Skin Game

by J. D. Allen

She flipped to the back of that Bible, which Jim now realized was hollowed out and filled with blank pages and handwritten notes. “Thursday.”

  “She must have suspected something of Keith. Put the drawing in the stall so if someone managed to figure out she was part of this railroad, they’d know we were on track.” Jim wished his shoulder wasn’t throbbing, but he didn’t want to risk any meds slowing him down.

  “And he got her Friday or Saturday, according to the timeline.”

  “Anything about him you remember? Anything?” Jim asked.

  She looked down at the paper with Keith’s information on it as if it would talk to her. “He did odd jobs after he was let go from the ambulance service. Something about that place up north. The fancy golf course. Said he was the only one to live up there for a while.”

  All roads led back to Coyote Springs. The girls had to be there. Made sense. The crates behind the club and the deserted warehouses.

  They stood to leave. Oscar took her hand. “This is a dangerous mess, Sister. Keith Worth is part of a large trafficking ring. I suggest you leave Vegas tonight. Visit a friend or relative for a few days.”

  She gave him a quick nod. “I may do that.”

  “Not may. Do it.”

  Jim looked back at the nun. She was pale, and her fragile hands shook. “Did I get Chris abducted? And Erica for that matter?”

  “No. None of this is your fault, Sister.” Oscar was quick to relieve her guilt.

  Jim might not have been.

  37

  They’d stolen a car. Actually, Jim had. One that was not being searched out under the trumped-up BOLOs. A white Camry. Plain Jane. Nothing worth raising an eyebrow over. Nothing that went as fast as Jim would have liked once they hit the open, desolate highway. Probably best O was driving. Jim watched the terrain drop off into the darkness, just as he had when he and Erica first drove to Coyote Springs. Nothing changed. Not out there. Stone and sand, unfeelingly and unyielding. The car tires chattered on the broken road that led to the dream that had been Coyote Springs.

  He rechecked the clip of the 9mm in his hand.

  Ely’s had been a bust. Watched from every conceivable corner. Oscar’s place was just as buggy. No way in. “Wanna break into the shooter’s club? Lots of guns there.” O had offered.

  Not really appealing. Too risky. He rattled off a verbal inventory to make sure he wasn’t missing anything. “A rifle, two handguns, two knives, and a stun gun against Zant and his little army?”

  O had given him that look that said no worries, man, and shrugged. “I’ve seen worse odds.”

  They zoomed past the anonymous hotel, the diner, and the strip club.

  “Pull over here.” Jim tilted his head to the east just below the service road and the warehouse on the west side of the highway. There was nowhere to hide the car in the open deserted town. Best they could do was pull it off the road a few yards and pop the hood so the Camry looked like it’d been left on the shoulder over engine trouble. Happened out here. It was a desert.

  They gathered what gear they’d rescued from O’s Escalade and the red van he’d taken from Banks. That added night vision goggles, a baseball bat, a coil of rope, two smoke bombs, and (thankfully) a handful of ibuprofen to the arsenal. Not the way he’d like to go in, but it’d have to do.

  Jim swallowed the pain reliever before they jogged all the way north of the warehouse on the wrong side of the road, then cut back south and west to come around the far side of the building. They avoided the service road altogether.

  “Last time I was here, there was one panel van outside this warehouse. No lights. Nobody home.” Now they were looking at three cars, the panel van, and an RV. The place was lit up like a hotel on the Strip. “They’re not even trying to hide.”

  “Why would you be out here?” Oscar assessed the building. This was his forte: getting people out of places they don’t want to leave. The bounty hunter had it in his blood. His eyes darkened as he thought things through. His usually jovial face hardened. He took a deep breath. “Smells like a rat’s nest to me.”

  Jim looked at the death in Oscar’s eyes. Ten years this guy had been looking for redemption for his wife being taken, sold, and killed by these men. And here they had a chance to face down the entire operation. Slay all his demons in one shot.

  Double O glanced back at Jim. “You want any left to prosecute?”

