“Wait, you really do that?” I said in shock.”
He laughed. “Nah, I wouldn’t be quite that gauche. But the point is, I could if I wanted to,” he said. “Know what I mean?”
“I guess so,” I said. “But I’ll tell you one thing. I’m definitely getting myself a yacht with a pool and a remote control.”
“That’s the spirit! We’ll make a crazy rich person out of you yet,” Beau said as he led me back toward the control panel. “Now, let me really show you how to pilot a yacht. Sit down here.” He patted the big leather captain’s chair in front of the steering wheel.
So, I sat down and let Beau show me how to be rich.
31
After a full day on Beau and Bella’s yacht, my new friend sent us back to Vegas on his jet with instructions to keep in touch. Gail and I had an invigorating time on the flight back, and it was great to come home to the base and all my girls. But the next afternoon, I was headed for Boulder City with Skye in a rented Rolls-Royce Phantom, just because it was the most expensive car the luxury rental place had to offer, to pay a little visit to Club Ace.
Skye’s search was still chewing through mountains of data, so despite the new information, we had nothing on Presley yet. Meanwhile, I was done sitting around and waiting for him to come to me. The bar that the captured soldier mentioned was the next best lead I had, and I was determined to follow it.
It was around three when I pulled the Phantom into the sparsely filled, hard-packed dirt parking lot of Club Ace, inconveniently located in the rural outskirts of Boulder City. The place was a real dump, shabby and sagging with weathered wood siding, and most of its several gaudy neon signs dimmed or sputtering. A high wooden stockade fence ran from the back of the building on both sides, blocking the view of whatever was behind the place.
“Wow. This is about the saddest bar I’ve ever seen,” Skye said as we got out of the car and headed for the entrance. “And believe me, I’ve seen some really pathetic bars. I feel like we should wear hazmat suits in there, or at least bring a few gallons of hand sanitizer.”
“Yeah, well, this guy’s a scumbag. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that he hangs around a scummy bar,” I said as I opened the door for Skye, and then stepped through behind her. I was half hoping I’d find Ann inside waiting tables or something. Not that I wanted to discover that she worked for Presley, but if she did, I wanted to get her away from him.
But there were no waitresses, at least none I could see. Aside from a handful of miserable-looking customers seated at the scattered tables or the long, scuffed bar that ran the back of the room, there was a lone bartender behind the counter. And to the right, seated on a stool in the middle of a worn platform stage, was an Elvis impersonator.
I had to admit, I didn’t expect that. The man on the stage wore a white sequined jumpsuit, huge dark sunglasses, and wingtip shoes. There was a blue guitar slung crookedly at his side, and instead of performing, he was working hard at getting to the bottom of a bottle of cheap whiskey.
I stared at the fake Elvis as the girls and I picked the least nasty-looking table to sit at. “You don’t suppose Presley would actually be …?” I said as I pulled one of the chairs out for Skye. “I mean, his goon did say he wears white suits and sunglasses all the time.”
Skye giggled. “Probably not,” she said with a smirk. “Even if he is that stupid, we wouldn’t get that lucky.”
I agreed. At the very least, if Presley was hanging around here doing a drunken Elvis impersonation, Agent Smith would’ve been able to get her hands on him by now. But I’d still ask the bartender about him. “Okay, so what do you think? Should we risk ordering a few drinks while we’re here?”
“I’ll take a rum and Coke. Nobody could screw that up too badly,” Skye said.
“Coming right up,” I said. As I rose to go get her drink and interrogate the bartender, I decided that a cold beer wouldn’t be the worst choice for me. As I made my way toward the bar, Elvis set the bottle aside, fiddled with his guitar for a minute, and then launched into a dragging, ultra low-key version of Can’t Help Falling In Love. I almost felt bad for the guy. He was doing a pretty good impression of the King, even though it was way too slow and moody, but no one was paying much attention to him.
That was probably why he’d been so intent on the whiskey.
