Spirit: Blackwood Security Book 10.5

by Elise Noble

  “Vegas?”

  “Football?”

  Black was sitting on the edge of the bed, and he opened his legs so I could step between them, then wrapped his arms around my waist.

  “You told me to be more social,” he said.

  “I guess I did. But that doesn’t mean I won’t miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you too. The football’s only on for a few hours—is there anything else I can do to help here? Did Bradley finish that Mistletoe thing? I filtered all his emails into my ‘read at some point’ folder.”

  This was the soft side of Black, the hidden sweetness that nobody else saw. My favourite part. Which was why I felt like a bit of a shit for what I was about to say.

  “It’s mostly done. That’s why we’re going to Vegas, to try and finish the last task. Bradley’s been on a real mission. Do this, do that. At one point, he wanted you to serve Christmas dinner to a bunch of seniors at the assisted living place.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Deadly. Jed, Slater, and Mal agreed to do it, but I knew you wouldn’t want to, so I asked Alaric if he’d help out. He reckons it’ll be a hoot.”

  Alaric was one of my exes, and just like that, Black morphed into the green-eyed monster. So bloody predictable. I’d tried everything to stop his petty jealousy over the past couple of years, but nothing worked, so I figured I might as well use it to my advantage. And I’d been upfront with Alaric. He and his three business partners had rented a villa in Florida for the Christmas break, partly because it was warm, and partly, I suspected, because Judd didn’t want to spend the festive period with his family. His mother was a real ball-breaker. Not many people made me nervous, but Stella Millais-Scott was one woman I avoided whenever possible.

  Anyhow, Alaric said that if Black wouldn’t play ball, he’d borrow one of our jets to fly up to Richmond, serve lunch, and delay his own Christmas dinner until the evening. Mainly, I suspected, because he knew it would piss Black off. And then he’d sent me a picture of himself grinning in a pair of red swim shorts with a tray of drinks balanced on one hand, and bloody hell, I was not showing that to my husband.

  “Alaric McLain is coming here? For Christmas?”

  “Not the whole of Christmas. Just long enough to charm the ladies at Appletree Acres, and I’m sure he’ll come over for a glass of wine afterwards. Have you seen Bradley’s musical drinks cabinet?”

  Black’s jaw clenched. “I’ll do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Serve dinner. No need for Alaric to take time out of his busy schedule.”

  “You will?” I shook my head. “Honestly, there’s no need. Alaric’s happy to come. Did I mention the ladies requested shirtless waiters?”

  “No, you fucking didn’t.”

  “Like I said, I realise it’s not your cup of tea, which is why I made alternate arrangements. Dan told Bradley at the planning meeting that you wouldn’t do it, but you know he never listens.”

  “It’s fine. I said I’d do it, and I will.”

  “Really?” I couldn’t help grinning because my plan had worked perfectly. By rights, Black should have seen right through the ruse, but jealousy made him irrational. “Well, in that case, Doris and Joan are gonna love you.” Time to change the subject before he changed his mind. “Tell me you’re not doing anything this evening?”

  “I am. I’m doing you.”

  A second later, he’d shredded yet another T-shirt. He was fond of that—tearing me out of my clothes—but I had no complaints. Knowing how much he wanted me was sexy as hell. Another second, and I was underneath him, his weight pressing me into the mattress, his rapidly hardening cock nestled between my legs. Fuck, I loved this man.

  Every last inch of him.

  What the hell?

  “Bradley, why are there two vehicles outside when only four of us are going to Vegas? Tell me you’re not taking that much luggage. We’ll only be there for one day.”

  I could see two pink suitcases in the trunk already. He did realise we were staying in a hotel, right? A hotel that Black and I owned, which meant we kept clothes there. Honestly, I’d travelled halfway across the world and started wars with less shit than that.

  “When I told Mack about the trip, she wanted to come too. And Carmen.”

  Dan hefted a duffel bag into the back of the nearest Ford Explorer. “And I invited Ana because someone has to stop you from killing Bradley.”

