Chapter Twelve

To say I wasn't ready for that one is like saying that the Japanese gave us a playful tap on the shoulder at Pearl Harbor in 1941. That is, it's a dangerously stupid understatement.

I'd never seen Quentin fazed by much, not even the two bullets that had most likely cracked his sternum and pulverized a couple of ribs. But after Laura told us what was in the trunk, dude turned all sorts of pale and sat down on the curb next to the BMW.

"Yeah. I really, really need to lie down now," he said after a moment.

It was a moment during which no one had said a word, and I hadn't really even noticed the silence. That's probably because my brain was too busy running a mile a minute, filling my head with questions, alarms, panic, fear -- all of it jumbled up into a nice, incomprehensible mess. I couldn't pick out a single thought in the turmoil, so I just decided to shut Mister Brain down for a while. Not like he was helping me out a hell of a lot anyway.

"Right. Laura, help me get Quentin up to his room."

"About the --"

"We'll talk about that when we get there. The Umbra guys don't know where we are."

"The car might have LoJack," Quentin said.

Damn. Hadn't thought of that.

"Anything we can do about that?"

"Yeah. I have some stuff up in the room."

So we headed into the casino, me trying to support Quentin without looking like I was holding him up. We looked like hell anyway, all three of us, and I really didn't want to draw any attention I didn't need to. Of course, this was Vegas, so I doubt we would have drawn any extra attention if we'd been running through the gaming floor naked and on fire.

When we were safely in the elevator, I leaned Quentin up against the wall and turned on Laura almost instantly.

"Start talking," I said.

I tried not to sound angry, but it didn't really work. My dad taught me never to raise my voice in anger at a lady, but hey, these were the most extenuating of circumstances. You try sounding all cool and polite when you've just been told you're carting around a nuclear bomb.

"When we get to the room and I can check it for bugs," she said.

"No. Now," I snapped.

"She's right, big guy. Just calm down a second," Quentin said, coughing. "My room is clear of bugs. I always check when I leave the house."

I felt pretty damned silly all of a sudden. If a paranoid, gun-nut, crackpot like Quentin was telling me to calm down, then maybe all of my anger was out of place. After all, she'd said *most* of a nuclear weapon, right? I mean, maybe the thing was safe. Maybe.

"Fine," I grumbled, sticking my hands in my pockets and intentionally not looking at either of my two companions. That made me feel even sillier -- I was throwing a temper tantrum, I realized. Just like when I was six goddamn years old and my dad wouldn't let me hold the shotgun from his police cruiser.

We got to Quentin's room a few minutes later, and he grabbed a suitcase from the floor and, with my help, threw it up on the bed. He rummaged around inside for a moment and produced a small box with wires snaking all over it.

"Here," he told me. "Go put this in the BMW and turn it on. Anywhere should do. It'll jam the LoJack if the thing has one."

I wanted to stay and argue, to tell him I was promised answers as soon as we got to the room, but I knew he was right. We had to get the BMW off the grid as soon as possible. Even if the bomb wasn't complete, we still didn't want Meskhiyev and his pals coming after it.

"You'll make sure she doesn't leave?"

Quentin propped himself up on the bed and patted his shotgun.

"She won't have knees if she tries."

I nodded -- that was a good enough answer for me -- and headed back to the parking garage. On the way, I might have stopped for a beer. Hey, fuck it. After the night I'd had, I'd earned a drink, and it's not like there's anywhere in Vegas you can't drink. I was at the bar maybe a minute, minute and a half, but maybe if I'd stopped after... well...

The BMW was gone when I got there. I looked around, thinking maybe I'd gone to the wrong space, but no. The space I'd parked in was empty, and the same two cars -- a Ford F-150 and a Pontiac Grand Am -- were still on either side. I guess the BMW really did have a LoJack or something similar, and the Umbra guys were on top of it as soon as Meskhiyev or his buddy called it in.

I was immediately back on my guard, figuring there would be Umbra guys in the hotel looking for Laura Mills, probably for me and Quentin as well. I was thankful for his paranoia then, as he'd checked in under an assumed name, so the hotel wouldn't have any record that he was checked in, assuming the Umbra people knew who he really was in the first place. I was in alarm mode all the way back up to the room, taking random left turns and doubling back, trying to catch any evidence that someone was following me, that I'd been spotted. Either I wasn't being tailed or my stalker was really good, because I didn't see anyone. Still, it took me a good half an hour to circle my way back to the room.

The scene inside was much as I'd left it -- no Umbra guys had come in and started shooting while I was gone. Quentin was still on the bed, still with one hand on his shotgun. Laura had taken a chair across from the bed, and I could tell by the looks on their faces that I'd walked into the middle of a conversation in progress.

"BMW's gone," I said, sighing and dropping onto the couch. Quentin -- or Ken Adams, I suppose -- had a nice suite.

"Wow. These cats are good," Quentin said, nodding appreciatively.

"I know where they'll take the car," Laura told me.

"Yeah, I have a pretty good idea, too." I was thinking the office park out in the ghetto.

"Good. Then we have to go get it back."

I shook my head and started to say something, but Quentin cut me off.

"I think you're going to want to listen to the lady, big guy. She has quite a story."

* * *

And this is when I truly learned the shit we we'd gotten ourselves into.

Laura Mills went to work for Umbra Dynamics straight out of college in 1992. She'd gotten her masters in some area of physics I couldn't even pronounce, then been recruited right out of the gate. Her job was to help Umbra's software people accurately model nuclear blasts in a software package. Simple enough, and all above-board at this point. I could even see why they wanted that information, kinda. It's a little tough to wrap my head around.

So anyway, she goes on working for Umbra for five years without anything too odd going down. On the surface, they seem to be perfectly legitimate, working on contracts from the military and the Department of Justice. Software stuff, mostly, but she knows they do some hardware too -- better armor systems for Humvees, research into new air-to-air missile systems. None of that's done out of her office in Santa Monica, though. That's done at the company's testing facilities in the Nevada desert, and since she works on math and software, she never needs to go out there.

So, imagine her surprise in late 1997 when she gets an email telling her she's supposed to go out to the Nevada test site in a week to consult on some top-secret project that the company is putting together out there. She checked it out with her supervisor -- all legit, he said. They needed her specific knowledge, so plane tickets were booked, hotels called, cars rented. She got on a plane for Nevada just after Thanksgiving last year.

This is when it gets fucked up.

As soon as Laura got off the plane in Las Vegas, she was met by two men in black suits -- Umbra Security. There were a few Security guys here and there at the Santa Monica office, but Laura quickly noticed that the security presence at the Nevada facility was insane. She saw more security than scientists or engineers, but that was by design.

The two security guys led her to a windowless van and drove her to what she now knew was a not-so-abandoned office park in a terrible area of the city. She didn't really know how to get there, thanks to the lack of windows in the van, but when she got there, she was led through an empty, narrow hallway to a large, sparse office in a seemingly disused part of the building.

A man named George Nichols was in the office -- he wasn't a scientist or an engineer, either, Laura explained. He was basically an HR guy. He told her that she wouldn't be meeting anyone who was working on the project, or told any details of the project that weren't absolutely vital to her task, citing the top secret nature of the project. When Laura objected that she *had* the highest level of government clearance -- it was required for her regular day job -- Nichols simply replied that this project was classified above that.

Her task, initially, was to study ten major cities -- eight in America, two in the Russian Federation. She was to calculate the effects of a 1.8-kiloton nuclear blast set off at various locations around these cities -- Los Angeles, New York, Denver, Dallas, Chicago, Miami, San Diego, Kansas City, Moscow, and Vladivostok. She was never given a reason why she was doing these calculations, but she went ahead and did them.

Now, at this point, she had to explain something to me, because saying "a 1.8-kiloton nuclear blast" doesn't really mean anything as far as I know.

"All right. You know how big the average nuclear bomb is?" she asked.

"No. Can't say I do."

"It's between 20 and 30 megatons. That's way more powerful than 1.8 kilotons. Ten to twenty thousand times more. The thing is, those things are meant as a deterrent."

"Right. Scary doomsday bombs, never meant to be used."

"Exactly. But a 1.8-kiloton device? You don't build one of those unless you damn well plan to use it."

"But why?" I asked.

