by Tami Lund
When their group reached the front door of the house, Greg took the key from Marjory’s hand, opened the door, and stepped inside first. Emily Kate knew he didn’t really expect anything to go wrong tonight. The most recent text from Jack had been frustrating, but not much different from all the others:
Still nothing. He isn’t making a move. Yet.
Emily Kate tentatively reached out and touched Connor’s arm when he held the door and indicated she should step inside before him. He offered her favorite lopsided smile.
And then she heard a voice she did not recognize, and Greg responding, “Who the hell are you?”
Chapter 18
“Oh look, a double date.”
The man was seated on a chair in the darkened living room, facing the door. He had clearly been waiting for their return. His dark hair was slicked away from his face, and bushy black brows overshadowed dark, intense eyes. A manicured, gray-speckled goatee outlined his mouth. His suit was impeccable. The gun in his hand gleamed, despite the low light.
“Who the hell are you?” Greg demanded.
“Would it be too much of a cliché to say I’m your worst nightmare?”
“Vik,” Connor said as he tried to push both his sister and Emily Kate behind him. He struggled with Greg, who was trying fairly unsuccessfully to convince Marjory to get behind him.
“He’s the casino boss,” Connor added. “The one behind this whole mess.”
“Nice job, Rikeland,” Vik commented. “Now this entire little party has to die.”
“Son of a bitch.” It was bad enough he’d gotten mixed up with Vik and his unsavory casino politics and that Vik had already gone after Emily Kate. Now he’d managed to pull his sister and a cop he’d only recently met but really liked into his problems. Deadly problems.
“Don’t listen to him, Connor. You think he really intended to kill you and let the rest of us live?” Emily Kate asked.
“Good point,” Vik said approvingly.
As they continued their dialogue, Greg slowly but steadily separated himself from the other three, moving away from the entrance, along the wall of the living room.
“Why did you put a bomb in my car?” Emily Kate wanted to know.
“The man who put a bomb in your car is dead.”
“He was acting on your orders.”
Vik did not deny it.
“Why me? I don’t even know you.”
“You know him.” Vik used the gun to point at Connor. “Intimately, as I understand it.”
Emily Kate’s cheeks flamed. “How do you know that?”
Vik chuckled. “You mean it wasn’t public knowledge? Were you trying to keep your torrid affair secret?”
“Fine,” she ground out. “We’ve been sleeping together. But I still don’t get why you had someone put a bomb in my car.”
Vik looked irritated for the first time. “Just to clarify, I did not have someone put a bomb in your car. In fact, I specifically told him to make it look like an accident. Larry clearly was not my best choice for that particular assignment.”
Emily Kate glared at him. Vik shrugged. Connor thought she was beautiful. He added spunky to the long list of reasons he loved her. He hoped to hell they both survived the night, so he could tell her so.
“As to why I targeted you specifically, well, you can blame your boyfriend here. I’ve been in love before. I know what it’s like to want to impress a woman. Most men would do anything to keep her in their bed. Including tell them fantastical stories about what they may or may not have seen while they were snooping about where they didn’t belong.” His voice rose at the end as he grew more agitated. Then he said, “Just so you know, you would have had the job.”
“Damn it.”
“The entrées you created during the interview were divine. Better than any chef we’ve had since I took over the casino several years ago. It’s really a shame I have to kill you.” He leveled the gun, pointing it at Connor’s chest.
“Oh hell,” Connor muttered.
“Why?” Emily Kate asked, sounding desperate.
Vik waved the gun back and forth. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know.”
“I don’t. All I know is that Connor did something to make you angry enough to want him dead. And now, apparently, me.”
Vik’s bushy brows furrowed, and he studied Connor for a few silent moments. “You really didn’t tell her?”
Connor cupped the back of his neck and shook his head. “Not exactly one of my proudest moments, so it wasn’t something I wanted to brag about. Besides, she’d just hired me on to run the kitchen at her restaurant, and then I talked her into bed, and...” He trailed off as he felt a blush crept up his neck.
