Helen nodded. She’d dated guys who couldn’t cope with the uncertainty of her life. She wondered if Alex was going to be one of them. As the days passed, she went from wanting to talk to him to almost dreading it, knowing that he would be upset about her sudden disappearance.

  “People like us are hard to get romantically involved with,” Blake shrugged. “I think maybe I’ll just stay single.”

  “Maybe you could date another cop?” Helen suggested.

  Blake shrugged again. “I’m not really in any hurry to meet anyone,” he told her. “I’m not sure I’m ready to try again.”

  Helen couldn’t think how to answer that so she changed the subject. “I’m still tracking Munroe’s device. He seems to be about an hour ahead of us. The signal that we’re getting sent to us that is supposedly showing his transport is still showing him almost exactly ten minutes in front of our current position.”

  Blake grinned. “So it seems likely that Rex doesn’t know we’re tracking Munroe’s M-ped.”

  Helen nodded. “I’m hoping that gives us a tiny advantage.”

  “Should we talk about your love life now, then?”

  “There’s not much to talk about,” she replied. “Alex and I had a nice sunny vacation, and now I’m back to work and I haven’t seen him or talked to him since Munroe decided to break out of jail.”

  “And he isn’t going to like that,” Blake suggested.

  “I’m sure he won’t,” Helen agreed. “But it’s my job.”

  “Maybe it’s time for both of us to find new jobs.”

  “I don’t know what else I could do,” Helen replied. “I’ve been training for this job my entire life.”

  “But you must have done a bunch of different jobs over the years, in different disguises, of course. Did you ever do any that you especially liked?”

  Helen thought for a long time. “The thing is,” she said eventually, “the best part of having any job was always knowing that I wouldn’t have to do it for long. No matter how fun or interesting a job is, ordinary people must get tired of it after a while. I’ve never had a chance to get bored with anything.”

  “I haven’t gotten bored with my job, yet,” Blake told her. “I love what I do.”

  “But there’s constant variety, right? No two days are exactly the same. I mean, I was a waitress in a small town in Oregon for two months and for the first few weeks it was fun and exciting and interesting. I met lots of great people and I got really good at anticipating the ebb and flow of how people eat in a restaurant situation. Then I started getting bored. I started making up little games for myself, guessing what people were going to order or deliberately getting one little thing in an order wrong and guessing which customers would complain and which would just eat what they were given. After about two weeks of any job, I start to get fed up and want to shake things up, I guess.”

  Blake chuckled. “So somewhere in Oregon there is a woman who is still annoyed with you because she got the wrong dressing for her salad?”

  Helen grinned. “Probably, although women complained a lot more than men did, so I usually didn’t play with them. They usually got exactly what they ordered. Most of the time, though, if I changed one small thing in a man’s order, his salad dressing or the type of cheese on his sandwich for instance, he would just eat whatever he was given. And he usually still gave me a big tip as well.”

  Blake grinned back at her. “There’s an interesting insight into gender behavior.”

  “Little old ladies were the worst,” Helen continued, remembering. “They always wanted everything exactly the way they’d ordered it, but then sometimes they would forget what they ordered and complain anyway, even when I got everything right.”

  “I guess I’m glad I didn’t become a waiter,” Blake remarked.

  “I’m glad I don’t have to be a waitress very often,” Helen answered. “Maybe that’s why I don’t like Vegas.”

  “You were a waitress in Vegas?”

  “I was a little bit of everything in Vegas,” Helen answered vaguely.

  “You’re going to tell me more than that, right?” Blake asked.

  Helen grinned. “What do you want to know?”

  “Well,” Blake grinned back. “Seeing as how we still have many hours to kill, why don’t you begin at the beginning and tell me everything?”

  “It isn’t that interesting,” she told him. “I was sent to Vegas to investigate one of the men who was behind the rebuild the strip movement once the chaos was over. It was suggested that he was taking bribes and kickbacks and using illegal funds in the rebuilding effort. My job was to sort out what was really going on.”

