by Dan Koboldt
“I feel like I’m in some kind of trouble,” Quinn said. He watched Kiara’s face for any hint of confirmation. Nothing.
“Just the opposite,” Kiara said. “We’re here to offer you a job.”
Thank God.
A job offer. As long as it wasn’t the one he’d been warned about. Although at this point, he wasn’t sure he was in a position to be picky. They didn’t need to know that, though. “I already have one.”
Kiara swept a few empty soda cans into the overflowing trash can. She wrinkled her nose, the first hint of expression he’d seen from her. “From what we just saw, I think you can do better.”
“It’s for triple what I’m making right now.” That was sort of true.
“Money is not a problem.”
That got his attention. Sure, he wanted the Strip more than anything. But if three casinos walked out tonight, it just might not be his time.
A lot of money could take the sting out of that. “All right,” Quinn said. “What’s the job?”
“A six-month engagement.”
He frowned a little. That was shorter than he wanted, and awfully vague. “Where?”
“I’m not currently at liberty to say,” Kiara said. “It’s nowhere that you’ve been before. A completely new audience.”
Outside of Vegas, then. His disappointment warred with curiosity. “I’m going to need more than that.”
“Five hundred thousand.”
Quinn blinked, not sure he’d heard it right. “I’m sorry?”
“Five hundred thousand, for six months. Plus we’ll cover the expenses of any equipment you require for your performance.”
She hit the last word hard. Gave it a special meaning, though he couldn’t guess why. But sweet Jesus, that was a lot of money. Too much, maybe.
“That’s quite an offer,” he said. And he waited. There had to be a catch.
“There are certain conditions, of course,” Kiara said.
Quinn smiled. “Of course.”
“The first and most important is a nondisclosure agreement.”
“That’s no problem. I sign those all the time.”
“Not this kind of NDA. You won’t be able to tell anyone about the work you do for us. And you’ll be completely incommunicado during the engagement.”
“What?”
That was ridiculous. A performance without any credit wouldn’t help him at all. He remembered the foreign guy again. The one who’d given him the odd warning before the show.
“That’s a little unusual,” he said. It’s insane, he wanted to say.
“So is the money we’re talking about.”
“You could buy out any magician in Vegas for that much,” he said. “Why me?”
She glanced at Logan, and seemed to think it over. “You’re not very well known, for starters.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“And you build your own equipment, correct?”
“Yes.” That was no small thing, either. It saved money but it took a lot of time. Which is part of why he’d spent five years getting this far.
“Not to mention the fact that you’re one of only a handful of magicians who passed the background check,” Logan added.
Quinn hadn’t seen that one coming. “You ran a background check on me?”
“Of course,” Kiara said. She didn’t sound apologetic about it, either. “That’s how we know your real name. And that you’re half-Lebanese.”
He curled his lip in half a snarl. “No, I’m not.”
“Your mother wasn’t from Beirut?”
Jesus, they had been thorough. He kept that little part of the family legacy under wraps. Not even Rudy knew about it. “I was born here. I’m as American as you are.”
“Well, we checked everyone, if that makes you feel better.”
It didn’t, but Quinn figured he’d save the full speech for the next time he was “randomly” searched by airport security. He supposed a background check wasn’t too surprising, given how freely available that information was. He’d run a few himself.
Besides, they probably wouldn’t have found anything.
“I’ll need a couple days to think it over,” he said.
Logan chuckled. Kiara looked at him flatly. “You have five minutes.”
“Then my answer will be no,” Quinn said. He felt a thrill just saying it. God, what a feeling! This was just the first offer. He wasn’t about to let them push him around. “After tonight I’ll probably have a few offers to mull over.”
“I doubt it.”
The certainty in her voice was chilling. “What the hell does that mean?”
“My employer’s not interested in a bidding war with the casinos. So we’ve taken out an option on you with every major theater in Vegas.”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “For how long?”
“Six months.”
“You—you can’t do that!” he said.
It messed up everything. The planned negotiations, the offers and counteroffers. Five years of trying to show that he was good enough to be one of their headliners.
“It’s done.”
“We’re done,” he said. “And you’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”
“Lawsuits take time, Mr. Bradley. And they take more than the two hundred dollars you have in your checking account.”
So they’d run a credit check, too. This kept getting better and better. He opened his mouth to say, Screw you, but glanced at Logan and thought better of it. They had the drop on him, and he hated how it felt.
About as crappy as saying “no” felt good just moments ago.
Well, there would damn well be a negotiation, whether she wanted one or not. “Six hundred thousand,” he said.
Her eyes widened just a little. Maybe she thought he’d be too impressed by the number to try and negotiate. “No.”
“Fine,” Quinn said. “Five hundred, but I keep the metal case.”
“What metal case?”
“The one in Rudy’s top drawer.”
Kiara reached for it, but Logan cleared his throat. “Let me, Lieutenant.” A military title. That explained the good posture.
