by Leslie Wolfe
Reyes flipped the phone shut and handed it to me politely, no brash gestures. “When can I get out of here?”
“I’ll get things set up in the next few days. If everything goes well with Snowman’s crew and no one suspects a thing, I’d say that by April you should be walking down the sunny side of the Strip again.”
He grinned, bobbing his head like a complete idiot.
“One more thing,” I asked. “What’s the newest territory your crew has moved into?”
“Northeast metro, why?”
“Just because Don’s envoy would know that,” I replied, then I winked and pounded twice against the scratched, yellow door. A CO quickly unlocked it and escorted me out. I looked over my shoulder at Reyes, noticing the cocky grin on his lips and his brazen gaze, and I cringed at the thought of seeing him out there enjoying his freedom, getting away with putting my husband into the ground.
It seemed unfair.
I was never going to let that happen.
34
Building Olivia
Forty-nine hours missing
The early morning shift from the local Walgreens was a bit reluctant to accommodate my request to block the ladies’ room with a mop bucket on wheels and a “Closed for Maintenance,” yellow sign, but they did it anyway. I dragged my wheelie in there and locked the door behind me, then dialed Fletcher’s number and put it on speaker, placing the phone on the counter between the sinks.
“Hey, Fletch,” I said, as soon as I heard his voice. He sounded tired, like everyone else for that matter. Tired, and something else I couldn’t put my finger on. “Hey, I’ve lost the camera feed. Holt’s gone in—”
“I’d rather not know, Baxter,” he replied in a heavy breath of air. “I’m sorry.”
I frowned at myself in the full mirror. I’d expected the brass to start leaning on him; I didn’t think it would be so soon.
“They’re asking questions?” I inquired in a gentle voice.
“Yeah,” he replied, sounding almost ashamed.
“What do they know?”
I held my breath, hoping no irreparable damage had been done, hoping they didn’t know Holt’s current location. Fletcher had the serial number for Holt’s GPS microchip and could’ve tracked my partner’s position. A SWAT team barging through the plumbing store doors sounded like a terrible idea, one that was guaranteed to get people killed.
“They know the two cases are correlated, and they know how,” he said, speaking slowly. I could picture him with his head lowered, shoulders hunched forward, eyes riveted to the floor. “They also know the address in Henderson that Detective Holt was looking for.”
“Oh, you got that?” I asked, feeling a wave of excitement. “How?”
“The feds offered their help. They have this incredible analyst,” he blurted. “She’s awesome!”
I breathed deeply once, then again, thinking. If the feds worked with Fletch and offered their help, that meant they had him in their crosshairs, watching his every move. He probably didn’t know it and telling him would only freak him out. But I couldn’t make my plan a reality without his help, with or without the risk of having the feds find out what I was doing. It was safe to assume Fletcher’s phone was monitored, listening devices were in place around his desk, maybe even video.
I breathed again, deeply, calming my stretched nerves.
“That’s wonderful,” I told Fletcher, “one hell of a job finding that address. Did you tell the captain?”
“Y—yes,” he replied. “And Karyn, the analyst I was telling you about, got the two kidnappers identified; I’ll send you the specifics.”
“Excellent,” I replied. “Okay, now, I need your help,” I added, letting a smile seep in my voice. “You’re an artist, you know that, right?”
“Uh-huh,” he replied, suspiciousness coloring his voice.
“Good. Then let’s build a character from an action movie, a powerful and intimidating businesswoman named Olivia Gaines. Let’s bring her to life.”
He hesitated a moment, the silence complete, not only void of his words, but also of the sound of his fingers dancing over the keyboard. Then he started typing.
“Full background? How solid?”
“Bulletproof, Fletch. They will check.”
“Age?”
“Um, thirty-four,” I replied, shaving two years off my real age. A girl can never look too young.
