Sleepless in Las Vegas

A horn honked, jerking Val out of her reverie. Sheepishly, she realized the light had turned green.

Another honk.

“Hold your britches, bubba,” she muttered, stepping on the gas and turning down Charleston Boulevard.

Time to call Marta with a final update. After a quick check to verify no cops were around—Nevada might have legalized prostitution and gambling, but drivers could get hefty fines for handheld cell phones—she punched in Marta’s number.

“It done?” No hello.

“Yes.”

“Where is he?”

“I left him in the parking lot at Dino’s.”

“When?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes ago.”

“So that be...quarter to ten.”

“Sounds about right.”

“He go inside Dino’s? Or to Topaz?”

Who cares where he went afterward? “I don’t know,” she said absently. “Listen, Marta, I have something to tell you.”

This next part was going to be tough for her client to hear, even if she had been anticipating it.

“The honey trap,” she said gently, “confirmed your intuitions, Marta.”

Silence. No tears. No rants. Just...silence. Poor girl. Probably numb with hurt.

“What is this intoshuns?” Marta snapped.

Her tone took Val by surprise. “Intuitions...uh, they’re your suspicions. Inklings. Doubts.”

“Too many words. I ask for information, not words.”

Like one wasn’t the other. “He kissed me.” Well, almost, but close enough. “He cheats. So don’t marry the man.” So much for the sensitive approach.

After a beat, Marta muttered. “He like that.”

He like that. What was that supposed to mean? He likes fooling around with women he doesn’t know?

Val felt an ugly zap of the green monster.

Oh, no. She refused to get jealous over the guy. This had been a job, one she had been paid well to do. Didn’t matter what he liked or didn’t like, he was a notch in Val’s investigative career belt, nothing more.

“I’ll send you a report when I get home,” she said tightly.

“No report. This between you and me.”

“Fine.” Like she wanted to rehash all the smarmy details anyway.

“I want you go back to bar.”

“When pigs fly.”

“What?”

“I fulfilled the job request, Marta. The work is done. Completed. Finis.”

“So many words again.”

“Then let me give you just one. No. I am not going back to that bar.”

“Please, Val,” she said, her mood shifting from cold to needy. “I must know if he still there.”

“What does it matter? He kissed me!” Kinda. “That’s what you wanted to know!”

“Yes, kiss. Good. Still...must know if he—”

“Call the bar and ask.”

“No. Want you to—”

“Call his cell, then.”

“I don’t have— Why not you go? It your job! Val, please—”

“Job is over. Terminated. Wrapped up.” She tried to think of even more words, but those would do. “Goodbye.”

She ended the call and tossed the phone onto the seat next to her, then frowned. Why hadn’t Marta cared about that kiss?

Hardly the reaction of a woman whose heart had been broken. She had been teary talking about her suspected philandering fiancé in the office this afternoon, but the only thing Marta seemed upset about tonight—besides Val’s vocabulary—was her not going back to check on Drake’s whereabouts.

Something else bothered Val about that conversation. Couldn’t put her finger on it...something Marta had said. Or didn’t finish saying. When Val told her to call Drake’s cell, she had said something like I don’t have...

She didn’t have what?

The nerve to call him?

The time to make such a call?

Val’s stomach growled. Spying one of her favorite fast-food pit stops, Aloha Kitchen, she decided to pull over. Time to put the crazy case behind her. Maybe she didn’t understand the conclusion, maybe she never would, but some things were best left in the shadows.

* * *

DRAKE DROVE HIS pickup along Las Vegas Boulevard. Warm breezes rushed through his open driver’s window, almost drying the sweat on his skin. Far off, a siren wailed, peppered with a variety of horn blasts. Ambulance and a fire engine? Maybe a police unit or two thrown in for good measure.

At a red light, he glanced at his phone, which he always set on his thigh when he drove, and checked the time. A few minutes after ten. He’d be home in twenty minutes, fifteen if traffic picked up. He’d piled plenty of food into Hearsay’s bowl, so his dog wouldn’t be hungry. After a short walk around the block, Drake would be in bed by eleven. If he was lucky and fell asleep right away, he’d get three hours before his early-morning surveillance.

Hadn’t been that lucky lately, though. At least he put his insomnia to good use. Was halfway through Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer, which made him wish he had someone to drive him around while he caught up on his paperwork and made calls. Not a partner, just a grunt with a driver’s license.

