Sparked by the three-way challenge on the dS Flashfiction comunity a month or two ago. Many many thanks to aerye for beta and encouragement.

Luck

Kat Allison

Almost never did he actually go out onto the floor. It was one of the rules he lived by now, never mind that he was in Vegas, that he damn near ran Vegas. "The Bookman don't gamble," Chepo would intone from behind his shoulder, if a visiting honcho invited him to while away the cares of business with a friendly hand of blackjack. "The Bookman makes the money, he don't piss it away."

So wouldn't it just be his fucking luck (good luck, bad luck, you live by your luck now) that the one time in a month he strolled through the Bellagio, nothing more on his mind than a craving for the minced squab at Jasmine, he wandered a little, and glanced over at the baccarat tables ... and there she was, right in the middle of the usual crowd of chumps on vacation. A scorpion in a cage of gerbils.

He ducked behind a pillar and grabbed Chepo by the arm. "That woman," he muttered, pointing with his chin. "Third from the left, red silk blouse, black hair."

Chepo peered at her, then nodded respectfully. "Nice. You can sure pick 'em, boss. You want me to go invite her to join you?"

He gripped Chepo's arm harder, and the man winced. "Shut up. Go find that security guy, what's his name—"

"Baxter?"

"Have him bring her to the back. Follow him, and if she tries to run, grab her. Lonnie, you bring the car around. Both of you, get her, gag her, tie her hands up, wait for me."

They stirred, and he yanked them back. "Be careful. She'll have a gun, maybe two. Maybe a knife." He fell silent a moment, watching her aslant in the mirror as she laughed, took a swallow of her drink, the white column of her neck smooth above the blood-red silk. She didn't look a fucking day older. "She's a snake. You let her wiggle away, that'll make me very unhappy."

The men glanced at him, at each other, nodded, and melted into the crowd. He waited, watching, as Baxter came up to her. Saw her take in his badge and his low-pitched line of patter, saw, in the way her eyes flicked, the debate—run? play cool?—and then Baxter's hand was on her elbow, the grip that if you were just a chump looking at it would seem like a gentlemanly gesture, helping her up. The little weasel was good at his job, you had to give him that, he'd been a good investment. Then she was up and they were moving, and Chepo swung in behind them as they moved through the crowd.

He gave them a minute and then followed, out of the big room with the crowds and the glittering chandeliers, into the back corridor with the fluorescents and linoleum, and at the end of the corridor, by the door, there they were. Lonnie had her shoved up against the wall, face into the cinderblocks, duct tape around her wrists. Chepo was nursing his hand, and Baxter was daubing at it with a tissue.

He hastened his step, and Chepo glanced up, scowling. "Fuckin' cunt bit me!"

"Yeah, I told you to be careful." He could see her jerk at the sound of his voice, jerk and try to twist her face toward him. "Hold her there," he told Lonnie, and turned to Baxter. "You keep it zipped, right?"

"Of course, sir," Baxter said, in an offended tone. He handed Baxter a couple of bills, and the man nodded, passed the tissue over to Chepo, and effaced himself silently.

He turned back to Lonnie. "You check her for weapons?"

"Yeah." Leaning hard against her with a hand between her shoulder blades, Lonnie fished in his pocket, handed over a slick little Mini-Cougar. He took it and slipped it in his own pocket.

"'Course we could always pat her down again." Chepo was running his eyes over her. "Have a little fun first, whaddaya say, boss?"

He backhanded Chepo, sending him staggering back. "From now on, nobody touches her. You got that? Lonnie, let her up."

"Fuck." Chepo was spluttering, rubbing his face with his good hand. "I mean, I wasn't saying hurt her or anything, boss, you don't gotta get—"

"It's not her I'm worried about." He kept his eyes fixed on her as she stepped away from the wall, wavering a little and then steadying herself, turning to face him, looking him up and down. He couldn't see her mouth, hidden behind the gag, but the look in her eyes, the way the corners creased up, made him think she was smiling, and that would've been a pretty scary thought right there, if he let himself think about it.

He jerked his head toward the door. "Car. Let's move it."