When I stepped up to the bar, the bartender plodded over reluctantly, like someone was holding a gun to his back. “Guess you want a drink,” he said, looking me up and down.
“Uh, yeah. This is a bar, isn’t it?” I said with a slight frown. “I’d like a rum and Coke, and a bottle of Bud. Please.”
The bartender gave a half-shrug and moved a few steps down to fish a frosted plastic tumbler from somewhere beneath the counter. “Ice?” he asked.
“Just a little,” I told him.
He flashed an exasperated look, grabbed a plastic scoop from an ice bin and deliberately picked out a single ice cube to plop into the tumbler. “That enough?”
I sighed. This was not going well. “Look, just make it however you usually do, okay?” I said. “It’s fine, really.”
The guy seemed to relax a little as he scooped ice into the cup, so I decided to risk a little conversation. “Hey, do you happen to know a guy named Henry Aaron?” I said. “I heard he comes here sometimes. His friends might call him Presley. White suit, dark glasses?”
The bartender gave a slow blink and pointed to the stage, where Elvis was droning his way toward the final chorus. “You know his name ain’t really Presley, right?” he said, and then leaned across the bar counter to add in a loud whisper, “The King is dead.”
“Yeah, I get that. I’m looking for a different Presley in a white suit and sunglasses,” I said.
“Tell you what. Drive out of town, and head north on 515 for about thirty miles. You’ll come to this big, shiny city called Vegas. Maybe you’ve heard of the place,” he said as he dumped generous splashes of rum over the ice, sprayed Coke into the glass, and produced a bottle of Bud. “You’ll find about five hundred Presleys there. Take your pick.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “All right, so you don’t know him,” I said. “Thanks anyway.”
“No problem.” The bartender actually smiled a little as he arranged the drinks on a small tray. “That’ll be eight fifty.”
I got my wallet and pulled out a twenty. As I was handing it over, preparing to tell him to keep the change, the bartender’s expression went from mild amusement to sheer anger.
“Roger,” he snarled. “What the hell are you doing in my bar?”
Shit, I recognized this. It was the same possession trick Presley had pulled at the roulette table in Vegas. “Hi there, Henry,” I said, enjoying his flinch of surprise when I spoke his real name. “Didn’t expect that, did you? I know a lot more than that, too, you nasty son of a bitch.”
Unfortunately, he recovered too fast from the shock, and let out a very unfriendly laugh. “You don’t know anything, Roger,” he said. “If the FBI can’t find me, what makes you think that you can?”
“Oh, I’m going to find you,” I said. “And when I do, I’m going to stomp your woman-beating ass into the ground, and then make sure you’re locked up for life. If I don’t kill you first.”
The possessed bartender snorted. “You have no idea what you’re stepping in. But I’ll tell you what, since I know exactly where you are and how to get to you,” - he leaned forward and folded his arms on the counter - “you have three days to get out of Nevada. I won’t even come after your pen … yet. But if you’re not gone by my deadline, I will come for you. I will fuck you up royally. But I won’t kill you right away.” A ghastly grin spread on his face. “First, I’ll make you watch every one of those sluts you keep around die. Slowly and painfully, one by one. And then you can join them.”
The rage that filled me was so intense, it took everything I had not to shatter the bartender’s teeth with a fist. I had to remember that the actual man in front of m
e wasn’t the target. He was just being used, apparently like everyone else Presley knew. “Listen, you—”
Before I could finish the threat, the bartender blinked and shivered, and his blank eyes filled with confusion.
“You need something else?” he said as he straightened and looked around, probably trying to figure out why he was leaning on the counter when the last thing he remembered, I’d just handed him a twenty. Presley had left the building, the goddamned coward.
“Uh, no. I’m good, thanks,” I said as I picked up the tray. “Keep the change.”
“Thanks, man,” the bartender said with another little smile. “Good luck finding that Presley guy.”
“Yeah, I think I just found him,” I said under my breath as I headed back toward the girls. I hated to drink and run, but as of now, finding Henry Aaron was my extreme top priority. There was no more time to get ready for him.
