Private Security

by Mallory Kane

  He had slowed down. Why? Whoever he was, he’d had plenty of time to get to her by now. She clung to the wall, her left hand feeling the way ahead of her.

  Her hand hit something cold and hard with a dull thud that to her ears sounded like a gong. She felt it—it was a fire extinguisher. She must be close to the door. She blew out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Her stuttering pulse slowed.

  The flashlight’s beam swept across the floor, pulling her gaze to it. She measured the near edge of the ellipse with her eyes. He was close and he was still coming.

  Then a muffled sound reverberated through the building. Panic gripped her again and she froze. Her fingers tingled and her stomach sank.

  The sound was unmistakable, wasn’t it? It sounded like a heavy door closing, she thought. But where? In front of her?

  The echo bounced from wall to wall, from ceiling to floor, all around her. Why did sounds that were ordinary in the daytime become magnified and distorted in the dark?

  Taking a deep breath and blowing it out eased her shivering panic a bit. Concentrate. Listen.

  Who had slammed the door, if it was a door slamming? It could have been a piece of debris falling, she supposed. Did the guy with the flashlight have a partner? A dreaded certainty weighed her down. Even if the sound she’d heard had come from the fire exit, she still had only one choice. She had to get to the door. She didn’t know how far the nearest exit was and she’d never find it in the dark.

  With her tense muscles beginning to ache and her confidence draining away, she slid farther along the wall.

  Her toe bumped something. It rolled noisily. She stiffened, her arms and legs quivering in reaction. Her first instinct was to reach for it, to quiet it, but she suppressed the urge. The man with the flashlight knew where she was anyway.

  We’ve got to keep going. Get outside where we can see. It sounded so easy, but what if she opened the door to an ambush?

  A chill crawled up her spine, raising the hairs on her nape. Her body was betraying her—giving in to fear. She was close to the breaking point.

  Suddenly, she was surrounded by sound. Rustling, whispering. The nearly silent footsteps were getting louder. The flashlight’s beam was brighter—blinding. And the sound of that door still resonated through the walls.

  Forcing herself to ignore her imagination, she patted the wall with her left hand and stretched to feel as far in front of her as possible. Where was the damn fire door? Shouldn’t she have reached it long before now?

  She kept moving, her hand kept sliding until finally her fingers hit a door frame. Thank God!

  At the same time, the flashlight beam reached her boots. This was it. She pulled her weapon from the waistband of her jeans, thumbed off the safety and gripped it two-handed.

  She took a deep breath and pushed against the metal panic bar with her elbow, preparing to lead with her gun. Maybe they wouldn’t expect her to have a weapon.

  The door slammed open. Light blinded her. Her grip tightened on her gun. Then she felt a rough hand on her arm and pain exploded behind her eyes.

  * * *

  JULIANA’S HEAD FELT LIKE somebody had stomped on it. She curled her fingers and they scraped across rough, cold concrete. She decided that before she moved, she needed to do an inventory—see if she was all in one piece. She knew her head was attached to her neck because both of them throbbed with pain.

  Her shoulders hurt, too, especially the left one. She flexed her fingers against the concrete. All ten present and accounted for. She felt vaguely nauseated and her left hip ached. Apparently, she was still intact.

  She tried lifting her head. The throbbing pain turned to screaming agony.

  “All right, then. Stop whimpering and sit up slowly.”

  She jerked in surprise and pain stabbed into her brain. Carefully maneuvering her hands under her to lift her leaden head, she grimaced and pulled herself to her hands and knees.

  “Oh!” she grunted as she rolled into a sitting position. As soon as her hands were free, she gripped either side of her head. Her fingers touched thick, sticky wetness on the left side of her head. Blood. “Ow,” she groaned.

  “I said, enough whining.”

  She raised her head a millimeter at a time. Highly polished black shoes came into her line of vision, as did two exquisitely tailored pant legs. She almost chuckled. Her brain seemed to be on autopilot. She couldn’t make it assess the situation or scope out her surroundings for a possible escape. In fact, it hurt her head to even think about not thinking.

