by Steven James
The woman I love.
And you’ve never told her so, not in so many words, not by using the three words that matter most.
No.
No, I haven’t.
“Xav, I took video of a notebook in Turnisen’s desk. I want you to pull it up on my phone.”
He does.
“Hit play, then pause it and read me the numbers listed for tonight.”
“Why?”
“I need to know what they are.”
“You think it’s the launch sequence?”
“I’m not sure. But if nothing else, maybe it’s something I can use to stall with.”
He looks at the screen. “Jevin, this code is at least, I don’t know, thirty or forty characters long.”
“I can memorize a deck of fifty-two cards; I can memorize a list of numbers and letters. Read them off.”
He makes it through the list twice before my phone rings.
He studies the screen. “Unknown number.”
“Let me have it.”
I accept the phone, and as soon as I tap the screen Akinsanya’s voice comes on. “Leave your car in the Arête’s parking garage. Take the elevator to the first floor of the casino. Go past the gaming tables to the escalator that leads down to the green rooms. Someone will meet you there.”
“Who?”
“Be here in fifteen minutes.”
“Let me talk to Charlene.”
But the line is already dead.
I hand Xavier the phone.
“What do we know?”
“We go to the Arête, near the green rooms. He wants me there in fifteen minutes. But I don’t know if they’re aware that you’re with me. He didn’t say anything about you being there, or about what you’re supposed to do.”
We’re less than five minutes from the hotel.
“That could work to our advantage.”
“Yes.” I’m deep in thought. “It could.”
Backstage
8:31 p.m.
15 minutes left
Xavier’s warehouse is on the way, and it only takes a couple moments to swing by and pick up the things I have in mind: a radio transmitter patch and receiver, a crossbow, and an indiscreet case for him to carry them in so he can get it into the Arête without being stopped by security.
My conspiracy theorist friend really is a good shot with a crossbow.
I place one of the transparent radio transmitters behind my left ear. It looks like a small piece of thick, clear tape. Hopefully, they won’t find it if they search me.
Using this, Xavier will be able to hear everything I say.
Back on the road, Xavier changes out of his camo clothes as I drive, then he fits the radio receiver into his ear.
“Xav, you need to promise me you won’t make any move or tell anyone where we are until I give you the go-ahead.”
“How are you gonna let me know when you want me to call the cops?”
“I’ll ask to see Charlene before I give them any information. I need to make sure she’s still alive. If I say, ‘What have you done!’ it means she’s dead. We have nothing to lose. Call the cops.”
“Jev, she’s going to be alright. Don’t even—”
“I’m just saying, just in case.”
He’s quiet.
“If I tell her, ‘It’s going to be okay,’ that means I need you to come in alone. I’ll try to give you any other info I can about what we’re dealing with.”
“What about if you want me to call hotel security?”
“I’ll just ask Akinsanya, ‘How did you get past the Arête’s security?’”
“Got it.”
I take a moment to review the random alphanumeric list. With everything that’s going on, I’m having a hard time remembering the last ten digits and letters.
“Review the code for me.”
He reads through it again, and I concentrate on the end sequence.
“Jevin, you can’t give them this code. No matter what happens in there. You understand that, right?”
I glance at him. “You told me the right one, didn’t you? You didn’t change any of it?”
“No. It was the right one. I’m just saying—”
“I got you.” I stop at that, avoiding making a promise I won’t be able to keep.
After dropping Xavier off halfway down the block, I cruise into the Arête’s parking garage.
Before leaving the pickup, I change out of the camouflage and into my street clothes.
As instructed, I ride the elevator to the first floor of the hotel’s casino and walk past the gaming tables, keeping my eyes focused straight ahead, trying not to attract any attention from people who might have seen the billboards of me out front.
I get a few looks of recognition, but thankfully no autograph requests.
I make it to the escalator that leads down to the green rooms. Typically, there are hotel security personnel down here to keep people out of the stage area, but tonight there’s just a police officer.
“Follow me,” he tells me brusquely.
An LVPD officer? So, Akinsanya really would have found out if you called the cops.
I wonder if he’s one of the two men who were staking out my house, but it was impossible to know since I hadn’t been able to get a good look at their faces.
We walk around the corner and through the doorway to the hall that leads to the backstage area. He locks the door behind us, quickly frisks me, takes my cell phone, and smashes it to pieces beneath his heel.
I’m nervous he’ll find the radio patch that’s behind my ear, but he’s not looking for anything like that and he doesn’t check for it.
People see what they expect to see.
The secret to misdirection.
He points to the hallway that leads past the dance rehearsal room. “This way.”
“Where’s Charlene?”
“Just walk.”
His name badge reads “G. Shepard.” I take it as a bad sign that he’s willing to let me see him in his uniform and let me read his name tag.
He wouldn’t let you see that if he was planning on letting you walk out of here alive.