Vik shook his head, a disgusted look on his face. “If you were going to live, I’d advise you to be more forthcoming. Otherwise, all your relationships are going to fail. Trust me, I’m an expert. I have four ex-wives and twice as many ex-girlfriends. Every one of them will tell you they couldn’t live with me because I couldn’t be honest. Well, that and my wandering eye, but that’s beside the point.”
“Fidelity’s just as important as being honest,” Marjory interjected while Connor marveled that he was receiving relationship advice from the guy intent on killing him. “In fact, they’re pretty much the same thing.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Vik said dismissively. “Since you aren’t going to live to tell the tale, and since I do like an audience, allow me to fill you all in on why you’re about to die.” He pointed the gun at Connor’s chest again.
“This guy walked into my casino and impressed the hell out of me with his culinary concoctions. I intended to hire him, but I wanted to let him stew for a while. I’m not an impulsive man, you see. So I gave him a hotel suite for the weekend, figuring he’d blow his cash at the tables, maybe get lucky. And if he couldn’t find a hookup on his own, I had a cocktail waitress all picked out to show him a good time in the evenings.”
“Hey,” Connor interrupted. “I’ve never had a problem picking up my own women, just so you know.”
Emily Kate nodded her agreement. “He’s right. Besides me, all the ladies who dine at my restaurant love him. They come to see him as much as to eat his food.”
“Whatever,” Vik said, clearly annoyed that they’d interrupted his story. “None of it mattered, did it, Mr. Rikeland?”
Connor averted his gaze and did not respond.
“You see, Mr. Rikeland here was far too nosy for his own good.”
“I just wanted to see the office,” he protested. “I’ve never had my own office before.”
“A chef doesn’t need an office. My previous executive chef never used that office,” Vik said.
“How the hell was I supposed to know that?”
“I’m so confused,” Marjory added.
Vik glared at Connor. “Mr. Rikeland went wandering about my casino, into places he wasn’t supposed to be.”
“Again, how was I supposed to know?”
“And he discovered something he wasn’t supposed to see.”
“Two somethings, actually.”
“Oh, yes. I forgot about the recipe book, in light of the dead body.”
“You put the dead body in the walk-in freezer,” Connor protested. “Outside of the movies, who does that?”
Vik looked mildly embarrassed. “Where do you think I got the idea? It’s Louisiana, for Christ’s sake. It’s freaking hot down there all the time. And as that death wasn’t supposed to happen quite the way it did, I needed some time to work out a game plan that wouldn’t tie it back to me. Hence, the freezer.” He shrugged.
The calm way Vik discussed killing someone was almost admirable, and then creating an elaborate scheme to throw the scent off himself was certainly clever. But the recipe book was a completely different matter. “You know, I wouldn’t have even realized what I was looking at if your guy hadn’t made such a big deal about that book,” said Connor.
Vik sighed. “Yes, I suspected as much. Wh
ich is why his life ended early. He was a lousy security guard anyway. Couldn’t keep his dick in his pants or his mouth shut when said dick was being serviced. I don’t mind my associates enjoying themselves with patrons or employees, but I do expect them to do so without divulging my secrets.”
“Is that the person they found in a shallow grave in Arkansas?” Emily Kate asked.
“Another unfortunate mistake, sending another associate to dispose of the body.”
“So where’s the body from the freezer?” Connor asked. “And who was it, anyway?”
“Still in the freezer. That particular body happens to be someone from the PR staff at one of the other casinos. My men discovered him snooping around the casino and worried he might have seen something that would ruin our plans.” Vik shook his head in apparent disgust.
“I really do need to go back to doing my own dirty work. As you can see, I’ve started here. You, Mr. Rikeland, have become a rather large liability. My casino’s sales have been dropping the last few months, a direct result of my competition having hired an amazing PR team. Unfortunately, the head of that team happens to be loyal to her boss and refused several rather hefty bribes. So I came up with a different way to boost my sales.” He gave Connor an expectant look.
