Alien Hunter (Flynn Carroll) (17 page)

After taking off, it turned into the dark western sky. Flynn looked at Diana beside him. Was she capable? No.

Better question: was he?

Same answer.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

They pulled around the gigantic lion that guards the MGM Grand’s porte cochere and got into the valet parking line. Nobody cared, of course, not about a couple of dismal little tourists in a rented Camry. Which was good. A noticeable detective is a bad detective.

He hadn’t walked into this building in five years. As he approached the gleaming doors, the old itch came back. He fought it off. You don’t start, that’s how you control an addiction.

“What do we do now?”

“Find the tiger.”

“If it’s still here.”

“It’s gonna be a major production for them to get it out of the building. Security is all over the place, not to mention the press. This place is loaded with cameras, believe me. If security hasn’t spotted the tiger being taken out, then odds are that it’s still here.”

“He could’ve used the helicopter to take it off the roof.”

He thought about that. Then he said, “Possibly, but he still has to get it up there. Somewhere, some camera will have seen that.”

This was the Grand, where the Skylofts had private butlers. How much would it take to convince his butler to help him get the tiger out? A couple hundred bucks would probably do it. Still, could a butler control the cameras?

They passed the huge golden lion in the lobby, heading for Skyloft check-in. They’d booked one, too, top floor.

He could hear the casino and smell the casino. From here, he couldn’t see the blackjack tables, but he could imagine the dealers standing behind them, waiting. He’d known a couple of those guys. They loved to see players burn, but they loved even more to see them win. Big wins meant big tips.

He slid the door back and entered the exclusive Skyloft check-in area.

“Reservation for James Carroll.”

“Yes, Mr. Carroll! Just a mo—.”

The receptionist’s smile turned to plaster.

“Get ready for company,” Flynn told Diana as the door behind them slid open and a howitzer shell in a black suit came in.

“Excuse me,” the shell said, his steel cranium gleaming.

“We’re here on official business,” Flynn responded. “No gambling.”

“Please come with me, Mr. Carroll. And you, too, Miss Glass.”

He looked at her in astonishment. “You’re booked, too?”

She did not reply.

As they headed toward security, the officer asked, “Are you two a team now?”

“Not really,” Diana said.

He led them into a familiar space, scuffed beige walls, no windows, a steel desk and a couple of wooden chairs. Not the sort of room you expect to see in the Grand. It was even more stark than the service areas and the maze of access tunnels that Flynn knew ran under the huge complex.

He thought he might recognize the security chief, but it was a new, short, stocky bullet-headed bald guy. The new howitzer shell said, “Diana Glass. Welcome back. Leaving, I presume?” He looked at Flynn. “And who’re you supposed to be, Mr. Carroll, Hecuba’s sidekick?”

“I’m a police officer,” Flynn said. He pulled out his badge. “Texas.”

“Doesn’t make a shit here, Mr. Carroll, this is Nevada. The message remains the same. Get out.”

“Look—”

“I’m lookin’ at a lot of losses between the two of you, now get off the premises or I’ll have to turn you over to some real cops, which will not amuse you.”

Unless there was a criminal charge, in cases like this the Vegas cops basically just yelled at you. It wasn’t against the law to win money from the casinos. It was just annoying to them.

“You have a tiger in here and I know this, and I know how to find it and get it out of the resort.”

He heard Diana suck in her breath.

“Your help isn’t needed,” the security chief said. “We’ve got eyes on every camera in the structure.”

“Why haven’t you evacuated?”

“Because we don’t think some eccentric high roller is gonna unleash his pet on the guests. We just want him quietly to leave. Like you.”

“What hasn’t been on the news is why you can’t find it, which I know you can’t. Or why we can. That hasn’t been on the news, either.” He flipped his badge wallet closed. “We’re not here to gamble.”

The security chief came closer to him. Flynn noted that he had a complete set of choppers. Not good with his fists, then.

“Wait here,” Choppers said. He left the room.

Flynn looked up at the camera and waved his fingers. “He’s gone to get the general manager.”

“I really didn’t want to come here.”

“Are you booked all over town, or just here?”

“Look, in a previous life I built illegal software, okay?”

“For the casinos?”