“Why are we meeting backstage?” I ask, to give Xavier our location.
The cop doesn’t reply, just orders me to keep walking, so with him right on my heels, I cross down the hallway toward the stage.
Calista heard a knock, then heard the door to the room bang open.
Then shouting.
A gunshot.
Another.
The loud thunk of a body hitting the floor.
She wasn’t sure what was real. Maybe she was imagining this, hearing things.
The sounds came from the other side of the suite. She was weak and tried to roll over to see what was happening, but couldn’t make it.
There was a scuffle of movement, the harsh sound of male voices, and then a man was kneeling over her, removing her gag.
“Ma’am? Are you okay?”
She shook her head feebly. “I’m . . .” But she couldn’t get any other words out.
“My name is Agent Ratchford.” He was freeing her wrists and ankles. “I’m with the FBI. What’s your name?”
“Calista,” she managed to say.
“Calista, who did this to you?”
“He injected it . . . into me.” She gestured toward the bag of gray powder that he’d left on the counter in the bathroom. “I need help.”
“What did he give you?”
“Dust. Poison.” She was finally able to speak, but every word was a chore. Leaning on one elbow, she could see a couple security guards bent over Turnisen, who was on the bed at the other end of the suite. “I don’t know.”
But then she toppled back to the floor.
“Who? Who injected you?” Agent Ratchford pointed toward Dr. Malhotra’s body, which lay near the bed. The pistol he carried was beside him, where he’d dropped it when he was shot. “That man?”
She shook her head, starting to lose focus
. “Derek.”
Ratchford called to one of the other men, who she now saw was from hotel security, “Get an ambulance here, stat! And contact poison control!”
He turned to her again. “Where is this Derek?”
“He left. I don’t know.”
“Do you know his last name?”
“Byrne. But he likes to be called . . .”
“He likes to be called what?”
She tried to catch her breath.
“Who is this man?” he asked her.
“Akinsanya.”
Antidote
8:41 p.m.
5 minutes left
“What?” Clay gasped. “Did you just say Akinsanya?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t know where he went?”
“He took . . . a wheelchair . . . ”
A wheelchair, huh?
This is a casino, he thought. They’ll have surveillance footage of all the hallways.
The officer leads me through the backstage area.
I notice the props for our show—the cages and swords, the glass panels and trunks with hidden panels and sliding doors. If I could lose the cop I might be able to use something back here against Akinsanya.
Before you do anything, make sure Charlene is okay.
As we cross onto the stage itself, I see that the auditorium’s house lights are off, but one of the spotlights is on and is directed at center stage.
“Go up there,” Officer Shepard commands. “Stand in the light.”
I walk onstage.
The piranha tank on my left looms in the darkness. The platform high above it that broke away and dropped me into the tank is out of sight. The larger platform on the other side—the one where the gurney was, where the divers were stationed, and where Seth took his bow—is also engulfed in shadows.
I enter the circle of light. “Alright,” I call. “I’m here.”
The words echo eerily through the vast, empty auditorium. The acoustics are good, and I’m confident that anyone in here would be able to hear me.
“Where is she? I want to see her.”
No reply.
When you’re a Las Vegas performer you get used to not seeing the audience. Instead, you spend most of the show with spotlights glaring in your eyes. Now, I use one hand to shield my eyes from looking directly into the spot so I won’t be blinded by it.
“I said I’m here,” I repeat, louder this time. “Where’s Charlene?”
A voice drifts down from the platform where the divers sat. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Mr. Banks.”
It sounds like the same person who was on the phone with me earlier, the one who identified himself as Akinsanya.
When I turn, I can’t tell who’s up there. “Where’s Charlene?”
“Tell me the launch codes.”
“Let me talk to her.”
“You’re going to have to trust me.”
“I’m not going to give you anything until I see her.”
He ignores that. “I propose an even trade.”
“Yes, I get it,” I say impatiently. “I know: the launch codes for Charlene. Now where is—”
“No.”
“No?”
“No: the launch codes for the antidote.”
My heart stops. “What?”
“Wheel her out.”
Another spotlight flicks on, illuminating the far side of the stage. It might mean someone is in the lighting booth controlling the lights, or it just might be Akinsanya using the booth’s iPad with all the controls.
The police officer who led me here appears from the darkness. He’s pushing a wheelchair.
Charlene is sitting in it. Her wrists are cuffed to the chair. She’s gagged but conscious.
“Charlene!” I start toward her, but the sharp blast of a gunshot ricochets through the theater and the stage splinters to pieces beside my left foot.
I stop.
“Don’t go any closer”—it’s Akinsanya—“I want you to tell me the launch codes, but you don’t have to be able to walk to do that. The next bullet goes through your left thigh.”
The shot seemed to come from the back of the auditorium near the lighting booth rather than from the platform above the tank.
Another person? How many people do they have here?
