Vegas Vengeance by Randy Wayne White Page B

with.
    Hawker tried to speak, but once again the woman covered his lips with her hands. They dozed for a while, then made love again—this time each making sure it lasted a long, long time for the other.
    When Hawker awoke again, a thin line of light filtered beneath the massage room door.
    It was morning.
    And the woman was gone.

eleven
    Hawker spent the next morning, a Thursday morning, sleeping.
    He had wandered away from the Doll House at dawn, too tired to explain his leaving or to say good-bye.
    It didn’t appear anyone was up anyway.
    Back in his own suite, he opened the windows, turned the air-conditioning on high and tumbled into bed.
    He awoke four hours later to the sound of laughter. It was 11:35 A.M. , and the showgirls were beneath his veranda again, sunning themselves at the pool.
    The long-legged beauty with the tawny red hair was there. Her bikini was wet, and Hawker could see the outline of upturned nipples through the thin material.
    As though she could feel Hawker’s eyes on her, the woman turned suddenly and caught him in his act of voyeurism.
    Hawker hadn’t blushed in a very long time, but he came damn close now. The woman seemed to sense it and grinned at him. Then, with a toss of her auburn mane, she dove headlong into the pool. Hawker felt the urge to slip on his swimsuit and trot downstairs for the obligatory inanities of introduction.
    It would be nice to escape from the dangers of this mission for a while.
    Hawker watched the auburn-haired girl swim. Her stroke was long and effective but surprisingly lacking in grace. Her buttocks pivoted alluringly with every kick, and the stirring he felt reminded him of the mystery woman who had come to him in the darkness. Who was she? Barbara Blaine? Mary Kay O’Mordecai Flynn? Or just one of the anonymous girls, a prostitute who had come to him with inexplicable desire?
    It was a pleasant mystery, and Hawker used it to take his mind off the girl in the pool.
    But then he cursed himself for mooning around like a love-struck adolescent. He had work to do, damn it. Important work. He had had enough of women for the time being.
    Hawker ordered breakfast from room service, then forced himself beneath a cold shower.
    After the fight he had had, he expected to feel more soreness. Instead, he felt pretty good—except for the knuckles of his right hand.
    The massage had apparently helped.
    Hawker dressed himself in worn twill slacks, a black cotton knit shirt and a pair of waxy soft boat shoes. He had already inventoried the armaments in the carefully packed crates, so it didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for.
    It was a VL-34, brand named the Privacy Protector. It was built of red plastic, and considerably smaller than a paperback book. The VL-34 was the smallest and most advanced electronic bug-detecting device ever built.
    Hawker checked the batteries and drew out the retractable antenna. He pointed the antenna toward the television set. The little beeper alarm went off immediately, but the tiny fail-safe yellow flasher did not come on.
    No bugs there.
    Hawker went over the entire suite painstakingly. And found nothing.
    It was not good news. It meant there were now only three ways the mob could have found out about his plans to drive to Jason Stratton’s cabin: through a spy among Kevin Smith’s help, through Barbara Blaine or through a wiretap.
    The wiretap would be the easiest to check, and Hawker decided to take care of that after breakfast.
    But while waiting for his food to arrive, he pulled out Stratton’s cryptic journal and went through it carefully.
    Aside from a few seemingly unimportant entries, the only things Stratton had not written in code were the dates of his entries.
    He had been keeping the journal for just over two years. The entries had been made sporadically over that time period, sometimes weekly, sometimes daily.
    The last three entries were dated June 9, June 10 and June 13.
    Barbara