by Myra Scott
I mouthed them back with a smile and squeezed his hand. Yeah. Life was good.
THE END
EXCERPT FROM THE PROTECTOR
Sin City Sentries – Book Four
CHAPTER ONE - BART
I was eleven years old, but the dry wind blowing sand in my face made me feel like I was in my prime, about to ride out into the desert for just about any adventure my friends and I could think up. I stood at attention in a perfect line with the rest of them while my father marched up and down the file, glaring at us with hawkish eyes.
We weren’t in the Boy Scouts or anything. Dad said they were too soft. We were just in it to become men our dads would be proud of.
“Tents will be up in no less than three minutes,” he told us in a voice that would put a drill sergeant to shame. “Any more, and you will do push-ups before we rehearse how to assemble your shelter in the right amount of time! Consider that a reward! You’ll need the strength in the coming days! Your fathers handed your candy-asses to me, and you don’t have to ask Bart to know that if I have to break you to remake you, I will! I do not practice favoritism,” he added with a sharp look to me.
Some of my friends looked terrified. Some of them looked eager. Others were going to be going home before the end of the next day.
Me, I just stood there still, ready for orders, because this was part of my everyday life. It was one big military drill with my dad, whether we were going camping with friends or playing football in the yard.
And as easily as I remembered it all, I was back to the present day, age thirty-two, walking in front of a perfect line of newly hired security guards at the Sentry Casino and Hotel just like my dad had organized us as boys.
There was hardly a difference between the two, and I just leaned into that parallel.
“…and I do not practice favoritism,” I said, echoing my dad’s words. “So, if any of your candy asses thinks that being from Texas makes you think I won’t have you working the nightclub at midnight on a Saturday when you’re so hung over from whiskey that you still can’t see straight, then you’ve got another thing coming! Do I make myself crystal-goddamn-clear?”
“Yes sir!” about half of them barked in unison. I glared at the ones who had remained silent. They clearly weren’t listening when I gave them instructions earlier.
“I’m sorry, I must be going deaf in one ear,” I said, sticking a finger in my right ear for dramatic effect. A couple of the men cracked smiles. “Let’s hear that again!”
“Yes sir!” all of them said this time, and I nodded in satisfaction.
“Damn straight. Now listen up because I have the authority to send you packing at a moment’s notice if any one of you so much as thinks about fucking up like some of our failed hires have. You are not guests here. You are not gamblers. This ain’t your vacation job. And this sure as hell ain’t throwing drunks out of a dive bar in El Paso, because if it was, you wouldn’t be getting paid what you are. This is the Sentry. While you’re on the clock, you are a uniform.”
I stood in front of one of my bigger hires, and I grabbed hold of his security shirt for demonstration. “This means respect. You make it mean respect. The good guests won’t even notice you’re there. You’ll just be part of the background to them. The bad guests will see this uniform as a threat. If troublemakers don’t respect this uniform, then by god, we make them see it our way. Be confident, be quick, don’t show fear. Show discipline. And if you can’t do those things, you’ll be out on your ass begging one of the other limp-dick casinos to give you a shot, because I am not afraid to blacklist your ass. Clear?”
“Yes sir!” they barked. I smiled.
I was the head of security at the Sentry. More than that, I was the co-owner of the whole operation, along with my best friends Mick, Gage, and Zane. That meant that for me, this wasn’t just about being professional. This was personal.
“Good. Y’all are untested, but I’ve heard good things from the senior officers about your preliminary trials.” I nodded to the two experienced guards standing in the back of the room, and they stepped forward. “Frank, you take the five on the right down to one of the conference rooms that’s not in use and run them through their crowd control drills. Tim, you take the rest and drill them on response routes. Focus on showing them how to get to the nightclub as quickly as possible, I still have a score to settle with the boys over at La Torre’s security force.”
“You got it, sir,” Frank grunted, and I watched with smug satisfaction as the men led the recruits away.
My dad had always been tough on me and my friends. Growing up in Texas put that in your blood, but I’d gotten a special dose of it that would never leave me, and I was proud of that. And at a casino like the Sentry, you needed top-notch security to be able to run a top-notch show.
I expected nothing less than the best from my men, and if they were worth their paychecks, they gave it to me.
As the men filed out of the door, I saw someone standing just outside the doorway, sticking his head in periodically to see where the train of big, burly men ended. When the last of them was finally gone, the visitor stepped into the doorway and knocked on the frame, cocking an eyebrow at me.
“Hey, Bart. How busy are you right now?”
“Eric!” I greeted him with a warm smile. “Get your ass in here. What’s going on?”
Eric smiled, casting one last glance over at the train of men before stepping inside and closing the door behind him.
Eric was Mick’s boyfriend. They’d only gotten together fairly recently, but I could tell he was going to be around for a good long while, maybe forever. And personally, I was just fine with that. Mick was the head of operations, meaning he was wound tight as a bowstring all the time, and Eric seemed to be good for him. As for the guy himself, well, he had a good head on his shoulders.
I wouldn’t have expected anything less from a former professional Dom.
“Looks like a solid round of recruits you’ve got there,” he said with a smile. “What do you think of them?”