  She winced and that hurt her head a lot. So she just let her thoughts go and listened to them. The tailored pant legs were a dark charcoal-gray with a pinstripe that she would swear was pink. The coat was a match for the pants. The shirt, which had to be silk, was white and the tie was an abstract pattern of gray, black, white and pink.

  Then she noticed that the suit was big—very big. It had to be to fit that body into it. Those were the hands that had grabbed her—huge and beefy. He wore a large opal ring on the left pinkie and his nails were buffed.

  “Feeling better?” the man asked, as he shrugged out of his suit jacket and tie and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He carefully folded the jacket and tie and set them on the loading dock.

  Juliana noticed something odd about his voice. No, not his voice, his words. He had some kind of accent. She filed that information away to think about later, when her head didn’t hurt so much.

  She focused on his head and wished upon him the pain she was feeling in hers. He was bald—shaved-head bald, not genetically bald. His head was shaped like an egg, but he didn’t look silly. He looked ominous. His eyebrows were bushy and slanted downward toward his nose, giving him a perpetual scowl. The nose looked as though it had been broken more than once. His lips were full. His mouth had an odd slant that transformed the frown into a smirk.

  She shivered. He looked as though he could kill her with one hand and not even chip a nail.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. Her voice gave her away, though. It was high-pitched and timid.

  “Ah, the usual question. I’ll take that as a yes, that you are feeling better. Shall we get down to business, then?”

  She was beginning to notice things around her, although the connection between her eyes and her brain was still a bit hazy. They were right outside the west fire exit, on a concrete loading dock. Somewhere—she couldn’t remember which side—there was a ramp for rolling dollies and carts. If she could get to it—

  A noise behind her made her jump. The throbbing in her head made her teeth ache as she squinted at the man behind her. She recognized his skinny frame and the ridiculous tattoos he had all over his arms. He was holding a flashlight that had blood smeared on the edge of it.

  “You’re that guy!” she cried. “You stole my letter!” She couldn’t come up with his name, but she knew it was him. She recognized the colorful snake tattoo, as well as his narrow face and bad teeth.

  “Get her up,” the big man said.

  “Maynard,” she said. “Your name’s Maynard.”

  “She’s—” Maynard started.

  “Shut up! Get her on her feet.”

  Maynard reached for her. She cringed away and held up her hands. “Don’t touch me. I’ll get up.” She tried to get her feet under her, but her head began to swim.

  Maynard grabbed her under her arms and jerked her upright.

  Nausea gripped her. For a couple of seconds she clung to Maynard as she struggled to stand on her own.

  “Very good, Ms. Caprese. Now to business.”

  “What—business?” Juliana rasped. She let go of Maynard’s ratty T-shirt and wiped her hands on her jeans. Getting away from him cured a lot of the queasiness. “Who are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter who I am. Not to you. What matters is why we’re here like this. You’re meddling in things that are none of your business.”

  “None of my—” Sharp, searing anger burned away her queasiness. “I am tr
ying to find out who caused my father’s death. It is my business!”

  The bald man shook his head. He reached into the inside pocket of his coat and brought out a fingernail file. He looked at his nails, then ran the file across one. “You’re annoying Mr. Vega. That’s never a good thing.”

  “I knew it! Vega’s behind all this, isn’t he? You—” She jabbed a finger in Maynard’s direction. “Vega ordered you to attack me, didn’t he?”

  “Please, Ms. Caprese,” the bald man said, lifting the hand with the file in it. “Calm down. I’m sure you can understand that accidents happen.”

  Juliana’s scalp burned; she was so angry. “The Sky Walk’s collapse was no accident. It was negligence at the very least.”

  The man shook his head, his expression showing regret. “As I said, accidents happen. It would be a tragedy if you were to fall from the cross beams of the casino’s ceiling while trying to find proof for your theory about the Sky Walk.”

  “What?” His words made no sense at first. Casino’s ceiling? Her head was still pounding. Then it hit her: he was threatening her.

