Smith's Monthly #22 Page 25

  “An army,” Fleet said.

  Mike laughed, but then got serious when Ace and I nodded our agreement.

  “I can get you a small army. What and who needs to be secured?”

  “Ace, Fleet, his wife and kids, my mother, me, and the house. There might be others along the way. Everyone needs to be very secured from all sides against all levels of surveillance and attack twenty-four/seven.”

  Mike glanced at his old friend Ace.

  “If what I think is happening really is happening,” Ace said. “We may need more than that before this is over.”

  Mike nodded, now very serious. “Under normal circumstances, right here I’d say this was going to cost, and cost a lot, but I owe Ace so much that—”

  I interrupted him. “Money is not an issue. Our lives are. We’ll pay you above your normal going rate for all this, and if you can get us all through this alive, there will be a very, very large bonus.”

  “Very large,” Ace repeated, smiling at his old friend.

  Mike took a deep breath, then thought for a moment before he said, “Give me two hours and the house will be secure. I’ll have at least two of my men shadowing each of you at all times starting within the hour, more as every hour goes by, no matter where you go, so don’t worry about them if you don’t spot them. Every man I have working for me is ex-Special Forces, and they all know how to move.”

  I liked the sound of that last little phrase. He had well-trained men if he thought we wouldn’t see them.

  “Can they all be trusted?” Fleet asked.

  “Completely,” Mike said. “They will die doing their job if they have to.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said.

  Ace just nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t sure it wasn’t going to come to just that kind of battle.

  Mike went on, clearly taking charge of security. “From now on, you’re to only leave the hotel through the front entrance and into my cars. I will have secured, bullet-proof limos waiting for you at all times if any of you need to go anywhere.”

  He glanced at Ace, then back at me. “Do you know how long this is going to last?”

  “Not a clue,” I said. “But prepare for weeks.”

  “I will.”

  “Thanks,” I said, shaking his hand after he gave each of us a card with his secure phone number.

  Mike and Fleet and Ace then left to go up to Ace’s suite to take care of the details.

  I sat, thinking, sipping my coffee until Annie arrived.

  “Not good, huh?” I said as she approached, the frown on her beautiful face not changing.

  “Not good,” Annie said, sliding in across from me.

  It was great seeing her again. But after the conversation with Mike, I was starting to worry about her safety as well. Even though she was a detective, someone could still get to me through her if they realized how much I liked her. At the moment, I hoped whoever was behind this just thought she was the police and I was working with them.

  “Well, spit it out,” I said after the waitress came and took her order and cleared off some of the dirty dishes left behind.

  “Kevin DeFoe disappeared in 1982. Nothing has been seen of him since.”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding. “Another detail of R.A.’s story confirmed.”

  “You want to tell me why that got just an okay?” Annie asked. “And who Kevin DeFoe was?”

  “I will, I promise,” I said. “But not here. I have a security agency sweeping my father’s house for listening devices and then putting up a secure area around the house where no one can listen in to anything going on inside. In three hours, there, in that house, I promise I’ll tell everyone what I know. But I want to make sure it can’t be overheard.”

  Annie stared at me for a moment, clearly deciding if that would be all right, then nodded. “That sounds reasonable. I’ll be there. But I’m afraid there’s a lot more that you don’t know. Benson James was killed a few days ago in Medford, Oregon. No leads or suspects or motive.”

  All I could do was sit there and try to breathe normally. That meant whoever was doing this now had three keys at least.

  “There’s more,” Annie said, her voice soft. “Last night, Aaron Bell and his wife were shot while still in bed. The FBI was guarding them as well and failed to stop it.”

  Or had a hand in it was what I thought, but I didn’t say that out loud.

  I didn’t dare.

  Not here, not now.

  I sat there silent, letting the waitress fill my coffee cup again and bring Annie her coffee. Four keys now in the maniac’s hands, not counting if he had one of his own to start with. I had to assume he did.

  And I had to stop thinking that there was only one person doing all this. More than likely, this was an organization.

  Or the President himself was behind all this.

  And whoever it was would soon be coming after me again, this time with all force necessary to take me out. The key I had of Carson’s was possibly only one of four left.

  Time was running down on this game and I was one of the next ones to be picked off. And the next attempt, they wouldn’t send a stupid thug to do the job.

  After the waitress left, I grabbed my cell phone and dialed Heather’s number, motioning for Annie to excuse me for a moment.

  When Heather answered with a “Yes,” I started in on her.

  “Aaron Bell. What happened?”

  Heather took a deep breath. “I overheard Verne Adkins warning Bell to protect his family. I put two men on Bell’s house and planted listening devices inside. The son-of-a-bitch actually taunted my men. We’re going to find him and take him down, I can promise you that.”

  “I wouldn’t underestimate whoever this was again,” I said.

  “Oh, trust me, we won’t.”

  I didn’t want to tell her that I didn’t trust her one bit, or damn near anyone else for that matter. So instead I just said, “Good luck,” and hung up.

  “FBI?” Annie asked.

  I nodded.

  “And you’re going to tell me why they are involved in this later?” she asked.

