Casey is standing to the side, his arms folded across his chest, a wisp of blond hair falling across his forehead. He tucks it back just as the door swings open and two large men fill the doorway.
They’re dressed in all black, earpieces obvious behind their ears.
And if I look closely, I can see that both have guns ready and waiting.
My hand sneaks into Georgiy’s, and the other goes to the knife I’m carrying.
“Who sent you?” the guy on the left says.
Casey eyes them and then says, “Senator Ruiz.”
“Password?”
“Death.”
The guards look at each other and then nod.
“That’s ominous,” I say when Casey eyes me.
“Yeah, it fucking is,” he replies, but both men step aside and we’re met with a blast of air conditioning.
“Any weapons need to be surrendered.”
Casey’s arms flex. “How are we supposed to protect our money then?”
The guards don’t miss a beat, having heard it all. “Weapons need to be surrendered to enter.”
“Fuck,” Casey murmurs as he, Kit, and Jax start pulling their guns out and setting them on a table.
The guards pick them up, place them in a locked container, and hand Casey a tag.
“You can retrieve them when you’re done. Just show us the number.”
When it’s all said and done, I feel the knife in my pants like a weight, but I don’t take it out. I don’t reveal that I have it. It’s tucked near my dick and made entirely of bone. It shouldn’t be detectable by the metal detectors.
And it isn’t.
Whatever Georgiy has in his pockets isn’t detected either. Even through the pat down.
I don’t know what he’s carrying, but I’m glad he still has whatever it is. I want him to protect himself if I’m not able to.
“Through that door and to the right,” another security guard says, pointing to another set of double doors.
Kit and Jax walk ahead, their shoulders touching, Casey lingering behind Georgiy and me.
And the entire time we walk, the ominous feeling grows. It swells and expands until I’m swallowing back bile. Now that I think about it, any time San Francisco was mentioned over the past few weeks, my stomach roiled. I waved it off as indigestion, something I ate. Maybe an incoming cold.
Now I realize that my body is remembering. My childhood, my life before I escaped.
And it doesn’t like it.
Not one bit.
We push through the door in front of us and are greeted by an array of colors and sounds, the smell of cigarette smoke heavy in the air.
“It’s an actual fucking casino,” Casey says with a laugh. “I assumed it would be some kind of metal table with chairs all around it like you see in the movies.”
“Me too,” Jax replies. “This isn’t what I was expecting.”
