Jogging to the kitchen counter, he snatched it up.
Vegas. Pay phone.
“Morena?”
“You okay?”
He was genuinely confused. “What?”
“Last time I called you, you sounded hurt. Bad.”
He breathed, felt the scar tissue strain. “I was,” he said. “Not bad.”
“Okay. I thought you might be dead or something. I just wanted to check.”
Evan restrained his urge to press her, trying to imagine how Jack would’ve played this out. He’d always had that knack — when to take up space, when to give it.
Evan walked along the row of sunscreens, patches of muted light rolling across him. “Is that the only reason you called?”
“At first I thought it was his cop friends, you know? Coming after us for revenge. You and me, we’re the only ones who knew anything about what happened to William Chambers, so I knew I had to get away from my sis and my aunt.”
“That was brave. And wise.”
“But these aren’t his cop friends, are they?”
“No,” Evan said. “They’re much worse.”
“They think I know something. I don’t know nothing. My life, it’s over. But Carmen, she can have a good life, maybe.”
“You will, too,” he said.
“I can’t go near you again. If I stick my head up, they’ll get me.”
Evan fought an urge to argue with her. Walking a lap around the great room, he did his best to channel Jack. I will never lie to you. If there was not trust, there would be nothing else.
“Yes,” Evan said. “They will.”
Wet breathing. A hiccup of a sob. “I’m scared. I should be scared, right?”
“Yes. You should.”
“It’s hard living like this. Invisible to the world. Apart from everyone. Like I don’t even exist.”
He thought of Mia in her bedroom, swaying to the Oscar Peterson Trio. “Yes,” he said. “It is.”
She cried some more, muffled gasps. Seventeen years old, targeted by a world-class assassin. Rage rose in Evan’s throat, but he choked it off.
“If you don’t tell me where you are,” he said, “I can’t protect you.”
When Morena spoke again, her voice was heavy with sadness. “I know,” she said.
53
A Backstroke with No Water
Excitement pulsed to life in Slatcher’s spacious chest when he saw Morena Aguilar switch buses. Slowing the Scion, which had been trailing the northbound Downtown Express, he noted that she wasn’t catching a connection but crossing the street to hop onto a southbound bus. Reversing course back to the Strip. A basic diversionary move that would have been advised by Orphan X prior to a meet.
For three days and nights, Morena had remained under Danny Slatcher’s watchful eye. She’d visited her sister once more on the playground and slung chips and guac at a shitty fast-food joint accustomed to paying under the counter. But until now there’d been no break in her routine that indicated that Evan was back in play.
Flipping a U-turn, Slatcher immediately roused his remaining man in the field, who through some cruel parental oversight was actually named Don Julio. “Big Daddy to Tequila One. Pull off the little sister and track my location.”
With a giant thumb, he enabled a phone app that sent his coordinates.
“T-One to BD. Be to you in … seven minutes.”
Even around lunchtime the logjam leading to the Strip rivaled rush-hour L.A. Angling all the air-conditioning vents toward himself, Slatcher patiently hung three vehicles back from the bus, making sure at each stop to account for all the passengers as they got off.
How dull and achromatic Vegas looked by daylight never ceased to surprise him, a collection of odd-shaped buildings smeared in a vague row like a line of dusty Legos that had been crushed underfoot. Sahara Avenue crept by, the Stratosphere looming like an alien antenna from a seventies sci-fi flick. In the rearview Slatcher noted the slate gray SUV swing around behind him.
Again he keyed the radio. “You take point when she moves. She’ll recognize me.”
“Copy.”
The bus came up on Sands Avenue, approaching Treasure Island with its skull-and-crossbones marquee, the pirate ship slumbering in Siren’s Cove waiting for its nightly shows. Another Strip meeting seemed in the making for Evan and Morena — plenty of activity, plenty of witnesses, plenty of cameras. The bus veered east, carving between the Wynn and the Palazzo, hugging the edge of an extravagant golf course. Just before Paradise Road, the bus halted and ejected Morena through the yawning doors, her head lowered. Hands balled in the pockets of her coat, she moved at a rapid clip, shooting nervous glances all around. She passed in front of a giant outdoor parking structure, rising seven stories from the pavement like a concrete corncob, and skipped through the automated doors into the lobby of La Reverie. A purple glow uplit the soffits of the new hotel-casino, reflecting off the shimmering glass and competing with the Nevada glare.
Parking tickets be damned, Slatcher left the Scion at the curb in front of the corncob structure, positioned for a quick post-kill getaway. The SUV drifted past him, and a half block ahead he saw Julio valet at La Reverie, hop out, and slice through the smoked-glass doors. Above Slatcher’s head an open footbridge forged across from the parking structure’s top level, plugging into the side of La Reverie. For an instant he debated taking that route to come at the meet from a different angle, but having no idea where Orphan X was set up, he bolted for the casino lobby instead.
As he spun inside, he noted the elevator doors closing. On cue, a text chimed into his phone.
T1: 8TH FLOOR.
Julio had made it into the car and was riding up beside her.
Slatcher banged through the wide door into the stairwell and lunged up three stairs at a time. Despite his giant frame and extra girth, he was well conditioned, a physiological marvel. Near the fifth floor, a few spindle-legged party girls clomped their way down on improbable stilettos, and he bowled past them, flattening them to the wall. By the time he reached the eighth-floor landing, his breath burned in his chest. He waited behind the door, heard the elevator doors rumble wide. A moment later, through the tempered-glass panel above the lever handle, he watched Morena dart by, less than three feet away. Behind her, Julio ambled, light on his feet, his blend-in biz-casual suit holding the contours of his basic-training body with nary a rumple.
Easing the handle down, Slatcher leaned out of the doorway. Morena kept on with a charged walk, her hands forming fists at her sides, seemingly too focused to check behind her. Though Julio held a relaxed pace, his long legs kept him a few steps off her heels. Slatcher stepped clear of the stairwell and moved swiftly behind them both, using Julio’s breadth to block Morena’s line of sight should she decide to shoot a look over her shoulder. If he and Julio timed this right, they’d stack the doorway all at once, Morena serving as a shield for any return fire.
Midway down the hall, she tapped on a door, then turned the handle and entered. Slipping a hand beneath one impeccable lapel, Julio drew a pistol and accelerated the final two steps to the door. His own pistol now in hand, Slatcher turned on a sprint, closing on Julio, his momentum carrying him into perfect position.
They aligned to crash the room in tight order, a three-car train pulling in to the station at last.
Eight stories up from the balcony window of the gaudily decorated hotel room, Evan had watched the sluggish convoy lurch along Sands Avenue — first the wheezing bus, then the purple Scion, then a dark SUV. He’d tied a length of rappelling rope around the balcony post, letting it dangle above the open-air footbridge one story below. He’d parked his Ford F-150 on the roof of the parking structure across the bridge, backed into the space to allow for speedy egress. From the window he could see the rear of the waiting pickup, its truck vaults gleaming in the bed.