Smith's Monthly #22 Page 30

  “Where’s Steven?”

  “No reports yet. And I’ve tried to call him.”

  “Well,” Dolan said to his best friend, “see if you can get your girlfriend to keep the lid on all of this from Doc Hill’s side, make sure nothing goes south before it gets finished.”

  “How?” Paul asked, clearly not willing to face the last part of what was going to need to be done.

  “How the hell would I know,” Dolan said, managing to keep his voice level, even though he really wanted to shout. “Maybe make up some excuse to be out in Vegas yourself and have a little talk with her. Give her what help she needs. I’ll talk to the FBI director and make sure he’s on board.”

  Paul only nodded, then turned and left.

  Dolan had no doubt Paul knew exactly what needed to be done, and over the years Paul had proven that when things got rough, he was the best person to have in the fight. He was quiet and unassuming at times, but he knew how to make things happen, sometimes legally, sometimes not, on all levels of business and politics.

  And never once had he left a footprint leading back to either one of them. Dolan just hoped that this time wouldn’t be the exception.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  Las Vegas, Nevada. August 30

  I FELT RELIEVED to be back in Las Vegas. Yesterday, the sheriff had asked a lot of questions I just didn’t have answers for, and a few I did, but didn’t want to tell him. I hated withholding information from him like that. But if I told him everything, it would put his life and his family’s lives at risk, and I didn’t want to do that.

  In the end, after officially interviewing both me and Annie, the sheriff was calling what happened up at R.A.’s ranch a murder and then accident. Since R.A. was dead, the sheriff ended up releasing the men he had captured around the cabin, but the men who Nyland had hired were going to do time on attempted kidnapping charges.

  Everyone just sort of ignored all the tapes we had made, and Fleet was going to have Mike just destroy them.

  Mike and his men had gotten us all back to Las Vegas safely on our company plane. Ace, Fleet, my mother, and I were now back in Carson’s house and settling in.

  After getting back to Vegas, Annie had gone back to her place to change clothes, then had come over, bringing a couple of giant pizzas for all of us. Mike’s people were guarding her the entire way. I knew that as long as she was hanging around me, helping me, she was putting herself more and more in danger. She clearly knew it as well and hadn’t complained about Mike’s men tailing her once since we got back.

  After dinner, my mother and Ace had both decided to call it an early night and were in their rooms. I was glad they were, actually. The longer I kept the anger bottled up inside me about not telling me the truth as an adult, the less I trusted myself to be around them. At some point, it was all going to come out. But Steven needed to be stopped first.

  Annie and Fleet and I were settled into the living room, me on the big couch with my feet up on the coffee table, her with her feet tucked up underneath her in a big recliner, Fleet stretched out on the second couch.

  If we didn’t make this conversation real interesting very quickly, he would be snoring. He looked just about as tired as I had ever seen my partner look.

  “So,” she said, “what are we going to do now?”

  “See if we can come up with a plan to get Steven before he figures out a way to get to me. He wants to play this game and I’ve just never been much good as a defensive player.”

  “That’s a big well-duh,” Fleet said.

  “I like your style,” Annie said, laughing. “Any ideas as to what to do first?”

  I told them my hunch about Steven working for the President, something I couldn’t tell her with all the recording devices getting every detail at R.A.’s cabin. I told her about the Special Forces man the sheriff and I had run into on the trail.

  “You’re kidding?” Fleet said, sitting up and staring at me. So much for his napping anytime soon. “The President wouldn’t be able to order in men like that.”

  “Not kidding,” I said. “And who knows exactly what a President can do and can’t do these days. He said he was Special Forces. Night scope and the most silent person I have ever met. He was behind us and until he spoke, I didn’t know it.”

  “Trained,” Annie said, nodding.

  “Really well,” I said. “We didn’t see him or any others after that, so neither the sheriff or I mentioned it to anyone.”

  “You think Nyland was dead before he left that trail?” Annie asked.

  “Convinced of it,” I said.

  “Oh, great,” Fleet said, sitting back and shaking his head.

  “Steven would kill his own father?” Annie asked, seemingly stunned at the idea.

  “I’m not sure Steven was a part of that decision,” I said.

  “The president?” Annie asked in almost a whisper.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But to be honest, I don’t know for sure. There is so much we don’t know about Steven. Those Special Forces may have just been some of his old army buddies up there helping him out for all we know. And he may be in on this alone.”

  “But you don’t think so, do you?” Annie asked.

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “The President and his chief of staff have everything to lose if this got out. Steven has everything to gain by working with them.”

  “Or with the President’s loyal opposition,” Fleet said.

  “But if he gets Carson’s key, he will only have seven keys without the two in the White House,” Annie said. “That still doesn’t seem to be enough.”

  “It is,” Fleet said.

  “How?” Annie asked.

  I stared at Fleet. Somehow he must have already known that fact. “He’s right, it is. I talked to Mike, showed him Carson’s key, told him it was from the early eighties to a long-term bank box, and it was one in a series of nine. Then I asked him how many keys it would take to open the box. He said seven.”

