He cleared his throat and sat back in his chair. Lifted his gaze and stared at a point in space over Victoria’s shoulder. She was tempted to look behind her but knew there was only a dingy white wall back there. It was obvious Harry was trying to decide how to respond, and she sat silently, waiting, sipping her coffee.
“I understand how terrifying your life has been since your time in New York. But wouldn’t you like to stop running? You said yourself how much you love Las Vegas and your job at Tequila Mockingbird.”
“Of course I’d love to stop running. I’d like nothing better than to finally put roots down, and this is where I would choose to do it if I could. But that’s just not feasible. If I don’t move, and soon, I’ll be dead or wish I was. You don’t know Joel Stark. He’s tenacious where I’m concerned. God only knows why. But he’ll never give up.”
“What if I told you Joel Stark can’t hurt you any more? What if I gave you my word? You trust me, don’t you?”
“Of course I trust you. I wouldn’t have come back here with you last night if I didn’t trust you, but I don’t think you understand—”
Harry raised his hands. “Let me stop you right there,” he said gently. “Hypothetically speaking, if I could assure you Joel Stark was no longer a threat to you, would you still want to leave Las Vegas?”
Victoria stared at this unusual stranger, the man she had come to trust so completely after such a short time, the man to whom she felt such a strong attraction. “Where did you go last night?” she asked quietly.
“I told you before, I had some business to attend to.”
“In the middle of the night. While the rest of the world was fast asleep.”
“Well, not the entire rest of the world. Vegas never sleeps. You live here, you must have learned that by now.”
“You know what I mean.”
Harry met her gaze steadily. “You never answered my question,” he said, his tone as gentle as ever, his voice as soft as hers.
“Hypothetically speaking, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Of course I’d stay in Vegas. I love it here, but—”
Again he interrupted her. This time his words were accompanied by a smile that took her breath away. “Would you do me one favor? Please?”
“What?”
“Don’t leave yet. Stick around for another day or two before you go. If, after that time, you still feel you’re in danger, by all means hit the road and don’t look back. But in the meantime, keep a close eye on the news. I don’t have a crystal ball or anything, but I get the feeling Mr. Stark’s criminal tendencies may finally have caught up with him.”
“Really? And why is that?”
Harry said nothing. He just waited, his eyes warm and his expression neutral.
Victoria thrummed the table with her fingers. “What did you say you do for work again?”
“I didn’t. Not specifically. And I can’t. But you said before that you trusted me. Has that changed?”
She thought about it.
Harry remained silent, letting her take as much time as she needed. He drank his coffee and watched her with his kind, expressive eyes, leaning back in his chair like he had not a care in the world.
“No,” she said at last. “That hasn’t changed.”
“Good. You’re a sweet girl and you deserve a long, happy life. I think it’s about time you got started on it.”
“But what—”
“How about these cinnamon rolls? Aren’t they the best thing you ever tasted? I’d like to lift that bakery out of Nevada and take it home with me.”
“Where’s home?”
Harry just smiled at her, a tinge of sadness joining the deep well of kindness in his eyes.
34
Victoria Welling paced her tiny apartment endlessly. Harry had driven her to the otherwise empty parking lot at Tequila Mockingbird to pick up her car shortly after breakfast and their bizarre conversation, which was surely the strangest she had ever been a part of.
He then accompanied her back to the Royal Flush complex, assuring her that while she had no longer had any reason to be concerned about Stark, he understood her nervousness and would make sure she was safely locked into her home before leaving for the airport.
At her apartment doorway they had experienced the first—and only—awkwardness of their short relationship. Harry seemed uncomfortable, almost shy, utterly unlike the strong, confident man she had come to know.
“Remember,” he said. “Give it a day or two before you bolt. Will you promise me that?”
“I promise,” she said, already beginning to feel the tension humming through her body like a live wire.
“And turn on the TV and pay close attention to the news.”
“I will.”
Then he had wrapped her in his arms and hugged her tightly, kissing the top of her head although where she really wanted that kiss was on her lips. She had been alone and afraid for so long, though, that she had no idea how to communicate her desire to Harry Carson, so she simply enjoyed the sensation of warmth and safety for those precious few seconds, treasuring it like a miser treasures his cash.
His lips lingered for a few seconds and then he released his hold on her and turned toward the door.
“I’ll never see you again, will I?” she asked his retreating form.
He turned, and when he did, the familiar smile—half-amused and half-sad—was etched onto his face. “You never know what tomorrow will bring.”
He winked. And then he was gone.
***
She wasn’t much of a TV watcher. Her tastes ran toward music and books rather than the surreal hyperactivity of television. But she did as he asked, leaving her small TV tuned to a local Las Vegas station, the volume low but not quite muted.
Time passed slowly, made doubly agonizing by the fact it was her day off at Tequila Mockingbird. Her plan had been to throw her meager belongings into the back of her little Pontiac and stop in at the club to quit while on the way to the interstate, leaving her old life behind—once again—by midafternoon.
Instead she paced.
