“Don’t remind me,” I growl, suddenly hit by the desire to drive out to the Red Rock canyons and go for an all-day trail run. “Where is the wandering minstrel, anyway?”
“Northern India?” Rachael sighs. “I sent him the invite for the casino’s opening gala, like you requested.”
“Let me guess. No response.”
“Ashrams are difficult places to get a hold of.”
“Oh, Elliot got the invite. He can’t be bothered.”
Rachael quiets. Looks at me with concern. “You can’t do it overnight,” she says, almost whispering.
“What?”
“Bring this pride back together. It’s going to take time.”
“Time I have. But you know what I’m wondering? Is it even worth it?”
Rachael stands. Brushes her dress smooth. “Sign the papers for Blue Line. Let me take care of that worry at least. Focus on the casino and the pride and how you want to lead in the days ahead.”
Then she strolls out the door, leaving me alone in her office. I stare at the file like it has teeth. Pick up a pen. I remember how Blake looked when I burst into the alley. His lion threatening to break free. The reek of death and predation coming off him.
Then I flip open the file, clamp my jaw closed and sign.
If you can’t trust family—
***
It’s nearly four in the morning. Only thirty minutes have passed since Summer and her crew ruined the opening night of Savannah’s soft launch. I haven’t slept a wink in more than a week. Wildbloods have more endurance than humans. But even for me a week is pushing it.
I hurry out of Rachael’s office and storm down the hall toward the elevator. Exhaustion gathers behind my eyes. Weighs them down. Messes with my vision. Makes everything seem either too sharp or totally out of focus.
The hallways is walled in glass on one side. Even though I have a thousand things on my to-do list for the day, I pause to take in the view. There’s a drop of more than a fifteen-hundred feet to the casino floor below. The view is expansive. I can look down at the casino covered by the sweeping glass arc, or through the bluish arc and out over the Strip and into the desert mountains to the north.
The moon’s low over the Red Rock canyons. I admire their striped sandstone, the reds and oranges and violets glowing in the soft pre-dawn light. Vegas’ pollution is a sickly yellow haze blanketing the valley, but the top floor of Savannah’s rises above it. We’re so high up even Luxor’s massive black pyramid looks small.
For some reason looking at the dawn mountains makes me think of the girl. Summer Mason. I’m not sure why I let her off so easy. She’s a known felon. A con and a thief. The right thing to do would’ve been to hand her to Colette and the Gaming Commission.
Let them make an example of her.
Colette said Summer was out on parole. I don’t wonder what she did to land in jail.
But I wonder why.
I look down the hallway. Take in the plush, imported wool carpet. The real gold foil lining the wainscoting. The gold framed paintings depicting Grecian myths like Sisyphus, Odysseus and Pygmalion. Classical music’s playing on the hidden speakers, Bach mostly, with a bit of Wagner thrown in to deepen the mood. Even the scents in Savannah’s are controlled. Created in a lab, cross-tested against several sample groups, designed to invoke whatever sensations we wish for a patron in that particular area of the casino. Here, in the penthouse offices, the air smells of river bushwillow and bermuda grass and gum acacia. It smells of the African veldt, an endless rolling horizon where my species once roamed.
Those smells used to help me connect to what I am.
Now they remind me of what I’ve lost.
I scent the chemicals that created them. The sterile white lab coats buzzing around with their beakers and test-tubes. Nothing in the casino is natural, except for the animals we imported to fill the indoor jungle safari.
The beasts locked and caged for the rest of their lives.
Like Summer Mason would’ve been.
As I step away from the view and enter the elevator my phone buzzes. It’s a text message from my youngest brother and die-hard computer geek, Cole, telling me he’s got something on Summer Mason.
Good, I think as the elevators whump closed.
I’ll pretend to professional curiosity around Cole.
But really, I want to know everything about that woman I can.