He hadn’t seen Brax’s Porsche or Yuri’s Benz when he’d walked through the Topaz lot, not a big surprise as Sally said she typically saw the cars in the wee hours. He hadn’t been in the mood to go inside Topaz. Same shift, same nonanswers. Nothing like wasting time trying to convince people to talk who didn’t want to talk.

He passed Bonanza Gifts, its parking-lot-wide marquee advertising itself to be the world’s largest gift shop. More like the world’s largest tacky emporium, but it had been one of his favorite hangouts as a kid.

He remembered a long-ago birthday gift, a dice clock, he’d bought for his dad there. Each hour had glued-on dice, their dots representing that number. “Snake eyes” for two o’clock, “little Joe” for four, “six five, no jive” for eleven. Over his mom’s protests, his dad had proudly hung it in the living room, over the TV. After a while, he and his dad started telling time by dice slang. “Billy’s coming over at Nina from Pasadena” meant Billy would arrive at nine. “He wants you to call at puppy paws” meant call him at ten.

Years later, after the old man died, Drake asked for the clock, but his mom refused, playing on dice slang by answering, “Six five, no jive.”

His dad would have gotten a kick out of that.

He blinked at the streams of red lights ahead, swallowed feelings he didn’t want to recognize.

Damn it to hell. He wished he had never met Val, if that was even her name. Wished he’d never heard about those damn pulsations. Like his dad would send such a message through a total stranger, especially one dressed as though she shopped at Army Surplus for Hookers.

Whatever her scheme, he was one up on it. When she pulled out her cell, he’d memorized the caller ID. He’d run it through some proprietary databases and by the time his head hit the pillow he’d know more about Miss Who Dat than her own mama ever did.

The phone vibrated against his thigh. He checked the caller ID. Las Vegas area code, but he didn’t recognize the number. Without moving the phone, he punched Answer, then Speaker.

“Morgan Investigations,” he answered, raising his voice to be heard.

“Drake Morgan?” A woman’s voice.

“Yes.”

“Sir, I’m a dispatcher, Clark County emergency call center, and are you the Drake Morgan who resides at...”

As the dispatcher recited his address, the hairs bristled on the back of his neck. “That’s correct.”

“I don’t want to alarm you, but I need to advise that your home is being worked on by several Clark County fire units—”

“Are you saying...my house is on fire?”

“Yes, sir—”

Adrenaline jacked his pulse. “I’m on my way.”

“The firefighters are doing their best, and what they need most is for you to remain calm when you arrive—”

“My dog is inside!”

“Anyone else?”

“No.” He gripped the wheel with shaking hands. “My dog likes to sleep under the kitchen table!”

Spring Mountain Road, the main artery to his street, was ahead. As he shifted to check traffic, the phone slipped and clattered onto the floorboard.

“Look under the kitchen table!” he yelled, flipping the turn signal. “I’m on my way there!”

Pumping the horn, he shot through an opening in traffic, straight through to the far lane. A horn blasted. He jerked the wheel left, barely missing an Audi wagon, before he wrestled a turn onto Spring Mountain.

“Check the kitchen,” he shouted again, jamming his foot on the gas pedal, “under the table!”

* * *

TEN OR SO minutes later—although it felt like hours, a lifetime—he slammed the pickup to a stop across the street from his house, his stomach lurching as he saw the gray-white smoke billowing to the sky, its core pulsing orange and red. Monstrous flames shot twenty, thirty feet from the roof. The wooden structure resembled an oversize pile of kindling.

Jumping out, he jogged across the street and around one of several fire trucks. Three or four police officers stood on the periphery of the property, keeping neighbors at bay. Several firefighters handled a hose, pointing its gushing stream of water at the flames. Others worked another hose, aimed at the roof of the neighboring house.

He headed up the driveway.

“Hey, buddy, you can’t go in there!”

“Chuck, stop that guy!”

A firefighter, his mask pulled off his face, blocked Drake’s path.

“My dog’s in there, damn it!” He tried to shove past, eyeing the crackling flames that licked at the side of the house. His office.

“Stop!” A second firefighter, his face gleaming with sweat, grabbed Drake’s arm. “Calm down or I’ll call those cops over to drag your butt to jail.”

