“Russian stuff?”
He eyed her. “More likely the Synth.”
“They’re a logical suspect for a plot to destroy the Cloaked Conjuror who’s been betraying their trade secrets nightly, but why would renegade magicians have a geopolitical motive?”
Max shrugged, then winced at the pain the automatic gesture caused. “For years, Gandolph and I found the role of magician handy for international tours in the service of counterterrorism work. Why wouldn’t the opposition discover the same thing?”
“Magicians are entertainers, not political fanatics.”
“Fooling all the people almost all the time can get to be a power trip. Maybe the profession is uniquely vulnerable to political recruitment. I was.”
“You’d lost a close friend and relative to terrorism. Why did your mentor Gandolph become involved in counterterrorism?”
“He’d become disillusioned with hucksters who used their talents to delude and defraud gullible people, false mediums and the like. When he was approached to use that gift to foil spies and bombers, he was ready for a more meaningful role.”
“Could you go back to it full-time, just being a magician? Just being entertaining?”
“Maybe. I won’t know until I infiltrate the Synth and break it, or vindicate it.”
“Why were you there? Did you have some idea that the cast would be targeted?”
“No. No heroics. I was there on behalf of the Synth. A sort of initiation ritual.”
“Some kind of frat boy stunt? Intrude yourself into the aerial show and upset everything and vanish? No harm done?”
“Right. No harm done. That was not on the menu. Not mine, anyway. Now I’m wondering if they haven’t seen through my deception and if my so-called ‘assignment’ wasn’t an attempt to off me. My ‘entry fee’ for the Synth was stealing the Czar Alexander scepter. They wanted me out on a limb; they wanted to have something on me before they would accept me.”
“A very sick initiation ritual.” Temple resumed her seat, dismayed.
She’d suspected the Synth had become Max’s mission, that the Synth had put their relationship on the back burner. That situation was even less likely to change now and it had impacted her work.
“And you couldn’t argue, of course,” she told him, “when their target turned out to involve my job and my reputation. You’re clever, Max. Couldn’t you have talked them into ripping off some other hotel that hadn’t given me the best PR contract of my life?”
“I’m clever, but they made it clear that it was this or nothing. Of course, I didn’t know then that you’d been hired for this exhibition. When I found out, it was too late to pitch another treasure. It would have looked suspicious, and they already have their suspicions about me.”
“Just asking you to do this pretty much blew your cover. Who else besides you could have engineered that death-defying aerial ballet of thievery, rescue, and tragic death?”
“God!” He drank half the fruit juice glass in one gulp. “I could not hold on to that lightweight woman one more second. Her cat landing on my back, all four feet splayed out, and scratching me to ribbons was the last claw.”
“Everyone could see that you—Zorro, the masked man, the superhero—saved the Cloaked Conjuror and almost saved Shangri-La. And still snagged the scepter. Maybe saved it too. Frankly, I’m toying with spinning it for the press as a Robin Hood sort of feat. The earlier death proved someone was interested in robbing the exhibition and the booby-trapped platforms tonight show that some kind of plot was still live and lethal.”
“The masked man stole the scepter to save it?”
“Something like that.”
“You’re the clever one, Temple.” His expression, bleak until now, softened into a smile. It quickly vanished. “Watching those white robes flutter like a leaf to vanish into the matching marble floor below were the longest moments of my life. I wished—I really, really wished—that I was a real magician, that I could have waved a hand and kept that from happening.”
Temple kept silent. A death not prevented was a life lost forever, for no reason. She tried a different tack.
“Maybe she was always the target of the falling set pieces. Shangri-La did work the shady side. She must have at least been complicit in the kidnapping of me and Louie and the truckload of designer drugs we were spirited away in. Who knows who put her up to that and maybe wanted to punish her for failing?”
“She still didn’t deserve a fatal fall to a cold stone floor. She was no friend to either of us, but at least we know she wasn’t in on this caper or she’d have saved herself.”
“She was working with the Cloaked Conjuror. The Synth would have considered her a traitor.”
Max nodded and sipped again. “Maybe they meant to off all three of us in one blow. I’m still not sure that my ‘test’ wasn’t a way to get rid of me.”
“What’ll they do now?”
“What can they do? Welcome me into their ranks as promised. I did steal the scepter, whatever the cost. From their viewpoint, Shangri-La is no loss and rescuing the Cloaked Conjuror is no feather in my cap to them. . . . I’ll say I needed him out of my way to complete the job of stealing the scepter, so I was ‘forced’ to save him.”
Temple shivered a little at the idea of justifying saving someone. “If it was obvious to me that it was you up there, you know that Molina will be right on that and go after you for this.”
“She’d be going after me for something else anyway.”
“No. I negotiated a deal with her during that Teen Idol charade where I was locked up in a mansion with a TV crew and her daughter and twenty-eight rival unnatural blondes. If I watch-dogged her daughter Mariah, she promised she’d lay off you.” She squirmed, knowing that the deal was off because Molina now suspected Max of being her stalker, but she figured that Max had enough on his plate at the moment. He was surely wary and wily enough to elude the Blue Ice Queen.
Max’s own blue eyes paled in the lamplight as he studied her. “I didn’t hear much about that caper. Sorry I couldn’t be there.”
“It worked out. But Molina can’t ignore that there are very few people at large in Las Vegas who could stage that surprise guest appearance at a floating magic show. This is the second death at the White Russian exhibition. Major Las Vegas mojo will come down on the police to solve them both. You are the prime suspect.”
“Good. I’d hate to give up my crown as the town’s perennial Number One Suspect.”
Max leaned forward, took one of Temple’s hands. “Whatever the Synth is, they’re formidable. Forget you ever heard of them, Temple, as you ought to forget me. I’ve got to get out of sight again.”
“I won’t say anything about you. You know you can count on me. Ducking out of sight for a while is wise. But . . . for how long?”
“Maybe . . . forever.”
“Max! What are you saying—?”
“A woman is dead, Temple, one I never meant to hurt.”
“It was obvious to anyone who saw that you were trying to save her!”
“Or trying to kill her? Both actions resemble each other. Don’t they?”
“You threw a safety net around the Cloaked Conjuror and saved his life.”
“Or a snare that only by chance, or mischance, kept him from falling.”
“You risked your life to catch Shangri-La and would have saved her if her cat hadn’t attacked you.”
“Or I always intended to drop her, and the cat merely got in the way. Besides, how many people saw way up there as clearly as you, my dear defense attorney? I disabled the cameras. There’s no record. I sealed my fate, or my reputation, at least.”
Temple was silent.
“Every eyewitness sees what he or she is bred to expect, or want.”
“What saved the big cats from going out on those booby-trapped platforms?”
Max bit his lip instead of shrugging and swigged more whiskey. He was a fast adapter.