He started working, asking me quick questions here and there, while I changed clothes. I took off the black dress and high-heeled sandals and put on the blue pantsuit and matching jacket. I replaced the thigh holster with an ankle one and snuck a Sig 365 in a belt holster worn on the inside. Then I put on the black pumps, a pair of kitty heels built on a metallic frame, in case I needed the heels to do more than support my weight.
Then I moved on to my makeup. I wiped and rinsed off my evening makeup and applied carefully a day-time, business-formal layout with just a tiny bit of eye shadow and an illusion of blush.
“Holy crap,” I heard Fletcher’s flustered voice. “Wait a second, okay? I got to look into something,” he added, then muted the call and silence overtook the open line.
My hand trembled slightly with the lip gloss stick, and I glared at my betraying fingers. Was I afraid? Maybe just a little. For the most part, I was tense and anxious, eager to go back to the plumbing store and get to Holt. Why would they keep his daughter alive for so long, and why would they keep him? If this was about revenge, they should’ve been dead by now.
“I’m back,” he suddenly said, panting a little.
“Is everything okay?”
“Absolutely,” he replied. “They brought in the dirty cop, Officer Pete Mincey, remember him? The one who took the bribe in the Perdido Club’s restroom?”
“Ah, yes,” I reacted, wishing I were there to grill him, although I knew now his pursuits weren’t related to Meredith Holt’s kidnapping.
“Who’s talking to him?”
“The big man himself, Sheriff McGoldrick. I didn’t know he still did interrogations.”
“He’s a cop, Fletch; of course, he does.”
He muttered, and then I heard him unwrap something and there was a crunching sound as he took a bite. That young man had the metabolism of a rocket; it burned everything he ate, and he still looked skinny, even if half the time he was munching on a snack or slurping five hundred calorie drinks.
“I’ll pull your ten card from the system and attach it, okay?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. This was about to get interesting. “Nope. I’ll send you the prints. If I take photos of my fingers, can you extract?”
“Sure, I can, but aren’t those the same prints as your ten card? We have them in the employee database.”
“No, they’re not.”
A moment of silence ensued, then he whistled. “Wow,” he eventually said. “Will you tell me how you pulled that off, sometime soon?”
“Sometime soon,” I replied, then took photos of my hands and sent them to him via the messenger app.
“Okay, I got it,” he confirmed. “Nicely done, Detective. They look perfect, whoever those might belong to.”
Ah, Fletcher, shut up about the bloody fingerprints already, I felt like screaming. If the feds were listening to the call, that issue was going to pose some problems when I found myself in an interrogation room across from a pissed-off fed or, even worse, my boss. Good luck explaining fake prints to any of them.
“I’ll give you a record,” Fletcher said, “say, five years for—”
“Olivia Gaines never did time,” I replied, rehearsing the intonations I was planning to use. “Only dumb people do time,” I added, infusing the right amount of arrogance in my words.
Moment by moment, I was entering the part I was about to play. As I’d learned in my days performing on London theatre stages, the key was becoming Olivia. Not acting Olivia or pretending to be Olivia but becoming her.
She was powerful; she traveled on private jets an
d held the fate of entire organizations in her hand. She was impatient and a stone-cold killer. You crossed her, you died. No questions asked, no excuses. Everyone knew she pulled her gun and double-tapped a rat in under three seconds. She was Don’s trusted associate, charged with inspecting his distribution organizations and making sure their businesses were tight and the associated risk managed to a minimum. She had the power to cut off the supply to a network just because someone talked to the cops about the weather. She was fierce.
She was also beautiful and knew it. She held her head up high, and wore her long, wavy hair loose on one shoulder. At night, she liked to eat at fancy restaurants and speed in her sports car, turning heads wherever she went. But she was all business, even when she was pretending to play. No one had touched her and lived to tell the story.
Satisfied with the Olivia I had constructed in my mind, I finished arranging my hair, accessorized quickly with a pair of diamond earrings and an expensive bracelet, then gave myself a thorough look in the mirror. Olivia Gaines looked back at me, impatient and fiery, ready to face Snowman.