The heat radiating off the fire was intense. Sucking in a breath that tasted like soot, Drake glanced at the name on the firefighter’s helmet. “Captain Dietrich, I’m Drake Morgan and I live here. My dog’s inside.”

“I know. Heard it from dispatch.” He looked over his shoulder and yelled, “I said, step on it!” Turning to Drake, he continued, “Sorry, but I can’t have you doing something stupid like trying to go inside. We got enough on our hands fighting the fire, looking for the dog. Can’t be trying to save you, too.”

“I won’t fight you.” Drake swiped at his brow. “My dog—”

“Two guys made an attempt to go inside, but I had to pull them back after a wall collapsed.”

His heart jammed in his throat. “Where?”

Dietrich jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “East side of house. Looked like an office. According to neighbors, that’s where the house first exploded in flames. Did you store flammable chemicals, other petroleum distillates, there or anywhere else?”

“Absolutely not.” A small relief sifted through Drake’s fear. The office was the farthest from the kitchen. “I think my dog is in the kitchen.”

“Where is it?”

“Back northwest corner.”

Dietrich stared at the front door, smoke swirling out the opening.

“It’s a clear shot,” Drake said, “thirty feet diagonal, from the door. Table is against the west wall. Hearsay—that’s his name—likes to lie under it.”

Dietrich pointed at Chuck. “Got that? Back northwest corner? Look under kitchen table for the dog. You and Ross are going in.”

Chuck pulled up his mask as Dietrich strode to a truck, gesturing and talking to several firefighters.

Drake watched Chuck and Ross, air tanks strapped to their backs, enter and disappear into the smoke.

“Hang in there, buddy,” he said under his breath, “they’re almost there.”

When the mutt—who looked to be part whippet, part retriever—showed up at Drake’s house a year ago, he’d ignored it, figuring it would meander back home. Instead it hung out in his yard like a lonesome guy in a bar who had nowhere to go after last call.

The next day, he’d grudgingly put out a bowl of water, some leftover meat loaf. It was cool enough in April that he didn’t worry about the mutt hanging around outside, figuring he’d soon go back to wherever he belonged.

Within the week, Drake was lugging home dog food. Mutt sniffed it, turned away. Wanted meat loaf.

Drake’s gut clenched as a front window exploded, glass shattering. Gray smoke streamed out the window, curling furiously over the roof as flames lashed through the opening.

He tried to still his thoughts, told himself that the worst of the fire was in his bedroom and office, was traveling only now into the living room...hadn’t yet reached the kitchen.

“Mr. Morgan?”

He turned. An elderly woman, who he vaguely recalled lived several houses down, stood hunched in her chenille robe.

“I’m so sorry.” In the flickering light of the fire, her milky blue eyes brimmed with emotion. She clutched his hand and squeezed it. “Oh, your sweet little dog...”

He couldn’t deal with this.

Clamping his mouth shut, he looked at the fiery hell, grinding his teeth until his jaw ached, willing God or whoever was in charge to hear him out. Take it all. Destroy everything I own. But please, spare one small heart...

In the doorway, a form materialized in the whirling smoke. A firefighter emerged, cradling a limp form in his arms.

CHAPTER FOUR

AS THE FIREFIGHTER laid the limp dog onto a cleared area of the yard, Dietrich ran over, carrying an oxygen tank.

Drake stumbled forward and dropped to his knees next to Hearsay. The dog lay on his side, unmoving, eyes closed.

Tugging off his own mask, Chuck knelt across from Drake. Dietrich, positioned at the dog’s head, strapped a small plastic mask over the dog’s muzzle.

Dietrich jabbed his chin at Chuck. “Turn it up.”

Chuck adjusted the nozzle on the tank, then pressed two fingers against the dog’s throat. He held it there, a studious look on his sweat-slicked face, before giving his head a small shake.

The two firefighters exchanged a look.

Which Drake caught. His insides constricted into a tight ball of hurt and rage.

He refused to believe it.

Not his dog. Not Hearsay.

He would find the bastard who did this, make him pay. After Drake was through with him, he would wish he had died a slow, agonizing death in this fire instead.

The crackling of the flames, movements of people and machinery, even the fierce heat shrank into the background as Drake stroked Hearsay, still soft and warm, willing his life force to not seep away.

Please. Spare him.

“Come on, buddy,” he whispered, his voice strained, “you can make it.”

