by Harley Slate
Yeah, it would be OK to walk that way. Give my pussy a chance to air out. Then, when I'm all springtime fresh, I can grab one of the cabs in the line at the first big casino.
Walking and texting is a thing in Vegas, and I realize I might have left the other girls hanging, so I take out my phone to check my messages.
>Emily, you want to check in?
Dakota doesn't know how to turn off auto-correct, which gives her text an oddly stiff feel.
>I'm OK.
>Where are you?
>Outside. Need air.
>What happened with the chocolate martini?
>He introduced me to someone. Pretty sure she's the club's owner. She's somebody bigtime anyway.
>We're going to need to talk about this some more.
I put my phone away as I realize I've somehow strolled into a pool of darkness too close to a shuttered building. I scurry back toward the road or, at least, I try to scurry, but a big hand comes out of the darkness somehow to yank me back.
The spike heels were not a good idea. When he lifts me up, I kick high, and both of them fly off, one of them close enough to catch in my right hand.
“Little girl.” A low voice growly from decades of dedicated drinking. Foul breath. I twist and try to kick out of his grasp, but he's still stronger than I am. Up close, I see dark eyes glazed over with impulsive lust. “What choo doin out so late, little girl?”
“None of your fucking business. Let me go.” They say you should aim for the eyes or the balls, but it's easier said than done when he's got me grabbed so tight like this. I have to settle for jabbing him in the ribs.
“Little girl thinks she can fight me. Awww. That's cute.”
I jab harder, using the stiletto heel like an actual stiletto. Except the cheap-ass fucker snaps right off in my hand and goes flying. That's why I need a sugar mama. Baby girl needs new shoes. I drop the useless piece of shit.
He keeps pulling me deeper into the darkness between the buildings. How did I find the one place in Vegas that's absolutely devoid of light? I pound the stinking pervo with my hands and feet, but his grip never softens. There's something besides alcohol. Something that makes him impervious to pain.
Fuck. I'm in real danger here. I can't expect the girls to come find me anytime soon, especially since I just checked in and said I was OK. They have no reason to worry.
Mom thinks I'm spending the night at Dakota's.
Jessica...
But Jessica doesn't know me. She's a rich power lesbian who put her tongue where she wanted to before going back to business with gangsters who are better dressed but just as criminal as this one. I recognized one of those guys who came up on the elevator. Not his name. But I've seen his face on TV, and he's bad news.
Right now, though, I've got some more immediate bad news to deal with. The fucking pervert's grabbing at my bare ass under my short club skirt. I don't want those filthy hands leaving bruises. Not there, not anywhere.
“Don't even try it, I'll bite it right off,” I say.
He laughs. His stinky breath is too close to my nose. I can't see, I can't breathe. The only good thing about the way he's pushing my back against the wall is that he needs both hands to fight me into position, so he's no longer doing the octopus all over my ass.
I try to get a hand free. Try to push him away, but he doesn't push.
I'm rubbing my ass against brick to try to drag my skirt down. Why did I wear such a short fucking hem?
So dark. That foul face shoved into mine. I push harder, but it's like trying to push over a wall.
A pop, and a spray of tiny pieces of brick.
The fuck. Somebody's shooting at us.
Somebody with a silencer.
Chapter Five
Jessica
“What happens in Macau stays in Macau.” I shouldn't have one hand in my pocket to clutch at Emma Bourne's forgotten thong, but somehow I do. It's soft and silky and I know what it will smell like when I press it against my nose like a flower.
Nick Gavrolovic is one of those expressionless guys who thinks it's his moral duty to play to the stereotype of the unreadable gangster. Not that I'm any easier to read. We're all in the same business, and we've all wearing our poker faces.
My game face, like Gavrolovic's, is cold and unemotional. Almost robotic. Nobody can see I'm in a rage about being interrupted during my moment with Emma. The man responsible is going to pay a high price for the privilege of disrespecting my private time. Oh, fuck yes, he's going to pay and pay and pay. That's a promise I make to myself, and it's a promise I intend to keep.
