Ben didn’t bother responding. Nothing he could say would change what was about to happen. He did think about telling them they had the wrong guy. A flare of anger, a thread of pissed-offedness, made him stand his ground. Match the guy’s stare, and not blink.
The heavy was about the same height. He tried looking down on Ben, but it didn’t work.
“Friend of ours wants to talk to you,” the guy said.
Ben’s nose flared, taking in the guy’s aftershave, the scent of gun oil. The odor of seedy bars and backroom shakedowns.
“Why?” Ben said, wondering if it sounded like a growl. He wanted to growl, but that would be a bad idea.
The thug, the talker, opened his suit jacket briefly to show the gun inside, in the shoulder holster. “No arguments.”
“He couldn’t just call me?” Ben said. Arguing. The flame inside was growing. He was getting angry, and a beast with claws was waking up.
The thug put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him. “Come on. Walk normal. Don’t draw attention.” The lookout led them to a side hallway.
God, he really was being kidnapped out of a Vegas casino.
“What happens if I knock you down and shout right now? You going to shoot me?”
“Maybe not. But we may find a way to draw a bead on that pretty little girl of yours.”
That shut him up. They moved out of sight of the poker room and the main casino floor. Empty corridor now, and straight ahead to a set of doors leading to the outside. The lookout was still scanning, ready to jump at a sign of trouble. Ben could almost hear his body quivering. His own escort was steady, methodical, and kept his anxiety tamped down. A pro. Didn’t make Ben feel any better.
“How does this friend of yours even care about me?” he asked.
The thug gave a sly smile. “He had a game going. Pretty good game. His boys had a system and would have cleaned up. But you ratted them out. You’ve made yourself a person of interest. Congratulations.”
So much for being a good citizen.
“You can’t do this,” he said, realizing it was a stupid thing to say. They certainly could do this. They had. Ben could whine all he wanted—they still had the guns. But were the bullets silver? Did he risk getting shot in the back on the streets of Vegas to prove a theory?
“I’m getting married in a couple of hours.” As if that kind of argument held any weight with people like this.
“If she really loves you, she’ll wait. So—she really love you, or what?”
God, what a question. The worst part about it was the cold lump in the pit of his stomach at the thought the answer might be no.
“I don’t know what this is about. Your boss wants to talk to me, that’s fine. But at least let me call my girlfriend. Just to tell her I’m going to be late—”
The muscle patted him down, found the phone, tossed it on the concrete sidewalk.
A car was waiting outside. The quiet one opened the door; the New York thug pointed Ben inside. Ben didn’t fight, didn’t argue, didn’t resist—he didn’t want to get punched or pounded. That really would wake up the monster. And while that might get him out of this immediate situation, he couldn’t see how it would help in the long run. So he waited.
The windows in the sedan were tinted. They blindfolded him anyway. Only then did he start to lose it: heart fluttering, breaths coming in gasps. He curled his hands into fists and dug them into his thighs—and the creature inside him snarled, from a place like a cage, deep in his gut.
He had to keep it together himself this time. Kitty wasn’t here to hold his hand.
What was she going to think? What if she thought he’d run off, stood her up? Part of her would. Part of her was still an insecure pup. Amazing, considering what she’d been through, how well she stood up for herself under the gun—and she hardly realized it.
Thinking of her steadied him. Just like holding her hand would have. He had to get through this for her. She often talked about her wolf side like it was a separate entity. Like the two sides argued, conversed. The metaphor was useful. He’d adopted it. It let him say, Down, boy.
He pressed his lips together to keep from smiling at that thought. He didn’t imagine the tough guys would take his smiling too well. The thug beside him was the kind of guy who would think it was all about him.
They arrived. The car stopped, and the blindfold came off. The location was seedy. Seedier than seedy. The kind of old industrial neighborhood where the windows were smashed out of the warehouses and weeds grew a foot high out of cracks in the asphalt. By the distance they’d traveled, Ben judged they were on the outskirts of town—the deadbeat, dried-up outskirts, not the gentrified suburbs. The building they’d parked by was concrete, wind-blasted and pockmarked. Tiny windows had bars over them anyway. It was the kind of place that didn’t have a sign—didn’t need one. The line of motorcycles out front said it all. This was the kind of bar that didn’t want tourists snooping around. He could hear music pounding from within.
His escort brought him through the front door, then straight through the bar and pool tables and bikers. Didn’t give him a chance to look around; not that he needed one. He knew the stereotypes well enough, and the smirk he wore came naturally. But maybe it would give him some armor. Keep him from looking a little less like a hopeless guy in over his head.
They next passed through a door in back, and into another world. Ben’s protective smirk fell.
From the outside, this had all looked like more concrete warehouses, auto body shops, and so on. Here, the interior was straight out of a bordello in a Victorian novel. Red plush carpeting, burgundy curtains held back by gold tasseled cords—not that there were any windows to cover. Sofas, chaise lounges, wingback chairs. Men in suits, smoking cigarettes and cigars like chimneys, gathered around poker games at several green felt tables. He wrinkled his nose to keep from sneezing at the odor. Draped over all—men and furniture both—were a dozen women in lingerie. Like they were part of the decoration. In the back, a beaded curtain marked the entrance to a hallway. Ben could make out a row of doors. So this wasn’t just a bar.
It was like something out of a bad movie. Kitty has got to see this. He shut down the pang that came with the thought.
In the middle of it all sat the guy who had to be the boss. The guy who was the source of all this ostentatious bad taste. Thin, weedy, hair obviously dyed black because he hadn’t bothered touching up his graying eyebrows. Old, weathered. Like he’d moved up through the ranks and spent a lot of time laughing at pain. That’s what the hard look in his eyes said.
An old-school gangster. Pure and simple.
Ben’s escorts—one on each side—brought him to stand before the table where this guy was shuffling cards and nursing a bourbon on ice. The boss didn’t look at Ben for what seemed like a long time. Making him wait, making him sweat. Ben concentrated on breathing, and not sweating. He could wait. He had to, didn’t he? But the smell of the women—the musky, wet smell of sex that edged the room’s atmosphere—was making him nervous. Making him want to be with Kitty even more than he already did.
The boss shuffled the cards, slowly, like it was the most important task in the world. Taking a deep breath, almost a sigh, he said, “So you’re the joker who spotted my ring. Ratted me out.”