Assignment Vegas: The Case of the Athlete's Assassin: Jae Lovejoy Cozy Mystery Two (Jae Lovejoy Cozy Mysteries Book 2)

by Lucey Phillips

  Anne shrugged. “James is a man who is free to do as he pleases,” she said.

  Poppy chimed in, “Plus, McKenna isn’t real great at making friends. But she doesn’t, you know, dislike you.”

  Anne narrowed her eyes and glanced sideways at Poppy. Clearly, she wasn’t interested in arguing with Poppy or dignifying that comment with a response.

  Poppy was right, though. McKenna didn’t seem to have many social skills. Her mom was the closest thing she had to a girlfriend.

  Her childhood as an elite athlete—spending all of her time in the gym training, instead of at the playground making friends, probably robbed her of any opportunity to develop her friend-making skills. Sure, she had teammates, but gymnastics really isn’t a team sport.

  I stirred a sweetener packet into my iced tea while I gathered my courage. I was sitting across the table from two women who could both be considered suspects in the threats against McKenna. This was my chance to get some information.

  “So, has anyone heard from Mike? Is he coming back to work soon?” I asked.

  I hoped I wasn’t being too obvious as I looked back and forth between Poppy and Anne. I was hoping to catch them off guard. If either of the women were responsible for Mike’s injury, maybe their expressions would reveal something when I said his name.

  But it didn’t work.

  Poppy’s face was sincerely concerned when she said, “I heard he’s coming back Monday.”

  Anne wore her standard, flat, utterly unimpressed expression when she shrugged halfheartedly.

  My only conclusions were that either these women were both innocent, or that one of them was guilty, but was such a severe sociopath that she felt absolutely no guilt when she heard the name of the man she’d almost killed.

  | Fifteen

  It was late when Poppy’s shift was done. After I thanked her, said goodbye, and promised to meet up with her one more time before leaving Vegas, I started the long walk back to the tower where my hotel room was.

  I texted Colin while I walked, telling him about Poppy and about my short conversation with Anne.

  “Maybe McKenna is right. Maybe Anne is behind all this. Her personality just seems off … of course, maybe it’s a cultural thing that makes her seem different,” I wrote.

  “What about Poppy? Having McKenna gone would change her life. She wouldn’t have to run around fetching key chains for minimum wage,” Colin wrote.

  “I think she makes more than that,” I replied.

  I stepped onto the walkway that ran along the side of the lagoon. It was the shortcut that Jacob had shown me the night before.

  Colin wrote back, “Not my point,” and sent me an image of a smiley face with its tongue sticking out.

  I laughed to myself and started to type a response. I wanted to tell Colin about the commissary and how I thought it would be a great place to photograph.

  But I never typed that message.

  I dropped my phone and gasped when a twisting, stinging pain took over the back of my head and radiated down my neck and spine.

  I reached behind my head, trying to stop the pain, and latched my hand onto a forearm that was as solid as a tree trunk. I dug my fingernails into the skin, but that only resulted in a tighter, wrenching grip in my hair.

  I tried to kick behind me, but that didn’t help either. Now my neck was twisted at such a severe angle that I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t even take a breath.

  I looked wildly up at the ceiling and at the hotel room windows that overlooked the lagoon. Surely someone had to be seeing this. Someone would help me, wouldn’t they?

  An odor like a filthy ash tray crept around my face. I could feel hot breath on my ear.

  A hoarse man’s voice said, “Get out of Vegas.”

  I squirmed and tried again to scream, but nothing happened except another jolt of pain down my neck.

  Next, the man—still keeping his grip on my hair—looped his arm around one of my legs and picked me up.

  My stomach dropped. I opened my mouth to scream. And, this time, the sound did come out—but only for a fraction of a second.

  Salt water rushed into my mouth, choking me and muffling my scream. The man had thrown me into the lagoon.

  I flailed in cold darkness for what felt like several minutes, but was probably just a few seconds.

