"You have a camera system?" He looked sharply at her, both offended and a little nervous. "When did you have time to install that? And how come I wasn't aware of it?"
"Oh, I didn't install them in the strictest sense." She grinned cheekily. "I…uh, might have kind of tapped into an existing network. You know, to help them to boost their efficiency while only using some of the data for my own personal benefit in exchange. It's a bargain if you ask me."
"What network?" Bobby asked. Taylor already had an inkling of what she meant.
"The city's traffic cameras."
"What?" The mechanic threw his hands up, exasperated, and stared at her. "Why would you do that?"
"I'm a little paranoid about my safety," she explained. "There are people who would still like to get their hands on me so I'd like to know if they come into the city, which would give me some time to bug the hell out."
"I…uh, guess I understand that," Taylor said. "It’s still a dick move to do something like that without telling us. And I’m fairly sure that shit is illegal."
"You would have told Niki," Vickie pointed out reasonably. "I couldn't have that."
"True enough, and would I have been wrong to?" Taylor glanced around for his shirt before he remembered it was torn and bloodstained and he’d need a new one.
"Yes." The woman sat and folded her arms. "I'm a hacker, remember? Anyway, moving away from how I hurt your feelings over not telling you about hacking the cameras, do you want me to make it up to you by tracking the dumbasses who shot your precious car?"
"Truck, dammit. But yes, I would appreciate that. And if you do find them, I'll think about not telling Banks how you kept up with whatever you did that landed you in trouble in the first place."
"Are you blackmailing me?" She tilted her head and regarded him with a challenging expression. "Because that would be interesting."
"I don't like the term blackmail. It has too many foul connotations. Think of it as me being a good leader and finding ways to give my people the right kind of incentive."
"Right. Incentive has a far more positive ring to it.” She grinned. "Let me get my laptop and I'll get right on that shit."
"You know I'm kidding, right?" he said, and she paused at the door and turned to look at him. "I would never sell you out to anyone, not even Banks. You're a part of this team and that means something."
"I know," Vickie said with a small grin before she sprinted up the stairs to her room.
"Are you sure about that?" Bobby whispered as Taylor inspected his bandage. "It might be useful to have something to hold over her if she gives you trouble."
"Okay, there is no doubt in my mind that she'll be all kinds of trouble," he replied as quietly. "But I think it'll be worth it. She will be worth it, I mean. She has a tough exterior, but her center is…gooey and nice—maybe a little too gooey and nice but we'll work that out of her and mold her more to our specifications. In the meantime, I'm reasonably sure threats won’t be the way to keep her on our side. People—or, at least, her type of people, respond far better to positive reinforcement than they do to negative."
"Is that something your drill instructor taught you?" His friend smirked and raised an eyebrow. "Or is it something you came up with on your own?"
"Let’s be honest, our drill instructors were never people," Taylor responded with a grin. "And as long as we're being honest, neither are we, not really. We're merely…caricatures of the people we used to be who use coping mechanisms we developed to keep what we became under the surface. Just…trying to survive what happened to us in that fucking place."
"That is surprisingly deep and philosophical. Annoyingly deep, actually. I don't like you when you're deep. It's depressing and annoying at the same time. I definitely don't like it so make it go away. Say something about how you're here in Vegas to exploit the looseness of the female population."
"I'm here to exploit the looseness of the female population.” He laughed. “Does that make you feel better?"
"A little, but the other stuff still left a bad taste in my mouth. Keep saying despicable things."
"I don't get involved with women. I sleep with them—although not too much sleeping actually goes on—and I'm gone by the morning without any emotional ties."
"Okay, that's better." Bobby relaxed and took a seat. "You had me worried there that you were actually a thinking, feeling person."
"My apologies for that. It was a temporary lapse in judgment."
"What was a temporary lapse in judgment?" Vickie asked as she returned, toting a laptop and what looked like a router, although he wasn't sure why she needed that.
"I was only… Never mind." Taylor shook his head. "What have you been able to find?"
"Nothing so far. I still need to get connected." She placed both devices on the table and booted them up. "Now, let's see if we can find the assholes who damage your c—truck, shall we?" She wiggled her eyebrows, but her smile was malicious.
Chapter Nineteen
Niki Banks didn't enjoy being in Vegas.
The fucking place was either morbidly hot or artificially cooled, and there was no in-between in the entire city, at least until the sun went down. Then everything was too cold for her to handle. People honestly had too much ambition when it came to settling in the most uninhabitable places on the planet.
The other option was that they simply wanted to get as far away from where oversight could catch up with them as possible and settled in the most uninhabitable place possible until they became the oversight themselves. That was, essentially, the circle of life, over and over again. No matter how free people wanted to be, there would always be those who thought order was necessary—and that they, of course, were the ones who needed to be in charge.
Not that it was really a bad thing. There were people who needed to be kept in check.
People like Taylor, she reminded herself, although he was the best of a bad bunch. They needed law enforcement as a motivator to remain regular citizens, while others needed to know that those in charge were there to protect them and make them feel safe.