My lion scents an ambush. Someone’s trying to bring me down. And if I’m right, the Stone Lion Pride’s long reign is nearly finished, and I’m going to need the help of every down-on-her-luck Vegas grifter I can stick under my thumb.
***
Cole’s bunkered down in a room in my penthouse suite. He showed up one day carrying a laptop and said he’d find his own place in a few days. The next day some guys arrived with enough computer geekery to finance a small state. That was four months ago.
I’ve tried asking him what he does, day after day, staring at those screens. He tried to answer me once. I glazed over after a few minutes of talk about the tor network and onion routing and the dark web.
Cole leads a double life. This one, the physical, is small and cloistered. But out there, zipping along the binary code, he’s an emperor. It’s a trade I never would have made, even if I had the talent for computers he does.
I unlock the penthouse door and step inside. The place is virtually unlived in. Almost sterile. The furnishings are standard to the hotel, all high-end designer stuff with names I don’t bother remembering. I arrived with a suitcase, and that’s still all I have here that’s mine. I don’t have to look to know there’s no food in the massive stainless steel fridge. When I eat here, which isn’t often, I order room service from one of my restaurants.
Cole’s door is open. He painted his room pitch black for some reason. Keeps the blinds closed and the AC running full blast. I step inside, blinking against the darkness. It’s almost cave-like.
“You know, brother,” I say into the humming computers. “Keep this up and people will start thinking you’re a vampire.”
“I have bigger teeth,” Cole says from somewhere in the darkness.
“Oh yeah? Last I remember you were the runt.”
I’m teasing, but only partly. There’s something off about Cole’s den. I try and remember the last time I saw him outside the penthouse, then realize I can’t.
“It’s like a meat freezer in here,” I say as I step further into the room.
The air’s so cold my breath nearly shows.
“Heat’s bad for computers,” Cole says in his quiet voice. “Fries their insides.” He’s sitting in an office chair that’s been modified to suit his tastes: he’s taken off the backrest so he can sit on it cross-legged.
Like a guru waiting for a divine vision.
“Maybe,” I say, moving into the glowing blue light emanating from the six screens surrounding Cole in a half-circle. “But it’s good for us. You look like shit.”
Cole gives me a thin smile. “You look only slightly less invincible than normal. Big opening getting to you?”
“Lots of things are getting to me.”
“Like this pretty girl who tried to rob us?”
“Girls? Yeah. You remember what those are, right? We should go out sometime.”
Cole sighs. “Why? So I can play wingman?”
“No. So you can get laid.”
Cole nods at a picture on the screen directly in front of him. It’s Summer, although the girl in the photo looks so different from the one I met in the alley it takes me a few moments to recognize her. First, she’s a bit younger. The photo was taken maybe three years ago. She’s sitting in the back seat of a beater black mid-eighties Porsche convertible. The car’s parked in front of a dumpy-looking lime green motel. Summer’s wearing a white dress, the lightly-patterned, frilly kind women wear when it’s hot outside. The dress’s thin straps run down her shoulders. My eyes linger over her skin, trace down to the shadows formed by her breasts. Her ha
ir is long, whipped wild from riding in the convertible. The dirty-blonde color she had in the casino tonight is gone in the photo, replaced by a lovely coppery brown. She must’ve dyed it tonight, or been wearing a wig. Her long legs are tossed with casual abandon over the Porsche’s red leather passenger seat. She’s wearing spiked black boots.
Everything about her turns me on. Her careless slouch. Her leg up in the air like that. The dress’s thin fabric. The saucy, not-taking-shit expression on her face—
Summer’s also sighting down a handgun, something mean and semi-automatic from the look of it. The gun has a gleaming chrome barrel and a bright pink handle. The look in her eye as she pretends to gun down the photographer is playful. But it’s not a stretch to imagine her aiming with real intent to kill.
“She’s a fucking basket-case,” Cole says.
“That’s saying something, coming from a guy who never leaves this room.”
Cole gestures at the computers. “World’s right here at my fingertips.”