“The money does not stay in Macau.” His heavily accented English is a gimmick, considering we both attended the same Swiss boarding school where we were required to speak fluently in four languages. English, the Latin of the modern world, was in many ways the most important of them. These days, though, he pretends to speak it poorly‒ his way of making you bend forward to listen harder.
“Actually, most of it did. Your investment is gone, Gavrolovic. You always knew it was high-risk. And Qwan knew it too.”
A crackdown on corruption, they called it. Yeah, sure. A crackdown on anybody else becoming a billionaire in the New China. They had enough billionaires and those guys didn't want to split the pot any further. Especially not with a lot of foreigners from America, Serbia, and all the other two hundred plus countries that spawned a billion gold rushers in search of the next big thing.
Same story as Russia before them, and America before that. There's an opportunity, too many people go after it, and the law gets involved to make sure the wrong people don't enjoy the benefits of that opportunity. Having a casino in Macau was a blast. At least for the two-three years that it lasted.
Gavrolovic folds his arms over his chest, a scornful, skeptical posture. His cold eyes glare directly into mine. “Qwan say you have his money.”
Of course Qwan would say that.
“Beijing has his money. Qwan knows that, and so do you.”
He has a way of lifting his left shoulder you almost wouldn't see. For some reason, even though I've got the Blue, he prefers to drink Johnny Walker Black, and now Quentin is setting a crystal tumbler of the stuff in front of him.
The piano is playing again, some kind of broody Twin Peaksish music. Soft, though. Maybe Gavrolovic doesn't even hear it.
His goons stand nearby, their arms not hanging in a natural way, but more held out an inch or two from their trunks, as if they're prepared to move at any second. For fuck's sake. As if I would tolerate anybody making a move on Nick Fucking Gavrolovic in my private club.
He won't make the message any more explicit than this. He doesn't need to. I get it.
Gavrolovic or maybe Qwan himself is gunning for me, and neither one of them is known for being the kind of guy who comes for you head-on. There's no code of honor with these men. They look for the weak link. Families, usually, but I don't have a family, so I don't have to worry about that.
Emily Dearborn, I think. A funny thing to think, since I just met the girl, but suddenly I feel uneasy.
Whatever Qwan is doing and wherever he may be, Gavrolovic is here in Vegas, and he's gone after girls before. There were stories in Macau. Distasteful stories. Enforcing territory is more than a job for him. It's a pleasure.
Thinking, I touch the balled-up thong in my pocket like it's some kind of touchstone. There are certain pleasures this son of a bitch will never enjoy, and that's final.
“I want you to enjoy my hospitality.” I doubt I sound all that sincere, although I'm perfectly prepared to play the part of the good hostess. “Do enjoy yourself. We'll speak tomorrow.”
One of my security guys follows me out while talking on his phone. Outside, he slips the phone in his pocket. My best men are practically mind-readers, and this particular guy is especially good at knowing what I need before I know it myself.
“She decided to walk, Ms. Blaire. In the direction of the strip.” He points with his square chin while sta
nding a little too close to block the exterior cameras that would otherwise be filming what he's doing― which is slipping a Glock 17 into my pocket. For some reason, the state of Nevada has recently chosen to deny me a license to carry.
“Thanks.”
“I should come with.”
“I'd rather do this alone.”
“Yes, Ms. Blaire.”
You can't be in the casino business or any dirty business without a certain kind of instinct. A prickle at the back of my neck is telling me there's something badly wrong, and it's more than women's intuition.
Showing up at my place could be Gavrolovic's way of toying with me. Of enjoying how clueless I am, how relaxed, right up to the final moment before he strikes.
Once in the not too long ago, we were partners in a casino in Macau filled with jade, crystal, and an endless warren of gambling rooms. Someone else owns it now. A man with ties to some prominent officials in Beijing.
