by Cj Howard
“Anything about the situation that I should know?” Benjamin sat back in his chair and gestured that Joe had the floor.
“I did a little scoping of the building my guy went to,” Joe said, taking out a steno pad. He began sketching in quick, decisive movements, and Benjamin watched attentively as the shapes began to emerge. “Looks like an office building, on the edge of the city proper—no name on the outside, but I can probably find a way to get in there and check things out, maybe get a company name or something.”
Benjamin listened as Joe went on, explaining what little he’d managed to get out of the situation. He had gathered a good bit of information to follow up on, which was the goal of the night. “I’ll wait to hear from my other guys, in terms of where they went,” Joe finished.
“Harold should have something for us, too,” Benjamin said.
“He does have a way about him,” Joe agreed. “And once I have some business names or companies for him to look into, I’d assume he could get more information than me—from a certain end.”
“How long do you think it’s going to take?” Benjamin knew that Claire would quickly chafe at being at his side so much, so soon, and he didn’t want to push her too hard, in spite of what he was starting to suspect about his feelings toward her.
“I can probably get you some preliminary stuff for Harold to track down—or to hand off to other people in the higher circles you move around in—in a couple of days,” Joe replied. “I’m going to keep working the leads we got out of tonight until I’ve got more.”
“Thanks,” Benjamin said. “I’m happy to pay your emergency rate for this.”
Joe chuckled. “You like her, don’t you?”
Benjamin shrugged. “She’s a valuable employee.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know: her dad owes you tens of thousands, so you need her to stay around until she’s worked off his debt.” Joe rolled his eyes. “But apart from that, you’re into her.”
“She’s smart, hot, and clever,” Benjamin said. “Strong, too.” He was thinking of the way she’d taken control of the situation at the other casino, the way she’d demonstrated her ability to deal with almost any situation she found herself in. He just hoped that there wouldn’t be a situation in the near future that would push that ability he’d seen in her.
“Combining business and pleasure can be fun,” Joe said, smiling broadly. “Just keep in mind that it also opens you up to more vulnerabilities.”
Benjamin dismissed the idea that he was vulnerable. “They’re not going to come after me directly,” he pointed out. “They stand to bring too much attention to themselves if they do.”
“They wanted her to get information from you,” Joe countered. “They’re obviously after you too.”
“Not in a direct way,” Benjamin insisted. “They’re not interested in taking me out the old school way.”
“They’re just interested in fucking with your business, and that’s plenty bad enough,” Joe said.
Benjamin considered that and half-nodded. “I’m not being careless,” he said. “We’re going to move on this quickly to disable them—that’s the goal.”
“We need to put you in a position to take the whole organization—whoever and whatever it is—out,” Joe said. “Something like this… Claire might not have even met the top guy—just his most trusted lieutenant.”
Benjamin nodded quickly to acknowledge the wisdom of that assessment. “She’s not leaving my side until we figure this all out,” he told the man. “If she needs to go somewhere alone, it’ll be with a bodyguard and someone to tail them as insurance.”
“Good call,” Joe said, rising to his feet. “You may not want to admit it, but you’re into that girl—not just as an investment. You need to be careful not just about how much that makes you vulnerable from the outside, but from the inside, too.”
“What do you mean?” Benjamin frowned.
“She might just decide that it would be better for her to negotiate,” Joe pointed out. “She might offer to do part of what her father promised—namely getting the intel they want on you—to avoid some of the other stuff. And to get herself free.”
“She already turned them down on all points,” Benjamin countered.
“But they’re likely to want to make a counteroffer, if they can,” Joe insisted. “They might just offer her a way to pay off her father’s debt to you early.”
Benjamin considered that. “She won’t work with them, even if they offered to pay off his debt and set her up with a great job somewhere else,” he said.
“As long as you’re sure of that,” Joe said, shrugging. “I’m going to get back to work. Another one of my guys should be showing up in a few to report on what he found from the other main car.”
Benjamin nodded to accept that and shook the man’s hand. Joe left, and Benjamin knew he would immediately blend into the crowd that populated the casino, making his way to the exit without being noticed by anyone. Even the people in security wouldn’t remark on his presence.
But Joe’s words had had an impact: he needed to make sure of Claire’s loyalty to him. He didn’t exactly doubt her unwillingness to work with people who had threatened her life, but Benjamin did realize that everyone had a price. He needed to make sure Claire’s price for turning on him would be so high that whoever wanted her to spy for them would find it unacceptable. That was almost as important as keeping her safe and getting to the bottom of the plot in the first place.
Chapter14
“Claire, can I talk to you for a moment?” Claire glanced at the phone on her desk, in the little office attached to Benjamin’s, as his voice flowed through the intercom.
“Yeah, I’ll be right over,” she said, briefly turning her attention back to the computer screen in front of her to finish what she was reading. In spite of the fact that they were still waiting on Joe—Benjamin’s preferred private investigator—and his associates to run down the full list of people involved in threatening her, the work she was doing with Benjamin continued.
