She returned to the extra bedroom and resumed her music, turning it down a couple notches, and set the roller in the tray, moving it back and forth to saturate it with paint before raising it to the wall.
Everything was fine. She was safe here. Had always been safe here.
Besides, everyone she had a reason to fear was at the Tangier — Fredo DeLuca, Jason, even the cold-eyed Bruce Frazier.
* * *
The first thing Max noticed was that Bruce Frazier wasn’t at Jason’s side. Instead, Jason was accompanied by the guard named Dean Heller.
It was a surprising last-minute swap, but not unheard of. Bruce may very well be stationed at a nearby exit, standing lookout for trouble from DeLuca’s men or problems from the Syndicate. They’d agreed in advance that each leader — Jason, Fredo, and Nico — would only be accompanied by one person, but Jason was a man who covered his bases.
And while Max knew Nico and the Syndicate held to their honor code, Jason had no such assurance, and there was no reason to believe Fredo lived by a similar code. If Max had been Jason, he’d have stationed additional guards around the perimeter. His other two goons were probably out there somewhere, too.
“Max, Nico,” Jason said when they entered the room. “Please come in.”
It didn’t surprise him that Jason was going through the motions of being mannered even under such extraordinary conditions. He’d been studying and mimicking the well-heeled his whole life. Fitting in was everything to Jason. It was one of the reasons Max had been so fascinated by Abby’s description of Jason’s outburst after DeLuca’s visit to the executive offices.
Max would literally have paid to see Jason lose his shit.
Max looked around, calculating the advantages and disadvantages of the setup as he stepped farther into the room.
Jason stood at the head of a conference table, Dean Heller to his right. Fredo DeLuca sat to Jason’s left, an unfamiliar man next to him, interchangeable with all of the other men DeLuca surrounded himself with: overweight and with a florid complexion that spoke of too much alcohol and too much food, and thinning hair slicked back from a wide forehead.
Jason gestured to both sides of the table, indicating that Nico would sit on one side while Max sat on the other.
It wasn’t an accident. It meant they would be split up, that it would take a few seconds longer for either of them to cover the other. Max considered taking a seat next to Nico anyway, rocking Jason’s world by messing with his little plan, but the existing setup had an advantage too: it gave him and Nico two vantage points on the figures seated around the table.
Max worked his way around the table and left an empty seat between his chair and DeLuca’s muscle. Across from him, Nico did the same.
Jason smiled at them like they had convened for a board meeting. “Gentlemen, thank you all for coming.”
Max looked around, his gaze settling on Dean Heller.
The man had the background for this kind of work — but he didn’t have the reputation for ruthlessness of Bruce Frazier.
It bothered Max that Bruce wasn’t in the room, especially since he’d been Jason’s body man for weeks — Max just couldn’t put his finger on why.
* * *
Abby stopped painting midway down the wall, her blood running cold.
This time she was sure — she’d heard something downstairs.
She set the roller down and walked to her computer, hesitating over the volume button. If someone was in the house, turning off the music would alert them that Abby had heard something.
She slipped her phone from her pocket and hesitated.
She could call Max, but the last thing he needed was to be distracted during his meeting with Jason and DeLuca. She could call 911, but what if she was wrong? She would make a scene, scare her neighbors.
She looked around the room and cursed herself for not bringing up something she could use as a weapon. She’d been right in the kitchen — she could have at least brought a knife.
But she’d trained herself not to give into her fear, to starve it of oxygen by refusing to acknowledge it.
Except she’d forgotten that sometimes fear was valuable.
That it could save your life.
She looked at the curtain rod leaning against the wall across the room. She’d removed it from the wall to paint, intending to take it to the thrift store when she put up shades to replace the old curtains.
She crossed the room, Mad World playing on the computer as she picked up the metal rod. It wasn’t ideal, not sharp or even heavy, but it was all she had.
She’d closed the door to the bedroom to work on the wall behind it. Now she hesitated with her hand over the knob, gathering her courage and raising the curtain rod in her hand before pulling the door open.
She half-expected someone to come at her, to rush her and knock her to the ground, maybe even to shoot or stab her.
Instead she was engulfed with smoke.
Her lungs immediately constricted, her eyes watering as the black smoke hit her face.
She was paralyzed, unable to compute this new problem even as one word echoed through her mind.
Fire.
* * *
“I want to know why.” Jason directed the statement at Nico, but it might as well have been aimed at Max. He could hear the unspoken questions of Jason’s silent martyrdom.
Why did you betray me?
Why did you take Abby?
Why did you have everything while I had nothing?
They were questions Jason would never ask, but Max felt them in the air, had felt them in the air for a long time.
Nico lifted his eyebrows. “Why?”
“Why you took Fredo’s money,” Jason said. “What did you hope to gain?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Nico turned to Fredo. “Although it sounds like you should consider getting a new partner.”
Jason’s eyes were cold as he turned to look at Max. “This wasn’t our arrangement.”