  I couldn’t see the man who’d attacked me—I didn’t know where he was. I had one instinct at that moment and it was shrieking at me to get away. So I kicked off my shoes while I swam as fast as I could.

  The drag and weight of my messenger bag made it almost impossible for me to gain any momentum. I let it slip off my shoulder, down my body and away from me.

  After a few strokes, I started to realize the man was probably gone. Of course he wouldn’t toss me into the lagoon, only to jump in after me.

  Salt water stung my eyes. There was a searing pain above my left knee. I squinted back at the walkway. Despite my blurry vision, I could see that the walkway was now empty. My attacker had escaped.

  I turned my attention to my injured leg. Treading water, I reached toward the source of the pain. I could feel a tear in my pants. I looked down to see a small red plume drifting from that spot—my blood.

  And I wasn’t the only one who had noticed my blood. I could see the aerodynamic outline and spotted pattern of a tiger shark circling just below my feet.

  I thought about the feeding sessions that the hotel had been broadcasting on one if its in-house television channels—how efficient the sharks were in making their meals disappear, leaving behind only a thick cloud of murky dust where the fish parts had been drifting in the water.

  I took off swimming again, this time back toward the spot where I’d been thrown in.

  When I got there, I was able to stand on some rocks that were several inches below the water’s surface. Maybe I’d cut my leg on one of those on my way into the water.

  The tiger shark swam impatiently back and forth in front of the rock. I turned my back to it and reached up, hoping to grab the railing and pull myself out of the lagoon. But I couldn’t reach. It was too far above my head.

  Across the lagoon, there was a waterfall feature that I might be able to climb. Getting to it, though, would mean swimming across—something I wouldn’t try with that shark lurking around.

  Just when I realized how cold I was—standing ankle-deep in the cool water with my clothes soaking wet—I heard a man’s voice.

  “Hey, are you okay?” A man wearing a tuxedo reached over the railing, but he was too far to help me.

  I looked up at him. I was only able to reply with a nod. My entire body was shaking now.

  The man looked to his side and yelled “Over here! We need a rope or something.”

  Two red-faced security guards were running toward me. One was carrying a long, red floatation device with a black nylon strap.

  He tossed it down to me. I took one last look at the shark, gliding gracefully back and forth in the water beside me. I grabbed the rescue device and held on tight while the men pulled me up high enough for me to reach the bottom rung on the railing and then climb over.

  “I couldn’t see his face,” I said around my heavy breathing. I was shaking even harder now—from the cold water and from the flood of adrenaline. “Someone … a man, threw me in the water.”

  “We gotcha now,” one of the security guards said. He took off his jacket and wrapped it around me. “You’re going to be ok.”

  “Did anybody see him? Where did he go?” I asked. My voice sounded unfamiliar—panicky.

  “We saw the whole thing on the monitors,” the other security guard said. “He had on a cap and a hoodie—couldn’t see a face.”

  “Marilla,” I muttered to myself. He wasn’t the man who tossed me into the water—that man didn’t have Marilla’s Italian accent or smooth voice. But Marilla was behind the attack, I knew it.

  The searing pain in my left leg was getting worse. I remembered my messenger bag. It was pr
obably at the bottom of the lagoon now. I stepped toward the railing, wanting to look into the water for my bag, but my injured leg was weak and I staggered.

  “Woah, woah,” one of the security guards said while he grabbed me by the shoulders. “Easy there. Let’s have you sit down a second.”

  He started guiding me toward a bench, but stopped when a man and a woman wearing navy blue medic’s uniforms wheeled a stretcher up to where I was standing.

  “I’m fine,” I said, holding my hands up toward them. Even though I hadn’t done anything wrong, I was feeling more and more embarrassed. I hated all of this attention. I just wanted to go back to my room and get into some dry clothes.

  The medics persuaded me to sit on the stretcher so they could check my vital signs and get a better look at the gash in my leg.

  While they worked, a security supervisor asked me question after question. But I didn’t have any answers for him.