  “I’m sure going to do my best,” I said.

  With that, I used my cell phone to call Mike upstairs in Ace’s suite. I told him that whatever he was thinking about levels of security, triple it. And make sure that everyone he put on any of us could be trusted completely.

  “It got worse?” he asked.

  “A hundred times worse,” I said.

  Then I asked for my grandfather. I had the unpleasant task of telling Ace that his old friend, Aaron Bell, had been killed.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Las Vegas, Nevada. August 25

  FBI AGENT HEATHER VOIGHT sat in her room at the MGM Grand and waited for a secure connection to the President. At least it was cool in here. She had spent most of the morning working the neighborhood around Aaron Bell’s home, trying to get some sort of sense of how the killer got in there. It had gotten her nothing but overheated. She had been out there far too long in the morning desert heat. Even though she’d been drinking a lot of water, she still felt light-headed by the time she got back to her room.

  She was going to have to force herself to spend a few hours cooling down in the air-conditioning and drinking sports drinks before venturing back outside again. No point in ending up in the hospital with heat stroke at this point. That wouldn’t do Paul or the President or her job any good at all.

  Two clicks on the phone and Paul said, “Yes, go ahead. The line is secure.”

  She was glad he was the one who answered. Maybe, without the President, she would get some answers to what was happening. Or at least maybe a hint or two. Paul owed her that much.

  “Hi,” she said. “We alone?”

  “The President’s in a meeting,” Paul said. “Do you have a report?”

  She could feel the coldness coming through the phone. He was angry at her. Very angry.

  She dropped into official mode,
her voice level.

  “There are a couple problems. Doc Hill has hired a security team to guard his father’s house.”

  “Good for him,” Paul said. “Since you didn’t have much luck protecting Aaron Bell.”

  Paul’s words stung, but she deserved them. He was right. She had failed and two people were dead. She didn’t want to even ask if Paul knew Bell, so instead she just ignored what he had said.

  “Hill has also put in equipment that blocks our surveillance units on all levels. Very sophisticated stuff.”

  “Really?” Paul said, actually sounding surprised and a little worried.

  She sure wished he would just come clean and just tell her what was so important to him and the President about this poker player. And the keys everyone seemed to mention.

  The keys seemed the oddest part of all this. There clearly had to be something about those keys that threatened the President in some way.

  Otherwise, none of this made sense.

  When Paul didn’t say anything else, she went on.

  “Right now, Doc Hill and his family just moved in secured vehicles into his father’s house. Right now, a Las Vegas homicide detective named Annie Lott is with them.”

  “Okay,” Paul said.

  “Hill has hired a very good security team who are standing guard around the house and patrolling the entire area. We’ve had to back off a short distance, but since he’s blocked our electronic surveillance, it didn’t matter.”

  “And no idea what they are doing in there?” Paul asked.

  “Not a clue,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Stand off and watch, keep track of everything and everyone going in or coming out. Report to me regularly on all aspects of this.”

  “Including phone calls?” Heather asked, knowing she would be breaking a few laws if he wanted calls monitored.

  “Including phone calls,” Paul said without hesitation. “The President will talk to the Director and will cover you if he has to, but try to do it on your own.”

  “Understood,” Heather said, but the phone was already dead.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Las Vegas, Nevada. August 25

  MOM MANAGED TO not cry much as I moved her into Carson’s master bedroom. I didn’t say anything, or even make a move to comfort her, just because my anger was so close to the surface, I didn’t trust myself. The pictures were still on the wall where Fleet had hung them back up, and the cleaning people had the place looking good and smelling fresh.

  “I assume those are your clothes,” I said, indicating the second closet. “I left Carson’s clothes for you to deal with.”

  Then, before she could say anything, I turned and left, slamming the door so hard behind me, I heard something fall. I hoped it was one of those goddamned pictures.

  Fleet took a second bedroom, Ace a third in the three-bedroom home. Fleet and Mike and Ace had decided it would be safer to get Fleet’s family out of the area. They were now headed on our plane to a resort in central Idaho where a dozen of Mike’s men could stand guard on them easily.

  I planned on bunking on the couch, or if I really needed privacy, back in my suite at the Bellagio. But I wanted everyone else here, under full guard and protected.

  Whoever was doing this would now have to come straight at me to get Carson’s key. And that was exactly what I wanted, now that I knew most of what was going on.

  I had to admit that the more I learned about Carson, the more I didn’t mind being in his house. The brown tones, the comfortable couches and chairs in the living room, the workable kitchen felt very much like a home. I had no doubt my mother had had a lot to do with that. I wasn’t about to forgive him or her for not trusting me just yet. Not by a long damn ways. I might never forgive them for that.

  Mike showed me the protection for eavesdropping on our conversations, saying that he hadn’t found a bug anywhere in the house. I had assumed he wouldn’t. Anyone who knew me knew I wouldn’t want to be in this house. And I was assuming whoever was after the keys had done their homework on me. So this house was the most unexpected and the safest place to come to.

  And the easiest to defend.

