I haven’t been this screwed since Post Malone’s New Year’s party in Bangkok, when I did priceless thousand-year-old shrooms by accident. Waving my worthless ticket in my hand, I stare at the mega big-screen of the Bellagio’s sports wing, at the triumphant jockey clutching the trophy that should belong to another guy—mine, on whom I placed a bet comprising the last of my life savings. Big Dipper, the odds-on favorite for this year’s Belmont Stakes, lost to So We Win Again by barely a flick of a horsetail.

No, not just screwed. Royally manhandled. Squeezed like an orange and told to turn my head and cough by an intern with sweaty palms.

“How’d you do?” a waitress asks. She clears empty drinks from beside a slot machine. Pauses to give me a once-over, probably admiring the tailored button-up and chinos I bought three years ago, back when I was rolling in cash. Working as a private investigator, poking into the lives of anyone my wealthy patrons were curious about or nursed a grudge against, yielded more money than I thought I would ever need.

“Yeah, not so great. I lost—” everything, but this waitress doesn’t need to know that. “Seems like I can’t get a break lately.”

“Buck up, guy. Maybe the next bet will be a winner.” She winks, all heavy eyeliner and fake lashes.

“I doubt it,” I mumble. “Hey, uh—any chance you can leave those drinks? They look half-full.”

I wince, hearing how pathetic I sound.

The waitress wrinkles her button nose. “They’ve been sitting out for the last hour while I was serving a bachelor party in the high rollers’ room. That’s not liquor, it’s melted ice.”

Casting me another stink eye, she turns away. I crumple the square of paper in my hand, then toss it in the trash. The remainder of my life savings was pretty pitiful to begin with: $371. I suspect the sum would have been more impressive had I not moved to Las Vegas. Being here, after I was forced into early retirement at the age of thirty-four, made everything feel surreal. Limitless. Without consequences beneath the blazing desert sun.

I take a seat and pretend to put money into a slot machine that features the Kardashians walking a runway. Maybe a different waitress will arrive so I can order a fresh drink for free.

A pop-up window appears in the corner of my screen. A news segment. The host of the show, a leggy blond in a barely there halter dress, stands beside aerial camera footage of a house.

“Thanks for joining your digital news source, LVIN. Just last night, CEO and controversial onetime playboy Phinneas Redwood was found dead in his Benedict Canyon home. Although police have not yet released further details, celebrities and business tycoons alike are weighing in on the tragedy.”

The footage cuts to some bodybuilder from the eighties expressing his regret, but the split screen continues with a camera zooming in on a house. A woman in bright red pants and a white top stands on the sidewalk beneath a helicopter spotlight while police officers mill around her.

I suck in a breath. “Holy shit.”

“Can I get you anything?” a new waitress, older and with blue eye shadow, asks at my elbow.

“Uh, yeah. Martini. Extra olives.”

She leaves me to gape at Addison Stern, dripping style outside a crime scene. Beautiful black hair wrangled into a French braid accents high cheekbones, dark red lipstick, and her perfect neck that, years ago, used to be her favorite place for me to kiss her. It was mine, at least.

Well, it was alternately my favorite place to kiss her and where I wanted to strangle her, but I digress.

“Of course you’d be working with that scumbag, Addison.” I scoff at the screen as the memories come rushing back. The scent of her lavender shampoo. Her love of James Dean. Her deep belly laugh that sounded like a machine gun if the moment hit her just right. The late nights and late mornings lying in bed together.

Her bloodlust for finding the best angle of a story to benefit her client. Her inability to see black and white—she was myopic, only seeing the gray area as it suited her needs. The way she betrayed me, stole information from me when I let my guard down, to fuck over my own client to help another Ovid Blackwell campaign.

When I had to cop to the blame to my client, the damage to my reputation as a private investigator ended my career, three years ago—which didn’t seem like the worst thing, until I discovered online poker. A few successful hits gave me the bright idea to move to Vegas. For a while, it was the good life. The cheaper cost of living held an obvious advantage over Los Angeles—but only if you stayed out of the casinos. Bottom line, it’s Addison’s fault that I’m stuck here in Vegas with a lousy betting streak. While she’s scrubbing clean the images of the worst companies and schmucks in the country. And looking gorgeous on TV.