Logan gave him a hard stare. Then he reached over and edged the drawer out, enough that he could look inside. “What the—” He slid the drawer open, picked up the case he’d had in his jacket. “My glasses.”
He wrinkled his brow. Finally, a crack in the stony facade. “How did you do that?”
Quinn shrugged. “Do we have a deal?”
“Fine,” Kiara said. “Six hundred thousand.”
Logan tucked the case back inside his jacket and buttoned it, watching Quinn all the while.
“That case felt like titanium.” He smirked. “What kind of specs do you have in there?”
“None of your damn business.”
“Guess I’ll have to take them again.”
Logan smiled. “Try it.”
Kiara looked at Quinn. “So, Mr. Bradley?”
Quinn turned back to her. “Let me get this straight: you won’t tell me who I’m working for.”
“No.”
“And you won’t tell me where I’ll be working.”
“No.”
“And you can’t tell me what kind of performance you’re looking for?”
“Before you sign the NDA? No.”
“But you’ll pay me six hundred thousand dollars.”
“Yes.” She gave no indication there was any more coming.
He had two choices, because he wasn’t going back to Rudy.
It was this or the foreign guy, who’d been even less forthcoming. But a jack of spades wasn’t a paycheck.
“Then I guess we’re agreed on terms. When do I start?”
“You already have,�
� she said.
They left by the theater’s back door before Quinn had a chance to tell Rudy anything. It let out into the narrow alley between the theater and a strip mall. An SUV with tinted windows waited there, the engine already running. Kiara went around to the passenger’s side. Logan opened the back door for Quinn, closed it behind him, and got behind the wheel.
“Seat belts,” he said.
Quinn buckled his and checked his watch. Almost midnight. “I need to pack a few bags.”
“What do you need?” Kiara asked. She had her comm device out again. It looked like a next-gen smartphone, one of the autoencryption models. They weren’t supposed to hit the market for another year.
“I don’t know. Clothes, toiletries.”
“Anything special?”
Six months was a long time to be gone, but he didn’t have much in the way of personal possessions. Every dime he’d had went into the illusions. The materials didn’t come cheap.
“I guess that’s all,” he said.
“We’ll take care of it.”
“Do you need my address, or . . .”
Logan snickered.
“No,” Kiara said.
Logan turned onto the 592, headed west. They passed Caesar’s Palace, then The Palms. Away from McCarran Airport. I guess we’re not flying, Quinn thought. He turned to watch their lights fade. Couldn’t help it, any more than he could ignore the heartbreak of getting so close, only to have Kiara get in the way.
“We’ve got a friend, Lieutenant,” Logan said. “Black sedan, three cars back.”
Quinn looked over his shoulder.
“Damn it, Bradley, don’t look!” Logan said.
“You have tinted glass, and it’s dark out,” Quinn said. No way anyone could have seen him turn.
Logan shook his head and muttered something about “amateurs.”
“How long have they been on us?” Kiara asked.
“Almost from the start.”
“Lose them.”
Logan hit the gas, and the SUV leaped forward. They went from forty to eighty in about two seconds. Had to be a V-8 under the hood.
“Did you contact anyone since we met?” Kiara demanded.
“No,” Quinn said.
“No phone calls or texts to anyone?”
“Nothing. Here,” he said. He took out his phone and offered it to her.
She took it, glanced at the screen, lowered her window, and threw it out.
“Hey!” Quinn said. “Aw, hell. I just got that!”
“We’ll get you a new one.”
“I want a better one.” He couldn’t help sounding petulant about it.
“Fine,” she said, and he was pretty sure she rolled her eyes. “Now, keep quiet.”
“Hang on,” Logan said. He braked hard and swerved onto a side street.
The momentum threw Quinn against his door and window. “Jesus!”
Kiara’s comm unit beeped. She checked it. “Thirty seconds.”
“Thirty seconds to what?” Quinn asked.
She ignored him. They shot past a couple of car dealerships. Orange pylons started flashing past. Quinn looked out the front, saw a construction crew and a cement truck working in the other lane ahead. One of the workers held up a stop sign. The truck rolled across, toward their lane.
“Shit, watch the truck!” Quinn shouted.
Logan gunned it through the gap. God, it was close. Quinn caught a glimpse of the guy with the stop sign as they passed. He didn’t look angry, or even surprised. It was like he didn’t even see their SUV at all. Quinn looked back, saw the crew drag a wooden barricade across. The sedan screeched to a halt, horn blaring.
“Relax, Mr. Bradley,” Kiara said. “They’re with us.”
Not for the last time, Quinn wondered who the hell “us” was. Logan eased off the gas. A chain-link fence rose up on the right side. They turned into an entryway and paused at a guard booth. Kiara flipped open an ID case and held it where the guard could see. He waved them past without a word, into the small airfield beyond.
Maybe we are flying.