"I'm not 100% on that... but I have a theory."

Laura went on to tell us that, for the first month or so she was at the Nevada Facility, Meskhiyev had been assigned as her personal guard. He'd been the one to pick her up from the Tropicana for work in the morning, the one who dropped her at her suite door at night. Then, suddenly, Meskhiyev had been replaced by Brendan White, the ex-Marine Scout Sniper. He was Meskhiyev's right-hand man. She'd assumed it was just for a couple of days, but it ended up being quite a bit longer than that.

After Meskhiyev had been gone for three weeks or so, she and Brendan had gone for drinks after work. The ex-Marine liked to slam down the sauce, and after he'd had a few too many, Laura finally asked where the Russian had gone.

"Oh, he's on a nice, paid sailing vacation across the Pacific," Brendan had said, smirking and slurring his words. "He's got contacts where the bosses need 'em. Making a parts run."

That stopped Laura cold. Up until that point, she'd convinced herself she was data-modeling for a government contract -- predicting damage in case of, say, a terrorist device smuggled into one of the major cities. But now, another idea was creeping into her brain -- that Umbra was actually building its own nuclear device, off the reservation and without the sanction of the U.S. Government.

"Why would Meshkiyev making a trip back to Russia, I'm assuming, make you suspicious all of a sudden?" I asked.

"I asked the same thing," Quentin said, propping himself up on the bed.

"It has to do with the way a nuclear strike, a terrorist one, would be investigated," Laura said, speaking slowly as if to an elementary-school class. "You can't just stick any old fissionable material in the bomb. They're able to trace the plutonium back to where it was mined."

"So he needed to get Russian plutonium?" I asked.

"That's my guess. When the USSR broke up, a bunch of nuclear material went unaccounted for. If someone were to set off a bomb using that material, it would read as being mined somewhere in the former Soviet Union."

Something clicked in my mind then -- the blueprints I'd seen in Laura's hotel room at Caesar's. The writing on them had been foreign, but not Russian. At least, not to my untrained eyes, anyway. I mentioned it.

"You're correct. It was Chinese, and when I found that, suddenly the whole thing got even worse," she said.

"Why does a Chinese blueprint thingy make it worse?" Quentin asked.

"Because -- and remember, this is just theory here -- it means they plan to detonate their device in one of those cities and blame it on China."

That didn't make any sense to me. I mean, neither did an American defense contractor detonating a nuclear bomb in an American or Russian city, but assuming that made sense, why blame China for it? What had China ever done to us?

"Nothing, yet," Laura explained. "But their economy is growing at a massive rate. They could take over as the dominant world power in the next ten years. Unless, of course, they fight a costly war with the biggest, baddest military on the planet before that happens. And remember, Umbra's a defense contractor -- they'd make out like mad in a war."

I went to the bathroom and poured myself a glass of water. This was all crazy, and the whole Chinese conspiracy plot wasn't helping even a little. Still, there was a guy in a BMW out there with a nuclear bomb. It was time to call the police and let them know about Umbra's little hideout in the ghetto.

"I wouldn't recommend that," Laura said when I grabbed the phone.

"Oh, right. A scientist, a banged-up hacker, and a bounty hunter should go out there and get back a nuclear bomb instead," I scoffed.

"Umbra won't let the cops get within a hundred yards of that place. If they have to..."

She let the silence hang there in the room for a minute, but I shared a look with Quentin. Her meaning was clear to both of us.

They'll detonate the nuke.

Chapter Eleven

The Town Car was moving at a pretty decent clip, so I knew we didn't have long to make our move before they made it to the office complex. I'd have to do something soon, and I was pretty sure I knew what would work.

If you've ever caught *COPS*, you're probably familiar with the Pursuit Immobilization Technique, or PIT maneuver. Basically, the car in pursuit -- my borrowed BMW, in this case -- accelerates, aligning its front wheels with the other car's rear wheels. Then there's a nice, hard swerve into the other car, causing it to spin out and stop. It has the dual purpose of working really well and looking pretty fucking cool. The latter reason is why I learned it in stunt driving school.

Of course, a pro driver who knows the PIT is coming can steer out of it, J-Turn around and get the hell out of there. I didn't know what kind of driving they taught in the KGB, but I had another trick up my sleeve in case Meskhiyev knew how to recover. I turned to Quentin and told him to hold on.

We were on a nice, straight stretch of road with only a couple of other cars around when I jammed on the gas and brought the front passenger tire of the BMW in contact with the Town Car's rear driver tire. I jerked the wheel the right, and suddenly, the Town Car was skidding sideways in front of me. The Town Car immediately skidded out and slammed into a bus shelter, and Quentin and I were out of the BMW seconds later.

He had the shotgun up and ready, and I had my Sig drawn and aimed at the Town Car's driver door. It was right when the passenger door opened that I realized I hadn't told Quentin we weren't planning on shooting anyone -- I hoped he could figure that out for himself, but let's be honest. Guy was walking around with an illegal sawed-off in his jacket. Probably not the best argument for prudence right there.

I wasn't two steps out of the car before the driver's window of the Town Car shattered. I heard a gunshot, and Quentin went down immediately.

You know, I've been in probably 20 real gunfights, and about a hundred times that many in the movies (thanks to multiple takes), and what Meskhiyev had just done never occurred to me. He'd fired through the closed window, not even bothering to waste the second it would have taken to open the door. It was a desperation move, a survival move, and it had worked -- it thinned out his hunters and gave him and his boy the advantage.

I had my own survival reflex, and it was to get to ground fast. I dove back behind the BMW and scrambled as quickly as I could to the rear tire. I heard another shot -- this one from a much bigger gun, or much closer, before Meskhiyev started screaming in Russian.

"What?" the other guy yelled, his voice way too loud. I realized he'd proably been deafened when Meskhiyev fired from inside the closed car.

"The package! That's my car, shithead!"

"Fuck!"

I didn't know what they were talking about, and right then, it didn't matter. It gave me a couple of seconds, and I used them. I flattened myself onto the pavement, took a quick glance, and fired my Sig as fast as I could. Meskhiyev's partner yelped and hit the ground -- I couldn't tell for sure where I'd hit him, but I was aiming for his shins, shooting under the car's undercarriage.

"Mister Harris!" Meskhiyev yelled. I could hear him scramble for cover behind his own vehicle.

"Alexsandr Meskhiyev!" I yelled back. I wanted him to know that I knew who he was.

"It seems the odds are now even, Mister Harris! Perhaps we can discuss this matter like civilized adults!"

The air was still and quiet around us. I'd like to say I was thinking over what he'd just said, but truth to be told, I was just trying to get my brain to form a thought. A word. Anything. I might be a better driver than this guy, but he had me outclassed as a shooter any day, and I was fucking terrified.

"So what's your answer, Mister Harris?" Meskhiyev finally yelled, breaking the silence.

"Here's my answer," I heard someone say. The next thing I heard was a loud, sickening crack.

After a few seconds of complete silence, I poked my head over the BMW's trunk. I could see Quentin standing there, leaning against the hood of the town car, his shotgun in one hand.

"Come on out," he said quietly, coughing.

"Did you kill him?" I asked.

"Nah. Just cracked him in the skull with Mr. Sawed-Off, here," Quentin said, grinning weakly.

"You all right?"

Quentin held open his jacket with one hand, revealing his torso. His shirt was torn aside, and underneath, I could see he was wearing a Kevlar vest. Two bullets were embedded, one right next to the other, just to the left of his sternum.

"Hey, I know I don't know shit about gunfights. Figured wearing protection was job one," he said.

"Probably busted up your sternum and ribs pretty good," I told him, walking slowly over to the motionless town car.

Neither Meskhiyev or his partner were moving. The other guy -- the one I'd shot in the legs -- was unconscious, probably passed out from the pain. Meshkiyev was crumpled in a heap near the Town Car's front passenger tire.

"Laura? You in there?" I asked through the Town Car's open driver door.

"Yeah. You guys gonna shoot at me?" she asked.

"No. Promise. Come on out."

The back door opened, and Laura slowly stepped out. She looked a bit tired, but that's not much of a stretch when a person had been on the run for a couple of days. She still looked miles better than anyone I'd brought in before.

"Who are you guys?"