  Blake whistled. “You went after Harvey Stevens,” he said in an awed voice.

  Helen shrugged. “Someone had to.”

  Harvey Stevens had been one of the country’s biggest news stories just a few years earlier and his name was still said in hushed tones in certain circles. He’d been one of the biggest crime bosses the US had seen after the wars. No one seemed to know for sure where he’d come from, but he rose up in the Nevada desert, rebuilding Las Vegas in layers of criminality. He had remodeled and reopened several casinos, all of which were filled with illegally manipulated gaming machines that barely ever paid out, even at the ridiculously long odds the state allowed. Stevens had then added drug trafficking and prostitution to his empire. A short time later he had begun to expand into blackmail and extortion as well.

  Nevada state authorities were reluctant to go after the man, because he was bringing a lot of money and tourists back to the neon city. And then, suddenly, Stevens disappeared. A state legislator with a spotless record filled his place on the city planning board. A consortium of investors from around the world bought Stevens’ casinos and every machine in every property was inspected and recalibrated to legal standards. Everything was done quickly and quietly. Only a few months after Stevens’ disappearance, Las Vegas was suddenly on track to be a fun and safe destination for gamblers and even their families.

  “What happened to Harvey Stevens, then?” Blake had to ask.

  Helen grinned. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” she teased.

  “Seriously, I’ve heard that he got away with billions and fled to some island where no one asks questions, and I’ve also heard that he got into a gun fight with agents from some secret organization and got killed. Which is it?”

  “Neither,” Helen shrugged. “The truth is always so boring. I actually feel bad telling it to you. We gathered a mass of evidence against him, presented it to him, and gave him a couple of options. He chose to live out the rest of his natural life on a penal island, the location of which I really can’t reveal.”

  “So why all the secrecy? Why not just tell everyone that he’s in jail?”

  “He knows a lot of people, some of whom might even feel like they owe him a favor or two. We didn’t want to have to worry about people trying to break him out every other week. This way he’s safely tucked away, everyone thinks he’s either dead or in hiding, and no one is looking for him.”

  Blake nodded. “I guess that makes sense.” He was quiet for a minute before he continued. “Did you ever meet him? What was he like?”

  “I met him,” Helen shrugged. “I worked for him for a while at one of the casinos. Then I dated him for a few months.”

  Blake silently digested that information. He finally cleared his throat and muttered out a question. “So was he as conceited and arrogant as everyone says?”

  Helen chuckled, aware that Blake had struggled to find an appropriate question. “Yeah, pretty much,” she told him. “He told everyone who asked about his past a completely different story. Most of them were variations on a rags-to-riches theme where he overcame his childhood poverty to build his hugely successful business empire. From what we could discover, there was at least some element of truth to his tales. He did come from a poor family and he did work hard to earn his success.”

  “Is building a criminal empire as hard as building a legitimate one?” Blake asked.

  “Probably not,” Helen replied. “It’s got to be easier if you can simply ignore the rules and eliminate anyone who gets in your way. While his methods were undoubtedly criminal, he was very successful at them. He got very rich very quickly and his ego grew at the same rate as his fortune. By the time I met him he was more ego than personality. He was surrounded by men and women who were terrified of him and who agreed with everything he said, even when it was a clearly a bad idea.”

  Blake chuckled. “I don’t know how long you dated him, but being that agreeable must have just about killed you.”

  Helen laughed. “Ah, but that’s the beauty of it. I got his attention by being disagreeable.”

  “I imagine that came easy to you,” Blake commented with a wink.

  “It did. He was so used to everyone falling all over themselves to do exactly what he wanted that he found it intriguing that I wasn’t at all like that. We spent three months fighting a lot more than getting along, but that got me on the inside of the empire. I was able to gather a lot of great information that we could never have gotten access to otherwise. Harvey was pretty paranoid by the time we met as well. He was pretty sure that someone was out to get him, but he wasn’t sure who.”

