Robby was now moving. Climbing. Standing on something.
Facing the expansive lake, his body was silhouetted against the pluming, brightly lit white wall of water.
She pushed forward. “No!”
But her voice was swallowed by the spouting jets, the booming horns, and masses of people in front of her.
Vail figured she was the only one who saw the two men raise hand-guns. Not even she heard them fire their suppressed rounds. But the buck of the barrel was unmistakable.
AS ROBBY NEARED the strip ahead, the high-def billboards and neon glow of Las Vegas excess reflecting off glass everywhere, his mind sifted through various scenarios. A substantial obstacle remained: the two men assigned to kill him, held at bay by a natural barrier of hedges.
And coming up ahead, from the boulevard, another two sicarios, fighting their way toward him.
He turned and looked in the direction from which he had just come. Go back? He took a step, then stopped. No—even if he could fight his way through the crowd, the men on the other side of the hedges would arrive ahead of him.
He had mere seconds to figure a way out.
There was only one unblocked path: the water. He pushed a man and two women aside, then hoisted himself to the top of the cement wall—and felt the hot sting of a bullet slam into his left arm.
With no further thought required, he jumped.
It was a ten foot drop, and he hit the lake’s surface sharply, feet first. That wasn’t the problem—it was the cold water and the spray of the jets raining down on him as the show built in intensity. He no longer felt the sting of the gunshot wound. The chilled water had numbed it, and his urgent need to avoid any more lead spinning through his flesh pushed him to move forward.
He paddled his right arm and legs through the water, slamming into something rock hard and immobile. Pipes. When he’d jumped, he had apparently come dangerously close to landing on a portion of the extensive network of plumbing that spidered off into the distance, as far as he could see.
He hadn’t appreciated how expansive this body of water was until he was in it, enveloped in its cold grasp, no reachable land in sight. Swimming ahead would only take him into the middle of the lake, and make him an easy target for another gunshot—one that might find center mass. He pulled his body around and faced a series of arched aqueducts, which appeared to lead under the roadway he’d just traversed.
Wherever they led didn’t matter—it meant he would be out of the line of sight of the hunters who were determined to notch him onto their bloody cartel belts. He thrust his legs and right arm outward and pushed on, beneath the nearest stone archway, into the pitch darkness.
VAIL SHOVED AND PUSHED her way to the edge of the lake’s retaining wall. The rockets’ red glare was booming from the speakers. The nozzles were blowing tight streams of water fifteen stories into the air, and smaller walls of synchronized spray cascaded across her field of sight. And— what the hell?—a fog began spreading rapidly across the lake. You’ve gotta be kidding me. Fog?
She stood there, looking for Robby—for any sign of life.
She saw nothing. No blood. No floating body. No flailing arms. And the dense cloud enveloping the lake was making it nearly impossible to see.
What to do. How—where—
Along the lower end of the right side wall of the lake, arched aqueducts. The water flowed into them. But where did they lead? Had Robby swum through one of them?
Vail pulled out the tracking device, hoping it was Robby who’d been carrying the phone. A black screen stared back at her. If Robby had the cell, it would be underwater now, shorted out, no longer transmitting a digital or electronic signal.
It was clear the device would bring her no closer to locating him. She shoved LOWIS into her pocket and headed back the way she had come, into the hotel.
ROXXANN DIXON STOOD on the pedestrian overpass that connected the Via Bellagio shops to the walkway that led to Caesars Palace. On a lower level directly ahead, a permanent tented structure arced over a plaza that housed tables catering to the adjacent Serendipity3 eatery.
As she descended the steps, off to her left, her eye caught a flash of movement and the glimpse of a man who looked familiar.
César Guevara.
Looming over the immediate vicinity was one of the towering rectangular Roman-themed buildings sporting a red neon Caesars Palace sign at its upper periphery. Keeping her focus on Guevara’s last known location, she ran through the well-lit tented area, then along a narrow passageway that led to the hotel.
Tall, slender evergreens rose to her right, which bordered the intensely lit main entrance to the Caesars complex. Limousines and luxury sedans were parked beneath the long and broad overhang, where bellmen awaited the next approaching vehicle ferrying a tip-bearing arrival.
There! Beneath the bright lights of the hotel’s brick plaza.
Dixon took off in Guevara’s direction, pulling her Glock with her right hand and fumbling for her badge with the left. It did not say “federal task force officer,” and would thus carry no jurisdiction in Nevada. But it would have the intended effect. Those in the vicinity would know she had a legitimate reason for brandishing a pistol and running through the crowds.
Yet no one seemed to notice. Some glanced in her direction, but the density of people provided adequate cover.
Seconds later, Dixon burst through the crowd. Guevara was nowhere nearby. She turned in a circle, looking, hoping—and then saw him behind the dark glass of the main entry doors. She scaled the steps and shoulder-slammed her way into the lobby. She almost froze, taken by the grandeur before her: dramatic ceiling lighting and frescoes, rose quartz columns, blown glass chandeliers, black and ivory marble everywhere—and a central fountain that spouted water into a basin below three scantily clad limestone women.