"I'm Jake. That's Quentin," I said, nodding over to Quentin, who grunted and pushed himself off the hood of the car. "We're... well, I guess here to take you to jail."

"You're cops?"

"No, not by a long shot. Bounty hunter."

"Great. Wait a second -- is that Meskhiyev's car you're driving?"

"Yeah. I'm just going to ditch it when we get back into a safe neighborhood... which we should really think about doing before these assholes wake up," I said, motioning to the BMW.

"No can do. You have to hang onto this car, and the two of you have to get me as far away from a major city as you can."

I wasn't accustomed to a target telling me what to do, and I guess it showed on my face. Laura Mills glared at me, staring me down like I was a dog who refused to sit.

"Look, Laura. I'm taking you to jail. I don't want to have to put cuffs on you and drag you there, but after what I've been through in the last couple of days, you can damn well believe I will."

"You can't. Look, we can talk about this in the car. Can we just get the hell out of here already?"

I had to admit, that was the best plan at the moment. I helped Quentin into the passenger seat as Laura got in the BMW's back seat. A few seconds later, we were rolling.

As I started to pull away from the wrecked Town Car, Quentin put his hand on my shoulder.

"Stop the car a second," he said, wheezing.

I pressed the brake pedal and looked over at him.

"You don't sound good, Q."

He waved his hand dismissively and rolled down the passenger window.

"Town Car's still driveable," he explained, pushing his shotgun out the window and firing twice. I saw slugs tear into the Town Car's hood, and heard the engine immediately sputter and die.

"All right. Let's roll. I need to lay down," Quentin said, leaning his head back against the headrest and closing his eyes.

"I have a room back at Ceasar's," Laura piped up.

"Had," I corrected her. "Meskhiyev knows where it is. Probably cleaned it out and has five guys on it."

"How the hell would he know about it?"

"Probably the same way I did. Tracked your credit card."

"Monte Carlo," Quentin said with a cough. "They don't know who I am, and I checked in under an alias anyway."

"Right," I said, nodding and heading back towards the bright lights of the Strip, visible from even out here in the ghetto.

A few minutes passed in silence. When we hit a stop light on Las Vegas Boulevard between Old Town and the Stratosphere, I turned around to look at Laura.

"So, you've got something to say? Something about why I shouldn't just haul you back to Los Angeles County Lockup and get my well-deserved paycheck?"

"You ever wonder why my bail was so high?"

"Excuse my bluntness, lady, but I didn't really give a shit."

"Come on, Jake. You don't strike me as an idiot, and you're obviously good at your job. Half a million for failure to appear? And you didn't even wonder?"

I didn't want to admit it, but she had a point. I had wondered.

"So?"

"So, the charges were inserted into the system. I went to ground, and they needed to find me. Their corporate security wasn't having much luck, so they enlisted the help of the LAPD and Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. Without their knowledge, of couse."

"Come on. Umbra doesn't have that kind of pull," I said, shaking my head.

"Yeah. Yeah, they do," Quentin muttered from the passenger seat.

"Why did they need you? You work for them," I asked as we got moving again.

"Worked. I quit when I found out what they were doing."

"They're a defense contractor, right?" I asked. "You have a problem with working for the military, or what?"

"No. That's not it. Their defense work is only part of what they do. And on the books, it's a big part, but really, it's not even the tip of the iceberg."

Traffic on the Strip was lighter now, and we made it to the Monte Carlo in just a couple of minutes. I helped Quentin out of the car, keeping an eye on Laura in case she felt like bolting. She didn't, though. She just got out of the back seat and leaned against the car, looking at me.

"Yeah?" I said.

"Keys," she demanded.

"Right. I'm just going to let you take the car and vanish again."

"I'm not running," she said.

"Uh huh."

"Do me a favor. Open the trunk."

I looked at Quentin, who just shrugged. So I opened the BMW's trunk, and Quentin hobbled over to see what was inside. Laura moved a black blanket aside and revealed a spiderwebbed mess of wires and metal. I looked at the... whatever it was... for a few seconds, trying to figure out what it was. Nothing looked familiar -- it just looked like some cheap electronics thrown onto a metal frame.

"So... what am I looking at, exactly?"

"That would be a nearly complete, homemade nuclear bomb," Laura said, closing the trunk.

Chapter Ten

There was no debate, no internal monologue this time. I was following them, and I was taking Laura Mills back to Los Angeles. Too much had happened in the past few days for me to do anything but.

There were only two guys with her, and I was sure they weren't cops. The Town Car had private plates, not Federal or State ones. I also noticed as I passed the car that there was no extra radio gear, no lights, no lowered suspension -- definitely not a law enforcement vehicle. The guys were Umbra Security, which meant... open season. Sure, they outnumbered me, but they were smaller, and I had the element of surprise.

As I tailed them through the gaming floor, I decided on my plan of attack. They looked like they were heading for the elevators, so once they got somewhere out of the way, that was when I'd crack some skulls and grab the girl. Two-on-one were about the best odds I could hope for.

I stayed about fifty feet back from them, keeping myself behind slot machines and late-night gamblers as I walked. Both of Laura Mills' escorts were scouting for tails, but they weren't doing a bang-up job -- a quick glance back over a shoulder here and there. I was, of course, concerned that there might be more guys hiding on the gaming floor, ready to pounce on me the second I made my move, but I was ready for that.

It's one of the things I learned as a stuntman -- situational awareness. Things didn't go wrong often in a big, coreographed stunt, but there was always the possibility. As a stunt performer, you learn to be aware of movement from any direction, almost like a sixth sense. If, say, a piece of burning metal was headed for the back of your head, you learned to duck without really thinking, or even consciously knowing the flaming chunk of death was trying to decapitate you. That was the state I was in now.

The two guys and Laura made it to one of the back hallways, a small elevator lounge that would take them up into the hotel. It was just far enough removed from the gaming floor that I could take them down there. As I got closer, however, I heard one of them mumbling into his sleeve, one hand over his ear.

"Copy that. We're in the lobby."

As he pulled his hand away from his ear, I saw one of those little Secret-Service radio earbuds. I ducked behind a rather large man at a slot machine near the elevator lobby and chanced a look out -- the elevator doors were opening, and inside were four more guys in black suits. One of them was Meskhiyev.

Shit. Two-to-one odds, I could handle. Six-to-one... well, there was bravery, and there was stupidity. Six-to-one definitely fell into the latter category. As the two guys from the car ushered Laura Mills into the elevator, I popped out from behind the obese gambler and watched the numbers on the elevator car. The elevator stopped on the 30th floor, and I immediately pressed the call button.

It only took about a minute for another elevator to show up, and I hopped in and pressed the button for the 30th floor. I was well aware I'd pretty much lost them already -- they'd be inside one of the rooms up there -- but maybe I'd get lucky and see a guy in a black suit going into or coming out of one. They weren't being too subtle, but it was Vegas. They probably just assumed no one was paying attention to their shit, and with the exception of me, they were probably right.

In the elevator lounge on the 30th floor, I was greeted by long, featureless hallways to the left and the right. A drunken 20-year-old guy ambled past, trying unsuccessfully to light a cigarette and walk at the same time. He smiled at me and shot me a thumbs-up, then leaned up against the wall next to the elevators. Slowly, he sunk down to the floor until he was sitting with his legs crossed, then finally managed to light his smoke.

"Hey, my man," I said, squatting down until I was in his eyeline. "You see a bunch of dudes in black suits hanging around up here?"

The drunk kid nodded, his eyes half-lidded, and pointed down the hallway to the right with his now-lit Marlboro. I nodded, grinned at him, and headed down the hall to the right. I kept to one side of the hallway, trying to make myself as small as possible, though that was pointless. Nowhere to hide out in the open, of course. But somehow, sneaking through an open, well-lit hallway made me feel better. Stealthier.

The Umbra guys made it easy for me to find them, but that's probably because they assumed no one was looking for them. Around the first corner, I noticed a guy in a black suit pacing up and down the hall. He was making a wide orbit, but right around room 3022, he slowed a bit each time. That was where they were, and they only had one guy on the door. One guy shouldn't be too hard to avoid. I had an idea, but I wouldn't be able to do it on my own.

