Luscious Craving (26 page)

Simmons’s eyes were glazed, wide open but lifeless. He looked like a sleepwalker. Then, with a strength that shocked me, caught me off-guard, he rolled out from under me, jumped to his feet, and pulled a knife.

I focused on the metal blade. All around me people were screaming. Lights from cameras flashed in my eyes, nearly blinding me. I was aware of the senator’s detail, finally hustling their man to safety. I kept my eyes focused on the desperate figure in front of me. I grabbed Simmons’s wrist and took a step to the left, forcing his arm away from me. At the same time, I rammed my knee into his hand. The knife flew out of his fingers. A quick step forward, jabbing my hip into his side, and he toppled, hitting the floor hard.

He lay there, groaning softly. I knelt beside him, one knee on his side to make sure he didn’t pull another slick move. Al and one of the senator’s security team were attempting to herd the reporters out of the room. All of a sudden, the head of the senator’s security was kneeling at my side.

“I’ll take it from here,” he said.

But as I was about to get up, Simmons grasped my hand. “They’ve got to be stopped!” he whispered, his eyes wild. “They’ve got to be stopped! You’ve got to stop them.”

“Stop who?” I asked.

“The Board.”

As if just speaking the name had brought on some sort of fit, Simmons’s body
spasmed
, his mouth stretching wide. Then the light of fear in his eyes went out, snuffed like a candle flame.

“Get back!” Senator
Hamlyn’s
guard snapped. “Give me some room.”

He tore Simmons’s shirt open, getting ready for CPR, then fell back with a gasp. The surface of Simmons’s chest was a mass of festering sores, as if he had once been badly burned and the tissue had simply refused to heal.
Incredibly, badly burned
, I thought. Simmons hadn’t been a man. He had been a vampire, an animated corpse. Now, a corpse was all he was. But as to what had ended him, I had no idea.

I put my fingertips on his carotid artery, already knowing what I would find.

“He’s gone.”

The hospital mechanism took over then.
Gurneys.
Technicians in lab coats.
The Board needs to be stopped
, Simmons had said. Who on earth was he talking about? What Board?

Al came up to me, his eyes concerned. “So I guess we’re all glad you came along. What the hell happened?”

“Who the hell knows? All of a sudden, he just had a knife.”

“Candace! Candace, can you tell us how it feels to have saved Senator
Hamlyn’s
life?”

All of a sudden, I realized Al and I were surrounded by TV cameras.

“It feels great,” I answered honestly. “But I just did what anyone would have done.”

A barrage of questions rolled over me like a wave, and suddenly Randolph Glass was at my side.

“Ms. Steele has no further comment at this time. Naturally, as her employer, the Scheherazade will issue a full press statement, commending her for her actions. Now, if you’ll excuse us.” He took my arm in a grip of iron, hustled me out the door.

As soon as I was through it, Senator
Hamlyn
stepped toward me at once, flanked by his security guards.

“Thank you. I appreciate your taking action the way you did.”

He offered me his hand and as I clasped it I realized he was trembling. I wondered how he’d feel if he realized what I had really just prevented.

A vampire had just tried to kill a
United States
senator. What the hell was going on?

Al and I returned to the
Sher
. Al spent the entire ride back talking on his cell phone. I didn’t even try to decipher his half of the conversations. I kept replaying the fight with Simmons in my mind. Even though he was the one who pulled a knife, I couldn’t help feeling that Simmons hadn’t been the real threat in that room. That blank, wild look in Simmons’s eyes told me something else was going on, something I had missed. Something that had to do with the Board—whatever that is.

The second we got to the casino, we went straight to Al’s office. He sat behind the desk. I sat in front of it.

“You go first,” I said, and won a tight smile.

“According to the senator’s press secretary, the guy in the bad suit is, was, a nutcase who’s been stalking the senator for months. Somehow he came up with press credentials from some tabloid.”

“Then why didn’t
Hamlyn’s
guys take him down before he got so close?”

“Up until now he’s behaved himself.”

“Give me a break,” I groaned. “So they figured what? Better the devil they could keep an eye on?”

Al gave an expressive shrug. “Who the hell knows? That’s their story, and they’re sticking with it.”

“Covering their asses.
So what was Simmons’s beef with
Hamlyn
?”

Al rested one elbow on his desk. “Are you ready for this? He claims the senator takes his marching orders from extraterrestrials or some other far-out group.”

“Called the Board?”

“That’s right. We found notes in his pockets, all about the Board spelled with a capital
B
. How do you know about the Board?”

“He said something about how they needed to be stopped.” I took a deep breath. “Now here’s what I know. Simmons was a vampire.”