Images of lavish, elegant opulence plowed through her brain, but she didn’t have time to process any of it because the lobby was more expansive than the eye could immediately comprehend. César Guevara was not stopping to take in the surroundings, nor was he evaluating its magnificence. He was moving at a rapid pace into the casino. And now, so was Dixon.
A violet, gold, black, and burgundy carpet extended throughout semiprivate and public gambling areas.
“Can I help you?” a security guard asked, eyeing first her badge, then the Glock.
“I’m following a suspect. Outta my way,” Dixon said as she edged around him.
“Hey—hold on a second—”
Dixon held up her badge. “Get the fuck out of my way!”
“You got a warrant? You can’t just walk in here with a gun—” he said, then maneuvered himself in front of her.
“I’m a federal agent,” she said, moving her head to see around him in hopes of catching a visual of Guevara. “Move!”
“That’s not what your badge says,” he said, then grabbed her arm. She was about to do something nasty to his closely held male compadres when she broke free, then shoved him hard into a crowd of youths passing by. He tripped backward and sprawled to the floor.
But as she moved on, she heard him key his two-way. Reinforcements would be en route—very shortly, she surmised.
Dixon moved deeper into the gambling areas, thick with people and the pungent smell of perfume and cigarette smoke. Guevara had to be around here somewhere. As her eyes roamed the large room, beeps and whirls sounding in her head off in the distance, she felt a creeping sense of anxiety. Had he gotten away?
Had she blown it?
VAIL PUSHED HER WAY through the crowd, then sprinted across the carport and into the Bellagio’s lobby. People of all ages milled about in seemingly haphazard activity. She needed to find someone who knew about the hotel.
To her left, a suited man with a brass nametag.
She dug out her creds and held them as she ran left, toward the bellman’s station, an ivory and gold counter that stood in front of a wall-size floral mural. “The fountains, the water—” She stopped, c
ollected herself. Be coherent. “The water outside—the lake. There are arches, aqueducts that go under the roadway. Where do they lead?”
The bellman leaned back slightly and swung his head toward the front of the building. Apparently the answers weren’t there, because he turned back to Vail and shrugged. “I—I don’t know. I’ve never been asked that question. People usually want to know how often the fountains go off, how many stories into the air the water reaches—”
Vail swung her head around the lobby. “Anyone who might know?”
“You can ask at registration. They might be able to call a manager—”
With five long strides, Vail covered the distance to the nearby desk, which stretched across the cavernous room as far as she could see into the distance. She slapped a hand on the tan granite countertop in front of a woman who was checking in a guest, shoved her badge forward, and said, “The goddamn fountain—I need someone who can tell me where the water goes.”
The guest gave her a dirty look for being so rude—but the eyes of the hotel service worker were wide with shock and glued to Vail’s credentials case. She seemed to be reading every word.
Vail flicked it closed and snagged her attention. “A manager. Call a goddamn manager.”
The woman stumbled over some words, then reached for a phone and dialed. She spoke into the handset, then lowered it and said, “He’ll be up in a few minutes.”
“I don’t have a few minutes.” Vail pulled her radio. “Vail to Mann. Over.”
A second later, her two-way crackled. “Mann.”
“Where the hell are you?”
“We swung around to assist SWAT, why?”
“Those fountains at the Bellagio. Where do they lead? I mean, there’s gotta be pipes, right? Some kind of plumbing, machinery and computers or something that plays and synchronizes the jets to the music. Right?”
“Affirmative. One of the designers once showed me around. He took me down to ‘the back of the house,’ which runs underneath the entire property. Catering tunnels, a massive kitchen, the pump rooms and maintenance shop for the fountain, all sorts of shit like that.”
“Okay, listen to me. Robby jumped into the lake. He may’ve been shot but I don’t know. There are arches, aqueducts that look like they go under the roadway that leads up to the hotel.”
“Affirmative. Bellagio Drive, south area of the lake. But those aqueducts are fake. They don’t lead anywhere. Do you see him on the lake?”
“I’m in the lobby. There’s some kind of fog hanging over the water. I couldn’t see shit.”
“Part of the show. It’ll lift in a few minutes.”
“There were assholes shooting at him. If I’m Robby, I’m swimming like Michael Phelps trying to get away. The drop from the roadway is about a dozen feet; I don’t think there’s a way to climb up out of the water. Is there any outlet into the hotel? Any way in?”
“North side of the lake,” Mann said. “There’s an opening in the fake rock that leads into the maintenance shop for the fountain. I think they called it the Bat Cave. From what I remember, there’s a boat launching ramp that leads into the cave. It’s the only place he can go. Find that and you’ll find Robby.”
“How do I get there?”
“Ask how to get down to ‘the back of the house.’ The corridor will lead to the north end of the complex.”
“Got it. Over.” Vail shoved the radio in her back pocket and pivoted in a circle. Signs for everything except “the back of the house.”
She stopped herself from thinking like a woman looking for a hotel room and thought like a cop. She was in a casino, a place filled with surveillance cameras. And security guards. Security guards would know more about the layout of the hotel’s underbelly and hidden locations than a bellman.
She reached into her holster and pulled out her Glock, held it up in one hand and her creds in the other. Then she started yelling. “FBI! Everyone down!”
