Lucky Score

by Deborah Coonts

  “You love me?” Sky Ponder whispered as the realization dawned.

  Too late. Way too late.

  Love forces you to be all in. If you’re not, if you hedge your bets, it’ll bitch-slap you to Hell and back...if you make it back.

  Even though Sky Ponder was a snake, I felt horrible for her. You grow up having to protect yourself, to scratch and claw for every penny and you never learn how to let go, how to trust. Her path and her fall—I needed to pay attention.

  “Kid,” Mr. Ponder addressed his comment to the young man who’d given me the best advice of the evening, to run for it. “Encourage Ms. O’Toole to step completely inside, then pull up the stairs.” Red lights strobed through the window. “Do it now!”

  Tires screeched as several cars skidded in around the plane.

  Shit! I knew why Fox wasn’t here. I kept my spot in the doorway. “Don’t shoot anybody, Mr. Ponder. You’re free and clear, and broken hearts, while extraordinarily painful, are not lethal. Trust me. I know.” I motioned the young pilot back, and he stepped into the shadow behind the bulkhead. “Get some help for Mr. Boudreaux, although, if he dies, the world would be a better place.” But having Ponder take the fall wasn’t something I wanted to see.

  I knew what I had to do. If I thought about it, I wouldn’t do it, so I didn’t. Instead, I reached in, grabbed Romeo, then threw myself backward down the stairs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  WITH ONE hand fisted in Romeo’s coat, I only had one other with which to grab the railing and slow our fall.

  Landing on my back, the air left me as I slid down the last two steps. Romeo landed on top of me, forcing the breath left out with a whoosh.

  This time it was his face in my crotch. He looked up at me and managed to blurt out, “I do miss you,” before we both scrambled off the stairs, ducked under the plane, and crouched behind the stairs. Little protection against the Feds with guns, but it was something.

  “Don’t…” I sucked in air. “They tell you…” More air. “To never go…”

  “With your captors? Yeah.”

  Romeo and I risked a peek. Looking out at all the people with guns, I reevaluated. Ponder was only one man with one gun.

  “First time for everything. Never imagined you doing what they say.” He put a hand on my back. “Are you okay?”

  “Tomorrow I will hurt in places I never knew I had. But we have one more person to save before I fall apart.”

  “Who?”

  “Reynolds.” I grabbed my phone and hit Jeremy’s speed dial.

  “Remind me to work for you more often. I’m sipping some fancy cocktail at a high-brow place, waiting for your bloke to do something, and all on your dime,” he said without preliminaries.

  “You’re still on Reynolds?”

  “He got a phone call. I followed him to Hyde at Bellagio. He’s waiting for somebody.” He listened while I filled him in. “Got it.”

  “Be very careful. And, if it’s a choice between you and Reynolds--”

  “I let the dingo get the cop.” A weird phrase, loosely translated I think it meant, “no way in Hell.”

  Knowing arguing with Jeremy was a waste of precious time, I pocketed my phone. “We’ve got to hurry,” I said to Romeo.

  “Reynolds?” Romeo shuddered in revulsion.

  “He’s been playing us. He’s been pretending to be the bad cop, playing it to his advantage. You showed up in the middle of his gig, threatening to ruin it all and blow his cover in the process.”

  Romeo sat back on his heels. “And he put me under the gun to keep me from interfering.” Skepticism infused every word. “I don’t believe it.”

  “You don’t want to believe it.” I took a breath, fighting my need to hurry. Fox had a huge head-start, and Jeremy was in the middle—we needed to hurry. “Think about it. He figured a way to keep you out of it. He cold-cocked you to prevent you from being the bagman for Lipschitz and Godwin. He kidnapped Miss P and took her out of the pawnshop before Fox, most likely, shot up the place.”

  “Why didn’t he go back and rescue everybody else? Marion Whiteside was there.”

  “I shot him in the foot and he had to go to the station with you.” My fault, but understandable, knowing what Romeo had seen fit to share with me. “Let me ask you a question.”

  “Fire away, even though you seem to have all the answers.” He wasn’t grousing, even though it seemed a lot like he could be.

