Chapter 5 Nash
NASH
Bastian’s office was huge.
I strode in, stretching my tight neck. I’d done several combat classes today. Shit, maybe I was getting too old for this.
The dark-wood floor was polished to a high gloss, Bastian’s desk was a huge slab of black marble, shot through with bronze veins. A moody painting consisting of gray, black, and bronze smudges hung behind it.
“Evening.” Bastian swiveled in his huge leather chair. The lights of Vegas shone behind him. Another man in a suit with his tie loosened stood at the front of the desk, knocking back a glass of bourbon.
Chance Tyler finished his drink and ran a hand through his blond hair.
“Long day?” I asked.
The actor lifted his chin. He was handsome in that clean, polished way that told me he had a great plastic surgeon and an excellent dentist. He looked like the kind of guy that would get cast as the district attorney or the president in a movie.
He no longer auditioned for movies. Instead, Bastian paid him a lot of money to pretend he was the owner of the Avernus. He did all the press, attended functions and events, and shmoozed when required.
“Had a group of high rollers in from China. They demanded I join them for poker, dinner, and a show.”
I snorted. “Tough life.”
“That was yesterday. I just managed to get free.” He scraped a hand down his face. “I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours.”
“Go home, Chance,” Bastian said.
The man waved a hand. “I will. I have a press conference and a council meeting in the morning. Its hard work being the fake owner of a casino.” He headed for the door. “Night.”
Bastian’s gaze settled on me.
“You look like you need a drink, too,” he said.
I jerked my chin. “Won’t say no.”
In an elegant move, he rose and stalked to the black cabinet against the side wall.
He pulled out a bottle of something that was no doubt expensive and poured.
I took the crystal glass from him and sipped.
Probably Pappy Van Winkle. It should have tasted smooth, sweet, and spicy. Instead, it tasted like nothing.
I walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows. It felt like standing on the edge of a cliff, with a bird’s eye view of everything. But tonight, it all blurred, my thoughts churning.
“The training went well?”
“Yeah.” I swirled the bourbon. “Couple of the new team members are good. They have leadership potential.”
“Excellent.” I heard his chair wheel back. “Nash, we have a problem.”
Turning, I raised an eyebrow. His tone was serious.
“What’s up?”
“There was a woman on the casino floor tonight. She was looking for you.”
Both my eyebrows winged up. “She asked for Nash Oakley?”
“No. She didn’t use your name. She had this.” He pulled a ratty, folded piece of paper from his pocket. He opened it and smoothed it on his desk.
It was an image of me walking in the casino. Thankfully, not a good picture.
“I thought with our alterations, facial rec wouldn’t register against any old images of us.”
Bastian shrugged a shoulder. “You’re standing in profile. It probably used other factors. I mean, the image isn’t great. It couldn’t have been more than a partial match and whoever matched it must have used a hell of an algorithm, and a lot of time and effort.”
Someone had come looking for me. My neck muscles tightened even more. “Who?”
“She said you’re a friend, and she was looking for you.”
Fuck. I felt a strange shiver. Whatever this was, I had a feeling it wasn’t going to go away. I scowled. “Who is she?”
“I don’t know.” Bastian rose and circled the desk. He tapped on his sleek, silver laptop, then turned it to face my direction.
I saw instantly that it was security footage. It was frozen to show a perfect view of the woman standing in the casino.
I stepped closer and pulled the laptop across the desk. She was medium height, fit, slim body, with a killer set of breasts hugged by a red top. Her straight, black hair brushed her jaw, and her lips were a deep red.
I didn’t know her.
My brow creased.
“No idea who she is?” Bastian asked.
“I’ve never seen her.” My gaze ran along her jaw line, and I felt a whisper of…something.
“She could be an assassin. Hired by someone with an axe to grind. Maybe she’s got her own axe to grind with you.”
“We covered our tracks, Bastian.” When we’d left our previous jobs, we’d taken steps. I’d been known as Nathaniel or Nate Hagen. Very few people knew I’d gone by Nash, and most of them were dead. “We have new identities. We did the work to kill off the men we’d been before.”
“Maybe someone’s cleverer than we thought.”
I touched the screen and wondered who the hell she was.
Then Bastian reached past me and pressed a button on the keyboard. “Watch.”
A guy in a bad suit grabbed the woman. My scowl deepened. Asshole. I had zero time for idiots who thought they could intimidate a woman.
Then a smile curled my lips. I watched her stomp on his foot, then twist his arm up behind his back and hand him his ass.
Suddenly I felt a rush of something else. For a second, I felt electric, awake. Energized.
Bastian made a sound. “I know that look.”
“What look?” I scowled. “There’s no look.”
“You’re impressed.”
“Hard not to be.” I cocked my head. “Despite some of the vapid women you bed, I know you like a spitfire.”
My friend shot me an unreadable look. “This isn’t about me.”
No, Bastian liked to poke into other people’s lives, but refused to discuss a certain female assassin who regularly tried to kill him.
“Where did she go?” I asked.
“She made a very cool, controlled escape before security arrived. She walked out the front doors, not in a rush, not attracting any attention.”
“Facial rec get any hits?”
“Nothing. She hasn’t been in the casino before, or any others in Las Vegas.”
Who the hell was she?
And why was she looking for me?
Suddenly, I really wanted to find out.
“Send me the images.”
Bastian nodded. “Done. I’ve got security watching for her. If she sets foot in here again, we’ll know instantly.”
I finished my drink. Now, I truly tasted it and enjoyed the spicy flavor. “I’ll take care of her.”
A smile curved Bastian’s lips. “I’m sure you will.”
“Rabbit, it’s Nightvision.” I kept the cellphone pressed to my ear as I walked into my villa.
“Nightvision. Long time, my friend.”
I imagined him sitting in a dark room, with the glow of a screen in front of him. No doubt he’d be fidgeting and eating Doritos. He had a serious addiction, and constantly munched on them. Rabbit rarely left his condo. He lived on one of the upper floors of the Sky Las Vegas tower.
We’d worked together a few times in the past. If you needed something or someone found, Rabbit was the one who could do it.
“I’m sending you an image of a woman.” I tapped on my phone and emailed the image to an anonymous email address. I knew that it would get forwarded through various untraceable accounts, and finally uploaded to a private cloud server where Rabbit—the world’s best hacker—would grab it.
“Sooo, Nightvision is after a woman,” he drawled.
“It’s not like that. She’s been looking for me.”
“Ah, she might be out to kill you.”
I heard tapping. Rabbit had been in Naval Intelligence, before he’d had a breakdown and faked his own death.
Now he used his skills to do whatever the hell he wanted. Sometimes he did weeks-long gaming binges, other times he tracked down terrorists or corrupt politicians. His favorite thing was stealing from scammers who stole life savings from hard-working people. Whatever took his fancy.
“Nothing popping.” Crunching came across the line, and I imagined Rabbit stuffing a handful of Doritos in his mouth. “I don’t have a name for you.”
Damn. That meant it might take Rabbit a few days to get something.
“But,” he continued, “I can tell you she’s walking down South 1st Street, just off Fremont.”
I straightened. “Right now?”
“Right now. That help?”
“Yeah, that helps. I’ll transfer your funds tonight. Thanks, Rabbit.”