  “Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “You’ll never get me up there. If you want me dead, you’ll have to shoot me. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Trust me, you will. Maynard—”

  Juliana reached for her gun but slapped at her empty waistband. Maynard’s skinny arm hooked around her neck with surprising strength. She instinctively grabbed his tattooed forearm and tried to stomp on his feet, but he was as quick and agile as he was strong.

  The bald man approached her. He still held something in his hand, but it was no longer the fingernail file. It was a syringe.

  “No!” she cried, then filled her lungs to scream, but he punched her in the stomach.

  Her breath whooshed out and pain cramped her insides. Before she could draw in another, she felt a pinprick on the side of her neck and everything went black.

  * * *

  THE CORVETTE’S TIRES screeched as Dawson turned in to the large driveway on the west end of the Golden Galaxy Casino. He had no plan except to storm the casino and find Jules. He headed toward the main entrance, but as he passed the loading dock, he caught a glimpse of a white face and a cloud of black hair.

  Jules! He slammed on the brakes. Threw the stick into Reverse. Replayed the snapshot his brain had just taken.

  A man held Jules’s limp body as a smaller figure opened the fire door.

  Dawson laid rubber as he backed around the massive concrete corner of the loading platform. Screeching to a halt and killing the engine, he jumped out just as the smaller man whirled around in the doorway to look at him. It was Maynard, the skinny tattooed skunk who’d attacked Jules and stolen her letter.

  The skunk’s close-set eyes widened. He yelled something. Then he backed through the door and manually jerked it shut.

  Dawson took a running start and leaped up onto the dock. He lunged for the door. Pulling his weapon with one hand, he yanked the door open with the other.

  He forced himself to enter cautiously. One or both men might be on the other side, waiting to shoot him. Standing in the doorway, he was painfully aware that his form was clearly outlined by the waning daylight. But he needed the light, too. He’d be totally blind in the dark until his eyes adapted—a sitting duck.

  He didn’t see anyone, but he heard footsteps—the sound of leather-soled shoes on hollow metal—the sound moving upward. Could that be what it sounded like? A ladder? He hadn’t noticed a metal ladder in the casino. It had to be a service ladder, leading up to the network of beams that formed the framework of the huge glass dome. Was the bald goon climbing up to the rafter beams? With Jules?

  Dawson gripped his weapon two-handed and swept the area in front of him with his gaze, then he let the fire door close.

  When the sound of the latch slipping into place echoed through the dark building, he blinked several times. Come on. I need to see.

  He heard the bullet whiz past him at the same time as the report. He ducked, too late to dodge that bullet. But he had to shield himself from the next.

  Maynard had to be as blinded by the darkness as he. If so, he’d lucked out with a damn close shot. But just in case the skunk could see better than he could, he stayed low, studying the shadows, trying to judge what was where by the different shades of black.

  He remembered that the poker room was on this end of the casino, near Caprese’s office. Now the varied shadows made a little more sense. They were oval tables and straight chairs and small beverage carts. Plenty of cover. Or they would be once he figured out where Maynard was. He had an inkling from that first shot, but if the little skunk was smarter than Dawson thought he was, he’d have moved after he fired.

  Crouched against the wall, Dawson yanked out his phone. He dialed 9-1-1.

  “This is 9-1-1. What is the nature of your emergency?” the detached voice asked.

  “Golden Galaxy Casino, Waveland,” he said quietly but distinctly. “Shots fired. Two armed males holding female hostage.”

  “Sir, can you—”

  A shot rang out.

  “Send the police now! Golden Galaxy!” he commanded and hung up. He stuck the phone back in his pocket.

  “Maynard!” he shouted. “Give it up. You know I’ll get you.”

  No response. Would Maynard figure out Dawson was baiting him? Dawson was betting he wouldn’t.

  “I’d hate to have to kill you, Maynard. Give yourself up and I’ll put in a good word for you.”

  “Screw you!” Maynard shouted in his tinny voice.

  Dawson pinpointed the direction. For a split second, he hesitated. How much was he willing to bet that the big man had carried Jules up to the metal beams? How much was he willing to bet that she wasn’t there with Maynard?