  Did I have any drugs or valuables that someone would want to steal? No. Was I involved in any domestic disputes? No. Then the questions, and my answers, started to get murky. Was I involved in any police or court cases? Well, not really. Is there any reason someone would want to hurt me? Well, not that I know of.

  “Are you here on vacation or for a work convention, Miss Lovejoy?” the security supervisor asked me.

  “For work,” I said.

  “What kind of work?”

  “I’m a reporter.”

  He clicked his pen closed and stared at me a moment. “I see. Are you working with Miss Johnson?”

  “Yes.”

  He closed his notepad. “The Las Vegas P.D. is working with us on her matter,” he said abruptly. “I’m going to refer your case to them, too. The police department will be in touch,” he said before walking away.

  “Ma’am, you really need to let us take you to the hospital. You’re going to need some sutures here,” one of the paramedics said to me while she gestured toward my left leg, where the red stain surrounding my wound was still getting bigger.

  I looked down at the wound and considered the consequences of ignoring her advice: more bleeding, a scar, an infection? I saw my left hand was pale white and clenched in a fist, pressing against my leg. I couldn’t put the pain aside any more.

  “Ok,” I said quietly. I rested my head against the stretcher, which had the back propped up like a lounger. I turned my face away from the medics, toward the stone wall that bordered the walkway. I bit my lip and squeezed my eyes closed tightly, urging the sensation of tears to go away.

  “Is there someone we can call? A family member who can meet you at the hospital?” one of the security guards asked.

  I replied, “Yeah. Room 8018, Colin Bloom. He’ll help me.”

  | Sixteen

  The ambulance took me to the same hospital where McKenna and I had visited Mike. I had no phone, no wallet—nothing to do but let the doctors and nurses take care of me. And wait for Colin.

  After I told an ER nurse what had happened to me, she wanted to call the police. I told her Currents was already taking care of it. And it didn’t surprise me when, after my tetanus shot and X-rays, Jacob White walked into my room.

  “You’re going to have one hell of a story to write,” he said. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m all right,” I said. I smiled a sincere smile. Seeing a familiar face really did make me feel a little better.

  “What happened?”

  “This guy just came up behind me, said something about ‘Get out of Vegas,’ and picked me up and threw me into the water. Guess I landed on a rock or hit something on the way down,” I said.

  “You should tell people a shark bit you. That makes a cooler story,” Jacob said.

  “I think that was next if I stayed in the water any longer. There was a shark hanging around me.”

  “Woah,” he said. “Glad you’re ok.”

  “Do you know if they got anything from the security video? I didn’t see the guy at all.”

  “I haven’t seen the tape, but it sounds like his face was never visible. He had on a hood and a baseball cap,” Jacob said. “Any ideas? Was the voice familiar?”

  “No, it sounded like it was probably a white guy. There was no accent or anything like that. His voice was kind of hoarse, or gruff, like a smoker or something. I bet he’s working with Marcos Marilla, though.”

  I told Jacob about what had happened when Colin and I went to Marilla’s house earlier that day. Jacob nodded knowingly.

  “I wish you’d talked to me before you went over there,” he said. “Vice has been watching him—drugs. That expensive car with California plates was probably his supplier.”

  My face became hot and I started trembling again. “Why didn’t you tell me that? Don’t you think it’s kind of relevant to McKenna’s situation—and mine?” I was furious.

  “I couldn’t tell you, Jae. We’ve got guys undercover. Any leak is risking their lives,” Jacob said. “And no, I don’t think it’s relevant to McKenna. What he’s involved with is way bigger than her. And she doesn’t know anything about the stuff he’s mixed up with. She’s not even on his radar, I guarantee it.”

  “What about James?”

  Jacob shook his head.

  “Well, if you’ve eliminated him as a suspect in the attacks against McKenna, you should have told me.”

  “Well, if you were going to go rogue and start casing this guy’s house, you should have told me,” Jacob said. His tone of voice edged on irritable, but he still looked calm.

