by Harley Slate
“All right.” I close my eyes, I have to think. All this night long, I've been thinking, and yet I still haven't reached a firm decision. Until now.
Emily's mom is in a limo that's just approaching the first gate into the cabin compound. The implant is letter box sized, and I have to assume it isn't powerful enough to take out much more than Cherry Dearborn herself, but we don't need her blowing up in the middle of downtown Vegas.
We don't need her blowing up at all.
Emily, I think. If only I could put my arms around her and tell her it's going to be all right. But I can't. Because everything isn't all right, and it might never be all right again if we don't figure this out, and we're running out of time.
“We're getting down to the moment of truth,” Julian says.
I look at him, and he looks at me― asking me without words if I still want to make the money evaporate. If I do, we've got two hours tops, maybe as little as ninety minutes, before Gavrolovic figures out the money's never coming at all.
Me, the woman who always knows what to do, legitimately doesn't know what to do. I don't want to pay Gavrolovic for blowing up Emily's mom. There's nothing to say he won't kill her anyway, just to make whatever statement he wants to make about not fucking with Nick Gavrolovic. In fact, if I pay him, he might take an extra-special pleasure in fucking me over. To pay him might be signing her death warrant.
But I don't want to not pay him, because that might be a death warrant too, and then it will forever be on me that she got killed.
“Slow it down,” I finally say. “But let it through.”
It's a compromise, and maybe a bad one. Gavrolovic wants it all, not just some of it.
There's a call from the gate. “Should there be two cars, Ms. Blaire?” asks the guard.
No, of course there shouldn't be two cars. But if Ken Cho has deliberately allowed the hitchhiker to follow the limo with Emily's mom in it, there's probably a damn good reason.
One of my security experts pulls up the video from the point of view of the guard shack. The second car has black tint on the windows too dark to pass a state inspection, and for a minute we can't see anything. Then some cocky son of a bitch puts down a back window.
Leans out.
Smiles a sick sadistic smile in the direction of the most obvious camera.
Nick Fucking Gavrolovic.
The man himself. Should have known he'd show up to gloat. See, it's shit like that which caused him to lose all his money. He hung around Macau too long. Laughed at me, called me a chicken for getting out too early, for cutting and running. Now he's doing the same thing, hanging around Vegas too long. For no good reason, except he wants to see the look on my face when he gets all my money and blows up Emily's mom on his way out the door.
“Are we detecting any explosive material in that second car?” I ask.
“No, Ms. Blaire. It's clean, Ms. Blaire.”
“Well, then, let's give a warm welcome to Mr. Gavrolovic.”
“Let him in,” Julian says to the guard. To me, he says, “A bold move, coming here in person.”
“He's that confident we can't disarm the bomb. And he wants us to know he's that confident. Sometimes, the only way to convey a message is to do it in person.”
Julian looks tired for the first time as he wipes a hand over his face. We're all out of work if I'm out of money. He doesn't like it that I've already shipped so much cash down that secret conduit.
The limo and its tailgater reach the second guard shack, where they're waved through again, more expeditiously this time since there's no need for discussion.
I take a deep breath. The time for chitchat is over.
“Turn off the pipeline,” I say.
Julian instantly looks a lot less tired. When he makes a few gestures and voices a code phrase, the numbers on the monitors reverse direction. My money's coming back to me, most of it anyway. Maybe a million, a million two has gotten away. Fuck it. I'm not worried about picking up peanuts right now.
The doorman phones into the basement. “Your guests have arrived, Ms. Blaire.”
Julian shakes his head, but I say, “Fine. Bring them down.”
“It isn't a good idea, Ms. Blaire,” Julian says. “If she goes off in a confined space...”
“She's not going off. I forbid it.”
He looks tired again, but he nods. “Yes, Ms. Blaire.”
The elevator pings even though Gavrolovic and company couldn't have reached it yet. Now what? Nobody on my staff looks much alarmed, but I know I've let something get by me.
