Raising the Stakes

Keir shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said, because, really, it was the only possible answer. “Dan, I want you to check out a man named Gray Baron. Graham Baron. He’s registered with us, so it should be easy enough to learn what we need to know.”

“Which is?” Dan asked.

A muscle clenched in Keir’s jaw. “Which is,” he said, “everything from where he was born to what he eats for breakfast. I want to know all there is to know about this guy, and I want to know it pronto.”

CHAPTER NINE

GRAY knew he’d blown it.

Ten minutes of smiling and doing his boyish best to convince Dawn that that he was Mr. Terrific got him no place.

He shoved his hands into his pockets as he walked through the gardens along a pebbled path that curved like the blade of a scimitar around the Desert Song’s enormous pool.

He’d wasted half a night searching the casino for a woman who wasn’t there…and the other half thinking about an elusive stranger with a shy smile who had gotten under his skin in, what, less than two hours? It was crazy, and even crazier now that he knew who that stranger was.

He’d imagined Dawn Carter as a flashy blonde, but she wasn’t. Not on the outside, anyway, and what did that prove except that you couldn’t judge the package by its cover? He’d known that for years. Every man knew it. It was like a little gift that came with puberty. Your voice changed, you sprouted hair on your face, and you figured out that women were never what they seemed.

But this particular woman was more complex than he’d anticipated. That was going to complicate things. He’d have to ditch plan A and segue into Plan B…and that wouldn’t work, either. The Dawn he’d come to see had just made it clear she’d sooner sip hemlock than have a glass of wine in his company, and he sure as hell couldn’t see her swallowing a story about her grandfather leaving her a music box in his will.

Now what?

Gray drew a deep breath, then blew it out. It was quiet here. No ping ping ping of the slots, no sound of voices like the distant roar of the sea in the background. He was pretty much alone: the gard

ens were all but deserted at this time of day. A hot breeze carried occasional laughter from the pool. At least someone was having a good time, he thought grimly, and kicked at the small white stones that made up the path.

This whole mess was Jack Ballard’s fault. If he’d sent a decent picture of the girl instead of a blurred faxed copy, Gray wouldn’t have spent the best part of an afternoon with the woman he’d come to see without knowing it and somehow offending her enough to make her want to freeze him out. Or maybe it was because of Keir O’Connell. If the man was, in fact, her lover, maybe she believed in being loyal to him…and what twist of fate had put O’Connell into the picture at the worst possible moment? Gray figured he must have looked as if he’d been hit in the head with a two-by-four when he read Dawn’s name tag. Life in the courtroom had taught him how to fake a fast recovery and that was what he’d done.

“Nice to meet you,” he’d said.

“Nice to meet you, too,” she’d replied, but the lie had been in the sound of her voice, in the look in her eyes. She didn’t think it was nice to meet him; he had the feeling she’d have been about as eager to shake hands with a snake as with him, but he’d made some inane remark about what a small world it was, yadda yadda yadda, and she’d said yes, it was, and all the time O’Connell had gone on standing there, watchful as a mastiff on alert.

Was it because he didn’t like the idea of someone hitting on his woman, or had he picked up on something? And what the hell did it matter?

Gray parked himself on a teak bench, tucked his chin on his chest, stretched out his long legs and folded his arms. O’Connell or no O’Connell, he wasn’t going to get near Red. She’d made that absolutely clear. He’d gone on talking, saying nothing, really, just waiting for her to pick up her end of the conversation, but she hadn’t. Her eyes had been cool and flat and he’d thought about how much he’d wanted to see what they looked like yesterday, about how he’d stared at that blurry photo and wondered if she’d have her grandmother’s sad, mysterious look, and then he wondered why in hell it should matter. That was when his brain went dead, his mouth went dry and he shut up.

Red had taken that as her cue to withdraw her hand from his. “Well, it’s been nice meeting you, Mr. Baron,” she’d said. “I hope you enjoy your stay with us.”

Yeah, he’d said, thanks, he was sure he would.

“If there’s anything special I can help you with,” she’d added, but he knew she was on automatic, that it was part of her job to make that meaningless offer to VIP guests at the Desert Song and now, as a matter of courtesy, to him.

She’d smiled again and then she’d turned to O’Connell and murmured that she needed five minutes of his time. O’Connell had stuck out his hand and said it had been nice meeting him and he hoped he’d see him around…

Gray’s mouth twisted.

What crap. Bull patties, Jonas would say. Two brush-offs in twenty-four hours, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He had to talk with Dawn, size her up without her knowing she was being sized up, although he still couldn’t imagine what he’d gain. Nothing he’d seen here changed his original estimation of her.

A high-pitched buzz sounded just beside him. Gray turned his head and saw a hummingbird, a brightly jeweled blaze of crimson, hovering over a crimson flower. His mind flashed to a client he’d had years before, a woman who had been into what she’d called birding and never mind that she’d also been into eliminating her rich as Croesus, old as Methuselah husband. He remembered walking through Bryant Park with her on a hot summer afternoon while she explained that she’d shot her husband five times in the chest and once in the face in broad daylight at a distance of no more than five feet because she’d thought he was an intruder, and while he’d been trying to digest that, she’d suddenly made a little sound of delight and pointed at a bank of flowers and the tiny bird working the blossoms.

“A hummingbird,” she’d said. She’d told him the exact kind, too, but Gray couldn’t recall it. All he remembered was that she’d said the fragile creature had flown a couple of thousand miles to reach its destination and then she’d gone back to calm recitation of the facts, including a description of how she’d had to toss out her favorite silk dress because her husband’s blood ended up all over it.

Gray had figured the hummingbird was lucky, not because a greedy woman with a .32 wasn’t interested in blasting it to smithereens but because it had the ability to get out of the way and keep on going. He felt that way again now. What he wanted was to drive straight to the airport and hop a plane that would take him home, but he couldn’t. He owed his uncle, big time. Defending a woman who had deliberately offed an old man was tough. Compared to that, finding a way to sit down and have a conversation with a woman you didn’t like and who didn’t like you was nothing.

That was what he’d come to Vegas to do, wasn’t it? Talk with Dawn? He wasn’t here because, okay, she had the same look in her eyes that he thought he’d seen in her grandmother’s, or to ask her why she’d married a man like Kitteridge and then walked away from her own kid…

“Shit,” he said, and he got to his feet, strode back inside the hotel, brushed past a noisy gaggle of women wearing T-shirts that read Slaves To The Slots and made his way to the little alcove and its fancy desk. A small, framed placard stood angled on the polished fruitwood surface. Discreet gold script urged Special Guests needing assistance to pick up the white telephone and press seven seven seven.

Gray wasn’t so sure about the “special guests” part, but he definitely needed assistance.