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Shit, I needed to carry all this. Who knew that a ransom exchange could be so complicated?
After grabbing a leather bag from my room, I began to stuff it full of stacks, counting carefully so as not to give Mac a cent more than he was due. In about ten minutes, I’d successfully filled the bag with exactly four hundred thousand and not a penny extra. I called my limo driver and told him to meet me at the curb.
Money in hand, I got back in the elevator and rode it downstairs. Once on the bottom floor, I took off in a dead bolt, leather bag thumping against my side with every step. I would make it in time, I still had some forty minutes to spare, but the sooner I got to Kiki the better. Mac had allotted me an hour, but God knows he wasn’t a man of his word.
My limo driver was idling at the curb as promised. I flung open the door, shoving the bag and then myself inside.
“Go to RES, and ignore stoplights.”
The driver nodded and did as he was told, peeling off from the curb as though it were a NASCAR event. I liked that in an employee — total disregard for the law when necessary. I reminded myself to give him a generous holiday bonus.
RES was just down the Strip. Traffic was a bitch, and I tapped my foot with such a fury I thought I might break through the carpet.
At last, after what turned out to only be ten hellish minutes, we were in front of RES. I threw open the door before my limo had even come to a complete stop, and my feet were on the ground in a second.
Calm down, I told myself. You can’t let them see you anxious.
That was a good point. I needed to seem relaxed, like I didn’t have a care in the world, as though this were just some average business dealing. I had half an hour to spare. I could afford to put on a show.
So, with great restraint, I stepped lazily out of the limo, which had now come to a halt, thank God.
As I ambled to the door, I saw Mac’s promised bodyguard waiting by the entrance. I recognized him from the virginity sale. He was the Russian guy with the mean mug. I waved my left arm to get his attention, my right one still occupied by the leather bag.
He nodded a discreet hello as I crossed the plaza. What an asshole. He didn’t even look agitated about this whole thing. Maybe Mac held people for ransom on a consistent basis.
“You’re here,” he observed as I finally stopped a few feet in front of him.
“As promised, yes.”
“Good. I’ll take you downstairs.”
With military precision, he turned on a booted heel and led me into RES. Had Mac been recruiting from the Russian secret service? And if so, where could I find some of these guys? Clearly, I needed to get some better staff.
I was led past the machines and tables to what appeared to be a staff elevator, well concealed inside a hallway so obscure that even a drunken moron would be hard-pressed to mistake it for a public entrance.
We rode down in silence, the man appearing to watch me without actually laying his eyes on me, a creepy talent that made me shiver.
The doors opened onto a stock basement, similar to the one at Dazzlers. I used to play in the one in my casino as a boy when my dad insisted on taking me to work. I never liked the loud whir of the main floor — or the people who filled it — so I’d escape downstairs to frolic in the mountains of bottles and snack packs. The workers in the basement had always been kind, letting me make mazes out of the piles or build a city with the boxes for my toy cars. It was one of my few happy memories associated with the casino.
That, of course, was now blighted from my mind, yet another piece of childhood falling by the wayside.
My escort led me past a series of stacks, and then to an unremarkable door set into the concrete wall.
He knocked three times, in some indistinguishable pattern, and the door swung back.
Kiki.
She was the first thing I saw. She was strapped to a chair, her arms and legs bound. Her head hung down, but I could see a black gag wrapped around her head, scrunching up her curly red hair. Was she even alive?! Oh my God, was I too late?
“Kiki!”
This time, I spoke her name aloud. She didn’t stir.
I lunged to her, my arms outstretched for her unconscious body, ready to untie her, but I was stopped mid-air by sets of hands. I didn’t need to turn around to know that the rest of Mac’s security team was here, and they weren’t about to let me make contact with Kiki.