  She did have a point there. I loved Bradley dearly, but sometimes, I wanted to toss him out of a window. On the sixteenth floor. Usually around the holiday season. But if Dan thought Ana was the woman to stand in my way, then she had another think coming. Ana would take Bradley’s feet while I took his arms. We’d better find what we were looking for on this trip because without a distraction, both of us would probably get arrested.

  CHAPTER 13

  “IS THAT HER?” Valerie whispered.

  I studied the photo of Mina Miracle on my phone screen. Mack had been busy on the flight to Vegas, and we had a reasonably good profile of Mina now. She worked as a blackjack dealer in the Silver Shamrock, a tiny girl with short brown hair, elfin features, and a ready smile. She probably got good tips.

  “We should do surveillance, right?” Bradley asked. “I’ll go and play blackjack at her table.”

  I grabbed his arm. Subtlety was most definitely not Bradley’s strong point. Not only did he shriek every time he won a hand, but his hair was now green and he had what looked like a dead Fraggle draped over his shoulders.

  “If you’re going to lose my money, do me a favour and lose it at my casino, yeah? At least I can get it back then.”

  “I don’t always lose.”

  “Yes, you do,” everyone except Valerie chorused.

  I peeled a couple of hundreds off the wedge in my pocket and handed them to him. “Here you go. Why don’t you go and get yourself some change and play the slot machines? You know how much you love slot machines.”

  “I do love slot machines.”

  Dan spun him around and gave him a little shove in the right direction. A cloud of feathers floated off his Fraggle, and unfortunately, a passing waitress inhaled one and began choking. Ah, fuck. Her tray crashed to the floor and drinks went everywhere. So much for staying under the radar.

  “It’s okay, honey, it’s okay.” I thumped the girl on the back, only to get interrupted by some prick in a wife beater. I knew he was a prick because he was wearing his baseball cap backwards and his sunglasses on the back of his head, and he reinforced that opinion when he shoved me out of the way.

  “Move, I know the Heimlich manoeuvre.”

  I kicked his legs out from under him, grateful when Ana, Carmen, and Dan piled in to hold him down.

  “She’s choking on a feather, not a bloody grape, you idiot. She doesn’t need a cracked rib as well.” I raised my voice slightly. “Can someone get her a glass of water?”

  A helpful soul thrust a bottle of Evian into my hand, and as I twisted the cap, I realised it was Mina staring at me wide-eyed. I held the bottle to the girl’s lips, trying not to let too much dribble down her chin. The panic was probably doing more harm than the feather at this point. Her eyes were already watering.

  “Is she okay?” Mina whispered.

  “She’ll be fine. Just a scare. Is there somewhere she can sit for a minute?”

  “Sure, sure, I’ll take her. I’m due for a break.”

  How fortuitous. I tagged along behind while the other girls melted away into the crowd. The prick wasn’t looking too pleased about being dumped on his ass, and none of us wanted to get into a fight.

  Mina opened a plain brown door at the back of the room, and I ignored the Staff Only sign as I tailed her through. Why break the habit of a lifetime by obeying the rules? An added advantage of tonight’s excursion was that I got to nose around the competition, and I can’t say I was impressed by the Silver Shamrock’s facilities. The staff break area was tiny, and it also smelled like chicken noodle soup.
Was that a cockroach that just skittered across the floor? Either that or a small mouse, and if I’d got my bearings right, it was heading towards the kitchen. Lovely. Mina helped her friend onto a hard plastic seat and crouched in front of her.

  “Do you want another drink?” Mina asked. “Something to eat?”

  “Perhaps not the food, eh?” I suggested.

  The girl rubbed her eyes, which only smeared her mascara more. “I’m gonna get fired.”

  Surely not? “It was an accident.”

  “But I’ve only been here for three days. I’m still on probation.”

  “And our boss is a real douche,” Mina said.

  “Do you want me to have a word? Tell him it wasn’t your fault?”

  The waitress shook her head. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

  “You’re not asking; I’m offering.”

  “I’m not sure…”

  She never got around to voicing what she wasn’t sure about because a man in a suit barged in. The suit appeared to be custom made, but there was only so much help good tailoring could offer. He was the wrong proportions. Legs too short, torso too long, belly too round, face almost square. It looked for all the world as though a toddler had assembled him out of spare parts and then slapped a toupee on the top.