See, here's the thing. The best bet would be to take this guy out and hang outside the room until they came out. But I knew I was facing five guys alone -- even if I caught them by surprise, I'd probably end up getting myself and the girl shot. I could hang back by the corner and watch, but if they took another elevator down... well, it would be really easy to lose them.

So second best would be to sit on their black Town Car downstairs, which I'm sure someone had parked by now. But it was entirely possible that wherever they were going to go when they did come out... well, they could easily walk. Vegas is the sort of town where you can get pretty much anywhere -- well, anywhere worth going -- on foot, especially at night when the heat had blown off a bit. So keeping an eye on the car might just let them walk right out the front door.

I'd need someone downstairs, someone who could pick up the tail after I lost it. And there was only one person in town who could get my back. It wasn't quite 2:00 yet, but I decided to check anyway. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed.

"Monte Carlo Hotel and Casino," a woman's voice answered.

"Hi. Ken Adams, please."

* * *

Quentin met me on the 30th floor in a matter of minutes. He had changed clothes -- we was now wearing a long coat and brown cargo pants. He had a pair of yellow-lensed sunglasses on, despite the fact that it was almost two in the morning.

"Hey. What's up?" he whispered, creeping up next to me at the corner of the hall.

"Found the girl."

"Man, you're good."

"No, I'm lucky. She's in 3022 under guard. I'm going to hopefully snatch her when they move her."

"What do you need from me?"

"Hang out downstairs near the elevators. If I call you, they're coming down. Guys in black suits with a good-looking woman my age. Keep on them until I can catch up."

"I can do that. Hey, got something for you," Quentin said, digging into the hip pocket of his cargo pants and pulling out a wad of bills.

"What's this?"

"It's your initial $25 investment, turned into $2500, minus ten percent. That's my fee," he said, grinning.

"How did you --"

"I'm a genius, remember? I'll be downstairs. You let me know when it's game time."

As Quentin headed back down the hall toward the elevators, I turned my attention back to room 3022. It was very quiet in the hall, and apart from the guard, no one was moving much. If he decided to round the corner, I was pretty fucked, but he hadn't in the last half-hour.

By the time something happened, most of the blood had drained out of my legs from crouching so long. Fortunately, none of the people coming up or down my side of the hall had been surprised to see me creeping around, any more than they were surprised by the frat boy sleeping next to the elevator lobby. I guess, after a certain hour, nothing really seems odd in Vegas. I checked my watch when the activity started: 3:27 a.m.

The guard left the hall first, heading into 3022. I pulled out my cell and dialed Quentin's number, and he picked up on the second ring.

"Movement. Guard just got recalled," I told him.

"Right. I'm near the front elevator lobby, but there's a back one, too. I can get there in under a minute."

"Hold on. They're coming out now," I whispered.

The door to 3022 opened, and Meskhiyev came out first, followed by another guy in a black suit. This one was huge -- I couldn't tell for sure, but he might have been bigger than me. They headed down the hall away from me. They must have been going for the back elevators.

"Back elevators. The girl and two guards, including the Russian guy. I'm coming down in the front elevators. Stay on the line."

"Got it."

I sprinted back down the hall, past the sleeping frat boy and into the elevator lobby. The door was just closing as I got there, but I shoved my arm in and stopped it. No one was inside, and I pounded the button for the first floor.

The ride didn't take long, but it felt like forever. As I passed the third floor, Quentin's voice buzzed in my ear.

"They're heading for the parking garage. I'm on them. Heading for a black BMW."

"Gotcha."

"Looks like they're having some trouble. Meskhiyev's checking his pockets. Holy shit. Think the guy forgot his keys."

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a set of BMW keys as the doors opened.

"Uh, I have them."

"How -- never mind. They're getting into a black Town Car two spaces down. We don't move quick, we're going to lose them."

I cleared the doors into the parking garage and saw Quentin crouched behind a concrete support. I tapped him on the shoudler, and he turned and hung up his phone.

"We need to stay on them," he said.

"Well, let's just take their ride," I said, grinning and holding up the BMW keys.

We stayed behind the pillar until the Town Car backed out and started off the other way. As soon as it was a few hundred feet away, we sprinted for the BMW, which thankfully had keyless entry. I got in the driver's seat and started backing out just as Quentin got his door closed.

"Nice ride," Quentin commented, running his hand over the dashboard.

"Yeah. Keep an eye on that Town Car. If it looks like they've spotted me... well, that would be good to know," I told him, heading off in the direction Meskhiyev had gone. We caught sight of them in just a few seconds -- they were turning out onto the Strip.

"There are, like, hundreds of black Town Cars out there," Quentin said.

"Yeah. Courtesy cars, private car services. Did you happen to catch the license plate?"

"Nevada CRJ899," he said as we turned left onto the Strip. "There it is."

I kept a few cars back, but Quentin was right -- there were a shitload of black Town Cars out on the Strip. Thankfully, I had a second set of eyes, so we didn't lose them as we powered on past the Strip and headed into North Vegas.

"Where the fuck are they going now?" Quentin wondered.

"I think I know. There's an abandoned office park way out in the ghetto. It's pretty secure. They get her in there, it's going to be tough getting her out."

"So we don't let them get there," Quentin said, nodding.

"Right. We take them in transit. Think you can handle one of 'em while I take down the other?"

Quentin reached into his long coat and pulled out an Ithaca 37 Stakeout shotgun with a pistol grip.

"Thought you'd never ask," he said, chuckling.

Chapter Nine

I spent the next several hours slowly working my way north up the strip, stopping in every casino and making several circuits to make sure I wasn't being followed. Most people are pretty easy to spot when they're trying to tail you -- if you see the same person more than once at several different, random locations, chances are he's after you. Especially if you have reason to suspect someone's following you. All it takes is a little observation.

Of course, it was a little harder when you figure that a whole company is after you. Companies have multiple employees, and if there are enough people on your tail, your chances of picking one of them out are pretty slim. One guy will follow you into, say, the Sahara, then hand you off to another guy as soon as you leave. That guy will follow you along the street, but hand you off to yet another guy the next time you duck inside. It's the same way the cops tail a high-priority suspect.

Still, there are ways you can tell. Catch someone looking away quickly right as you make eye contact? That guy could be tailing you. See someone stop suddenly and become very interested in something patently uninteresting when you look in his direction? He's definitely following you.

It seemed, though, I'd made my escape from the Imperial Palace without a tail. Or at least, without one I could discover. Either no one was after me, or the people after me were so good I wasn't going to lose them anyway, so it didn't really matter. I made it to the Stratosphere just after dark.

I found a place by the sports book to have a seat and keep an eye out. I didn't expect to see Quentin come in -- he was sneaky like that. But I was still worried about someone following me, so I spent the next couple of hours just sitting, watching. Besides, it felt good to sit down for a bit. I'd been on my feet all day. Still, I didn't detect any sort of tail, so I was good to go.

Around 11:15, I got in line for the elevator up to the 107th floor. It wasn't a short line this time of night -- the highest point in Las Vegas was a popular place to hang out around midnight, what with the postcard-worthy view of the strip, the laser light of the Luxor shooting off into space, and the relatively cheap drinks at the bar. No one really gave me much of a second glance, even though I was dressed in leather, a full head taller than anyone else in the line, and looking pretty damned rough by that point.

That's one thing I like about Las Vegas, though. No one really looks odd or out of place here. There's really no normal, no baseline for appearance. Unless you're walking around completely naked, you're probably not going to get stared at. Hell, even then you might not, but I'm not itching to test out that particular theory.

A group of Korean tourists, kids a couple of years younger than me, were in front of me in line. They were tipsy and affable, and had a couple 12-packs of Budweiser with them. Though they didn't speak any real English, at least not any that I recognized, they were making friends with everyone around them in line. When they smiled in my direction and handed me a bottle, I was only too happy to accept it and smile back. If there was ever a time I could use a drink, that was it.

Even with the long line, I made it to the 107th floor about ten minutes before midnight. I didn't bother to look around for Quentin -- he'd find me. I'm easier to pick out of a crowd than he is. Easier to pick out than most people, really.

And find me he did. One second, I was standing next to the Korean kids as they plowed toward the bar, the next he was there in front of me. He wore a big goofy grin and had a crazy-huge drink in his right hand. He was minorly tipsy, but I'd expected that. In addition to being crazy smart, Quentin had a bit of the social anxiety disorder. If he was going out in public, that meant he was two or three drinks up on everyone else in the world.

