Just before he released the volunteers to roam freely around the bar, he leaned into the man who chose to be a wolf and whispered to him that when Trent said the word dinner, the man should start stalking the rabbit as if he were hunting it for his meal.
Normally, Trent would never have done anything so careless and irresponsible, because the man and the woman didn’t know each other. He had no idea what kind of person the wolf was or what he was capable of doing.
As the volunteers wandered off the stage and began roaming through the bar tables, the crowd started laughing at the different animal noises coming out of the three people, despite Trent’s direction that they remain silent. But even as Trent asked the crowd to lower their voices, he couldn’t help but make a side comment into the mic.
“That rabbit has no idea how lucky she is that the wolf already ate dinner tonight!” Trent said, as he elicited even more laughter from the audience members.
As soon as Trent said the word dinner, the man acting like a wolf stopped what he was doing and turned his head to the short, attractive blonde woman who was hopping around in her little mini-skirt.
The wolf had been howling on and off for the better part of three minutes, but as soon as he focused on the rabbit at the other end of the stage, he became deathly quiet. The sudden predatory switch was not lost on the audience, and they too quieted down and watched for his next move with anticipation as he stalked his prey.
Even though Trent had seen similar intense transformation before, he still was fascinated by the change that had come over the man. The volunteer was completely focused on the woman in the mini-skirt who was still oblivious to him, lost in her own happy world of bonding with her spirit animal. To her credit, she was giving the people at the front tables a pretty good show all on her own.
But she had no idea that there was now a deadly killer closing in on her and that a crowd of observers was watching the whole thing unfold.
From the looks in the eyes of the audience members, most of them wanted to see the man really attack the woman. It probably would have been the most entertaining thing they had witnessed during their stay in Vegas.
As the wolf closed in on the rabbit, the man started to actually drool—strings of saliva dripping from his mouth like a starving dog that knew it was finally time to feast.
Seeing how things were about to go too far even for him, Trent stepped forward, ready to intervene. If the two subjects had been friends, like before with Zana and her goth buddy, or if Trent knew more about the man himself, he might have let the scene unfold for a bit longer.
As it was, he didn’t want to risk someone actually getting hurt. He also didn’t want to risk being sued.
Just as the wolf tensed its body to spring, Trent shouted the word, Cadillac, and all of the volunteers stopped and blinked their eyes as if trying to reorient themselves. Their behaviors returned to normal as they made their ways back to the chairs on the stage.
As they did so, some members of the crowd moaned in disappointment, and one person even booed.
In response, Trent simply made a theatrical shrug toward the audience and helped each of the volunteers onto the stage. After they were all seated, Trent quickly stepped through the process for bringing them out of their trances.
During the last part of his show, mostly everyone raised their hands when asked whether they had been truly afraid at some point during the performance. Afterwards, the crowd of tired tourists slowly cleared the room, and Trent sat down on the edge of the stage with his head in his hands. He was already exhausted, and he still had another show to deliver.
His nap beforehand hadn’t helped at all, and if anything, he felt more drained, like someone coming down from a few too many shots of espresso.
Trent thought back to the man who had turned into a wolf and how he had ordered him to attack the blonde. Taking that kind of a risk wasn’t something that he usually did, at least not with other people’s lives and well being. He felt a little bit off tonight, but that didn’t explain it. For some reason, he had felt a strong disdain for the woman—like there was something about her that deserved punishing.
And that emotion combined with the fact that he had acted on it frightened Trent.
He was also having lingering pangs of guilt about abandoning Zana in the tunnels, and he was anxious about his involvement with her overall. What was he doing getting involved with a homeless woman?
He had never had a panic attack before, but his heart was beating faster than ever before, and it pulsed so strongly that he could feel it striking the walls of his chest. He knew that people were not normally consciously aware of things like heart rate and breaths per minute, but he counted his heart at over a hundred beats a minute, when normally it was closer to seventy. Something was going on with him, and he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was.
His baggy suit suddenly felt very constraining and tight on him, and he absently loosened his tie, trying to take a deep breath while he sat on the edge of the stage.
After fifteen minutes or so, the hotel owner came over to shake Trent’s hand and to tell him about all the good feedback he was receiving from the show. Trent was still stewing and barely registered anything the man was saying.
At the same time, the next crowd of people was already starting to trickle in, filling the bar with close to a hundred people. Despite his continued anxiety over something he couldn’t quite pin down, Trent allowed himself a quick smile. Word of his show was spreading, which was good news for him on all levels.
The sense of accomplishment helped him suppress his rising anxiety enough for him to get through the next hour and a half. Only once during his show did he find himself losing focus, his thoughts drifting off to the mountains of Alaska, the tunnels under Vegas, and having sex with both Christina and Zana—sometimes separately and at other times, together.
After the last of the midnight crowd disappeared, Trent found himself standing by the stage alone. It was 1:40 a.m., and the show had ended up going so well that now he was not tired at all. In fact, he felt like going out on the town and doing something, although he wasn’t exactly sure what.
