Her 24-Hour Protector

by Loreth Anne White

  She’d tackle it all tomorrow, because right at this moment, she was falling into her tried and true coping mechanism. And she knew it. She inhaled deeply, glanced at Napoleon. “Ready, Naps? Because we’re going to partay. We’re going to the Desert Lion, and we’re going to make sure Cassie has the best damn birthday celebration of her life.”

  And with that, she drove out of the garage, the automatic door sliding smoothly shut behind her. As Jenna headed down the driveway she registered in the back of her mind that Rebecca Lynn’s slate-gray BMW hadn’t been parked in its spot in the garage.

  Daddy’s little trophy bitch was out.

  She shoved ugly thoughts of violence toward Rebecca Lynn from her mind. The night was clear, the moon high and she was going back to the twenty-four hour buzz that was Las Vegas. Where she felt safe. Where she felt herself. Where the lights and the laughter and the frenetic pace spelled freedom.

  And as she neared the metropolis, the dusky gold glow of Sin City shimmered like a beckoning halo in the hot desert night, and Jenna felt her spirits lift.

  She didn’t notice the dark sedan that pulled out of the shadows and followed her into town.

  Cassie’s birthday celebration was a glittering event that had attracted the A-list of young Vegas natives, along with special guests and family who had been flown in from around the country. The party was being hosted at the Desert Lion, Frank Epstein’s massive temple to excess, because Cassie’s uncle was a friend of the Epsteins, and Frank was generously returning a favor.

  But no matter how she tried, Jenna could not put her heart into having fun. Her champagne martini sat untouched on the bar, and Napoleon, perched on the stool beside her, glowered at the crowds from the security of his little designer purse.

  The fact Jenna was in Epstein’s opulent establishment didn’t help her mood. All she could think of was Lex, his questions about Frank and her dad. Which in turn lodged thoughts of Lex himself fast and firm in her mind. And now Jenna couldn’t shake the images of his body in the sun, or the memory of kissing him, his scent, the green sparkle in his eyes when he smiled. The way those eyes had looked so haunted when he’d heard about his mother from the Lucky Lady fortune-teller.

  She wondered again about a possible connection between Sara Duncan and Mercedes Epstein. They’d have been roughly the same age when they’d both worked at the Frontline—Sara as a croupier, Mercedes as the leggy showgirl who’d won the hand and heart of the big Frontline boss himself. Jenna found herself scanning the crowds half expecting to see the sleek silver chignon of the elegant Vegas matriarch drifting by. That’s what Mercedes did—she floated. It was those long legs. She must have been truly stunning in her day as a dancer. Jenna wondered what Lex’s mother had looked like.

  “Hey, hon, why so glum?” Cassie said as she came up to Jenna and Napoleon at the bar.

  She sighed. “Just need to wind up I guess.”

  “Well, drink that martini, and you’ll feel way more yourself.” Concern tinged Cassie’s bright hazel eyes. “Never known you not to sparkle at an event, Jenna. What’s going on?”

  Jenna couldn’t even muster a grin. “I’m sorry, Cass. It’s just…this whole Candace thing not being solved. It has me…edgy.”

  Cassie crooked up her brow quizzically. “So, it’s not going so well with Mr. Sexy FBI Agent, then?”

  Too well.

  “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  Cassie gave her a long and knowing look. “It backfired, didn’t it? He’s gotten to you.”

  Jenna said nothing.

  Cassie threw back her head and laughed. “The Jenna Jayne Rothchild has fallen for a federal agent investigating her family for homicide.”

  “I fail to see the humor, Cass.”

  Her friend’s smile sobered. “Come on, let’s try our hand at blackjack. I feel lucky tonight.”

  Jenna slid onto a seat alongside her friend at the blackjack table and stacked a pile of chips on the green felt, but all she could think about was losing…her dad, the bedrock foundation of her life. Lex.

  Jenna played her hand, flipped over her card. A bust. The dealer raked in her chips.

  Frank Epstein pointed to the top left screen along a bank of monitors. “Take camera seven in closer. Zero in on the blackjack table.”