“You were saying?” I asked Fletcher.
“What would you like me to put on her record? She can’t be squeaky clean; they won’t buy it.”
“She’s suspected of drug trafficking in the UK,” I said, “because whatever I do, I still sound like a Brit. That won’t go away with makeup and fake prints.” The moment I said it, I wanted to kick myself. In case the feds hadn’t caught that detail the first five times, I had to say it again and now they knew for sure. The hell with it. “She’s wanted by Interpol. Carries British and Colombian passports.”
“Known associates?”
“Amado ‘The Don’ Cardenas, Carlos ‘Dry Bones’ Juarez, several high-ranking pushers in Bones’s organization, and add a few more names from the Sinaloa Cartel.”
His fingers stopped tapping on the keyboard. “Baxter?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful, all right? These people will kill you on the spot if they smell you’re a cop.”
I grinned nervously. “I know that, Fletch. Make that background stick; bury it under a layer of fake identities and associations like only you can do. It just has to work for a day; that’s all I need.”
“Consider it done,” he replied, sounding satisfied with himself.
“I need two other things,” I said, starting to pack the suitcase and makeup kit. “First, I need to officially arrive in Vegas. Book me on an inbound flight from Colombia on a private jet, complete with a flight plan and customs declarations, and reserve the most expensive Mercedes convertible you can find in this entire city. I need that set of wheels to wait for me at McCarran International in twenty minutes.”
“You got it. What else?”
“Now this one’s going to hurt. Remember that recording you got from the NSA with Don’s voice? Who did that voice remind you of?”
“Um, vaguely, maybe Detective Nieblas?”
“Exactly,” I replied. “You have precisely thirty minutes to coach Nieblas how to speak like Don, including accent, word usage, the works. See if the DEA has any recordings of Snowman talking with Don. Apply pitch correction filters on the phone that Nieblas is going to use, and some static and background noise for authenticity and camouflage.”
“He’s going to kill me, Baxter,” Fletcher reacted. “You know Nieblas, he’s not that friendly, and he hates Holt.”
“All cops pull together when another cop’s family is under attack, right?”
“Right.”
“If needed, remind him of that. If that won’t work, threaten, bribe, or blackmail him, I don’t care. But when anyone in Snowman’s organization dials Don Cardenas’s phone, that call will be rerouted by you straight into the detective’s hands. All he needs to do is sell Olivia Gaines as Don’s personal envoy with the power to dry up the well. Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it,” he replied, his voice hesitant and a bit sad. “At which point do I call this in? What if we don’t hear from you?”
If the feds were listening in, that was the moment they needed to hear my message.
“You do not call this in, Fletch, you read me? Never. No matter what happens… promise me you’ll wait for my call.”
“Geez, Baxter, you’re batshit crazy,” he replied.
I laughed quietly while locking my wheelie. “No, Fletch, I’m just that desperate.”
35
The Meet
Fifty hours missing
I didn’t belong in that place, and it was obvious even from the parking lot, where my black Mercedes S-Class Cabriolet stood out among contractor trucks and beat-up vans like a princess among pirates. Fletcher had outdone himself, grabbing that impressive piece of German engineering from an exotic car rental under a fake name he’d constructed as an alias, just as Olivia would’ve done.
I ignored the appreciative looks my silhouette was eliciting from the predominantly male patronage and entered the store walking briskly, clacking my heels and holding my head high. In passing, I smiled when I noticed several customers crouched or leaning to look at items located on lower shelves, all of them proudly displaying the infamous view of the hairy butt crack that usually accompanied the notion of a plumber at work. That tiny bit of amusement did nothing for the anxiety gripping my gut in an iron fist.
Was Holt still alive?
The thought of being too late sent shivers down my spine.