They were still meeting with people, with Claire playing the role of an assumed partner/investor, dressed to appeal to the class consciousness of the men and women they met with. It had been about a week since the MGM Grand, and Claire knew that some progress was being made—but she wasn’t entirely clear what the problem was.
Surely a man as connected as Benjamin, with people like Joe working for him, could figure out who was behind the threats to herself and her father.
At this point I almost would be willing to let them do whatever they want to Dad, she thought grimly, thinking about how little of Vegas she had seen in the past few weeks, outside of the hotel. While the Halston Grand was a relatively large hotel, it was—to Claire, at least—little more than a particularly spacious prison.
Benjamin had given her permission to leave if she went with a bodyguard and a tail to keep an eye on the area around her, but that didn’t seem like much of a change from being at the hotel in the first place.
She printed out the documents she would need for her next meeting with Benjamin and some other associates and stood up. It’ll be over soon, she told herself, thinking that it couldn’t possibly take longer than a couple of weeks for them to track down on who was behind the group threatening her.
Once they had all the details, they could put those people away. That was, more or less, the assumption that she and Benjamin had been operating on. Then, in theory, she could move out of his suite and their lives would be something closer to normal.
Claire stepped through the short passage between her office and Benjamin’s and knocked on the door separating them before opening it. She had expected to only see her boss and sometime-sex partner, but instead there was an impeccably dressed woman seated across the desk from him as well. Claire glanced at Benjamin, but he just smiled cordially and gestured for Claire to continue to her usual spot.
“This is Senator Natasha Knowles,” Benjamin said as Claire seated herself opposite him. �
��She’s gotten wind of what’s going on with you through… shall we say, odd sources.”
“Don’t be cute, Benjamin,” Natasha said, her face taking on a half-scowling expression of irritation. “Some people threatened to out my connections with a few associates if I didn’t help them.” Claire resisted the instinct to look at the woman askance; she had already learned that just about everyone of any kind of prominence in Las Vegas had connections they would rather not talk about publicly.
“In other words, they wanted her help getting you away from me,” Benjamin said. “Because they can’t come after me directly.”
“Not without revealing who they are,” Natasha agreed.
“So you know who they are, then?” Claire glanced from the middle aged woman to Benjamin and back again, curious and hopeful—yet at the same time feeling something more like dread underneath.
“I don’t know who’s directly threatening you,” the senator said. “But I know one of their connections.”
“How… I mean, I’m not from Vegas, clearly,” Claire said, taking a quick breath to compose herself. “How could they be threatening you and you not know who’s behind it?”
Natasha shrugged. “If there’s anything more complicated than the connections people have in Vegas, it’s figuring out who is at the top of anything,” Natasha said. “It could be anybody.”
Claire sighed. “So while it’s helpful, we’re not really all that closer to figuring out who’s behind it,” she surmised.
“We’re closer than you think,” Benjamin said. “Besides which, Natasha here is rather annoyed at the fact that she’s being threatened.”
“You’re damn right I am,” Natasha said. Her scowl deepened. “I came to Benjamin because I figured that as one of the targets of this mess, he probably already had some investigations going on.”
“Well if they’re someone threatening both me and a senator, then they’ve got to be a fairly big operation, right?” Claire looked from the older woman to Benjamin.
He nodded and went on to explain, “We can narrow down the list a bit, but it also spreads the list out in other directions. I’ll give you more details once we’re done speaking with our friend, the senator.”
“The important thing right now is that you should be seen in public—but not alone,” Natasha said. “From what my security guy says, the goal should be to force them to show their hands. They can’t come for Ben directly without showing who they are—they’re being cautious this way, at least as much as they can be. But if you’re out in public where they’re going to be tempted…” she shrugged.
“I’m not putting her out on a limb,” Benjamin told the older woman, and Claire felt relief wash through her. “If they’re not going to come after me openly, then I can accompany her.” Claire wasn’t as certain how she felt about that—but she had to admit that it would be much more comforting to go out and about with someone and know there was almost no chance of being kidnapped again.
“You can figure it out between the two of you,” Natasha said with a shrug. “But my advice would be to work quickly. These guys are serious—and they’re well-funded, if they’re coming after me, too.” She rose to her feet. “It was nice meeting you, Ms. Stevenson. Once you’re done working for Benjamin, in about eleven months, you should come by my offices. I might be able to find a position for you.” Claire shook the woman’s hand, thanking her, but remained in confusion until after the senator left the office.
“She’s a bitch, but an effective one,” Benjamin said with a grin once they were finally alone. “I think you’d actually like working with her—and it’d be helpful to me to have someone in her office who knows and likes me.”
“Why would they go after her, though?” Claire frowned, trying to work out the significance of the information they’d been given.
“Because they’re going to try and have the feds grab you,” Benjamin said, matter-of-factly.
Claire’s eyes widened and for a moment she could only stare at him. “Seriously?”
Benjamin nodded. “The idea would be for them to arrest you on some kind of fake charge, and then you would be ‘lost’ in holding, or something like that would occur,” he said.
