A Thin Disguise by Catherine Bybee

CHAPTER TWO

Leo diverted his attention from the couple that had walked into the restaurant and toward the woman he’d just bumped into. Dishwater blonde with mysterious eyes and full pink lips. Beautiful.

The back of his throat itched as if he should know the woman staring at him. Only he didn’t. He would have remembered.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

Her lips instantly closed, and she stood taller. “No.”

She turned to leave, and for some reason his hand found her arm and halted her.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m quite positive.” She glanced over his shoulder, eyes wide, and walked swiftly away.

Is that an accent?

Yeah, he would have remembered her.

He watched her leave before shaking off thoughts of the confusion on her face and turned back toward the restaurant. Then, because he felt someone’s stare, he looked to his left.

Brutis A and Brutis B stared, recognition on their faces.

Fuck.

He shifted from one foot to the other, weighed his options.

Brutis A stood.

Leo squared his shoulders. “He in there?” The question was rhetorical.

Brutis B met his friend on his feet.

It was then that Leo pushed his jacket back enough to display his badge and the butt of his gun holstered at his side.

They didn’t flinch, and they didn’t sit down.

They knew who he was.

“I’ll just look,” Leo said as he moved into the restaurant.

Navi Sobol’s bodyguards right at his back, he marched in.

Sobol spotted him, put his drink down.

With every step, Leo knew his boss wasn’t going to be happy with him. But he moved forward anyway. He had no choice.

Leo arrived at the table with a smile. “I see you’re making yourself right at home.”

Navi folded his hands and placed them in his lap.

“Is there something I can do for you?”

Leo moved his gaze around the room.

Plenty of people were watching them. Hard not to when three men, two admittedly a little larger than him, stood in the center of a posh restaurant talking.

“No, no . . . I’m good.” Leo turned his stare to Navi’s female companion—young . . . but not Marie Nickerson young—then looked back. “How’s the food?”

Navi opened one palm to the empty table. “I couldn’t tell you.”

Leo grinned. “Well, let me know. I’ll put this place on my list.”

Navi tilted his head, looked Leo dead in the eye.

“You kids enjoy yourselves,” Leo said. He’d gotten what he wanted by seeing the man in the restaurant with only the woman.

He turned and found Navi’s bodyguards push in just enough to stop him from walking past without bumping into one of them.

There was no way Leo was going to brush shoulders with them. As much as the men were trying to intimidate him, Leo knew their kind. Hired men who held no value for life other than their own and the man they were paid to protect.

An accidental touch of a shoulder could be considered battery in front of the right judge.

Leo put his hands up, his playful smile still in place. “If you’ll excuse me.”

A noise behind him suggested Navi had called his dogsoff.

Brutis A and B separated, allowing Leo a path.

Leo made eye contact with at least two people in the restaurant as he slipped past the paid help.

He felt both bodyguards at his back as he left.

A few yards into the noisy casino, Leo muttered, “Well, fuck.”

Olivia broke her own code and called in. “Get him out of here.”

“Who?”

“The teacher. He’s fucking up.”

“Grant?”

“I don’t care who he works for, he’s fucking up! I can’t do my job if he’s lurking.”

“Consider it done.”

The person on the end of the line disconnected the call.

Leo walked out of the restaurant with an audience.

As he headed toward the door, the bodyguards peeled off. Leo lifted a cell phone to his ear and paused.

Olivia was too far away to hear the conversation, but she imagined what was being said. Leo looked around the massive room as if searching for someone he recognized. Olivia knew that wouldn’t be her. Outside of walking past him in the restaurant, they’d never met.

He turned a full circle, gestured with his hand, and walked out of sight.

She released a breath of relief.

If Navi Sobol had planned on meeting with anyone after dinner, that plan was likely to change.

She should probably call it a night, but instead she walked over to a penny slot machine, put a hundred bucks in, and sat down.

In the time it took Navi to have his dinner, the cocktail waitress had stopped by several times and filled up a sparkling water with lime, and Olivia had managed to keep the machine eating pennies a few at a time. She’d pulled out a cigarette only to realize she was in a nonsmoking section of the casino. Just as well, but it would have added to her leisure status, as she’d sat at one machine for well over an hour.

She saw the bodyguards first. But once Navi and the woman stepped out of the restaurant, the guards took position from behind, following like the puppy dogs they were.

Waiting until the entourage had passed, Olivia cashed out of her machine and held her winning ticket in her hand as she followed from a safe distance.

The casino had filled with people, and with them the noise level increased. But even with all that, it was easier to duck into a bank of slots when one of Navi’s dogs turned around.

Olivia played shadow while Navi stopped at a craps table and pulled out several hundred-dollar bills. This was where she would have approached, but since Leo had stopped her in the restaurant, she knew better than to make her face seen twice by the bodyguards. They looked as if they were all muscle and no brain, but she wasn’t going to risk it. Instead, she kept her distance and watched to see who, if anyone, approached the man.

An hour passed, he won some, lost more, but the only conversation was with the woman and a thirtysomething man wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. His accent said Deep South, and the only reason she knew that from a distance was the loud nature of the man. No one Navi would be in contact with on purpose.