  “Were you at War Vegas before I called you and sent you on a treasure hunt for Lake’s body?”

  “No.”

  I sighed. Just as I thought—in the dark, Bethany had mistaken Reynolds for Romeo. Even I’d had a hard time distinguishing them in a dark alley. “Reynolds had the rifle used to shoot Lake—he clocked Boudreaux in the face with it.”

  “Boudreaux killed Lake?”

  “No, Mrs. Ponder, but that’s where I need a bit more evidence. She was here and she shook sand out of her shoes in my office. But, that’s all I got on her. Either Reynolds saw her do it, as Fox probably thinks, or we’ll need the clothing she wore or some other physical evidence.”

  “What if we have her on tape at War Vegas?”

  “Do we?”

  “No.” The kid deflated.

  “Don’t give up, kid. Get a warrant. Search the plane, including the wastewater. She had to have cleaned up after she offed Lake. She could get on the plane without being seen—she’d had them park it at Henderson Airport. Much less traffic. And then swab-down the Secret Suite. That’s where they drugged Mr. Ponder, doused him in Lake’s blood, and gave him the murder weapon. As he was trippin’, they took him down the back staircase—the secret entrance to the Secret Suite, and shoved him into the lobby. Their only miscalculation was the Fentanyl. The Mrs. didn’t know her husband had a fairly serious habit and it would take a more than fairly serious amount to kill him.”

  “And Fox?”

  “He does the dirty work while Mrs. Ponder and Boudreaux keep everyone’s attention. Right now, he’s on his way to clean up that last little mess.”

  “Reynolds.” Romeo was starting to buy in.

  “What if Mrs. Ponder is smarter than we think?”

  “One of these idiots will roll.” I squeezed his shoulder. “We got this. But now we need to return the favor to Detective Reynolds. And we need to hurry.”

  “Are you sure about all of this?”

  “Yes.”

  Romeo dusted himself off. Hard to do crouched behind the stairs, but he made a valiant effort.

  Covered in blood, I didn’t even bother.

  “Where are we going?” Romeo asked.

  “Hold it right there.” A female voice.

  “Airport Police.”

  “Are they the Feds?” I asked Romeo.

  “Beats the hell out of me, but I think they’re the law around here.”

  The stairs started to ascend, leaving us rather exposed.

  “Someone’s buttoning up the plane.” Romeo couldn’t resist the obvious, but that meant he’d scraped the bottom of the I’ve-got-a-plan barrel.

  “Works for me as long as we keep the bird on the ground. They won’t be leaving.” I nodded toward the Prius.

  When we had headed for a showdown in the plane, Bentley had parked the car directly in front of the plane as close to the nose wheel as he could get without bending metal. I could just see the hood. The airport cops had him sprawled across it. He looked up to see me smiling at him. He gave me a thumbs-up and a shit-eating grin.

  “You want to take the lead in explaining all of this to the local constabulary? And make it quick. We’ve got to go.”

  EVEN THOUGH WE were well into the new day with sunrise not too far, the normal nighttime gridlock packed the Strip from Tropicana to Flamingo, slowing us to a crawl. Strolling pedestrians sped by us. Sipping from yards of daiquiris and margaritas and carrying buckets of beer, they leaned down to peek in at us, raising a glass as they strolled past. Some had lost various bits of clothing;
others had lost all inhibition.

  “Come on.” I popped the door before Bentley had time to stop. It didn’t matter. I hit the ground in an easy stride, Romeo on my heels.

  “Do you know how far we are?” Romeo sounded like he had no run left.

  “Hours if we stayed with the car.” I scanned the sidewalks. As luck would have it, a pedicab was parked under the portico of NewYork-NewYork. “This way.” The pedicab sat alone, the driver nowhere to be seen.

  Romeo, who’d fallen behind, arrived winded at my side. “You think he’ll be back soon.”

  Guess all the chasing bad guys recently paid off—I’d never been able to outlast the kid before. Or I was already dead—my calf didn’t hurt; my nose, even though I couldn’t breathe through it, didn’t leak blood. Only explanation was my heart had stopped. “Not waiting to find out.” I straddled the seat; my feet found the pedals. “Get in back.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  I showed him serious, then pushed down on the higher pedal. He dove into the back, then righted himself. His hand found a loop, and he held on like a toddler in a crowd. “I’d use both hands.”