  The technician zoomed into the pit.

  “There, see that woman in green at the table? Closer.”

  The image of the woman filled the screen. Frank’s pulse quickened. He stepped forward, attention riveted by the beautiful young siren in a low-cut shimmering emerald-green gown. Dark hair fell in thick waves down her bare back, and her lush lips were painted a ruby-red, the precise shade of her nails. A red ruby pendant hung at her throat. Even the mutt’s purse matched her outfit—emerald-green with little ruby-red accents.

  Frank’s security head, Roman Markowitz, came up beside him. “It’s Jenna Rothchild,” he said in his characteristic sandpapery voice, a result of damaged vocal chords in his youth.

  Frank nodded slightly. So Harold’s pretty young daughter was playing in his casino.

  From the monitors in his Desert Lion security room, Frank could spy on nearly all activity in his establishment. Virtually every corner of his hotel was watched by these cameras—his eye-in-thesky—including elevators. Select hotel rooms had also been outfitted with hidden cameras, which could be activated if necessary. Frank had gone so far as to install hidden filming devices in his own private penthouse where he lived with Mercedes, but those feeds only Frank could see, from a private setup in his office.

  It wasn’t that he was spying on his wife but he did like to record the activities of staff who serviced his penthouse. One never knew when a problem might arise and visual evidence could come in handy, perhaps even in a court case, for example. Information was currency in his business.

  And in Vegas, everybody watched everyone else. 24/7.

  Frank himself liked to spend several hours per day up here in the Desert Lion security room, mostly at this time of night when the action really started happening on his floors. And he never ceased to tire of the Vegas drama that unfolded nightly.

  In one twenty-four hour period, at one of his blackjack tables alone, fortunes could be made and lost several times over. He’d see hearts broken, dreams shattered. People being seduced by luck and parted from their money by the shimmering illusion—the promise of a dream—that he was selling.

  And all the while, he got richer.

  Such was the game.

  His security nerve hub was located adjacent to his private office, and Frank felt that in standing up here, he was at the pulsing core of his happening hotel at the very heart of the Strip. Quite simply, he felt like a king.

  Which, in many ways, he was.

  It wasn’t an accident years ago that his inner circle had started referring to him as the Vegas Lion, or Lion King. He held power most men could only dream of.

  Harold Rothchild, however, was one man who had the wherewithal to take it all away. Harold remained one of those annoying, ever-present fault lines in the otherwise solid foundation of Frank’s existence, a rival from Frank’s past who had something on him—and on whom Frank had something in return. It was not a situation Frank liked to be in.

  But he also couldn’t simply make Harold go away—as much as he’d like to. He could kill Harold, but it would require some serious planning and risk. Frank was all about risk. Gambling, betting, odds—they were his business. Even so, the odds needed to be in his favor. The risk needed to be calculated, and resorting to murdering Harold definitely had the odds fully stacked against.

  This was because Harold had “insurance,” a videotape showing an illegal business transaction between Frank and himself. That tape was being held in a bank safety deposit box. It was evidence that would incriminate Epstein in a much broader range of illegal affairs and provide the FBI with the tools to start dismantling his entire empire. Harold had made it quite clear that should anything “untoward�
� happen to him, his will would ensure the tape was released into the custody of federal agents.

  Epstein felt fairly secure that Harold would never take the video to the authorities prior to his own demise, because the tape would implicate Harold as well. Hence, keeping his rival alive was playing the best odds. For now.

  Ciccone, of course, had wanted to eliminate Harold years ago—said he’d become a problem down the road. And Ciccone was right. He had become a problem. But when Ciccone had presented his plan to whack Harold Rothchild the climate in Vegas had already shifted, and simply offing people Ciccone-mob-style had come to hold serious consequences, especially during a period Frank was trying to get respectable for stock market investors. It became a time that Frank desperately needed to distance himself from Ciccone. But trying to hold the mob enforcer at arms’ length hadn’t been easy.