  “And he didn’t guess it was you, until you sprung the trap on him?”

  “As far as I know, he still doesn’t know it was me. When the police came and did their sweep, I got arrested along with Harvey and his entire staff. Officially, I was sentenced to life plus twenty years for my involvement. I actually only spent three nights in jail and then I was, tragically, murdered by my cellmate.”

  Blake turned in his seat and stared at her for a long time. “I would love to know how the agency arranged that,” he said finally.

  “It’s nowhere near as complicated as you’d think. Some day, when we’re both retired and living in the same home for retired crime fighters, I’ll fill you in on all of the details.”

  They rode in companionable silence for a while, both lost in their own thoughts. The conversation, when it resumed, kept to general topics like recent news stories and the weather. Finally Helen checked the tracker again.

  “Munroe appears to have stopped for the night,” she reported. “We’ll catch up to him in about forty minutes.” She pulled out her black card and tentatively pressed its center. A moment later Michael spoke to her.

  “I’m in Vegas,” Michael reported. “There is definitely something going on. Everyone is tense and a lot of our usual sources are either missing or very quiet.”

  “Assuming we catch up to Munroe, should we stop for the night where he is or keep going?” Helen asked Michael for his opinion.

  “I read your report. Stopping with him seemed to work last time,” Michael replied. “You could even try putting another tracker on the vehicle. If nothing else, finding it gives Rex something else to do with his time.”

  Helen grinned. She liked the idea of keeping Rex busy. “I’ve tried repeatedly to contact your M-ped, but I’ve had no luck,” she told Michael.

  “I know, I’ve heard from Mr. Smith through certain channels. His electronics aren’t working properly, and he’s had no luck with getting a flight to Vegas. He’s now scheduled to fly tomorrow morning, with an estimated arrival time of four o’clock in the afternoon. I don’t think Rex will let that happen, though. I think he wants me to arrive after everything has already gone wrong.”

  “If we stop where Munroe is for the night, we’ll still have about ten hours worth of driving to get through tomorrow,” Helen told her boss. “If we leave around six, we should get in around four in the afternoon as well.”

  “We’re still thinking that whatever is being planned is scheduled for Sunday, probably in the afternoon. If you arrive tomorrow, we should have plenty of time to plan once you get here. We’ll figure out where to meet when you get closer. Let me know if anything changes in your plans.”

  Helen smiled at Blake as the black card switched itself off. “I feel better having contact with Michael this time,” she confessed.

  “I do too,” Blake told her. “It feels like we’re doing something rather than just running around reacting to whatever Rex and Munroe throw at us.”

  Helen nodded. A short time later they pulled into yet another strip of hotels and shops just off the highway. A trackless train pulled in next to them, parking in front of the largest hotel in the strip.

  “It looks like that’s where our friend, Mr. Munroe, is staying,” Helen told Blake, checking the tracker on her wrist-con and gesturing toward the anonymous frontage. “At least that’s where his M-ped is staying. The fake feed from his transport shows him stopped ten minutes ahead of us in the middle of nowhere.”

  The pair studied the bland hotel building where dozens of tired-looking train passengers were now making their way up stone steps and into the lobby.

  “Let’s try that one,” Helen suggested after a moment, pointing to a much smaller building on the edge of the strip. It looked expensive and exclusive, at least as much as hotels in this sort of environment could, and Blake hesitated for a moment.

  “Come on,” Helen insisted. “It’s out of the way so we won’t have to worry about Munroe spotting us, and the agency won’t care what it costs.”

  They checked into adjoining rooms and then headed to the restaurant that they had passed on their way in. While Helen was tempted to just grab a FADS bar and get some sleep, she knew that Blake would prefer real food. At any rate, the food turned out to be better than either of them expected.

  After dinner, they both felt refreshed and slightly restless after the long hours spent sitting in the transport.

  “Let’s go find Munroe’s transport and tag it again,” Blake suggested.

