Velocity (Karen Vail #3)(132)

When he had gathered sufficient strength, he struggled to his knees, but even lifting his soaked pant legs required effort. He crawled forward onto the cement floor and lay down again. He’d lost blood, he was sure of that.

He gathered the wet shirt sleeve in his right hand and yanked. The cotton fibers gave in and tore, slowly, along the shoulder seam. He twisted the cloth into a thin band, then tied it above the wound, tightening it as best he could.

He’d made it this far, through beatings and drug dealers and hired killers. He wasn’t about to let a piece of lead kill him.



VAIL FOLLOWED THE GUARD, whose name tag read “Pryor,” through the hotel’s ground floor to the room service elevator.

“Aren’t there stairs?”

Pryor, who sported a belly that had likely played host to many a six-pack evening, sighed audibly. “You didn’t say you wanted to walk it. What are you, some exercise nut?”

“No, I’m a federal agent in a goddamn hurry.”

“Faster to take the elevator,” Pryor said as he reached out and poked the button again with a stubby finger. “By the time we’d gotten to the staircase over by the retail shops, elevator would’ve been here twice over.”

Vail keyed her radio. “This is Vail. En route to the lower level of the Bellagio. Waiting for the elevator.”

Mann’s voice boomed over the two-way. “You kidding me? Take the fucking stairs!”

Vail brought the radio to her mouth and faced Pryor as she spoke. “Now there’s a brilliant idea. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Pryor looked up at the ceiling and rocked back on his heels. Not a worry in the world.

Vail thought of Robby and grabbed her temples. I can’t believe this.

The elevator doors slid open and she practically leaped inside.



ROXXANN DIXON HAD LOCATED César Guevara attempting to circle back and exit Caesars Palace through its front entrance. She was determined not to lose him again, but he appeared to be moving urgently—and he had a cell phone to his ear. If he had spotted her, bodyguards would not be far off. Armed bodyguards.

“This is Dixon,” she said into her radio. “In foot pursuit of suspect Guevara. Leaving Caesars’ main entrance. Request available backup.”

Dixon followed him as he ran across the pedestrian overpass that arced above South Las Vegas Boulevard at Flamingo Way. To her left, building-size pictures of Donnie and Marie Osmond smiled back at her.

Ahead, amid people moving in both directions across the bridge, César Guevara was thirty feet from the down escalator and staircase.

“Hold it right there,” Dixon yelled. “Agents are coming right at you, there’s nowhere to go.” Not true, but what the hell.

The tourists who saw her SIG veered away, but those who were oblivious bumped her from behind or weaved around her. Guevara slowed and glanced through the clear Lexan walls, no doubt attempting to verify Dixon’s claims of nearby reinforcements.

But Guevara apparently felt that if there were federal agents approaching, he would be no worse off than if he were to surrender. And he surely knew she wouldn’t discharge her weapon with innocents in such close proximity.

Down the stairs they both went. Dixon keyed her radio.

Guevara negotiated a sharp left at the bottom of the staircase, passing Bill’s Gambling Hall and Saloon and moving toward the Flamingo Hotel.

“Guevara headed north at the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo Way,” Dixon said into her two-way.

Guevara sidestepped the open casino entrance, where two scantily clad women were dancing atop a raised pedestal. Dixon struggled to stay in visual contact with Guevara, as the crowd was now considerably thicker than it had been on the bridge.

Guevara fended off Latino workers shoving porn trading cards into the hands of passersby. He looked right, at the raucous college students pulling on neon green drinks in Margaritaville, then glanced left at the thick, slowly moving traffic.

Dixon made up ground and was only thirty feet behind him when Guevara stopped suddenly, shoved a man aside, drew his handgun, and—

Before Dixon could reach him, his weapon bucked, followed by his body.

He’d been hit—but by whom?

As Guevara slumped back into the trunk of a streetside palm tree—he’d taken a round but was not incapacitated—Hector DeSantos stepped off the planted median in the center of the boulevard, his gold Desert Eagle out in front of him, approaching Guevara with caution.

Cars stopped, drivers gawking at the man in front of them advancing across the roadway with a handgun—and making no attempt to hide it.

“Don’t make me shoot you again,” DeSantos said. “Drop the gun or you’ll be joining all your dead cartel brothers.”

Guevara, his face contorted in pain, did not acquiesce.

But Dixon came up behind him and pressed her SIG against the man’s temple. “Does this make the decision easier?”

Guevara dropped the handgun. He was bleeding from the abdomen—a notoriously painful wound—but Dixon showed him no mercy as she grabbed his hands and yanked them behind him, then fastened her set of cuffs to his wrists.

“That’s for Eddie,” Dixon said of her deceased ex-boyfriend.

Guevara winced. “Don’t know who that is.”

“John Mayfield killed him.”