Lonnie sat in the back with her, and he sat in the passenger seat, next to Chepo, who drove one-handed, sulking. He didn't need to give Chepo any directions; the guy knew where they were going, they'd been there before. She didn't know, though, and from time to time he'd glance into the visor mirror, watching her eyes, as they drove through the suburbs and the outskirts, past the junkyards and trailer parks, and on out into the desert, down the two-lane blacktop. He wanted to see her take it in, wanted to see fear in her, as they turned onto the unmarked gravel road and bounced and jolted into empty land. But her eyes gave nothing away.

Then there was the cattle guard in the road, and the bullet-riddled sign, and they swung onto the driveway and eased around behind the abandoned ranch house, putting it between them and the road, cutting the lights. He noted that another chunk of the roof had fallen in since the last time they'd been there. Soon enough the whole place would fall down, and then they'd have to find somewhere else.

Chepo killed the engine, cut the lights, and for a moment they all sat there. He opened the door and let the hot breeze waft into the car. Silence, darkness, the smell of dust. Soft clean air. Nice. It'd be nice to get out of the city once in a while, for some reason other than this one; but the Bookman didn't like the desert. Still, he let himself relax for a minute, leaning back on the headrest and breathing. There was a little voice in his head, thin and faint as the dust, a slightly panicky voice, saying What the hell do you think you're doing here, moron? Why did you have to start this shit? He shook it off, glancing into the mirror again, catching her gaze steady on the back of his head. Hey, you start a thing, you finish it up, that's business. That was the other voice, the one he had to go by.

He spoke without turning his head. "You two. Stay in the car, keep the windows shut." He reached and turned the keys a notch in the ignition, turned the radio on, loud, that lousy 80s-revival station Chepo liked. "Listen to some nice music and take it easy."

Lonnie leaned forward, brow furrowed. "Boss. We can handle this for you."

"Were you maybe not listening to me? You know I get annoyed when people don't listen to me."

Lonnie scooted back, and he opened the door wider, letting Hall and Oates woo-woo into the desert. "We're going to have a private talk, me and her. In case you're still not listening, I said private." They both nodded. "Wait here till I come back."

He didn't help her out of the car, but she made a smooth job of it anyway, twisting and sliding so her skirt rode up over her long stockinged legs. He told her, "Walk," and she headed out, staggering a little when her spike heels sunk into the sand. He kept a careful few feet away from her, out of kicking range.

After a while he said, "OK, stop." She halted, and he circled around in front of her, pulling a penknife out of his pocket, unfolding it. She watched narrow-eyed as he stepped toward her. "You try anything here and I'll cut you," he said, and she stood steady as he sliced through the gag and pulled it out of her mouth, stepping back and away from her.

She worked her jaw, licking her lips, and bent and spat on the ground where he'd been standing. Then she raised her head and looked at him. "Detective Vecchio."

"Don't call me that," he snapped, and she smiled. The gag had smeared her lipstick around so she looked a little crazed, like the recklessly-made-up old ladies you saw at the slots sometimes, but there was nothing crazy in her eyes.

"Undercover, right?" she said. "And your boys down there don't have a clue. You like to live dangerously."

"Doesn't look like I'm the one in danger here." Her voice, low and insinuating, he'd forgotten her voice, and the sound of it made his stomach clench.

"A made man." She gave a little snort of amusement. "But we're old friends. So you can just drop the act for a while, OK? I imagine that would be a relief."

"Friends. That's funny," he said. "You're funny. And another thing? No act to drop." She stared at him. "You have no idea who I am."

They watched each other. It was dusk, that vague time between daylight and darkness when everything seemed to be glowing and shadowed at once.

When she spoke again her voice was cool. "How is he? I know he's not dead, that much I found out. Did you cripple him? Put him in a wheelchair, perhaps?"

He had his hand back to smack her before he caught himself. No one touches her. He shook out his arm, taking a step back to keep distance between them. "We're not talking about him."

She opened her eyes wide in mock surprise. "Of course we are! What the hell else do we have to talk about?"

Not a bad question, actually, but he shoved that aside. "Oh, I dunno, maybe about the way you tried to fuck me over? Take my job, get me sent to the slammer?"