  This time, he didn’t argue.

  “Where is the little bell? And what are you supposed to shout? On the left?” I wheeled down the driveway, ignoring cars coming at me. The traffic parted except for one large black SUV.

  “Shit!” Romeo shouted.

  At the last minute, I closed my eyes and pedaled as fast as I could. Tires screeched. Brakes smoked—I could smell it. A few invectives in a female voice and a language I couldn’t identify. Two breaths and I sneaked an eye open. We were still alive! At the sidewalk, I paused pedaling. “To the left!” I shouted at Romeo as I threw my weight into the left-hand turn, fighting centrifugal force. Behind me, I felt Romeo shift. The inside tires went light on me, but we hung on, thrusting our bodies as counterbalance like sailors on an America’s Cup boat.

  Once headed north, I hit the pedals again. Scattering pedestrians, I stood up and pumped furiously. At the Monte Carlo, construction in front forced me to veer into the street, against traffic. I hugged the fence and, for once, thanked the Powers that Be that the traffic was at a virtual standstill. The cars left just enough room to squeeze past. One cab took his share of the lane out of the sidewalk as well. I clipped him and thought, as awful as the cab drivers can be, it was cosmic justice. His shouts dwindled as I pedaled north as fast as I could, which, hyped on adrenaline, was pretty darn fast. Three young darlings clad in tubes of Lycra and balancing on stupid-high heels, scattered like a flock of geese as I wheeled around the front of The Cosmo, the hanging-out place of the beautiful twenty-somethings.

  Bellagio loomed in front of me. A crowd had gathered, spilling onto the Strip. They stood five-deep along the rail as I wheeled up the long, curving driveway, the fountains to my right. Tonight was Andrea Bocelli night—the first chords of “Music of the Night” sounded through the speakers lining the drive. The first salvo of the fountains drew a collective oh from the crowd. Billed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, the fountains always drew a crowd and a vigorous response. Last time I was in Geneva, their lone fountain shooting into the sky seemed pathetic in comparison. One compared to twelve hundred, lit by forty-five-hundred lights and they all dance to music?

  Nothing like it.

  But tonight, the crowd slowed me down. Coasting to a stop under the porte-cochere, I pulled out my phone and hit Jeremy’s number. “Where are you?”

  “Still at Hyde, but your guy is paying up. He’ll be on the move shortly.”

  I dismounted and took off at a run. Romeo was right behind me, his coat flapping, his breath coming in gasps. We dodged and darted through the crowd, hanging a right into the casino. Sticking to the right wall, we avoided most of the gambling crowd. Up ahead, I could see the door to Hyde on the right, with a bouncer out front.

  He didn’t even slow me down as we charged by. I heard him shouting behind us as he chased us inside. Beautiful people draped across the wicker furniture, basking in the glow of heaters, hip cocktails, and attention. Most weren’t startled as we ran into their presence. Instead, they looked at us with a bit of disdain as if we were beggars crashing a society soiree.

  Skidding onto the patio, we stopped. The bouncer roared behind us. “Romeo, take care of that. Do your badge thing.”

  He gave me a wide-eye but did as I asked. No more bellows. Easy as that. I needed a badge.

  Where was Jeremy?

  In the background, the fountains danced, booms announcing a spectacular launch of water into the night sky. Lights added an almost-daylight brightness to the lake. Underwater lights pointed toward the sky at each water nozzle.

  I spied Fox by the balustrade, the fountains dancing behind him. He saw me at almost the same time.

  “Fox!”

  A boom from behind him. Water shot into the sky.

  When I looked back, he was gone.

  Reynolds, three tables over, whirled when I shouted. I pointed to where Fox had been. He glanced below. With one hand on the balustrade, he vaulted over and he, too, disappeared.

  A body flashed by me. “I’m on this.” Jeremy!

  “Wait!”