He didn’t have to get up early in the morning, so he decided to head up to his room for a few minutes, wash up, and then hit the strip—maybe have a few drinks and see if he could meet some new people. Since he was in a mood to socialize, he even decided to keep his mentalist suit on.
He found that it always helped him stay in the correct frame of mind.
Trent smiled to himself as he walked out of the hotel lobby and up the outside set of concrete stairs. Maybe tonight would be a good opportunity to perform bar tricks in exchange for shots of Jägermeister—an old favorite of his.
As he stepped onto the second-floor landing, he looked up and saw Zana standing outside his room in her tight black jeans and a cutoff black T-shirt. She had a bottle of what looked to be wine in her hand and an evil grin on her face.
The logical side of Trent was mildly annoyed that she had shown up, probably to ask for his help again, but the majority of him was excited to see her. He immediately decided that he could always visit the strip on some other night.
At least having sex with her would help him relax and would serve as an excellent distraction to whatever was going on inside his brain today.
He walked up to her, pulled her into him by the small of her back, and kissed her passionately.
After a minute, they separated.
“I’m glad you’re OK,” Trent said. “I was worried about you. But I’m also a little surprised to see you.”
“Well, mister…I saw your show a couple of nights ago and was hoping you could help me with something,” Zana said, looking directly into his eyes.
He at least had to give her points for persistence.
“My answer is the same, Zana” he said.
“Then I don’t think you understand what I’m asking you for help with,” she said.
Trent raised an eyebrow.<
br />
He unlocked the door to his hotel room and walked in closely behind her.
The door had not yet fully closed behind them before Trent was pulling off her shirt, and she was unbuckling his belt.
He felt a tingle up the nape of his neck and his hair stood on end as he reached out his arm and opened the blinds. Stripes of moonlight bathed the bed, and anyone who walked by might see them in all their nudity, but the thought of that made him even more excited.
Before lying down with her she removed her silver Ankh necklace and Trent, in turn, removed his silver pendant, leaving him completely naked in more than one way.
The sex was immediate and familiar, and he drank in her smells like a man dying of thirst who was suddenly presented with a jug of cold, clean water.
Their union was primal, animal-like, and increasingly uninhibited as the night progressed. The next couple of hours blended into a chaotic ensemble of exploring each other’s bodies in every way imaginable, alternating between slow and caring to hard and borderline brutal.
At 4:43 am, they finally paused, rolled over and collapsed. Trent forced himself to stand up and to close the blinds. He knew the sun would be up shortly and that he definitely needed to sleep in.
He barely made it to the bed and kissed Zana on the lips before falling into a sound sleep.
When he woke up later that morning, Zana was gone.
Chapter 21
WHEN TRENT TURNED over and saw that Zana wasn’t there, his first thought was that she had stepped out to get breakfast for the two of them.
He looked at the hotel room’s digital alarm clock that read 11:28 a.m. and reached over to feel the space where she had been sleeping.
The sheets were cold.
Between the fact that the breakfast bar downstairs closed at 11 a.m. and the fact that Zana had been gone long enough for her body heat to fully dissipate, he had to conclude that there was at least a chance she had simply left him without saying goodbye.
Now he just had to figure out why.
Looking around the room, he didn’t see a note of any kind, and that worried him.
He knew that there was no obligation between the two of them, but he was an excellent judge of people. In fact, he made his living at being one. And he knew that Zana was not the kind to up and leave without a word unless something unplanned had happened.
His analytical mind started racing through the possibilities.
Perhaps she had remembered while downstairs at the breakfast bar that she was late for work. If that had been the case she most likely would have left a note for him at the front desk, which Trent made a mental note to check shortly.
Or maybe she ran into a friend and was downstairs chatting even now.
Both of these were plausible scenarios, but Trent’s intuition warned him that something far worse had happened to Zana.
He jumped out of bed and slipped into his baggy black suit instinctively, before he even realized what he was doing. He spied his cross-trainers on the floor across the room, but decided to remain dressed as he was, just in case he was out all day and had to go directly to his show. At this point in his life, his suit was as comfortable as any pair of jeans, and was infinitely more useful with its myriad pockets and places for secret stashes.
As he laced up his black dress shoes with their comfortable rubberized soles, he spied Zana’s silver Ankh necklace on the nightstand. She had taken it off the night before and had either left it behind accidentally or perhaps as a sign to Trent that she planned on returning soon.
He was unsure if the abandoned necklace was a good or a bad sign.
He finished tying his shoes, grabbed his wallet, keys, and Zana’s necklace, and dashed off to the hotel lobby. He could have called ahead to check his messages, but he wanted to be able to ask about her face-to-face if it came down to that.
When Trent rushed into the front lobby, Buddy was working the front desk. Trent noted that the overweight clerk didn’t get much time off from his job at the hotel, but he was happy to see a familiar face and to find someone who at least knew what Zana looked like.