Many things could go wrong with my plan. Nieblas could do a poor job posing as Don Cardenas. My cover background could have a crack, or that piece of slime, Pedro Reyes, could find a way to leak my identity to Snowman’s organization, just to get even for his crooked nose. But none of those scenarios scared me as much as the thought of being too late for Holt, for his daughter.
I walked toward the back of the store searching for a way in, seeing two men hanging around a door leading to an employee-only area. I recognized one of them immediately, from Fletcher’s video surveillance screen grabs, and later, the man’s rap sheet texted to my phone. It was Rudy Huber, the man who’d kidnapped Meredith Holt wearing a cop’s uniform with the name tag, “Beasley.”
The second man looked entirely unfamiliar; he wasn’t someone I’d seen before. I pretended to check my phone for messages and snapped a quick photo of the man and sent it to Fletcher. I approached the two men with a tight-lipped smile.
As I drew closer, they started shifting in place, looking at each other, then at me with increasing uneasiness. Huber unbuttoned his jacket, probably to make sure he had easy access to the weapon bulging at his side.
“Tell Samuel Klug I’m here,” I said coldly.
“Is he expecting you?”
I let my smile stretch a corner of my mouth. “If he’s smart, he’s expecting me. Why don’t you go ask him?”
“Your name?” Huber asked, giving me a look from head to toe.
“Olivia Gaines,” I replied calmly. “Tell him Don Cardenas sent me.”
The mention of Don’s name had the effect of a double shot of espresso served intravenously to both men. Huber rushed through the restricted access door, while the other man, a white male with a traditional goatee, the chin-only version without the mustache, kept his eyes on me as if I were a ticking chunk of C4. He followed the same characteristics and probably shared a similar background with the rest of Snowman’s lieutenants we’d been able to track. The ink jobs on the visible parts of his body pointed to lengthy terms spent behind bars.
My phone chimed, and I checked my messages quickly, without really taking my eyes off the man. “Devon ‘Tiny’ Burch,” the message from Fletcher read, in response to the photo I’d sent. “Ten years for manslaughter, three for B&E.” Fletcher’s FBI friend was worth her salt; I’d never before seen a facial recognition ID come back so quickly.
The door opened, and Huber invited me in. I followed him through a corridor shrouded in darkness, lit only by a yellowish bulb hanging from the ceiling by its twisted wires. He stopped halfw
ay and patted me down carefully, enjoying it a little too much, especially in the lower parts of my body.
As he was crouched down, running his hands down my legs, I grabbed his chin between my index and thumb as if he were a child. “Are you having fun there, Mr. Huber? Or just a plain old death wish?”
He stood abruptly, glaring at me. “How the hell do you know my name?”
“I like to know who I’m dealing with.”
He removed the gun on my belt and the one in my ankle holster, but completely missed the Sig hanging from my bra. Then he beckoned me to follow him to the storage area.
My heart thumped loudly as I entered through the flexible, rubber, swing doors, recognizing the images I’d seen earlier when Holt had been dragged down the same hallway. Then, after passing through those doors, I saw Snowman sitting in his armchair just like I’d seen him before, in the grainy video feed captured by Holt’s camera. To my right, about fifteen feet in front of Snowman, I saw Holt, tied to a metallic chair with power cords attached, bleeding from his nose, but very much alive. I contained a sigh of relief and refrained from giving him too much attention; instead, I walked straight to Snowman.
The goon by his side wolf-whistled, and I stared him down with all the contempt I could muster.
“Do that again, and you’re dead,” I whispered, my voice casual, factual as if I were telling him the cash register had run out of paper.
His whistle died on his lips and his jaw slacked. He looked at Snowman for guidance, but his boss’s eyes were riveted on me.
“I don’t like the way you treat my people,” Snowman said.
“And I don’t care,” I replied calmly. “I’m here to speak with you, not entertain your lap dogs.”
He shifted in his seat, leaning forward. Then he snapped his fingers and Huber brought him a cold beer from the fridge.