“And what arrangement was that?” Max asked.
Jason’s expression changed, turning inward the way it had when they were kids and he’d felt out of his element. He was like a computer recalculating, a GPS rerouting.
Fredo stood. “It seems like this meeting was premature,” he said. “I was under the impression an agreement had been reached.”
“I don’t know what your agreement is with Mr. Draper,” Nico said, “but the Syndicate is still willing to entertain a partnership, provided you agree to our terms, of course.”
“This is my town,” Fredo said, still standing. “What makes you think I need you?”
“What makes you think I need either of you?” Jason asked from the head of the table.
They turned toward him, and that was when Max knew they’d made a terrible miscalculation.
He was standing at the head of the table, a gun pointed at Max. Next to him, Dean had a weapon drawn on Fredo while Fredo’s muscle had a gun pointed at Jason.
“Let’s not get carried away,” Nico said calmly. “We’ve only started talking, and I think we all know our chances of getting out of here alive decrease considerably once the shooting starts.”
“Maybe,” Jason said, “but there’s one thing you’re taking for granted.”
“And what’s that?” Nico asked.
“You assume that I care about getting out alive.”
The words had barely left Jason’s mouth when he fired his gun.
The room was an explosion of sound as Max waited to feel the bullet pierce his flesh. Instead, Nico dropped beside him as Fredo and his guard both went down, Fredo falling forward over the conference table while the other man stumbled backward, getting off a couple of rounds before hitting the wall.
Dean dropped to the floor next to Jason, who turned his gun back on Max.
Max was hardly aware of it, his instinct to protect Nico overwhelming, borne both from his time in Afghanistan and his affinity for the man he now realize
d had become like an older brother.
He scrambled across the table and dropped onto the floor next to Nico. The other man was down, blood seeping through his suit jacket as he lay on the floor next to the table.
“Jesus,” Max said, applying pressure to Nico’s shoulder.
“You did this.” Jason’s voice shook Max from his panic, and he looked up to find himself looking into the barrel of Jason’s gun, everyone else down around the table.
“You always had to have everything,” Jason continued. “The perfect father, the perfect woman, the perfect life. It didn’t matter how hard I worked, how much I sacrificed, you always came out ahead where it counted. Maybe it’s time you see what it’s like to lose the things that matter most.”
It didn’t make sense. Jason had built a company that was the envy of every businessman in the world. He was celebrated, wealthy beyond measure.
But there was no time to soothe Jason’s ego. Nico was losing blood fast, staring up at Max with glassy eyes.
“You’re going to have to shoot me, too,” Max said, reaching into his pocket for his phone.
Jason’s face had gone pale, sweat glistening on his brow, the gun shaking in his hands. He was going into shock, his psyche obviously unprepared for the raw brutality of killing someone up close. This wasn’t a poker game where he could distance himself from his crime with a few hundred thousand dollars in chips.
This was death: the scent of blood, thick with iron, in the air.
Max dialed 911 and looked up at Jason as he waited for the operator to answer. The gun was still pointed at him.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” a voice asked on the other end of the phone.
Max looked down at Nico. “Four men have been shot in the Casablanca Room at the Tangier.”
He didn’t give two shits about the other men who were down, but four men down would bring the lights and sirens quicker than one.
The dispatcher said something on the other end of the line, but Max wasn’t paying attention. He was looking up at where Jason had been a moment before, the spot now empty, the door to the meeting room open.
Jason was gone.
“How bad?” Nico asked.
“It’s just a flesh wound,” Max said, quoting Monty Python.
Nico closed his eyes and grimaced. “Farrell’s right: you are an asshole.”
Sirens sounded from somewhere outside the casino.
* * *
Abby shut the door to the hall and backed into the room. Smoke was seeping under the door, and she coughed as she reached for the tarp she’d used to cover the floors while she painted. She stuffed it under the door, then lay her hand against it to try and gauge how close the fire was to the bedroom.
The door was hot.
She hurried for the window and opened it, glad she’d replaced the windows right after she’d moved in. The old ones had been old and hard to open, some of them painted shut.
The gust of fresh air hit her like a blast of pure oxygen. She gulped in the fresh air and coughed as she leaned out over the edge of the house. She’d never looked out the window with the intent of jumping, and she saw now that there was nothing to hang onto on the way down.
No trees close enough to climb, no trellis or gabled roof.
Just the window and the ground far below.
Sirens grew closer with every passing minute. One of the neighbors must have seen the smoke and called the fire department. She considered waiting, then glanced back at the bedroom door, smoke seeping in around the tarp.
She couldn’t afford to wait.
She lifted a leg over the windowsill and looked down. It wasn’t far enough to kill her. Worst-case, she’d break a leg or suffer a concussion. She could limit the damage by hanging from the frame, lessening the distance between her feet and the ground, then tuck her legs so she didn’t snap them when she landed.