Connor hesitated and then explained. “When I was in the kitchen office, I found this ancient cookbook. I love old cookbooks, so I opened it, began checking out the recipes. A piece of paper fell out. I picked it up and unfolded it, expecting to find another recipe. Instead, I found the handwritten plans to rig the machines at the Lucky Belle.”
Vik nodded approvingly. “Patrons have been winning left and right. Theoretically bad for business, but really, it pulled customers away from the other casinos. They began pouring into my casino, everybody hoping for that next big payout, even more so than normal. My profits were souring. I would have kept it going indefinitely, had Mr. Rikeland not discovered my secret.”
“Again, I didn’t even realize what I was looking at,” Connor retorted, glaring at Vik.
“Your discovery led me to call the FBI. I figured you would run straight to the authorities with the information.”
If he weren’t afraid any movement would cause Vik to pull the trigger, Connor would kick the wall. It seemed every damn choice he made was the wrong one.
“You called the FBI on yourself?” Emily Kate asked, sounding dubious.
Vik nodded. “I had thought it would send them off-track, have them checking out the competition instead of myself. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work that way.”
“That’s because they aren’t idiots,” Emily Kate said.
Before Connor could figure out a way to convince her not to say anything that might lead Vik to suspect she was connected to the FBI, his sister spoke. “Who handwrites that sort of thing, in today’s day and age?”
Vik waved his hand dismissively, distracted by her question. “I don’t trust computers. Too many twelve-year-old geniuses who know how to hack into your system. How do you think I came up with those plans anyway?”
Marjory gave him a dubious look. Connor searched desperately for something else to say, to keep Vik’s attention diverted from the fact that Greg had shifted away from their group and was making his way around the room, behind Vik’s back. Hopefully, Greg had figured out how to call for backup. Only he and Vik had guns in their possession, leaving the odds not exactly in their favor. And he knew without a doubt that Vik would shoot him first.
If I have to die with Emily Kate by my side, I want it to be when we’re ninety and we’ve been happily married for two-thirds of our lives.
“Get down!”
Greg shouted the command, and Connor grabbed Emily Kate and Marjorie and pulled them to the floor with him. Vik turned his head, swinging the gun at the same time and pulling the trigger. The shot went wild.
Emily Kate and Marjory both screamed. Connor scrambled to attempt to protect them while Greg ran through the house, away from the entrance, deliberately trying to lure Vik.
It worked. Vik leaped from the chair and turned, aimed the gun, and shot again. Greg ducked out of the way but did not shoot back. Connor assumed it was because he didn’t want to take the chance of hitting the three bystanders.
“Run,” Greg shouted as he rushed into the next room.
Vik turned around, and Connor could tell when it dawned on him what Greg was trying to do. “Son of a bitch.” The casino boss’s face contorted with anger.
Connor herded the two women out the front door, shouting for someone to call 9-1-1. He glanced over his shoulder in time to see Vik start toward the door, only to be tackled from behind by Greg.
“Greg!” Marjory shouted. His sister darted past him, back into the house. The two men were scuffling, Greg trying to keep Vik from taking aim with his gun, Vik trying to get away from Greg. Vik lost his grip and the gun went skittering across the hardwood floor, bumping into the nearest wall.
“Get out of here,” Greg shouted. His attention was diverted just long enough for Vik to get in a solid punch, which sent him crashing into the nearest wall.
“No,” Marjory screamed. She grabbed the nearest item of substance—a spider plant housed in a ceramic planter—and rushed at Vik, who was breathing heavily, clearly winded, as he lumbered toward the gun. With a grunt and a massive swing, Marjory slammed the plant into Vik’s back, sending him crashing headfirst into the plaster wall, right next to Greg. In the space of a heartbeat, Greg managed to produce a pair of handcuffs, which he promptly clamped around Vik’s wrists. When he was satisfied both the perp and the gun were secure, he leaped to his feet and stalked over to Marjory, fury etched into every line of his face.