I decide to ignore him. It’s an old argument, doomed to go nowhere. “What’s her story?”
“Her father, Dave Mason, died in the military when Summer was three. Fluke accident on the firing range during basic. She was raised here in Vegas. Her mother, Carrie Mason, made ends meet working the casinos in…just about every capacity they asked her to. Money was tight, given Carrie’s predilection for the slots. ”
“Mom gambled whatever she made.”
Cole nods. “Summer hit the streets early. Mom worked two jobs, sometimes more. Very little adult supervision. Summer basically raised herself.”
Something’s building in me as I stare at Summer’s photo. A kind of sadness mixed with longing. I want to hold her. That’s the short of it. It seems silly. Even juvenile. But I want to fucking hold this complete stranger and tell her it’s all right. Tell her she’s with me now. That everything’s changed in her life, and that I’ll never let anything lousy hurt her ever again.
Which is odd, considering how I plan to use her—
“What?” I interrupt Cole, realizing I’ve zoned out on his last few sentences.
Cole gives me an odd look. “Sure you’re all right, bro?”
“Been a while since I fed. I mean…ate.”
“Do that, then. Cuz you’re looking…off you’re game.”
Cole leaves the rest unsaid.
That it’s a real bad time to be off my game.
“Tell me about her.”
“All right. You know about the grifter stuff. She works at Trader Ho’s, stocking shelves a few nights a week. But that doesn’t keep the fridge full. She supports herself and her mother almost exclusively through robbing casinos.”
“Even now? On parole?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Any big scores?”
“Nothing I could find, but who knows? I think she’s a kind of con-artist grinder.”
I toss Cole a blank look.
“You really need to study up on this shit, man.”
“I’ve been a bit busy lately. Besides, that’s why I have you.”
Cole gives me an exasperated sigh. “A grinder’s a gambler who ekes out a grim living winning small bets. Never goes for the big score, so never loses his ass completely. Just day in and day out, a few hundred here, a few hundred there, flying under the radar—”
“Summer didn’t stay under the radar. She got busted once already. Then tonight.”
“Yeah. Well. Sooner or later, every con’s luck runs out. Or maybe she just got greedy. This is Vegas, after all. Greed’s in the fucking water. The bust that landed Summer in prison happened two years ago. She spent a year in juvy. Out on parole a year ago. Quiet since then. Until tonight.”
“What about her mother?”
“Moms is still with her. Not doing too well.”
Cole presses a key. Summer’s image is replaced by a second one. Another run-down motel or apartment. A woman, very thin, bald, hooked up to a respirator, sitting on plastic lawn chair on a balcony, staring across an oil-stained parking lot at an empty pool.
“Carrie’s too weak to leave the apartment,” Cole says. “Stage two lung cancer. Terminal.”
“Summer supports her. Pays the rent. Puts food on the table.”
“By any means necessary. Dropped out of school when she was thirteen because she had to work. Studies distance ed now. Working toward her GED.”
I don’t know why, but I almost feel vindicated.
Summer’s not a charity case. There are thousands more like her in this country, maybe even millions. Life dealt her a shitty hand and she’s trying to get by. Trying to survive the best way she knows how. I respect that. I might not agree with what she has to do. But if I were in her shoes…I’d be doing the same damned thing.
“Do you see her being beneficial to our interests?” I ask.
Cole shrugs. “She might be. You got a lot on her, for sure. That parole she violated is no joke. With her record, she’s looking at ten to twenty. But it gets better.”
Cole pauses. He likes it when I have to hang on his every word. It’s a little, micro-sized power trip. I let it slide. Cole’s the runt of the litter. He doesn’t have any power other than what his geekery give him, and he never will.
After a while he says, “First, Summer’s in with the Abatelli Family.”
“No shit? The Gaming Commission woman mentioned that.”
Blake nods, hits a button. A Jersey Shore looking dude appears on the screen. Fake tan. Roid-monkey build. Rhinestone shirt. Slicked-back hair. “Seems like a douchebag,” I say.