  Was he willing to bet her life?

  “Jules!” he shouted, but there was no answer. He shook his head. He had to. It was the only chance he had to save her. If he was wrong and his bullet found her— He shuddered. He took a long breath, rose and fired a shot.

  Maynard yelped, cursed, then returned fire—three shots.

  He doubted he’d hit the skinny skunk. The yelp was more likely surprise. He held his fire and crawled out onto the floor, away from the wall.

  Another shot rang out. He dived instinctively and slammed into the leg of a table. He rubbed his stinging arm, feeling the unmistakable thick warmth of blood. The damn thing had cut him. It was metal, and that was a good thing. He was glad to sacrifice a little blood to find out that the tables would shield him from bullets. Now if he could just get Maynard to empty his gun. So far he’d fired four rounds.

  “Maynard, you’re going to run out of bullets,” he shouted, hoping the skunk wouldn’t be able to keep from bragging if he had another magazine.

  No answer.

  Dawson wasted another bullet, hoping to draw Maynard’s fire. Sure enough, two more shots rang out.

  Then, just as the echo of the second shot was fading, Dawson heard a sound that chilled him to the bone.

  Jules screaming—or trying to.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Juliana had tried to scream, but her voice sounded so weak that it broke and ended with a fading moan.

  “Jules!” he cried, unable to help himself. Where was she? The sound had echoed through the silent casino, but Dawson was pretty sure it had originated from over his head. That bald goon had carried her up to the ceiling. But why?

  Bald goon. Damn! It was the same man who’d threatened his dad, who’d threatened his mom’s life. He worked for Tito Vega!

  So it was Vega who’d had her followed, who was determined to stop her from digging into the collapse of the Sky Walk.

  “Daw—” Jules started, but Dawson heard a sharp slap and she cried out. The bastard had hit her. Anger burned in him.

  Stop, he ordered himself. Focus. What was Vega up to?

  Then he knew. Oh, God! He knew without a doubt exactly what the plan was. The goon had tak
en her up to the metal framework that had held the Sky Walk suspended over the casino.

  It was brilliant. He had to give Vega that. Poor Juliana had become obsessed with finding someone to blame for her father’s death. She’d climbed up there to see for herself if the Sky Walk had failed or had been tampered with. She’d slipped and fallen to her death on the floor of the casino.

  Dawson shook off that image and tamped down the fear and sudden grief that came with it. He couldn’t let emotions get in the way if he was going to have any chance to save her.

  Tomorrow when demolition started, if the work crew didn’t find her broken body in the wreckage, they’d plow her under the twisted wires and debris.

  “Hey, Maynard, why did your fat, ugly partner leave you down here to get shot? Because if you don’t give up now and make a deal, I am going to shoot you. And because you hurt her, I’m going to make it count. How’d you like to get gut shot? You’ll have to carry your bathroom around strapped to a hole in your belly for the rest of your life. How much fun do you think that’ll be in prison?”

  “Shut up!” Maynard shrieked.

  At the same time, the bald goon yelled, “Maynard, he’s trying to rattle you! Kill him and get up here!”

  Dawson rose up enough to get off a shot, then he scrambled toward the stage. He was gambling that the service ladder was hidden behind the stage.

  Maynard shot three more times. Hell, that was nine shots. How big a magazine did he have? Must be a fifteen or a twenty-five round.

  Dawson craned his neck, trying to get a glimpse of Jules and the goon. The sun was long gone and he could see the dark sky through the glass dome above him.

  “Hey, Baldy,” he shouted, squinting, searching for a human shape.

  There! He saw a movement. Then he could make out Jules’s pale oval face and the goon’s shiny head. “You’re not leaving here alive, you know.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” the man yelled. “Worry about yourself and your young woman. You are the ones who won’t leave here alive.”

  “How’re you going to get out? The police are on their way, and of course I’m here, just waiting for you to climb down those stairs.” Dawson heard a noise behind him and ducked. He felt the heat from the bullet as it whizzed past his neck. Way too close for comfort.