Chapter One
“Almost home, miss.” The First Officer peeked his head through the open doorway of the small office off the largest bedroom in the back of the plane. “I’ll need you up front and belted in for landing.”
“Thank you.” I shut down the computer and my efforts to try to catch up on what had been going on in Vegas while I’d been gone. My name is Lucky O’Toole and for the last two weeks or more I’d been ignoring my responsibilities as the vice president of customer relations for the Babylon Group, the owner of multiple properties in Vegas and one of the primo Strip properties. Not that a couple of hours over the Pacific would get me up to speed, but it might help me hit the ground running.
I reached to flip off the satellite television showing a live feed of the local news. The face on the screen stopped me. My best friend, Flash Gordon, newshound extraordinaire, reporting from a local party—not her usual beat. As the sun was out, it looked like the party was earlier this afternoon. I glanced at my watch.
Just after midnight.
In the feed, Flash interviewed another buddy of mine Jordan Marsh, Hollywood heartthrob. They were promoting the Concours d’Elegance, a fancy car party starting soon, so I didn’t bother with the sound. Next to Jordan, attempting to squeeze into a sliver of importance, bobbed a man I didn’t know—tall, thin, graying temples and a smile that would have most smart men grabbing their wives and daughters. There was one in every crowd. I shook my head and snapped off the TV. That was Vegas right there: fancy cars, celebrity cachet, and a regular Joe soaking it up for the weekend, perhaps pretending an importance he didn’t have.
The pilots pulled back power and started our descent as I buckled in.
The lights of Las Vegas spread across the valley below—thousands of pinpoints in the desert darkness. At ten thousand feet, the plane skimmed over the Sunrise Mountains then started the drop to final approach—the end of a very long trip. Along the way, I’d left broken hearts, numerous bodies, and perhaps some sanity in my wake.
It struck me that a few short weeks ago, I’d started out heading west and had kept going until I’d come full circle.
Home again.
Odd when the beginning can be the end. Sort of like that old joke: when do you leave home to get home? Guess my life resembled a game of baseball.
Hadn’t struck out yet, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the damage I’d left behind wasn’t going to stay in my rearview.
The plane that now carried me home, one of the Babylon’s G650s, certainly had made a clean getaway all the easier. I thought I’d left each country with the approval and most likely the enthusiasm of the local constabularies, but I wasn’t entirely sure. At some point it would be my luck to land on the wrong side of a modern-day Avert. Despite the body count, there’d been only one near fatality on the side of truth, justice and all of that—one of the fractured hearts was mine.
Thankfully, my body had survived. Most of the time I was grateful for that.
I pressed my nose to the window as the pilot banked the plane lining up on final approach. Landing to the north put the Strip on the left side of the plane. The lights beckoned with a false promise of fun. Oh, don’t get me wrong; for most who came here, the city delivered.
But not for me.
As the Chief Problem Solver of the Babylon Group (my business card reads Vice President of Customer Relations, but let’s be real), it was my job to keep the Vegas magic burning bright for all who stepped across the threshold of one of our properties. Consequently, I’d seen behind the curtain. And once you see the levers and gears, the magic isn’t quite as…magical.
For me, Vegas was not a holiday, not one last toot with my BFFs before the impending stranglehold of marriage, nor did it provide even a simple weekend fantasy to offset the drag of real life.
No. Vegas was my real life.
My home.
And it was no fantasy.
Like everybody else, I lived with my problems lurking with the dust bunnies under the pieces of large furniture and whispering from the shadows. But unlike everyone else, I didn’t have Vegas in which to offload them, not even for the weekend.
I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes contemplating exactly where to begin my reentry, how to solve a few of the looming problems, but I hadn’t a clue. I’d left a beautiful young girl killed on my watch in London, a broken engagement in Paris, and a slew of bodies and unanswered questions in Bordeaux. I’d delivered a Hong Kong financier on the run from some very scary Triad enforcers to Monte Carlo with only the slimmest chance to right a wrong and save his own hide. But those paled in the light of my worst problem. My father, the head and heart of the Babylon Group, still struggled to recover from a bullet to the chest. My mother couldn’t…or wouldn’t…tell me how sick he really was.
If he died it would change everything.
Between you and me, I found adulting to be a cruel hoax perpetrated on happy children. I once was a happy child…I think. But that little slice of Norman Rockwell (the only slice of Norman Rockwell in my childhood) was so far in my rearview it had vanished in the haze.
“Glad to be back?” A familiar voice knifed through my little bit of dirty laundry airing. Detective Romeo.
For a moment I’d forgotten about him—my personal Sir Galahad who had ridden to my rescue. (His take. I let him have the fantasy.) He’d arrived in Paris as I touched a match to the fuse and fireworks lit the sky. He’d stayed to help me pick up the pieces, then caught a ride home…via Monte Carlo.