  Jim felt killing wasn’t usually necessary. Maiming worked just fine and gave the person something to think about in the future

  “Keep at least one to testify against the top rat. As for the rest …” Jim shrugged. “I really do like the thought of Zant decaying away in orange cotton and using community piss pots.”

  They eased around the side of the structure, looking for weakness, a quiet way in. As they circled around the front, car lights swept across the open yard in front of the steel building. Dead bushes stood sentry on a path that led to a double glass door.

  Jim ducked behind the RV. Oscar fell in beside him. They were each propped against a tire. No chance their legs could be seen under the chassis.

  The car stopped at the far end of the building, past the vehicles. Lights stayed on, leading the way to a side door. Oscar took a quick look around the RV. “I recognize that one.”

  Jim looked as well. BMW limo. High-dollar ride. Real gold trim. Vulgar in its narcissism. “We have the head rat. Interesting. Why would he be out here for this?”

  O’s face was chiseled into stone-cold hate. “Don’t care. Now they all can die.”

  “I’d still like to see Zant do the time.”

  “Zant would still be in business on the inside.”

  True enough. And Alexis and her son would still be at risk. The driver jumped out and rushed to open the back. Andrew Zant emerged, taking a moment to survey his surroundings. His smugness wafted through the Nevada heat like the stench of roadkill.

  Jim glanced back the way they came. “We need to get inside. Get a head count. Make a plan.”

  O nodded and slipped into the dark, easily avoiding the floodlights as he made his way to the back of the structure. There was a second-floor window. An office. With any luck, it was empty.

  Jim resituated the sling his arm had been enjoying. The rest of the night’s activities were going to be painful. He’d turned down the narcotics the ER doc had offered. Needed a clear head. The shoulder hurt, didn’t want to cooperate, but it worked. Banks had good aim. He’d done little more than cut through skin and nick some muscle. Jim was sure he hadn’t been as expert in return.

  He ran after Oscar. They positioned themselves under the window. “Want me to push you up? Can you get in with one arm?”

  Jim nodded. “It’s not like I can hoist your big ass up there.”

  “Upsy-daisy, then.” He held his hands in a cup for Jim to step into.

  Jim pushed up, O hoisted. Jim stepped onto his shoulders. The window was at chest level. The latch was not locked. Lucky. He pushed up the pane slowly. Bathroom. Not an office. He listened carefully for sounds. Let his nose check as well. Stale. Unused. O shifted.

  Jim used his good arm to pull his weight to the sill and dragged his legs through. There was nothing below, so he turned and dropped. His shoulder complained. He ignored it. There would be time to heal later. Erica and Chris were here somewhere. He hoped.

  He secured the rope to the post at the end of the row of stalls and tossed it out for O to climb up. The big guy made it up and in easily. Wordlessly, O removed the rope and tucked it in a pantry full of cleaning supplies.

  Jim crouched down low, eased the door open. A couple of dark empty offices with large windows open to the warehouse floor below spread out to his right. The setup was intended for the managers in the glass rooms to oversee the production on the first floor. From the recessed bathroom door, he was too far back to see over the rail above the wor
k area. He heard voices from below. Someone was heading this way. He signaled O to follow, then crouched and moved quick and quiet to the nearest office, closing the door behind them without a sound.

  He turned and looked down from the window behind an empty steel desk. Lights were on in the main open area. Movement. A couple of girls he didn’t recognize were milling about. Coolers and crates were stacked close to a table just inside three roll-up garage doors.

  “Holy hot cars, Batman,” Oscar whispered. “Look at that collection.”

  Voices in the office caught his attention. He wanted to go in there and just blow everything away. But not till they knew how many targets were moving around this warehouse. And where the head rat had taken root.

  Jim looked long enough to see several sports cars lined up against the far wall, maybe fifteen yards away from the girls and the boxes. “That has to be a million bucks in scrap metal right there.”

  “More than that—the gold one’s an Ascari A10 …” He glanced at Jim. His lack of car enthusiasm must have shown. “It’s basically a race car with turn signals. Has to go for eight hundred grand. And that Aston Martin is another three hundred.”

