No such luck. No luck at all, considering that she was supposed to be back in—she checked her watch and groaned—in ten minutes. If only she hadn’t driven to the mall…but she had and the truth was, she had no regrets. Space Cadet Teddy had been available on a first-come, first-served basis at a giant toy store. She’d arrived in time to grab the last one. No matter what happened, that was something to feel good about.
She’d learned about the popular toy’s unheralded, one-day-only appearance thanks to Prince Ahmat’s third wife. Dawn had been riding in the elevator with her, her lady-in-waiting and the bellman when the princess, looking straight ahead, suddenly made an announcement.
“You will acquire a Space Cadet Teddy for me,” she said.
Dawn lifted an eyebrow in surprise. A teddy bear for the royal wife? And who was she addressing? The lady-in-waiting, evidently, because after a bit of foot-shifting, the woman whispered that she would do her best but she understood the toy was difficult to come by.
The princess folded her arms. “The Crown Prince wants one. You will acquire it.”
The lady-in-waiting seemed to shrink. Thankfully, the bellman came to the rescue. “Heard the radio this morning,” he said. “Supposed to be a one-day sale of them bears at that store near Belson’s mall. “
Dawn had come within a breath of asking the lady-in-waiting if she’d please purchase two Teddys. She hadn’t, of course; it wouldn’t have been proper. More importantly, there’d have been questions to answer about why she’d want a teddy bear at all.
When Jean urged her to take an early lunch, she pocketed her ID badge—you weren’t supposed to wear it out of the hotel—hopped into her car and raced to the mall, already imagining the look she’d see on Tommy’s face when he saw the bear. Her little boy had fallen in love with the toy in its first incarnation three years ago. Dawn had managed to buy every Teddy since, even when she’d had to pinch pennies to do it. Tommy had Fisherman Teddy, First Baseman Teddy, and Sleepytime Teddy. Now, she’d managed to snag the last Space Cadet Teddy from the shelf in the toy store…
And, on the way back, to strand herself far enough from the Song that she might as well have been the far side of the moon.
She sighed, closed the hood and dusted off her hands. The heat was unbearable. Everyone said you got used to it but she hadn’t. When she had to be out in midday, she dressed for it. Shorts, if she worked in the tiny patch of yard that fronted her apartment; long cotton skirts, sandals and a floppy straw hat if she went to the market. What she was wearing now—a suit, silk blouse, panty hose and heels—was fine for the air-conditioned office and lobby of the Song but it was a killer anyplace—
A horn blared in fury.
Dawn spun around. A car was flying toward her. It wasn’t true, she thought with terrifying clarity. When you were about to die, your life didn’t pass before your eyes. Your heart lodged in your throat, and all you could do was wait for the moment of impact.
CHAPTER FIVE
GRAY’S plane had been delayed more than an hour by a line of heavy thunderstorms that rumbled through New York that morning.
He sat in the first-class lounge, annoyed and edgy, knowing he was overreacting to the delay but he didn’t give a damn. All he wanted was to get to Vegas, find Dawn and write Paid to his debt to Jonas.
“How much longer until flight 1740 boards?” he kept asking the ground attendant.
Her response, the same as her smile, was constant. “Just as soon as the weather clears, Mr. Baron.”
When he found himself on the verge of telling her she could save time by putting her answer on tape, he knew he needed to calm down. Pacing back and forth wasn’t helping, and he had enough caffeine in his system so that he’d probably start twitching if he had any more. He took a small bottle of water from the minifridge and found a chair in the far end of the lounge where he couldn’t see the departures board or the rain beating against the window.
When the weather cleared and outbound flights resumed, he’d know it.
The water cooled his throat, if not his impatience. He finished it, put the bottle on the floor beside him and took a file out of his briefcase. Jack had faxed him the last information on Dawn late last night and he’d tucked it away after a cursory glance. He’d intended to go through the information on the plane but why wait? He had the time right now.
The first few pages were duplicates of stuff he’d already seen. He thumbed through them quickly. The last pages were the ones that interested him. The data was new and defined the woman he was flying to Vegas to meet. It was fascinating stuff.
For starters, the lady wasn’t Dawn Lincoln Kitteridge anymore. She was Dawn Carter. She had been, ever since she’d spent a couple of months in Phoenix where she’d somehow managed to acquire ID in that name: driver’s license, social security card, a gasoline credit card. Everything you’d need to assume a new identity.
Whatever else Dawn was, she wasn’t stupid.
She’d stopped at half a dozen other places after Phoenix, worked at a waitress in a couple of diners and at a Denny’s before she’d landed in Vegas more than three years ago and got a job waiting tables at the Desert Song. She’d made the most of the opportunities at the hotel and casino, shifting from waitress to blackjack dealer, then to dealer in what Jack’s investigator called the high stakes section of the casino. Now she was off the casino floor, working at something called Special Services where she “offered private attention to VIPs and big spenders,” Jack’s man had written, and underlined it.
Gray’s mouth thinned. He wouldn’t read anything into that, not yet, but he had his suspicions of exactly what special services she provided.