“Honestly?” I said, chuckling. “On a normal day, about half of them would be gone before the end of the week, but Zane made good on his promise to let me screen them more thoroughly beforehand.”
“Got a good nose for this kind of thing, huh?” he asked, leaning against the wall on one shoulder and crossing his arms.
“I should hope so,” I said. “Been at it for a while now. Back when I worked a factory job, I got to where I could tell if someone was going to work out within the first few days of knowing them. I was never wrong, so the hiring people started asking me for opinions on the down-low.”
Eric chuckled, nodding. “Sounds like an alright gig.”
“Doesn’t beat this,” I said. “Now I can shout at people and teach them how to disarm a drunk man who’s over three hundred pounds.”
Eric let out a laugh. “I’m sure the guests appreciate it. Good security makes all the difference—that’s one thing my old job taught me to appreciate.”
“They run a tight shift at your old place?” I asked, scratching the back of my head. I frankly had no idea how a BDSM dungeon operated. Some of my hires had worked at brothels before, but that wasn’t the same thing.
“No,” Eric said, “which is why I appreciate things here so much. If men like you had been around at Madame Myrina’s place…well, things might not have gotten as bad as they did.”
I frowned and nodded. “I hear you. Well, we might not be a dungeon, but I take security pretty damn seriously here, so I’m glad it’s paying off.”
“That’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about, now that you mention it,” he said, and he glanced around the room briefly. “This a good place to talk?”
“Of course,” I said in a more serious tone, gesturing for him to come over to one of the seats and get comfortable. “Anything you say here
can be confidential, if you want it to be.”
“Depends on whether something needs to be done about it,” he said as he took a seat across from me. This room was my security room. There was a wall full of screens beside me, and besides that, it was just the coffee maker, my laptops, and a few humble office chairs. I didn’t do any of the fancy office shit some of the other guys like. That just wasn’t my style.
“Listen,” I told him, “if you think it’s serious, I’m taking it seriously already.”
He smiled, looking comforted by that. “Thanks. So, I’ll be honest, I don’t have any proof of what I’m about to say. I just hear things through the rumor mill. You know, my old friends involved in sex work meet up with me every now and then, and we talk.”
I nodded, following along.
“One of my friends says he has a solid tip that there’s some new pimp in the area with a chip on his shoulder,” Eric said, looking deadly serious at me. “I don’t know him, but he doesn’t sound like one of the good ones.” I didn’t know there was such a thing as good pimps, but I didn’t interrupt him. “Word is that he’s trying to start doing business through the Sentry.”
My eyes widened, and I leaned back, stroking my beard thoughtfully. “A prostitution ring in my casino, huh?”
Eric nodded. “Like I said, I don’t have a scrap of evidence. I know organized crime isn’t as big as it used to be in Vegas, but have you noticed anything unusual about the incidents you’ve run into lately? Something that might fit in with a pimp’s MO?”
“Nothing jumps to mind,” I admitted, furrowing my brow. “But if you trust the guy you heard this from, then I’m gonna review footage with the guys and treat this as if we do have evidence. This is a serious thing to bring up.”
“I know, and I wouldn’t toss it around lightly,” Eric assured me. “But…look, I know the Sentry has a reputation as being one of the best casinos around for the LGBT crowd, y’know? Apparently, this pimp is trying to cater to gay men, and some of his guys are young. Real young. The last thing I’d want is for a good thing like the Sentry to come under accusations like that. We have enough trouble as it is.”
I gave Eric a solid, confident nod. “You’re absolutely right. Some people are just waiting for us to make the slightest slip-up, and something like this would be a nightmare. I can already hear Zane losing his shit.” Besides being our CEO and the guy who brought us all together, Zane was also the face of the casino who handled all the PR. “More importantly, though, I don’t like the idea of some money-hungry jackass exploiting our young men.”
“I’m glad you see it that way,” Eric said with a relieved smile. “So many law enforcement types tend to treat sex workers like statistics, and…”
I held out a hand, giving him a gruff smile. “I’m not law enforcement, I’m a security guard. And these boys ain’t statistics, they’re real people with real lives that need protecting, regardless of whether they want to be doing sex work.”
Eric’s smile grew, and he nodded. “I’ll be honest, this is going much better than I thought it would. Thanks for taking this seriously, Bart.”
“Well, it ain’t just my job,” I said, standing up with Eric and shaking his hand firmly. “It’s in my blood. I’m a protector, Eric. Always have been.” My smile showed a few teeth. “Texas don’t make no cowards.”
“I’ll drink to that,” he said. “If you need any more help, here’s my card,” he said, and he handed me a business card that was still decorated to look like a BDSM advertisement, complete with chains along the edges. “Ignore the decor. I don’t do Dom work for anyone but Mick anymore, but I kept my business phone and email, and I’ve been too lazy to get it changed.”
“We’ll see about fixing that, too,” I said with a chuckle, pocketing the card.
“Thanks, Bart. See you around.” He gave me a nod and left, leaving me alone. I stroked my beard, then pulled out my phone and dialed one of my contacts.
