Burned Hearts (Burned 3)

“Cliff Castle,” Kyle answered again.

I gazed up at Amano, giving him a hopeful expression. He stared me down.

But I wouldn’t be deterred. Not even by his biting expression—the oh, hell, no stamped across his hard features.

“You’re the one who tracked him down in the first place,” I reminded Amano. “Really, it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary or suspicious at all if I accidentally ran into him at the casino. He hasn’t been seen or heard from since that day at the estate—that was nearly three months ago. Out of sight, out of mind is how we could play it. Plus, it would be easy for us to come off as not considering him a threat, since his el jefe is el muerto.”

The dark eyes narrowed on me. “You are getting way too excited about this.”

“Amano, Vale is dead! Wayne is in our crosshairs. Why wouldn’t we take the shot?”

My bodyguard groaned. “You know what this is? Out of hand.” He turned and stalked off.

I shifted my attention to Kyle. “It’s not exactly crazy, admit it. We have two FBI agents outside. You don’t think that if I pulled them in here, showed them my wall and the Breaking News on TV, they wouldn’t back us up? Hell, they’d wire me in a heartbeat!”

“You?” he demanded. Roared, actually. Then very slowly and succinctly said, “Abso-fucking-lutely not.”

I’d heard a similar sentiment from him before. It didn’t give me pause.

“Kyle. We’ve had this discussion. You won’t get squat out of Wayne because you’re too aggressive, too threatening. I, however, can use the ploy of being taken aback to see him, intimidated, slightly terrified. He?

??ll buy that and won’t think for a second that I’m recording my conversation with him.”

“Ari,” Kyle said with exasperation in his tone. “There’s a very good chance he murdered those three guys—his brother, even! You think he’s going to let little ol’ you trip him up?”

“Most everyone has underestimated him, but not me. And he doesn’t know we’ve actually figured him out. Though we really ought to act fast, before he thinks we have a chance to put the alive Horton and the dead Horton together.”

Folding his arms over his massive chest, my friend demanded, “And what about Bax Junior? You’re going to willingly put yourself in jeopardy when you now have a son?”

“Kyle!” It was a bit of a low blow, but I reminded him, “We’ll have the FBI with us!”

“There is no way Amano is going to let you out of the house if he believes you’re up to something.”

“He won’t know. You take one of the FBI agents and stake out the casino again, to see if Wayne has returned and what his pattern is. Then we’ll have Rosa schedule a grocery run at the same time Wayne’s at the casino. Amano always takes her, sometimes with Amsel. We’ll make sure of it on this particular trip.”

“Ari. Goddamn it,” Kyle said as our gazes locked.

“This is foolproof.”

His intense look didn’t waver. “I do not like how devious your mind has become.”

“Why? Because it’s a little too similar to your devious mind?”

He stormed out.

I took that as his acquiescence.

chapter 10

Our day of reckoning came all too quickly and my nerves were jangled. I figured that would work in my favor. As long as Wayne wasn’t on to me—and my anxiety would definitely prove I wasn’t in some cocky frame of mind over confronting him—I could likely get him talking. The FBI would get the information they needed. Justice might actually be served when it came to the Asshole.

The stakeout agents, Johnson and Price, hadn’t been difficult to win over. Babysitting the creek house bored them to tears; I could see it in their eyes. Plus, they’d taken an interest in the Vegas developments. They wanted to nail Wayne just as much as the rest of us did.

So one dreary afternoon Kyle and I sat in an SUV atop a hill adjacent to Cliff Castle Casino, also perched on a hill in the Camp Verde area. While he popped Tater Tots, since we were parked at a drive-in space at Sonic, he surveyed the casino with binoculars.

Mid-day on Tuesdays seemed to be the prime time for Wayne to hit the poker tables. The older folks who didn’t plop down enough of their Social Security to waste time on were heading to their early-bird dinners, and the evening crowd of carefree revelers hadn’t yet rolled in. The rounders were upping their own antes and getting rousing games going that would lure a few unsuspecting suckers to take advantage of.

All of this was relayed by Kyle, who’d spent some time at the tables himself. Apparently, he’d learned a thing or two in Monte Carlo that had funded half of his summer backpacking excursion through Europe and a first-class upgrade back to the States. I didn’t ask who’d been the pretty girl to give him the pointers.