  “What the hell happened out there? There’s broken glass everywhere.”

  “I dropped my tray. I’m sorry.”

  This was the boss? He fit with the “douche” description. “It was my fault. I bumped into her.”

  That was easier to explain than Bradley’s bloody feather.

  “And you are?”

  “A patron of this fine establishment.”

  “Then why are you back here? Who let her back here?”

  “I’m here out of concern for your employee. She seemed a little shaken.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t be in the staff area.” He turned to the waitress. “And you can get out too. You’re fired.”

  “Wait a minute—she didn’t drop her tray on purpose.”

  “Part of her job is looking where she’s going. She should’ve dodged.”

  “Please,” Mina tried. “It’s busy out there.”

  “And you… You abandoned your table.”

  “I’d finished the game. It was time for my break.”

  “No, no, no, Mina. You left two whole minutes early. What have I told you about timekeeping?”

  “I didn’t realise. The clock…”

  “We operate a three-strikes rule here, and you’ve already had two warnings. So you can get out as well.”

  Don’t touch your gun, Emmy. “You know what? I’m an ex-patron now.”

  And Mina was wrong—the guy wasn’t a douche. That was far too mild a word. Perhaps a cuntwaffle or a fucknugget? A boil on Satan’s backside? A skid mark on the ass of humanity? I was tempted to pick up the cold mug of coffee from the counter and hurl it at him, but some poor cleaner would only be left to deal with the mess. No, there were better ways to get revenge. I’d start with a call to the environmental health inspector.

  But I did slam the door Bradley-style on the way out, and a new crack appeared in the wall. Wasn’t this trip going swimmingly?

  Out on the casino floor, Mina tried to hold it together, but I could tell by the way she bit her lip that she was having a hard time. And the waitress’s eyes had started watering again.

  “So?” Dan asked, looking indignant when I grabbed the hot dog she was about to bite into and tossed it into a plant pot.

  “Don’t—that’s probably fifty percent rodent. And we all got chucked out by the human equivalent of a cut-and-shut.” Mina moved to walk away, and I grabbed her arm. “Wait a second.”

  “I’m having a bad day, okay? I want to go home.”

  “Yeah, we’ll fix it. Just give me a minute, both of you.”

  “Fix it? How the heck can you fix it? I really needed this job. And it’s Christmas. Nobody’s hiring over Christmas.”

  “Dan, can you wait with these guys for a second while I round up the others?”

  She rolled her eyes but nodded. “Sure. Let’s head for the door, shall we?”

  Mack was counting cards at a blackjack table, Valerie was hovering behind her, Ana was watching a guy on the far side of the room—undercover security, by the look of him—and Carmen was engrossed in her phone. I caught each of their eyes in turn and nodded towards the exit. No need to tell them twice. Even Valerie got the message.

  Bradley, on the other hand… I found him sitting at a slot machine with a cocktail, his gaze fixed on the screen as he pushed the buttons over and over and over. Every so often, he’d stretch his neck from side to side and roll his shoulders. Yup, he was in for the long haul.

  “Gotta go, champ.”

  “What? No way. I’ve won seventy bucks so far.”

  “And how much have you spent?”

  “Uh… A hundred and ninety?”

  “Perhaps we can leave while you still have some money left?”

  “But I’m due another win. I know I am.”

  “How about we find you a different casino, one that doesn’t have roaches, and I’ll give you another two hundred dollars?”

  “Roaches? Ugh.”

  But he didn’t stop. No, he pushed the buttons twice as fast, and then the worst thing happened. The absolute worst. A plume of confetti exploded, and I feared Bradley had somehow snuck Mr. Frosty into his manbag, but then sirens wailed and the machine went crazy. Bradley’s eyes weren’t just saucers, they were damn dinner plates.

  “Holy shamoli! I won fifty thousand bucks!”

  Ah, fuck. I was never going to hear the end of this, was I? Never in a million years.

  “See? I told you I was feeling lucky. I told you.”

  “Bloody marvellous.”