The sick bastard was absolutely going down.
32
The final lead I had was ridiculously slim, but since Skye’s search was still going to take at least half a day to finish, I decided to follow it anyway. After extending the rental on the Rolls, I dropped Skye off at the Medallion, picked up Marty, Cami, and Felicia, and headed for Duckback, Nevada, the last known address of Henry Aaron.
The tiny town was about a four-hour drive from Vegas, and halfway there we pulled off the highway into a truck stop diner to use the bathrooms and grab a quick bite. I’d brought the new-and-improved suit with me and wore the backpack, just in case anything went wrong. Until this thing with Presley was over, I’d probably keep it with me constantly.
A bell jingled over the door as we went into the place. Though the diner was about the size of a single-wide trailer, it managed to look bigger on the inside. There was a short counter near the entrance where a few truckers sat on stools, nursing coffees and cold sandwiches while an older woman behind it refilled their mugs, and a sign in front of a wooden stand next to the door that said Please wait to be seated! in old-fashioned script. Two long rows of booths ran down the place after the sign.
We hadn’t waited more than a minute when an adorable waitress in a blue and white uniform with pink-streaked black hair in a pixie cut, a name tag that said Heather, and a bubbly smile walked over. “Hey, there. Party of four?” she said, looking at me with wide-eyed and undisguised interest.
“Yep, you got it,” I said. “We’d like a booth, please.”
The waitress laughed. “Well, you’re in luck, because that’s all we’ve got. Right this way.”
She grabbed four napkin-wrapped bundles of silverware and four menus from behind the stand, and then led us to the third booth on the left. As we took seats, I grabbed the outside next to Felicia, with Marty and Cami across from us. Heather deftly passed out menus and silverware, and then stood back with a hand planted on her hip and a smile lingering on her lips.
“I’d tell you the specials, but we don’t have any,” she said. “Can I start you off with something to drink?”
“I’ll take coffee and an ice water,” I said, feeling a little fatigued. The rented Phantom was easily the smoothest, most comfortable car I’d ever driven, well worth the twelve hundred a day rental cost, but I’d already done a lot of driving today and still had quite a bit more to go. “What about you guys?”
“Same here,” Marty said. Cami asked for a Sprite, and Felicia just wanted water.
“All right. I’ll be back with your drinks in a few minutes,” Heather said as she gave me another thinly veiled look of interest before she walked away.
“Gee, Roger, I think she likes you,” Felicia said when the waitress was out of sight, laughing as she rubbed my thigh under the table. “Can’t blame her, really.”
“Well, I am pretty awesome,” I said with a grin as I looked at the menu. “And possibly starving.”
When Heather returned with the drinks, we all ordered burger platters, and we had food in front of us in less than fifteen minutes. It was surprisingly good, especially the fries.
“Okay, so in case I didn’t say it, thanks for coming out here with me,” I said between bites. “I honestly doubt we’re going to find anything useful, but I feel like I have to try, you know?”
“Yeah, I definitely understand why,” Cami said darkly. I’d already filled them in on what I found out about Henry Aaron, what he did to make money, and how he treated women. “We need to find this guy fast.”
Marty nodded in agreement as he popped a fry in his mouth and chased it with a sip of water. “You said no one’s lived in this place since he moved out, right?” he said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find some pictures or something. I mean, we don’t even know what this asshole looks like.”
“Yeah, maybe. But according to Agent Smith, it’s been empty for something like fifteen years,” I said as I swallowed the last of my coffee and set the empty cup at the end of the table. “Whatever’s left probably isn’t going to be pretty.”
The bell over the diner door jingled in the background. I didn’t pay much attention to it, until I heard a frightened scream followed by a struggle, and a man’s voice snarled, “Hold still, sweetheart. You get to keep me company while my buddy here cleans out your register.”
“Oh my God,” Cami whispered, staring past me at the commotion. “Two guys with guns just walked in, and they have our waitress.”
