“Do I look like a fucking maid?” Jolie, the blonde, sassed, not even looking up from the fresh deck of cards she was opening.
That made Valentine pause, but only for a split second. “Dealers are replaceable. Now get the fucking towels, or you’ll be the next one in the chair.”
She huffed like my torture was an imposition and waltzed to a storeroom, smacking her gum, like she had all the time in the world.
“Please,” Joel rasped. “Take me. Kill me. Just don’t?—”
Valentine rolled his eyes and huffed, “Shut up,” as he backhanded Joel.
The door to the high roller room cracked open at the force of Jolie’s put-out stomps. “Here,” she sneered as she held out a stack of bar towels to Valentine. “Just don’t get blood near my table. That’s gross.”
Valentine peeled his eyes away from me entirely and stared her down. “Are you forgetting who you work for?”
She didn’t cower, just stood with her hip cocked as she blew a pale pink bubble with her gum. “No. I know exactly who I work for,” she said. “I think you’re the one who doesn’t know who’s working for you.”
Gunshots rang out, so loud that I heard nothing at all as the warm spray of blood slicked my skin.
The numbness was back.
The nothingness.
43
JUDAH
Tuesday, August 26 | 3:16 p.m.
“Idon’t have a clear shot,” I said, voice low as I lingered in the darkness of the high roller room. Tension rippled through my arm as I stared down the barrel of my bureau-issued handgun. It felt so unfamiliar.
I had gone to the range to requalify with it after I was cleared to return to duty, but it had been a long time since I’d held a gun on an operation.
Valentine was never bothered by the fact that I didn’t use a gun. Frankly, he liked the discretion that came with avoiding firearms, save for selling them.
He had much more creative ways of inflicting pain than bullets.
Cole stood at my six, watching the door we had snuck in.
It was a door I had snuck peopleoutof time and time again. One that wasn’t visible from the outside of the building unless you knew right where to look.
Valentine had never been arrested. He’d just gone into hiding, thanks to Agent Sanders.
I was still reeling from the day’s revelations, but I couldn’t focus on them. Not when Amelia’s life was on the line.
Al and Jeremiah kept bobbing back and forth, blocking Valentine as he stood hunched over Amelia.
My breath hitched as he used the knife to snap the zip ties, then yanked her arm out and held the knife out. Al kept her other arm restrained behind her back.
If he so much as raised the knife, I’d have to take two shots: one to get Jeremiah down and the other to take out Valentine.
It was risky. Jeremiah might not drop fast enough. He might move as I pulled the trigger. Valentine might move after the first shot. It could be a bloodbath.
I kept my sights trained on Valentine as he turned his head and shouted at the dealer to grab towels.
“If I go in, you grab Amelia,” I said to Cole. The last thing I wanted was to get made by someone just walking by.
“We’ve got company,” Cole said quietly as he watched the casino security feed that played on a small monitor so the bigwigs who came into this room to gamble and do business could see who was outside. “Backup is never early.”
“They’re not used to being backup,” I muttered.