  He climbed on his stool and started dancing, bits of Fraggle mixing with the confetti and floating around like the remains of a chicken that got totalled by a semi. Luckily, I managed to catch him when he fell off the seat.

  “The drinks are on me tonight,” he shrieked. “And the purses. New purses for everyone.”

  Please, no. “Let’s just collect your winnings, okay? And then we can get our arses out of here.”

  “And go to the circus? Let’s go to the circus. Or the cabaret. Or a nightclub.”

  With a hundred slot-machine addicts as my witnesses, I was never coming to Vegas with Bradley again.

  CHAPTER 14

  WHILE BRADLEY COLLECTED his cash, which secretly pleased me immensely because the fucknugget-backside-boil came out to hand it over personally and I could tell it pained him, I called Cesar, the general manager at the Black Diamond.

  “Hey, it’s Emmy. What do you have in the way of employment vacancies?”

  “Employment vacancies? Are you…looking for a job?”

  “No, but I accidentally got two people fired, and I’m feeling a bit shit about it.”

  “Fired from where?”

  “From the Silver Shamrock.”

  “People get fired from there all the time. The manager’s a douche.”

  “So I heard. Anyhow, I need to find a home for a waitress and a croupier.”

  “The waitress… We’re recruiting for waitstaff at the moment. Mandy from the VIP lounge moved to Montana with her girlfriend, so we shuffled… You don’t need to know any of that, do you? We don’t have any dealer roles right now, but Carina’s going on maternity leave in three months, and we’ll probably have a vacancy by the time she’s due back. If you don’t mind some crossover…”

  “I’ll sign off on it.”

  “In that case, send them over. We’ll give them a trial.”

  “I’ll bring them over myself. Save me a spot in a poker game later?”

  “You bet.”

  That was one hiccup solved. Now we just had our original issue to deal with, and of course Bradley’s insufferable cheer. I herded him outside to where the rest of the crew were waiting on the sidewalk. Ana looked ready to
jump into traffic.

  “Are we taking a cab?” Bradley asked. “Two cabs? Or I could rent a limo.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “For the same reason we don’t take the elevator. Exercise is good for you.”

  “But what if somebody mugs me for my fifty thousand dollars?”

  Three people slowed to stare at him. Good grief.

  “Maybe if you didn’t tell everyone about it…” Dan said.

  I leaned in close enough to whisper in his ear. “I have a gun. Ana has a gun. Dan has a gun. Carmen has three guns and an itchy trigger finger. Good enough?”

  He gulped and nodded. “Perhaps we could use some fresh air.”

  “Is the right answer.”

  “Wait, where are you going?” Mina asked. “Are we coming too?”

  “We’re going to meet your new boss.”

  “Our what?”

  “Your new boss. You said you needed a job, yes? There’ll be a probationary period, but you can start right away.”

  “Where?”

  “The Black Diamond.”

  “But they’re not even hiring dealers at the moment. I check the website every week.”

  “I know the manager there. Come on—if we don’t hurry up, Bradley’ll complain his shoes are pinching.”

  “I don’t understand… If you know the manager at the Black Diamond, then why on earth were you in the Silver Shamrock? That place is a dump.”

  “Actually, we came to speak to you.”

  Mina stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk, and Bradley walked into her.

  “Me? Why?” She backed away two steps. “If you’re from the car dealership, I know I’m late on a payment, but I promise I’ll make two next month. I’ve had the worst luck lately, and—”

  “We’re not from the car dealership.”

  “Then what?”

  “We need your help with a teensy problem. Nothing sinister, I swear. Let’s discuss it over dinner, okay?”

  “But I don’t know anything about anything.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. You might know more than you think.”

  The Black Diamond in Las Vegas wasn’t my favourite of the hotels we owned—that was a toss-up between our Queensland and Dahab locations—but the service was certainly good. Cesar ran a tight ship. He’d booked us a private dining room, arranged extra suites because Black’s and my private apartment on the top floor only slept four and nobody wanted to share it with me anyway, and chilled the champagne. There was even a cocktail waiting for Bradley, complete with a tiny umbrella and fruit on the rim of the glass.