"You look like pounded shit," Quentin said, his lopsided grin widening. "What are you drinking?"

"Beer," I said.

"Hey, Frank! Get my guy here a Pete's Wicked, yeah?" Quentin yelled over his shoulder at the bartender, who was definitely not named Frank. Not unless her parents had a horrible sense of humor.

She scowled at him, but she produced a bottle of Pete's Wicked Ale anyway and set it on the bar in front of me. Quentin laid a $20 bill on the bar and winked at her, then picked up the beer and ushered me away towards the observation deck.

"Serious about you looking awful, though."

"Yeah. Happens when you spend the day on the run."

"About that. Looked into Umbra Dynamics for you. Man, that is one beautiful system they have running there. I was almost right when I said it was unhackable," he said, his words barely above a whisper as we stepped outside into the warm, windy night. He stood close, so I could just barely hear his words before the desert wind caught them and whipped them away into the night.

"Almost right?" I asked, keeping my voice as low as his.

"Yeah. I got in. For about five minutes, but I got in. First looked for your lady friend, Laura Mills. Her file was locked up tight. But there was a file -- she works there."

I nodded.

"Then I checked out their Security People. This little guy, Russian, you think?"

"Could be."

"Black hair? Scar on the right side of his neck?"

I thought back -- there was a hint of a scar coming out from just under the little guy's collar. Old one, looked like.

"Yeah. That's probably him."

"Aleksandr Meskhiyev. Up until seven years ago, he worked for the KGB. Mean motherfucker. Please tell me he's all sorts of dead now."

"A concealed carry license doesn't mean I just get to shoot anyone I want, Quentin," I said with a sigh. I'd explained that to him before. "I can only legally shoot someone when my life or someone else's is in danger."

"Yeah, but wasn't this guy shooting at you?"

"Not him. A buddy of his in a building across the street. Hard to make a case to a judge that Meskhiyev was controlling that guy, or that shooting him would make the other guy stop shooting."

"A sniper?"

"I think so."

"Think I might know who that is, too. Name's Brendan White. Marine Scout Sniper in the Gulf War. These are some hardcore guys you're messing with, Jake."

I nodded. I'd already figured that much out -- so far, Quentin's hacking wasn't really helping at all.

"So what else did you find out?"

"Not much. Like I said, they have your lady locked down in the system. But someone got a little sloppy. I caught a reference to her name in a project file -- she was listed as a senior engineer on some project having to do with nuclear... something."

"Like what? Power plants?"

"The impression that I got was it was more about weapons. It was lumped in with all of their defense stuff -- same project group -- but there's no contract from the government for it. As near as I can tell, it's something the company is doing on its own."

I thought about that for a moment as I sipped from my nice, cold beer. Why would a private company be doing something with nuclear weapons if not for the government? And what research was there possibly left to do there? Hadn't we figured everything out in, like, the 50s? I'm not a student of history past whatever PBS documentaries I catch, so I couldn't be sure.

"And I found one more thing. Just like Laura Mills' credit card records, there was evidence that someone else had already hacked into Umbra Dynamics. This was a memo to their Security team, letting them know that someone in Compton had made an attempt to access their system."

Something clicked in my head. Compton. That's where Laura Mills' brother had gone. To see the hacker? To try and find his sister, like I was doing?

"Thanks, Quentin. I think you might have helped quite a bit there," I told him, draining the last of the Pete's Wicked. "You heading back to Los Angeles in the morning?"

"Oh, hell no. No way I'm going back to the house until you sort this thing out. That hacker in Compton? Probably the same guy whose house was firebombed with him in it this morning."

"I hadn't heard about it."

"Yeah, it was on the evening news. I put the pieces together shortly after I made it into Umbra's system. I'm in the wind for a while."

"You going to stay in Vegas, then?"

"Probably for a while. I'll be around if you need any help. What about you? You get another room yet?"

"Yeah, there's a problem with that..."

"Left your cash back in the Firebombing of Dresden?"

I was going to tell Quentin the truth -- that I was pretty much broke -- but me leaving most of my money back in the hotel room I'd had to abandon was much less embarassing. I nodded.

"Most of it," I said.

"You still got some on you?"

"Like, $25."

"Give it," he said, sighing and opening his hand.

I dug into my wallet and pulled out the two tens and one five dollar bill. He shoved them into his front left pocket, then checked his watch.

"Two hours. Meet me down at the Monte Carlo. Ask the desk clerk to ring Ken Adams."

"Who the hell is Ken Adams?"

"That's me. At least, it is until the heat dies down. Now, get gone. You're bad luck."

* * *

So I was back on the Strip again, but at least it wasn't brutally hot out anymore. And I was two beers up, which is always better than being no beers into the evening. I still had my eye out for anyone following me, but talking to Quentin had made me feel better. Even if he did have all of my money, as small an amount as that was.

Still, the cooler weather and the time since the morning's firestorm had me in a much better mood as I slowly walked south down the Strip. I had a destination -- the Monte Carlo -- but I had more than enough time to get there. People who have never been to Las Vegas don't realize that the Strip itself is only about five miles long, so it doesn't take too long to walk from one end to the other. I wasn't even going that far -- maybe three miles or so -- and I had two hours in which to do it.

So I stopped often, checking for tails of course, but also just to people-watch. Vegas is great for people-watching, especially after midnight. All of the crazies are out, and mingling with all of the normals. At about 1:00 in the morning, I'd made it down to the Stardust, and was stopping to cool my heels for a few minutes before continuing on.

And then I saw something I didn't expect: Laura Mills. And she wasn't alone -- two men in black suits were ushering her out of a black Town Car and shuffling her into the hotel.

Chapter Eight

The little guy wasn't in a hurry to start talking. He slowly pulled a gold windproof lighter from his jacket, clicked it open, and touched the tip of the flame to the cigarette in his mouth. I was glad Mike was such a heavy smoker, so I was used to it now, but back when I quit two years ago, this guy lighting up right in front of me would have driven me to homicide.

"Now, we both know why you're here, and why you were at a certain room across the street this morning. You even made it out to the complex, which surprised them."

"Them?" I asked.

"Yes, them. Not me, though. I told them not to underestimate you."

I considered pushing for a more accurate description of who "they" were, but something in the guy's face told me it was pointless. "They" were simply "them." Best to let it stand and move on.

"Well, I'm a smart guy," I said, shrugging my shoulders.

"Hardly," the little guy chortled, sending micro-puffs of smoke my way. "But you are, as I mentioned before, stupidly persistent. It was only a matter of time."

I considered again pouncing on this dude from across the room. How quick could his sniper friend react, anyway? Still, self-preservation instincts kicked in, and I let the comment slide.

"Now. I must warn you -- as a friend, you understand -- that your continued persistence in tracking down this young lady will only result in bad things for you. And not just for you," the little guy continued, nodding slightly at me.

"For who? My family?"

"Patronizing me is not a healthy course of action," he told me. "You don't have a family. Only child, mother died when you were three, father drunkenly crashed his patrol car into a tree in your senior year of high school. But you do have friends -- Mike DeLonge, Quentin Barnes. One in downtown, one in Silver Lake. Quiz me if you don't think I have their exact locations at this very moment."

Shit. "They," apparently, knew everything there was to know.

I was stuck, and I knew it. If this guy didn't get the answer he wanted, I just might live long enough to make it back to LA and find Mike and Quentin dead. I had to say it, but I didn't have to mean it. No rules against lying.

"Fine," I said, sighing. "You've made your point. I'm off the case.'

"It was, of course, the only choice you could make," he told me, nodding. "See that you stay clear. Go back home, take a few days off. The whole situation will be done by the time you go back to work, and you'll never have to spare a thought on it again."

I nodded, gritting my teeth together as I did so. The little guy smoothed out his black jacket, stood, and tucked his cigarettes back into his pocket. As he started for the door, I saw the red dot vanish from my chest.

It would take the little guy's sniper buddy time -- a couple of seconds? -- to reaquire me, and I knew I could move faster than that could happen. In half a second, I had the little guy tackled to the carpet. I'd already punched him once hard in the face, and I was bringing up my fist to deliver another blow. He laughed.