"Well, it looks like your job sort of went south anyway." She glanced around the desert landscape.

"Hey, I'm on the job, right this minute. I'm doing fine." Then, because he couldn't help himself, "And so's he. Doing fine."

"Mm. Lucky for him, I guess. If you can call that luck, going back to his pathetic little life." She held herself like she was perfectly comfortable, although her arms had to be getting damn sore. "You know what's funny, you'd think a thing like that would have been all over the papers. I kept checking them—you can get the Tribune most places, you know. But I never saw a word about it." She raised a brow at him. "It must have taken a lot of doing to bury that."

He said nothing.

"So—I guess maybe they had to get rid of you. Bury you for a while."

He'd never thought she was stupid, and even though that wasn't dead on target, it was still close enough to graze him, and he shut his eyes, sucked in a breath.

He'd had no choice. Welsh had been sympathetic, up to a point, but his own nuts had been in a vise. "Sorry, Detective, but you cashed your chips buying Fraser out of that caper, you got nothing left to put on the table. If you're the guy they want for this job, then you're the guy they're going to get. You being the perfect guy for this stunt—that's just your bad luck." He'd leaned forward in his chair. "And Vecchio—listen to me and listen well, there'll be no calling the Mountie, no writing the Mountie, no secret messages by carrier pigeon, nothing." He'd stared at Ray a moment from under his brows. "I'll keep an eye on him, best I can. But you're outta the picture."

"Did they bury him too?" He snapped his head up to stare at her. "Or is he still out there walking those mean streets? Bambi in the woods, with his big blue eyes ... he's not safe out alone, is he? With you not there to babysit him."

"Shut up." Why the hell had he started this? What the fuck had he been thinking? "You don't know him. You never knew him. You were just—"

"You worry about him, don't you? Aren't you afraid someone else might've gotten their hooks into him?" She smiled. "With him right now, maybe, peeling him out of that uniform—"

He couldn't hit her, he'd already told himself that, a woman, tied up, not something he would do, not either one of him, and so instead he kicked, hard, at the pebbly duff at his feet, and sent a spray of sand rattling against her shins. She looked down, with a little giggle of surprise.

"No one else is gonna do to him the shit you did. No one else could be fucked up enough to do that to him." He jammed his hands in his pockets, and felt the hard steel of the revolver, her revolver. Cut the chat, finish it up and move on. He took a breath, shaking his head hard. "Look, tell me one thing, there's just one thing I want to hear out of you. How could you do that him? How could anyone hate him that much?"

She looked honestly affronted. "You think I hated him? God, you're an idiot, you know that?" She looked away from him, toward the distant mountains. "I loved him."

The worst of it was that he could tell she meant it. "Oh, now there's some great definition of love, try to wreck a guy's entire life—" He flung out his arms. "—rip him apart, shoot his dog for chrissake—"

"I loved him. You don't get it. I wouldn't expect you to." She spoke quietly, with a kind of weird dignity. "I wanted him to be with me, he wanted to be with me, and if that was ever going to happen I had to—even things up between us. Get rid of some of his ideas about himself. Then we could be together." She looked back at him. "You wrecked it."

"You're a fucking psycho. I saved his life, I—"

"Really? From where I was standing, it looked like—well, like he's lucky to still be alive."

There was nothing he could say to that, nothing at all, and he grabbed for a cover. "Maybe while we're at it you could clarify just why you thought it'd be a fun thing to fuck me over. What the hell did I ever do to you?"

She moved her shoulders. "You were in the way. Nothing personal, you were just—what's the word? Collateral damage."

"Yeah?" And it was weird—just as a minute ago he'd smelled truth on her, this time he could feel the lie. So weird that now he could see his way into her head, the way he never could back in Chicago. "Cause I'll tell you something, it felt kind of personal to me. You wanted to even things up with me too, maybe?"

"Oh, for god's sake, you and I—we were always even up." At his look, she went on, "Of course we are. Why else are we here? We're not all that different, you and I. Except that he fucked me, of course." She smiled at him. "That just kills you, doesn't it? That he finally got lucky. With someone else."