While he was my secret weapon in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department—Metro to us locals—he was just a kid. Although, tonight, he looked way more world-weary than his years would allow. In fact, he looked as tired as I felt, despite the now mashed lei around his neck, the white Plumeria blossoms starting to brown—we’d stopped for fuel in Hawaii and had done the whole customs and island thing. At the time, I’d resented the time it had taken but was grateful now we’d done it.
Romeo blinked at me, clearly expecting some kind of response—I couldn’t remember to what. Dark circles underslung his red eyes. The hint of worry lines bracketed his mouth and radiated from the corners of his eyes. Somewhere over Indonesia he’d stopped worrying about straightening his tie or combing his hair. The flag of a cowlick sprung from the crown of his head.
I resisted the urge to brush it flat.
A hint of sympathy lit the blue of his eyes, faded by lack of sleep. “You left a lot of shit back there. Home must feel good.” His attempt to make me feel better was appreciated but fell short of the mark. Not his fault. For some reason I wasn’t feeling the homecoming joy.
Must home feel good? Did it? Jet lagged and heartbroken, and more than a little panicked, I didn’t have an answer for him. In fact, I didn’t have any answers period—heck of a place for a professional problem solver. The only answer I could give him was a shrug.
As the wheels kissed the runway, he turned to look at the Strip out the window that still held my nose print. “Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” He was still young enough to be awestruck.
“One constant in a sea of change.” Too tired to muster a grin at the irony—if Vegas stood for anything it was change, even if only for a weekend—I pulled my phone out of my bag and powered it up. A few seconds of silence, no more, and texts pinged like the ringing of a come-to-dinner bell but without eliciting the same salivating anticipation.
Romeo and I both looked at the offending device.
“Damn,” he said. “You must be important.” His smile told me he thought so.
I wasn’t so sure. “Being the one who stops the proverbial buck makes me popular, but I’m not so sure about important.”
Miss P, the head of customer relations for the Babylon Casino Hotel, our most exquisite, over-the-top Strip property and my right-hand man, caught me before I had a chance to begin to tackle the texts. I answered her call on the second ring. “Have you been bugging the FAA again?”
“I have a copy of your flight plan.”
One more bit of proof that I could indeed run but not hide. “Along with a detailed transcript of my last visit to my therapist.”
“You don’t have a therapist.”
“An oversight soon to be corrected.”
“Riiiight.” She knew me well. Whining was my go-to when pressure mounted. Sharing my innermost thoughts with a stranger didn’t promise the same immediate gratification. “Can we talk now, without the whine?”
“Oh, if you insist.” As the plane slowed to a taxi, Romeo pushed himself up and disappeared toward the back. I took his place at the window, working to draw energy from the wattage outside. I’d been told the Strip could be seen from a galaxy far, far, away. As I blinked against its brightness, I believed it. “Whatcha got?” The lure of a problem that perhaps I could actually solve tickled me. The old happy-to-be-home tingle shivered through me—a faint shiver, but there.
“I’m sorry to do this to you, but we’ve got a dead guy.”
A dead guy! Oh yeah. Right in my wheelhouse. As I tucked the phone between my shoulder and ear and pushed up my sleeves, I resisted pondering what that said about my life. “How fresh?”
“Still warm.”
“Where?”
“Delivery bay seven. Police are on their way. Jerry’s pulling the security feed. You know the drill.”
I did. Death was the flip side of the fun and frivolity in Vegas. Like all the properties, we had our share. But a dead guy in a delivery bay raised questions. He couldn’t be explained away like a tapped-out gambler deciding to go out in a blaze of idiocy, or a panicked john shoving a roughed-up woman under a bed, or one of the millions of private negotiations that went on all over town going bad. “I’ve got Romeo with me.”
“Paolo is on his way to get you.”
“Thanks. Anything else I need to know?”
“Oh, we’ve got the full complement of crazy this weekend, but I can fill you in later.” Miss P sounded tired. Little wonder—Vegas was a nonstop mischief shop and we were the proprietors. No doubt, my Paris respite with its lure of a normal life with a normal schedule had eroded my 24/7 skills. Although there had been the guy stuffed in a barrel of wine and then the shootout in Bordeaux. Maybe I wasn’t as rusty as I feared. Besides, fire tempers steel and this one would be hot, even by Vegas standards.
“Did my father get home safely from the hospital?”
“Yes.” Her tone turned guarded.
“I’m really surprised they discharged him so soon. A good sign, don’t you think?”
A pause. “They didn’t.”
“They didn’t what?” I asked, sitting up a bit straighter. This rat was stinking to high heaven.
“He left. They didn’t discharge him.”
“He just walked out of the hospital?” That sounded so much like my father.
“He said he had to talk to you. It’s important.”
“He’s okay, right?”
