Running Scared

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Risa was counting on her captor being one of the people who didn’t read. If he wasn’t, at least she might get a chance to body-slam him against one of the vacant slots. Then she could get away without endangering crowds of people.

  Socks looked at the icon on the bathroom door. A skirt. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  “To look for the gold.” Risa gave him a clear-eyed glance and prayed she hadn’t lost the skills Cherelle had taught her. Among them was how to lie: always meet their eyes. “Just like I told you. There’s a big ol’ vanity in there with a drawer she could have—”

  “But that’s a women’s can!” Socks cut in.

  “She wouldn’t hide it in the men’s, now, would she?”

  Socks chewed on that. “You got one minute to get back with the gold. Then I’m going to come in there and beat the shit out of you. And forget hiding in the stalls. I’m onto that bitch trick.”

  A look at Socks’s flat, dark eyes told Risa that a minute was fifty-nine seconds more than he wanted to give her.

  Sixty seconds wasn’t much, but it was better than what she had now.

  The instant his grip loosened on her wrist, she shot through the fancy gilt doors. By the time the doors closed behind her, she was sprinting toward the west entrance to the bathroom. She had only one thought—getting to the nearest employee elevator without attracting any attention, closing the doors behind her, and hitting all the alarms at once.

  She went out the other door with a long-legged stride that was almost as fast as a run and attracted a hell of a lot less attention.

  She might have made it all the way to the elevator if one of the slots hadn’t hit a big one just as she got close to it. Like everyone else in the place, Socks turned to look at the lucky jackpot winner. The first thing he saw was Risa quickstepping away from him.

  “Hey!” he yelled, yanking out his gun.

  Risa knew the layout of the casino by heart. The bozo in the Hawaiian shirt was between her and the doors leading to the street. The closest employee elevator was through the heart of the baccarat and craps tables, which lay like obstacles directly across her path.

  At least the action was light around the tables now.

  She hiked her skirt above her hips and ran flat out. Forget about going around. She vaulted up onto a craps table and then down the other side, darted between two other tables, missed her next vault, and scattered baccarat bets, bettors, and dealers in every direction. The fact that she was yelling the whole time—“He’s got a gun! Get down! Get out of the way!”—might have had something to do with the near absence of people in front of her.

  Socks’s first shot shattered a slot machine. His second one gouged a fist-size hunk from a craps table. His third exploded a drink glass on the baccarat table Risa had just hurtled over. She cut right and vanished behind steel ranks of slots.

  “Fuck!” he snarled.

  He might not have been an IQ wonder, but he was plenty street-smart. He knew if he wanted to spend the next few years of his life smoking crack and screwing women, he had to leave.

  Fast.

  With surprising speed for a man who had trouble standing up all the way straight, he turned and raced for the front doors. People ran in all directions to clear a path for him. None of the casino guards fired their weapons, because their orders from Shane—and the Las Vegas PD—in situations like this had been direct and unmistakable: don’t put civilians in danger.

  Before the first sirens started screaming toward the Golden Fleece, Socks was sitting in his purple baby, sweating and breathing hard. His abused crotch ached like a bitch. So did his head from trying to think. But no matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t see any way to get to the gold. One gun just wasn’t enough.

  But he was damned if he would let a bitch—two bitches—make a fool out of him.

  It was time to cut his uncle in on the action.

  He cranked the car to life. The radio came on at the same instant. A hot new retro-rap group was shouting their syncopated bile over the airwaves.

  Grinning and snarling along with the fuck-them-kill-them-eat-them music pounding out of the radio, Socks headed down the Strip.

  Chapter 33

  Las Vegas

  November 3

  Afternoon

  Risa leaned against the wall next to the employee elevator and tried to get enough oxygen into her lungs. As she did, she silently vowed to take advantage of the employee gym more often. She should be able to sprint a few hundred feet without feeling like steel bands were squeezing her lungs.

  Then again, fear might have had something to do with it.

  “You sure you’re all right?” asked one of the uniformed guards.

  She nodded because she didn’t want to waste breath on words.

  “The police are on their way,” another guard called out.

  She nodded again. “I’m going up to my room. I need . . . a minute.”

  “Sure,” the guard said. “Want me to walk you there?”

  She shook her head.

  Shane’s voice cut through the babble in the casino. “Where is she?”

  “Over here.”

  Risa shot the helpful guard a bleak look. She knew she was going to get the cutting edge of Shane’s tongue for putting everyone in the casino at risk. Even though she had tried to avoid doing just that, it had happened all the same.

  Bloody hell.

  She straightened up, drew a slow breath, and watched Shane come toward her like a thunderstorm looking for a place to break. Without a word he crowded her into the elevator and keyed in the override. The doors shut. The car stayed put.

  “Sorry,” Risa said before Shane could start tearing a strip off her. “I tried not to involve the casino, but someone hit a jackpot and he—”

  “Are you all right?” Shane cut in.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not.”

