Sleepless in Las Vegas (6 page)

She barked a small laugh. Couldn’t help it. Of all the secrets he’d accused her of, she hadn’t expected that one. “Girls like me don’t have husbands. You got a wife? Or a girlfriend? A fiancee?”

“None of the above.”

His lie bothered her, even though she’d been expecting as much. She was glad the night shadowed her features, because confusion and hurt were probably stamped all over her face.

The door to Dino’s swung open, and the faint strains of a Coldplay song wafted onto the street. Traffic cruised down Las Vegas Boulevard with its mix of honking horns and screeching tires. The air simmered with the never ending, relentless heat.

Everything was the same as it had been when she first got here, but she had changed, irreversibly so. Until the past few minutes, she had not realized that, deep within her, she had put up a wall that protected something fragile, yet potentially devastating. Now it had been freed, and she could never put it back.

“I need to go now,” she said, fighting to keep her voice even.

“Where are you parked?”

“There.” She pointed in the general direction of the Honda rental, thirty or so feet away.

“I’ll watch, make sure you get into your car okay.”

She didn’t trust herself to speak anymore. With a wave, she walked away.

As her heels clicked across the lot, Jayne’s words drifted through her mind. Diamond Investigations never did honey traps because “inducing the behavior” to “objectively document” was unacceptable. Just like Jayne to couch it in clinical, detached terms.

Val could add an important side note to her boss’s rule. Honey traps were especially unacceptable because people whose hearts had been numbed might unexpectedly wake up and realize what had been missing in their lives—an impassioned connection, a sense of belonging or maybe just a person’s touch. When that happened, inducements became deterrents, and all objectivity was lost. The game became real.

She reached her car and turned.

He stood where she had left him. A dark, lonely form, vigilantly watching, protecting.

* * *

A
SHORT
WHILE
later Val sat at the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and East Charleston. She still felt wobbly about what had happened in Dino’s parking lot. And embarrassed by telling him about the pulsations. At the time, she would have sworn they were dead-on real. She winced at her choice of words. Well, whatever, she should have kept the bulletin to herself.

Her nanny was the one who really had the “soul’s eye,” as she called it. Through it, she said she experienced
impressions—
images, feelings, voices—in the part of her brain where dreams lay, which resonated from objects imbued with memories of their owners’ lives, anything from significant events to people they had loved. Although some people called her gift psychometry, Nanny called it “measuring people’s spirits.”

When Val was thirteen, she’d thought she was picking up on objects’ impressions, too. Sometimes when she touched one of the antiques in their shop, especially ones with metal or stones, her fingers would tingle slightly. Immediately following that, an image or emotion would pass through her mind. Never heard a voice, though, like Nanny did. Not until tonight.

Looking back, she couldn’t honestly say she really saw or felt those things. Sometimes she wondered if it had just been a way to be closer to her nanny, the two of them sharing something special. Hindsight could sure give a person twenty-twenty vision.

But still, what happened earlier in the bar had seemed like an impression. She had definitely heard an older man’s voice when she held Drake’s phone, but thinking back, she remembered an older couple sitting at a table behind them, and Val had overheard him expressing his love for his lady friend. And those pulsations from the phone? No-brainer. The phone was on vibrate.

A horn honked, jerking Val out of her reverie. Sheepishly, she realized the light had turned green.

Another honk.

“Hold your britches, bubba,” she muttered, stepping on the gas and turning down Charleston Boulevard.

Time to call Marta with a final update. After a quick check to verify no cops were around—Nevada might have legalized prostitution and gambling, but drivers could get hefty fines for handheld cell phones—she punched in Marta’s number.

“It done?” No hello.

“Yes.”

“Where is he?”

“I left him in the parking lot at Dino’s.”

“When?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes ago.”

“So that be…quarter to ten.”

“Sounds about right.”

“He go inside Dino’s? Or to Topaz?”

Who cares where he went afterward?
“I don’t know,” she said absently. “Listen, Marta, I have something to tell you.”

This next part was going to be tough for her client to hear, even if she had been anticipating it.

“The honey trap,” she said gently, “confirmed your intuitions, Marta.”

