nodded. “That’s because you, unlike our friend, know you’ll have a chance to get your money back.”
The men laughed.
She added, “I’d love to stay and party, but I have some business that needs immediate attention.”
There were a dozen or so “poker houses” owned by these guys and their friends scattered around Vegas. Games went on day and night. Partying for them wasn’t about drugs and fast women; they were the nerds of the party world and preferred playing pool, video games and more poker on the Internet. These young hotshots in this new world of poker had the good life by the tail.
“I guess you want the money,” Manny said.
She smiled. “That’s why we live and breathe, is it not?”
In the end, unlike the big TV games where scantily clad casino girls brought out trays of money, this was much more subdued.
While the money was being retrieved from a safe, she called Curtis Sault, a bodyguard she employed whenever she was in a big game in Vegas. He’d dropped her off the previous day and now she was in need of a fast exit. The ex-Army Ranger turned professional bodyguard had been told, if she won, he’d be in for a substantial bonus.
She transferred the quarter mil to an expandable travel bag, thanked her host and the other players and then left. With the bag of loot slung over one shoulder, her purse over the other, she felt a little like a happy bank robber.
It was fully dark now when she spotted Curtis Sault roaring up the road in his vintage ’58 Corvette. He pulled over the tricked-out red beauty and she dropped the bag on the floorboard and jumped in, settling in the red leather seat with its cool chrome trim. The bag sat between her feet.
Curtis did a one-eighty and they headed down the mountain. He glanced over at the bag. “Is that full of dirty laundry, or should I be congratulating you?”
“You should be smiling from ear to ear ’cause I just paid for your vacation in Costa Rica and then some.”
“I’m liking the sound of that. You know what amazes me?”
“What?”
“These guys you play poker with don’t get robbed, all the money they have around and no security.”
She agreed. Many of the young guns of poker were so flush with cash that it had become commonplace to go into one of their houses and see it everywhere. Money was the new drug of choice.
Beth settled back, her mind preoccupied with how to handle backing out of the Oracle assignment.
They dropped quickly down past the Mormon church that stood on the side of Sunrise Mountain looking down on Vegas like a condemnation. It was her father who told her the Mormons provided the casinos with their most valuable employees, as they had long ago proven to be honest and trustworthy, a highly sought after quality in a casino.
Without warning, Curtis swerved and braked hard, the car’s headlights framing a black car that was blocking the road. “What the hell’s this?”
He brought the Vette to a skidding halt.
Two men on the far side of the black car raised their arms and extended from their hands the unmistakable glint of gun metal.
“Get down!” Curtis yelled.
He reached for the glove box, pulled out a weapon and at the same time started to back up. Bullets slammed through the windshield.
Another car pulled out of a side street behind them, its high beams flooding the Vette and blinding her when she turned to look.
The ambush was perfect. The trap doors closed at both ends. And when she looked at Curtis to see why he wasn’t doing anything she saw blood on his face.
Chapter 2
“Get out, run!” Curtis said as he fired his weapon first one way, then another.
She snapped off her seat belt, grabbed the door handle, opened the door and he pushed her out onto the road.
The firing was from guns with silencers that made little spitting sounds. She rolled over the side of the embankment, her small shoulder bag tangling around her neck as bullets kicked dirt and rocks around her.
When she stopped rolling, she pushed herself up and started running. Glancing back as she ran, she saw Curtis get out of the car, still exchanging gunfire. He was trying to get away, but then he fell, face first onto the pavement.
A sickening feeling clenched her stomach.
Two men came after her, scampering down the hill, fanning out. Then she spotted a third running down the road.
The money was in the car. Why were they after her? Did they think she had the money in her shoulder bag?
Then the frightening thought raced into her mind that it wasn’t the money. It was her they were after.
They wanted to kill her.
The houses along the hill were in uneven rows and the men were trying to cut off her escape routes.
She darted into what looked like a narrow lane between two large buildings, only to find that it was an alley that had been dead-ended by a high wall connecting the structures.
Trapped.
She turned and retreated the way she’d come in, but then heard someone running. Frantically she looked for a place to hide and found nothing. She tried a door but it was locked.
Everything slowed to a near halt. She felt the pulsing of her blood through her veins, the intense weight of the air, the granulated texture of the wall her hand brushed against, the push of the stones beneath the feet.
Her gut became a knot of cold, sickening fear.
In panic and desperation, Beth snatched up a large rock and waited at the entrance of the narrow alley.
It wasn’t in her nature to die passively, trapped like a rabbit. Her reflexes and reactions had been honed in the tough backstreets of Vegas as the daughter of a down-and-out gambler, and later she’d been trained as a teen in martial arts and survival combat tactics at the Athena Academy.
She heard the gunman before she saw him, his breathing heavy, footsteps crunching gravel as he rounded the corner.
Beth crouched in the blackness, coiled tight as a cobra. She struck, driving up and swinging the rock with everything she had.
Startled, he had no defense other than to raise his hands a split second too late to shield his face.
The rock met skin, bone, teeth and nose with a sickening thud. Blood sprayed across her pink T-shirt, her neck and arms. The man went down hard and stayed there.
She yanked his weapon from his hand, then racked it to make sure a round was chambered as she ran. Curtis had trained her at a firing range, but firing at targets was one thing, firing at people, another. She’d never shot at someone before, but had often wondered what it would be like because she knew one day,
