Victoria shook her head. “I can’t take your bed. It’s not right.”
Jack chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve slept on much worse than a motel room floor. I’ll be fine, believe me.”
She shook her head again and he thought she was going to protest more. Then she sighed and slid under the blankets, pulling them up to her chin. “Thank you so much,” she said and closed her eyes.
“You’re very welcome,” Jack answered. Then he slipped out the door, locking it behind him, and went to work.
22
Blake Standiford was playing blackjack.
Drunk.
It was a dangerous combination, stupid really. He knew that but didn’t care. He was struggling mightily with the notion that just because some pushy bitch had gotten herself killed—which was no more than she deserved—he now was being forced to pack up and leave the town in which he had been born and raised and had lived his entire life.
It wasn’t fucking fair.
So Blake was angry. He was also a little scared. He hated to admit it, even if only to himself, but he was beginning to feel that little tingle up and down the back of his neck that told him time was running out. Big Tony had bought his bullshit story about having nothing to do with Kathy Saldana’s death, he knew that much.
But just because he had bought the lie this morning didn’t mean things couldn’t change. The fact of the matter was that things would change, and fast, once Sammy Saldana got past his shock and grief over Kathy’s death and started wondering why the hell she had been spending so much time in Vegas in the first place.
And who she had been spending it with.
When that happened, Sammy would send a crew down here to investigate, and when that happened, Blake knew he would be toast. He had done nothing to hide his relationship with Sammy’s woman, reveling in the bad-boy notoriety it had provided. In retrospect, flaunting the fact that he was screwing Kathy had been a monumentally bad idea, but long-range planning had never been Blake Standiford’s strong suit.
Thus, the reality was clear: it was critical he be out of Vegas before Shotgun Sammy’s boys arrived. That reality sucked, but sucking didn’t make it any less true.
There was one problem, though, and it was a big one. He needed scratch. Blake had never started a brand-new life before, but he had a pretty good handle on the value of money and he knew it would take cash, lots of cash, for him to do so while continuing to live the lifestyle he deserved. His plan had been to clean out a petty cash account kept for Mercadante family insider use, but upon his trip to the bank this afternoon, Blake had discovered the account closed, the funds transferred.
And that was a very bad sign.
Tony wouldn’t have closed the account for no reason. The reason may have had nothing to do with Blake, that was certainly possible, but if that were the case, why wouldn’t Tony have mentioned it? Told him how to access the new account?
It all added up to trouble, and when Blake Arthur Standiford III got nervous or angry, he drank. That had always been the case and tonight was no different.
He scanned his cards. A seven and a nine, with the dealer showing queen. Total shit, just like he had been getting all night. He sipped his whiskey and water and glowered at the dealer out of habit while he considered his options. Fat Tony may have shut off Blake’s access to the Mercadante family’s petty cash, but after a little serious thinking, Blake had come up with a backup plan.
It would be risky, but it might work. And if it did, Blake figured he would have all the money he would need for a long time. A massive drug deal was going down tomorrow afternoon south of Vegas. Heroin, being trucked up from South America. Mercadante’s organization was poised to rake in over a hundred grand in cash, all of it untraceable by the authorities and, even more importantly, by Big Tony Mercadante, should it go missing.
Blake hoped he would draw the assignment of making the exchange. Whether that would happen or not would probably depend on whether Tony still trusted him. Blake figured it was a tossup at this point.
But if he did draw the assignment, it would be a simple thing to make the transfer, then put two 9mm slugs into the head of whatever other Mercadante guy had been assigned to accompany him. Then he’d simply dump his partner’s body in the desert and take off. He would be three hundred miles away before Big Tony even knew he was gone.
And if he didn’t draw the assignment?
That would complicate things considerably, but Blake would adjust. He knew by heart the route the Mercadante family drivers would take to get to the exchange location. He should, he had driven it plenty of times. Blake would simply wait outside town and hijack the assholes with the cash before they could make it to the exchange. He’d force them off the road, put bullets in their heads in the ensuing confusion, then grab the cash and run.
It was risky but doable.
And what was more, Blake had no choice.
He became aware of the dealer making impatient grumbling noises and took a hit on his seven-nine and, predictably, busted. He was well aware it was a mistake to gamble—or to make life-and-death decisions, for that matter—while half-trashed, but fuck it. Even drunk, Blake Arthur Standiford III was smarter and sharper than just about anyone in Big Tony’s employ.
As far as the cards were concerned, they would turn around eventually. They always did. There was only one thing to do: wait it out until your luck changed.
Two things, he corrected himself. Wait out the cards and get another drink. A gorgeous waitress dressed in the requisite short skirt and tight blouse wandered by and Blake grabbed her, literally, getting a handful of young female ass.
She squirmed away, whirling and staring daggers at him, and immediately, seemingly out of nowhere, a bouncer appeared. He was big and strong and ill-tempered, but Blake knew he could make mincemeat out of the pussy if he wanted to.
The musclehead placed himself between the waitress and Blake and said, “Touch one of our girls again and I’ll break your fucking arm, got it?”