He stabbed his pointer finger into her chest and bellowed, “What the hell is wrong with you? When I say run, you run. Do you understand me? You could have been killed! Do you want to die? Do you? Do you? Run next time I tell you to, damn it!”
Marjory slapped his finger away. “You’re welcome,” she snapped.
Connor turned away from the spectacle and helped Emily Kate to her feet. “You okay?”
She pressed a hand to her ribs and winced. “I think I could use one of those pain pills I’ve tried to avoid taking.”
He brushed an errant curl out of her face. “I’m sorry you got hurt. Again.”
She smiled. He loved her smile. “Hey, at least we’re alive.”
“Yeah, we are. And speaking of that, I want you to know that I—”
A cavalcade of police cars, lights flashing and sirens blaring, rounded the corner and headed their way, drowning out what he intended to say. A moment later, they were surrounded by uniformed officers, and Emily Kate’s cellphone was ringing, Jack calling, no doubt wanting to know if everyone was okay and what the hell had happened.
With a sigh, Connor plucked her phone from her hand and informed her brother that Emily Kate was indeed alive and well and would be heading back to Texas soon.
Chapter 19
“Where is that handsome chef, Emily Kate? These sweet potato and pecan muffins are good, but they aren’t...”
“To die for?” Becca, the daytime server, suggested while she passed out drinks. She then answered Wendy’s question, not bothering to wait for Emily Kate to do so. “He’s still in Detroit.”
“He’s lucky he’s not in prison,” Jack muttered.
“Because a casino boss was trying to kill him?” his mother-in-law asked, sounding astonished.
“Because he stole some guy’s boat when he was running from the casino boss.”
“Oh. Well, why isn’t he?”
Jack glanced at Emily Kate, and she dropped her gaze to the table before he answered. “Apparently the guy he stole the boat from refused to press charges. Claimed Rikeland helped save his relationship, so it had been worth it.”
“That’s a man worth keeping,” Wendy proclaimed. “And you should start calling him by his first name, Jack, if he’s going to be your brother-in-law.”
“What?
” Jack said, a look of alarm on his face.
“Don’t jump the gun,” Emily Kate said. “I haven’t heard from him in two days. How long before I give up hope that he’s coming back?”
“It’s only been a week since the casino boss was arrested,” Wendy said.
“Hell, we haven’t even finished the paperwork yet,” Jack added.
“Why didn’t he come back with y’all in the first place?” Wendy asked.
Emily Kate glanced at her brother before answering. “He said he needed to tie up a few loose ends, make sure Oliver’s new chef could handle the kitchen on his own. But I’m afraid he’s going to realize it’s so much better up there and stay.”
She knew she sounded whiny, but damn it, she’d put on a brave front for a week, and suddenly, two days ago, Connor had stopped calling and texting. She had no idea what he was doing or why he’d gone silent. She’d quickly lost all ability to be positive about the situation, especially considering he’d neither outright agreed to come to Uncertain nor had he indicated he had any desire to move their relationship to the next level.
Every conversation had been vague, although he professed to miss her desperately and kept insisting he could not wait to hold her in his arms again. But if he couldn’t wait, then why was he?
Wendy changed the subject. “Did you see the casino is under new management already? Looks like somebody from Vegas stepped in to clean things up.”
Becca returned with salads and placed them on the table.
“Yeah,” Jack said, as he dove into the greens with gusto. “It’s Vik’s nephew. We think he’s clean, though. He’s been running a casino out in Vegas for a while, and the feds out there say they haven’t had any trouble. We’ll monitor his activity, but hopefully this mess is behind us now.”
Behind us now. Whatever Emily Kate had with Connor was behind her now.
“I still can’t believe the casino manager was so crooked,” Wendy prattled on. “Killing people, chasing Connor and Emily Kate up north. All because his casino was bringing in a few million dollars less than he wanted it to.”
