His Property(8)

“Excuse me?” I asked, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. “I’m sorry, but can you tell me if there’s a man in there? His name is Henry Waters, he was cashing out?”

She frowned, looking distracted and annoyed. “What?”

“A man is cashing out back there,” I said impatiently. “Do you know how much longer it might take?”

She stared at me blankly.

“Can you please go check on him?” I asked, using the tone of voice I’d heard Maddie use when she wanted something and people weren’t giving it to her, like the time she tried to return a dress to a store after she’d lost the receipt and there was a sign on the wall that said NO EXCHANGES WITHOUT RECEIPTS NO EXCEPTIONS with NO EXCEPTIONS underlined five times. Maddie got them to take the dress back and we walked out of there with an insane amount of cash. She took me out for a fancy steak dinner before putting the rest of the money toward her textbooks for the semester.

“Cashing out where?” the woman casino employee asked me now, and the regret and sadness I’d felt thinking about Maddie and my old life was immediately overtaken by more annoyance.

“In there!” I said, feeling like I was in some kind of comedy sketch or hidden camera show. “In the office you just came from.”

“I didn’t come from an office,” the woman said, opening the door behind her and showing me. “It’s just a staircase.”

Sure enough, she was right. The door didn’t lead to an office at all. It led to a long concrete stairwell, the kind of stairwell that usually led to a parking garage.

I closed my eyes as the realization of what had just happened washed over me.

My father had left.

With the money.

And with him had gone my chances of getting out of this mess.





4





EMERY



Liam had to confirm it of course, had to question the way it had happened, had to make sure that my father had really gone. It was annoying as hell and made no sense – Liam was the one who’d brought me here, who’d told me that my father was a scumbag, and now he was doing everything he could to prove it. What was proving it going to do? Nothing except make me feel even worse than I already did.

But Liam was such a control freak that there was nothing I could do about it. He was insistent, and as soon as he started making demands, the casino employees started scurrying around like Santa’s elves.

We stood in the security office in the back of the casino, watching tapes on the monitor as my father and Tito – who, we were informed, wasn’t a pit boss at all, but another ne’er do well my father had befriended during the time he’d spent here – hopped into a taxi and took off to God knows where.

Liam was furious. The head of the casino was called down immediately. The man tried to talk Liam down, offered him all kinds of comps and free rooms, but Liam didn’t care about any of that.

He stormed out of the office and pushed his way through the door that my father had gone through, the one that led to the stairwell.

“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled as I struggled to follow him. I was wearing those ridiculous high-heeled shoes that he ‘d made me wear, and the soles were slipping all over the concrete floors.

“Catching him,” he growled.

“What? We can’t catch him, Liam. You saw the tapes. He’s gone.” I held onto the railing and did my best to keep up with him, but with every step it seemed as if Liam were widening the distance between us. “Will you please slow down?” I panted.

“No. We can catch him.”

“Liam, we cannot catch him. Trust me, I’ve been trying to catch my father for twenty-one years. There’s no catching him.”

But Liam didn’t like hearing the words “we can’t” or “it won’t work.” In fact, my protests and declarations that his mission was a lost cause seemed to do nothing but make him more determined.

“Slow down!” I yelled. “Jesus,” I mumbled under my breath.

When I finally caught him, he was at the bottom of the stairs, standing in a tiny vestibule encased in glass. Through a set of automatic doors was the employee parking lot, and beyond that, in the distance, was the traffic circle we’d seen on the security tapes, the one where my father had jumped into the taxi with Tito.

My father had been smart, leaving through the employee parking lot. It was a lot less busy than the circle at the main entrance, which was a constant parade of cars and shuttles. My father had never been stupid, though, at least not when it came to getting away with things.

I watched now as Liam stared out the window across the parking lot, as if he couldn’t believe my father was gone.