"That was... unwise," he chortled, spitting up a few drops of blood.

The windows suddenly exploded in on us. Gunfire ripped up the walls, the beds, and the door as I threw myself flat on the floor and pulled out my Sig. Don't know who I was planning to shoot at, but it felt better to have it in my hand than not.

The gunfire was flying over my head, and I realized the sniper couldn't see below the windows. That meant he was probably close to the same height in the building across from us, and it also meant I might be able to belly-crawl to the door. I checked the floor next to me -- the man in black was still chuckling on the floor, bleeding from the mouth.

"You should have listened to me, my friend," he shouted over the continuing gunfire. "You would have survived."

"Oh, shut the fuck up," I grumbled, shooting my right leg out and catching him in the side of the head.

The little guy's lights went out almost immediately, and I quickly rifled through his jacket pockets. Inside, I found a Glock .23 pistol, his cigarettes, and a set of car keys. I took the gun and the keys and stashed them in my jacket. Just as I was crawling away, I noticed a small, gold pin on the jacket's lapel, a sweeping, inverted triangle design. It tried to ring a bell in my brain, but nothing came up right away. Maybe the continuous gunfire was distracting me.

I crawled out into the hall, where I could just see people running for the elevators. As soon as I cleared my door, I got up and ran along with them, throwing myself into the elevator just as the doors closed and the car started to descend to ground level.

I knew I couldn't go for my car -- they'd have that covered for sure, and the Imperial Palace Parking garage was small and closed off. It would be a turkey shoot in there. My best bet was to stay with these people in the elevator, try and slip out into the streets in the confusion and get some distance. That was, of course, assuming I could blend in, and that they didn't have guys waiting at every exit.

When the elevator doors opened, the people inside with me simply joined the chaos in the lobby. Surprisingly, there were no cops at the front doors yet. That struck me as odd, as it felt like the little guy's buddy had been shooting at me forever, and the Strip was usually crawling with LVPD. Still, the front doors weren't covered, and the chaotic mess of people was heading that way, so I hunched down into the crowd and spilled out onto Las Vegas Boulevard with them.

Most of them were just standing around outside, not sure what to do after they'd made it out of the building. I immediately took it on my heels, sweating intensely underneath my leather coat. I didn't dare take it off, though -- the two handguns under my jacket were sure to draw some attention, especially so close to an area that had just gotten all shot up. I headed north up the Strip, but there wasn't any strategy behind that. I just wanted to put as much distance between myself and the crime scene as possible.

I knew I was in trouble. Once the cops got there, the Imperial Palace would let them know who was staying in the room that now resembled North Vietnam. About ten minutes after that, they'd have my driver's license picture in every patrol car. The Beast might as well have been parked in Guam, because as soon as the little guy's friends were off it, the cops would be on it. I had no room, no transport, about $25 in my pocket, and a credit card that had about $50 in available credit on it. Couldn't use the card anyway -- as I'd proved last night, it was a nice, easy way to track someone down.

It was pretty stupid to kick the crap out of that little guy. I know this. I should have just done what he told me and walked away, but it wasn't something I thought out. Rage was rarely logical, and that was the fuel behind the little guy's beat-down. I'd made things a whole lot worse for myself, but still...

Damn it felt good to kick the shit out of that guy.

I just kept walking, and ended up at the Riviera after a bit. I was covered in sweat, so I popped inside to get some air conditioning and will my hands to stop shaking. My heartbeat was probably still north of 100 BPM. I know the big, tough-guy move would be to say I wasn't scared, but that would be a lie. You try being calm and collected when someone just pumped a couple of hundred rounds in your direction.

As I wandered around the casino floor, I realized I needed to make a couple of phone calls. The little guy had threatened Mike and Quentin, and while I was sure they could both take care of themselves, I needed to give them a heads-up. My cell battery was still pretty well charged, but the roaming charges were going to be killer. Yeah, you think of strange stuff when you're in panic mode.

I called Mike first and explained what had happened. Mike has more cop buddies than any man I know. It's one of the perks of his job, and the fact that he's actually pretty likeable. He wasn't happy with the situation I'd gotten him into, but I was sure he'd be fine. He'd let his cop buddies know someone was out there with a grudge against him, and they'd keep an eye on him.

Quentin was armed to the teeth and never left the house, so I was even less worried about him. He had cameras covering every inch of his crappy-looking property, so no one would even get close without him knowing about it. Still, I gave him a ring and let him know what was up.

"Damn, man. Another person out to get me? You got a name or anything?"

"Nah. Little guy. Eastern European. Tough as shit. And he has friends."

"No ID at all on him?"

When Quentin asked, I remembered the pin on the little guy's lapel. More importantly, I suddenly remembered where I'd seen it before -- on a wall behind a disinterested secretary in Santa Monica.

"Umbra Dynamics," I told Quentin. "I think the little guy works for them."

"Oh, shit. You really got us into a mess now, boss," Quentin groaned.

"What? You know something about Umbra Dynamics?"

"A bit. Nothing good."

"Think you can hack them for me, get me something to work with?"

I could hear Quentin cover the phone, and even with his hand over the reciever, I could still hear him laugh hysterically for a couple of seconds.

"Seriously, Jake. Umbra is un-fucking-hackable. They're a Defense Department contractor, but they're harder to hack than the Pentagon. If they don't want to kill me already, me trying to hack them will definitely put me on their kill list."

"You saying it can't be done?" I said, smirking to myself in spite of the situation. I knew how Quentin would respond to that.

"Whoa, whoa. Hold on there, big guy. No one said I couldn't. It'd just be a bad idea."

"Hey, you can't do it, you can't do it. No worries."

"Fuck. Give me ten hours. I'll meet you on the top floor of the Stratosphere at midnight," he growled.

Chapter Seven

I looked like hell when I got back to the Imperial Palace, as I could tell from the girl at the front desk shaking her head slightly when she saw me. My nose was still running like mad, and I couldn't keep my eyes open for more than a couple of seconds at a time without needing to blink. They didn't sting as much anymore, though, which was nice.

A shower was the first order of business. I still didn't look great when I got out -- my nose was still running, and both eyes were still red and puffy. I had the beginnings of a shiner on my left eye. An angry blood vessel had also popped in the left eye, though I'm not sure if it was from the pepper spray or the guy's mega-punch to my skull. Damn if he didn't hit hard for a little dude.

I was feeling a little better, though. I could keep my eyes open a reasonable amount of time now, and nothing felt like it was burning. That was a plus. I decided to catch some breakfast and scope out the address on the business card I'd found before I got punked by a guy half my size.

Yeah, I was still smarting on that one.

If you want a cheap breakfast, Vegas is the place to get it, especially in the casinos. They want you to spend your money gambling, not on things like food. For the change in my pocket, I got access to the Palace's breakfast buffet. It wasn't what I would really call good, but there was a lot of it.

After breakfast, it was time to check out the address in North Vegas. Sure, it was hot as fuck out, but going to North Vegas in the daylight was infinitely preferable to going there after dark.

If you've just been to Las Vegas on vacation, you've probably only seen the Strip, maybe Old Town. You might even think Vegas is a perfectly nice city, but man would you be wrong. If you really think that, try an experiment -- walk about three blocks off the North Strip (you know, around Sahara and Stratosphere). See how quick you feel like you're about to get murdered, even in broad daylight. From what I've seen on my previous work trips, most of Las Vegas is a fucking ghetto, plain and simple.

So, even in midmorning, and even with my best buddy Sig Sauer riding shotgun, I wasn't exactly crazy over the prospect of going way off the strip to this random address. I had no idea what I was going to find there, but if my adventures in Compton the day before were any indication, it would probably be something fucked up.

I considered again just walking away, just cutting my losses, going home, and looking for any other job but this one to pay the bills. The cost-benefit ratio on Bounty Hunting was going down with each passing minute, what with getting shot at twice in as many days and some little dude beating the crap out of me. Throwing in for some Welfare looked great right about then.

One thing I inherited from my dad, though, was stubbornness. I guess I just can't leave well enough alone, ever. At least I didn't inherit his alcoholism, too. So I retrieved the Beast from the Imperial Palace's parking garage, got a map of Las Vegas from a 7-11 just off the Strip, and plotted my way out of the good part of the city.