“You think? Meet Vito Abatelli. He’s a bottom feeder in Il Potere. A small time enforcer. Runs drug deliveries too. A glorified mule. But he has the famous family name, and he slings it all over town. Summer’s been fucking him since they were in their early teens. You should see some of the emails he sent her. Dude’s no poet, but Summer’s gotten way under his skin.”
He’s not the only one.
“You think Vito was involved in her playing the Savannah tonight?”
“Nah. Not his style, from what I gather. More of a gun-in-your-mouth kinda gentleman. But…”
“Say it.”
Cole tenses. “Don Luca Abatelli does have a beef with you.”
“I paid that motherfucker off.”
“Not how the dons work. You disrespected a mafia boss in his own town.”
“Bullshit,” I say, getting pissed off. “I can’t help it if the fucker didn’t want my casino on the property next to his. Tough shit. I have more money. It’s not the early Twentieth Century in Sicily. Welcome to America. He with the most cash wins.”
Cole cringes. “I know, I know. But you asked about dirt on this Summer girl. There it is. A potential connection linking the grifter who just fried your soft opening to the crime boss who hates you.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I take it out.
My entire body tenses.
“What is it, Landon?” Cole asks, his eyes wide as he scents my anger. “What the fuck is it?”
“Nothing. I want cameras on the girl. Everywhere. In the next hour.”
“That’s gunna be—”
The six computer screens go black.
Cole looses a panicked choke and begins frantically banging on his keyboard. Written across each screen is a single word that makes a sentence that matches the threat I just read on my phone:
YOU’RE ALREADY DEAD AND BURIED, WILDBLOOD.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMER
“WHERE THE FUCK were you?” I yell at Alfie as he pulls to the curb in his shitbox Porsche 911.
“You followed?”
“What kind of question is that? No. Where were you?”
“Getting stoned. Playing Angry Birds. You should see my score. Why? Something go down?”
I slide into the passenger seat and smack him on the shoulder. Alonso’s one of my oldest friends. He’s a smallish, thin-boned Latino guy with a knot of curly dark hair and mischiev
ous eyes that sparkle when he’s taking the piss, which is just about always.
“Nah,” I say. “You know. Tried rolling the largest casino in the world. Had my usual shit luck. Got chased down by tools. Oh, and this…”
I lift my broken pinkie finger in Alfie’s face. It’s duct-taped to a Bic pen. It’s a shitty splint, but it’ll have to do. I don’t have the time for a trip to the hospital. Or the money.
Alfie punches into traffic along the Strip. “What the fuck happened?”
“Assholes happened,” I say, wrapping the finger with another few layers of duct tape, chewing through the end and spitting a piece out as we gain speed. “Caught me in the alley. Where you were supposed to be, engine gunning, ready to tear ass outta there.”
“Got held up, Summer. Sorry.”
“Oh yeah?”
Alfie flicks me a quick glance. “I got the fire alarm going, didn’t I?”
“You want a medal? What happened?”
“You’re not the only one who had a run-in with assholes. I was jacked into Savannah’s security network like we planned. Took a bit longer than expected. Whoever’s running firewall security at Savannah’s knows his shit…”
“But you got in.”
Alfie grins. “I watched your play through their video feeds. Nothing you coulda done different. Just a bad roll.”
“Fuck that. You see the good samaritan rat sitting beside me? The one who called me out for pocketing my chips? I could’ve had another round if he hadn’t opened his mouth. The croupier might as well not have been there, she was so fucking blind.”
I dig in the Porsche’s glove compartment until I find my pack of Nicorette. Pop the foul-tasting gum in my mouth.
Grimace. Resist the urge to spit it out.
“Fuck. We can put a man on the moon but we can’t make quit-smoking gum that doesn’t taste like ass?”
High Card: A Billionaire Shifter Novel (Lions of Las Vegas Book 1) Page 5