Eventually Mr. South moved on, and Navi collected his chips and did the same.

After a brief stop at a roulette table, the couple headed back to the elevators.

It wasn’t even ten o’clock and the man was turning in.

For the second time that night, Olivia wished she’d bugged the man’s room.

She waited until his group entered the elevator, then stepped closer to watch the numbers. Sure enough, the elevator stopped on the top floor.

She considered hanging around longer, see if the man was dropping off the woman only to reemerge, then decided against it. If she’d stashed another disguise in the hotel and could change her appearance, she would have. But as it stood, the longer she hung around, the better the chances of being seen.

Outside the resort, the hot desert night had cooled down enough to be tolerable. The dryness of the air gave the atmosphere a spark of electricity. Or maybe that was the buzz of people that swarmed like bees to honey.

Olivia walked past the valet and the line of high-end cars all parked in a way to be noticed. As tourists snapped pictures of the Ferrari that sat next to a Bentley, she rolled her head and loosened the tight muscles in her neck as she strolled by.

She was hungry, and tired.

Deeply tired.

She made her way onto the Strip and slowed her pace. If Marie’s testimony wrapped up the next day as expected, this would be Olivia’s last night in Vegas. Maybe even the States. That forgotten island somewhere sounded better and better.

Groups of people passed her in both directions. Several homeless limped along in no hurry while a few single locals, high on God only knew what, zipped around talking to themselves.

The closer she was to the trendier hotels, the bigger the crowd.

Street drinking was encouraged, and nearly everyone took part.

She found an understated convenience store and stepped in under the blinding fluorescent lights. The air-conditioning grew colder as she moved deeper inside the building. In the back she found what she was looking for. She favored a turkey and cheese over tuna and discovered an apple that didn’t look half bad. And since the water coming out of the tap at her hotel tasted like dirt, she grabbed a big bottle of water.

“Someone as beautiful as you shouldn’t be eating that piss-poor excuse for dinner.”

The words registered, and Olivia turned to find a pair of blue eyes staring her way. The guy was twenty-five, tops. The sunburn on his face and the way he wasn’t completely steady on his feet suggested he’d been out day drinking and continued the party into the night. His eyelids closed halfway and had a hard time opening back up.

The man wasn’t interesting enough to even respond to.

Olivia turned away from the refrigerator and toward the checkout.

“Wow, not even a hello?”

She kept her eyes forward and didn’t look back.

He was still behind her when she set her stuff on the counter.

Her neck tingled, and she looked toward the open doors.

“Is this all?” the clerk asked her.

She offered a tired smile and one quick nod. From her back pocket she removed a twenty-dollar bill and handed it over. All the while the hair on her arms stood up. Much as she wanted to look behind her, she didn’t.

She accepted the plastic bag and her change and started toward the door.

The man who’d been watching let out a low whistle.

Let it go, Olivia.

She made it a block outside the store when the chill on her neck made her stop and turn around.

Her spidey sense ratcheted up another ten notches when she didn’t see the object that was watching her.

The streets were loud, with people everywhere and cars cruising the Strip, music blaring into the southwestern air.

Her intention was to zigzag back to her hotel so long as the neck tingling went away.

With a twist of her heel, she turned around and stopped dead in her tracks.

Leo stood two feet away, eyes glued to her.

“We meet again,” he said, his voice calm and even.

She paused . . . shocked to see him. “Are you following me?”

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and then he opened his mouth and lied. “No.” The corners of his mouth lifted, and a smile that could only be described as flirtatious manifested on his face.

This was not happening. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she asked him, knowing damn well he did.

Her question pulled some of the tension out of his shoulders. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

She looked him dead in the eye. “So, go there.”

He paused, let that flirty smile expand. “What’s your name?”

A car horn sounded from the street.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” The man was trying to pick her up.

He cocked his head to the side. “You’re beautiful, you’re not wearing a ring . . .” He shrugged. “What’s your name?”

For a moment she stood in shock. In her line of work, she didn’t believe in coincidences. So what were the chances of Grant not knowing whom he was talking to?

Considering she’d sniffed out his earlier lie, and the one he just delivered by saying he hadn’t been following her . . . no, Leo Grant wasn’t that great of an actor, even if she knew he was capable of taking on the persona of someone he wasn’t. Undercover federal agents had a knack for things like that.

In an attempt to deliver the same message to him as she did to the guy in the convenience store, she shook her head and walked past him.

He followed. “Wait.”

She stopped, did a quick pivot, causing him to step into her personal space. “Go away!”

“You don’t mean that. I see something in your eyes . . .”

“You see me being . . .”

Car horns blared.

Olivia shifted her gaze from Leo to the street.

In an instant, she saw the barrel of a gun pointing out of a car, the face behind it.

“Get down!” she yelled.

Everything happened all at once.

Surprise on Leo’s face as she dropped her bag and lunged for him.

Her knees buckling as she attempted to become a smaller target.

And a flash of light from the tip of a gun that fired without a sound.