“Against the casinos.”

“All I did was count cards.”

“They don’t like that, either.”

“They do not.”

He looked at her with new eyes. From casino hacker to government super spy. “You’ve had an interesting career.”

She smiled a tight smile. “It has been interesting.”

The general manager came in. He was not smiling. “I’m told you won’t leave.”

“We’re not here to gamble. We’re here to help you with your tiger problem.”

“We don’t have a tiger problem.”

“You have a half-empty casino is what you have. Because of the bad publicity regarding said tiger. That’s a tiger problem.”

The guy was young, no more than five years older than Flynn, but he had the dead eyes of somebody who’d worked tables too long. Under the flinty, hostile surface was a deeper level of what Flynn sensed was real nastiness. So he had to be beaten about the head and shoulders a little. Not a problem. He said, “Okay, fine, we’re gonna leave. But we’re also going to let the press know that you refused our help.”

“A cop from the beautiful little town of Dead, Texas, and his hacker girlfriend? Nobody cares.” He turned his glare on Diana. “Why aren’t you in jail? You’re supposed to be serving time. Or dare I ask? ’Cause I can see you’re carrying heat, both of you. But then again”—he gestured toward a uniformed guard who had quietly entered the room—“so is he.”

“I’m not in jail because I cut a deal with Uncle Sam, Willard.”

“Willard?” Flynn asked.

“What kind of a deal would the feds cut with a sleazeball like you, Diana? You went down for four years.”

She pulled out her documentation. “When there’s only one person who can do a job, they’re gonna deal.”

He looked at her ID card. “As if this was real. Please don’t bore me. You either bribed your way out or fucked your way out or both. Or you did something to their computers. Probably hacked your own release and just walked.”

“Look, Willard, we’ve been sent here by our bosses for reasons that we cannot tell you to do a job that you are not going to be able to do yourself.”

“We’ve got security patrolling every floor. We’ve entered and searched every guest room in the complex.”

“But you haven’t found the tiger or seen it leave the structure. Not on any camera. So what does that tell you?”

“LVPD SWAT are standing by.”

“Hordes of cops in black Darth Vader outfits. International media attention. That would not be good.”

“Whatever, I fail to see what a card shark and a jailbird hacker are gonna bring to the table.”

“Go the SWAT route. Or let us do our thing. Nice and private. You see the tiger, then you don’t.”

“Do we get an ID on the shithead who brought it in?”

“I guarantee the tiger. The shithead if we’re lucky.”

“And what does this cost?”

“Not a penny. We really do work for Uncle Sam.” He looked at Diana. “She’s been scared honest.”

“That would be false. So let me put it this way. If this fucks up in some way—if it turns out to be some sort of bass ackwards scam, I’m not bothering with the cops. I’m gonna just go ahead and brass you two until your faces are but a memory.”

“You beat up ladies now?”

Willard focused on Diana. “I saw this ‘lady’ here toss an armed man twice her size-fifteen feet into a glass wall.”

“I’ve only seen her geek side,” Flynn said.

Willard stared at her for a while. “That was her geek side. Don’t even get me started about her skill at ripping marks.”

Her face was scarlet. She did not reply.

A long sigh from Williard. “What do you need to get started?”

“Smart move,” Flynn said.

“Nope, it’s a case of curiosity killing the cat. Why would a big-time hacker team up with a small-time counter? I’m fascinated.”

“Let’s roll some videotape.”

Willard took them to the security complex, which Flynn saw was fitted with state-of-the-art cameras watching the gaming area. Every corridor on every floor was also covered. “Any penetration into the rooms?”

“Not legal.”

“Detectives, maybe? Police investigation?”

“It happens, but nothing’s going down at present.”

He introduced Scott Morris. Flynn saw a graying former cop, probably a retiree. Sincere, capable, dedicated. “Scott supervises the system. He’ll give you what you need.”

“I have all the incidents edited together,” he said. “This is the first one that was noticed.” He touched a button, which froze an image.

They were looking at a blur stretched along the floor line in one of the access tunnels. Diana said, “You can tell what that is?”

“I can tell that it isn’t supposed to be there.”

“Could be a big cat,” Flynn said.

