Stacked Deck

When she stopped rolling, she pushed herself up and started running. Glancing back as she ran, she saw Curtis get out of the car, still exchanging gunfire. He was trying to get away, but then he fell, face first onto the pavement.

A sickening feeling clenched her stomach.

Two men came after her, scampering down the hill, fanning out. Then she spotted a third running down the road.

The money was in the car. Why were they after her? Did they think she had the money in her shoulder bag?

Then the frightening thought raced into her mind that it wasn’t the money. It was her they were after.

They wanted to kill her.

The houses along the hill were in uneven rows and the men were trying to cut off her escape routes.

She darted into what looked like a narrow lane between two large buildings, only to find that it was an alley that had been dead-ended by a high wall connecting the structures.

Trapped.

She turned and retreated the way she’d come in, but then heard someone running. Frantically she looked for a place to hide and found nothing. She tried a door but it was locked.

Everything slowed to a near halt. She felt the pulsing of her blood through her veins, the intense weight of the air, the granulated texture of the wall her hand brushed against, the push of the stones beneath the feet.

Her gut became a knot of cold, sickening fear.

In panic and desperation, Beth snatched up a large rock and waited at the entrance of the narrow alley.

It wasn’t in her nature to die passively, trapped like a rabbit. Her reflexes and reactions had been honed in the tough backstreets of Vegas as the daughter of a down-and-out gambler, and later she’d been trained as a teen in martial arts and survival combat tactics at the Athena Academy.

She heard the gunman before she saw him, his breathing heavy, footsteps crunching gravel as he rounded the corner.

Beth crouched in the blackness, coiled tight as a cobra. She struck, driving up and swinging the rock with everything she had.

Startled, he had no defense other than to raise his hands a split second too late to shield his face.

The rock met skin, bone, teeth and nose with a sickening thud. Blood sprayed across her pink T-shirt, her neck and arms. The man went down hard and stayed there.

She yanked his weapon from his hand, then racked it to make sure a round was chambered as she ran. Curtis had trained her at a firing range, but firing at targets was one thing, firing at people, another. She’d never shot at someone before, but had often wondered what it would be like because she knew one day, when she caught up with the man she was hunting, it just might come to that. Would she hesitate, and because of that, be the one to end up dead? Curtis’s words echoed in her mind: When it’s your life, you will fire.

Her peripheral vision picked up a second man coming toward her twenty yards away.

Without hesitation, she took aim and fired right at him. The gun didn’t buck much. The silencer seemed to barely make any sound. But it was effective.

Her pursuer vanished around the corner of a garage behind one of the tract homes and in that instant she knew the exhilarating power of a gun in all its deadly reality.

Beth darted in the opposite direction, cutting down a narrow path.

She caught a view of the third man as he tracked her from one street over, a blip of movement in the dark, sliding fast on her right as he tried to cut off her downhill escape.

She charged through one open backyard gate, then another, past a startled woman and her small white dogs barking with tiny fury in her wake.

Her pursuer cut across below her.

She tried to find another route, but already he was rising over a wall that separated two houses, the man moving with the agility of a gymnast.

She fired. He twisted awkwardly, landed with a yelp and she didn’t know if she’d hit him, or if he’d twisted an ankle. She didn’t hang around to find out.

In that instant she thought she understood something about soldiers in combat. Bone-chilling fear can paralyze if you don’t squash it quickly.

Sprinting toward another street that bled down the mountain, she came upon a young guy straddling a blue motorcycle, the engine rumbling as he talked to a girl on the curb.

They both glanced at Beth as she ran toward them, utterly unaware of the chaotic battle that had unfolded up the hill.

“I need your bike,” Beth said. She’d dated an air force pilot on and off for two years and he’d introduced her to motorcycles. She’d owned a much beloved Harley for a while, but an accident and the increase in traffic had changed her mind about the joys of motorcycle riding in Vegas.

Maybe he didn’t see the gun, didn’t believe it, but in any case he told her to fuck off.

She was fully in the persona of the tough Vegas kid she’d once been. And her life was at stake. Beth pushed the astonished girl aside, and leveled the semiautomatic at the motorcyclist. “I said I need your motorcycle.”

“Ron, get the hell off and give it to her,” the girl said. “She’s fucking crazy.”

He abandoned his machine, hands up. “It’s all yours. Don’t shoot me.”

Beth said, “You have a cell phone?”

He nodded.

“Then call the police and tell them somebody has been shot up on Peaceful Lane. Send an ambulance. Tell them there are three men with guns running around up there. I’ll call in the location of your motorcycle in an hour. Sorry, but I have to get out of here.”

She mounted the bike, heeled the kick stand and roared off into the Vegas night.

As she drove, the wind brushing across her face and the rumble of the engine on her legs, she tried to push the shock of what had just happened out of her mind so she could keep her focus on her driving. But the image of Curtis hitting the pavement, and not knowing if he was alive or dead, made her sick with apprehension.

Beth blew through traffic on Nellis Boulevard until she felt she was well away from trouble. Then she pulled into a strip mall and dialed 911 on her cell, just in case the couple freaked and didn’t call the police. “There’s been a shooting up on Peaceful Lane. A man’s wounded or he may be dead.”

She hung up before they could ask her anything. Then, trembling from all the madness, she called a detective. She knew most of the detectives in Vegas, but only trusted one man. He was the detective who had investigated her father’s death and had never really let it get tossed into the cold case file. His voice was soothing in her ear.

“Detective Ayers? This is Bethany James.”

“Hey, Beth what’s up?”

She struggled not to sound hysterical as she told him what happened.

“Beth, where are you?”

“I borrowed a motorcycle from some guy to get away. He didn’t volunteer it exactly. I’ll call you later and tell you where it is. I can’t explain anything right now. But my bodyguard was hit, Curtis Sault. I want to know how he is. Call me when you know something. I need to lay low until I find out who is trying to kill me.”

“Beth, I need you to—”

Beth hung up. She didn’t want to get involved with the police. Not until she had things figured out. She sat there thinking for a minute, staring at the flood of traffic on Nellis. Suddenly she knew what she was going to do. Get out of town, go to Virginia and straighten things out with Oracle even if that meant severing ties. Then she would come back here and deal with this.