Dying for the Highlife by Dave Stanton Read Free Book Online Page B

cooperate after that, I guarantee it.”
    “My god,” Heather murmured. The prospect of violence stunned her for a second. It represented the point of no return. Moving forward with the plan now meant it was all or nothing: success meant wealth for life, tropical drinks in paradise, total freedom. Failure probably meant jail. This was unlike anything Heather had ever been involved in.
    “You think he’ll actually give us the money?” she asked.
    “One way or another.”
    Eric’s face looked charged with an evil energy, and it scared Heather. She was then overcome by a wave of loss and regret so powerful her knees almost buckled. How had things got to this point? She always thought her beauty would naturally result in a privileged life; a rich, classy husband, interesting, successful friends, material surroundings that spoke of higher culture. But none of that ever happened. Instead, here she was, with her whacked-out, unemployed, steroid-abusing spouse, sitting in a lousy apartment, working on a desperate scheme to steal $3 million.
    She blinked and took a deep breath. “Let’s do it,” she said.

9
    H eading north on Highway 50, I crossed over the California-Nevada border, passing the casinos and leaving South Lake Tahoe in my rearview mirror. I followed the highway around the lake, then downshifted and began climbing the pass over Spooner summit, toward Nevada’s Great Basin desert.
    The pine-choked forest became sparse, replaced by brown hills dotted with sagebrush. I crested the summit and coasted down the grade, until I reached the flats outside Carson City. The late-afternoon sun was falling behind me as I cruised Highway 395 through the center of town, past the old bars, second-rate casinos, fast-food joints, and strip malls. Toward the north end of Carson, 50 reconvened heading east again. From there the highway stretched without interruption for four hundred empty miles across Nevada’s high desert and into Utah. Fortunately, I only had to drive eight miles before I saw the low billboard marking the brothel complex Jimmy Homestead visited a week ago.
    I followed the potholed road around a few bends and back behind a low rise that hid the neon cathouse signs from the highway. The complex was made up of four single-story, chain-link-fence-enclosed buildings set in a horseshoe. In the middle was a large gravel parking lot. One of the establishments was a strip club; the other three were whorehouses, sanctioned and licensed by the state of Nevada.
    I drove around the parking lot and parked in front of Tumbleweeds Ranch, the most upscale of the bordellos. The last time I’d been here was a year ago. I got out of my truck and walked over to a spot a little ways out and kicked at the gravel with my boot. It was here I’d shot an ex-mercenary who tried to send me to the next dimension with a sawed-off twelve-gauge. My shot didn’t kill him, though; Cody Gibbons finished the job by blowing his head off from twenty feet with a .44 hollow-point round. I lingered over the spot for a moment, then walked back to where I’d parked.
    There were two motorcycles among the dozen or so cars in front of Tumbleweeds. One of the bikes was a customized Harley, the other an old Honda with long, makeshift forks and a sissy bar. I rang the buzzer and waited for the lock on the gate to be released. The sun had sunk behind the desert hills, and the temperature was dropping quickly.
    When I entered the parlor the madam was nowhere to be seen, so I waved off the lineup of prostitutes and took a seat at the bar, which was scattered with a handful of men. I ordered a whiskey rocks and let the ice cubes melt while I scanned the velvet couches against the walls. A small group of ladies were talking and laughing, led by a stunning Asian whore I’d met last year, but I couldn’t remember her name. Three other women sat alone, separate from the group, seemingly aloof, or maybe just bored.
    Two seats from me, a pair of men sat huddled