by Mark Dawson
Jessica directed him onto the Bruce Woodbury Parkway and then to the west of the city and Summerlin. She took them into a neighbourhood where the houses grew in size the deeper inside they went. The properties on the outskirts were modern, two-storey stucco homes with small yards, but, as they drove along the enclave’s quiet roads, those residences mutated into sprawling mini-mansions set in generous grounds. The properties had circular drives and privacy walls and water features and all of the other foolish things people surrounded themselves with when they found that they had more money than they knew what to do with and tried to show it off.
“It’s nice here,” Milton said. “What does your dad do?”
“Did,” she said. “He worked in IT. Network security. For the casinos.”
The streets were quiet, but as Milton followed Jessica’s directions, he saw the lights of two cars approaching them. He observed the lead vehicle and then the one in the rear; they were identical Chevrolet Suburbans. The driver of the first SUV stared at Milton as they rolled by one another. Milton got a good look at him: hair cut short, appeared to be reasonably large, wearing a dark top.
He felt a quiver of disquiet.
“What is it?” Jessica asked him.
“You recognise either of those cars?”
“No,” she said. “But I don’t live here.”
Milton watched them until they passed out of sight around a corner. The two vehicles didn’t belong here. They felt out of place.
“Why?” she asked him.
“It’s nothing.”
He drove on. The Russo home was at the back end of a cul-de-sac formed by two other homes. It had been built on a small rise, the expansive lawn spilling down toward the street with a paved path offering access. The property had been built in a Mediterranean style, two storeys tall and with the main body of the building bracketed by identical wings that looked as if they were used as garages. A half-moon-shaped drive curled in front of the white stucco structure. The majority of the house was dark, save two windows to the right. The double front doors were nearly ten feet tall and looked like they belonged on the front of a small castle rather than a house, even a house as expensive as this one. They were wooden and ornate, with metal studs and cross bands.
Milton parked and looked up at the house, searching for anything that might be a reason for the unease he was feeling. The door was closed; the windows were closed; there was no sign of activity in any of the rooms that he could see into.
He thought of the two SUVs. Something still didn’t feel right.
“Does anything look out of place?” Milton asked.
She looked at the house and frowned. “Maybe a little quiet.”
“What would it normally be like?”
“The blinds downstairs would usually be down. And my father would usually have the sprinklers on. Why are you asking?”
Milton got out of the car, shut the door quietly and listened again. There was silence, and, given the proximity to Vegas, that was surprising. Milton knew they were on the fringe of the desert here, but it was still uncanny how the noise of the Strip had been smothered by the simple expedient of travelling a few miles to the west. He heard the whoosh and chug of a sprinkler in the garden of one of the other houses and, in the distance, the howl of a coyote.
She got out, too, and came to stand beside him. “What is it?”
Milton shook his head and put a smile on his face. “Forget it. You’ve got a flight to catch. I hope Italy is great.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I appreciate it. You’ve been amazing.”
“Please pass my best wishes to your father,” he said.
She leaned in to him and placed a kiss on his cheek. “Goodbye, John.”
“Goodbye.”
Milton stood beside the car, watching as Jessica climbed the rise and reached the front doors. There was a small keypad on the left of the doors, and an overhead light flashed on as she reached it. She tapped out the code on the keypad and pushed the doors open. She turned back to give him a final wave and then she went inside.
He waited.
11
Oscar Delgado stared out of the windshield at the GTO as it rolled slowly in the other direction, heading toward the cul-de-sac that they had just left. The car was distinctive, but that wasn’t what had given him pause. It wasn’t the driver, either, although there had been something in the man’s expression that had made Delgado’s hackles rise as he had driven by.
No.
It wasn’t the car or the driver that had arrested Delgado’s attention.
It was the woman in the passenger seat.
The GTO passed them, the engine rumbling, and continued toward the Russo house. Delgado let it go, waiting until it had turned the corner and was out of sight.
He turned to Higuaín. “Stop.”
“What? Now?”
“Yes, now.”
Higuaín pulled over to the side of the road. Pérez was driving the Suburban behind them and he pulled over, too.
Delgado took the radio from the dash and held down the button to transmit.
“Pérez,” he said.
“Yes, boss.”
“Go back.”
“What?”
“Go back to the house.”
“I don’t get it. What’s wrong?”
“You see that GTO that just went by?”
“Sí.”
“Jessica Russo was in it.”
“Shit,” he said. “I didn’t—”
“Go back and get her.” He thought about the driver. “There’s a guy with her,” he added.
“What you want me to do with him?”
“Bring him, too.”
