Skin Game (s-1) by Ava Gray

Author:Ava Gray [Gray, Ava]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_fantasy_city, love_sf
ISBN: 9780425231531
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2009-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

Gerard Serrano returned to the United States with a minimum of fuss.

It took a day for talk to start circulating, and he eavesdropped on his employees using the technology he’d installed in the break rooms and changing areas, expressly for that purpose. He hadn’t gotten where he was without a deserved reputation for being prepared. If he didn’t know everything about his domain—or at least have the potential to do so—then he deserved whatever happened to him.

Settling into his leather office chair, he powered up his desktop system and input a password. He didn’t keep it written down anywhere. It wasn’t a personal fact that someone could guess, and he changed it on a weekly basis. Serrano prided himself on being a careful, methodical man.

Smiling in anticipation, he brought up the streaming feed from the lounge. A couple of security guys whose names he didn’t recall offhand sat at a table covered in the remnants of a fast-food lunch. At first they only talked about things that had happened so far on their shift. They mentioned an elderly couple trying to make off without paying for the breakfast buffet. Serrano shook his head; that was the least of his worries.

While they gossiped like little girls, he looked up their personnel files: Rick Calloway and Dave Brody, both in their late twenties, both a couple of slackers with little to no ambition. Calloway was a tall, thin drink of water, and Dave was just average in every respect. Just as he was about to get bored and attend to more pressing business, the conversation shifted.

Dave leaned in over his cheesy burger wrapper. “You heard yet?”

“Heard what?” Calloway picked at his fries, which looked cold and disgusting even through the grainy feed.

“About Wayne, man. He didn’t come back with the boss.”

Rick wasn’t as dumb as he looked because he said, “Shit. He heard about—”

“Totally,” Dave said.

The other man’s hands clenched on the table. “You think he knows our part in it?”

Ah. Interesting. So it had been a team effort. Serrano tapped his fingers against his mahogany desk, thoughtful.

“Nah, man. If he did, he woulda invited us to Sweden and pushed us out of a plane over the ocean somewhere, too.”

Calloway looked nervous. “I dunno. Maybe we should get out of town. I don’t think we should work here anymore. You never know what might happen.”

“C’mon. This is a great job. Where else could I sleep instead of doing real work? As long as nothing catches on fire, it’s cool.”

Serrano narrowed his eyes. So he was paying Brody to slack? He’d tell Foster to ride him like a cheap whore, if he didn’t have the loser killed. He was still considering the angles.

“I’m telling you, Dave, if you’re smart, you’ll get the hell out. Serrano runs this place like he’s Don Corleone. He thinks he can just disappear somebody and nobody will ask questions. Hell, man, think about it. He did.”

Brody shrugged. “It’s not like this is the Wild West. It’s not even old-school Vegas these days.

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