The Scam

  After the blast, Nick lifted the real manhole cover into place and scrambled along thirty yards of dry sewer pipe that led to another manhole outside the warehouse they’d used as their base. He climbed out and ran inside the warehouse, where Chet, Ted, and Willie were busy peeling the beige skin off the van to reveal blue paint beneath. Boyd had taken off his shirt, which was soaked with red-dyed corn syrup, and was undoing the Velcro straps on his vest of exploded blood packs.

  “Excellent work everyone,” Nick said and headed straight for Jake, who sat in the van’s passenger seat, monitoring the police band. “Where do we stand?”

  “The police are dispatching units,” Jake said. “The nearest patrol car is three minutes out. The fire department is on the way.”

  “Do you copy that, Kate?” Nick asked.

  “Gotcha,” Kate said as she dashed across the motor court to Trace, who’d risen to his knees and appeared to be shell-shocked. Kate holstered her gun when she reached him.

  Car alarms were going off everywhere. Bits of broken glass from the hotel tower were falling on the lobby’s broad portico.

  “What just happened?” Trace asked. “Why did Blackmore kill Nick? Why did he try to kill me?”

  Kate grabbed Trace roughly by the arm, jerked him to his feet, and practically dragged him alongside her into the VIP lobby. Glass shards crunched under their feet. Tara, Guido, and the others were stunned but physically unharmed.

  “The police will be here soon,” Kate said to Tara and Guido. “Give them your full cooperation.”

  Tara nodded and Guido stood slack jawed and glassy eyed.

  “We need to go somewhere private and talk,” Kate said to Trace, pulling him toward the casino’s door.

  “Why?” he asked. “What?”

  Kate opened the door and they stepped into sheer pandemonium. People were screaming and running through the casino toward the main lobby exit. Dealers were hiding under their tables. Pit bosses and security people were watching over the chips.

  Kate hustled Trace as fast as she could across the tide of escaping people to the high-roller salon. Goodwell was nowhere to be seen, but the Japanese gamblers were still in their seats at the poker table.

  When they reached the door to Trace’s private dining room he swiped his key card over the scanner. Kate glanced back at the three Japanese gamblers. Something wasn’t right. Why weren’t they running for an exit like everyone else? Her gaze locked on one of the men. It was Nakamura, the man from Macau. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a pair of shoes. They were on the feet of Niles Goodwell, who lay crumpled on the floor behind the blackjack table.

  “Crap,” Kate murmured.

  She pushed Trace into his private dining room, kicked the door closed behind her, and drew her gun as they crossed the bridge.

  “Now what?” Trace asked, noticing her gun.

  “Three Yakuza assassins have Goodwell’s key card, and they are coming to kill us,” Kate said, more for Nick listening in than for Trace.

  —

  Jake also heard the message about the Yakuza and jumped out of the parked van.

  “We need to help her,” Jake said.

  “Not necessary,” Nick said. “The police will be there in two minutes.”

  “And it’ll be another five minutes before they can get to Trace’s dining room,” Jake said.

  “You’re not going to get there any faster,” Nick said. “She can take care of herself, and she has a gun.”

  “Her gun is loaded with blanks.”

  “The assassins don’t know that,” Nick said.

  —

  Good point, Kate thought. The bad guys wouldn’t know she was firing blanks.

  She flipped over the dining table and pulled Trace down behind it. The door to the high-roller room flew open and the Yakuza came in, guns drawn.

  She waited until one of them was midway over the bridge, and then she popped up and fired. Two of the Yakuza dropped to the floor. The man on the bridge dropped into the pond. Big mistake. Instantly the water surged with piranha and the man screamed and thrashed around as he was devoured.

  One of the Yakuza sat up, staring in horror at the roiling water. Kate threw her gun at him, fast and hard, catching him between the eyes, knocking him out cold.

  Nakamura, the remaining Yakuza, fired two shots at Kate in quick succession. Kate ducked behind the overturned tabletop. Trace crawled as fast as he could toward the elevator. Kate stood and flung a chair at Nakamura. Nakamura dodged the chair and Kate tackled him, knocking the gun from his hand.

