Chapter 21
21
Alex’s world was collapsing in on him faster than he could prop it up. And it was all because of Katie and Dawn. Never before had he had anyone else to worry about besides himself. But the two of them changed the whole damned equation.
Something—someone—mattered now. And it made him vulnerable to everyone who’d ever coveted a piece of his hide. Life as he knew it was over.
“Dude, you gotta slow down.”
Alex glanced over at Ian in the passenger seat of the rented Porsche coupe and took his foot off the accelerator. Again. He’d crept back up over a hundred miles per hour on the highway. Katie and the baby had that effect on him.
“You okay?” he asked Katie’s brother. The guy was still recovering from a serious stab sound, but had flatly refused to stay in the hospital doing nothing to protect his little sister when she was in trouble. Suddenly, Alex could relate to that. He swore under his breath.
“I’ll live,” Ian bit out. “How much longer till we’re there?”
The guy must be in severe pain. But Alex wasn’t going to coddle him. He’d demanded that Alex help him slip out of the hospital, and Alex couldn’t say no. He would’ve done the same if he were laid up and Katie was in trouble.
“If it wasn’t raining, you’d see the skyline of Atlantic City ahead of us, now,” Alex replied.
They drove a few more minutes, and the underbellies of the thick rain clouds began to glow garish red. It was nearly two a.m., but the casinos were still going strong. Their flashy light displays lit the night. About halfway down the strip, the huge wagon wheel and cowboy boot of the Cartwheel Casino came into sight.
“We gonna make a direct approach?” Ian gritted out.
Alex shook his head. “Russians will have the place staked out by now. Their spies inside the Cartwheel will have told them she’s there.”
“But the Russian spotters won’t make a run at her?”
“The Cartwheel is traditional New York mafia turf. The Russians won’t confront another mob family there directly…I hope. And besides, now that the Russians know Katie and the baby are tight with me, they can grab her any time in the future and use her against me.”
Ian swore luridly. “As soon as we’ve got her back, I’m telling her to dump your ass like a hot potato.”
Alex mentally winced. If she were his sister and was involved with a bastard like him, he’d do the exact same thing. He maneuvered the Porsche into a parking spot along the main drag about a block from the Cartwheel, eyeing the surprisingly heavy foot traffic and cruising cars carefully.
“How mobile are you?” he asked Ian.
“I can walk. Run a little.”
“How sneaky can you be?”
Ian grinned like the wolf he was. “As sneaky as you need.”
They waited until what looked like a bachelor party with a dozen guys singing, laughing, and staggering drunkenly came along. Alex and Ian slipped out of the car and in with the guys.
Ian said jovially, “Hey! You guys know where to find a party?”
Laughter and introductions ensued, and Alex slid into the role of quiet sidekick to Ian’s dynamically outgoing personality. Which gave him the freedom to watch for Russian lookouts.
“Ten o’clock. Thirty yards,” he murmured.
Ian’s eyelids barely flickered in acknowledgement, but both of them managed to be engrossed in storytelling and facing away from the Russian spotter when they passed the guy’s position.
The bachelor party wasn’t headed for the Cartwheel, but when Alex shared that he’d heard from an inside source that the slot machines had been set to pay out extra, the drunk group willingly veered into the garish western-themed casino.
“Where to?” Ian muttered.
“Blue Moon Saloon. Back side of the casino.”
“You go on. I’ll run interference out here.”
Alex nodded and moved away from the cluster of guys. Casinos were easy to move around in unseen. The sight lines were lousy, the lights and noises tremendously distracting to anyone trying to watch a single subject move around. A gray-haired woman hit a big enough jackpot to spill coins on the floor and he stopped to help her pick them up. He used the time crouching to clear his tail. So far so good. He pocketed a handful of the tokens and moved on, adopting the wandering stance of a gambler, pausing now and then to feed a coin into a one-armed bandit and pray he didn’t win anything.
Just a few more minutes, Katie and Dawn .
He spotted the blue neon sign advertising the bar he knew to be DeMecci’s ‘office’. There. One of Dominic’s boys was lounging outside the door. Alex spotted Ian sliding around behind the guy and made a subtle hand gesture to wave off Katie’s brother.