  Frank had once liked Ciccone—but he’d have liked him even better with his hairy butt back in Chicago, doing the mob’s union work. But Ciccone wouldn’t leave Vegas. Instead, the stocky little Italian with a vile temper had accused Frank of betrayal, and he’d gone renegade, doing unnecessary violence as he’d tried to muscle in on Frank’s turf. It turned into a bitter vendetta.

  And things began to look real bad for Frank.

  The feds had moved into Vegas in a big sweep to clean out Sin City and Ciccone was drawing serious heat to Frank—heat he didn’t need.

  Turns out, he didn’t have to worry.

  Ciccone “disappeared.”

  He’d been whacked, and Frank knew who’d done it.

  “Rothchild’s daughter is seeing the FBI agent assigned to the Rothchild homicide case,” Markowitz rasped as he studied the gorgeous young woman down at the blackjack table. “He’s the same guy Mercedes bid on at that auction.”

  Frank nodded slowly. He knew his wife had bid fiercely on Special Agent Lexington Duncan. He also knew why. He knew a lot of things that his wife didn’t know that he knew. He was appraised of Mercedes’s illness, too. It burned Frank, to think she was dying and hiding it from him. He loved her more than anything. For Mercedes, he’d literally move mountains.

  He’d kill people.

  “Could get interesting,” Frank said, eyes fixed on Jenna. He wondered what game she was playing with the federal agent, how Harold might possibly be involved and how it could all potentially backfire on him—or Mercedes.

  “Put a tail on her,” he told Markowitz. “I want to know what she’s up to. Get photographic records, anything that shows her and the federal agent in a compromising position.”

  One could never underestimate how useful those could be.

  Frank and his security head exited the room together. “Did you take care of that fortune-teller at the Lucky Lady?” Frank asked quietly as they walked toward the elevators.

  “Accomplished,” rasped the security head, inserting his elevator card and keying in his code. “But Agent Duncan had already been there.”

  Frank’s temperature rose slightly. “How do you know?”

  “We made her talk first.”

  “She tell him anything?”

  “Nothing that will bring him here.”

  They entered the elevator. Frank watched lights flicking down from floor to floor. As fast as he was moving to plug up holes, the past still seemed to be seeping up into the present, somehow triggered by that Candace Rothchild murder.

  Frank for one wouldn’t mind knowing who had killed the rich slut. She’d had it coming—that didn’t concern him. What did concern him was the way it was filtering into his life.

  He didn’t like it.

  Not one bit.

  He clasped his hands behind his back as the elevator descended to the casino floor level, flexing his fingers in controlled irritation. This could not touch Mercedes. Not now. Not ever.

  Especially when she had so little time left.

  Jenna left the party at the Desert Lion early, looking forward to a hot bath and mind-numbing sleep. As she drove she was, as usual, grateful for Napoleon’s company. She reached over and scratched his head fondly. A pet had always been the one constant in her life. Perhaps her only true friend.

  “There’s nothing like a pooch, you know, boy?” she told him. “No judgment, no worries if your hair looks like crap, just pure unadulterated love, and respect—” she hesitated as errant headlights from a car suddenly blinded her in the rearview mirror. The dark sedan behind her was coming a tad too close for comfort.

  Jenna sped up a little, but the sedan kept pace. A cool sense of unease trickled through her. She didn’t like the way the driver kept his brights aimed high. She changed lanes, weaving deftly between a big SUV and a delivery truck in an effort to avoid him. The dark vehicle swerved after her.

  Was it following her?

  Panic whispered through Jenna.

  She recalled the warning notes in her father’s desk drawer…eliminating Rothchild trash, one by one. She glanced up, trying to determine the model of the vehicle, but all she could make out was that it was a dark sedan.

  The headlights loomed closer again, high beams blazing into her rearview mirror, making her eyes water. Jenna tightened her hands on the wheel. She saw an off-ramp looming ahead. It led off the freeway. On instinct, she swerved down onto the ramp, praying that the car would not follow, that she was just imagining it was tailing her.

  It swerved after her.