It was really the only reason that she had a job. She sighed and sprawled on her hotel bed. The FBI didn't like to set their agents up in nice hotels when it wasn’t necessary. Even the apartments and houses they maintained around the country for when people needed a place to hole up for a while were shit-heaps.
Thankfully, she had managed to weasel her way around some of the stricter rules about where she could stay for her time there, supposedly to oversee her operation in the city. Although this particular trip was really only to make sure Vickie was all right.
She really did worry about the kid.
For now, though, she was able to worry in some style where she stayed at the NY-NY Hotel and Casino on the Strip. The rates were surprisingly low, although still higher than what the FBI preferred to approve for hotel stays. Of course, the price was meant to be low since the owners expected people to spend all their extra money in the casino.
Niki knew that there was only one way to beat the house, and that was to not play. She could enjoy the amenities available without additional strain on her spending budget.
If worse came to worst, she would pay for the excess out of her own pocket. It was better to have a decent place in which to spend her time than try to relax in a place that reeked of mildew and possibly dead hookers.
There were other reasons why she would have a hard time relaxing, but it was nice not to have to worry about the damn sheets being clean. She had been over the room a couple of times with a black light, even though she knew from the start that she would probably regret it.
Thankfully, either she was lucky enough to book into the only hotel in the world where they cleaned the rooms with bleach on a regular basis, or she had encountered an exception to the rule. It could be that a party had gone a little too wild and created enough of a mess to force the management to break out the nuclear option and the purple stuff.
Either way, she d
idn't want to think about it too hard. All she really needed to know was that the bathroom was as clean as a whistle. Well, a new whistle, anyway.
She paused when she heard a buzzing in the room.
"Oh. fuck. If someone left a dildo behind, I'm so changing rooms." She hissed her annoyance and looked around, even though she’d already done a thorough search on arrival. At least if she had found someone's sex toy left behind in the room, she could have demanded a complimentary dinner or something. People always offered her things when she showed them her badge.
She grimaced when she located her phone, left on vibrate on the desk in the corner of the room. The number told her that Vickie was trying to get in touch.
"Huh, I actually expected her to call it quits a couple of days ago," she said, shook her head, and answered it. "Vickie, nice to hear from you again."
"Yeah, right," the woman scoffed. "What are you doing up this late anyway?"
"You called me," she said. "How late is late?" She glanced hastily at her watch. "It's only eight in the evening. I don't know what you're complaining about."
"You regular people are generally asleep by now," Vickie said. "I merely assumed you were a regular person who needed to be up in the morning because you really cared about your pointless job."
"My job is important," Niki said defensively. "I'm in federal law enforcement. I save lives."
"It still sounds pointless to me."
"Says the girl who is an intern in a mech shop," she retorted. "How's that going, by the way? How are Oog Oog and Fat Jet Li treating you?"
"I don't even have time to address how offensive that is. I need your help."
"I knew that was coming." She grimaced and tried to quell the rising frustration so she’d be able to think clearly. "I can wrangle a reference from McFadden. Believe me, with a veteran's reference, you could probably get a job anywhere. Well, except most of the casinos. They have a problem hiring people with your particular…legal issues."
"I'm sure they'd rather have me on their side than against them," the other woman retorted. "But no, it’s nothing like that. I need you to help me with something else. I'm sure you're already aware that someone tried to shoot Taylor, right?"
"I—what?" she snapped. "No, I haven't heard that. Who told you that? When did that happen?"
"Earlier this afternoon. Well, I guess that answers the question of whether or not someone called the police."
"No one in that area calls the police. They're all too afraid of the local criminal element—those who are being paid for so-called security in the area. They'll call someone if they personally run into trouble, but it’ll be their protection, not the police. It’s what they pay for, after all. Besides that, if the criminals are the ones who sent the people to do the shooting, they will definitely not do anything about it on the off-chance that someone nervous did actually call them for something that wasn’t a direct personal problem. As far as they're concerned, the people who are shot at are the ones who haven't paid anyway. On that topic, why didn't you guys call the police?"
"We are, technically," Vickie said.
"No, I'm not the police. You will not lay this on me."
"Sorry, but I kind of am," Vickie said and didn’t sound too apologetic. "Anyway, this is me letting you know there was a shooting around here. Oh, and I also kind of need your help to identify the people responsible."
Niki took a second to stare at her phone before she replaced it against her ear. "How the hell am I supposed to identify them?"
"Oh, did I not mention that I have their faces and fake names used at a car rental? Do you ever check your email?"
She rolled her eyes, crossed to her laptop, and opened the email she had been sent. The pictures of the men meant nothing to her, although she could push them into a database or two and have an answer spat back out at her, but that could wait. The car itself meant nothing either since it was a rental, and the names that were used to hire it were, as the woman had said, probably fake.
There was a name attached to the rental, however, that was familiar. Minosse Incorporated. She had run into the name long before when she had worked other cases with the FBI.
"Did you get the email?" Vickie asked.
"Yeah," she said. "Are you sure all of this is correct? Especially this name, Minosse Incorporated?"