He walked up to the mobster. “Long time no see, Sergio. The boss waiting for me?”
“You got giant cajones to show up here, asshole.”
“I need a wheelbarrow to haul ‘em around,” Alex replied dryly.
The mobster laughed and jerked his head for Alex to follow. They walked into the bowels of the bar that had seen a few of Alex’s worst binges in years past. The ripple of unease that passed through him was not just about facing Dominic DeMecci.
His gaze roved around the back room quickly, and his gut tightened to see that Katie and the baby were nowhere in sight.
“Alexei, you son of a bitch, what brings you to me on bended knee?”
They both knew that one. “Thanks for taking care of the lady and the baby, Dominic. I knew I could count on your sense of family to look out for them.”
“I want my money back.”
“You understand I won it legally, right?”
“You used that fancy math of yours to beat the system.”
“But unless your security guys could catch me, I got away with it, fair and square.”
“The money for the woman and the kid. Plus interest.”
The bastard cracked up over the last bit. Whatever. A few hundred thousand bucks extra wouldn’t strain Alex’s bank account. “Bring them to me along with an encrypted laptop computer, and I’ll transfer the funds to you.”
“Just like that?” Dominic blurted.
Alex shrugged. “It was never about the money, Dom. It was about beating the system. Proving I could do it.”
“Sick bastard,” DeMecci muttered. He gestured for one of his goons to bring the girls and the computer.
While they waited, Alex said casually, “Since we’re gonna be square in a few minutes, can I interest you in another deal?”
“What kind of deal?” DeMecci asked suspiciously.
“The lady and the baby—they could use a little extra protection in the future.”
“From whom?” DeMecci asked, unwilling curiosity vibrating in his voice.
“Your Slavic counterparts.”
“Damn Russkie bastards.”
“Not just them,” Alex said lightly. “Their friends, too—the Chechens, the Bosnians, the Albanians. All the Eastern European mobs.”
“What the hell do all of them want with you?” Dominic rightly assumed that the reason the Slavic mobs would come after Katie and Dawn would be to get at Alex.
“You know those Slavs. They’ll do anything for money,” Alex replied dryly.
“True.”
His mouth twitched in humor at the insult to his heritage. Good thing he thought of himself as an American or he might have been forced to react to that jab. He continued, “You’ve already seen for yourself that the girl and the baby are defenseless. I can make it worth your while to extend your protection to them.”
“How worth it? Them Russkies can be crazy bastards.”
Truer words had never been spoken. “I’ll give you my gambling algorithm. You can protect your casino from it. Hell, you can trot down the street and use it to rip off the Russians to your heart’s content if you want.”
Dominic stared intently, his pale eyes skewering Alex. “You fuckin’ around wit’ me?” The guy’s Bronx brogue was abruptly much more pronounced.
“I fuck you not, Dominic.”
“How do I know you won’t feed me a load of shit nonsense?”
“Let’s go out on the floor. I’ll demonstrate it right now. I can beat the house at blackjack seven times out of ten, and four times out of five at draw poker.”
“This I gotta see,” the mobster announced.
He hadn’t agreed to protect Katie and Dawn, yet, but Alex wasn’t worried. As soon as the guy watched his house money evaporating and reappearing in fat stacks of chips in front of Alex, the guy’s greed would force him to take the deal.
Ian caught Alex’s eye the second he stepped out onto the casino floor surrounded by a phalanx of DeMecci’s men. Alex nodded fractionally to indicate that everything was okay.
“Bring the girl and the baby, Dom. I don’t play until I see for myself they’re okay.”
“Have I ever lied to you, boy?” Dominic demanded.
“Not yet,” Alex replied humorously. “And let’s keep it that way, eh?”
The mobster grinned. “As much as I hate your guts, I like you, kid.”
Alex grinned broadly. “Feeling’s mutual.”
DeMecci laughed. He broke off to announce, “Here they are. Your little family.”
Alex looked up sharply from the table where the dealer was setting out a new boot of cards. Thank God . A sleepy looking Katie was blinking under the bright lights as one of DeMecci’s men led her forward.
She lurched when she caught sight of him and her face lit up like sunshine after a long darkness.