  Kate and Nakamura went to the floor, and Kate used the momentum of the fall to her advantage. She flipped Nakamura over her and rolled into a crouch, coming face-to-face with him as he rose up.

  At that instant, a spinning mallet slammed into the side of Nakamura’s head, and split it open like a ripe melon. Kate turned and saw Garver standing in a doorway across the room.

  “The police are coming,” Garver said.

  Trace got to his feet and swiped his key card over the call pad for the elevator. “Stall them, Garver. Kate and I need a few minutes to talk.”

  Garver picked up his beloved mallet and glanced at the crimson pond, which had begun to calm. Bits of cloth from the consumed man’s clothing floated on the surface. Garver gestured with his mallet at the two unconscious men.

  “What do I do about these two?”

  “What you do best,” Trace said. “Make sure they tell no tales.”

  —

  Nick didn’t want his crew hearing Kate reveal her genuine FBI background. Using the key fob remote in his pocket, he cut off the transmission from Kate’s earbud to everyone but himself and Jake. “It’s a wrap,” Nick announced. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Chet, Tom, and Willie piled into the blue van for the drive back to Los Angeles. Jake walked outside with Nick to his Buick. On his way out of town, Jake would drop Nick off in Henderson, where a private jet was waiting for him. Kate would remain in Las Vegas for a few days to tie up the case.

  “I can’t believe the Yakuza picked today to make their hit on Trace,” Jake said. “He’s lucky Kate was there to save him.”

  —

  That was exactly the point Kate intended to make to Trace when they emerged from the elevator into his office.

  “Surprise,” she said, flashing her badge.

  “You’re an FBI agent,” Trace said. “Could today possibly get any worse?”

  “Yeah, you could be dead,” Kate said. “But I was here, so you’re not.”

  “You didn’t come here to save me.”

  “I’ve been working undercover to nail Nick Sweet. But then he came to you, and my mission objectives changed. I can arrest you right now for money laundering.”

  “No, you can’t,” Trace said. “The alleged crime happened in Macau, where you have no jurisdiction, and it was done through Nick’s junket. My hands are clean. That’s the beauty of junkets. The only person you might have a case against was just blown to bits. So we’re done.”

  Trace turned his back to her and went over to the floor-to-ceiling window behind his desk. He looked forty-five stories down at the police cars and fire trucks converging on the burning Audi and at the hundreds of Côte d’Argent guests streaming out of the main lobby to the parking lot.

  Kate stepped up beside him. She noticed a Las Vegas tour chopper heading their way. Côte d’Argent wasn’t usually on the sky tour itinerary, but perhaps the explosion changed that.

  Trace glanced at her. “You’re still here?” he said.

  “Aren’t you curious why Blackmore and the Yakuza want you dead?”

  “Maybe it was you they’re after and I just got caught in the crossfire,” he said.

  “Nick bugged his guests in Macau and recorded your pitch. I got hold of the recordings and passed them on to Quantico to an agent that we suspect is dirty,” Kate said. “Now we know that we were right about him. He alerted Shane Blackmore, Lou Ould-Abdallah, and Lono Alika t
hat you and Nick are FBI informants.”

  “But I’m not one.”

  “You will be if you want to live. Blackmore is off the field, but the Yakuza will keep coming after you until you’re dead.” Kate’s gaze kept drifting to the chopper. “Wouldn’t surprise me if some Somali pirates came after you, too.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “What happened today is just the beginning. You’ve been branded as an informant. The killers will keep coming. They will be relentless and unforgiving. You’ll need an army to protect you. Fortunately for you, we have one,” Kate said. “We can put you on an Army base until you’ve finished testifying against every mobster and terrorist group you’ve worked with. Then we’ll put you into the witness protection program.”

  “I’d rather be dead.”

