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Noah nearly pissed himself. Every muscle in his body tightened. The killer. That’s who they were talking about. In his mind’s eye, he saw the rifleman approach, long gun in his hand, moustache visible in the wicked glow of the conflagration.
He’d been here? Holy crap!
“That would be the guy,” Helen confirmed, and he had to strain to hear her, even opened his eye a slit to make sure he was alone. A quick scan, and he saw no one, but the shadow near the cracked door suggested the two nurses were still close. He chanced sitting up, straining to hear the conversation over the escalating beat of his heart.
Barb asked. “Who did he say he was?”
“That’s just it. He didn’t really. Claimed he was an uncle of a kid who stole a motorcycle and went missing. Wanted to make an ID, but wouldn’t give a name the police could cross-check with missing person reports or something like that. Anyway, when the questions got a little too hard, the guy just up and left. Before Ted from Administration could get up here. The whole thing seemed fishy.”
Barb said, “But he was caught on camera.”
“Not much of him. Baseball cap and sunglasses, two days’ growth of beard along with the moustache. The police have the security tape.”
As their conversation faded, the shadows in the hallway fell away. Noah let out his breath. He’d survived. Barely. But, obviously, the gunman had come looking for him. Panic shot through him, adrenaline spurting, and it was all he could do to contain himself so that the damned heart monitor didn’t give him away. He forced himself to lie back against the pillow and feign sleep again.
He had to leave. Soon. Before the cops started nosing around and before the gunman returned. He’d wait, until the middle of the night, when it was quiet, and then some way, somehow, he’d escape. Not just this hospital, but Vegas, too.
He knew this city, had grown up here, and the hospital was only a mile from his old man’s place. His legs weren’t broken, so he could walk that far, steal the rest of the money he needed, and hitchhike. Denver sounded good. Or Seattle. Maybe Anchorage. Or . . . Mexico. L.A. to San Diego, across the border to Tijuana, and disappear, a gringo no one would recognize.
Through slitted lids, he glanced out the window again, and for a second he thought of Remmi, wondered what she was doing. Then he closed his mind to her. She was a part of this, if not knowingly, then by association with her mother, who was in the desert last night. His jaw clenched hard enough to ache as he thought about her. Even if she knew nothing, she was guilty because she lived here, and in six short hours, Las Vegas and everyone within its city limits would be dead to him.
* * *
When P
lan A doesn’t work, then initiate Plan B.
Or so Didi reminded herself as she sped across the desert, the lights of Las Vegas a distant glow behind her. L.A. was in her sights. Around five hours, if she followed the route she had planned, on I-15 across the desert and over the mountains and into the greater Los Angeles area—well, actually a little farther west to Malibu, to an oceanside home, of course. Nothing but the best for Oliver Hedges, the old bastard.
She clicked on the lighter and, as it heated, found her cigarettes in her purse. She had hours to drive and could smoke as much as she wanted or needed. Cracking the window, she lit up, holding her Virginia Slims in one gloved hand, the steering wheel with the other. She considered taking off her gloves—they were a bit of a problem—but decided instead to stay “in character” and channeled Marilyn Monroe, sitting sexy and sultry behind the wheel.
She glanced at the briefcase on the seat beside her, filled with the phony bills; she’d culled out the good ones. She would throw all those fake fifties and twenties into the Hedgeses’ conceited, self-righteous faces! Reignited anger made her grind her teeth at the gall of the con. If Brett had died in that fiery heap, he deserved it.
But not Ariel . . . not precious . . . Her heart twisted painfully. “Stop it!” she growled at herself, then hit the gas with a spiked heel. The Cadillac tore around a slow-moving van that was having a little trouble staying in its lane, the person behind the wheel sleepy, drunk, high, or maybe just terrible at controlling his vehicle. It didn’t matter. She blew past and stared through the bug-splattered windshield at the night sky, dark and flung with thousands of stars, the road a ribbon cutting through the desert on her way to the mountains and beyond.
She wondered, not for the first time, if she should have brought Adam as a bargaining chip with the old man, but decided she’d made the right decision in leaving the baby with Remmi. Better to hold back. She’d already lost one child through recklessness and being overly cocky. Her throat closed as her thoughts wandered to Ariel, but she dragged them back from the dark chasm of grief to the reality of the here and now; there would be time enough later for grieving and chastising and feeling downright horrible. Right now, she had to focus on the job at hand.
Oliver Got Rocks—or, more accurately, Oliver Got Stocks—the grandfather of her children, was beyond wealthy, having invested in a fledgling tech company that had taken off and was continuing to soar. And he wanted an heir. She’d learned all this from the private investigator she’d hired, the same P.I. she’d hired to check on her second husband, the magician from whom she’d learned all of her tricks and who had ended up banging his barely legal assistant. The P.I. had provided pictures, glossy full-color shots of Leo in oh-so-many compromising positions with the nubile and nimble assistant; in one particularly clear photo, the assistant, naked as the day she was born, was bent over the very box he used to showcase his tired cutting-a-woman-in-half routine.
At the memory, Didi blew out a last disgusted breath of smoke, then stubbed out her cigarette frantically in the ashtray. No time to think of Leo “Kaspar the Great” Kasparian tonight. The only thing he’d been really great at was being a low-life adulterer. “Jerk,” she muttered.
Traffic was light, her tires humming over the dry pavement, the Caddy’s engine a smooth rumble under its massive hood. A few red taillights were far in front of her, while a thicker stream of oncoming headlights glowing like hungry eyes approached on her left to speed past.
She settled in, deciding to stop at a gas station once she crossed into California; there she would reassess her makeup and hair, because no matter what, she wanted to look spectacular for that old goat. Rotating her neck to get rid of a kink, she thought she heard something . . . almost a rattle, a sound she couldn’t immediately place, but out of the ordinary, something out of rhythm with the night.
“No,” she whispered.
She’d checked the Caddy herself after last night, and other than a few scratches from the cacti she had brushed as she drove like a bat out of the desert last night, nothing had seemed wrong with the car. No broken axle or flat tire or anything. But if something happened now . . .
It was just her nerves, that was it. She was jumpy. On edge. And who wouldn’t be? She was going toe to toe with a wealthy and, as far as she knew, unscrupulous old man, bartering with him, challenging him. Deep in her gloves her palms began to sweat. She had heard that he’d declined in health, that some accident had befallen him, but that his mind was still sharp, so despite his frailties, he would still be a sly adversary.
She heard the strange sound again. A click this time.
She eased up on the throttle. What was it? On the outside or . . . ? She glanced into the rearview mirror, and her heart nearly stopped.
Shadowed eyes glared back at her.
Didi shrieked.
