Max said the words so casually that, at first, they went right over her head. Then, when she realized what he’d just said, she was sure he was kidding.
But he wasn’t laughing.
“Seriously?” she asked, then lowered her voice, terrified someone nearby would hear, even though there weren’t many people in the place at the moment. “You were going to rob a casino?”
He chuckled. “I did say I grew up on the wrong side of town and did some stupid stuff, remember? I’ll be the first to admit that when I left home at eighteen, I was pretty screwed up. I got involved with a group of idiots who’d been doing small-time burglary jobs all across the Southwest—pawnshops, electronics warehouses, mom-and-pop jewelry stores. I was stupid as hell to get mixed up with them, but back then, being with them looked about as good as it was going to get.”
“Did you ever hurt anyone?” Lana asked, afraid to ask but needing to know. “Or carry a gun?”
Max shook his head, looking down at the chip in his hand again. “I carried a gun, but I never had a need to use it. We hit small places without security guards, usually late at night. If a situation had ever occurred where I had to pull that gun, I’m not sure what the hell I would have done. I never wanted to hurt anyone.”
“So what happened?” she asked hesitantly, fervently wanting to believe this story had a happy ending.
“The guys running our little crew got greedy and set their sights on a much bigger payoff. One of them had a cousin who worked in a casino in Reno, and they got it in their heads that we could pull off a smash-and-grab job there early in the morning, just as the security company that serviced the place was taking the evening’s winnings to the bank. They figured we could get away with two hundred thousand, easy.”
Max stopped talking, flipping the poker chip over and around his fingers so fast Lana could hardly follow it. She tried to be patient, but it was all she could do to not lean over and smack the chip out of his hand. She needed him to hurry up and tell her what happened.
“I was the biggest guy in the crew, so it was my job to follow the four-person security team through the casino and take out the two in the back as they were pushing the money cart out the rear exit. Then the other members of the crew would sweep in, deal with the two guards up front, and grab the cart full of cash. It was a horrible plan, but in theory, no one was supposed to get hurt.”
“But?” she prompted, her stomach tightening.
“But as I was sitting there at the blackjack table, this big guy sat down beside me. He looked me straight in the eyes as the security guards started to move and casually told me that if I got out of my chair, he was going to put me in jail for the rest of my life.”
O-kay. Lana wasn’t sure what she thought had been coming next, but it hadn’t been that. “He was a cop? They knew you were there to rob the place?”
“He wasn’t just any cop.” Max’s mouth edged up. “He was Gage Dixon, the commander of the Dallas SWAT Team you met at headquarters tonight. And yeah, he knew I was there to rob the place.”
Lana only had a vague recollection of the men with Max at the awards ceremony because she’d been so focused on him. Her mind spun as she imagined the scene he’d described at the casino.
“How the heck did he know you were about to rob the place? Why was he even in Reno?” She waved her hand. “No, wait. Skip all that for now. Tell me the important part first—what the heck did you do?”
Max chuckled. “Well, I wish I could say I did something brilliant and daring, but in reality, I freaked out. The casino guards were already moving past me, and I knew that if I didn’t do something quick, the whole plan would implode. So I did the only thing I could think to do—I tried to punch him.”
Lana stared, her jaw dropping.
“Remember that part where I said I’d done some stupid stuff?” Max said. “Well, me—at nineteen years old—trying to take a swing at a fully trained SWAT officer is definitely in that category.”
“It didn’t work?”
He shook his head with another laugh. “Understatement there. I won’t bore you with the details, mostly because it’s so damn embarrassing to have to remember them. Suffice it to say, Gage had no problem keeping me in that chair.”
“Did the rest of your crew get arrested?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yeah, there were a dozen cops waiting for the job to go down. The moment it did, they swarmed in and grabbed everyone. It was over in seconds.”
“You were arrested?” she asked, but then realized that couldn’t be right. If he’d been arrested for attempted robbery, how the heck could he be in SWAT right now?
“No, I wasn’t arrested,” Max said. “While everyone else was paying attention to all the excitement on the far side of the casino, Gage yanked me to my feet and we walked right out the front door. We got in his rental car and drove straight for the California state line. Then he pulled over and told me I could get out if I wanted to.”
This story was becoming stranger by the second, and if it wasn’t for the deadly serious expression on Max’s face, Lana would have thought he was making the whole thing up.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “Your future commander went all the way from Dallas to stop you from robbing a casino, then let you go?”
“Not quite.” Max’s mouth quirked again. “He was ready to let me walk, but first he wanted to talk to me. I had nowhere better to go, so I listened. We ended up sitting there in his car talking until the sun came up. For reasons that are too complicated to get into, Gage had tracked me to Reno and figured out what I was doing. He got some of his friends from the local PD involved, and in exchange for the tip on the casino robbery, they agreed to look the other way while he got me out of the state.”
Lana frowned. “Why would he go all the way to Reno to do something like that? Is he family?”
Max thought about that a moment, then smiled. “Yeah, I guess that in some ways, he is family. He knew what I was going through and went out of his way to find me. He helped me understand a lot of the things that were going on in my life at that time. He got me straightened out and kept me from totally destroying my life.”