Compton was a ghetto, but at least it didn't really look like it. For the most part, people took care of their property, mowed their lawns, kept their houses from falling apart. That wasn't the case in North Las Vegas. Trash on the lawns wasn't uncommon, at least in the rare places you could find lawns. Mostly, the neighborhoods were concrete and sand, with a little more concrete and some dirt thrown in for good measure. Cars were broken-down, dented, and dirty, but no real rust thanks to the desert climate.

Then there was the smell. Ever walk behind a strip-mall Chinese restaurant on a hot day? The garbage rotting in the sun -- that was the exact smell that hit me as I drove deeper into North Vegas. I would've loved to have rolled the windows up, but the mercury was already past 100, and as I mentioned before, the Beast's air conditioning was theoretical at this point. I resloved that if I ever tracked down Laura Mills and got paid, the first thing I was doing was getting the damn AC fixed.

I passed out of the residential areas and found myself in what looked like a broken-down business park, one that had been built about 10 years ago. It looked like some developer had optimistically thought he could turn this neighborhood into a business zone, but I doubt even one corporation moved in. The place looked completely abandoned, and I double-checked my notes. I was in the right place, but I was the only one there as near as I could tell.

I killed the engine and sat back to take a look at the place. Just because I didn't see anyone right away didn't mean the place was really abandoned, so I opened the 20-ounce bottle of Pepsi I'd bought with the map and settled back into the Beast's rapidly-warming leather front seat.

First thing I noticed was that the entire park was surrounded by a high, chain-link fence. That wasn't too surprising, really, nor was the barbed wire on top of the fence. Abandoned or not, whoever still owned the place probably didn't want homeless folks crashing there, or opportunistic thieves stealing copper pipes and wiring out of the walls. Even if the place wasn't pulling in any money, it didn't make sense to just let the ghetto swallow it back up again.

I wasn't there too long -- maybe five minutes -- when the first security car looped around the parking lot. It came from behind the furthest of the three buildings, driving slowly along with its windows up and its lights off. Again, that wasn't too out of the ordinary on its own. Some of the above-mentioned homeless people or thieves might try to get around the gate, so hiring some minimum-wage security was a reasonable investment. The car took about three or four minutes to pass by where I was parked, and didn't even really slow down as it drove by.

Ten minutes later, either the same car or an identical one made another loop through the parking lot. This one, though, sped up as soon as I saw him (and, I'm guessing, as soon as he saw me). His lights went on as he hammered toward me, so there was little doubt he was coming to see why the hell I was just hanging out there. Time to go. I started the Beast and tore away from the curb.

I figured the security car would just come up to the gate and stop when he saw I was leaving, probably take down my license plate number and keep it on file. That wasn't the case. He didn't even slow down as he approached the gate, which rattled open for him. He shot out into the street and jammed on the gas -- and if I wasn't sure that he was after me, the gunfire that started up a second later sure convinced me.

I didn't know who the hell these guys were, but no way were they going to be able to hang with me. In addition to driving a faster car (they were driving what looked like a Taurus), I knew I was a better driver. Rent-a-cops, no matter how good, just cannot hang with a fully trained stunt driver. No way in hell.

I chanced a look through the rearview as I hammered the gas pedal. There were two of them, one driving, the other leaning out the window with either an M-16 or an AR-15. The way I was juking the Beast in and out of oncoming traffic, the guy with the assault rifle was having a hard time hitting me. I heard bullets crack against the pavement, slam into a bus shelter on the side of the road, tag other cars... but the Beast was fine.

I was in the ghetto, and I hadn't seen a cop since I came into that neighborhood. The security car, like most, was painted up sort of like a police car, but different enough that no one would mistake it for one. That's the only reason I can figure that someone else opened fire on it as I passed a block of apartment buildings crumbling in the desert sun -- that whoever was shooting knew these weren't real cops, and were therefore open game. I guessed it was some gangbanger or criminal badass wanting to take a chunk out of these guys, but the motive didn't matter. Someone was helping me out, whether he intended to or not.

I would have been able to lose the rent-a-cops on my own, but it turned out I didn't have to. The mysterious shooter -- my benefactor, I guess -- put several rounds in the hood of the Taurus, and the thing stopped dead as I rocketed on back toward the relative safety of the Strip.

As I eased the Beast down to the normal speed limit -- no sense in getting pulled over by a real cop now that I was heading back to civilization -- I tried to plan my next move. That all depended on the information I had been able to piece together so far, which didn't take long at all to go through. I had a missing woman, Laura Mills, 31 years old. Her listed employer was Umbra Dynamics in Santa Monica, a company that claimed never to have heard of her. She was pulled over and detained on a failure to appear, but her bail had been set astronomically high for unknown reasons. Her brother -- I assume -- was shot down in a carjacking in Compton on his way to... what? And she had gone to Las Vegas for... what?

Like I said, didn't take long. Didn't much help me plan any next moves, either. But from the sweat soaking my shirt thanks to the heat, my next move was going to have to be a shower and a change of clothes. The Imperial Palace it was. I piloted the Beast into the parking garage and trudged off to my room.

It wasn't as I'd left it. Oh, the duffel bag was still haphazardly thrown on one of the queen beds, sitting open and rifled through. The dirty clothes from yesterday were still kicked into a pile in the corner of the room. But when I left, there wasn't a little guy in a black suit sitting in the armchair across from the door. Same little guy in a black suit who had kicked my ass a few hours ago. Looked like I wasn't the only one who knew that trick with the card readers on the door.

"Your persistence borders on psychosis, my friend," the little guy said, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his coat. His voice had a thick accent -- somewhere from Eastern Europe, I guessed.

"First, we're not friends. Second, you have ten seconds to get the fuck out of my room before I --"

"Reach for the Sig Sauer in the left inside pocket of your jacket?" he asked, smiling. "I would not suggest that."

The little guy nodded down at my chest, and I chanced a look. A little red dot was floating just above my heart. Shit.

"Now, please, sit. We need to have a conversation."

Though I knew there was a sniper somewhere outside waiting to put a large-caliber bullet through my chest, I seriously considered going for the Sig anyway. Sighing, I sat on the bed across from the little guy.

"Fine. Let's talk."

Chapter Six

"How'd you find her so fast?"

Quentin leaned back on the couch and kicked his bare feet up next to the huge monitor. I noticed then that his toenails were in desperate need of clipping. Ugh.

"Your buddy Mike kept a carbon of her credit card. I traced the number," Quentin said with a grin. "Looks like I wasn't the first one to do it, either."

"LAPD?" I asked.

"No, but I expect they will before long. This was another hacker -- one who was good enough to cover his tracks, but not completely. I could still see that he ran the card, but not who he was or where he ran it from."

"So, better than you or worse than you?" I asked.

"Man, no one is better than me," he said, his grin getting wider. "Got time for a beer?"

"Nah. I should probably get on the road, find a hotel in Vegas. Crash out and start hitting the pavement in the morning."

"If you're looking for a hotel, I suggest Caesars. Looks like your girl checked in there last night."

"I'm on my own dime until I catch her, and I think one night at that place would max out my credit card," I said, shaking my head.

"I could massage the system a bit. Book you in and charge it to someone else."

"No thanks."

"Then Imperial Palace? Pretty close by, tons cheaper."

"Yeah. I'll do that."

Quentin typed on his keyboard for a few more seconds, then looked up at me.

"Done. Just give them your name when you arrive. Guaranteed the room with your Visa."

"How do you know my credit card number?" I asked.

Quentin just grinned again.

"Have a good time in Vegas, big guy."

* * *

I don't go to Las Vegas often, and there's a good reason for that. It's not that I hate gambling or anything -- I was brought up in a pretty damn liberal household, even though my dad was a cop (a traditionally conservative profession), so gambling wasn't demonized as the Devil's Work. No, I stay away from Vegas because I love gambling, and worse, I used to think I was pretty good at it.

I wasn't, of course. I was just on a lucky streak for a little while there, and when it ended, man, it *ended.* But you just try telling a gambling junkie his lucky streak is over. It's never over, man, it's just stepped out for a smoke. It's just around the corner, and if you keep playing, it'll come right back.