She drank coffee and then, when she felt her nerves tightening and her body becoming jittery and even tenser than usual, switched to herbal tea.
And paced some more.
The noontime news broadcast provided no insight into why Harry Carson would have insisted she pay close attention to the local news, and as the afternoon dragged on, she began to doubt him. Why had she trusted him in the first place? The conviction in his voice had been plain, but he was gone now, and he wasn’t coming back. The longer she stayed here, trapped like a bird in a cage, the easier it would be for Stark to hunt her down and do the things to her he had devoted his sociopathic life to.
She paced and drank tea and paced some more and, as the afternoon began to turn into evening, decided she needed a shower. She felt hot and sweaty and nervous and wanted to wash off the fear that seemed to be seeping through every pore in her body.
The water was hot and the shower long and refreshing, and Victoria stepped into her threadbare Elton John towel just as the six o’clock news aired. She had turned the volume up on her television and the sound of the anchor’s lead story floated through her closed bathroom door.
The bodies of two men were discovered this afternoon in a North Las Vegas home in what appears, at this hour, to be a home invasion gone wrong. Twenty-nine-year-old Las Vegas resident Blake Arthur Standiford III, rumored to be tied to the notorious Mercadante crime family, died inside his home sometime within the last twenty-four hours, apparently of gunshot wounds inflicted by a small-time New York drifter named Joel Stark.
Also killed in the altercation was Stark, as authorities theorize Standiford fired his own weapon at the intruder even as he lay dying on his kitchen floor. We go live now to correspondent Melissa Flowers, at the scene with breaking details.
A buzzing began to fill Victoria’s ears and she felt dizzy and lightheaded. She slumped onto the closed
toilet seat and the rest of the news report faded into meaningless background noise as she attempted to process what she had just heard.
Joel Stark was dead.
Exactly as Harry Carson had predicted.
Harry’s words from less than eight hours ago came back to her, clear and precise. I get the feeling Mr. Stark’s criminal tendencies may finally have caught up with him.
Dead.
Joel Stark was dead.
The lightheadedness began to pass and the buzzing in her ears faded, and she scarcely knew how to proceed. She would get dressed, of course. That was the first thing to do.
But then what?
Whatever she wanted.
The notion that she could now go anywhere she wished, and do anything she felt like doing once she got there—without fear of being harmed by the man who had haunted her nightmares for a full decade—would take time to sink in. A lot of time, probably. But already Victoria could feel her spirit lightening, with the weight of so much terror lifted for good.
She dressed slowly, puzzling through the mystery of Harry Carson and how he could possibly have known what took place at the home of some mobster she had never heard of in North Las Vegas, when he wasn’t even from around here.
And what kind of businessman goes to work at two a.m.?
No legitimate kind, that was for sure.
But Harry Carson had a good heart; of that she was certain. He had listened patiently as she unburdened herself of her deepest fears. Had promised to protect her and had done so. Had even offered her his bed, not in a sexual way—although Victoria wasn’t entirely certain she would have objected—but in a caring way. Had even predicted she would be free of the specter of Joel Stark, and had then been proven right.
There had to be a connection between the seemingly unrelated events of Harry Carson’s appearance and Joel Stark’s death. Coincidences of that magnitude simply did not happen.
But Harry Carson had a good heart. Of that she was certain.
He had told her she was going to have a future and now she did, however it had happened.
And it felt wonderful.
35
Mike Hogan sat in a bar inside one of the passenger terminals at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, nursing a drink while waiting to board his connecting flight to Boston. The Harry Carson persona was long gone, along with his Harry Carson driver’s license and credit cards, cut up and scattered across trash receptacles throughout the Las Vegas McCarran Airport.
The Organization spared no expense to provide numerous identities to its operatives when they traveled, the theory being it was much harder for the authorities to track three or four different people cross-country than it would be to track one.
Provided the operative proceeded with care.
And Jack Sheridan always proceeded with care.
So now he was Mike Hogan, and he sipped his drink and considered what he had done for Victoria Welling. Strictly speaking, eliminating one man while in town to fulfill a contract on another was against the rules, if professional assassins could be said to have “rules” in the first place. The Organization in general, and Mr. Stanton in particular, would not be happy if they discovered what he had done.
Still, Jack felt no regret. Victoria Welling’s terror had been very real and very obvious, and Jack had no doubt every bit of the horror story she had related regarding Joel Stark was true. And if Stark had tracked her all the way across the country from Brooklyn, he most certainly was not in town to wish her well.
Besides, Jack had been given plenty of latitude in carrying out the contract. The details had been left to him, and Tony Mercadante’s wishes—that Blake Standiford’s elimination appear unrelated to his employment by the Mercadante family—had been served perfectly by the tableau Jack orchestrated in North Las Vegas.
Jack knew there was a very real possibility he had left a blood sample on Stark’s clothing or inside his car. Certainly he had dripped blood on the carpet in Stark’s motel room. But even if true, the samples would lead nowhere. The only way recovered DNA could come back to haunt Jack would be if he was taken into custody in the future.