“
What
? Please tell me you’re joking.”

“I’m not. Maybe this is the missing connection, Al, between the vamps and the con. Maybe it’s not a con at all. Maybe
Hamlyn’s
being set up.”

“By vampires,” Al
said,
the sarcasm heavy in his voice. “Candace, you know and I know that vampires feed off humans, they manipulate humans. They do not use them to get involved in politics. And don’t tell me there’s a first time for everything.”

“We’ve got to get him out of the casino, Al,” I said. “No matter what the real story is, there are just too many people here. There’s no way we’ll be able to protect just one, let alone them all.”

“Agreed,” Al said at once.
“And already taken care of.
Half that conversation in the car was with
Randolph
.
He’s agreed to have his big shindig on New Year’s Eve out at the lake house instead of at the hotel. He’ll have the celebrities there instead of wandering around the
Sher
.
Smaller venue, easier for security to control.”

“Not to mention divide and conquer,” I said.
“Just in case there really is a con.”

“Anything new on that?”

“Other than the headache I got trying to understand Chet in IT? No.”

Al grunted,
then
gestured toward the door. “Go home and get some rest. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

“I’ll be here for the day shift.”

“And for the night and until the following morning.”
He sighed.
“Provided we still have jobs when the sun comes up.”

Eighteen

Tired as I was, sleep turned out to be impossible. A clock was ticking down inside my head, set to explode at midnight tomorrow. I lay in
bed,
Simmons’s anguished face in my mind. Was he just some vampire nut job? Or was there really something out there. Something called the Board? And if there was, how could I find out more about them?

Going back to Ash was not an option. Not only was I afraid I’d want to stay, but when it came to discussing vampire affairs he had completely shut me down. If I was going to discover more about the Board, I was going to have to do it on my own.

After I destroyed my cell phone!

It had been ringing off the proverbial hook. I turned it off after checking voice mail from the first couple of callers, but I knew the calls wouldn’t stop. TV and newspaper reporters wanted a quote for their big story about the foiled attack on the senator. I had no idea how they had gotten my cell number, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to talk to them.

I needed to talk to someone else, someone who would listen and not freak out if I tossed a couple of seriously weird ideas around.
Bibi
, I thought. She was the only one who might understand, the only one left I could trust. I turned my cell back on, called hers before another call could sneak in.

Through the noise that burst out of the phone, I barely heard, “Hello?”

“
Bibi
?”

“Candace? Speak up! I can’t hear you.”

“What’s going on?”

“Dress rehearsal’s over.”

She didn’t have to say more. I knew the routine. The dancers went to the loudest club in Vegas after a dress rehearsal to take a break before the show opened.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Just checking in to say hi.”

“Well, get your butt over here!”
Bibi
yelled into the phone. “See if you can grab Michael and join us. We’re headed for the Irish pub at
New York
–
New York
, and we could use another male voice. Besides, I can’t believe I haven’t met him yet. It’ll be fun.”

“I have to work tomorrow,” I said.

“So do
I
. It’s going to be a new year, Candace. Remember, moving on?”

“Let me see if Michael can get away,” I said. “If he can, we’ll meet you there.”

“See you there,” she said, and I closed my cell. It began to ring again. I tossed it on my bed, got up, and went to my closet.
Moving on
, I thought.

The tournament seemed to be on break when I walked by. I saw a man tinkering with a camera laid out on one of the tables. He told me that the tournament had been called for the night because the No-Limits Foundation wanted everyone at the top of their game for the final table tomorrow.

“Michael Pressman?” he asked in answer to my question. “Yeah, he’s one of the six finalists.”

Thanking him, I walked to where I could get a signal to call Michael’s cell. No answer but voice mail. I didn’t want to leave a message, so I took the elevator up to the eleventh floor and rang the doorbell for Room 1100.

No answer.

I tried knocking.

Still no response.

Maybe he was somewhere else in the casino, out with his friends. But if so, why wasn’t he answering his cell? I checked my watch. It wasn’t all that late. Maybe they’d all gone out for a quick bite. Maybe Michael had tried to reach me, but been unable to get through. I’d had
my
phone off, after all. I drew out the key he had given me. There was nothing that said I couldn’t wait in the suite. As I suspected, the key worked in the main door as well as the one for the bedroom. I slid the key in and opened the door.

There were lights on in the foyer, baggage piled against the wall. Michael’s friends were probably getting ready to head home as soon as the tournament was over. The living room was dark. A dim light in the dining room glowed from the screen of an open laptop. It beeped and I went over to it. It was Michael’s; I recognized the royal flush sticker on the keyboard.