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“Busy where?”
“Sit down!” Rory barked, and she knew from his tone she should obey. She planted herself on the couch. The thug with the beard pulled a can of Monster the size of a bowling pin from his hoodie’s kangaroo pocket.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he went on. “Pay attention.”
“You keep moving the goalposts on me,” she said. “I’ve done everything you asked. And still you don’t give me back Marisa. I want my daughter.”
“You know as well as anyone that life’s not fair,” Damon reminded her. “Rory told me what you told the cops about your sister and your stepdad this morning. That’s heavy shit. But your life has the potential to get so much better. Or so much worse. It’s in your hands.”
She couldn’t believe that he’d brought that up and almost said so. But when she looked at the faces of the men and read the tea leaves, she knew not to bother.
“Now Orlov? He was always going to be blood in the water,” Rory went on. “Accident, suicide. Whatever. But I leave nothing to chance. Think of that old expression, ‘three on a match.’ ”
“I don’t—”
“Lighting the third cigarette on one match. That’s the one the sniper sees and gets you killed. So, two suicides, the Morleys? Risky, but we’ll get away with it. A good bet. But Orlov? He was number three. Eventually, you always roll snake eyes. So, your sister can take the fall for that one. Even if she doesn’t, it still makes it all as muddy as Turkish coffee.”
“But I didn’t…I wasn’t…” she stammered, but, of course, she was there. “How did you even get her car to Red Rocks?”
“Girl we trust drove it. Same one who grabbed the spare key when she dropped off the Maenads brochure in your sister’s suite at the BP,” said Damon. “Easy peasy.”
“I want my daughter and I want out,” she pleaded. “I want Marisa and I want to go home.”
“Home?” Rory asked, half scoff and half shout. “What in holy fuck does that even mean? Vermont? You have no home. You have this apartment, and Frankie pays for it. You got nothing. You. Got. Nothing.”
Suddenly she was weeping: it was as if she were being sucked down into quicksand and saw no tree limb or vine on which to cling.
“Where’s Marisa?” she begged. “Please, please bring me my daughter.”
Damon and Rory glanced at each other, and for the briefest of seconds she thought they might relent. But they didn’t. “Some of the Las Vegas PD would be happy to call Orlov’s death an accident or a suicide and move on. But the FBI isn’t letting them,” Rory said instead, ignoring her tears. “So, are we feeding your sister to the wolves? Yes. But before she’s arrested, and she might be soon, we need you to ask her about Orlov. Are you listening?”
He leaned forward and snapped his fingers in front of her, and she wiped her face with her fingers. She tried to gather herself. She nodded.
“Good,” he said. “We need to know if Orlov told Crissy anything about us she could tell the FBI. I want to know who turned him and whether he mentioned anyone. Named names. If so, we’ll deal with her differently. We also need to know if he gave her anything. Someone is trying to get the skinny on our political friends here in Clark County and in D.C. I want to know what he said to the princess and how far he—or the FBI—got recruiting her.”
“I’m too tangled in this, Rory. I can’t do more. I just can’t.”
They sat in silence, the men occasionally gazing down at their phones. Then Damon and Rory looked up at the same moment, made eye contact, and Rory said, “If you don’t want to talk to her, that’s fine. We can. And then?”
She waited.
“Then we kill her.”
I’d gotten out of the pool and was sitting on a chaise in the shade. I was going to text Crissy a 911 mayday from the tablet. (I’d never given a you-know-what that the tablet’s FaceTime didn’t work…until now.) I decided not to text Betsy. If they had my phone, they might have hers.
But then a big SUV pulled up to Frankie’s slot machine dacha, and three people got out. One was a woman I’d learn was Frankie’s next-door neighbor, Lara Kozlov, and the other was Erika Schweiker. A congresswoman. I recognized her right away: Barbie Doll blond hair and this black beret that looked like an acorn cap. She sometimes told people she liked it because it kept her hair out of her eyes, and sometimes she said it was paramilitary because patriots had to wear the Second Amendment on their sleeves. (Which, of course, would mean an armband, not a hat, but even I knew most of what Schweiker said made zero sense.) It depended on who she was talking to.
The two of them had a driver, a guy in a black suit, and anyone who was wearing a black suit out here in the middle of the day was a mortician or a limo driver. Or someone with a gun. Security. And Schweiker loved guns, so I guessed it was some combination of the second and third. And given that Frankie had two pistols that I knew of, that meant there were now a lot of guns at Frankie’s house.
They were sitting in the living room talking, and they could see me and I could see them. We all waved like it was just another day in Las Vegas (which, I guess, it was).
I dried off pretty instantly when I got out of the pool, and so I grabbed my tablet and walked into the house. I walked to this big island between the living room and the kitchen like I was just getting something to eat. And right there, like I wasn’t up to anything at all but playing some dumb game while getting a soda, I texted Crissy that I was being held hostage at Frankie’s, I had no idea where her sister was, and there was a congresswoman right now in Frankie’s living room. I said I wasn’t sure if she should call the police because I was worried about Betsy, and the idea there was a congresswoman here meant Futurium had really powerful people in their pocket. (I loved that expression from the second I heard Frankie use it. Imagine what it would look like to have a tiny human being in your pocket.)
But Crissy was the Princess of Las Vegas.
So maybe she did, too.
I deleted the text chain I had started as soon as it was sent and watched the group until Frankie told me this was business and I should hang out at the pool. I nodded, but put the tablet down in the crevice between the wine fridge and the island counter, and pressed Record on voice memos. I had no idea how much of the conversation I’d get, but it was close enough that I might get some.