The only wildcard in the entire operation was Victoria Welling herself. Jack had only known her for a couple of days. There was no telling how she would react once she learned of the death of her tormentor. She would be relieved, certainly, but she would also have a lot of questions, all revolving around the mysterious “Harry Carson,” and the extreme actions he may or may not have taken to protect her.
It was possible she would take her suspicions, or at least her misgivings, to the local police. Jack didn’t think that outcome was likely, but he could not deny it was at least a possibility.
Even if she did so, though, there was nothing to tie Jack to the events inside Blake Standiford’s home. The guns used to kill the two dead men both belonged to Standiford, and Jack had been careful to wear gloves during both trips inside the mobster’s home. Jack was known to Victoria only as Harry Carson, and even in the unlikely event the young pianist did go to the police and they did take her concerns seriously and they did investigate her mysterious protector, their trail would begin and end at the Tumbling Dice Motel on the south side of Vegas.
They would have Jack’s description, of course, but so what? One of the reasons he had been so successful in his career was that he was entirely unremarkable-looking. Not ugly, not by a long shot. But he wasn’t especially handsome, either. He stood average height, was thin but not skinny, muscular but not muscle-bound. He looked exactly like any one of a million American men in their mid-thirties.
And realistically, he doubted Victoria would ever visit the police. Every fiber of his being told him Victoria Welling would puzzle over the question of what Harry Carson might or might not have done, would spend many nights pondering the mystery, but would never take those questions any further.
She had been that fearful of Joel Stark.
Jack Sheridan’s current alter ego Mike Hogan finished his drink and stood. He moved slowly and, he had to admit to himself, a little painfully. There was a reason careers in his chosen field were usually short, aside from the obvious possibilities of death and capture. The job was hazardous and physically demanding, better suited to a man in his early twenties than one in his mid-thirties.
After more than sixteen years spent operating as a military specialist and then as a civilian contractor, Jack was a dinosaur, and right now he felt as though he might just be teetering on the brink of extinction. His back ached, his muscles were sending an uninterrupted stream of complaints through his nervous system to his brain, and the gash on his face throbbed incessantly, covered as it was by only a gauze pad taped awkwardly to his face. Jack had to admit—if only to himself for now—that he was tiring of the professional assassin’s life.
He moved through the terminal to his departure gate, painfully aware of the reactions of strangers, who, without exception, moved aside and averted their eyes as he approached. He wished he could convince himself it was only because of the facial injury, but he knew better. Killing people, even if those people were among the most vicious, dangerous and bloodthirsty on the planet, took a toll on a man’s—or a woman’s—humanity.
And once lost, that humanity could never be recovered.
He thought about Edie Tolliver, working her cute little butt off to make a success of the Three Squares Diner and provide for her adorable seven-year-old. He thought about her obvious attraction to him. He thought about how lonely he had become thanks to his desire not to expose anyone he cared for to the obvious dangers of his chosen career field.
He thought about all of that and moved a little more quickly. It was time to go home.
36
A steady drizzle fell from slate gray skies as Jack’s flight from Atlanta touched down on Runway 4 Right at Boston’s Logan International Airport. May could be a capricious month in New England, with the occasional scorching temperatures straight out of an August afternoon bala
nced off at times by freezing rain more appropriate to Thanksgiving than late spring.
Today’s weather was closer to the latter than the former, and although only a few hours removed from the Nevada desert, Jack felt his time out west already fading into unreality.
The continuous throbbing in his cheek was sufficient reminder of Joel Stark’s reality, though, as well as of Blake Standiford’s and Victoria Welling’s. Jack knew he would be foolish to consider any future contact with the pretty young piano player. He also knew that at some point, years from now, he would ignore common sense and take a quick trip out to Vegas, just to see how she was doing. From afar.
For now, though, he was satisfied. He had done all he could for Victoria. If nothing else, he had offered her a second chance at life, an opportunity she had clearly never expected, although richly deserved.
He wandered through the terminal building, carry-on bag slung over one shoulder, just another weary business traveler making his way home. Though he looked no different than the people surrounding him, he felt no kinship with them.
More than anything else, he felt alone. Utterly and completely alone. It was a sensation that invariably dropped over him like a wet blanket upon completion of a mission and one that was becoming more noticeable—and harder to ignore—as he grew steadily older.
The throng of travelers began to thin as he worked his way toward Central Parking. The air outside the terminal building was cool and brisk, the skies overcast, matching Jack’s mood as the drizzle continued to fall.
He trudged to his truck and tossed his bag onto the empty passenger seat.
Then he sat for a long time, thinking, staring at nothing, before finally firing up the truck and heading for New Hampshire.
37
The Three Squares Diner was a whirlwind of activity as Jack walked through the door. The place always seemed to be busy on weekend mornings and today was no exception. He waited dutifully to be seated—as instructed by a sign just inside the front door—newspaper clutched in one hand, scanning the restaurant for one face in particular.
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