Blake returned the kid’s stare, humiliated now as well as angry and drunk and worried about his situation with Big Tony. The bouncer was definitely a juicer; his arms looked like a pair of oak trees had sprouted from his shoulders.
Blake didn’t care. He sneered at the kid and said, “You have no fucking idea who you’re talking to, pal. Do yourself a favor and get lost.”
“I know exactly who you are, little man. Big Tony says I have his personal permission to break you in half any time I want. So you do yourself a favor and stop harassing the girls, before I decide now is that time.” Oak Tree spun on his heel and strutted away, disappearing into the crowd like he had been a mirage.
Red-faced and furious, Blake threw his cards onto the table and leapt to his feet. He bumped into a man walking by and snarled, “Watch where you’re fucking going,” and the man opened his mouth to reply but then slammed it shut and kept walking.
“Fuck this,” Blake muttered as he stalked through the casino. He didn’t need aggravation from some snot-nosed little prick who thought he was king of the world just because he had been given the authority to push people around.
He weaved and wobbled as he headed to his car, drunker than he had realized, angrier than he had probably ever been without then killing someone. He ran his humiliation at the hands of the muscle-bound twenty-something gorilla over and over in his mind, getting more and more pissed off as he did.
So Big Fat Tony had given some half-wit bouncer permission to keep him in line. Him! Blake Arthur Standiford III! Blake hadn’t even been aware that Big Tony knew he liked to drink and gamble here, but obviously Tony knew more about his people than Blake had ever given him credit for.
Well, so what? Maybe after stealing all of that drug money tomorrow, Blake would drive into Vegas and spread Fat Tony’s brains all over his shabby office before hitting the road for good. He’d force the dumb fuck to squirm and beg for his life, drag it out a good long while, and then he’d bury two sl
ugs in Tony’s ear.
It was a satisfying daydream, and Blake ran variations of it through his head as he stumbled to his car and drove through the Nevada night. He knew he shouldn’t be driving after all of that whiskey, but fuck it. If a cop stopped him, he’d blow the unlucky fucker’s head off and drive away.
But no cops stopped him. He didn’t see so much as a single cruiser on the way home, and before he knew it, he had arrived back in his quiet little neighborhood, tired and drunk and ready for bed.
23
Victoria rarely made it through an entire night without dreaming. And those dreams were almost always nightmares, inevitably involving Joel Stark, horrifying vignettes of him raping her, cutting her, torturing her. Killing her. She often woke herself up screaming, shaking and sweaty, the covers twisted around her trembling body.
Tonight, though, was different. Tonight there were no nightmares. Tonight her dreams starred not Joel Stark but Harry Carson. And in those dreams, Harry flew out of the sky on a magnificent white-winged stallion, landing in the parking lot of the Royal Flush Apartments. He climbed down off his stallion and beat Joel Stark with his bare hands.
Then he pulled Victoria astride the horse, setting her behind him. Then they lifted into the air, the two of them soaring high above Las Vegas, whisking her away and removing the terror from her life forever.
24
Jack had long since come to grips with the odd hours demanded by his profession. Sipping coffee at Tequila Mockingbird, driving the piano player to his motel room after closing time, and then going off to work at two-thirty in the morning was no big deal for him because he had been doing most of his work while the rest of the world slept for over a decade and a half.
He had to admit, though, that he was tiring of these late-night hours, but he was used to them.
Victoria had told him the name of her apartment complex while they were chatting on one of her breaks at Tequila Mockingbird, and after programming the address into his portable GPS—a low-end model he had received from Mr. Stanton before leaving on this mission that would be smashed and then discarded in a random Dumpster before he left Nevada—Jack wound his way south out of Las Vegas toward Overton.
Traffic was light, although the streets were far from deserted. He stopped at a twenty-four-hour liquor store inside the Vegas city limits and bought a fifth of cheap whiskey and then continued on his way. As he drove, Jack tried to piece together what he had learned about Joel Stark from the terrified musician currently fast asleep in his bed.
He had no doubt she was telling the truth as she knew it. The young woman was sincere and honest to a fault, Jack could already see that. But more than anything else, she was clearly caught in the grip of a gut-wrenching terror that took precedence over everything else in her life. He doubted she could have made up a believable lie about Stark right now even if she wanted to. Survival was her priority.
It seemed a safe bet to Jack to assume that Stark had just arrived in the Las Vegas area when Victoria happened to see him a couple of days ago. His history had been one of rash action where she was concerned, which made sense given the nature of his obsession combined with his clearly sociopathic personality. Based on everything Victoria had said about Stark, Jack doubted the man had the ability to control his obsession for more than forty-eight to seventy-two hours.
If all of that was true—and that was big “if,” Jack knew—then he thought he might have come up with a reasonable solution to her problem, and one that would tie in well with his own reasons for being in Vegas.
And if not, if his analysis of Victoria’s longtime stalker was off the mark, all he would have wasted was a few hours of his time over the course of a couple of nights. It was a chance worth taking, because it seemed clear that the young red-haired musician was approaching her breaking point.