“Martini, extra olives.” The waitress returns with a glass brimming with gin. I take it, then throw her my last fiver on the tray.

“Oh, wait. Uh, could I have that back?”

The waitress lifts both eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry, I mean—you don’t have change, do you?”

She purses thin lips, then reaches into her apron pocket and produces five one-dollar bills. I take them all, then hand her a single, pathetic George Washington. Burning shame climbs my throat.

The waitress leaves, and I gulp down half the drink. The TV host moves on to another segment—the latest movie to be filmed along the Hoover Dam—and I stand to walk the diamond-patterned carpet. Cigarette smoke is thick on a Saturday afternoon in summer. Tourists and bachelor parties rolled in yesterday like a selfie-tsunami, as they do every Friday night.

I amble past a pair of dancers in a cage. Pause to admire the tassels and sequins.

Another sip of my drink goes down easy. A retired couple hits the blackjack table beside me, and a group of preteen girls wearing heavy makeup livestream their afternoon on social media. Vegas: Where anything goes, and one second you’re up—and the next you’re considering stealing garnishes from the bar for dinner.

The group of preteens disperses. A man in a black hoodie leans over a bistro table behind them. Staring at me.

“Hey, Connor, right?” His voice is gruff. I don’t recognize it.

“Uh, yeah?”

He moves toward me. Hulking shoulders, thick eyebrows that connect in the middle, and a glare that I last saw in the dead of night on the Fremont Strip come thundering closer.

Spinning on my heel, I walk. Quickly, at a speed just below a sprint, I begin weaving my way through the crowd.

Gianni’s muscle. Gianni was a guy I knew better than to place bets with, but who was the only bookie who’d accept such little collateral as I had to give before last week’s boxing match.

I down my drink, then toss it on a cocktail tray. High-pitched bells peal from a gambling arcade game, screams and moans burst from a craps table that I pass, and drunken conversations all blur together to make listening for my pursuer’s approach impossible. I sneak a glance behind me, and he’s closer than I remember. Faster than I gave him credit for. He’s already passing the craps table.

HIGH ROLLERS ROOM. The illuminated sign overhead is a beacon of safety, and I cut right. Slipping between a pair of burly women with sun hats, I withdraw from my wallet the VIP card I earned when I was at my financial peak, then disappear past the glass doors.

I whirl to watch Gianni’s goon turn in a circle. He doubles back toward the craps table.

My shoulders drop. I lean my head against the glass. He’s going to come back—they always do. When they return with their open hands, I’ll still have nothing to offer them. How did I end up here? How the hell am I ever going to dig myself out of the quarter-million-dollar hole I’m in?

“Connor. Connor Windell?”

A woman’s gravelly voice calls from behind. The back of my neck prickles in a wave of déjà vu. I know that sound.

Seated at an empty blackjack table, wearing a flowy, mid-length black dress and blunt heels, Mrs. Genevieve Aspen balances a slender cigarette holder between two delicate fingers—delicate in size, but wielding more power than most grown men could hope for. She’s a widow-turned-venture-capitalist and used to keep me very gainfully employed. Anytime she thought her employees, new boyfriends, lovers, or children were up to something, she gave me a call, then had an envelope of cash dropped in my mailbox. I could usually count on her paranoia to fund a trip in December, my own year-end bonus.

“I thought that was your shapely behind,” she says, matter-of-fact. With a flick of her wrist, she invites me to join her. “It’s been ages.”

I slide onto the plush velvet chair opposite her. The dealer raises his eyebrow, waiting for me to ante up; I shake my head.

“How are you, Gen?”

She sweeps a glance down my face, taking in the sweat dotting my brow and my chest still rising and falling too fast.

“I suspect better than you, my dear.”

“You always were perceptive. What are you doing in the desert?” I sneak a glimpse at the glass doors. Still no linebacker shoulders. Not yet.

She puffs on her cigarette. Red lipstick leaves rings around the paper. “I needed a getaway. Business is good, of course. It’s my family.”

“Oh?”

She pauses mid-inhale to eye me. Zero in on my cornea from close range. “Tell me, Connor. Was that just babble I heard, that you sold out your client? Simply your excuse to leave Los Angeles and the game? Or did you really betray your professional ethics?”