Warmth poured through Alex, but he shook his head to stop her from rushing over to him. She checked herself and nodded back slightly. She looked around, obviously counting and cataloguing the locations of DeMecci’s men. So quick on her feet, she was. He would have to remember to thank her father and brothers for teaching her that…if the three of them got out of this alive.
“Okay, Koronov. Show me how you do it.”
He’d agreed to a demonstration, not an explanation. “Give me a stack of chips and I’ll play two hands face-up.” He nodded at the blackjack dealer to start.
The play was fast. Obviously, the dealer was trying to stop him from counting cards. Although, he did that as a matter of course without even really thinking about it consciously. It had been a while since he used his gambling algorithm, and it took him a few minutes to get back into the swing of it, but the decisions came faster and easier as the hands came one after another. Before long, he had a significant stack of chips in front of him. One the next hand, the algorithm set up perfectly and he pushed the whole stack toward the dealer.
“Uhh, sir, I’ll need house permission to accept that bet.”
DeMecci snapped from behind him, “Take the bet.”
Alex smirked as the cards fell his way. “Good thing all this is fake money, eh, Dominic? Are we ready to move to the poker tables to continue this little demonstration?”
Alex’s success at the blackjack table had drawn a small crowd, and it trailed along behind him toward the felt-covered poker tables. He felt Ian flinch before he saw Katie’s brother move. Acting instinctively, Alex spun toward Katie. Time slowed to a crawl.
She saw him coming and gripped the baby tighter. Started to look around for the threat. The goon beside her started to reach inside his sports coat.
Alex dived for Katie, but she was already heading for the floor. He landed on top of her as she fell onto her side, curling her body protectively around Dawn.
And that was when Hell incarnate erupted. Gunshots erupted in a deafening volley. Light bulbs and slot machines exploded, sparks and flying glass went everywhere . He registered screams and shouts, patrons running every which way, and armed men shooting and shouting and diving for cover. Casino security men rushed into the fray, shooting, and only added to the chaos.
A lifetime of training told Alex that he and Katie and Dawn were at the epicenter of the firefight. They had to get out of here, now. The odds of avoiding being hit by crossfire were nil if they stayed in their current position.
Hell, the three of them were probably the targets of this whole mess.
A big body slid to the floor beside them and Alex lurched. Who the hell would run toward this insanity and not away from it?
“This way,” Ian grunted.
Alex pushed up to his knees and drew Katie up beside him. Dawn was screaming her head off, but the good news was it was barely audible in the chaos. The worst of it was the flying glass from broken light bulbs and neon tubes and shot-up slot machines. With every new volley of gunfire, a new round of shards flew like stinging sand.
Crawling awkwardly and staying as low as possible, they followed her brother to a row of ruined slot machines that shuddered as lead slugs continued slamming into their backsides. Thank God for the heavy gear mechanisms inside them.
They reached the end of the row and Ian rose to a crouch. Alex and Katie did the same.
“Go!” Ian yelled in a bare whisper.
They shot forward across the open space and dived behind the next row of slots as a burst of gunfire erupted behind them. Alex felt something hot graze across the back of his left calf and checked his leg. Just a scratch. Damn, that had been close.
They crawled for another hundred feet or so through a jungle of blasted slot machines and exploding glass before they finally rolled behind a big craps table. They were able to move more quickly toward the back of the casino as the gunfight raged behind them.
Automatic weapon fire erupted, raking the space behind them in a violent staccato. Crap, who’d pulled out the big guns? The Russians or DeMecci’s guys?
Ian ducked around a corner and Alex urged Katie to go ahead of him. She disappeared from sight and he experienced a moment’s cold, hard panic. Once they got clear of this disaster, he wasn’t letting her out of his sight for a good long time.
He cleared the corner and saw Ian and Katie sprinting down a long hall. He took off after them and caught up just as Ian threw open the exit door at the end of the corridor.
They burst out into the cold and dark of night behind the casino. After the noise and bright lights behind them, the sensory deprivation of blackness and silence out here was disorienting.
Which was maybe why he didn’t seem them right away. Several men leaped out of the shadows at them and something hard and heavy slammed into the back of his head. The last thing Alex registered was an explosion of pain as his legs dropped out from under him and he went down like a rock.