Jack entered the main parking lot of the Royal Flush apartment complex and immediately turned away from Victoria’s building. The complex consisted of a series of large rectangular structures, each containing six apartments, built in a pattern designed to look random, to give the appearance of a neighborhood that had grown up haphazardly over time.
The reality, of course, was just the opposite. The entire complex had undoubtedly been constructed at once. But the access road connecting the parking lots for each of the buildings meandered in a long, winding semicircle, allowing Jack to cruise slowly behind all of the buildings and eventually approach Victoria’s apartment from a direction opposite the main entrance.
He turned into the lot reserved for the building next to Victoria’s. Killed his headlights. Eased into an open space under a shade tree and smiled. The location was perfect. He could see not just the entrance to Victoria’s building, but halfway down one side as well.
He settled in his seat and stifled a yawn. Checked his watch. It was just after three a.m. He guessed Stark would have staked out Victoria’s apartment almost immediately following his arrival, based on the level of obsession that would make a man stalk a terrified young woman across the country. It was only a guess, though. There was no real way of knowing how long the man had been in the city when Victoria spotted him.
If he was right, though, Jack thought there was at least a decent chance Stark would be back tonight to execute his plan.
And when he did, he would encounter a little surprise.
Jack hoped he wasn’t too late, that Stark hadn’t already come and gone. He didn’t think that would be the case, though. Stark would know Victoria’s schedule, which meant he would be aware that she worked until Tequila Mockingbird’s two a.m. closing time.
He would give her plenty of time to get out of work, drive home, and get into bed. He would want to make sure she was fast asleep before breaking in and reintroducing himself to her, which meant there was almost no way Stark would show up before three-thirty at the earliest, maybe closer to four.
If he was reading Stark right, a questionable proposition at best.
He sipped a coffee that had started out bitter and hot but was now bitter and lukewarm. He grimaced and swallowed, then took another sip and repeated the process. His gaze scanned the building as he passed the time by trying to puzzle out exactly how someone with Joel Stark’s obvious psychopathy had had the technical expertise to track the object of his obsession around the country, not just once, but several times.
Victoria hadn’t made things particularly difficult for him. She had kept her name, and worse, had made a living as an entertainer under that name. Still, Jack doubted Stark was operating alone. More likely he had a friend or relative in a position of authority somewhere. The police maybe, or the FBI, or some other federal agency with access to citizens’ private records.
Jack was determined to ensure the cycle of terror being propagated by the remorseless Joel Stark ended here.
Tonight, if possible.
He took another sip of his coffee—still bitter, now even colder—and continued to scan the area, his eyes in constant motion.
25
Joel was sick and tired of waiting. Tomorrow would be his third day here in Vegas and he hated it. Hated the never-ending stream of tourists clogging the strip, hated the relentless heat blasting down day after day, hated knowing his little princess was so close but he had yet to enjoy her.
He had demonstrated to his own satisfaction that he was capable of taking things slowly and methodically. He had developed a plan and had stuck to it, following the beautiful redhead to work, learning her schedule, watching her without allowing her to see him and without giving in to the urge to stuff her into the trunk of his car and take off.
He was proud of himself. He had even examined his princess’s apartment building—from the outside, of course—last night while she slept. It was torture knowing she was just a few feet away, on the other side of the exterior wall, likely nearly naked and ripe for the taking. But he had maintained his resolve, forcing himself to retreat, going over his plans one more time by the light of day.
He
had done everything necessary to ensure that he would finally be successful. And now it was time to act, before he did something stupid and alerted her to his presence, as he had done so many times before.
Joel parked his rusting piece of shit car in the lot of a dry cleaning establishment that looked as though it had passed its heyday when Bugsy Siegel was running things in Vegas. The shop was one of the few remaining businesses still making a go of it in a beaten-down strip mall located no more than a quarter mile from the Royal Flush apartments. Returning to pick up the car would be a little inconvenient when the time came to get the hell out of Dodge, but there was no way he was going to take the chance of someone noticing a vehicle that didn’t belong in Victoria’s lot and then alerting the police about it when the girl turned up missing.
The logistics of getting Victoria into the car would be tricky but were doable. It was all part of his plan. After the day or so they would spend getting reacquainted inside the apartment, Joel would simply tie her up securely, duct-tape a couple of socks inside her mouth to keep her quiet, and then hike back and retrieve his car. He would park outside a different building—slightly risky but not overly so—and then sneak Victoria out to it at three or four in the morning.
Simple. Now that he had seen the light and understood the value of caution and of taking the time to do things right, Joel knew this time he would not fail. He would finally get what he had craved for so long.
He walked along the side of the road, being careful not to move so quickly he would attract attention, not that anyone was around at this time of night in this part of Overton. On the rare occasions a car approached, he slinked into the shadows and waited for it to pass. It wouldn’t do to have a suspicious cop brace him and then remember him later.
Careful and easy.
Even with his slow progress, Joel arrived at the grounds of the complex in less than fifteen minutes. The place was a ghost town, the three-thirty a.m. darkness broken only by the flickering watery yellow of unevenly spaced light poles, totally ineffective against the partially overcast desert night.
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