I got some money out. A billion or so. We're not talking Bezos or Gates. We're talking about enough for me to maintain the lifestyle to which I've grown accustomed, but you wouldn't necessarily want to maintain more than two or three private jets.
Gavrolovic and Qwan were slow to act. I warned them, but they didn't listen. Maybe because I'm an American, or maybe because I'm an American woman, but they tend to think they always know better. I told them so, but they wanted to let their investment ride just a few days longer.
Not my fault. They had every opportunity to pull back their bets.
It wasn't much use bitching about it to the Chinese government. Instead, they thought they could get it out of me. Good luck with that, boys. What's mine is mine.
You're not getting any of it. Not one fucking penny.
There isn't any reason to think they'd go after one of my girls. And anyway she isn't yet one of my girls.
But they'd seen her at the elevator, and she'd given Gavrolovic a look that told me she'd seen him on the news. She's a sharp girl, she may have remembered the words, “a shadowy figure linked to organized crime,” attached to his name.
As for him, all he'd seen was her long bare legs.
He's already forgotten her. She isn't a target.
But, just in case, I'll feel a whole fuckload of a lot better when I see for myself she got home all right.
Hell, her whole life's new and shiny. I know she's a virgin.
I can just smell it.
A wedding party, laughing and already giddy, is coming up the street in my direction. I can ask them if they've seen a girl, but it's a waste of time to ask a big group anything. Instead, I keep moving.
The skin on the back of my neck prickles harder. She's close, I think. Don't ask me how I know, but I know. Maybe it's the faint traces of her perfume leading my way. A scent I can't pick up on a conscious level, but somehow it's there.
Somehow it registers.
Somehow I know I need to move fast and smooth and slow.
I was a soldier once. Long time ago. Oh, fuck yes, if there's one thing I can do, I can move fast and smooth and slow. I can hug the shadows.
You don't forget. Not when remembering is a matter of survival.
I'm moving at a near jog when I observe how much dark there is over in that one stretch of road.
There, I think. Right there.
A high-heeled shoe is still spinning around and around where it's just been kicked out into the sidewalk.
I move even faster and, if anything, even more quietly. At first all I see is a shadow of a big hulking brute pushing someone against a wall, and then I see the way the heel of a bare leg is kicking at the guy's back‒ kicking in a determined strike, again and again, at the guy's kidney. It's a street fighter's move. GRIT. Girls raised in the south, gotta love them.
I can't fire into the creep without firing through his body and maybe hitting her. Instead, I fire close by, hitting the brick to make little bits of masonry dust come flying out. The special silencer direct from Austria was a mistake. A big bang would have had more impact.
I fire again and again. Silencers get overloaded, and every shot bangs out a little louder.
“What the fuck choo doing?” Creep finally drops the girl and turns around. “Get your own girl.”
That fat mouth needs stuffing with a Glock. I use both hands to shove it between his lips, and if I chip a tooth or two, ask me if I give a fuck.
That close, he drops the bravado and goes stiff and unmoving all over. The gun must be burning hot, but he's frozen.
“He's not worth it,” Emily says. “Let's call the cops, and they can take care of him.”
“I can't call the cops,” I say. “Look the other way.” The perv's mouthing his ugly teeth all over my gun, and it's the opposite of pretty.
“Really, I'm OK. He's the one who's going to need to get his kidney looked at. Let's just call the cops.”
She doesn't want me to kill the guy in cold blood but, thing is, my blood isn't all that fucking cold. The sight of that monster pushing my little girl‒ MINE!‒ up against a dirty brick wall...
Some things won't stand.
“Will you please look the other way?”
“I'm fine. You can't continue to use excessive force after I'm already fine. Don't you ever watch TV? You could go to jail.”
Dude's biting at the Glock, testing me even if Emily doesn't understand it, and I have to back my hand up a little. No way I wanna risk catching a case of rabies from his dirty spit.
“Back off,” I say. “This is my problem now, not yours.”
