Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(79)

They ate mac-and-cheese microwave dinners, hauled their gear out to the Cadillac, and took off. Cox found another news station. They were halfway to Tina’s Wayside when the woman newscaster said, “We’re getting word of a SWAT team raid believed connected to the shootings at the Show Boat mall. Our reporter, Jennette English, is with Metro police on Windmill Lane.”

Cox flinched. “Oh my God, they got the house.”

Deese: “What?”

“That’s where we were,” she said. “We were on the first street off Windmill Lane. We can’t go back. They’ve got all our clothes, everything. My shoes.”

Cole: “Jesus, we got lucky. They couldn’t have come in more than a few minutes after we left.”

“Fuckin’ cameras, I bet,” Deese growled. “When I was in London, they could track people all over town, step by step, with their cameras. Bet they’ve got them here, too.”

“What do we do?” Cox asked.

“If they were tracking us, they know the cars,” Cole said. “This car. And the truck. They’ll be checking everything that looks like us. We need to get out of sight right quick.”

Cox started to cry again. “I want to go home.”

“We really need to get out of sight,” Cole said.

“It’s a Cadillac,” Cox wailed. “You can’t park a Cadillac in the woods without somebody looking at it.”

“No, but you can hide it . . . Turn left at the next light.”


COLE TOOK THEM to a Cadillac dealership five minutes way. The place was closed, but there were rows of parked Cadillacs facing the street, with a few empty slots. “What if there’s a guard?” Cox asked, as she backed into one of the vacant spaces.

“I’ll handle it,” Deese said.

“Aw, jeez, you’re gonna kill a security guard?”

Deese didn’t say no. Instead, he looked around the crowded lot, then asked Cole, “How’d you know about this place? This is pretty fuckin’ smart.”

“Saw it when we were out driving around,” Cole said. “We still gotta get down to Tina’s without being spotted to see if Harrelson’s there. That’s not for an hour yet. We need to wipe the dirt off the license plates—at this point, it’s a giveaway.”

They did that, then settled in to wait.

A foil sack rustled in the backseat. “Anyone want some Cheetos?” Deese asked.


THEY ARRIVED at Tina’s Wayside at ten minutes after nine o’clock, in full darkness, and immediately spotted Harrelson’s Yellow Cab–colored Porsche Cayenne sitting under a light in the parking lot. “Aw, man,” Cole said. “He’s here.”

“I hate sitting around in this Cadillac,” Deese said. “Find a place we can wedge it in, where you can’t see it.”

They drove once around the parking lot, decided on a spot in the street that ran parallel to the backside of the lot, between two other SUVs, from where they could still see Harrelson’s truck. More waiting. The last time, Harrelson had left at ten o’clock. And he did on this night, as well.

One difference: there was a short, round-headed man with him. They both got into the Cayenne and Deese said to Cox, who was driving, “Gotta go! Gotta go fast! Fast! Go! Go!”

She threw the Cadillac into gear, yanked the SUV out of the parking space, and hit the gas. “Not too fast,” Cole said, “We don’t want some cop stopping us.”

“Gotta take the chance,” Deese said. “Fast! Fast! Go! Go!”

Cox knew the route from the first attempt. They didn’t see any cops—“I bet they got every spare car covering the house,” Cole said—and they made it to the wall across the street from Harrelson’s with three or four minutes to spare.

Cole and Deese had pulled the ski masks over their heads, checked their guns. Before they left the house, Cole had unscrewed two wooden legs from a coffee table. These made satisfactory clubs, each two feet long, with sharp, ninety-degree corners at the top end. Cole handed one to Deese and said, “Your leg. Don’t kill anybody.”

Deese hefted it and said, “Maybe I shoulda worked with you guys instead of working for fuckin’ Smith, that miserable piece of shit. I used to have this walking stick . . .”

“Right,” Cole said.

Cox would find a place to ditch the Cadillac not too far away. If something went wrong, they’d call and she’d come in a hurry. If all went well, they’d take one of Harrelson’s cars and leave town in that. As they came up to the wall, she slowed, and Deese said to her, “Don’t you run off. Don’t you run off to the cops. If you run off and leave us here, after I get out of prison, I’ll find you and cut you open and eat your liver right in front of your eyes.”

“Jesus, Deese,” Cole said. And to Cox: “You’ll be okay. Stay in the game.”

They were at the wall, and Deese and Cole, now in complete darkness, were quickly out of the SUV and over it.


AS WAS THE CASE with their first attempt, the subdivision seemed dead: no cars on the streets, nobody outside, no voices or music or people in swimming pools. The flicker of television screens danced behind a few curtains, but as part of Las Vegas, with its all-night reputation to live up to, the place was a failure.