Vegas Moon by John Locke

Author:John Locke [Locke, John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781935670599
Amazon: 193567059X
Publisher: Bill
Published: 0101-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

21.

“What are you doing?” Lucky says.

“Pulling over.”

“Something wrong?”

“You tell me.”

I’d been heading toward Phyllis’s house, but now I slow down to turn into the entrance of a Wendy’s. I find an empty space and claim it. The sign light casts a yellow glow across part of the back seat where Gwen is sitting, and crosses her diagonally, illuminating her face, right arm and shoulder, leaving the rest of her in shadow. Lucky, in the front passenger seat, is directly in front of her. When he stares straight ahead like he’s doing now, his face is backlit, and has an aura around it, that reminds me of a lunar eclipse. If the moon was wearing a cowboy hat.

Lucky’s nervous, but acting cool. Gwen hasn’t spoken since we entered the car. I see her giving me a quizzical look in the mirror. No one speaks for a minute.

Finally Gwen says, “Would you like to try a combo?”

“Shut up, Gwen,” Lucky says. To me he says, “You know how late it is? I’ve been up twenty hours, nonstop. Not to mention my ass feels like the doctor left his scalpel in my upper intestine.”

I say, “Lucky, look at me.”

“Fine. I’m looking. What do you want?”

“I know what we’re looking for. But I want to know what you plan to do with it.”

He shrugs. “Phyllis had a device. A work product. I need it.”

“Start at the beginning. But before you say anything, I’m going to allow you one lie.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re going to tell me everything you know about the device, and how you first learned about it, and I’ll let you lie up to one time. If I believe you’re lying twice, I’ll kill you without giving it a second thought. Do you believe me?”

“I don’t know. You could be bluffing.”

“Spoken like a gambler.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s not a compliment.”

I glance in the mirror and see the sudden flash of Gwen’s smile as she realizes I just made a reference to what she said earlier in the day: that I was great looking, but it wasn’t a compliment. I give her a wink.

“Spill it,” I say to Lucky. “I won’t use this information against you. You have my word.”

He pauses a few seconds, then says, “How much do you know?”

“I know a lot about the device. Things I haven’t told you. But I need to know what you know, or we could be at a disadvantage with Connor Payne.”

“What do you know about Ropic Industries?”

“I know you put twenty million bucks into a technology company that had a surplus of sixty million at the time. You bought your way onto the board, and worked a deal with your accountant to get your hands on twelve million of their investment capital. I think you took that money and bet it on college hoops, or pro football, or whatever the hell you like to bet on. And I think you lost your ass. So you went back to the trough for more money, and you lost that, too. I

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