Unknown - 23_Cat_In_A_Vegas_Gold_Vendetta

Faint. So faint most people would dismiss it as a distant outdoor noise or the house settling. Faint as a single revolver barrel clicking a bullet into place fifty feet away.

Max set the glass down on a hand towel he’d whipped to the stone counter. He bet he’d used to know how to soundlessly traverse this furniture-scape in the dark. He moved stealthily toward the main room, his stance wide to keep his trouser fabric from hissing against itself, flat-footed to counter any shoe squeaks.

The scraping sound came again, from the front hall. What the hell? A key?

For a heartbeat he hoped that … Gandolph had pulled off another resurrection.

Max plastered himself to the living-room wall. He’d abandoned the shot-up car with the body near the Belfast address of a long-ago counterspy network contact. People didn’t tend to move as frequently in the Old World as in the States. He’d hoped.

Maybe Garry had still been revivable, and found.

The hall was too narrow for an opening door and two people. Max’s blood was pulsing through his carotid arteries, pounding in his eardrums. Maybe Gandolph. Maybe Gandolph.

Whoever … he needed to startle and control the body that came past this break in the house wall.

He heard the door open and shut. The newcomer paused, his or her senses routinely checking the empty house for any change. Max nodded mentally. A pro of some sort. Not the redhead deciding she wanted a return fling in the opium bed. He weighed the slow oncoming footsteps. As precise and cautious as his own.

This was interesting. Who or what would expect this empty house to offer more than vacancy? The white-noise hum of the air conditioner muffled the visitor’s approach. Suddenly a presence blocked the archway, just oncoming bulk and darkness.

Max jumped into the opening, pounding a fist into kidneys, right on target, needing to disable the trunk before the struggle quickly came down to the intruder’s hale legs against his weakened ones. He heard the man’s grunts, but the guy torqued his torso away before Max could get in any more cheap shots. Max pushed his sharp forearm bone across the man’s windpipe and used the opposite wall as his own buttress. Had to exercise some care. He wanted to overcome and question, not kill.

The guy’s elbows were pummeling his ribs. Max slid aside, letting the intruder hit his own crazy bones against the wall. During the expected cascade of curses, he spun the guy against the wall, knee to nuts, and let up on the windpipe.

“Enough already,” the intruder gasped. “You know the turf, and you’re tall enough to be Max Kinsella, in person.”

“And you are—?”

“Your damn house sitter. My contract with Randolph covers my medical costs, so ease off before you run up a bill even you can’t pay.”

Mention of Garry’s name was like saying a password to Max. He lifted his arms and backed away.

“Mind if I turn on the living-room lamp?” he asked the unknown man.

“Hell no! I wanna see how much I can sue for. Freaking idiot. No one called me to say you’d be coming back.”

Max turned and found the lamp he’d noted on his tour of the house, fumbling for what should be a familiar on switch. He let himself sit on the couch arm, relieving his legs but still projecting the impression nothing was visibly wrong with them.

In the weak lamplight, he confronted a sturdy guy, five-ten maybe, 190, and enough five-o’clock shadow for a Latino, with a cop stance, more curious than pissed.

“Man,” he said, “you look like death warmed over and served as sliced jellied aspic. Why’d you attack me?”

“I didn’t know Garry Randolph had contracted for your services, whatever they are. Must be watering the yard and fine-tuning the air-conditioning. Can’t be security.”

“Now that’s where you’re off base. There was nothing to secure here but the house, until you showed up. Where’s Randolph? He e-mailed me saying he’d rendezvoused with you in Switzerland and you were both heading to the British Isles, last I heard.”

Max leaned his head against the wall. “When was that?”

“More than a week ago, U.S. time.”

“Who are you?”

“The guy who helped Randolph get you out of the Neon Nightmare club and then the country.” The man shifted his pummeled body. “I gotta say you recovered pretty damn well from that so-called ‘fatal’ accident in just a little over two months. I figured you’d never walk again, much less threaten the family jewels.” He glanced around. “Where’s Randolph?”

“Who are you?” Max asked again.

“You’d seen me around. Rafi Nadir.”

Max just shook his head.

“My regular job is assistant security chief at the Oasis. Randolph did me a good turn and recommended me for the position, in exchange for maintaining the house so it didn’t deteriorate while he was trying to get you back on your feet again at some fancy Swiss clinic.” He glanced at Max’s legs. “Guess that worked.”

“Somewhat,” Max said. “I’m still compensating. That’s why I hit you like a ton of bricks. I’m still mostly bark and not bite.”

“Pretty nasty bark. But why don’t you know this? Where’s Randolph? Where’s the old guy? He’s some character, but he knows his beans.”

“Dead,” Max said.

Rafi took a deep breath and leaned against the hall wall in his turn. “Shit. I liked that guy. He gave me a second chance.”

“Me too,” Max said. “A couple times.”

“How did he die?”

“Shootout with the ex-IRA and alternate IRA in Belfast. Our car got caught in the crossfire. I lived and Garry didn’t.”

“Shit,” Nadir said. “Nothing personal. I mean the situation. Bad. That old guy moved the world for you.”

Max said nothing. Just took a deep breath.

Nadir said, “Sorry. I’m guessing the admiration was mutual.”

That brought Max’s head up, business on his mind.

“I don’t know what Garry’s arrangement with you was. I don’t know you … who or what you are or how you’re involved. My legs were smashed and my memory is … a vast wasteland. I know what happened after I woke up from a coma at that Swiss clinic, yet almost nothing of my life before, just the … static … of the inane march of pop culture. Nothing important.”

“So you’re a blank slate?” Nadir said. “I know some things. I know someone wants to kill you bad enough to follow you from Vegas to Europe. You say your legs are iffy and your mind is an empty playground? Cheer up, Kinsella. That’s just the bad news. The good news is you have me to depend on.”

The stranger named Rafi Nadir grinned.

“And my ex thinks I’m utterly undependable.”

Chapter 8

Dry-Gulched

Who would have ever guessed that Temple Barr would be grateful to Savannah Ashleigh for anything?

Not Temple Barr.

The annoying has-been actress who’d made Las Vegas her shaky second-career base seemed to embody everything that kept the female persona known as “bimbo” alive way too long into the twenty-first century.

Still, it was good to have a serious errand the morning after picking up what was left of Max.

After a fitful night with Midnight Louie in her California-king-size bed and a nervous morning wondering how Max had fared, Temple was glad to have something on her agenda.

She parked her Miata outside the Aloe Vera Drive address Savannah had given her, although no house was visible. She stared at a tangled web of mesquite trees and spiny desert shrubs and varieties of cacti, a desiccated jungle compared to the scruffy lawns and foundation-planting-bare neighboring house yards.

This was an older area, from the sixties, not maintained with watered Bermuda and landscaped plantings, as Max’s house had been and still was. Another oddity, Temple thought.