When Trent asked Buddy about Zana, the man grinned and said that he had indeed seen her earlier, around 10 a.m. or so, at the breakfast bar. She had left with a handful of food and a big cup of orange juice cradled in her arms. She had also flashed Buddy a big shit-eating grin as she had hurried past him.
Buddy had assumed that she had been on her way back up to Trent’s room with the food. And no, she had not left a note for him at the front desk.
Trent ran outside and looked around for any clues to her whereabouts. He knew the trail would be cold, but often even the smallest of details could prove useful.
He scanned the parking lot and the area just outside the entranceway but at first didn’t see anything of note.
Then he glanced down at the foot of the concrete stairwell. There was a nearly-dried splash of liquid right next to the first step. Trent bent down, touched his finger to the wetness, and sniffed it. He could easily smell sugar and the scent of oranges.
He looked behind him and saw an overturned plastic Solo cup with a bit of orange liquid still inside resting against the concrete wall.
It was only guesswork, but his intuition was strong, and it was also usually right. She had made it only as far as the outside stairwell, and then something had happened. All he could imagine was that someone had taken her away. Maybe it had been her friends come to rescue her from Trent, the crazy outsider who wouldn’t help with their problems. But most likely, it was someone else with more nefarious intentions.
Why would anyone want to take Zana? He had no idea. The truth was, despite their intimacy, he didn’t know much about her. Maybe she owed someone a lot of money. Or perhaps an ex-lover had finally found her since she wasn’t sequestered away in her usual underground hiding place.
Anyone could have taken her for any reason, but Trent had no way of knowing who or why.
Even as he stood there trying to sort things through, he noticed how empty the parking lot at the Lucky Imp was. In the five minutes he had been standing there, he hadn’t seen another person. If the lot had been this empty earlier that morning, it would have been easy for someone to drive up and take Zana without ever being noticed.
The first thing he thought about was calling the police. But he knew that it would be too early to declare her as a missing person. And once he told them that the girl was homeless and lived in the tunnels beneath the city, he knew their interest would dwindle substantially—in her, at least.
The real reason he was hesitating to call the police was because he wasn’t so sure that he wanted to have them asking too many questions about him. Trent didn’t have a criminal record, but there were some things he had done in his recent past that the cops would be very interested in learning about.
Either way, he thought it best to avoid the law as much as possible and for as long as possible. If Zana didn’t turn up soon or if he didn’t uncover any leads, he would call the cops, but first he had to try to find her himself.
But Vegas was a big town, and she could be anywhere on or below its streets.
Chapter 22
HE REMEMBERED that Zana had mentioned working at a flower shop just a few streets away, so that would be his first stop. He knew the shop would be within walking distance, but he took his rent-a-car to save time.
Trent hopped into his white Prius and zipped out of the hotel parking lot. One quick search with his smart phone, and within minutes he was parallel parking outside the only flower shop on Riviera Street.
He rushed into the shop, causing the chimes on the door to jangle loudly as he entered. He wondered if every small shop in Vegas used chimes to announce their customers. The woman working behind the counter and a couple of people browsing the roses glanced at him with the same disapproving look reserved for someone who talks too loudly inside a library or a church.
Trent immediately ascertained that these were some very serious flower
shoppers.
Although he feared that he already knew the answer to his question, he walked over to the woman arranging bunches of wild flowers and asked her if Zana was working.
The woman looked a little surprised at his question but told him that Zana was supposed to have shown up a few minutes ago, and was late.
As an afterthought, she added that Zana was never late and that he was more than welcome to wait for her in the store if he wanted to.
Trent thanked her but instead ran outside and got into his car.
She could be anywhere, but the only other people he knew to ask concerning her whereabouts were Zana’s friends who lived in the tunnels. So that was where he was going next.
But since he had been followed the last time he was down there, he wanted to find some kind of a weapon before he returned.
He started the car, but then saw the marquee for a pawn shop about a block away. He shut the engine off again, got back out of the car, and ran to the store.
As soon as he walked in, he knew he was in the right place. It wasn’t as good as the pawn shop on television, but it was filled with all sorts of antique and modern weapons, along with art, war memorabilia, musical instruments, jewelry, and anything else someone could think of buying or selling. Trent figured that pawn shops this close to the strip probably did a booming business with all the unlucky gamblers looking to fund just one more opportunity for their luck to turn around.
Now the question was, what kind of weapon did he want? He needed something that was legal to carry, and something that wouldn’t attract too much attention. He was heading down into the tunnels, which would keep him out of sight of anyone who would care, but he had to get to the manhole first.
He saw axes, nun-chucks, throwing stars, knives, and even a halberd. A knife would be good to have no matter what. Easily concealed and highly practical. His eyes settled on a flip blade with a combo serrated edge and a black rubberized handle.
The Whittier Trilogy Page 20