When I got out of the hospital, my buddy Ethan took me to Vegas to cheer me up. I was still in a wheelchair at that point, and I learned something interesting on that trip. A guy in a wheelchair who's winning? Well, he's good luck, and everyone in the casino crowds around him, buys him drinks, and treats him like the earthly embodiment of Our Lord and Savior himself. Nothing's quite the self-esteem boost for a cripple than the attention you get when you're winning.

A guy in a wheelchair who's losing, though? Well, that's just sad. Sad and unlucky. When that dude wheels his way up to the Blackjack tables and starts hemmhoraging money, people get up from the table like he's coughing up Bubonic Plague instead of red chips. No drinks bought for you then, apart from the ones the casino gives you for losing. You'll get nice and hammered off loser drinks, but your lucky streak stays outside, smoking pack after pack of cowboy killers until you finally lose every scrap of cash you came with and start doing the math on what your car is worth.

So, yeah, I usually stay away from Las Vegas.

After I left Quentin's, I headed back to my apartment to throw some things into a duffel bag. Before Mr. Hernandez tried to perforate me with an AK-47 yesterday, I'd been doing laundry, so I had a dryer full of clean clothes. I grabbed indiscriminately and stuffed most of the dryer's contents into my bag, then hefted it over my shoulder. After that, all I had to do was lock the door and ask Eammon to grab my mail while I was out. I want to buy a dog, but I have to go out of town kind of often and always on short notice... so for now, it's just me.

It normally takes about four hours to drive from Los Angeles to Vegas, and I was leaving after dark, so I didn't expect any delays. A straight-through drive would put me in about three in the morning, which would be an odd time to check into a hotel in any city other than Las Vegas. There, it was pretty much routine.

I loaded up the CD changer in the trunk with some decent, loud road-trip stuff: Wu-Tang Forever, Pantera's Far Beyond Driven, Antichrist Superstar by Marilyn Manson, Evil Empire by Rage Against the Machine, Unpredictable by Mystikal, and the old road-trip favorite Nevermind by, of course, Nirvana. Yeah, my musical tastes are all over the map, but for a long drive on zero sleep, nothing beats loud and agressive. I made a stop for gas and coffee and hit the road just before 11 p.m., and traffic was almost nonexistent.

I rolled into Vegas just after three in the morning, and pulled up to the Imperial Palace parking garage with "People of the Sun" blaring from the huge, aftermarket speakers I'd put in the Beast back when I was making movie cash. After I parked and checked in, I hit the bed and was out cold in seconds.

* * *

In June, there are only a couple of safe times to move around Las Vegas. Late night, when the heat is usually bearable, provided you drink enough water; and early in the morning, before the sun starts its daily quest to fry humans on the sidewalk like ants under a magnifying glass. I slept for about four hours, so I was dressed and on the street by 7:30. I ate a hot dog as I walked, promising myself I'd get some health in my diet as soon as I tracked down Laura Mills.

Hotel employees aren't supposed to give out any information about their guests. If you don't believe me, call a hotel where your friend is saying and ask what room he's staying in. Unless the clerk is a complete idiot or just an asshole who's trying to get himself fired, he won't tell you -- he'll offer to connect you with your friend's room instead. I could always just talk to the guy at the front desk, tell him who I was and why I was there, but I didn't want to count on him helping me out of a sense of "what's right." Besides, I'd seen a picture of Laura Mills, her mug shot from her file.

She was pretty, even in the mug shot. And if someone looked good in a mug shot, chances are that person was stunning in real life. If the guy behind the counter was a heterosexual male with a pulse, he'd send me to the wrong room, then call Laura and warn her the second I was out of sight.

Nope, if I was going to get any information out of the hotel staff, I'd have to be sneaky about it. And, fortunately, Nevada was one of those places I could be sneaky. I once tracked down a bail jumper in New Orleans, and Louisina requires bounty hunters to wear a uniform when they're looking for people -- kind of kills the element of surprise. Nevada, like California, has no such law, and no one ever told me I couldn't lie my ass off to get the information I needed. So that's what I was going to do.

The kind of cool thing about Las Vegas is that it's a very on-demand town. If you want something sent up to your room, chances are very good there's a service that specializes in exactly that thing you want. Feeling a little sick and need a doctor sent to you? That's an easy one. Want someone to prepare you a Louisana-style Creole dinner in your room? Yeah, they can do that, too.

Of course, no one's going to buy that I'm a doctor, or probably not even a chef. But there is one thing they'll buy, and probably send me up without hesitation. It's a little degrading, but we're talking about quite a bit of money here. That, and finally getting some information on this asinine quest I seem to have gotten myself involved in. And it's another one of those areas where being a big, in-shape dude comes in handy.

"Hi," I said to the young, thin guy behind the desk at Caesar's Palace. "I'm here to see Laura Mills. I'm the exotic dancer she ordered."

I made sure to crack a big, goofy smile when I said it. Like I thought, the guy gave me her room number without even a moment's hesitation. Ten seconds later, I was navigating my way through the sprawling monument to gaming and consumerism that is Caesar's Palace.

Laura Mills' room was in the Forum Towers, a relatively new part of the complex. It was a suite, and probably cost more than a week in the room I slept in last night. Since it was a newer room, it had those brand-new card readers on the door rather than keys. Those things almost make my job too easy. I'm not going to say too much about how to beat those locks here -- no point in disseminating criminal information -- but I was in the room in twenty seconds.

It was only 7:30 in the morning, and it was Las Vegas. I was almost sure to find my target passed out, but no one was in the room. There was a small suitcase on one of the queen beds, though, and some stuff scattered around the bathroom, so I knew someone was staying there, at least. I took a look through the suitcase -- clothes, in a size that would probably fit Laura Mills (if the height and weight on her driver's license was accurate). Minimal cosmetics and toiletries in the bathroom. Other than that, the room looked clean, at least at first glance.

Looking further, though, I found a manilla folder between the mattress and box spring on the bed furthest from the door.

"Boo-ya," I whispered to myself as I opened the folder and flipped through the papers inside.

The pages inside -- there were six of them -- didn't make any sense to me. They looked like technical documents or blueprints of some kind, but the writing was all in Chinese or Korean or something. And I couldn't tell what I was looking at just from the drawings. It just looked like a bunch of vertical and horizontal and diagonal beams arranged into various shapes, some of them with a ball in the middle. No clue.

As I was putting the papers back into the folder, a business card fell out onto the floor. It didn't have a name or a business on it -- just an address and a phone number. The address was in North Las Vegas, and the phone number had a Vegas area code. I jotted them both down on a pad in my pocket, then put everything back and headed back out into the hotel.

You know that kind of paranoia you get when you're doing something you know you're not supposed to? Like when you were drinking with your buddies underage, and your head snapped around at every noise? I'm convinced that it's not necessarily paranoia, but hyperawareness -- what atheletes and elite soldier types call "flow state." Paranoia plays tricks with you, but the flow state just might save your life.

It's pretty accurate to say I was in flow state the whole time I was doing my little breaking and entering routine. It didn't leave off when I left the room and headed back out into the hotel, either, a fact I'm sure saved my life.

When I closed the door to Laura Mills' room, I wasn't the only person in the hall. There was a white guy about five foot eight coming down the hall towards me, dressed in a black suit and a black silk shirt buttoned up to the throat. Nothing odd about that on the surface, as he could have just been a high roller coming back after a late night. He glanced at me as he approached, and I nodded and smirked as I walked toward him, heading back to the casino floor and the exit. I was still in that hyperaware frame of mind when the two of us passed in the hall, so I felt him reach inside his coat before I saw it, and I reacted by ducking low and driving my shoulder into his midsection.

His gun bounced on the carpet, and I kicked it down the hall as he swung a right hand toward my head. I dodged, but not fast enough -- the first two knuckles of his right hand connected with my skull just above my temple, and I saw flashes. The guy hit like a runaway pickup truck. Thankfully, I can hit hard, too. I smashed him in the nose, knocking him onto the floor, then reached into my pocket and pulled out my Sig Sauer. I trained it on him, and he put his hands up.

"Stay right there," I growled.

"Not going anywhere, Chief," he said with a grin. His left hand twitched, and suddenly my eyes and nose were on fire.

By the time I blinked away the pepper spray, he was gone.