Barry Eisler - The Detachment

She was certainly easy on the eyes, and any other time, he would have been happy to follow wherever this led. But not today.

“Well, I better wrap it up,” he said. “You can only do so much yoga in a day.”

She smiled, just a hint of Oh, well in the way her eyes lingered on his. “Can I bring you anything? A towel, water…?”

“No, I’m good. Thanks for asking.”

“Okay, then.” She held his gaze for another instant, then turned to head back to the front of the room. Treven was about to follow her when a muscular, crew-cut guy in a dark suit came in. Treven made him instantly as a bodyguard-the build, the watchful presence, and no way was the guy here for a workout wearing a suit.

“Oh, one thing,” Treven said to Alisa, who turned back to face him. “The spa. There’s a steam room in there, right?”

He was stalling for time, wanting to see what the bodyguard did and who might come in behind him. It wasn’t necessarily going to be Shorrock. The Wynn did a lot of business with VIPs. Whoever it might be, he knew he’d look less noteworthy chatting up one of the attendants than he would on his own.

“There is,” Alisa said. “The steam is infused with Eucalyptus, so it’ll really clear out your pores and open up your sinuses.”

“I’ll have to give it a try. I don’t think I’ve ever had a Eucalyptus steam bath before.”

She smiled. “You’ll like it. I use the women’s every day I’m here.”

Treven tracked the bodyguard in his peripheral vision. The man scoped the room, but not carefully. Treven had the sense he was only confirming there was no other way in or out. And why be more thorough than that? Shorrock was important, true, but it wasn’t as though he was the president. And like Rain had said, if Shorrock was doing something unscheduled, the security detail would be more focused on someone following him than they would be on people who were already there.

“Every day?” Treven said. “You must have the cleanest pores in Vegas.”

Alisa laughed. “I don’t know about that, but it’s definitely good for your skin.”

The bodyguard walked back to the glass doors and held one open, and bam , in walked Shorrock. Treven felt his heart rate kick up a notch. Son of a bitch, they had him.

“I’ll tell you,” Treven said, keeping Shorrock in his peripheral vision, “I’ve always been jealous of people who get to work out for a living.”

“You look like you’re doing okay,” Alisa said, glancing down at his torso. “What are you in town for?”

The guard, he noted, hadn’t come back in. Shorrock was heading for the back of the room, where the free weights were.

“Just a reunion with some friends,” Treven said. She’d pinged him with that glance and the question about his plans. If he pinged back, she’d escalate. “Play some poker, maybe see that Cirque de Soleil show.”

She nodded, noting, no doubt, that this was the second time he’d failed to return a volley. “Enjoy,” she said. But then, keeping the door open: “And let me know how that steam bath goes.”

He smiled. “I will.”

He knew it would look odd if he stuck around much longer, but he thought he could afford to take just a few minutes more and see if he could pick up anything operational.

He walked to the water cooler and filled a cup, then strolled over to the front of the room to grab a towel. Through the glass he could see the bodyguard, pacing slowly in front of the salon, which put him between the elevators and the entrances to the gym and the spa. Yeah, the guy wasn’t worried about people who were in the gym already, but he might key on new arrivals. Treven thought Dox should hold off, that it was time to send in Rain. Rain was the only one of them whose size wasn’t itself conspicuous, plus he was Asian, or Asian-looking, anyway, which likely put him generally outside the kind of profiling Shorrock’s bodyguards would be doing. And beyond that, there was something about Rain’s demeanor that made him easy to overlook. There was a stillness about him when he was in public that might initially be mistaken for blandness, or even timidity. It was the mistake the contractors had made, and Treven would never forget the way the average-sized, meek-seeming Japanese guy he had assumed Rain to be had suddenly decloaked and dropped the two much larger men with his bare hands before anybody could even get there to stop it.

Besides, they’d agreed Rain would do the actual hit. He had the most esoteric experience-the rest of them were strictly firearms guys. In fact, of all the men Treven had killed, more than he could remember in combat, assassinations, and self-defense, he couldn’t think of a time he’d used anything other than a gun. Not that it would be so terribly complicated to spray someone in the face with cyanide, but on the other hand aerosolized cyanide was dangerous shit, and in an op anything could go wrong. The surest, and safest, way to deliver the dose would be directly into the target’s open mouth, and if there was anyone who could get close enough to make that happen, he guessed it was Rain.

He walked back to the free weights area. Shorrock, a wiry guy of about fifty wearing Under Armour shorts and a tee shirt, was doing pushups, his movements crisp and efficient. He had an iPod Shuffle strapped to his arm. Treven noticed he’d set down an aluminum water bottle at the base of the dumbbell rack, probably filled with some sports drink. The guy looked at home in the gym. Treven started to turn away, then noticed something on the carpet next to the water bottle. Son of a bitch, it was a keycard, in the hotel’s signature flaming red.

His mind raced through the implications. They’d expected Shorrock to take a locker in the spa. Obviously he hadn’t-maybe because he didn’t have time, maybe because Eucalyptus steam baths weren’t his thing. He’d come straight to the fitness center, after which, presumably, he’d be heading straight back to his room.

Was there a way to get the room number? There was a sign-in sheet at the desk outside. To use the gym, Treven had needed to write down his name and room number. The people at the desk then checked the computer to confirm he was a registered guest. Presumably, Shorrock had filled out the form, too. Maybe the bodyguards had told him not to, but Treven doubted it. Their security posture seemed pretty relaxed. It was a Las Vegas casino, after all-what could possibly happen?

He stood behind the massive pillar in the center of the room so the bodyguard outside couldn’t see him if he looked in, and glanced around to confirm no one was within earshot. The place was huge and the closest people were on the treadmills and exercise bikes, a good fifteen feet away. The whirring of the machines was audible from where he stood.

He pulled his cell phone from his shorts pocket and called Rain. “He’s here,” he said quietly.

There was a brief pause. Rain said, “Okay. I know you can’t plausibly stick around much longer. We’ll rotate my partner in and I’ll head to the spa to wait.”

“No, the spa’s no good. I’m pretty sure he’s not using it. He set his keycard down on the floor right here, so I’m guessing he never got a locker.”

“His keycard?”

Treven moved from one side of the pillar to the other to ensure no one had approached. “Yeah, we’re thinking the same thing. I’ll check the sign-in sheet at the desk and see if I can learn his room number. You send your partner down to the spa-have him tell the desk he’s just checking it out to see if he wants to spend the forty bucks. There’s a bodyguard outside but I don’t think he’ll care about your partner if he’s heading into the spa instead of the gym. I’ll swap our friend’s card for mine-”