  My shout didn’t even slow him down. With Romeo on his heels, the two of them vaulted into the darkness. I stepped to the railing and shook my head. Talk about jumping without thinking. Fox in front, the fountains still dancing, the three men following him—they formed a human wedge as they struggled through the knee-deep water. One misstep and they’d be singing soprano at the very least. In all likelihood, the force of the water being shot into the sky was probably lethal, but I wasn’t sure. Impossible to watch; impossible to look away.

  Men. Always opting for brute when brains would do nicely.

  I scrolled through the contacts on my phone. Finding the one I wanted, I pressed send. A crowd gathered around me, watching the show and the men dodging through it as I waited for an answer. This crowd used perfume and cologne as weapons—like a gas, the nauseating mixture enveloped me. One of the mating rituals I’d never understand, it fell on the spectrum of why waste time on the subtle art of seduction when one can hit them with a stone and drag them back to the cave? And look where that had gotten us.

  Finally, a voice on the other end saved me from my random mental walk. “Fountain Room.”

  I had to stick a finger in my other ear and strain to hear over the music, the excited chatter, and the booms and bursts of high-flying water. “Is Iceman around?” Iceman ran the fountain choreography. He’d come by his nickname when he helped solve an icing problem with the fountains—some bit of esoteric physics I didn’t understand, but apparently it almost caused Steve Wynn to stroke out. All those millions and the nozzles would ice over in the middle of a show? I’d stroke out, too.

  “He’s busy.”

  “It’s important.”

  “Call back. But you can’t have a private tour of the room nor can you play with the fountains. Not even for a blow job.”

  That flipped a switch. I lowered my voice to corporate bitch mode. “You put him on or I’ll have your ass. Come to think of it, your ass is a grape when I talk to your boss.”

  A pregnant pause. “I miscalculated. I’m sorry, sir.” Too little, too late. I knew his boss, and he’d take a dim view.

  He fumbled the phone, then a voice came over the line, one I recognized. “This is Walt.” Walt didn’t cotton to his nickname. Told me his mother had hung Walter on him. He loved his mother, so that’s what it would be. Gotta like a guy like that.

  “Hey, Walt. Lucky O’Toole.”

  “Hey, Lucky! Long time no see. You want to play with the fountains again?” We’d spent several hours in a dingy in the middle of the fountains with a bottle of bubbly choreographing a Vegas commercial for the Visitor’s Bureau one fine summer morning in the wee hours when magic lurked in all the nooks and crannies. And to think, a blow job had not been on the table at all.

  “Of course
. That kind of power goes right to my head. But not now. Right now, I need a favor.” I kept my eyes on my little band of merry men. Progress was slow.

  “Sure thing. What can I do you for?”

  He always said the same thing, the same way—he thought it was funny. I was pretty sure he didn’t realize he left himself wide open to all kinds of misinterpretation.

  “See those four idiots running through the fountains?” I watched them zig and zag. Jeremy, Reynolds and Romeo had fanned out behind Fox, trying to outflank him. A good strategy, but nobody was making much headway. The water and a healthy respect for water pressure slowed them down.

  “Yeah, we get them a lot. One wrong step and one of those fountains could cut them in half or at least do some serious damage to the delicates. The pressure is pretty intense.”

  A here-hold-my-beer-moment if there ever was one. “Yeah, well the one in front is wanted for murder. The three behind are with the authorities trying to corral him. Think you can cut him off at the pass for me?”

  “Song’s just ending. Let’s give the crowd an encore. What do you say?”

  “My thoughts exactly. Let’s run them around and tire them out.”

  Keeping the line open and the phone pressed to my ear, I watched as the three men and one idiot, to the extent that wasn’t redundant, staggered through the water, the fountains firing, then dancing around them. An eight-and-a-half-acre lake was a big corral. This could be fun.

  As the song hit its final high note, like the fireworks finale on the Fourth of July, all the fountains burst skyward. The water rained down in a soft sizzle, melting into a fine mist as the music trailed away. A roar and clapping erupted from the crowd.

  Fox made a beeline for the nearest exit point—the far side. The shops at Bellagio loomed over him. At this time of night, they’d be closed. If he made it, his only entry point back into the hotel would be Prime or Picasso—the two restaurants on the lake level. They both would still be open.