“But the FBI surely…” Claire shook her head, dismissing the thought before it was even fully out of her mouth. Of course there were FBI agents who would go along with a scheme like that—though of course, officially, the agency itself would never approve it.
There would be some kind of field office in Vegas, and they would take her there, and somehow money would change hands and no one would ever be held accountable. But that depended on certain people playing along—and clearly, Senator Knowles was one of those key figures, and she’d already decided not to play along with the scheme.
“Basically, the issue is that we’re going to have to work quickly to get this resolved,” Benjamin said after she’d been silent for a moment. “Joe has some leads, and one of his guys is working on infiltrating the organization to find out as much as he can… and I’m investigating the people here, of course.”
Claire nodded. “But forcing them out into the open a bit more would help things,” she finished for him.
“If we can,” Benjamin said. “Now that Natasha has given them a clear ‘no’ on their proposal, we need to take care of things on our end quickly. I promised her before you came in here that we would do our best—so that she isn’t smacked down for putting her neck out for us.”
Claire considered that, nodding slowly. “That makes sense.” She sighed. “I am starting to think that I’m never going to get out from underneath the problems my father caused.”
Benjamin gave her a sympathetic smile. “Well, in theory at least if we can get from top to bottom in this other organization, there’s no reason that you won’t,” he pointed out.
Claire smiled wryly. “I’ll still have another ten and a half months to work for you,” she pointed out.
He chuckled. “You’ll be making money of your own, too,” he countered. “And you can look into working for Natasha afterwards.”
“Why is she so interested in me?” That was another aspect that had confused Claire: she had only just met the Senator, after all.
“I told her about your quick thinking and courage in meeting with those assholes,” he explained. “As someone with—shall we say—an obscure background, Natasha appreciates having employees like you.” He smiled slowly. “It would also be greatly to my benefit in the long term to have a friend working in her offices.”
Claire rolled her eyes. “Let me guess: you would want me to keep some kind of flow between you and her,” she said.
“Once you’ve paid off your father’s debt, you don’t owe me anything,” Benjamin said firmly. “But I would like to hope that you would consider me a decent former employer, and at least an acquaintance.”
She chuckled. “I suppose that will depend on how things go between us the rest of the time I have to work for you,” she told him. She thought about the situation in front of them once more. “So how is this scheme of ours going to go?”
“I assume you’d enjoy leaving the casino, right?” Benjamin raised an eyebrow, and Claire grinned.
“Yes,” she admitted.
“So we’ll go on a few outings,” he said. “Do some shopping, see some sights, meet with some people you might not have met otherwise. Try and pull some of these guys out of hiding.”
Claire thought about that and nodded slowly. “That makes sense,” she said, meeting his gaze levelly. “And you’re absolutely sure that they won’t make a move on you to get to me?”
Benjamin smiled. “As sure as I can be, and I wouldn’t take the risk if I wasn’t sure enough that it would shock the hell out of me if they did.”
She looked at him skeptically. “That’s pretty easy to say.”
He returned her look matter-of-factly. “Do you want this over sooner, or later?”
Claire smiled wryly. “Well when you put it that way,
there’s no argument,” she told him. Besides, she told herself, it would at least be good to be able to leave the hotel and casino, even if it wasn’t complete liberty to leave on her own. Just being able to leave would be an improvement.
*
“I find it kind of hard to believe that in all the time you’ve lived in Las Vegas, you have never once visited the Hoover Dam,” Claire told Benjamin as they dutifully followed the tour guide. Benjamin chuckled, letting one hand rest on the small of her back.
“It’s just one of those things,” he explained. “Everybody goes—so I wanted to avoid it as much as possible.”
“Oh, I wasn’t aware I was working for a hipster,” Claire said playfully, receiving a snort in return.
“I’m just not usually interested in going places like this,” he countered. They were both barely listening to the guide as she explained about the building of the Dam and the rest of its history, instead looking around at the details that actually interested them. It was, Benjamin had to admit, nice to go out with Claire without it being a specially-planned meeting with associates.
They’d been out and about, around the city, for a week since the senator had visited them, and so far no one seemed to have made any major moves—but Benjamin was certain that they would. They just had to be patient.
“So where are you taking me after this?”
“A quick drink and dinner at a little spot just off the strip,” Benjamin told her.
They had been increasingly extending their time outside of the casino as their outings had failed to result in any action. In addition, Senator Knowles had let him know, a few days before, that nothing had happened on her end yet either; the threats had failed to materialize. Joe’s opinion, when Benjamin had asked him, was that the organization was going to try and make a counteroffer to Claire, one way or another.
There was clearly something bigger at play in the three demands they had made on her—possibly, Benjamin thought, just proving they had the kind of clout to make it happen. He recalled what he’d told Claire about her father’s debt: the amount of money did not, itself, matter. It was the fact that he couldn’t let it get out into the world that he’d excused any amount of debt. By the same token, Benjamin was fairly certain that the people who were after Claire for her father’s other debts had the need to prove that a person couldn’t just skip town and avoid doing what they were supposed to do.