There's a pause, and then brushed steel doors open to reveal Emily and Quentin arm-in-arm. My assistant's eyes are defiant. “I anticipated your order, Ms. Blaire,” he says.
He's right. Emily didn't need to be in the tower for another moment. Hell, she didn't need to be there in the first place.
Only the strongest leader can admit when she's wrong, and I'm still not completely ready to admit it in so many words, but the way I open my arms so Emily can run into my embrace is a full-on confession. I was wrong to lock her away. Wrong to doubt her.
There's a moment out of time where nobody says anything and nobody breathes except for me, and all I'm breathing is the coconut scent in her lovely hair.
“Forgive me.” I murmur the words as softly as I dare into the sweet shell of her ear. Nobody else deserves to overhear, although I realize they undoubtedly can.
She squirms within my embrace, a token show of anger. “I'll think about it.” Her eyes search my face for a long moment. “How's my mom doing?”
“She's fine,” I say. “In fact, she's here.” And indeed the elevator has already gone up and come back down again.
This time, my two best armed guards are in place on either side of the opening door, rifles at the ready.
Two people get off. Emily's mom and Nick Gavrolovic.
I gesture at the guards to lower the rifles but never, ever to relax their guard.
It takes stones, coming down here with a single hostage at his side. He's that confident of the explosive in her arm. Son of a fucking bitch. The implant was small enough that I kept hoping it was a bluff, but that smug smirk on his face...
Fuck. We could be in real trouble here.
Emily and Cherry Dearborn embrace, hugging each other so hard I want to shout a warning, although hugs won't set off the explosive. “You OK, mom?” Emily keeps asking. “I was so worried.”
“Some asshole tried to kidnap me, but then some sniper blew away the asshole.” Cherry squeezes her daughter tight. “I take it your girlfriend is the one responsible for that.”
Mother and daughter both look at me, and there's so much I wish I could say to both of them, but it isn't a good time to talk. Not with Gavrolovic here. He didn't follow Cherry and Ken Cho back to my castle to share a pot of tea.
In fact, he's never stepped foot inside the place before, and he examines my security room with frank curiosity, his gaze sweeping across the programs running on the screens set up around the basement. The numbers ticking over are fakes, but they look real enough, and they'll pass as long as it's only Gavrolovic looking at the problem. His best programming days, like my own, are long behind him. We've both been management for a long time, and computer skills get dated in months, not years.
He tires of pretending he understands what he's seeing. Instead, he gazes hard at me, his former classmate at the stupid-ass Swiss boarding school. A famous one where lots of troubled rich kids go. And then my family was killed, and there was no money for the school, and then I became part of the Selkelskie crime family, and I should have known they were using me, they had no serious use for a teenage girl except as an expendable.
Well, look who's expendable now. Not me. Not me and mine.
Gavrolovic and I look at each other. The silence goes on and on. Unreadable.
We were once friends, although it's hard to remember that. School days are far behind us now.
“What's this really about, Nick?
” I finally ask. “You know I'm not the one who owes you the money. Coming after me, that's a shit move, and you know it. Involving the Dearborn women, that's unspeakable. They've got nothing to do with this, they're innocents.”
He shrugs. Shame too is far behind him. “You are the one who still has money. You are the only one who can pay. Therefore you are the one who must pay.”
“As you can see, it's all flowing to you. But I can stop the flow on a dime just by saying the word. You don't threaten family. You never threaten family.”
Gavrolovic, who was never sentimental and never attached to family, shrugs.
“What is this crap in my arm?” Cherry asks. “I want it gone. I'm not a fucking dog in need of a fucking microchip.”
I realize she doesn't know.
Emily touches the bandage on her mother's arm. I don't like that, Emily touching that delicate spot. It can't be that volatile, but what if it is?
“Get back here,” I say.
Emily gives me an odd look and doesn't move. “They hurt my mom.”