  His comment made her think about the attempt on his life. The real one. The three Yakuza assassins didn’t know they’d have the distraction of a drive-by shooting and an explosion to cover their hit. What was their exit strategy after killing Trace?

  Once again, her gaze was drawn to the approaching helicopter. In a few seconds, it would be close enough for them to wave at the tourists. Then she remembered the report over the police band about a chopper being stolen from a tour company and she knew the answer to her question. The three assassins had planned to escape off the roof.

  “Crap,” she said.

  She grabbed Trace, turned him around, and ran toward the sunken conversation pit. Behind them, the side door of the chopper slid open and two gunmen with AK-47s started shooting.

  —

  Jake and Nick had driven only a block south when they heard Kate say “crap” and knew that she was in trouble. Jake made a sharp U-turn in time to see the tour chopper hovering outside the penthouse and the rapid flashes of gunfire going into the building. Through their earbuds, they heard the hundreds of rounds shattering the windows and obliterating everything in Trace’s office.

  —

  Kate stood, took the two steps out of the conversation pit, and surveyed the damage. The windows were shattered and wind blew through the office. The storm of bullets had passed over their heads. The million-dollar desk was decimated. The walls and the bar were riddled with hundreds of holes. The control panel for the elevator was destroyed. The only way out was the stairwell, where they were sure to be mowed down by Yakuza assassins.

  The sprinkler system burst on. The gunfire must have automatically triggered the sensors in the deluge fire suppression system. The sudden, drenching downpour gave Kate an idea.

  She turned to Trace and yelled over the sound of wind and rain. “I’ll be back. Stay right there.”

  Screw her, Trace thought. He wouldn’t just sit there while she hid and left him to be executed. There was a gun hidden behind the bar. At least that would give him a slim but fighting chance against the assassins. He scrambled to his feet and immediately tripped on the rain-slicked floor, slamming his knee hard into one of the steps leading out of the pit.

  The pain was a shock and a humiliation, and it pissed him off. He tried to stand up again and there they were, the two Yakuza assassins, charging out of the stairwell into the office, their AK-47s pointed at him. In that instant, Trace regretted telling Kate that he’d rather die, because now that it was about to happen he realized he’d do anything to live.

  A thick jet of water came out of nowhere and slammed into the side of the lead assassin like a battering ram, knocking him off his feet and sending him sliding across the glass-strewn floor. Before the second man could fire, the blast of water sent him sprawling, too.

  Trace turned to see Kate, wielding the standpipe fire hose.

  The first assassin sat upright and fired where Kate had been standing, but she’d moved to one side and pummeled him with 250 gallons per minute at a force of one hundred pounds per square inch. It propelled the assassin across the floor and out the window. He fell forty-five stories without screaming because his nose and mouth were full of water.

  The second assassin dove for his fallen assault rifle and grabbed it. When he stood to fire, Kate hit him in the gut with the water, smashing him against a wall like a bug hitting a windshield. He slid to the floor, his head hanging at an unnatural angle. He wouldn’t be getting up ever again.

  Kate switched off the nozzle and dropped the hose. Trace rose shakily to his feet, one leg unable to sustain his weight, and looked at her. He knew with sickening certainty what he had to do. There was no other option.

  “Colt Ramsey,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” she asked.

  “It’s the name I’d like to have when you put me into the witness protection program.”

  —

  It was close to midnight when Kate let herself into her budget room in the budget motel off the Strip. She’d chosen the motel not so much for the price as for the location. She’d wanted something that wasn’t in the shadow of Côte D’Argent. And she’d wanted something that was her normal and not Nick’s. Not that she didn’t love the thousand-thread-count sheets and the complimentary champagne and fruit baskets that she enjoyed when she traveled with him. It was more that she needed to re-center herself to a more grounded reality. It had been an exhausting day. Successful but emotionally draining. Everyone on her team had come through unscathed. Thank heaven for that. They’d been paid off and sent on their way, Nick included. She was never sure where he landed after their assignments were done. He could be in Los Angeles or Tibet or Rome or his house in the south of France.