  We stopped talking when a nurse walked into the room. She set up a tray of supplies—a couple little vials of medicine, some plastic packets, needles and syringes, and some scissor-looking things. As soon as she was out the door, we resumed our conversation.

  “So you think it was Marilla? He got somebody to do this to me?”

  “On the same day you showed up at his secret address and probably interrupted a very expensive transaction?” Jacob asked. “Yeah, I think that’s exactly what happened.”

  “But you’re convinced Marilla’s not after McKenna? How can you be sure?” I narrowed my eyes at him when I asked the questions. The fact that he’d been holding back information from me was still making me ragey.

  “I’ve already checked it out,” Jacob said, sounding defeated. “Vice has him under pretty tight surveillance. And let’s just say he was preoccupied every time something happened to McKenna.”

  None of this was making sense. I folded my arms across my chest and stared at the wall in front of me. The nurse had given me a hospital gown to wear instead of my soggy clothes. I felt like, if I’d had my own clothes, if I weren’t lying in a bed with one bloody leg sticking out from a hospital blanket, maybe I would be able to assert myself.

  But from this position, I couldn’t summon the strength to tell Jacob that I was angry at him. Or that I didn’t trust his judgment any more.

  “One more thing,” Jacob said. “Poppy has an alibi for last night, when someone snuck into McKenna’s dressing room. She is on camera in the south tower the entire time McKenna’s dressing room was empty.”

  “What about Anne?”

  “Not sure yet. She was away from her work area twice that night,” Jacob said.

  “Ready to get this show on the road?” A physician’s assistant asked as he strode into the room, smiling at me.

  “Think you’ll be able to save the leg, doc?” Jacob teased.

  Maybe earlier I would have found his attempt to be funny endearing, but now it was just annoying. I rolled my eyes at Jacob before I told the PA I was ready.

  He rinsed my wound with saline then filled a syringe with medicine from one of the vials.

  “This is lidocaine to numb you up before I do the sutures. It’s going to burn a little,” he said.

  I nodded. My leg had been throbbing for the past hour, so the pinching and burning from the injection didn’t really bother me.

  I was watching the PA sew the edges of my wound together with q
uick, deliberate movements, when Colin walked into the room. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that had deep creases in them from where they’d been folded in a suitcase.

  “Jae.” He seemed to breathe my name, relief saturating his voice.

  “Hi, Colin.”

  The PA looked from Colin, to Jacob, to me, then back to his work on my leg.

  Before I had a chance to tell Colin what had happened, Jacob started talking.

  “We do have some ideas about who this guy was. It’s on camera, but we can’t see his face.”

  “Wait,” Colin said, interrupting Jacob with a sharp tone. “So you were really in the lagoon? What happened to your leg? Is it broken?”

  “Just a flesh wound,” the PA interjected. He winked at me, then resumed sewing.

  “It’s okay—I’m okay,” I told Colin. “This guy walked up behind me, said ‘Get out of Vegas,’ grabbed me and threw me in the water.”

  “Oh my God,” Colin said. His gaze alternated between my face and my leg.

  “All done,” the PA announced while he peeled off his gloves. “We’ll send the nurse in with your discharge papers.”

  After he left the room, Jacob told Colin, “We’re looking at Marilla for this. He’s already under surveillance.”

  “What? If he’s under surveillance, why didn’t you stop this attack before it happened?” Colin demanded.

  “He must have used code or else he has a phone we don’t know about,” Jacob said. “We’re looking into it.”

  “You’re looking into it. Just like with McKenna,” Colin said.

  I’d never seen him use that bitter tone with anyone.

  “It’s okay,” I said, trying to diffuse the situation. “They’re doing everything they can. I shouldn’t have insisted on going to Marilla’s house today.”

  “This isn’t your fault,” Colin said. He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against a wall.

  The nurse returned with my discharge papers. She told me about looking out for signs of infection and seeing a doctor or nurse in seven to ten days to have the sutures removed. She handed me two small squares of paper.