again now. What he wanted was to drive straight to the airport and hop a plane that would take him home, but he couldn’t. He owed his uncle, big time. Defending a woman who had deliberately offed an old man was tough. Compared to that, finding a way to sit down and have a conversation with a woman you didn’t like and who didn’t like you was nothing.

  That was what he’d come to Vegas to do, wasn’t it? Talk with Dawn? He wasn’t here because, okay, she had the same look in her eyes that he thought he’d seen in her grandmother’s, or to ask her why she’d married a man like Kitteridge and then walked away from her own kid…

  “Shit,” he said, and he got to his feet, strode back inside the hotel, brushed past a noisy gaggle of women wearing T-shirts that read Slaves To The Slots and made his way to the little alcove and its fancy desk. A small, framed placard stood angled on the polished fruitwood surface. Discreet gold script urged Special Guests needing assistance to pick up the white telephone and press seven seven seven.

  Gray wasn’t so sure about the “special guests” part, but he definitely needed assistance.

  A woman answered on the first ring. He knew who it was even before she identified herself. He’d have known that voice in his sleep.

  “Dawn speaking,” she said pleasantly. “How may I help you?”

  Gray cleared his throat. “I need some assistance out here.”

  He hung up before she could say anything, counting on her either not recognizing his voice or recognizing it and knowing she had no choice but to deal with him since he was a guest. A minute passed. Then a door in the alcove wall opened and she came toward him. One look at her face and he knew she’d identified him right away.

  “Mr. Baron,” she said politely, “how may I help you?”

  “Miss Carter,” he replied, just as politely. She was a concierge? He’d dealt with hotel concierges for years. Okay. Let her do her job. “I was wondering…what’s the hottest show in town?”

  She looked relieved. He knew she hadn’t been expecting such a simple question.

  “Well,” she said, after a few seconds, “there are a couple of them. It all depends on your own preferences.” She hesitated. He didn’t say anything. “For instance, there’s the national road show of—”

  “Have you seen it?”

  “No. No, I haven’t, but I’ve heard that it’s wonderful. On the other hand, if you’d like to see something you can only see in Las Vegas—”

  “Let’s put it this way.” He dredged up a smile he hoped would identify him as one of the good guys. “If you were going to get tickets to see something, what would you pick?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you.” She smiled and he felt his gut knot at the kind of smile it was, dismissive and phony, a smile you flashed when you didn’t want to insult the guy at the door who was trying to sell you ten magazine subscriptions for the price of one. He thought about yesterday, how good it had felt to coax an honest curve from that soft-looking mouth, and wondered what it would take to make that happen again. “I really don’t have much time for that sort of thing, Mr. Baron.”

  “Gray,” he said. “Surely the man who rescued Spaceman Teddy from certain death in the desert is a man you can address by his first name.”

  That put feathers of pink into her cheeks. Good. Let her be embarrassed. All this formality pissed him off. He’d been feeling pissed off a lot, thanks to her.

  “Gray,” she said, as if the word were a bone caught in her throat. She reached for the phone. “I’ll be happy to arra
nge for tickets, if you’ll just tell me what you’d like to see.”

  “You pick it.”

  “I can’t do that. I don’t know your tastes.”

  He wanted to tell her that she did, that she was to his taste, all that hair he longed to unpin, that soft-looking mouth, but what the hell did that have to do with his business here?

  “Of course you can,” he said pleasantly. “I’m a tourist. You live in this town. You must have an idea what’s good and what…” He stopped, took a breath. “Are you involved with O’Connell?”

  The pink in her cheeks turned crimson; she stared at him as if he’d just committed a social faux pas of hideous proportions and maybe he had, but he had to do whatever it took to get past that shield, didn’t he? Wasn’t that why he was trying to get her to go out with him?

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I asked you if you’re involved with—”

  “That’s none of your business!”

  “Is that a `yes’?”

  “No! It is not a…” That delicate chin angled upward just like her grandmother’s. He knew she was trying to control her temper. Good. At least he was getting some reaction from her other than dismissal. “Do you want me to see about those tickets or don’t you?”

  “That’s why I asked the question, Miss Carter. If you’re involved with O’Connell, the answer is `no.’ If you’re not—if you’re not, I have another question.”

  “Which is?”

  “What night are you free?”

  “I’m not,” she said, biting off the syllables with staccato precision.

  “You’re never free?” He shook his head in pretended disbelief. “That’s one hell of a work schedule.”

  “Mr. Baron—”

  “Gray.”

  “Mr. Baron,” she said coldly, “I am extremely grateful for your generous assistance yesterday, but—”

  “But, you wish I’d disappear.”

  Color rose in her cheeks again, straining the polite mask she maintained. Being polite was part of her job and he was making it hard for her to do it.