  She closed and locked the motel room door, flipped the light switch, and kicked her shoes off. She shed her clothes and headed for the shower, needing to wash the day’s grime off her body and soul. She glanced over at the bed and saw it. The Toblerone bar. It was on the pillow.

  “Hot damn,” Kate said, with a sigh and a smile.

  She heard movement in the bathroom, and before she could get to her gun, Nick appeared in the bathroom doorway.

  “It’s a tradition,” he said. “You always get a Toblerone at the end of a mission.”

  He looked relaxed and fresh from a shower, wearing only a towel wrapped low on his hips.

  “This is embarrassing,” Kate said. “I didn’t expect you to be here. I’m sort of naked.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” Nick said. And he dropped the towel.

  The parking lot was full, and cars were parked along the shoulder of the Kamehameha Highway for the grand opening of Harlan’s Rib Shack, which was now located in the building that only a few weeks before had been Da Grinds & Da Shave Ice.

  Many of the customers wore blue surgical scrubs, because they were either coming or going from the Kahuku Medical Center. The crowd also included quite a few other locals, among them Lieutenant Gregg Steadman, who sat with Kate and Jake at the patio table that had once been Alika’s iron throne.

  “I don’t know how you did it,” Steadman said.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Kate said. “It was Lono Alika’s own decision to walk into the FBI field office in Honolulu and confess to his crimes.”

  “He did it because he was afraid for his life,” Steadman said. “He thought the Yakuza would kill him for getting them involved with Evan Trace.”

  “He was right,” Jake said.

  Trace had agreed to fully cooperate with the FBI in exchange for immunity from prosecution and entry into the witness protection program. Based on his testimony, law enforcement agencies in fourteen countries had arrested 230 people, all of them mobsters, terrorists, or corrupt government officials who’d used the casinos to launder money. The arrests and the closure of the Côte d’Argent casinos had a chilling effect on money laundering throughout the global gambling industry.

  “What I don’t understand,” Steadman said, “is how Harlan ended up with Da Grinds & Da Shave Ice.”

  “The FBI discovered that Alika was using the restaurant as a front to launder his drug profits,” Kate said. “So they forced him to forfeit the property to the U.S. government, who
made it available for rent pending an eventual auction. Harlan was the only applicant for the space.”

  “Well, that’s no surprise,” Steadman said. “There aren’t any locals who’d dare move into Alika’s place. They’d be too afraid of what he’ll do to them when he comes back.”

  “He’s gone for good,” Kate said. “After Alika testifies against the Yakuza, the witness protection program will relocate him as far away from here as possible.”

  “He’ll be living in an igloo in the North Pole,” Jake said.

  “That’d be Alika’s version of hell,” Steadman said. “He’s spent his life in Hawaii. He’s never experienced an outdoor temperature colder than sixty degrees.”

  Harlan Appleton and Cassie Walner came up to their table. He wore an apron splattered with barbecue sauce and carried a platter piled high with spareribs. She was in her nurse’s scrubs and carried their drinks.

  “Dig in,” Harlan said and set the platter in the center of the table. “For you, it’s all-you-can-eat and no charge.”

  Jake inhaled the smoky smell of the ribs. “I may never leave.”

  “Great,” Cassie said as she passed around the drinks. “Then you can start waiting tables for Harlan instead of me.”

  “You’re working for Harlan now?” Kate asked.

  “Part-time,” Cassie said. “I want to be sure that he makes enough money to pay his share of my rent.”

  “You’re living together?” Jake asked.

  “In separate rooms,” Cassie said.

  “Most of the time,” Harlan said.

  “And only until his house is fixed up and habitable again,” she said.

  Harlan whispered to Jake, “Which may be never.”

  Cassie went off to see to another order. Jake watched her go and shook his head with disbelief.

  “She’s got to be twenty years younger than you and two hundred pounds lighter,” Jake said. “How’d you win her over?”

  “My ribs are an aphrodisiac,” Harlan said.