A private jet was on the runway, getting ready to take off. Logan drove right up to it. Right out on the tarmac. Quinn was shocked they were allowed out here, but he kept his mouth shut. After the construction site, he figured he shouldn’t be surprised by anything. Logan put it in park, but left the engine running. He and Kiara got out. Quinn would have followed, but his door was locked. He knocked on the window.
“Whoops,” Logan said. He opened the door from the outside.
Quinn climbed out and gave him a dirty look. He doubted they’d locked him back there on accident. Another SUV pulled up beside theirs. A young guy in a suit got out and jogged around to the trunk. He lifted out a black suitcase and handed it to Logan without a word. A woman got out of the passenger seat and got behind the wheel of Logan’s SUV. They drove off, one right after the other.
Kiara was already boarding the jet.
“Shake a leg, Bradley,” Logan said. He shoved the suitcase at him. “Don’t forget your suitcase.”
Quinn grabbed it by instinct. He saw the American flag label, and the neon-green shoelace he’d tied on the handle last year. It was full, too. Probably with his own stuff.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. So they hadn’t needed his address. They hadn’t even needed his keys. He walked up to the jet, and noticed the company name on the side. “CASE Global Enterprises?”
“Your new employer,” Logan said.
CASE Global was a billion-dollar corporation. Quinn couldn’t guess what they wanted him for, but one thing was certain.
I should have asked for more money.
“Nothing spreads across a continent like disruptive technology.”
—R. HOLT, “RECOMMENDATIONS FOR GATEWAY PROTOCOLS”
CHAPTER 2
FLIGHT
Fourteen hours later, they rode in an unmarked helicopter over some island in the South Pacific. Quinn sat on a bench in the cargo bay, trying to keep his lunch down. Already regretting that he’d said yes. Kiara and Logan sat across from him, stoic as ever. They might as well have been out for a pleasure cruise.
Kiara pressed her headset to her ear, listening to something the pilot was saying. She signaled to him and Logan: we’re landing.
Thank God for that.
A gust of wind buffeted the chopper as they descended. Quinn fought another wave of nausea. Jet travel he knew. Helicopters were another beast entirely. The whole thing seemed so . . . fragile. He was glad when they touched down.
A security team awaited them on the helipad, four men cut from the same cloth. Big shoulders, short hair, dark suits, and excellent posture. Quinn caught the glint of brushed aluminum under their jackets.
Machine guns. Sweet Jesus.
Kiara and Logan held up badges that got a careful look, but then they were waved past. Two of the security men came forward and took Quinn aside. He started feeling nervous. These guys were huge. Probably bigger than Logan, and that was saying something.
“Quinn Bradley?” one of them asked, with just a faint accent. German, maybe. He was even bigger up close.
“That’s me,” Quinn said.
The man consulted a small notepad. No, a legal pad. His hands only made it seem small. “Who was your favorite high school teacher?”
Quinn was surprised by the question, though he found himself answering without hesitation. “Mr. Ribbing.” His high school physics teacher, the one who’d first gotten him interested in engineering.
“Where was your mother born?”
“Lebanon,” Quinn said.
The man just stared at him, unblinking.
“Uh, Beirut,” Quinn added. He doubted the question was an accident. When were they going to get over the fact that his mom was born in the
Middle East? It ticked him off a little, but not enough to talk back to these guys.
The man lifted a hand to speak into his wrist. “Clear Bradley.” He waved Quinn past to where Kiara and Logan waited.
“Good security you have here,” he said to Logan.
“You’ll be hard-pressed to find any better.”
“How do they know that stuff about me?”
“We told you: we ran a background check.” Logan shrugged. “Besides, they know everything about everyone. Oh, almost forgot. Here’s your ID.” He handed Quinn a security badge. It had his driver’s license photo and the words “CLEARANCE LEVEL: 0” stamped in red on the front.
“Level zero? Seriously?” Quinn asked.
“Won’t get you in anywhere except the cafeteria.”
“What’s your level?”
“A lot higher.”
A dark-haired woman in a white lab coat had hurried out from a nearby building. She got to the helipad and started sneezing. Kiara gestured at her. “Quinn Bradley, meet Dr. Veena Chaudri.”
“Welcome,” Chaudri said.
Quinn shook her hand, impressed by the strong grip. She was almost as tall as him, too. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.” Chaudri turned abruptly to sneeze again. “Oh! Sorry. It’s my allergies.”
Kiara and Logan started toward the building, which was long and low like an army barracks. Quinn fell into step beside the newcomer. She looked to be in her mid-thirties. Had to be from India with a name like that, but the accent was puzzling. Not Indian, but not British colonial, either. “Are you a medical doctor?” he asked.
“Not quite. I’m an anthropologist. What about you?”
“I’m an entertainer,” Quinn said. “A stage magician.”
“Really?” She didn’t seem terribly surprised. “They certainly have thought of everything.”
Whatever the hell that means. . .
The interior of the building belied its outward drab appearance. The corridors were brightly lit, the floors polished. Everything was spotless. It looked more like a research laboratory than anything else . . . if research laboratories had state-of-the-art security.