"Yeah, I'm sure. I remember it being a weird name for a company until I dug a little deeper and found it was a shell corporation. Why do you ask?"
"Because I've seen it before," she explained. "La Cosa Nostra likes to hide their money in a number of seemingly legit shell corporations. They like to use Greek and Roman mythology for the names. Minosse is the Italian name for King Minos, and I've seen it tied to the mob before. They would have a fit if anyone else used that kind of naming process, so… Well, I can't be a hundred percent sure it's them until I do more research, but I do think it is."
"Why would the mob want to attack Taylor and Bobby?"
"Oh, well, countless reasons…uh, could apply." She decided to leave it there. "But I won't make any more conjectures until I know for sure. Tell them to be on alert out there."
"They're very alert already around here."
"Well, I guess that's all they really can do," Niki said. "I'll work on this. In the meantime, how are you doing, Vickie? Are you settling in?"
"Aside from someone taking shots at my boss?"
"Obviously."
"Well, it's not what I thought it would be," the woman said. "It’s harder work than I expected, but that’s not really a terrible thing. Taylor and Bobby are cool to work with. You know, tough but fair. They have their own style of doing things that's not very orthodox, and… Well, you know me, I'm all about the unorthodox."
"So, you're having a good time?"
"Sure. Like I said, they are tough but fair. They appreciate the work I've done too. I think I'd like to spend more time here with them. Maybe get a place of my own too, but…you know, baby steps."
"I'm happy to hear that. But please, make sure I don't get any calls from someone to tell me you've been picked up while breaking in somewhere you're not meant to be. If that happens again, even I won't be able to keep you from being shipped off to the Zoo. Only the straight and narrow from now on, got it, cuz?"
"Yeah," Vickie said. "Will you call me when you find anything?"
"I'll call Taylor when I find something," Niki corrected her. "You'll focus on your work, understood?"
"Yeah, fine. But I'll talk to you later, right?"
"Yeah, I'll call you later to see how things are going," Niki replied. "Now get to bed."
"Fucking—watch it!" Jon snapped.
"You fucking stay still," Mike remonstrated roughly. "I won’t be able to patch you up with you flinching like a little girl every time I touch you." The wounded man rolled his eyes and looked around the basement they had commandeered as a haven in which to lick their wounds.
Quite literally in Jon's case, and his frustration was exacerbated by his pain.
"We spent a week staking that place out," he said. "A whole fucking week spent watching, casing it, and trying to learn how that fucking security system worked, and the one time I head out to get coffee, the guy notices us. How the hell did he notice us?"
"You have to calm down," his partner said curtly. "We knew upfront that this guy isn’t your ordinary average Joe. He was a fucking Marine, for fuck’s sake, and had set something of a record with his Zoo trips. That aside, we were careless. It's not like we even tried to be inconspicuous.” He patted the wound with a swab soaked with antiseptic liquid and scowled when his patient yelped. “Do you really think he made us?"
"Do you think I would have opened fire if I didn't think so?" Jon pointed out belligerently. "He looked directly at us, and I could see it by the way he stopped the vehicle so abruptly. And I knew he’d have a gun in the truck so what the fuck was I supposed to do?"
"Walk away? Look casual, get in the car, drive away, and come back in a different veh
icle."
"And he would have been looking for us," he argued and shook his head vehemently. "He knew we weren’t two guys who stopped in a random part of town for coffee and would have known if we came back, even if we used another car. I was… Well, it was an opportunity. Yes, it wasn’t plan A and we were caught on the back foot but he was out in the open. If we could get to him there would be no need to find a way through that damn security system."
"And how did that work out for you?" Mike asked and readied a new swab for another attempt.
"Don't sass me," he responded sharply. "I made a decision and it was the right decision under the circumstances, even if it didn't work out in the end. It wouldn’t be the first time we had to think on our feet and change tactics when something unexpected turned our plans inside out. This was bad but could be fixed, and that’s exactly what I tried to do—turn it into an opportunity that worked for us. Either way, it didn't work so we now need to find another way to into that fortress disguised as a strip mall."
"How?" Mike countered. "He won’t come out, not in any way that we'll be able to get to him. The big guy will be with him all the time to make sure he stays alive, and now they have the bald girl with them too."
"Other guys tried getting to him and failed, but he was alone then. The bald girl and the Jet Li-looking motherfucker are clearly close to McFadden and are therefore the perfect way to get into his little fortress and take control. They're leverage, you see. We can use them."
"The chances are that it'll merely piss him off more." The man didn’t look at him and focused on applying the bandage.
"Sure, he can get pissed off all he wants," Jon replied. "But if he's missing his kneecaps and maybe a couple of his fingers are broken too, he'll still get the message that you don't fuck around with Marino. Pissed or not, that's what we're being paid to do and I'm sorry, but I don't think I can stand being stuck in a car with you for any longer. We’re operatives, not fucking PIs. Stake-outs are not our territory."
"No, no, I get that. I don't think I would be able to be stuck in there either. So what are your plans to get our leverage over McFadden?"
Silent Death (Cryptid Assassin Book 2) Page 15