  The first dark tendrils of terror clawed through her. She was being pursued. The road fed into a quieter, secluded community near the deserted desert fringe. The sedan sped up behind her. Jenna’s heart began to pound.

  “Hold on, Naps,” she whispered, hitting the gas, causing her tires to skid as she wheeled sharply round a corner.

  But the sedan kept pace. The streets grew darker, more empty. Narrower. Raw fear tightened her throat. “What does that freaking idiot want with us?” she whispered to Napoleon.

  As she headed over a long bridge, the headlights began to loom closer again. With one hand fisted on the wheel, eyes fixed on the road, Jenna groped under the dash for her purse. She pulled out her phone, began to dial, but the sedan drew up suddenly and smacked her bumper from behind. Her car lurched violently forward. She gasped, dropping her phone, as she clutched at the wheel with both hands.

  It hit again, more at an angle.

  This time her car slammed against the bridge railing on the passenger side, metal sparking against metal, tires screeching. She bounced back into the lane, swerving, managing to re-steady her vehicle, heart slamming in her throat, her body wet with perspiration. She saw the dark sedan speeding up again and veering wide out to her left, coming in for a sideswipe on the driver’s side.

  Oh, God, he was going to try and push her over the bridge railing!

  She saw a highway on-ramp up ahead. She had to get back onto that freeway, where there were more cars, people. She gritted her teeth, punching down on the gas just as the sedan smacked sideways into her. She bounced off a median, swerving violently back onto the road. She was almost to the on-ramp, almost!

  Jenna flattened the accelerator to the floor, screeching up the on-ramp as the sedan closed the distance gap at incredible speed behind her. It drew almost level with her as the road narrowed, forcing her vehicle to scrape against the concrete abutment, throwing sparks.

  The passenger window of the sedan slid down. Then she heard it, something thudding into her car. He was shooting at her! Oh, dear God, someone was trying to kill her! Another bullet sparked off metal.

  Adrenaline dumped into her system, firing every synapse in her body as she kept her foot flat on the gas, focusing dead ahead where she wanted to go. And Jenna careered from the on-ramp onto the highway, bouncing and shooting diagonally across four lanes. Cars screeched everywhere, radiating out from her, but she had her fists clamped on the wheel, and she aimed for the gaps between vehicles. A small truck swerved madly, narrowly missing Jenna. But in doing so it connected the back bumper of an old station wagon, sending it into an ins
tant 360 degree spin behind her. Cars and trucks swerved outward from the spinning station wagon, tires shrieking, horns blaring…and she heard the sickening thud and crunches of metal against metal. But she couldn’t look back. She kept speeding down the highway, hands fisted on her wheel, limbs shaking, tears streaming down her face. Soon the sound of sirens began to wail, coming at her along the highway from the opposite direction.

  She passed the flashing lights and the screaming fire engines and ambulances.

  Shaking violently now, mouth bone dry, her body drenched with sweat, Jenna drove for the one solid thing—the one person in her world who would know exactly what to do, how to keep her safe. Even if he was using her.

  She pulled up outside Lex’s modest suburban house, relief washing through her chest when she saw that his lights were still on inside. Jenna cut the engine, glanced up into her rearview mirror, saw nothing but empty street.

  She peered out the side windows. It was dark, the shrubbery and trees moving in a hot breeze. Ominously writhing shapes. Jenna was convinced she could see malicious intent in every shadow, in every movement. She was terrified that whoever had murdered Candace, whoever had said that one by one, they would eliminate the Rothchild trash, was now trying to kill her. And even though the distance to Lex’s door was short, she was too afraid to get out, cross the dark space.

  “Are…are you okay, Naps?” she said on a harsh sob, reaching with trembling hands for her dog who was cowering on the floor. Napoleon made a small whine and climbed up into her lap, and Jenna began to cry, hard. She couldn’t stay here, but she couldn’t move, either.

  The front door of Lex’s house suddenly swung open. Warm gold light pooled out into the night, and the agent, dressed only in faded jeans, stepped barefoot onto his porch. Jenna scooped Napoleon up, rammed open her battered car door and bolted for his front door.