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And I sure was comfortable with her.
I shook my head, clearing away the thought as I headed where Ozias had sent me, to the armory, to talk to Retta. For obvious reasons, her domain was next to the gun range, my next destination.
My thoughts had strayed so far from my objective that clearly I was rusty.
Shooting up a target was a great way to get refocused.
Vegas was good for disappearing.
Crawling with tourists and gamblers and junkies and nomads, you could easily never see the same face twice if you played it right.
Unless maybe someone was looking for you.
And even then, if you were smart enough – good enough – you could live a life of perfect immersion with the crowd. You just had to understand… there was a certain art to being watched.
You had to be ready to fluidly navigate between genres at any time, whatever fit the situation you’d found yourself in. Maybe a guileless baroque era piece—no nuance, just a subject laid bare, offering a knowing smirk. You knew you were being watched, and the watcher knew you were aware.
A very classic style, admiral.
Personally, I had a penchant for performance art.
The elegant equilibrium of maintaining natural movements; no hesitations, no embellishments. The precarious willingness to take your eyes off a target that might be trying to kill you, while not eschewing the disinterested sort of eye contact one might unconsciously make. Curtailing the impulse to drop a motherfucker and coax out all your antagonists, just get the shit out of the way.
All a beautiful challenge I welcomed, even when I wasn’t in the fucking mood, because I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter anyway.
This was happening.
Bottoms Upwasn’t exactly a dive bar, but it was no upscale place either. The kinda spot where you weren’tlikelyto get shot but there was always a chance.
That was part of why I liked it.
Aside from the obvious proximity to thePredators, it was just my kinda spot, purely on the likelihood of shit popping off.
I just hadn’t expectedthis.
Apparently, Ihadlost my touch.
I feigned another swig of my midday beer – too early to drink anything harder – knowing it wouldn’t do to add anything more to my current low-level inebriation. After I was done shooting shit up at the range, Ozzy had sent me over here to act as additional muscle for Keira – club secretary – who was managing the bar.
She was the one who’d put the beer in front of me.
Another mistake on my part.
I was good, but theRoses and probably a coupleThornsthat were currently scattered throughout this bar were just as good—probablybetter,with no alcohol tainting their vigilance.
Shit.
Where had I gone wrong?
Whose attention had I gotten at such a level to warrantthisresponse? I shook my head, realizing their presence meant this place was burned as a spot where I could relax; a damn shame because I really likedBottoms Up.
Randomly, the fresh new ink on my neck itched, reminding me of my new allegiance. I put a hand to it, but didn’t scratch, not wanting to fuck it up.
As if the whole idea of all this wasn’t already fucked up.
Had Ireallyexpected this shit to work in my favor?
“Is that good?”