The security officer returned the camera to real time. The shadow was now gone.

“What was it then?” Flynn asked.

“Nobody could figure it out, so it got kicked up to me. I did a little work on the image, but it’s unresolveable.”

“What’s the refresh rate on these things?”

“Eighteen fps.”

“So whatever it is was moving really fast.”

“Faster than a man can run.”

“Where’s that tunnel?”

“Right under us, actually. Access to the lion habitat is through there.”

The MGM Grand’s lions were a world-famous tourist attraction. When he was here gambling, Flynn had passed by the habitat often enough. Even the floors were glass, so it was going to be a hard place for a tiger to hide.

“Street access? Is that where they bring the lions in from the ranch?”

“Yeah, there’s access out onto Tropicana. A couple of hundred feet.”

“Let’s see the best image of the tiger that you have.”

“This is from the tower. Sixteenth floor. Three twenty this morning.”

The animal came down the hall, stopped, and looked up at the camera.

“My God,” Diana whispered.

Brilliant eyes sparked in a sea of gray-orange fur. The animal’s face seemed almost to smile. Then it slowly turned around and, switching its tail, ambled down the corridor and around a corner.

“Next camera?”

Scott Morris pushed another button. “This is all there is. A blur again.”

“It displayed itself intentionally,” he said. “And it’s still here. And not alone.” He asked Scott, “Do you cover the Mansion? With cameras?” This was an exclusive facility behind the Grand itself, reserved for high rollers and people willing to pony up $5,000 a night for accommodation.

“We cover the whole facility.”

So there would be no reason for the perp to prefer the Mansion over the Skylofts, and perhaps a good reason to favor the lofts, because he would have arrived the same way he’d arrived at the Hoffman’s, from above, using that high-tech aircraft of his.

In any case, MGM was going to know a lot about the people who stayed in the Mansion. You didn’t just walk in, you had to be invited.

“What about the roof of the tower?”

“There’s time lapse video of all roof areas. We’ve examined every foot of it.”

“How long is the delay?”

“Sixty seconds.”

Easily time enough for someone to land, drop the animal and its support crew, and leave. Working at night, staying below FAA radars, using that soundless helicopter or whatever it was, it would have been easy.

“What we need to do is concentrate on the top floor of the tower, not the roof, the roof cameras are too slow. But I want to look at every inch of interior footage.”

A few minutes later, Flynn was watching one camera, Diana the other. “You’re looking for a blur,” he said. “They know the frame speed of the cameras, so the animal is moving fast.”

“It’s that well trained? Tigers are hard to train.” Morris said.

Flynn said nothing.

It took three hours, and during that time neither of them saw a single sign of anything unusual. Butlers and room service waiters came and went, guests came and went, but nothing else happened.

“Like I said, it’s still here,” Flynn said.

“Which surprises me,” Diana replied. “If it’s bait. Wouldn’t they have exposed it, then pulled it out as soon as they could?”

“Gotta let the fish swallow the bait, then you can set the hook. That’s what we’re doing now. We’re swallowing the bait. Next step, the hook will be set.”

“How will it be done?”

Flynn thought about that. “We shall see.”

“Look, it’s not in this complex,” Morris repeated. “I’m sorry.”

“If it’s not anywhere you’ve looked, then it has to be somewhere you haven’t. I suggest we start at the point of entry and we move through every space where the animal has been observed.”

“And?”

“We shall see.”

“Flynn,” Diana said, “that’s just blatantly taking the bait.”

“A smart fish wants to get the fisherman to go home. So he plays a game with him. He wants to frustrate him. He takes the bait, but he’s careful. He’s not greedy. He nibbles. So the fisherman up there thinks, ‘have I got a bite or is it just the current?’ Finally, he hauls in his line and finds a clean hook. This happens a few times, and the fish is finally left in peace. Full, too.”

“So he leaves and we get nothing. Stalemate.”

“Oh, no, he’s gonna get something.”

“What?”

Flynn made a gun gesture. “The fish, in this case, is gonna follow the line right back to the fisherman in his little boat.”

“Flynn, you’ll get killed.”

“Somebody will, most likely.”

“Remember Montana. The animal is extremely dangerous, and whoever’s behind it is even more so.”