  “How?” Annie asked.

  “Keys back then were made in a sequence,” Fleet said. “If the numbers of the sequence are clear, as they are in this case, it’s easy to make two replacement keys that can fill the empty sequence spots to open the box.”

  I nodded. “I’m sure the President knows that as well.”

  “Oh,” was all Annie said. “Then why didn’t Steven take your key when he had the chance?”

  “Because he didn’t want the game to be over,” I said. “So far, it’s been frighteningly easy for him to get the six keys he has. He considers himself far superior to anyone he’s dealing with. I know the kind. The winning isn’t important to them.”

  “Okay, that lost me,” Fleet said.

  “Compulsive gamblers don’t care about winning or losing,” Annie said. “They just crave the action.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “And you’re the only challenge he’s had, right?” Fleet asked.

  “Right again,” I said.

  “So what first?” Annie asked. “How do we bring this guy out to play?”

  “Learn everything we can about the other player,” I said. “Standard poker thinking. We need to know what he’s going to do, how he’s going to act before he does. Think you can help with that?”

  Annie nodded. “I think I’ve got an entire city police force that would like to capture this scum. I’ll get them started digging.”

  “And in the meantime,” I said, smiling at her, “I’m wondering if we can get our dear FBI friend searching as well, without tipping our hand. I’m meeting with her to see if she really knows what’s happening. I have a hunch she doesn’t.”

  Annie suddenly looked worried. “You really shouldn’t meet with her without me in the room, and a few of Mike’s men around as well. More than likely she’s reporting directly to the President and who knows, she could be working with Steven.”

  I smiled at her. “I’m meeting her in the restaurant at the Bellagio. Mike and three of his men will
be there, keeping an eye on me. I already have it set up with Mike, and he’s making sure the Bellagio security team is in on it as well.”

  “Good,” Annie said. Then she got a distant look. “I have a nasty idea.”

  “I like nasty,” I said, smiling at her.

  “Do I need to leave the room?” Fleet asked.

  Her face turned slightly red, but besides that, she ignored both of us.

  “How about you give your FBI friend a little piece of false information to give to the President? A little bait. See if it brings our friend Steven out of the wilderness. That way we’ll know exactly who’s working for whom.”

  “Oh, I like the way you think,” I said.

  Two hours later, we had a plan set to lure Steven out into the open, if he was attached to the President in any fashion.

  A perfect trap.

  As a poker player, I had set a lot of them over the years.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Las Vegas, Nevada. August 31

  FBI AGENT HEATHER VOIGHT sat in the back of the limousine on the tarmac of the Las Vegas airport, waiting for Paul to come out of the plane and cross the thirty paces of hot asphalt to the air-conditioned coolness of the car. At three in the afternoon, it was over a hundred and twenty degrees on that surface. It was amazing anyone could work out in those conditions.

  Over the past two hours, since her lunch with Doc Hill, she had just twisted over and over in her mind what she knew and what he had told her. He had finally explained to her that the keys Verne Adkins had mentioned were to a safe-deposit box that held evidence to an old murder, part of a very old cover-up that was coming unraveled.

  Someone who was after the keys was killing people to get them.

  That all made sense to her, especially when he told her that the information in the box would expose a number of high-ranking people. He would not say who. But he did say his father had a key and that he now had it in safekeeping.

  In Washington, the high-ranking people he mentioned could be anyone. She just hoped it wasn’t the President. She liked him, thought he was doing the country a good job, at least in his first year. She didn’t know what she would do if she found out it was him. She’d cross that bridge when she came to it.

  Doc Hill had also told her that while up in Idaho, he had learned from R.A. that he had made copies of some of the stuff before it was put into the box back in 1982. Tonight, Doc and Detective Lott were going to get it from a secret wall safe in R.A.’s Las Vegas home.

  “Why are you telling me this?” she had asked.

  “Because I want your help in protecting us,” Doc Hill had said. “I’ve got my people, but they are not at your level of expertise. And I’m telling a lot of people about R.A.’s wall safe in hopes that somehow the person behind all this will show his hand. If we have the items from R.A.’s wall safe, then the keys to the box are mostly redundant and depending on what’s in that safe, could quickly become worthless.”

  “A trap?” she had said.

  “Exactly,” Doc had said.

  She had no doubt she was part of the trap. She just wasn’t sure how just yet. So she had agreed to be there as well with agents in conjunction with the Las Vegas police, protecting the outside of R.A.’s house while they were inside.

  “It may take a while inside,” Doc had told her. “I didn’t get the safe combination, and his wife didn’t even know the safe existed. So we have a professional safe person to help us get it open, all under an official warrant, of course.”

  Now, two hours later, some of the conversation still made no sense to her. But it had been given to her with the clear intention she would pass it on, and that was exactly what she intended to do.