Dietrich, his face grim, peered intently into the dog’s face.

Chuck lightly shook the dog’s shoulder. “Stay with us, boy.”

Drake ran his hand down the dog’s side, stopping when his fingers grazed stiff, charred hair.

“Looks to be only the fur,” Dietrich said, “nothing deeper. Bigger problem is how much smoke this little guy took in.” He lightly brushed some soot from Hearsay’s nostrils.

“I heard whimpering as I approached the kitchen,” Chuck said. “He hasn’t been out long.”

Drake leaned closer. “Stay,” he whispered hoarsely, every fiber of his being commanding it to be so. He swiped at the tears coursing down his face, not giving a damn who saw. “I need you, buddy.”

A crackling crash. On the west side of the house, flames blew out the shattered kitchen window.

“Got a pulse,” Chuck said.

Drake stared at the dog’s chest, catching an almost imperceptible movement. “He’s breathing!”

The men stared at another rise and fall of the chest...and another...

“Keep at it, boy,” Dietrich coached, “you’re almost there.”

Three grown men on their knees cried and whooped as Hearsay’s eyelids fluttered opened.

Dietrich grinned at the dog, his teeth white in a face streaked with soot. “You’re one tough bastard, Hearsay.”

Blinking, the dog looked around, his gaze settling on Drake.

In that moment, he met God.

“Welcome back, buddy,” he murmured.

After a few minutes, Chuck slipped the oxygen mask over the dog’s head. “There’s an all-night emergency vet hospital near here—”

“I know where it is.” Drake stroked Hearsay’s head.

“Take him there right now, have him checked over. He’s alert, breathing on his own, but the little guy took in a lot of smoke. He’s gonna need medicine to prevent lung issues later.”

“I will.” He looked over at Dietrich, who had moved away and was yammering orders to several firefighters. “I never got to thank him.”

“Captain lost his own dog a few months ago,” Chuck said. “Saving yours helped him, you know? Helped all of us. It’s an honor to save a life.” He put his hands underneath the dog. “Let’s get him up.”

Together, they lifted the dog.

Cradling Hearsay in his arms, Drake walked down the driveway. As he passed through clusters of neighbors, people touched his back, murmured words of encouragement. He held Hearsay close, knowing there were difficult, frustrating days ahead, but at the moment, nothing mattered but the life in his arms.

At the pickup, he opened the passenger door. Cuddling Hearsay close in one arm, he lifted the jacket lying neatly on the seat with his free hand. Then paused. The vinyl seating was old, ripped. A jacket would provide some cushioning.

Carefully, he laid Hearsay on the jacket, which still carried lingering scents of his dad’s Old Spice cologne and love of cigars. His old man would have approved. He liked the material things like anybody else, but nothing—not even a jacket that had cost him a month’s pay—was more important than family.

“Mr. Morgan?”

He double-checked to make sure Hearsay was comfortable, then turned. A streetlight highlighted a stocky man dressed in pants and a sports shirt.

“I’m Tony Cordova, arson investigator for this district.”

Drake guessed his raspy voice was from years of smoking, inhaling smoke or both.

“Like to ask you some questions,” Tony said.

“Later.” He carefully closed the passenger door, which shut with a solid click. “Need to take my dog to the vet hospital.”

“Saw the firefighters bring him around. Glad the tyke’s okay.” He followed Drake as he walked to the driver’s door. “You’re a private investigator, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Then you understand the importance of my asking questions right now.”

“I understand.” He yanked open the door. With any crime, the faster you gathered data, the faster you were on the trail. “But as I said, I’m on my way to the hospital.”

“Was anyone else in your house when you left tonight?”

“I already told dispatch there was no one.”

“Did you accidentally leave the stove on? Any faulty electrical apparatus that you were aware of?”

Drake climbed in, slammed the door and glared at him through the open window. “Tony—that’s your name, right?—I promise to cooperate with your investigation, but now is not the time.” He held out his hand. “Give me your card, I’ll call you.”

Tony handed over a card. “Are you aware of anyone who might wish to harm you?”

“No.”

After checking Hearsay one more time, he shoved the key into the ignition. As Drake drove off, he heard Tony yell something about calling tomorrow.