“Resting comfortably according to your mother.”
No one was ever comfortable in my mother’s presence, least of all her family, but I took the words at face value for comfort. “Okay, dead guy first on the list, my father second.”
I disconnected without waiting for a reply, then tossed my phone on the seat next to me. “Am I lucky or what?” I said to no one in particular.
Romeo plopped back down in the seat across from me looking all spit and polished, his eyes bright with anticipation. “People get shot for saying that in your presence.” He watched me; his brows stitched together with worry.
I shot him a bit of slitty-eye. Unchastised, he grinned. Of course, he had a beautiful fiancée who would be very glad to see him—that could sure scrape away the travel grime. I hated to dim his wattage, but I needed his help. “Your homecoming will have to wait. We’ve got a bit of a problem.”
I filled him in on the few details I had.
A puppy eyeing a bone, he perked up. If he had a damn tail… A look of grown-up competence replaced his slobberdog. Personally, I liked the slobberdog better. It reminded me of the aw-gee-whiz kid he’d been when we first met. Now he was Grasshopper all grown up and ready to snatch the stone from my hand. He pulled out his notepad and pencil, then shot me a half-smile. “A dead guy, you say? Welcome home.”
Home. I took a deep breath. A dead guy in the delivery bay and all manner of craziness yet to be discovered and waiting to be dealt with.
Problems to solve, magic to preserve. The old sizzle burned stronger just under the surface.
Home.
Yes, it was good to be back.
* * *
As the plane rolled to a stop and the pilots shut down the engines, Romeo jumped up to help the First Officer lower the stairs. Once the stairs had descended, they both stepped aside to let me go first.
“We’ll call for your car, Ms. O’Toole. I believe one is waiting in the parking lot.” The First Officer held out his hand. Fresh-faced, his cheeks devoid of stubble, his hair still wet from a recent combing—heck, even his shirt was pressed, and his pants still held a crease—he looked as if he could go around the globe again. Of course, he also looked like high school was still in his future. I wasn’t sure when they allowed mere children to fly, but somehow, I’d missed it.
“Watch the first step, it’s bigger than you think.”
Even though the idea that he would think I needed help rankled, I put my hand in his. “Thank you,” I said, surprising myself with the hint of sincerity. Romeo coughed behind me. “Manners, Grasshopper,” I hissed over my shoulder.
The reference did a fly-by right past the First Officer as he continued without a hitch. “We’ll grab your luggage,” he said with the perfunctory tone of an order shaped like a suggestion. Jean-Charles had an irritating way of doing the same thing.
Jean-Charles.
“Are you French?” I asked the young officer as I paused at the top of the stairs.
Romeo sniggered behind me.
“No, ma’am. I’m from Idaho.”
And cursed with a Y-chromosome, I thought. From the bland smile on his face, I hadn’t given word to my thoughts for once in my life, for which I was profoundly grateful.
“I don’t have time to wait for you to fetch my luggage. Would you send it later?” I charged down the steps, in too much of a hurry to wait for his answer. I folded a coat over my arm and took the stairs as quickly as I could with a tired, folded-up body and balky parts. Why was it so easy to sit but so hard to unbend and move again? Even my brain was having a hard time spooling up. The cold slap of wind provided the wake-up call I needed.
Late spring in Vegas was a mercurial thing. Clouds scudded low capturing the light and reflecting a multihued but mostly pink glow. The sting of a wind-driven pellet or two stung my cheeks. Water of any sort occupied a spot on the endangered species list here in the middle of the Mojave, so rain, or more precisely, corn snow, would likely cause citywide wonderment.
I welcomed anything that hinted of a season other than unblinking sunshine and skin-melting heat. Tonight snow, but tomorrow could be sunbathing weather. Nobody could forecast it, least of all the weathermen.
A low, dark limo with the Babylon logo scrawled in hot pink down the side stopped at the bottom of the stairs. The pink had been my idea. I still liked it. My father tolerated it but occasionally, when he thought I was out of earshot, did grudgingly admit it had a certain flair. We made a good team, father and daughter—cut from the same cloth but with a chromosomal orientation that differed yet complemented.
Paolo, the Babylon’s head chauffeur, jumped out of the driver’s side, smashing his chauffeur’s hat on his head as he greeted me with a smile that hinted at his normal wattage but seemed dimmed, perhaps by the demands of a weekend already spooling at a high RPM. “Miss Lucky!” He opened the back door with a flourish. “Welcome home!” Paolo always spoke in exclamation points, something that used to bother me. Not tonight. Not anymore.
Life held precious few superlatives.
My lungs did a happy dance as I paused, breathing in the cold and damp. A few lungsful, then I dove inside.
“The Babylon. Step on it.” I’d always wanted to say that, but tonight it didn’t make me smile. Romeo barely had enough time to scramble in next to me before Paolo threw the car in gear and hit the gas.