Silence. No tears. No rants. Just…silence.
Poor girl. Probably numb with hurt.

“What is this
intoshuns?
” Marta snapped.

Her tone took Val by surprise. “Intuitions…uh, they’re your suspicions. Inklings. Doubts.”

“Too many words. I ask for information, not words.”

Like one wasn’t the other. “He kissed me.” Well, almost, but close enough. “He cheats. So don’t marry the man.” So much for the sensitive approach.

After a beat, Marta muttered. “He like that.”

He like that.
What was that supposed to mean? He likes fooling around with women he doesn’t know?

Val felt an ugly zap of the green monster.

Oh, no. She
refused
to get jealous over the guy. This had been a job, one she had been paid well to do. Didn’t matter what he liked or didn’t like, he was a notch in Val’s investigative career belt, nothing more.

“I’ll send you a report when I get home,” she said tightly.

“No report. This between you and me.”

“Fine.” Like she wanted to rehash all the smarmy details anyway.

“I want you go back to bar.”

“When pigs fly.”

“What?”

“I fulfilled the job request, Marta. The work is done. Completed.
Finis.
”

“So many words again.”

“Then let me give you just one.
No.
I am not going back to that bar.”

“Please, Val,” she said, her mood shifting from cold to needy. “I must know if he still there.”

“What does it matter? He kissed me!” Kinda. “That’s what you wanted to know!”

“Yes, kiss. Good. Still…must know if he—”

“Call the bar and ask.”

“No. Want you to—”

“Call his cell, then.”

“I don’t have— Why not you go? It
your
job! Val, please—”

“Job is
over.
Terminated. Wrapped up.” She tried to think of even
more
words, but those would do. “Goodbye.”

She ended the call and tossed the phone onto the seat next to her, then frowned. Why hadn’t Marta cared about that kiss?

Hardly the reaction of a woman whose heart had been broken. She had been teary talking about her suspected philandering fiance in the office this afternoon, but the only thing Marta seemed upset about tonight—besides Val’s vocabulary—was her not going back to check on Drake’s whereabouts.

Something else bothered Val about that conversation. Couldn’t put her finger on it…something Marta had said. Or didn’t finish saying. When Val told her to call Drake’s cell, she had said something like
I don’t have…

She didn’t have what?

The nerve to call him?

The time to make such a call?

Val’s stomach growled. Spying one of her favorite fast-food pit stops, Aloha Kitchen, she decided to pull over. Time to put the crazy case behind her. Maybe she didn’t understand the conclusion, maybe she never would, but some things were best left in the shadows.

* * *

D
RAKE
DROVE
HIS
pickup along Las Vegas Boulevard. Warm breezes rushed through his open driver’s window, almost drying the sweat on his skin. Far off, a siren wailed, peppered with a variety of horn blasts. Ambulance and a fire engine? Maybe a police unit or two thrown in for good measure.

At a red light, he glanced at his phone, which he always set on his thigh when he drove, and checked the time. A few minutes after ten. He’d be home in twenty minutes, fifteen if traffic picked up. He’d piled plenty of food into Hearsay’s bowl, so his dog wouldn’t be hungry. After a short walk around the block, Drake would be in bed by eleven. If he was lucky and fell asleep right away, he’d get three hours before his early-morning surveillance.

Hadn’t been that lucky lately, though. At least he put his insomnia to good use. Was halfway through Michael Connelly’s
The Lincoln Lawyer,
which made him wish he had someone to drive him around while he caught up on his paperwork and made calls. Not a partner, just a grunt with a driver’s license.

He hadn’t seen Brax’s Porsche or Yuri’s Benz when he’d walked through the Topaz lot, not a big surprise as Sally said she typically saw the cars in the wee hours. He hadn’t been in the mood to go inside Topaz. Same shift, same nonanswers. Nothing like wasting time trying to convince people to talk who didn’t want to talk.

He passed Bonanza Gifts, its parking-lot-wide marquee advertising itself to be the world’s largest gift shop. More like the world’s largest tacky emporium, but it had been one of his favorite hangouts as a kid.