This debate is going on for too long. She needs to take a clue train, but she's standing there with her arms folded over her cute chest like she's the boss here somehow. “Call the cops. They take it from here.”
“I can't call the fucking cops. I'm not allowed to possess a firearm.”
Why am I even trying to reason with her like this? This is not going the way it should. Creep should be done and dusted by now, but I can't blow off a guy's head when my girl is staring right at him. She could be traumatized for life, seeing something like this, plus I don't want to implicate her in what some shitty police officer would probably write up as a so-called gangland-style execution.
The cops have funny ideas about witnesses. Sometimes they treat witnesses as accessories.
No fucking way I'd let any funny cops get their hands on my girl.
If you can shoot daggers out of your eyeballs, that's what my glare is doing now. Somehow, though, Emma‒ Emily‒ isn't standing down.
Must I beg? Really? Seriously?
I narrow my eyes and look hard into her eyes. “Can you please stop yapping and stop staring and go across the street over there?”
In the meantime, the perv takes advantage of the situation to extract his face from my weapon and sprint for the open road like a running back going for the touchdown. I let him because I'm not blowing off his face with Emily standing here right in front of him where she could potentially get all splattered up with gore and blood.
Fuck my life. I don't like to shoot a guy in the back. That never looks good if you end up in front of a judge, but I've got a message for Gavrolovic.
Hell, I've got a message for anybody who tries to fuck with my girl.
Anybody at all.
I don't care who you think you are, who your gang is, who your known associates are, who you work for or who works for you. I don't care who your brother is and how many bodyguards you got in your army.
You don't fuck with what's mine. Not fucking ever.
I drop the poker face and openly snarl as I take aim at a creep who badly needs to go down right this fucking minute.
Chapter Six
Emily
I should have looked away, but I refuse to be treated like a little girl. A lot of blood blew back from the pervo's leg, but it wasn't shooting out like a firehose, so I presume Jessica took extra care to miss the more important arteries.
She's a good shot. Damn good.
“That kn
ee'll never be the same.” It's the responsible thing to say but, in my heart of hearts, I'm not crying a lot of tears for the creeper. A crippled pervert isn't going to be running down any more girls on the street.
“Nick Gavrolovic can afford to buy him a new knee.” Jessica's gun vanishes into her jacket. Now she's got a platinum cell phone in one hand and my arm in the other as she leads me out of the dirty alley. Because of my bare feet, I have to step very carefully.
“I need clean-up,” she says into the phone. “My phone will message you the GPS coordinates.”
The phone too vanishes. She stops a minute to look around, then scoops up my broken shoe and the broken heel too.
“You're a fighter. I like that.”
I shrug. Being a fighter doesn't fit the image I want to project as a sexy, sultry kitten looking for a sugar mama. “You're a fighter too.”
“US Army. I signed up after nine eleven.” She takes a sharp breath. “Shit.”
“It's all right,” I says. “I already knew you were older. I like it. Experience is good.”
“Forty-one. Since you're too polite to ask.”
I would have believed thirty-five. Maybe even younger. It makes me feel pleasantly warm inside, that she told me the truth. “We need to call the cops. And my other shoe's out there somewhere.”
She pulls the shoe out of her jacket. Already taken care of. “Actually, I'm gonna let my people call the cops after we put some distance between us and that bozo.” When she wrapped her arm around my waist, I could stand on one foot to glide the shoe back on. Not much point, though, considering the broken heel.
“Is that legal? I thought we had to stay here on the scene.”
“Me having a gun isn't legal. I need to go. Stay here if you want, but I don't want to leave you in a position where you have to lie about what you saw.”
Oh. “I guess I don't want that either. Getting you arrested would be a pretty shitty way to thank you.”
You're only supposed to walk around with plastic cups on the street in Vegas, but somebody's been breaking the rules because there are shards of broken glass everywhere. Jessica frowns and suddenly sweeps me up into her two arms to carry me. She's really strong. I know she must have a trainer who focuses on strength as well as cardio.