  At Ace’s suggestion, Mike had also put a scrambler on one of the phones and had it routed in such a way that it couldn’t be listened to in any fashion. I hadn’t thought of that, but was glad it was done. The plan I had formed last night in the tournament would be well-served by a secure phone line.

  I gave my mother a short time to get settled while Mike ran Ace and me, with Annie listening, through some of the security features he had installed in and around the house. After he left to go out to one of their big trucks parked on the street, Annie nodded. “He’s good.”

  “The best in the country,” Ace said.

  Now, finally, it was time to get everyone on the same page, find out what had happened exactly all those years ago. I took a kitchen chair and pulled it into the living room.

  Annie took the couch to my left, closest spot to me. I had to admit, I found I was calmer, more in control when she was around. We seemed to fit together, even think alike at times. After this was over, I hoped to spend a lot more time with her. But both of us had to survive this first.

  My mother and Ace sat on the couch directly in front of me, and Fleet sat in the big chair on the right.

  The tension in the air-conditioned room was thick enough to cut, so I decided to just outline what had happened that I knew of up to this point, starting with what I had discovered at Carson’s crash site. I told them about finding a key in Carson’s card capper, what Verne said about it, and the following attempt on my life out front of the house here.

  Annie nodded. My mother and Ace looked shocked, but I didn’t allow them any moment to ask questions. I wanted to ask them questions.

  I told them about the visit of FBI Agent Heather Voight to my suite and what she had said her reasons to be there were.

  With that, Ace nodded, but my mother just looked puzzled. Clearly, Ace knew that Carson knew the president. Chances are, Ace knew him as well, now that I thought about it. If Dolan Chase had been a high-stakes poker player back when I was young, of course Ace would have known him.

  “I was given a few more pieces of the puzzle by a man named R.A. Scott. He stopped and talked to me right before the tournament yesterday.”

  “The R.A. Scott?” Annie asked, clearly shocked.

  Ace didn’t look happy with the news either, but said nothing.

  “Yup, that one. It seems that in a high-stakes poker game at his ranch in Idaho back in 1982, there was a murder of a card cheat and the start of a cover-up.”

  I looked at my mother and Ace and then said, “Actually, a number of cover-ups.”

  Ace started to say something, but I waved him silent.

  “Later,” I said, not bothering to hide the anger. “We’ll talk about that part of it later.”

  “The keys,” Annie said, coming to their rescue. “That’s why the keys and all the secrets. It’s a murder cover-up.”

  I nodded. “Ten players in the game, nine keys for the players remaining alive. Proof of the murder is in the box that the keys open.”

  I stared at my mother and Ace. Both were looking down at their laps, saying nothing. So far it appeared I had everything right.

  “Let me guess the players,” Annie said. She held up her hand to check off the players in that poker game. “Kevin DeFoe was the cheater. He’s been missing since that year.”

  I nodded, so she went on. “Your father, R.A. Scott, Verne Adkins, Benson James from Oregon, Aaron Bell, Jeff Taylor, and Dolan Chase.”

  She still held up two fingers. “Who am I missing?”

  “Nyland Harrison,” Ace said before I could. “A powerful and heartless businessman from Northern California. And Dolan Chase’s partner, Paul Hanson.”

  “The President and his chief of staff?” Annie said, suddenly looking very worried. “Involved in a murder and cover-up? Oh, man, are we in over our h
eads.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying,” Fleet said.

  “That’s why the FBI is involved,” Annie said. “Now it makes sense. They’re trying to protect their boss.”

  “Or actually just here to protect Doc,” Ace said. “Dolan is a good man.”

  Annie snorted. “They were at Aaron Bell’s house last night and couldn’t protect him.”

  “Or they killed him themselves,” I said.

  Shocked silence around the room.

  “He’s the president,” I said, going on. “He has the most to lose if this all comes out. I’m betting he’s involved somewhere along the way.”

  I let that comment just float in the air like a bad nightmare.

  Then I turned to my grandfather. “Who’s this Nyland Harrison? I’ve heard nothing but bad things about him.”

  “And you haven’t heard near enough,” Ace said. “It was mostly his idea to do the cover-up. He threatened families of all the players if they didn’t go along.”

  “Carson didn’t want to go along, did he?” I asked.

  Ace looked angry, but somehow contained it. “Carson was planning on going to the police when they all came out of the wilderness, and Nyland knew that. He had your mother beaten to stop him before they even got out.”

  I watched as my mother looked up at me. “The men who beat me said they would come for you next. Carson couldn’t let that happen, so he went along.”

  “The bastard threatened you and your mother twice more over the next month,” Ace said. “I got so angry, I contacted Mike.”

  “Same Mike?” I asked and Ace nodded.

  “He’s been around a long time, with a lot of contacts. He was going to take Nyland Harrison out for me, make it look like a nasty accident, but your father stopped me.”

  I stared at my grandfather. The man had constantly surprised me. I wasn’t sure why this should have. He had made a living in the old days of poker, when often a gun was the only way to get your winnings out of a game, and the mob ruled Vegas. He knew his way in and around a lot of shady people.