Pérez acknowledged the instruction. Delgado looked in the rear-view as the second Suburban performed a three-point turn and started to roll back toward the house. Delgado watched for a moment and then allowed his focus to draw in and drift down to the other men in the back of the vehicle. The SUV had the two seats up front, then a row of three, and then, at the rear, another two. He had four of his men with him: Higuaín was in front and Castellanos was in the back, with Grande and Araujo in the row of three. Grande was in the leftmost seat and Araujo was in the rightmost, with a fifth man wedged between them. He wore a hood over his head, and his hands were secured behind his back with two cable ties. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and there was blood on his right leg from where he had fallen into the glass table during the struggle to subdue him.
He had fought, and that was not surprising. Richard Russo had worked for the cartel for two years and, in that time, he must have realised what would come to those who were crazy enough to cross them. Delgado was the cartel’s representative in Las Vegas. Russo’s betrayal did not look good for Delgado, and fixing the mess that had been caused—and finding the money that had been taken—was his highest priority. He needed to get it done before La Bruja found out just how serious the situation was.
Delgado was confident that he could persuade Russo to cooperate now that he had him in his custody.
But having his daughter, too?
That wouldn’t hurt at all.
Higuaín put his hands back on the wheel. “What you want me to do, boss?”
“Follow them,” he said.
Higuaín nodded and turned the Suburban around.
12
Milton waited outside the car. He rolled his shoulders forward and back, working out the tension, loosening the knots from the nine-hour drive, forcing himself to relax. He watched as the light for the hall switched on, and then another, and then a final one in what he assumed must have been the living room. He leaned back against the car, enjoying the cool edge to the night, wondering whether he might be able to take a swim when he arrived at the hotel. It had been a long day, and he knew that a little exercise before bed would guarantee a deep and restful night’s sleep.
He was contemplating what he would like for his evening meal when the front door was flung open and Jessica walked quickl
y back outside. She came down the path and made her way straight for him. Her face was white.
“What is it?”
“Something’s wrong.”
“What?”
“Really fucking wrong.”
He pushed himself upright. “What is it, Jessica?”
“He’s not there. My father—he’s not inside.”
“He couldn’t have gone to the airport?”
“I’m meeting him here,” she said, her voice quivering. “And the house has been wrecked.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the table in the living room is smashed. The drawers have been pulled out. The books in the bookshelves are all over the floor. Someone must have broken in.” She paused, her face twisting with a mixture of realisation and fear. “Those SUVs that passed us—you said they bothered you.”
“I thought they looked strange,” he said.
“Jesus,” she said. “What the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know,” he said carefully. He wanted to tell her that there was nothing to worry about, that there must have been an explanation for what she had seen, but if the house had been turned over like she said… She was no fool. “Show me.”
Milton scanned the cul-de-sac as they approached the bottom end of the drive. There were no cars on the street, and the other two homes were dark. He could hear the sprinkler nearby, but that was it. He spotted a Jaguar parked in the drive of the house on the left, but it was the only sign that he could see that indicated that the neighbouring homes were lived in.
They reached the top of the drive. Milton listened for sounds inside the home.
Nothing.
“Show me around,” he said.
Milton went inside first and Jessica followed. They were standing in a large foyer. The floors were made of marble and there were large portraits on the wall: Milton saw a younger Jessica, a teenage boy who looked like her—he remembered that she and her brother were twins, and guessed that it must have been him—and an older couple who he guessed were her mother and father. There was a circular staircase to the left and a ceiling light above.
Milton listened.
Nothing.
Jessica led him through the foyer, across an open passageway and through a set of decorative pillars into a vast living space. A huge marble fireplace was off to the left, and a long wet bar made of matching marble was to the right. Two leather sofas faced each other in the middle of the room. A set of three shallow steps led up to a breakfast nook and, beyond it, a huge kitchen and family area.
“Look,” she said, pointing.
The remains of a glass table lay between the two sofas. The glass top had been shattered, with large shards scattered beneath and around the wrought-iron frame. A smashed vase contributed its emerald-coloured glass to the debris, with books and papers similarly strewn over the floor. Milton approached the table and knelt down; there was a patch of red across the corner of the frame. He dabbed his fingers against it; it was tacky, and his fingers brought back a faint red stain.
There had evidently been a struggle. Someone had fallen back and cut themselves against the corner of the table. Not long ago, either, if the blood was still wet.
They were near a window. Milton went to it and looked out into the cul-de-sac beyond. There was his GTO and nothing else.
“Dad!” Jessica yelled. “Dad! You here?”
Milton put a hand on her shoulder. “We need to check the rest of the house.”
“Dad!”
“Jessica.” He needed her to be quiet.
“That’s blood,” she said, pointing down at the table.
She was on the edge of panic and Milton needed her to keep it together. “Let’s just be sure he’s not here,” he said. “Do you understand?”
“He’s not.”
“Let’s check.”
Jessica stiffened and fell silent. Finally, she nodded. “Okay. Where?”