“It didn't hurt. They used a local,” Cherry says. “But it's still bullshit. I think it's some kind of tracking device or something.” She tugs and then rips at the bandage to expose an angry red incision less than a quarter-inch long with lots of puffed skin around it. Not infected, but swollen because the implant is so recent. “What is this, some kind of RFID tag? Emily, do you know what this is? What have you gotten us involved in?”
The way Emily looks at me breaks my heart. “I have an idea my girlfriend...” She tried to spit out the word, make it something sarcastic. “I have an idea Jessica used to launder money and got mixed up with some people she shouldn't be mixed up with. She will not be doing that in the future.”
The hell. The likes of Emily Dearborn thinks she can tell me what I can and cannot do? My various employees all busy themselves with screens and buttons, pretending they're not hearing a thing. Only Gavrolovic openly smirks, enjoying the whole fucking show.
So I give Emily the hairy eye, and she gives me the hairy eye back, and somehow I'm the one who's looking down.
“That stuff is already in my past,” I finally say.
“Do you owe this guy money?” she asks. “Because it doesn't seem to me you need to keep anything that doesn't belong to you.”
I shake my head. Gavrolovic nods. We will never agree on this.
“Somebody owes me money,” he says.
“Somebody isn't me,” I say.
“You are the one with money.”
Emily can see how it is, and she turns that hairy eyeball of hers toward Nick Gavrolovic. “I think if you really believed Jessica owed you anything, you'd hire lawyers instead of kidnappers. I really do think you're in the wrong here.”
Quentin manages to maintain a straight face, but the corners of Julian's mouth twitch with amusement. Fine. We're all being schooled by an eighteen-year-old.
“Nobody care what you think, girl,” Gavrolovic says.
But he's wrong. I care. We all do.
“I need you to disarm the device,” I say. “I need the code to switch it off or the money stops flowing.”
“I know not how stop any code.” He folds his arms over his chest. “I am unable to stop what is started.”
“Wait,” Emily says. “Disarm? Device?”
Cherry Dearborn's face has gone white under the last traces of her eighteen-hour makeup. “This isn't a fucking tracking chip in my arm, is it?”
Gavrolovic pushes up the sleeve of his own shirt, and I see a bump in his arm, healed but still pinkish around the incision point. His own device was inserted maybe four to eight weeks ago.
“You would not disarm as favor to old friend. But you have motive now to find a way.”
Chapter Eighteen
Emily
All right, I'm not a fucking idiot. I get it. I see it all. Like my mom, Jessica came to Vegas to change her life. But her old life followed her home. I'm so angry with myself for putting my mother in this situation. Mom isn't angry, though. She's always best in a crisis, and she knows how to keep a cool head.
She breathes when the gangster man reveals his own implant, because she can see it isn't a recent one. We have time. We don't know exactly how much time, but we've got some. She isn't going to go popping off in the next ten minutes.
Everybody's talking at once, but I mostly just listen. The story reminds me of a television drama. This gangster had been in prison for a short time, but then he'd been released with the implant in his arm. I understand immediately‒ we all do‒ that those who imprisoned him were hoping he'd lead them to more money. Nick Gavrolovic is a criminal, but those who arrested and then freed him weren't exactly going by the book either.
It's always all about the money. First, last, and always.
So he got a device in his arm, and they let him go to see where he went, and he got a second device‒ or maybe an entire box of devices. That part I'm not sure about because I find his heavy accent difficult to follow. The relevant point is he studied and studied how the devices could be set off at a distance but ultimately couldn't crack the code, so he never knew when and how his enemy was going to blow him to heaven. He was going mad, walking around with a mini-bomb in his arm, never knowing when it was going to go off.
“Who?” Jessica asks, and this Nick Gavrolovic says a name that means nothing to me. A guy in a suit who looks like Jessica's second-in-command exchanges a significant look with Jessica. His name is Julian, I think. Whatever it is, he and Jessica nod at each other, communicating without words the way adults do.