  “Bond car?”

  “Yep.”

  “I like James Bond. Did you see the last one?”

  “Yeah.” O resituated his vest.

  “Effects keep getting better.”

  “And the women hotter.”

  “I know the Rolls, but what are the other two? I don’t recognize them at all.” They looked like race cars too. Shiny. New. Expensive. Gluttonous.

  “Not a clue.”

  The garage bay door opened. The RV pulled in.

  “They’re going to move the girls in that. Probably across the border into Mexico. Lots of little airports there with less than tight security. We can’t let that thing leave here.”

  There were voices coming from the office next door. Some not so subtle.

  One was Erica. Cursing

  38

  They heard footfalls. Jim guessed three, maybe four people. They eased back into the restroom. He hovered above a john. In the next stall O was doing the same thing. The hall fell quiet. Luckily no one needed to take a piss.

  Voices wafted from the office. When he was reasonably sure no one else was in the hall, he eased the door open a crack, stuck his mirror out. Erica was in the receptionist’s area. He could see her back clearly in the reflection.

  “Affirmative,” Jim heard a deep male voice say. Then a moment later the guard moved into his view. He was silent for a moment, followed by, “Wilco.”

  Then two men were in front of Erica in a heartbeat. Both had high and tight cuts, matching dark suits, and ear set radios. “Are you pilots?” She giggled.

  Drugged. Not good. She’d be harder to handle, slower to move when Jim needed her to. Her arm was wrapped in bloody fabric. It must have been injured in the crash. Her head was bleeding in the spot Banks had knocked her into the wall. Given that the car had rolled a couple of times, she was lucky to have a pulse.

  “Hey!” Ex-Marine Thug Guy A ignored her exclamation as he pulled her to her feet, even though he’d been nice enough and not grabbed the injured arm. Hell. Maybe he wasn’t nice. Maybe it had just been by chance.

  Ex-Marine Thug Guy B caught her up when her legs refused to play their part and hold her weight or participate in the dynamics that were required to place one foot in front of the other. He also grabbed the top of her jeans and not her arm, so Jim knew they had some sense of her injuries and no real wish to make them worse. For now.

  The ex-marine thug guys dragged her into the inner office as if they were helping her past a finish line.

  To keep an eye on her, he had to move, possibly expose himself if he got closer. But Zant was likely in there. He needed to hear what they said. There was no choice. He’d like to have a plan for all the players in the building, but this was urgent. He had to go out. He glanced at Oscar. Got the nod.

  O signaled that he was going to check the rest of the layout with a twist of his finger. Jim nodded.

  He crawled into the outer office that Erica and the thugs had just exited and ducked behind a secretary’s desk. He lay flat. The position gave him a view under the front panel of the desk that faced incoming guests. Part of the room was blocked, but he could see her. And Zant.

  Zant stood behind a pretentious black lacquer oriental desk. It hadn’t been that long since Jim last saw the man, and as usual he turned Jim’s stomach. The guy’s features were small, as was his stature. Jim always fixated on his little mouth. It was tiny compared to his head. Should be on a boy. But very grown-up shit spewed from those lips. Jim had once pictured him as a small-mouthed bass, all face and a pie hole so small he probably had someone cut his meat into tiny bites in order to eat it.

  Jim’s focus drifted to the dead gaze of Zant’s equally thin eyes. He needed to visit the same barber that the ex-marine thug guys used, because his hair was wavy and reached well past the collar of his four-thousand-dollar suit.

  Erica was on the floor before the desk. She tried to hold herself upright in that kneeling position, but she faltered and swayed back and forth a couple of times. She caught herself since her hands were tie-wrapped in front of her. She closed her eyes tight, took a deep breath. Coughed.

  Get your shit together or this bastard is going to kill you.

  Zant appeared disgusted. “Give her some water. I didn’t want her dead. Who is responsible for the bruising and bleeding?”