He remembered a long-ago birthday gift, a dice clock, he’d bought for his dad there. Each hour had glued-on dice, their dots representing that number. “Snake eyes” for two o’clock, “little Joe” for four, “six five, no jive” for eleven. Over his mom’s protests, his dad had proudly hung it in the living room, over the TV. After a while, he and his dad started telling time by dice slang. “Billy’s coming over at Nina from Pasadena” meant Billy would arrive at nine. “He wants you to call at puppy paws” meant call him at ten.

Years later, after the old man died, Drake asked for the clock, but his mom refused, playing on dice slang by answering, “Six five, no jive.”

His dad would have gotten a kick out of that.

He blinked at the streams of red lights ahead, swallowed feelings he didn’t want to recognize.

Damn it to hell. He wished he had never met Val, if that was even her name. Wished he’d never heard about those damn pulsations. Like his dad would send such a message through a total stranger, especially one dressed as though she shopped at Army Surplus for Hookers.

Whatever her scheme, he was one up on it. When she pulled out her cell, he’d memorized the caller ID. He’d run it through some proprietary databases and by the time his head hit the pillow he’d know more about Miss Who Dat than her own mama ever did.

The phone vibrated against his thigh. He checked the caller ID. Las Vegas area code, but he didn’t recognize the number. Without moving the phone, he punched Answer, then Speaker.

“Morgan Investigations,” he answered, raising his voice to be heard.

“Drake Morgan?” A woman’s voice.

“Yes.”

“Sir, I’m a dispatcher, Clark County emergency call center, and are you the Drake Morgan who resides at…”

As the dispatcher recited his address, the hairs bristled on the back of his neck. “That’s correct.”

“I don’t want to alarm you, but I need to advise that your home is being worked on by several Clark County fire units—”

“Are you saying…my house is
on fire?
”

“Yes, sir—”

Adrenaline jacked his pulse. “I’m on my way.”

“The firefighters are doing their best, and what they need most is for you to remain calm when you arrive—”

“My dog is inside!”

“Anyone else?”

“No.” He gripped the wheel with shaking hands. “My dog likes to sleep under the kitchen table!”

Spring Mountain Road, the main artery to his street, was ahead. As he shifted to check traffic, the phone slipped and clattered onto the floorboard.

“Look under the kitchen table!” he yelled, flipping the turn signal. “I’m on my way there!”

Pumping the horn, he shot through an opening in traffic, straight through to the far lane. A horn blasted. He jerked the wheel left, barely missing an Audi wagon, before he wrestled a turn onto Spring Mountain.

“Check the kitchen,” he shouted again, jamming his foot on the gas pedal, “under the table!”

* * *

T
EN
OR
SO
minutes later—although it felt like hours, a lifetime—he slammed the pickup to a stop across the street from his house, his stomach lurching as he saw the gray-white smoke billowing to the sky, its core pulsing orange and red. Monstrous flames shot twenty, thirty feet from the roof. The wooden structure resembled an oversize pile of kindling.

Jumping out, he jogged across the street and around one of several fire trucks. Three or four police officers stood on the periphery of the property, keeping neighbors at bay. Several firefighters handled a hose, pointing its gushing stream of water at the flames. Others worked another hose, aimed at the roof of the neighboring house.

He headed up the driveway.

“Hey, buddy, you can’t go in there!”

“Chuck, stop that guy!”

A firefighter, his mask pulled off his face, blocked Drake’s path.

“My dog’s in there, damn it!” He tried to shove past, eyeing the crackling flames that licked at the side of the house. His office.

“Stop!” A second firefighter, his face gleaming with sweat, grabbed Drake’s arm. “Calm down or I’ll call those cops over to drag your butt to jail.”

The heat radiating off the fire was intense. Sucking in a breath that tasted like soot, Drake glanced at the name on the firefighter’s helmet. “Captain Dietrich, I’m Drake Morgan and I live here. My dog’s inside.”

“I know. Heard it from dispatch.” He looked over his shoulder and yelled, “I said,
step on it!
” Turning to Drake, he continued, “Sorry, but I can’t have you doing something stupid like trying to go inside. We got enough on our hands fighting the fire, looking for the dog. Can’t be trying to save you, too.”