“Zane?” I said into the speaker. “Need you to call a meeting down here at security tonight. We’ve got trouble.”
CHAPTER TWO - BART
The hot, black coffee in my hand warmed my whole body as I took a drink of it while my eyes stared at the security cameras. Gage leaned on the back of my chair, watching over my shoulder. Mick was sitting in the chair beside me, resting his chin on his interlaced fingers with an intense expression on his face. Zane stood to my right, watching over everything with a sharp, commanding gaze and a deep frown on his face.
Everyone took this very seriously. We were about an hour into reviewing security footage from the past few nights at peak hours. The new security systems Zane had installed recently made it a lot easier and more seamless than it had been before, so things were going smoothly.
“That look odd to you?” Zane asked me, gesturing to a couple of men in business suits at the bar from last week who were whispering to each other and glancing over their shoulders a lot.
“No,” I grunted. “I know the guy on the right, had to send him up to his room early a couple nights ago for having too much to drink. He’s here looking for a boyfriend, but he’s not out of the closet yet, so he’s paranoid about anyone catching him.”
“God, what kind of toxic workplace must he have where that’s still an issue in this day and age,” Gage remarked, and I shook my head.
“It’s more common than you think,” I said.
“So, do you have anything better to have us look for than ‘unusual activity’?” Gage finally asked after a few more minutes had passed. “I get that we don’t have a lot to go on, but anything could be ‘unusual’ if you look at it a certain way, and most of us wouldn’t even know what to look for in pimps, as far as I know.”
He cast a glance around at the rest of us as he said that, but Zane just shrugged and Mick didn’t look away from the cameras.
“Well, it’s not like some dickbag in a big purple coat and leopard-print hat is gonna come strolling in with a diamond-tipped cane,” I grumbled, “that would make things too easy. And Eric said this guy is trying to set up a prostitution ring in here. We don’t know if he’s really done it yet. He might just be putting feelers out.”
Mick nodded. “These people are careful. They have to be. One wrong move could mean a lot of trouble for all of them. He’s probably going to try send a few of his men out to case the place and identify potential weaknesses.”
“So, look for guys treating the casino floor like a hunting ground,” I said.
“Or people looking for Johns,” Zane said, and I nodded.
“Eric said this pimp is trying to set up a ‘barely legal’ operation, so keep an eye out for men who might not be old enough to drink but still want to chat up the drunk crowd,” I added.
“Could be anyone,” Zane said unhappily. “I don’t like unknown variables like that.”
“Me neither,” I said, “which is why it might be a long night. Might want one of the interns to do a coffee run for us, if you need something fancier than the shit I keep stocked,” I added with a little smug satisfaction. Gage rolled his eyes with a smirk. He was by far the pickiest coffee drinker among us, but Mick could give him a run for his money.
“I think we’ll manage,” Zane said with a smirk. “Black coffee means a caffeine crash will come a little later than a sugar crash.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Gage said. A moment later, though, he furrowed his eyebrows and stood up to get a better look at something going on at one of the blackjack tables. “Hey, hold on. Can you rewind this screen a little? That’s Devin.”
Zane arched an eyebrow at Gage while I paused the feed and rewound the tape.
“Stop there and play it back,” Gage said after a few seconds.
The screen showed Devin, one of the blackjack dealers, doing his job like any other employee. Devin was Gage’s new boyfriend as of very recently. Like everything Gage did, it w
as an explosive, fiery romance that seemed to happen overnight to the rest of us, but I knew there was a lot more to it than that. There was a lot more to Gage as a person than met the eye, really.
If there was one thing you could say about Gage, it was that he cared intensely.
“I recognize that guy,” he said, pointing to someone at Devin’s table. He was an unassuming looking guy. I wouldn’t have noticed him if Gage hadn’t pointed him out.
“How?” Zane asked.
“I’m not sure, but I swear I’ve seen him before,” Gage insisted, leaning in and putting his hand over his chin. He watched him intently for a few more minutes while we all joined him, trying to wait for any suspicious movements.
There were two other men with him. They both looked about as unassuming as the first, but they were clearly together. I noticed them glancing at each other from time to time. They probably thought themselves subtle, but I knew what to look for at casino tables by now.
“Oh, fuck me,” Gage said suddenly, snapping his fingers. “I remember now—that guy is one of the pieces of shit who was giving Devin trouble.”
“What?” I said, turning to Gage with my eyebrows furrowed.
Gage had brought this up to us at a meeting just after he and Devin got together. Apparently, there was some card counting going on at Devin’s blackjack table. Devin and some of the untrained security guards tried to keep a handle on the situation, but these guys were persistent. It ended up with some guys jumping Devin in the parking lot while he was on his way to his car. If Gage hadn’t been there to save his ass, there was no telling what might have happened to him.
Ever since hearing about it, I’d made it my priority to see that the perpetrators were caught, and this was the first lead I’d gotten.
“Yeah, that’s the spotter,” Gage said confidently. “I’m positive. I saw that bastard down in the parking lot before I kicked their asses.”
“That’s a lead for sure, but what would it have to do with a prostitution ring?” Zane asked.