Choosing to confront us here in the theater really isn’t a bad idea. Keeping the effects of one of Vegas’s most famous performers secret is a priority for the Arête, so this place is secure. To keep our music from distracting people in the gaming area, the theater is soundproof as well.
“Take off her gag.”
Akinsanya’s voice: “Go ahead.”
The officer obeys him.
“Jev,” she gulps in a breath, “don’t give them what they want. I heard ’em talking; they want a drone. They want—”
“That’s enough,” the cop tells her.
“It’s for a drug cartel. They’re delivering—”
“I said that’s enough.” He grabs her hair with his right hand and yanks her head back.
I feel my hands tighten into fists. “Let go of her now, or you will never use that hand again.”
“Do it,” Akinsanya orders.
The cop untangles his hand, shoving her head roughly to the side as he does.
“Did they poison you? Drug you?” I ask Charlene urgently.
“They gave me something.” She’s coherent at least, not out of it. At least not yet. Her eyes go to her arm where I assume they must have injected her. “I don’t know what.”
This isn’t happening, this can’t be happening!
“It’s going to be okay,” I tell her, using the phrase that will give Xavier the signal to come in alone. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
My friend would hear that through the radio.
They might have some surprises on their side, but we have at least one on ours.
Xavier was waiting at the base of the escalator, phone ready to call the police, when he heard Jevin’s words through the radio receiver assuring Charlene that she would be alright.
That meant he was to come in alone.
The door in front of him was locked.
But Jevin wasn’t the only one who knew how to pick a lock.
I face Akinsanya. “What did you mean, the codes for the antidote? What did you give her?”
He’s still in the dark. I can’t see his face.
“Dalpotol, for what it’s worth. She’s a slim woman. Based on her body size and the dosage, I’d say she has maybe four minutes left, maybe less. Now, tell me what I want to know.”
You need to get that antidote.
If you tell him the codes, any number of people might die!
But if I say nothing, Charlene will.
The stage lights come on and I see a man sitting on the scuba divers’ platform. Short-cropped, dark hair. Stocky. Late fifties. He’s holding a syringe. Akinsanya. “You don’t have a lot of time to deliberate this decision. Don’t make a choice you’re going to regret.”
The drones are armed.
Charlene’s life.
Or handing over a drone to a terrorist.
Suddenly I wish I hadn’t memorized that code, then I wouldn’t have to decide.
But I had.
And I remember it.
“How do I know that’s really the antidote?”
“It is. That’s one thing I wouldn’t deceive you about.”
I’m about to reply when Xavier’s voice comes from the shadows behind the cop who wheeled Charlene onto the stage. “Nobody move. I have a crossbow aimed at this man’s back.”
Plunge
8:42 p.m.
4 minutes left
“They drugged her, Xavier,” I call to him.
“I heard.”
“We need—”
The sound of a gunshot rips through the auditorium, another rifle shot from the lighting booth.
The cop Xavier is aiming the crossbow at jerks backward as
the back of his head blows apart in a ferocious red spray from the bullet’s exit wound.
His body drops limply to the stage.
Charlene cries out and Xavier stares dumbfounded at the corpse.
“Put down the crossbow,” Akinsanya says calmly. “I didn’t need him. I need you even less.”
A second cop appears from behind the curtain and pulls a gun on Xavier. “He told you to set down the crossbow.”
Xavier looks my direction and I nod for him to comply.
He lowers it to the stage, bolt still in it, and kicks it toward the curtain.
As I’m trying to sort out what just happened, Charlene gasps and starts convulsing.
“No!” I rush to her side.
“That’s not a good sign,” Akinsanya tells me. “You have maybe three minutes. But I wouldn’t guarantee—”
“Alright. I’ll tell ’em to you. Give me the antidote.” I put my hand behind Charlene’s neck to support her. Her breathing is strained, her fingers clenched.
“First the launch codes.”
You can’t give him the codes!
You have to!
The officer signals with his gun for Xavier to move toward center stage, and they walk past me.
Charlene’s eyes roll back in her head and she begins to make harsh gasping sounds.
“I’ll do it!” I whip around and face Akinsanya. “Write this down!”
He has his cell phone out. “Take it slowly. I don’t want to make a mistake and have to reenter this. That would take time. And time is the one thing you don’t have.”
Concentrating, focusing, trying not to let my concern for Charlene distract me, I tell him the thirty-five-digit alphanumeric code that was written in Dr. Turnisen’s notebook.
Fred Anders stood at the security checkpoint trying to explain what had happened to his walkie-talkie when he heard the harsh swish of the UAV rush past overhead.
A drone had taken off.
The test flight had begun.
“Now, the antidote,” I shout. “Give it to me.”
Akinsanya holds a syringe above the tank. “Happy swimming.”
“No!”
He drops it in, and as I race toward the steps that lead up to the platform where he’s standing, I track the movement of the syringe.
