Vegas Vengeance by Randy Wayne White Read Free Book Online

the corner of your mouth. A bulge under your lapel where your gun is holstered. Glassy scars on your jaws and knuckles.” She peered at him closely over the candle in the center of the table. “But I guess you do have a few scars, don’t you?”
    â€œA few. I hope they make up for the other shortcomings.”
    She laughed. “Oh, I’m not disappointed in you. Not yet. Kevin Smith speaks highly of your abilities.” Her gaze narrowed. “In fact, he said you were something of a legend among the major police departments in this country. He said he had never even met you before yesterday, yet he was sure you were the ideal man for the job when he realized that neither he nor the official police could handle it. I wonder why, Mr. Hawker. Why would one man be able to succeed where a whole force of trained policemen might fail?”
    Hawker shrugged. “To begin with, I’m not Mr. Hawker. That was my father. I’m ‘James’ or ‘Hawk’ or just about anything else you care to call me. And maybe it’s because I don’t take coffee breaks. And I don’t have a union that charges time and a half. And, of course, there are no guarantees I won’t fail. Working undercover offers certain advantages, but it also makes me more vulnerable.”
    â€œIs that right? For some reason, you don’t strike me as the vulnerable type.”
    â€œI become especially vulnerable when the people I’m after have a spy in my own camp.”
    She put down her drink quickly, her face incredulous. “What? You can’t mean that.”
    Hawker shrugged. “Today on the telephone, I told you I planned to check out Jason Stratton’s cabin this afternoon. I left a note for Captain Smith telling him the same thing. Through one of those two sources, the organization trying to force you out of your businesses was informed.”
    â€œI didn’t tell a damn soul!”
    â€œI’m not saying you did. It was stupid of me to leave the information in a note. Anyone could have opened it, read it, then put it in a fresh envelope. It’s a mistake I will never make again.”
    â€œOr the telephone lines could have been tapped,” Barbara Blaine said thoughtfully.
    Hawker nodded. “Or they could have bugged my room. I didn’t have time to give it a thorough going over when I returned late this afternoon, but I will tonight.”
    â€œBut they knew where you were going? And they followed you?”
    Hawker poured the rest of his Tuborg into the pilsner glass. He didn’t want to go into too much detail. For one thing, he had no real proof that he could trust this woman. On the way out to Vegas, he had formed several possible scenarios to explain the extortion attempt on the Five-Cs complex. One of the scenarios was that Jason Stratton hadn’t been murdered—he had disappeared voluntarily to work undercover against the Five-Cs with his accomplice, Barbara Blaine.
    The scenario didn’t seem to fit now. Barbara Blaine seemed too earnest; the things he had found in Stratton’s cabin suggested that he had, indeed, been kidnapped or murdered.
    Even so, Hawker omitted some key information from his story. He had learned very quickly that in Las Vegas, the opposition only needs one small opening to kill you.
    She listened transfixed to the story of the car chase. “But what happened after they wrecked their car?” she demanded. “Did they talk? Did they say anything?”
    Hawker looked at her levelly. “They were both killed.”
    Her hand trembled slightly as she touched the martini glass to her lips. “They were killed? In the car wreck, you mean?”
    â€œIn the paper tomorrow you will read that the two men somehow got into a fight with each other while driving through Kyle Canyon. The police will be confused, so they will say that it is still under investigation. But they will decide the two men killed each