Flicka chanced a quick look back. Behind them, the crowd roiled like people were pushing through and chasing them.
She pushed her legs to runharder. Dieter had an arm out and bulldozed through the crowd.
Dieter guided her away from the hotel entrance and toward a parking structure. The door to the corner stairwell stuck when he grabbed it, but he leaned and yanked, holding Flicka back until it opened.
Flicka sprinted ahead of him, taking the stairs two at a time and as fast as she could. Her thighs burned, and her skirt chafed herskin.
On the third floor, Dieter tugged her hand and shoved open a door.
It slammed behind them. Flicka winced at the noise, sure that the pursuers would hear it and find them. They ran through the rows of cars, some filthy from the desert dust and some gleaming new, dodging between them to run diagonally through the parking structure.
At the opposite corner, Dieter flung open the door andpaused—the silent stairwell sounded empty to Flicka—then started running down the stairs.
Flicka gripped the handrail and double-timed down the stairs behind Dieter. “But what if they—”
“Then we’re screwed,” Dieter said, “but they were chasing us up the other stairwell, and there were only four of them.”
“Four? Only one guy grabbed me.”
“There were three on me. Evidently, they thought I wasthe greater threat. Not too bright of them.”
“I’ll say.”
At the bottom of the stairwell, they ran into the brightly lit night, heading for the shadows at the back of the Bellagio’s loading docks.
Her heart hammered in her chest from running and from fear. They’d had her. The guy had been holding her arm. Two more steps, and they would have been at the street, where a van had doubtlessly beenwaiting. She would have beengone.
Flicka looked back as she ran, holding Dieter’s hand. Artificial glare and black shadows filled the spaces between the parking structure and the skyscraper walls of the Bellagio, but no one ran toward them. Her skirt rode up her thighs from stretching her legs as she ran.
Their footfalls echoed off the cement canyon rising around them, but the roar and stompingfeet of the crowd half a block away overwhelmed even their noise.
They reached the shadow of the wall, and Dieter pulled her around a corner.
Ahead of them, towering walls bounded the long loading dock area filled with empty truck trailers, but the zone was silent and still. No one was working after midnight. All the trucks were empty, and only a few emergency lights shone on the trailers. Blackshadows spilled along the walls and sides.
“Come on. Nearly there,” Dieter said, still running.
Flicka turned on one last burst of speed though her legs ached and a cramp knifed her ribs.
He led her behind one of the semi-truck trailers and into a dark corner up against the wall.
Flicka grabbed her side, trying to press the cramp out of her ribs, and sucked wind.
Back in the dark concretealcove, the clamor of the Strip was almost gone, just a murmur if she listened carefully. The air conditioners on top of the Bellagio’s roof whirred.
Dieter was facing out, his back toward her, his arms stretched back to shield her. His fighting stance made his back and shoulders look wider.
Warmth rolled off his body from running, carrying the cinnamon and fresh herbs of his cologne and thefaint masculine musk of his skin.
Flicka slipped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek to his shirt, exhausted from sprinting.
One of Dieter’s arms curled around her back, holding her. He whispered, “I think we lost them.”
She nodded, and her face rubbed against the crisp cotton.
“I don’t hear anything. Do you?”
“No,” she said.