“Every room. We’ll start at the top and work down.”
13
They went back to the spiral staircase in the foyer and climbed it to the floor above. Milton followed Jessica up to an impressive landing that was carpeted in deep shag. They followed the hallway to a bedroom. It looked like a master suite, with a huge king-size bed in the centre of the room with a vaulted ceiling overhead. Jessica stayed where she was, while Milton carried on into the his-and-hers en suites, both done out in ostentatious marble with gold fixtures and fittings. Even the medicine cabinets had been turned out, with bottles scattered on the floor and in the sink.
He returned to the bedroom. Jessica was standing by the headboard of the bed, withdrawing her hand from behind it.
“Okay?” Milton said.
She nodded.
“What are you looking for?”
“My father kept a gun here.”
“Behind the headboard?”
“Yes. But it’s not there.”
She led him to a second living room, then a third and fourth bedroom. Both these bedrooms were furnished with en suite bathrooms featuring marble floors and brass fixtures, and there was an enormous family bathroom. The rooms had clearly all been searched, with drawers pulled out and overturned, their contents scattered across the floors. Clothes had been yanked out of the wardrobes. The place had been ransacked. It was a mess.
“You think it’s burglars?”
“It could be,” Milton said.
“So where’s my dad?”
“I don’t know that yet.”
They returned to the landing.
Milton gestured to the only door that they hadn’t checked. “Through here?”
“Guest suite,” Jessica said, opening the door.
Milton went inside. It was another vast bedroom, ransacked like all the others. The room was at the front of the house, and the view from the floor-to-ceiling picture windows was impressive. They were up high and the elevation afforded a magnificent vista; he could see the Strip in the far distance, the neon pulsing and throbbing, throwing coloured light up into the dark. Milton saw his Pontiac below and, behind that, the lights of an approaching vehicle. It was moving slowly and cautiously and looked big and boxy, the black paintwork glittering in the light from the streetlamps.
A second vehicle turned into the cul-de-sac and followed the first.
Milton frowned: it was the pair of Chevrolet Suburbans that they had passed earlier.
“John?”
Milton ignored her, his attention still fixed on the Suburbans. The second one stopped alongside the GTO. A man stepped out of the cabin, went to the door of the car and tried it. Milton had not locked it and, as he watched, the man slid inside the car. The first Suburban moved ahead, turning onto the drive that led up to the house. The doors opened and three men disembarked.
Jessica joined him at the window. “Are those the same cars?”
The men walked up the drive. The fourth man—the one who had checked out the GTO—followed them. The second Suburban stayed on the road. Both vehicles had killed their lights, but Milton could see the exhaust still swirling around their pipes. He knew what they were doing: the occupants of the second vehicle were standing sentry for the others and providing cover should anyone arrive at—or try to leave—the house.
“Come away from the window,” Milton said, taking Jessica by the elbow and moving her back.
“I don’t understand—who are they?”
“Doesn’t matter for now. We need to get out. I don’t think we want to be in here when they arrive.”
“What about my dad?”
Milton had a very bad feeling about that. “We’ll sort that out once we’re safe, but now we need to go. Right now. Does your father have a car in the garage?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think so.”
“Which way?”
“There are two garages. He keeps the lawnmower in that one.” She pointed over to the right, then to the left. “His cars are in there.”
Milton led the way back to the l
anding. He paused at the top of the stairs, straining his ears for any suggestion that there was anyone else in the house with them, and, satisfied that there was not—yet—he started quickly down. The staircase wound around itself, and it was only as he reached the final few treads that he was able to look down into the foyer. There was a panel of glass on either side of the double-height front doors, and Milton froze as he saw the silhouette of a man in the window to the right of the door.
He reached back with his hand, stopping Jessica behind him, and held his breath.
14
The man in the window moved to the right, his silhouette no longer visible. Milton grabbed Jessica by the wrist and hurried her down the remaining steps. He moved as quickly as he dared, hurrying through the foyer and then into the central corridor that ran across the middle of the property from east to west. There were skylights overhead, and the moon cast its glow down onto them, silvering the antique side table and occasional chairs.
Milton reached a billiard lounge with no obvious way out.
“This way,” Jessica said.
There was a door to the right, on the other side of the table. Jessica pushed it open and led the way through into a room that had been left undecorated, with a plain tiled floor and walls painted in neutral grey. The room was in the shape of an L: Milton walked ahead three paces. There was a laundry room to the right and, straight ahead, another door.
“Garage?” he asked.
Jessica pointed forward. “Through there.”
Milton heard the faint sound of a voice from behind them, from somewhere near the front of the house.
The men were inside.
Milton walked up to the garage door. He listened.
Silence.
“Stay here,” Milton said. “I’m going to check it out. Don’t move.”