The personal data on Dawn Kitteridge—Dawn Carter, he reminded himself—was skimpy. There was nothing about who she had lived with, who she had been involved with during the months she’d spent working her way to Nevada. If what Harman said was true, she’d probably left a trail of men behind her but that wasn’t his business. She lived alone in Vegas. She had one seemingly close friend, a former stripper named Cassie Berk who was now a cocktail waitress at the Desert Song. She also seemed to have, in the sterile language of the report, a “significant personal relationship” with the hotel’s manager, Keir O’Connell.
What was that supposed to mean? Was she sleeping with her boss? Maybe that was why the lady had gone from waitress to dealer so fast. At least, Gray figured it was fast. He didn’t know very much about the way casinos or hotels operated, but it was a possibility. Harman had said his wife had been unfaithful. Why should that change now? Gray rubbed his forehead. There was nothing new in the report, nothing to help him get a better grasp of the woman he was going to meet. Actually the most telling piece of information was the one Jack’s man had omitted.
Dawn was beautiful.
He looked at the picture Ballard had faxed him. The investigator had obviously taken it at a distance and the black-and-white fax transmission was of such poor quality that he could see the grainy dots that made up the image. Jack had tucked in a note explaining that he knew the picture wasn’t very good but that he figured it might be of some use since it was more recent than the photo Gray had bought from Harman.
Lousy quality or not, one thing was clear. Dawn was no longer a shapeless girl in a simple dress. She’d been replaced by a woman with one hell of a body. A clinging T-shirt and short—very short—denim cutoffs made the most of high breasts, a slender waist, almost boyish hips and legs that went on forever.
Was that why she’d left her husband? Why she’d abandoned her son? Because she’d grown up and wanted a different life? Because she preferred the excitement of a wide-open city to the isolation of a mountaintop?
“Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. The weather has cleared. The following flights are ready for immediate departure…”
Gray looked at the faxed photo again. The accompanying note said Jack’s man had taken it in the front yard of a house at 916 East Orchard Road, where Dawn rented an apart
ment. The picture showed her watering a shrub that looked as if what it really needed was a quick and merciful death. The photographer had caught her as if she were staring straight into the lens. Too bad the image was so blurry. Gray couldn’t read her eyes. Did they hold the same mystery as Nora’s? That blend of sorrow and defiance that seemed to say more than words ever could?
Jesus. His mouth twisted with disgust as he stuffed the picture and the rest of the report back into the folder. What was with him? This was no mystical experience. He was going to Vegas to talk to Dawn, though he couldn’t figure out what they’d talk about any more than he could see much reason for it. He already had a good idea of what she was like. What more could he learn? Something good, maybe? That she was kind to animals, or that she bought Girl Scout cookies?
“Flight 1740 to Las Vegas now boarding. All passengers, please report to…”
Gray tuned into the voice coming from the speakers. The storm was over, planes were back in business, and his was boarding. About time, he thought, and headed for the door.
* * *
He read a book part of the way to Vegas, a bestseller by a lawyer who obviously knew more about fiction than the law, closed it when he found himself yawning and slept until the flight attendant woke him to say they were about to land.
If only this were a real vacation, he thought as his plane touched down. But it wasn’t, and when he exited the terminal at McLarran Airport, he felt the heat and thought wryly that he’d be ready for a vacation in the Arctic by the time he finished with this mess.
Gray turned the AC in his rental car to high.
He didn’t like Vegas. He’d been to the neon oasis in the desert once before, to meet with a client. The flashing lights and phony glitter, the crowds hell-bent on a good time and the electronic noise of the ubiquitous slot machines had impressed him but not the way he suspected the city fathers would have liked. Everything he saw convinced him that the town was a monument to self-indulgence.
No wonder Dawn had come here to live.
He edged into the long line of traffic headed for the Strip and the Desert Song Hotel and Casino. He’d blocked out five days for this trip, figuring it might take him that long to check out Ben Lincoln’s granddaughter, but he hoped he could cut out sooner than that, fly straight to Austin, write some notes on the plane, hand them to Jonas and tell the old man what he could do with his blackmail and his philanthropy.
“Here’s the information you wanted,” he’d say, “and by the way, Uncle, I’ll send you a check to cover the money you spent on my education. Goodbye, good luck, and to hell with you.”
Just thinking about it made him feel better.
The only thing he still had to do was decide on a way to approach Dawn Carter. He’d been wrestling with that problem for days. The straightforward approach was out. He certainly wasn’t going to come at her with blunt questions any more than he’d walk up, introduce himself and say that he here to take a good, hard look at her and see if she was worth, oh, six figures, maybe even seven, to an old man who had too much money and a bad case of the guilts.
Years in the courtroom had taught him that misdirection was often the best way to uncover information, especially from a hostile witness. And yeah, this wasn’t a courtroom and Dawn wasn’t a witness, hostile or otherwise, but it wasn’t much of a stretch to figure she wouldn’t want to explain herself or her life to a stranger.
He could always fall back on the story he’d told Harman, that her grandfather had left her a keepsake. Just for a minute, he thought about finding the kind of junky gift shops this town was sure to have in abundance. He could buy a music box, tear off the inevitable made-in-a-third-world-country-you-never-heard-of sticker, and present her with it.