“You know, it’s a funny…Well, the thing is—”

She slaps the air with her taloned hand, interrupting me. “No, don’t say. I make my own decisions, and you always delivered with me. More importantly, I have a proposition for you that I can’t entrust to anyone else. I confess—I came to Las Vegas to find you. I deleted your number after that scandal, but I heard you were a regular at the Bellagio these days. I figured sooner or later you’d turn up among the high rollers, so here I am.”

My mouth opens. Hope flutters in my chest like a baby bird. “Gen, what do you need?”

She taps her smartphone where it sits on the green felt tabletop. A photo of Genevieve and a spritely young woman fills the screen.

“My daughter, Hyacinth, is engaged to a man who I believe has been unfaithful to her. I need you to find out whether my suspicion is correct.”

“What makes you think that?” I ask.

The white security-tint envelopes from the past flash to mind, and I can almost smell the crisp hundred-dollar bills within. I’ve dreamed about a moment like this, a chance to start over and leave the money pit of Vegas, ever since my luck started to change a year ago—and yet…

“And why do you think I can help? I’m an outcast back in LA. My bridges are all burned there, I’m sure you know. I’m…I’m done with all that. I hurt a lot of people.”

Being on the receiving end of Addison’s double cross brought a lot into perspective—although I didn’t come to grips with the way my actions destroyed lives until a long time after. It was the jagged little pill I swallowed eventually.

Gen fixes me with a stare. “Security footage caught my daughter’s fiancé sneaking another woman into my guesthouse. There’s the pudding for you.”

I whistle. “That is compelling.”

“And you are the right man for the job because I say you are. No one else was ever as efficient, discreet, or creative as you. You don’t have to hurt anyone. You’d be making everyone’s life better by uncovering the truth. Most of all, my Hyacinth’s.”

“I’m not sure about that.”

“Then if he is cheating on Hyacinth,” Gen continues, tapping her cigarette in a gold-flecked ashtray, “you have the choice to secure additional payment.”

I lean away in the short-backed chair. “Do you want me to investigate the mistress?”

She levels me with a sneer. “I want you to bring the affair to an end, using whatever means you deem necessary. And I don’t want to know a scrap of detail about how you do it.”

My shoulders slump. Genevieve Aspen wants me to do something I’ve never done before: meddle. Sure, I’ve poked around in other people’s lives, their bank accounts, and real estate records, and that has led to trouble. But I’ve never altered anyone’s path or deliberately harmed someone—until Addison did on my behalf. Other PIs I knew, friends of mine, who got too involved in their client’s personal affairs wound up missing, or outright dead. Messing with someone’s relationship—even a poorly functioning one, if he is cheating—could be more hassle than it’s worth.

I sigh. “Look, Gen, I appreciate you coming all the way out here, but I can’t do that. My answer is no.”

Gen lifts a finger. Signals to a cocktail waitress dressed in a white beaded floor-length gown. “How much money do you have in your checking account, Connor?”

“Excuse me?”

“It can’t be much.” She pauses as the young woman delivers a martini to the table. Extra olives. “It’s been, what, three years since you left and forced me to work with your subpar competitor PIs? I can offer you a signing bonus, if you will, and bring you out of the red—whatever it is. Judging from the sheen across your temples when you burst through the doors, it must be a significant figure.”

She slides an olive off a toothpick, then bites into it with a dull pop. My stomach rumbles.

“What’s the guy’s name? The fiancé,” I ask.

“Devon Lim.”

“The tech buff?” Years ago, he was Addison’s client; he still could be. We drove past his megamansion once, somewhere over in Bel-Air.

Genevieve scowls. “The tech buff embarrassing my daughter and my family.”

Although I know it shouldn’t, learning I could do some damage to Addison’s carefully curated world adds a twinkle to the job offer. A sparkle. An extra sequin on a drag queen’s bustier. Plus, Gen’s offer of a signing bonus might get Gianni off my back. And ensure he doesn’t break it.

“So, deep thinker. What’s your decision?” Genevieve polishes off the last of her three olives, then plunks the toothpick in her full martini glass.

I wave a hand to the waitress, ready for my own gin-soaked fruit. “All right, I’ll do it. But I’m going to need something from you first.”