Screams. Movement. People hitting the floor. Now that’s more like it. Security should be here any second. Damn, I should’ve thought of this sooner.
Sure enough, two guards dressed in red blazers and black pants approached on the run, from the direction of the casino that fed into the lobby.
They were yelling at her, but that was a game Vail always won.
“FBI! Federal agent!” She made sure they saw her badge and credentials—because she had no idea if casino security guards were armed and she couldn’t afford any misunderstandings.
As they neared, Vail saw they were not packing. One was chattering on his radio and the other appeared to be unsure of what to do. She couldn’t blame him. This probably wasn’t something they’d ever encountered.
“I need one of you to take me to the Bat Cave. And I need someone to lock the place down. Tight.”
They looked at one another.
“Now!” She advanced on them.
That got them moving. The man to her left stepped forward and said, “Did you say the Bat Cave?” He asked it as if she had lost touch with reality.
“Yes, the Bat Cave. The back of the house. The maintenance area for the fountains.”
“Yeah—okay, The Shop. I can show you where it is.”
Vail swiveled to the other guard. “No one out, any exit. Only federal agents in. Got it?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Tell your boss we’ve got an emergency.”
The guard keyed up his radio.
Vail and the other man moved off, toward the lower reaches of the complex.
THE ARCHED AQUEDUCTS turned out to be dead ends. The lake was too far below ground level to even attempt to climb out, so Robby moved off into the framework of piping and water jets. He swam as best he could with one arm, following the plumbing as it led toward the other end, into a blue-tinted darkness.
Pipes meant a water supply—and that hopefully translated into some kind of apparatus that he might be able to use to climb out of the lake.
He was not sure where or how he had summoned the energy to go on, but thinking about seeing Karen again, holding her, caressing her, kept his arms and feet moving through the chilled waters.
At least the sicarios were not shooting at him. The fog that had provided him cover had evaporated from the lake’s surface. Was he out of range? Were they moving to a better perch? He couldn’t worry about any of that—he had to get out of the cold water. Not only was he feeling the effects, but he did not want to still be in the lake when the immensely powerful fountain jets rumbled to life again.
How long did he have?
Ahead, he saw something reflecting off the rock wall—no, not a reflection, and not off the rock’s surface; off an opening in the rock. A way out? He swam toward it—and about twenty yards later, he was able to confirm it was, indeed, something resembling a cavity of some sort in the stone wall. And the water appeared to be flowing in.
As he approached, a rumbling vibration built inside the pipe to his right.
The fountains.
But before they exploded into the air, the slap of water behind him snatched his attention. Movement. A body. He yanked his head around but never saw it. A blow to the face caught him off guard, like a truck broadsiding a car at an intersection.
Dark—
Dizzy—
Music roaring, water raining down around him.
Head shoved underwater—can’t breathe—
Blow to the back—
He reached and grabbed—at anything—something to make it stop—
And found purchase on a shirt—
Yanked, twisted, elbowed his arm up and under the hand holding down his head and—
Leveraged himself free.
Robby forced his face up through the water’s surface and sucked in air—saw a large dark head, body in front of him—
And threw up his left arm in time to block another punch. The blow landed instead just beneath the gunshot wound, causing a stab of ice-pick intense pain.
Enough of this shit.
Robby swung his right hand out of the water and snatched a grip around the man’s ear. He nearly slipped off the appendage, but he closed his hand as tight as he could, with whatever strength he had left, and pulled.
The ear is a sensitive part of the anatomy, and the innate desire not to have it separated from one’s body provided the survival mechanism Robby needed: his attacker instinctively refocused his attention and bent his neck to reduce the angle of Robby’s pull.
But Robby did not release his grip. The sicario switched tactics and grabbed Robby’s arm, but couldn’t pry it free. Robby squeezed harder—the man’s mouth opened—and if the music and fountains hadn’t been so damn loud, his yelp would’ve reached impressive decibels.
Robby yelled as well, infusing himself with the will to win . . . the will to live.
But the man extracted a knife from somewhere on his body. Light glinted off the chrome blade, seizing Robby’s attention. He yanked the man’s head toward him, then slammed his forehead into his attacker’s skull. It hurt like hell—but not as much as the pain inflicted on the asshole who’d tried to drown him.
The sicario’s eyes rolled up in submission. His head slumped to the side, and Robby grabbed him by his neck and plunged him down, beneath the surface.
The knife floated from the man’s open hand, then sunk impotently toward the lake’s bottom. An arm burst through the surface, reached up and clawed at Robby’s chest, grabbed for his wrist, his face—anything to make Robby release his grip.
But as the seconds ticked by, the man stopped struggling and went limp. Robby realized he was breathing rapidly—too rapidly—and was in danger of hyperventilating. He calmed himself, told himself this was not over.
He felt around, trying to move the man’s dead weight in the water, rolled him face up, and found a wallet. Shoved it into his back pocket, then searched for a handgun. Pancake holster—empty.
Robby’s body began quivering. The fight had depleted his adrenaline. He released his grip on the corpse and maneuvered himself toward the wall’s maw and—hopefully—land.
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