  Helen agreed quickly. If they got it done tonight they could sleep later in the morning. Right now a later start sounded wonderful. They left all of their electronics, except for the unregistered M-ped, in the hotel and walked down the air-conditioned and slowly moving sidewalks between buildings. In spite of the lateness of the hour, the strip was busy as travelers arrived by train or public transport bus. It seemed like every new arrival was rushing to get checked into a hotel room before the bargain rooms were all full.

  Those who had already secured their rooms were wandering up and down the strip, window-shopping or even purchasing the over-priced clothes and traveler’s necessities that were showcased in every window. Helen and Blake walked slowly through the crowd, letting the noise and atmosphere wash over them. As they approached the huge hotel, Helen checked her wrist-con and then looked around quickly.

  “Uh, oh,” she remarked as she spotted Munroe making his own way through the crowd. She grabbed Blake’s arm and pulled him into a small alcove that marked the outer wall of the main hotel. She didn’t have time to explain as she pulled him close and kissed him thoroughly. After a moment of stunned surprise, Blake, whatever he was thinking, began to respond with enthusiasm.

  Helen forced herself to stay focused. She couldn’t get lost in the kiss, no matter how tempted she was. She shifted slightly in Blake’s arms, watching Munroe as he made his way through the crowds. She could see him wince and recoil as someone bumped him, presumably connecting with those still sore broken ribs. He looked gray and unhealthy, like he hadn’t slept properly in a long time, and like he had taken too many pain pills before he came out. She watched as he made his way into a Chinese restaurant.

  Helen broke away from Blake and walked toward the restaurant cautiously. Munroe shouldn’t recognize her. She looked very different to the last time he had seen her, but she didn’t know what pictures or videos Rex might have shown him. The hostess in the doorway was explaining to Munroe that there was a short wait for a table. Munroe seemed to think about that for a moment before shrugging and taking a seat at the bar. Helen spun back around and grabbed Blake’s arm.

  “Now’s the perfect time to find that transport,” she told him, hurrying him toward the parking area for the hotel.

  Blake followed, looking dazed and slightly confused. As they began to make their way up and down the rows of parked transports, he cleared his throat. “I take it you spotted Munroe in the crowd?” he asked.

  “Yep,” Helen answered briskly. “He’s just taken himself out for dinner.”

  They found the transport parked in a dark corner. Helen ran her hand along the passenger door, looking for a good place to attach the new tracking device that Michael had given her. This one, a prototype that was still in development, was a simple one-inch round flat sticky dot. Helen studied the stickers on the side of the vehicle. “New York Police Department” was spelled out in large black letters. Helen affixed the small black tracking dot over the top of the dot for the letter i that was already in place. The tracking dot was slightly larger, but Helen doubted that Munroe would notice.

  “Do you want to scramble the internal electronics?” Blake asked.

  “I’m not going to bother,” Helen said after thinking for a moment. “I’ll download all of the data in the onboard computer, but I doubt that there’s anything in there other than the route to Vegas. Maybe Munroe has done another video. That might be useful. I’m afraid scrambling the computer might alert Rex and Munroe to the fact that we found the transport again. I’d rather they didn’t notice the new tracking device, if at all possible.”

  Blake nodded as Helen used her M-ped to grab all of the data from the transport’s computers. She flipped through the screens of information and then shrugged.

  “There’s nothing much here at all except the route to Vegas. I can’t even find any trace of the external command program like last time. It looks like Rex is being more careful about covering his tracks. There seems to be a short video, though.”

  A large group of people suddenly came around the corner toward the parking lot. Helen grabbed Blake’s hand and pulled him further into the darkest edge of the lot. They ducked around behind a parked train, trying to stay out of sight of anyone who might notice them and wonder about the police transport that was so far from home. They made their way carefully along the back of the train, which seemed to stretch endlessly across the parking lot. When they finally emerged at the other end, they were nearly back to their own hotel.

 

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