Heading down the road, he called the vet hospital and made arrangements for Hearsay’s emergency care. Afterward, one hand resting on his dog, reassured by the steady rise and fall of his pet’s chest, he thought about the lie he had told to the arson investigator. No, he didn’t know anyone who wished to harm him.

It wasn’t so much that Yuri wanted to harm him—more like he wanted to leave his calling card, a violent, fiery one meant to intimidate. Which told him the Russian knew Drake had been tailing him.

How? He had taken extra care to park his pickup in secluded areas, always used covert and long-range cameras. In the nearly six years he’d been a P.I., only once had he been caught surveilling someone, but not because he got sloppy. In that case, his client, during a phone call yelling match with his almost ex-wife, had informed her he’d hired a P.I. to surveil her that very day. After that, Drake had never shared his investigation schedule with clients.

No, Yuri must have heard from one of the employees at Topaz that Drake was sniffing around the club, asking too many questions. If Yuri had nothing to hide, he wouldn’t have cared.

But his savage reaction showed the depth of his paranoia. He was afraid Drake might have documented something incriminating. Something the police would find of interest.

Drake had a good idea what had happened tonight. Before setting the fire, Yuri, and probably one or two of his boys, had ransacked the office, snatching cameras, the laptop, recorders. Hearsay, hackles bristling, had barked at the intruders. But it hadn’t taken long for the dog’s street smarts to kick in, sense that retreat meant survival, so he’d withdrawn to his spot under the kitchen table.

The men hadn’t bothered with the dog after that—they had work to do.

Yuri and his stupid cretins. No concept that images could be saved in places other than physical devices. Idiots probably thought “the cloud” was something in the sky, not a remote storage option.

After gathering equipment, they’d drenched his office in gasoline. Considering how rapidly the fire spread through that part of the house, they must have also splashed gasoline down the hall and into the bedroom, too. Then torched the place.

With the dog still inside.

His fingers dug into the steering wheel. That son of a bitch would pay dearly for what he did tonight. And Drake would do it personally, not hand over the meting of justice to some arson investigator.

Sure, he could have leaked Yuri’s name to Tony Cordova, who would have tracked the bastard down tonight for an interview. The Russian would have had an alibi, of course, along with a string of witnesses who’d back up his story. Plus, with Drake siccing government dogs on him, Yuri would go into hiding, and Drake’s personal investigation would grind to a halt. Any hopes of digging for more dirt, or ever getting back the ring, would be crushed.

Then there was Brax.

His brother felt above the law, but arson? He wasn’t that dirty. But if Drake offered up Yuri to arson investigators, trails could lead to his brother. And if they didn’t, Yuri would ensure sure they did.

A form materialized in Drake’s mind. That woman. Who Dat. Had she been a player in this arson? Paid to keep Drake busy, give Yuri and his goons time to do their job? His gut said yes. Just like the Mississippi River that ran through her city of New Orleans, she was twisting, swift and treacherous.

She had never been to Dino’s, a dive bar in a lousy neighborhood, yet she showed up tonight, out of the blue. Made a straight line for him, too, and even after he’d shunned her, she didn’t budge. Stayed perched on that stool like some kind of tufted bird of prey, waiting for an opportunity to sink in her talons.

He’d walked out of that bar knowing she was trouble, but had given in to the night, the heat.

He clenched his teeth. And for those few hot, heady minutes, his home had been destroyed. Hearsay nearly killed.

Just as Yuri would pay for what he had done tonight, so would she.

By morning, he would know her name, age, address, where she hung out, where she worked. And he would pay her a visit.

The kind of visit a person remembered for the rest of her life.

* * *

AT TEN-FORTY, Val walked through the door of her second cousins’ Char and Del Jackson’s home, carrying a paper bag from Aloha Kitchen.

Their home was a hodgepodge of secondhand furniture, along with some everyday objects Char, with Del’s handyman help, had remade into furnishings. Stacked crates had become a bookcase in the living room, and a polished wooden wire spool now served as a small table on the patio. Val’s favorite was an old trunk they had recycled into a wine rack. “It’s not about what God took away,” Char liked to say, “but what we do with what’s left.”

To Val, that said everything about their being survivors of Katrina. Char and Del had visited her and Nanny, Del’s cousin, several times when Val was a child, but they had lost touch over the years. Right before Katrina, they had moved to Gulfport, Mississippi, an area also ravaged during the storm, during which they’d lost their home along with Del’s job as a truck driver.