Of course, I'm an adult now. Eighteen. I should know what they're telling each other, but somehow I don't.
“Who's that?” Mom spends more time skimming the obits looking for lonely widowers than studying the financial pages. She knows the basics about who's got what and who's in the top five percent, but it's clear she doesn't recognize this name.
“I'm not sure I should involve you in this,” Jessica says. “You don't need to know this stuff.”
Mom taps her bandaged arm. “I appear to already be involved.”
Julian and Jessica exchange another meaningful glance, and then Jessica continues. “Qwan's an official in the Beijing federal government who investigates high-level financial crimes. He's uniquely well-qualified for the job.”
Mom, no fool, laughs. “By which I assume you mean he's up to his eyeballs in graft.”
The way Jessica lifts her shoulder in a half-shrug is a yes.
“I hope you're not sending money to a known grifter,” she says. “That's money better spent on my little girl.”
“Mom!” I say.
“I have no reason to believe they would unlock these devices no matter how much money I paid. So, no, I wouldn't send ten cents out Qwan's way.”
Gavrolovic glowers.
“You must know that about Jessica,” I say to the gangster. “That she doesn't respond to blackmail.”
“I did not come just for money. The money, if it came through, was bonus.” His accent is very thick at the moment.
Stress, I think.
“Why pressure Jessica Blaire?” Mom asks, a reasonable question under the circumstances. “You clearly don't like each other. Why do you think she would help you?”
Jessica, not Gavrolovic, answers the question. “In school, I used to have a certain facility for cracking codes. I don't really do that anymore. The time and techniques move on.”
“Intuitive,” Gavrolovic says, although I think he puts an extra syllable in it, because at first I can't understand what he's saying.
“Instinct.” Jessica rubs her chin. “Most of what separates a billionaire from the random dreamer is being able to trust their instincts. People talk a lot about learning from failure, but you don't have time to learn from failure if you're going to be a billionaire before age thirty.”
“You know to hold and how to fold,” Gavrolovic says, and for a minute I'm reminded of the old gambling song, the one
I've heard played way too often since I moved out to Vegas. But he isn't pulling a misheard song lyric out of his elbow. He's trying to explain.
To make excuses.
“You knew when get out, Jessica. Most everyone else stayed in game too long.” He rubs his forehead, then rubs his arm. “I want to live.”
“Planting a second explosive in my mom's arm wasn't the way...” I start, but Mom herself is the one who holds her hand up.
“There will be lots of time for yelling later,” she says.
Julian's putting some schematics up on a big monitor. They mean zip to me, but Jessica, Gavrolovic, and several of the other guys study the screen like it might mean something to them.
“You shouldn't sit touching her.” Quentin comes up to me on the other side from my mom. “It's a small device. Limited range.” He means if I'm not sitting here with my arm around my mom's waist, I won't get hurt.
I shake my head. I'm not letting go of my mother.
Gavrolovic is saying what he knows, which isn't much, and then Julian is saying what he knows, which isn't much more.
“It isn't obvious how it's triggered, so it's hard to know where to begin,” Julian says.
The rest of the staff, some dozen or so people, are quiet as mice. The sound of people thinking isn't very loud.
Then, suddenly, Jessica starts laughing. And that's as loud as it gets.
Chapter Nineteen
Jessica
“Her first,” says Gavrolovic.
What a gentleman. Now I remember why his family locked him up in the Swiss school. Something about medical experiments on cats.
“I never liked you, Nick,” I say. “Even when we were friends, I never liked you.”
“Never liked you either, Jessica,” he says. “So we are even.”
Cherry Dearborn shrugs. “I don't mind going first.” She thrusts out her arm. “Hell, I prefer it.”
Jesus. The brass balls on this woman.
“I'll be holding your hand the whole time, Mom.” Emily gives me a look like I'd better not even dream of forbidding it.