  She watched through the tinted windows as Paul came down the stairs of the plane and moved quickly across the hot pavement. He had on his normal suit and tie, and even in the heat looked good. She wasn’t sure why she was attracted so much to an older man who didn’t seem to exist outside of a coat and tie, but she was. There was just something about him that she had to admit she loved.

  Paul climbed in beside her with a blast of hot air, closed the door, then gave her a quick kiss, far quicker than she would have expected considering how long it had been since they had seen each other. He was clearly all business at the moment. With luck, there would be more kissing and other exercises later.

  “What’s the status?” Paul asked. “Did you learn anything from Doc Hill?”

  “Actually, a lot,” she said. She told him about the keys and the reason for their existence.

  “I knew about the keys and why they existed,” Paul said. “Did Mr. Hill say who the people in power were that the information threatened?”

  “No,” she said. “So that’s why I’m on this in the first place, isn’t it? Not just the President’s friendship with Carson Hill.”

  “Both,” Paul said. “We needed you here, close to everything to keep us informed as to what was happening. We couldn’t do it ourselves, and we couldn’t do it through completely official channels. Just too many questions.”

  She understood that.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “Tonight, Doc Hill and the Las Vegas police department are opening a wall safe in R.A. Scott’s home that has some copies of the items that are in the safe-deposit box. R.A. Scott supposedly made some copies of things before it was all put into the safe-deposit box. Doc Hill asked me to use my people to help guard the building while the Las Vegas police cracked the safe. I agreed.”

  Beside her on the seat, Paul had gone white and looked like he might throw up at any moment.

  “Excuse me,” he said, opening the door to the car. “I forgot something on the plane.”

  She watched him walk like a man being chased across the hot asphalt. He almost ran up the stairs onto the plane.

  Now it was all clear.

  Paul and the President were involved in the crime and the cover-up in some fashion. She now had no doubt. Doc Hill had used her like a paid messenger to get just exactly the information he wanted to get to the President.

  But now she didn’t know what to do.

  Or for that matter, if she could, or should, do anything at all.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  Las Vegas, Nevada. August 31

  STEVEN EASED HIS M21 sniper rifle over the edge of the back parapet wall of the Safeway building. From there he could see through some tall, thin trees and down the road toward R.A. Scott’s Las Vegas home.

  Steven was dressed in complete black, and had a night scope on the rifle.

  It was just before eleven in the evening. The sun was long gone, and the only lights behind him were from the parking lot and the business signs and cars on the road. From the air, he would blend in perfectly with the black roof, but he didn’t expect the police or FBI to have anyone in the air.

  He studied the M21, the feel of it comforting in his hands. He knew the rifle better than anything in the world. He practiced with it almost every day when he was home. While in prison, he had missed it more than anything. It was nice he was getting a chance to use it in this game.

  The rifle rested perfectly on the concrete edge of the roof. Through the scope, he looked for his target between the trees behind the store. There was an older subdivision street back there, the entrance on a side street. It was a very private area of expensive homes, tucked in away from all the tourists.

  Paul Hanson, Chief of Staff to the President of the United States, came clearly into Steven’s view in the scope, sitting in the front seat of a rented sedan a block to the west of R.A. Scott’s house. No doubt there was a Secret Service agent in the back seat, and FBI all over that neighborhood. Paul was sitting next to one FBI agent, more than likely his girlfriend. She was going to be in for a shock very shortly.

  He laughed again to himself. They were so focused on someone coming into the area, trying to get into the house, that it hadn’t occurred to them that the threat might come from outside.

&nb
sp; Idiots.

  Steven laughed again and had to pull back from the edge of the roof to get himself to settle down. Didn’t these people know that he held all the chips, controlled the game like they were puppets?

  The phone call from the President earlier had been so pathetic. “Rescue me, help me, save my poor do-nothing career. Get the documents from R.A. Scott’s house before anyone else did.”

  The man was an idiot. How the hell he had ever become President was beyond reason. Steven hadn’t even been at the original poker game where his father and others killed a cheater. But he knew, without a doubt, that the only real, hard evidence about what happened that night in 1982 was in that safe-deposit box in Seattle that could only be opened with nine keys.

  His father had said that nothing else could have been outside the box, that he had been with the evidence the entire time after the murder. He had made certain of that.

  But, of course, Steven’s father had been controlling that night, just like he had tried to control everything in Steven’s life. And Steven had believed his father when he told him because he’d had no reason at all to lie.

  On the other hand, Dolan Chase and Paul Hanson were being shoved around that fateful night, having a very bad experience, their families threatened by Steven’s father. It wasn’t a surprise that twenty-seven years later, they bought in to this stupid trap.

  And more than likely, this had all been set up by Doc Hill. It was his style of play, just as he had trapped Steven’s father in that last hand of poker.

  Doc Hill was the only opponent worth going up against in this game. He had let Doc keep his father’s key for that very reason, to keep Doc clearly in the game. And as soon as tonight was over, Doc would be Steven’s next challenge.

  He was so looking forward to it.

  But first Doc needed a lesson. Right now, Steven was going to do what poker players called “advertising.”