To the Limit (36 page)

His initial panic over, now that he could touch her, his mind finally engaged.

"We've got to get out of here."

She didn't hesitate. She just gripped his hand and took off with him when he hobbled off at a pathetic imitation of a dead run.

Chapter 23

A HUGE AND HAPPY PARTY CROWD GATHERED in a semicircle around an outdoor stage in a beer garden behind Harrah's on the Strip. Onstage, a Bon Jovi tribute band struck the first chords of "You Give Love a Bad Name."

And the crowd went wild.

Lifting their beers high and rocking with music, Eve and Mac—just another vacationing couple for all practical purposes—partied in the shade on a hot Vegas afternoon. The plan was to blend in like apples in a basket of apples, hiding in plain sight. So far, so good. They were still alive. And they needed a breather.

They'd been on the run for a good hour before they stopped here to retool after ducking in and out of casinos as far down Las Vegas Boulevard as Mandalay Bay. They'd run up escalators, over pedestrian crosswalks, ridden the tram, and cleaned some of the blood off at a Caesars Palace restroom. They'd cut through buffet lines at Bally's and were now at Harrah's. Mac was marginally satisfied they'd lost whoever had been waiting in the parking lot with Mr. Detonator in hand.

Several women stood beside their tables dancing to the beat and swooning over the Jon Bon Jovi look-alike lead singer while a sassy blond bartender jumped up on top of a long horseshoe-shaped bar. With practiced skill and deadly accuracy, she poured red, white, and blue concoctions out of stacked silver containers into twenty or so Tom Collins glasses and never spilled a drop.

Mac was interested in not spilling anything, either. He was particularly interested in not spilling any blood. He was specifically interested in not spilling any more of Eve's.

For that reason, he was barely aware of all the activity around them, except for the need to look like they were a part of it. He resettled the aviator sunglasses he'd lifted from a sixtyish bluehair playing a Lucky 7's machine at the Hard Rock and tugged the UNLV baseball cap he'd also filched lower over his eyes. Beside him, Eve also wore shades and a hot pink ball cap that he'd grabbed for her at the Monte Carlo.

"Your friend is starting to play a little rough." He tipped up his beer, swallowed deep.

"It doesn't feel too much like he's playing. And he doesn't feel much like a friend." They were the first words she'd spoken since she'd assured him she was OK. They'd been making tracks at a dead run ever since.

"Who in the hell is this person?"

"That's what we've got to find out."

She propped her elbows on the table and lowered her head into her hands. "A bomb. God. What if you hadn't checked?"

They'd be dust particles, that's what. Just another million or so irritants for tourists to wipe out of their eyes.

He frowned at her lowered head. "You doin' OK?"

She lifted her head. Gave a big sigh. "Yeah. I'm fine. And I'm ticked. That's going to scar," she sputtered, studying her knee.

Atta girl. She was starting to get pissed.

"We need to find Tiffany before he does. Before we all turn up dead. Just because she got away from Reno before he passed on to the great poppy field in the sky, there's no guarantee she's out of danger."

"You're assuming our phantom bomber hasn't done her in."

"She's alive." Mac sat forward in his chair, palmed his glass of beer between both hands, and rolled it back and forth. "That's part of his game. He wants to make you sweat. He wants a showdown and he's taunting you."

She nodded with reluctance. "The question remains: to what end? Why does he want me dead? Why use Tiffany as a pawn?

"There's something at stake here that we're missing. Money, power, revenge? Love? Hate? Did I miss any possible motives?" Nine times out of ten, murder came down to one of the issues she'd just listed.

She pushed out a weary grunt. "That's the million-dollar question. I don't know. But whoever it is, he's persistent."

Mac lifted his stolen cap, dragged a hand through his hair before resettling it, his mind working overtime.

"OK. So. He's been following you from the beginning. Which means he knows we've been traveling together since New York. Which just prompts more questions. If he's working with Edwards, why hasn't he called me on it?"

"Maybe I've been barking up the wrong tree with Edwards."

That was the logical conclusion and the impossible question.

"Still, it's a little coincidental that the boys were killed shortly after we informed Mr. Combover that we'd located all of them in Vegas, don't you think?"

"But he hired
you
to find Tiffany. Why would he add you into the mix? Why wouldn't he just let me fumble around looking for her on my own?"

There was that. "Maybe it was all for show," he speculated. "You know. To satisfy the old man. Make Clayborne think he was looking for Tiffany when, in fact, Edwards was trying to get rid of her—and you, for whatever reason." He leaned back, hooked an arm over the back of his chair. "Try this for size. What if Reno and Gorman worked for Edwards? Maybe he hired them to get Tiffany out of the picture. Maybe the guy after you is just another hired hit man."

"Power?" she speculated, huddling with him over the table. "Is that our motive then? With Tiffany out of the way, does Edwards figure he's in line for something? Something big? Something more than he's already got?"

"What, exactly, does he have? A job as second fiddle to a nutcase."

"An obscenely
rich
nutcase."

"
Livin' on a Prayer
" ended to a chorus of whistles and cheers. Mac joined the enthusiastic applause.