She eased the rest of the way over the ledge and turned so she was kneeling in the frame, clutching the sides of it with her hands. The fire department was close now, maybe even right on her block, but flames were licking under the door of the room, the plastic tarp melting away, her breath coming in gasps, her lungs working like a kinked garden hose.
She held onto the ledge and eased her body over the side, gasping as gravity tugged at her lower body. Then she was dangling from the window’s edge, nothing but air under her legs.
Her hands were already slipping, her grip loosening on the window ledge.
She let go.
* * *
Max ran next to the gurney as they wheeled Nico out to the waiting ambulance. He was surprised by the grief that squeezed at his heart as he looked down at Nico, an oxygen mask covering his nose and mouth.
He needed to call Farrell, make sure someone got in touch with Nico’s wife.
They had just gotten the gurney out of the casino’s doors when Max heard a phone ring. He followed the sound to Nico’s suit pocket and fished out his phone. The display said the call was coming from Farrell.
“Nico’s been hit,” Max said into the phone. “They’re taking him to the hospital now.”
Farrell cursed. “I’ll call Angel and meet him at the hospital, but Max…”
Max’s heart nearly stopped, his footsteps slowing. “Is it Abby?”
“There’s been a fire.”
Thirty
Max could hardly breathe when he saw the flashing lights surrounding Abby’s house. Three fire trucks, two ambulances, and two patrol cars were parked next to the curb and in the street, the whole scene marked off with crime scene tape. Reporters were already gathered, a handful of Abby’s neighbors standing around with worried expressions, their hands covering their mouths as they looked up at Abby’s burning house.
Max didn’t care about the fucking house. Not right now.
He pushed his way through the throng and ducked under the tape.
“Abby!” He shouted through the people working on and around the house. “Abby!”
A patrol officer came at him. “Sir! Sir! You can’t be back here.”
Max pushed him hard and fast. He stumbled backward as Max barreled forward.
He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t see anything but the flames and smoke pouring from Abby’s house, the way she’d looked when he’d left her in his bed that morning.
“Max!”
The voice called to him like a siren, and he turned to see her sitting at the back of one of the ambulances, a blanket around her shoulders, an oxygen mask in her hand.
He sprinted toward her, closing the distance between them until she was in his arms, solid and real and alive.
“Thank god… Thank god…”
It was all he could think of to say. And then, as he pulled back to take in her soot smudged face, the beautiful face that might have been lost to him forever, there was only one more thought.
Jason Draper is going to die.
Thirty-One
Max stepped into the elevator. He was relieved when the doors closed without anyone else stepping in after him, and he tipped his head back and closed his eyes as the elevator rose to the Penthouse level.
The moment had been a long time coming, probably even longer than he realized.
The elevator door opened and he stepped out into a wide hallway, then made his way toward a set of double doors, the only ones on this level. When he reached them he knocked and waited.
A minute later he heard movement on the other side of the door. He waited as the locks were undone.
“Well, well, well,” Farrell Black said when he opened the door. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
He stepped back to let Max in.
He walked past Farrell and into the suite’s living room. Luca was standing at the bar, Christophe on one end of the sofa. Nico sat at the other end. His wife, Angel, stood next to him, one of her hands on his shoulder above the bandage and sling that immobilized his arm.
Angel smiled. “Max, it’s so nice to see you.
Can I get you anything?”
“No, thank you.”
He’d met Angel at the hospital when he and Abby went to see Nico the night of the shooting. Max had apologized profusely, his guilt at having allowed Nico to be shot gnawing at him like a desperate rat.
But Angel had been gracious and kind, giving Max a hug and insisting Nico’s injury wasn’t his fault. Her husband had known what he was getting into, she’d said. She was just glad they hadn’t both been hurt.
They’d run into each other twice more after that — once right after the surgery to remove the bullet in Nico’s shoulder, the other on the day before he was released.
He’d liked her more every time.
She bent to kiss Nico’s temple. “I’m going to call and check on the arrangements for tomorrow. Keep it short, my love.”
He squeezed her hand, and she headed for the bedroom, the door closing quietly behind her.
“Tomorrow?” Max asked.
“We’re flying back to Rome,” Nico said. “No offense, but this town isn’t high on my list of places to convalesce.”
“No offense taken. Vegas isn’t for resting.” Max nodded at Nico’s shoulder. “How is it?”
“It’s nothing.”
It hadn’t been nothing. The bullet had come perilously close to Nico’s heart. He’d been unspeakably lucky.
They’d all been lucky — except for Fredo and his bodyguard and Dean Heller.
They were all dead.
“How are things going with the police?” Max asked.
“It’s under control,” Farrell said. “Have they called you in again?”
Max shook his head. It had been four days since the shooting. He’d had one interview with the police the day after and had stuck closely to the script provided to him by Farrell. The detective on the case owed the Syndicate more than one favor, and the interview had been cursory, the shooting temporarily classified as a “probable accidental discharge”.
“Good,” Farrell said. “And Abby?”
Wages of Sin: Las Vegas Syndicate Book Two Page 16