The acceleration threw Romeo back against the seat. “Shit!” Apparently, he hadn’t graduated to five letters from four as I’d been trying to do as I navigated my former fiancé’s, Jean-Charles’s, turf. French society frowned on such common vulgarity.
Turns out common was sorta where I lived. Growing up in a whorehouse didn’t prepare one for navigating the halls of palaces filled with the intrigue, backstabbing, and head lopping—the whispers of kings and queens long dead. I pursed my lips as I pondered that. On second thought, maybe it did.
“My sentiments,” I said, embracing Romeo’s base assessment. As I watched the scenery race by and tried not to think about the number of tourists we endangered, I wondered just how much my parents and Miss P hadn’t told me. I glanced at the rearview to catch Paolo’s eyes bracketed by worry, taking quick peeks to check on me. “What is it, Paolo?” Surely, he wouldn’t know any details about my father…or the dead guy—for me, a toss-up in importance. Duty or family—wasn’t that a historical choice suffered by many through the annals? Just carve my name next to Gandhi, who gave up sex with his wife to best serve his people. Okay, not Gandhi. Maybe Richard the Lionheart or Alfred the Great.
“I picked up Mr. Teddie yesterday,” Paolo said, his usual verve wilting to a whisper at the end.
Romeo swiveled a look as I absorbed the punch.
“See.” I held my arms out wide, “all I have to do is think about sex and his name comes up.” Obviously, my self-censor had taken a break. Of course, that presupposed I had any sort of filter. If I did, we weren’t terribly well-acquainted.
That left Romeo struggling to keep up as red crept up his cheeks. “You were thinking about sex?”
“An odd thing, I know, all things considered. I won’t explain how I got there. Besides they say men have a sexual thought every seven seconds. I’m merely trying to keep up.”
“Lowering your personal expectations, I should think.” Romeo coughed and straightened his tie, angling for a look in the side mirror—a thinly cloaked attempt to avoid my slitty-eye.
Paolo’s eyes held the hint of the smile I could not see.
I eyed Romeo. Yes, the student had truly become the teacher. “Indeed. I will endeavor to up my game.” What was it they said? Women who wanted to be equal to men weren’t very ambitious. In a rare show of self-regulation, I kept that to myself.
“Mr. Teddie is here because of his show…” Paolo added. “He asked if you’d gotten home.”
His show! Of course! I’d forgotten. My father, in a flagrant if rare break with family loyalty, had booked Teddie into the theater at the Babylon. In addition to being a super-hot, super-virile man whose voice would make the Pied Piper jealous—especially if he was interested in luring women instead of children—Teddie was also Vegas’s foremost female impersonator. Yes, the first man I’d given my heart to not only looked better in a dress than I did, but he also had daddy issues. I’d snatched my heart back…well, after he’d cut me loose…but I’d left a piece of it behind. Guess that’s how it worked with love. If I were the great Poohbah of the Universe, I’d change that. That way the aftermath of a failed love affair would be a bit less devastating—not that there was any risk I’d ever assume that throne.
“And what did you tell him?” I asked Paolo, who was spending far too much time nervously glancing at my reflection rather than at the road in front of him.
Paolo slunk down a bit in his seat which made him all but disappear, not exactly comforting.
“I told him you’d be home tonight.” He dropped even lower.
I inched toward the edge of the seat and leaned over the front. “I hope from down there you can see more than I can from back here.” People and buildings, signs and cars passed by outside the window in an alarming blur.
“Not so much.”
I reached over the seat and pulled him up by the shoulder of his jacket, reinstalling him to where I was pretty sure he could at least see through the steering wheel. “My whereabouts aren’t a secret.” Not that I wanted Teddie anywhere within eyesight until I figured out how to handle all my mixed emotions. Did I love him? Sure. Did I trust him? Not on your life. Could love exist without trust or did it become something else? Once broken could it ever be repaired, or was it forever lost? Could those questions even be answered?
“Terrific.” I wondered if the show was the only reason he was here. Part of me wished it so. The other part wasn’t so sure.
Romeo touched me on the arm. “It’ll be okay.”
Teddie and I had dodged bullets together in France. Bonding through bullets didn’t sound like the glue to hold a relationship together. And there was still that bit where Teddie had thrown me over for some young songbird and the huge ego boost. Now he was back and singing a different tune. Still sounded a bit off-key to me.
“Okay?” I arched an eyebrow at the young detective who, to his merit, didn’t wilt. “One way or the other.” There was a tiny continuum between homicide and rekindled love. Where Teddie and I would fall was anybody’s guess. “Come on kid, let’s go solve some problems. Remember, no matter how shallow life gets, it’s nice to be needed.”
“Somehow, between you and me, I think we’re looking for mental health in all the wrong places.”