"The hell are you talking about?" He took a quick angry step toward her, halted himself. "I was happy he got laid, at long last, I wanted him to—"

"Stop it." Her tone was warm, almost teasing. "Good grief. I mean—there he is in bed with me, where we've been all day and all night, having a great time, and all of a sudden he jumps out, leaves me there alone, goes running off down the street half-dressed—and why?" She fluttered her lashes at him. "Because you'd gone off in a snit. He hadn't come to your birthday party, and so you show up at four in the morning, pitch a hissy fit, go flouncing off with your feelings hurt—and he left me there in bed to go running after you." She laughed. "You were priceless. A teenage girl with a crush would act with more dignity."

"You—" He was about to start spluttering, screaming, and he bit that back, reached for his cool. "You're delusional, you know that? You're sick in the head."

"I'd been wondering, you know, but that kind of clinched it." She shook her head. "Jealousy's an ugly thing, isn't it, detective?"

He shoved his hands back into his pockets, gripped the gun hard. "You are so fucking wrong, you don't even begin to—he's my friend. You wouldn't understand about that, it's not like you ever had any friends, when you had a partner you shot him, and—" He stopped, mouth open, and then he clamped his jaw shut, grinding his teeth, turning his head away from the triumph in her eyes.

"Right, I don't understand about friendship at all, clearly. Not your special kind. So—" She glanced at the bulge in his pocket. "Are you going to tell your friend about this? You think he'd understand?"

He stroked his finger over and over the trigger, head bowed. "There's some shit he doesn't need to know."

She laughed, a harsh bark. "Now there's friendship for you. You think you're ever going to be able to look him in the eye again? You think he wants to be friends with a murderer?" She lifted her chin. "Because that's what you're going to do, right? You set it up that way. I know who you are, I know who you're pretending to be. You can't let me walk away."

He pulled the gun out of his pocket, held it flat in his palm, looking at it. "Got no choice," he said. "Guess your luck ran out, Victoria."

"You're a fucking liar." She sounded a little more strained, staring at the gun in his hand. "This was all your choice, you could have turned and walked away, back in the Bellagio."

He popped out the magazine, inspected it, racked it back in.

"You're thinking you got lucky, finding me? You're a loser, detective. You already lost, back then, back in Chicago. You lost, I won. He picked me." She showed him her teeth. "You lost, and nothing you do now can ever change that. You do this—and you'll never get him back."

"But neither will you." He looked up at the sky; near dark now, a few stars starting to come out. "I gotta take care of him. He's my friend."

"You can keep telling yourself that all you want." She shifted her footing, and he swung the gun toward her warningly. "Doesn't make you any less of a liar."

"You think I'm lying?" He moved the gun slowly, aiming it over her body—knees, belly, heart, head. She watched it move, squaring her shoulders.

"Lying—that's what your whole life is now, right? You're a better liar than I am. You had him fooled. But not me."

"This how you want to spend your last minute on earth, talking crazy shit?" He took off the safety, adjusted his grip.

"Hey, if you want to spend the rest of your life telling yourself crazy shit—I guess that's your choice. You want to go on thinking you and him were just friends, be my guest. But I know better." She was breathing faster now, eyes fixed on the gun. "At the train station—you can tell yourself you were aiming at me, right. But I've got a hunch you're a better shot than that. The way that turned out—that sure as hell wasn't just bad luck." He jerked his arm up, aiming at her, and she threw her head back, with a laugh of triumph.

The explosion drowned it out, and kept echoing over the empty land for long moments. When it faded to silence, he stood and breathed for a moment, smelling desert air and gunpowder. Then he walked over and looked down at her. Neat hole, just left of the sternum. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I'm a better shot than that." It was too dim to tell the black-red of her blouse from the black-red of the blood.

After a moment he pulled the handkerchief from his breast pocket, wiped off the handle, dropped the gun at her side. Then he turned and began the walk back, down to where Chepo and Lonnie waited in the car. His knees were rubber, and in the darkness, he had to go slowly, careful for loose rocks and gullies. But he knew the boys were watching him, gauging him, and he didn't stumble once.

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