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Ranger put his finger to his ear. “Tank has a visual of Vlatko. Mezzanine level, convention center.”
We were standing near the front door. Ranger turned and ran out of the casino, down the boardwalk, and into the convention center. He crossed the floor to the escalator and took the steps two at a time while I scrambled to keep up. He stopped at the top of the escalator, and I came up behind him, gasping for air.
“Tank lost him,” Ranger said, moving toward one of the concession stands. “He exited through the door by the frozen yogurt bar.”
Ranger unholstered his gun, and we opened the door and looked into a service area with two elevators and a stairwell. No cameras. This was a major security flaw, but not unusual. The hotel had cameras only in areas available to guests. We took the stairs to the ground floor and then down one more level. We opened a door onto a maze of hallways, mechanical rooms, and storerooms connecting to the main part of the hotel.
“He can move around undetected down here,” Ranger said to Tank. “Call Mac and tell him you had a visual and he needs to have a man go through the belowground service area.”
“Is Mac the FBI guy?” I asked.
“He’s not my primary contact. He’s boots on the ground.” Ranger holstered his gun, and we stepped out of the service area and into the casino. “I want to go back to the room so I can look at the hotel blueprints.”
Hal was in the suite, but the computer guy was gone. Ranger unrolled the blueprints, found the lower-level print, and set a couple bottles of water on it to keep it from rolling back up again.
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p; “Do you think you have him trapped?” I asked Ranger.
“I’m not counting on it. He’s insane, but he’s not stupid. I’m sure there are ways to slip out of that underground maze.” He marked the blueprint with a red marker. “These are the exterior exit points. Two are to the rear of the building. A loading dock and a single door. I have a man on both of those. Plus the hotel has extra security there because Semov and his entourage are using the back door. Employees for the most part enter through a side door and go to various locker rooms. Eventually the locker rooms lead to the underground service corridors.”
“And you have a man on the employee entrance?”
“Yes.”
“What about the elevators and stairwells?”
“They go to all floors, and on each floor they empty out into the service pantry. Extra linens and toiletries are kept there. Room service passes through there. And next door to the service pantry is the mechanical room with the air handlers, among other things.”
“Can you go directly from the service pantry into the mechanical room?”
“No. They’re side by side, but you have to go out one door and in another. And when that happens you’re caught on camera.”
“So now we sit and wait?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to go for a gelato?”
Ranger looked at me like I had corn growing out of my ears.
“I’m just saying, they have a gazillion flavors of gelato at this little kiosk next to the all-day breakfast place,” I said. “And I thought it might be refreshing.”
Ranger smiled. “There are times when I seriously consider marrying you, but then I get yet another black mark on my path to enlightenment and forgiveness and I scratch marriage off my bucket list.”
“Really? You think about marrying me?”
“Marrying you might be extreme, but once in a while I think about sharing my closet.”
“You have a really great closet.”
It was a big walk-in with beautiful cherry cabinets and wall-to-wall carpet. Ella kept Ranger’s clothes perfectly pressed and orderly. She folded his underwear and matched his socks. She lined his dress shirts up with the hangers all going in the same direction. Of course it was all made easier by the fact that Ranger only wore black.
“So about the gelato?” I said.
“Sure.”
“I don’t mean to be listening in or anything,” Hal said. “But if you’re bringing gelato back, I like Banana Sunrise.”