  “What—” she began.

  With one hand Shane covered the ceiling camera lens. With the other he grabbed her and stopped her question with a kiss that made her forget that she needed to breathe.

  She had wondered what kissing him would be like. Now she was finding out.

  Hot.

  Urgent.

  Addictive.

  With a husky sound she wrapped her arms around him and gave him back the kiss taste for taste, heat for heat, need for need. He was better than wine, sweeter, wilder. She wanted to be inside his skin, to wrap him around her, to taste all of him, to sink into him until she forgot who she was, where she was, knowing only him until the stars burned out and the universe went black.

  “Risa,” Shane said raggedly. His free hand swept up and down her back in caresses that were more inciting than calming. “Hush, darling, you’re killing me. I want you the same way.”

  Dazed, she realized that she had been whispering her thoughts aloud while she poured frantic kisses over every part of him she could reach. She leaned her forehead against his chin and fought to breathe without jerking. The slam of passion right on the heels of fear had sucked everything civilized out of her.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “If you apologize about running through the casino again, you’re going to piss me off.”

  She shook her head. “For jumping you.”

  His laughter stirred the hair at her temple. “I jumped you first.”

  She drew a ragged breath. “Oh, yeah. That’s right. I thought maybe I dreamed that part.”

  “I’d refresh your memory, but the cops are probably arriving about now.”

  “So?”

  “The next time I kiss you, I’m not stopping until we’re naked and I’m so deep in you we don’t know who’s doing what to who until the stars burn out and the universe goes black.”

  She knew she was blushing. “I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean . . .” She stopped before she got in any deeper.

  “You didn’t mean it?”

  A full-body shiver was her only answer.


  He put his hand under her stubborn chin and tilted her face up to his. Her lips were lush, flushed, wet, hungry. He nearly lost it just looking at her. “Did you mean it?”

  The roughness of his voice was like being licked by a cat’s tongue. She wished she could feel it all over. “Yes. Did you?”

  He crowded her against the wall until she could feel every inch of him. “What do you think?”

  Thick with heat and need, he pressed against her, silently proving just how badly he wanted her. The purring, approving noise she made deep in her throat had him reaching for his zipper.

  Then he remembered.

  Shit.

  “If I boost you up, can you smash the camera lens?” he asked.

  She blinked, looked at his hand braced against the ceiling over the grille, then shook her head as though recovering from a bucket of water flung in her face. “Camera. Shit.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  He removed his hand from the grille, keyed in a floor, and watched Risa with heavy-lidded eyes. When the doors opened again, he pulled her almost gently into the hallway.

  “This isn’t my floor,” she said.

  “I know.”

  Before she could ask another question, she was inside one of the casino apartments with a locked door behind her back and Shane molded to the length of her front.

  “Now,” he said, “where were we?”

  “We were jumping each other.”

  “Show me.”

  He watched her eyes while her hands slid down his chest to his thighs. When she kneaded the heavy, flexed muscles, breath backed up in his throat. She was so close . . . and not nearly close enough.

  “I was going to take it slow and thorough,” he said roughly. “You’re changing my mind.”

  “Your mind, huh?” Deliberately she unzipped his pants and found him hot and ready. She stroked the full length of his erection. “I was always told that men thought with their dick, but I didn’t believe it.”

  “Believe it.” His deft, clever hands went from her collarbone to her breasts to her thighs, opening buttons, pushing up her skirt, lighting fires. “What do women think with?”

  “You’re getting close.”

  His hands moved.

  “You’re there.” Her breath hitched, and she melted in a shivering rush. Her hips pushed helplessly against his teasing hand. Her eyes closed as a small climax ripped through her.

  Before the heat shot to her fingertips, she was on the carpet and he was pushing sleekly into her until he filled her. Stretching around him was the hottest pleasure she had ever known. And then he started moving. Sensations coiled inside her like a spring, tighter and tighter, until everything let go and she was flying, shivering, crying, and saying his name with every broken breath.

  The first clench of her release pulled him over the edge with her. He kept sliding into her because it felt too good to stop, each hot pulse better than the last until his whole body was hard, shaking with the violence of his release. He felt another climax hit her, and he gave himself to it, driving both of them higher, until the world went black and pulsing around them.

  Finally he caught enough breath to say her name and roll onto his back, taking her with him. She tightened around him, telling him without words that she liked having him inside her even when she lay limp and spent on his chest. He flexed his hips and felt more shivers take her. Fresh arousal prowled through him on hot claws.

  “Jesus, we’re going to kill each other,” he said hoarsely.

  “Are you bragging or complaining?” she said against his neck.

  “I’m taking rain checks. A whole fistful of them.”

  “Okay. As long as I don’t have to move real soon.”

  “Define real soon.”

  “This century.” She sighed. “What the hell is tickling my thigh?”

  “My pager is vibrating.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. I thought maybe you had two dicks or something.”