"OK," Eve said after the band launched into "Let It Rock," which had most of the audience on their feet and rocking all around them. "Let's think here. Who else besides Edwards knew we were in Vegas? Ethan. Kat and Sven."

"You're forgetting someone." He leaned in closer to be heard above the music and the crowd. "Clayborne."

"You're right. It's possible that Clayborne has also known where we've been, the moves we've made."

And the consequences of Clayborne being the powder filling the keg were just too horrible to contemplate. Neither one of them said anything for a while, but they were both wondering if it was possible.

"We'd have to assume he's held a grudge against me for a very long time."

"Maybe you screwed something up for him during that kidnapping attempt."

"Like what?"

"Who knows? Get your friend in the Secret Service to check into it. Or your brothers. Maybe having your job wasn't enough for him."

"They're already on it. But if that's the case, then why didn't Clayborne just have me taken care of sooner? He's got the money, the power, the means. Of course, he's turned completely loony tunes in the last few years."

"Maybe it took that long for things to jell for him."

"But why involve Tiffany? She's his daughter, for Pete's sake. Sure, he's never been much of a father, but still."

Mac shook his head. "You said it yourself. The guy's nuts."

"No," she stated adamantly. "It can't be Clayborne. It's something else. Something I'm missing. Something that does tie Tiffany and me together."

"Well, whatever it is, I hope you figure it out soon."

"I'm sorry you got involved in this."

"Not your fault. It's my fault for not being square with you."

"Look, I was already in this. You had nothing to do with that. And you had no way of knowing these things were going to play into each other."

"And how exactly do they play? And where does all of this leave Tiffany?"

"Dead, I'm afraid, unless we find her. I need to call Ethan again," Eve said abruptly. "Maybe he's turned up something."

"Better do it on the fly," Mac said, draining his beer. "We need to get moving again before we're spotted."

"But I love this song."

He was about to point out that this was probably not the time to indulge her musical ear when he saw her ornery grin.

"Come on, smart mouth. You like it so much, buy the CD. Let's move."

They were riding the tram that connected the casinos from one end of the Strip to the other when she called Ethan. He was dead silent as Eve relayed the details of the bombing. And when she was finished, her brother wasn't satisfied with just the facts. He wanted every little detail. When she'd given them, his voice was flat with concern.

"You sure you're OK?"

"Yes," she insisted. What was it with these men that they couldn't take her at her word? "I'm fine."

"What about McClain?"

She glanced at the sullen man sitting beside her. "What about him?"

"Are you sure you can trust him?"

As if reading her thoughts, McClain turned to her, smiled that tight, reassuring smile that told her everything was going to be OK.
I'm here. You'll be fine.

Damn chauvinist,
she thought with affection.

It was right then that she realized that, yeah, she trusted him. No ifs, ands, or buts.

She told Ethan as much before they disconnected with a final warning for her to be careful and a promise that he'd keep digging and get back to her.

She pocketed her cell phone on a deep breath.

So. She'd just told Ethan that she trusted McClain.

Wasn't that a kick in the pants? Talk about your unexpected revelations. She was suddenly face-to-face with a whopper. Who knew a life
/
death experience would have a tendency to lay everything out there bare naked and open for inspection?

And as long as she was inspecting, she realized that she felt a little too much of something else for this man, reacted a little too strongly to the way he smiled, the way he moved. But more to the way he looked at her sometimes—like she was the most important thing in the world to him.

A vivid memory dragged her out of fantasyland. She'd seen that look fourteen years ago. And then, she'd never seen him again—until several days ago.

Granted, it had been an amazing several days, but one way or another, she had to face facts. Conquer feelings. Think with her head. Not her heart or her hormones. Nothing had changed. McClain hadn't changed. He was still a charmer, but he was still not a man on whom to pin any hopes. What she could count on from him was grief. And plenty of it. Well, and good sex. Plenty of that, too.

And trouble. Trouble, quite frankly, wasn't something she needed a lot more of at the moment. Seemed to be plenty of that coming her way from another quarter.

Her cell phone rang again.

It was Bob Gleason.

"I dug out the closed file on Tiffany Clayborne," he said without preamble.

"The protection file?"

"We never pinned down why an attempt was made to abduct the girl."

"Billionaire's daughter. Ransom money. Seemed pretty clear-cut to me."

"On the surface. You were cut out of the loop when you were forced out of service. The two men who tried to nab her? Their names were Petrov Yanev and Stayon Georgiev."

The air just sort of deflated from Eve's lungs. She'd never known their names. Never known the names of the two men whose lives she'd taken.

"That silence tells me you forgot there for a minute that they were the bad guys."

Yeah. It was easy to forget.

"Anyway, they had roots in Bulgaria."

Eve frowned. Thought. "Isn't that where Clayborne was at the time? Supposedly working on some arms deal for his company when in fact he was working undercover for Uncle?"

"So goes the story. But I got to thinking. So I did some more digging on the old man. Lots of loose ends there. Lots of stuff that doesn't add up."

"What are you suggesting?"

"I'm not sure yet. I'll let you know when I tie things up."

"Well, you'd better hurry. Things are getting a little dicey here. But you might be on to something. What's happening with me and Tiffany—it's tied together."