I got the strangest feeling of combined anger and indignation. I was insulted that these bastards would bust in here while I was trying to eat, and furious that they were threatening Heather. No way was I going to sit here and put up with this.
“They won’t have her for long,” I said as I pushed my plate back on the table. “Suit up.”
My suit responded instantly, covering me with the black polymer undershell and then assembling the armor above it. I stood and stepped into the aisle between the booths as the electricity crackled through the suit and fused it together.
“Hey, assholes,” I called. “Didn’t your mothers ever tell you that it’s rude to interrupt people when they’re eating?”
They both looked at me. The one standing behind Heather with an arm over her shoulder and across her throat, and a gun pressed into her side, was tall and thin, with a face like a boot and an expression of sneering disbelief. The other one was shorter, stockier, and headed for the counter with a gun pointed at one of the truckers and a black bag in his other hand.
The tall one laughed. “Who the hell are you supposed to be?”
“Iron Man, RoboCop, take your pick,” I said as I started toward them slowly. “Mostly, I’m the guy who’s going to stop you. So, you can either let the girl go and wait peacefully to get arrested, or you can keep being a dickhead and get your ass kicked, and then get arrested.”
“Are you kidding me with this shit?” The tall gunman glanced at the bagman, and this time both of them laughed. “Yeah, you and your Halloween costume are here to save the day. That’s great news for you, sweetheart, right?” he said as he tightened his grip on Heather, making her gasp.
I took another few steps and held a hand out toward the bagman. “Are you going to let go of her, or not?” I said.
“Gosh, lemme think about that,” the tall hostage taker drawled. “I’m gonna go with shooting your stupid ass, and then I’ll really have some fun with her,” he said as he shoved Heather to the floor and pointed the gun at me. “Bye-bye, hero.”
“Blast,” I said, and gestured at the bagman.
The tall asshole fired at the same time, and as the bullet clanged off my armor with a small shower of sparks, the concussive blast hit the bagman and drove him into the wall behind him, cracking the plaster. The bagman’s head snapped back and smashed hard against the wall, and he groaned and slumped to the floor. White dust and a few pebbles pattered down over his unconscious form.
I pivoted and held a hand out toward the other would-be robber. “Hey, what do you know?” I said. “Best damned Halloween costume I ever bought.” As his eyes widen
ed and he tensed to run, I pumped a concussive blast at him that knocked him out neatly against a wooden cross-beam support in the wall, with a lot less damage to the diner this time.
There was a moment of silence as the second robber slid to the floor, and then the two truckers at the bar counter let out rough cheers. “Fuck, that was awesome. Thanks, man,” one of them said.
“No problem,” I said as I approached Heather and held a hand out to help her off the ground.
She took it and stared up at me as I boosted her to her feet. “Wow, where did you come from?” she said in a shaken voice. “I mean, there’s only one door …”
“From your table back there,” I said, jerking a thumb over my shoulder. “Power down.” At my command, the suit crackled with electricity and pulled itself into a backpack again.
Heather’s eyes bugged out of her head. “Holy shit, it’s you!” she said breathlessly, and threw herself at me. She was kissing me before I could blink, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to stop her. She tasted just as sweet as she looked.
After a minute, Heather stepped back suddenly with a shocked gasp. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she said as she blushed deeply. “You and your friend are here with your girlfriends, and I … I’m sorry. It’s just that you saved my life, and I was really grateful.”
“It’s fine. Really,” I told her with a laugh. “But listen, we’d better get these guys tied up or something, and then call the police,” I said as I moved past her and collected the guns from the unconscious robbers. “Do you have maybe some rope in the back, or anything we could use?” Hopefully they did because the last thing I wanted to do was use pen-created ones and have these guys escape because Presley was being a dick.
“We’ve got zip ties in the maintenance closet,” the older woman behind the counter said. I hadn’t seen her while all this was going down, but then she explained why. “I’ve already called 911, so the cops will be here soon. I’ll get the zip ties,” she added, giving me a nod of approval as she melted into the back of the place again.
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