  Laughing, he reached into the pocket of the pants he was still—mostly—wearing and pulled out his casino remote. Susan Chatsworth’s number was in the window. Without shifting his position, he dug his communications unit out of the small of his back and keyed in Chatsworth.

  “Tannahill,” he said.

  “The police have arrived. Would you like the interview to take place in your office?”

  His executive assistant’s carefully bland tone told Shane that whoever was on the elevator security camera must have put the word out real fast that Shane had probably jumped his curator in the elevator. And vice versa.

  “My office,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. Right away?”

  He bit back a curse at the laughter that lurked just beneath the question, as in Sure you don’t want time for a quickie? But he felt much too good to be irritated.

  “Send them up,” he said. “Anybody follow the guy who grabbed Risa?”

  “Sorry, sir. He was waving a gun, and your orders—”

  “Fine,” Shane cut in. “Was anybody hurt in the casino?”

  “No. Most of the people are gathered around the slot machine he blew a hole in. Some are admiring the gouge in the baccarat table made by another bullet. A few folks headed straight for the bar. And here come the cops.”

  “While we talk to the police, settle up with the gamblers whose games were interrupted. If you have any problems getting the people to accept who owes what, run the security tapes to make your point.”

  “Yes, sir. Is Ms. Sheridan all right? Med techs are on their way, too.”

  “I’ll check.” Shane caressed down the length of her back to her lush hips. “You okay, Risa?”

  “Fine as frog’s hair,” she said, and blew against his chin.

  Laughing, Shane took his thumb off the receiver and said, “She’s fine.”

  Really fine.

  And somebody had just tried to kill her.

  Chapter 34

  Las Vegas

  November 3

  Afternoon

  John Firenze stared at his nephew and wished his sister had exercised better taste in men. The guy who had sired Cesar had been muscle, pure and simple. Mostly simple. Cesar was his father’s son in every way that mattered, except one: he was Firenze by blood. Family had to be protected from stupidity for as long as possible. When it no longer became possible . . . well, his dear sister was dead, and his sainted mother would never have to know what happened to her only grandson.

  Socks shifted uneasily from one foot to the other and moved the weight of Tim’s backpack on his thick shoulders. He felt like a kid called into the principal’s office for pinching a girl’s tit. Firenze even looked like a principal. Dark suit and white shirt, dark striped tie, thinning hair combed straight back, hands that still showed the scars of a youth spent as a bare-knuckle brawler in the waning days of Las Vegas and the Mob. When he thought about it, Socks had a hard time believing that Kid Firenze had grown up to be a suit with a thin mouth.

  But he had.

  Firenze leaned back in his big leather executive chair and watched his nephew with unblinking black eyes. “Let’s see if I have this straight. You just killed two men—”

  “I didn’t do Joey,” Socks cut in quickly. “Tim did. So I killed him.”

  “Whatever. Two men are dead.”

  Socks shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “Where’s the gun you used?”

  “Down a storm drain. Hated to do it. Cost a lot.”

  Firenze grunted. “You wore gloves?”

  “Shit, yes. I ain’t stupid.”

  “Where are the gloves?”

  “Flushed ’em in the men’s room.”

  “Here?” Firenze asked sharply.

  “Nah. An all-night gas station by the interstate. I told you, I ain’t stupid.”

  That was a matter of opinion, but at least the boy was trainable. He hadn’t forgotten how to do a clean job of dirty work.

  “Are the cops onto you?” Firenze asked
.

  “Far as I know, they don’t even have a body yet. I hocked my police-band radio, so I can’t be sure.”

  One of the five phones on Firenze’s desk rang. He ignored it, just as he ignored the subtle beep of his computer every time a new e-mail arrived.

  “Anybody see you?” Firenze asked.

  “I went out the alley and then down to the burger joint where I parked. I always remember what you told me about not parking near a job.”

  Thinking of Socks’s screaming purple car made Firenze wince. He could park it on the far side of the moon and someone still would notice. One of these days Delia’s dumb little boy was going to get into the kind of trouble even his well-connected uncle couldn’t get him out of.

  This had all the earmarks of just that unhappy day.

  “Did you see anybody?” Firenze asked.

  Socks frowned. “A drunk pissing in the alley over from Joey’s pawnshop. Does that count?”

  Firenze sincerely hoped it didn’t. “Okay. You got away clean.”

  Eagerly Socks nodded.

  “Then why did you come to me?” Firenze asked.

  “Well, it’s kinda about Joey. He really hosed me.”

  Firenze waited. Getting hosed by a pawnbroker wasn’t the type of news that would lift his heart rate.

  “I mean, really,” Socks insisted. “Stuff I had was worth a million, at least, and he only—”

  “A million?” Firenze cut in, leaning forward sharply. “What the hell were you doing robbing jewelry stores? How many times do I have to tell you that those high-end places aren’t—”

  “No jewelry,” Socks interrupted, talking fast. “I remember what you taught me, Uncle John. And this shit didn’t come from no high-end place.”