Traffic opened up ahead. Gray gunned the engine and the car shot forward. What a scene that would be. He, acting his part to the hilt, solemn and sincere as he handed her the box. She, eagerly anticipating something old, maybe priceless. Her reaction when she saw what she’d supposedly inherited…
He’d love to see it play out, but it would never happen. In a pinch, he could tell her the story but actually giving her a phony legacy would be pushing the boundaries. He was a lawyer, not a shyster. All right. He’d play it cool. Forget telling her anything. A man didn’t need an excuse to talk to a woman. A smile, a couple of minutes of idle chitchat, and he could parlay that into an excuse for a drink and some conversation. The unadorned truth was that he had an easy time with women. It was only relationships that were hell.
And he wouldn’t feel so much as a twinge of conscience about the decep—
“Shit!”
He came up a low rise—barely a bump in the road, he thought, in the instant before surprise gave way to shock—and saw a woman and a stalled car directly ahead of him. He hit the horn, she whirled toward him, and he knew he’d never forget the white blur of her face, the look of horror that transformed it as he hit the horn, stood on the brakes, and prayed for a miracle to any god who might be listening.
His car came to a shuddering halt inches away from her. The stop threw him forward; the seat belt bit into his shoulder and hip. Adrenaline pumped through him, hot and fast, as he unlatched the belt, flung open the door and jumped out.
“Jesus Christ,” he roared, “what’s the matter with you, lady? You almost got both of us killed!”
“I didn’t realize—” She took a step back. “I—I’m sorry.”
She was shaking from head to toe. Good, he thought viciously, let her go into convulsions for all he gave a damn. She’d scared the crap out of both of them. His heart was still trying to beat its way out of his chest.
“You’re sorry? Sorry? You leave your car in the middle of the goddamned road and you think you can say you’re sorry and that’s the end of it?”
“I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Did you ever think of setting out flares?”
“I don’t have—”
“Well, you should. Or was the poor son of a bitch who came over that hill supposed to have ESP?”
“My car broke down. It just—it just…” She flung out a trembling hand. “It just stopped.”
“Yeah, well, you almost stopped. And if you think I want to sit around a police station and explain how I came to cream a woman too stupid to move her car off the road, you’re—What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
Hell. Gray hurried toward her, caught her by the shoulders as she swayed. She flinched, and he tightened his grasp.
“Let go,” she said in a tiny voice.
“So you can pass out on me? Yeah, that would be perfect.” None too gently, he walked her to the curb. “Sit.”
“I don’t need to—”
“Sit, dammit!”
Dawn felt his hands press down on her shoulders. It was the first time anyone had touched her in anger in four years but it didn’t matter. The old instincts were still there, trying to suck her down into submission. No. God, no, she wasn’t going to let it happen.
“Don’t touch me!”
“Lady, don’t be an idiot. You’re going to faint.”
“I’m not…” But she was. The world was spinning. She heard him curse, felt his hand wrap around her arm as she sank to the curb.
“Put your head down, dammit.” He put his hand on the back of her head and shoved her face toward her knees. She felt as if she were on an out-of-control merry-go-round. Any second now, her teeth would chatter. How could the sun feel so hot and she feel so cold?
“For God’s sake,” the man said, his voice thick with disgust. “Stay where you are, you hear? Don’t try to get up.”
Stay where she was? If she could have, she’d have laughed. It was hard enough to keep from pitching into the gutter. The last thing she was going to do was try to stand.
“Here.”
She felt something warm drop around her shoulders. Gratefully she burrowed into it.
“Do you have anything to drink in your car?”<
br />
She nodded. Big mistake. The merry-go-round took another spin. “Bottle of water,” she whispered.
He was back a few seconds later. “Drink,” he ordered.
He put the bottle to her lips and she clutched it, drank greedily, gulping down the warm, life-giving fluid, feeling it spill over her chin. When the last drop trickled down her throat, she lifted her head and looked at the man standing over her. His hands were propped on his hips and he was slit-eyed with hostility.
She could deal with hostility.
“I’m okay now.”
Her jerked his head in what she assumed was assent.
“Thank you.”
He jerked his head again. Apparently he’d run out of names to call her. Without a word, he walked to his car. She heard a door slam, followed by the sound of the engine starting. Good. Her Bad Samaritan was leaving—but he’d forgotten whatever he’d draped over her. Dawn reached up, felt the softness of cotton. A shirt? A sweater?
“Leave it on.”
She looked up, startled. He was back.
“I checked my trunk.” Just for a moment, his mouth curved in what might have been the first stages of a smile. “Turns out there were no flares in it, either. You sure you’re okay?”
Dawn nodded. The world had stopped spinning. “It was just the heat.”
“And the sight of me coming at you at a million miles an hour.”
The sight of you coming at me in a rage, she thought, and hated herself for discovering that she hadn’t gotten past that. He smiled, and she forced herself to smile in return as she rose to her feet. He reached out a hand but she pretended not to see it.
Raising the Stakes Page 9
