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‘Whatever,’ I snapped, my ears buzzing, the line already dead.
Somehow the FBI had tracked us to Vegas. Shit. Shit. SHIT!
* * *
I thought I’d throw up waiting for the knock on the door and for ‘room service’ to appear. When a guy in his mid-thirties appeared at the door, wearing an ill-fitting hotel uniform and wheeling a tray bursting with breakfast foods, I glared at him so intently I’m surprised he didn’t catch on fire from my death rays. Sure enough, two cups of coffee sat in the middle of the tray, steam billowing from them. That right there was the biggest giveaway. I’d never had room service coffee delivered at any temperature but lukewarm. They were obviously camped out in a room nearby, watching us and preparing poisoned coffee to send to our room.
Fuckers.
I debated telling Dornan about Lindsay’s call and the spiked coffee, but I decided against it, sipping at my latte as I watched Dornan down his black coffee in about three gulps.
The coffee worked quickly. I’d already anticipated Dornan’s suspicion at suddenly feeling woozy and drugged, so I figured I’d lessen it a little if possible. While he drank his coffee I gave him the quickest blowjob in the history of blowjobs, hating myself the entire time, and now armed with the knowledge that Lindsay could see everything I was doing. Great. As I swallowed, Dornan’s hand on my head, I made a mental note to thank Lindsay for saving my life when I was being choked out.
Seriously. They couldn’t have knocked and pretended to be cleaners or something?
Instead, they’d watched as I fought for my life. More embarrassingly, they’d watched while I had, quote, ‘fucked myself’, and given Dornan a peep show to rival all others. I’d made myself come in front of him, and probably half of Lindsay’s unit.
I started to panic as I contemplated where else they might’ve had cameras. In my apartment, the place where I’d killed Murphy? That didn’t make sense, though. If they’d had cameras hidden in my apartment, I’d already be sitting in a cell, serving my life sentence without parole.
That was the punishment for killing a federal officer of the law, last time I checked.
Add money laundering, drug running and (unknowingly) balancing the books for an entire human trafficking operation for the better part of ten years, and it was easy to watch the consecutive life sentences stack on top of one another like Tetris bricks.
Dornan was snoring soon after he finished his coffee and I’d finished him. He didn’t even make it to the bed, sprawled out on the couch in the sitting area. I prodded him a couple of times, then, relatively comfortable with the fact that he was deep asleep, I got dressed, brushed my teeth, grabbed my purse and headed downstairs.
A black Escalade was parked at the front entrance to the Wynn, the door already open for me. I picked the guy holding the door straight away – black suit, short hair, one of those little earpieces in his ear with a cord that ran down under his suit jacket. He held out a hand to help me step up into the SUV, but I ignored it, preferring to use the handle inside the doorframe to pull myself up and onto the black leather seat that flanked the rear of the interior. I winced as the door closed and the central locking clicked with a sound of permanence.
FBI Agent Lindsay Price sat beside me in the dim cabin, the dark tint on the windows saving us from the worst of the unrelenting Nevada sun. He was still the same as I remembered – green eyes and dark hair cut close to his skull, military style – but he looked a little rougher around the edges than the first time we’d met. He looked like he’d missed a day of the impeccable shaving routine he obviously adhered to. His chin bore a five o’clock shadow and his eyes were lined with fatigue, despite it being only nine in the morning.
‘Your bag, please?’ Lindsay asked.
‘Well hello to you, too.’ I clutched my bag tightly, glaring at him.
Lindsay raised his eyebrows. ‘Look,’ he sighed. ‘We can do this the hard way. I can take out my gun,’ he patted his hip holster, ‘and I can threaten you, maybe throw some cuffs on you. But I don’t want to. I’m not going to.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘Just give me the bag,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Please.’
I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was the fact that I was so tired. Worn out, frayed. It seemed I’d momentarily lost the ability to resist. Without breaking eye contact, I placed the bag on the seat between us and he scooped it up, rummaging around until he found my gun and pulled it out.
‘That’s mine,’ I said, reaching for it.
Lindsay opened the chamber, presumably to check for bullets. ‘A woman carrying an unloaded gun, and there are no bullets in her bag. Did your boyfriend take them?’
I didn’t bother correcting the term boyfriend to husband. He’d find out soon enough, no doubt.
‘What, were you filming us on the car trip, too?’ I asked.
‘Educated guess,’ Lindsay shrugged.
‘How’d you know I’d bring a gun?’ I asked.
He smiled. Not in an arrogant, cocky way. Just a smile. ‘Because I told you not to.’
‘You think you know everything about me?’ I asked.
‘Twelve years in the FBI profiling unit, there’s a good chance I know more about you than you know about yourself.’