  That was good news. Zant picked up a gold cigarette case with hands that were also in proportion to his mouth and his eyes. Manicured fingers took out a small black cigarette, tapped it on the shiny lid, and placed it between his skinny fish lips. All of his movements were smooth, exact.

  The twisted trail of smoke that left his mouth was as compact as the man. No big show of the act of smoking. No wasted effort. He’d smoked often and for years. Maybe he was already being eaten alive with cancer. Brain cancer might explain how his mind was so twisted. Jim could only wish.

  “Broady said the car flipped four or five times.” Ex-Marine Thug Guy A handed Erica a full bottle of water. “Water should help move the drugs through your system quicker.”

  She drank it down fast, even as he tried to pull it back from her. “Easy, girl.”

  Jim saw her grab her stomach and look up at Zant and his immaculate appearance, that glaze gone for an instant. Maybe she wasn’t as drugged as she was letting on. Then Erica let it go, vomiting, making sure the trajectory was in Zant’s direction, as if she wanted to sully him.

  “That’s an antique Afshar carpet. Do you have any idea how much that cost me?” He tossed his lighter to the desk and glared down at her, but the man wasn’t rattled, didn’t come closer to her.

  Ex-Marine Thug Guy B rushed to attempt to clean Erica’s stomach contents off the rug.

  She burped. “Excuse me.”

  With that, Zant did stalk around the desk. “There is some nasty stuff still in your system. Short-term unconsciousness is difficult to manage.” He leaned back against the front of the desk, crossing his legs at the ankles, relaxed and making sure his presence allowed Ex-Marine Thug Guy B to continue to clean the evidently very expensive carpet. Jim thought her contribution was more an improvement to the busy red pattern than a distraction.

  Without a word Zant watched, then took a long toke from the cigarette. Or was it a little cigar? And why did Jim care enough to consider the distinctions?

  Zant motioned for Ex-Marine Thug Guy A to give her the bottle back. “Slower this time.” She took it and nodded. “Leave us,” he said to the big men. The thugs hesitated. “Her hands are tied and she’s still fighting the effects of the injection. I’ll be fine.”

  They dutifully filed out, moving as one. Jim ducked his head and pulled his legs in to be as small under the desk as possible.
They weren’t expecting trouble out here, so they weren’t being overly careful. Neither did a visual scan as they left the office. Cheap muscle had no clue what they were up against.

  Jim listened as they marched down the stairs, then he resumed the position that gave him the best view of the room and the quickest access to get Erica if needed.

  He wanted her out of that small room, down in the open where he and O could take them all out. Zant gave Erica an appraising look, tilted his head. “I was going to kill you once you got to the city. Clean. Simple. Let your pretty little sister go with the others and kill you outright. Maybe even do the deed myself.” He inspected his smoking hand, his right hand, like he was giving himself a moment to imagine what joy that might have brought him. “But kismet intervened in the little script of our association for a second time.”

  “Second?” She took another, slower drink from the bottle.

  “Yes. The first was the wonderful revelation that Chris Floyd—the woman nosing about my business, costing me money—was none other than your baby sister. It was like a Christmas gift from the universe all wrapped up just for me.” He shrugged. “Things fell into place. It wasn’t hard to feed her a few extra bits of information, make sure she got close enough. Not often do things fall in line like that. And she was so pretty. Much like you.” He bent forward, putting his face only a few inches from Erica’s. “A shame it will take a while for that beauty to show through again. Very headstrong, that girl.”

  Jim heard O moving in. Held his hand up for him to stay put. They needed to know what Zant was planning, and the megalomaniac wouldn’t be able to contain that kind of plot, keeping it for himself. No, he was going to lay it all out to frighten, to torment Erica. This guy was all about wielding power.

  “She’s alive?” Jim could feel Erica’s relief from the other room as she sagged forward, dropping the water bottle.

  “Of course.” Zant sucked on the cigarette, taking a moment before letting out a long puff of stale smoke. “She’s graduated. You, on the other hand, will not be trained. I can’t risk the entire operation to put you into the pipeline now. Schedules are tight, preplanned for months. Lots of logistics to this business, you know.”