Obviously we had no chance of getting past Gorilla Man—especially since the line for the concert was now snaking into the casino, and big guys in red SECURITY T-shirts were standing by.
But Eddie-Elvis had said something about a Blues loading dock, which I figured meant the House of Blues loading dock.
Which I figured meant that there had to be a back way in.
“What are we looking for?” Heather asks after we’ve trucked through the casino for a minute.
“An exit.”
“Not the main exit?”
“Well, the Elvises didn’t cut across to the main exit. They kind of went this way, right?”
“But they could have turned anywhere in through here.”
I nod. “I know. I just got the feeling they were going out this way.”
“Maybe we don’t have to go out to get in.”
“What do you mean?”
“We could try going through there,” Heather says, pointing to an EMPLOYEES ONLY door.
I grin at her. “You have no idea how funny that is.” Then real quick I add, “I don’t mean making-fun-of-you funny.”
“Then what?”
“It’s just that’s something I would have said to Marissa.”
“So? You want to try it? Maybe it goes backstage or something?”
We were already past the House of Blues, so I didn’t think the door was connected, but I also didn’t really understand how things were laid out. “So there’s the House of Blues restaurant, and there’s the gift shop, but where’s the concert hall? Is it underground? I mean, that tunnel hallway thing slanted down, right?”
Heather nods. “And it went back behind the restaurant.”
“So is that where all those people lined up are going? Down that hallway?”
“Must be.”
I try to visualize where we’d walked and how the tunnel hallway had turned. “So the concert hall is, like, that way,” I say, pointing.
She laughs, ’cause it turns out I’m pointing right at the EMPLOYEES ONLY door. And then, like it’s egging us on, the door opens.
But only halfway.
And then it just stays like that.
Magically open.
Heather and I look at each other like, Whoa! And although there’s a definite creep factor to this—like the witch inviting Hansel and Gretel inside her sugar-crusted house of horrors—we hurry over and get there in time to hear a woman’s voice go, “No, here, I’ll show you where it is,” before the door starts to close.
We don’t actually see anyone, and since there’s a security keypad on the wall next to the door and the door has an automatic closer, there’s no way we’re going to get inside unless we move fast.
So I do what I always do when I don’t want someone closing the door on me.
I stick my foot in.
“I hate when you do that,” Heather whispers, ’cause let’s just say I’ve gotten her in some major hot water by not letting a door or two shut when she would have liked them to.
I toss an innocent look at her. “You want me to let it close?”
“No, stupid.”
I arch an eyebrow at her. “My name’s Sammy.”
“Sorry,” she grumbles, and looks away.
So yeah. This was weird. And it wasn’t just that I wanted to give whoever was on the other side of the door a chance to get gone. My foot stayed put because all of me was in a little bit of shock.
Heather saying she’s sorry?
Like she means it?
Definitely weird.
Finally I pull the door open and stick my head inside, and what do I see?
A long, industrial-looking hallway with big steel elevator doors on one side and regular metal doors on the other.
Heather wedges her head in, looks around, then pushes me through. “You can’t be half in and half out—it looks suspicious!”
Which it does, only I’ve noticed something Heather hasn’t.
Video cameras.
“Uh, I think we’re already busted,” I whisper as she heads for the elevators.
“What are you talking about?”
I hurry over to her and whisper, “Don’t look, okay? But there are video cameras everywhere.”
To my amazement, the only place she looks is straight at me. “Where?”
“In the ceiling corners. They got a straight-on shot of us sneaking through the door, and we’re on camera right now.”
“Great,” she mutters, but instead of hightailing it back out of there, she presses the only button next to the elevator.
A button with an up arrow.
“Wait a minute,” I tell her. “If this only goes up and we want to go down …”
“We want to go anywhere but here!” she whispers. “Away from the cameras!”
“But if it’s not taking us where we do want to go …?”
“We’ll figure it out later!”
Then the elevator doors open and we find ourselves standing face to face with a security guard.
This guy is nothing like Gorilla Man. For one thing, he’s wearing a blue uniform with official security-guy patches. For another, he’s young and soft and has obviously never tossed anyone hard enough for them to catch air.
Still, from the look in his eye, I know we’ve hit the end of the line. So I pop off with “Hey, maybe you can help us!”
He steps out of the elevator but stays in front of it like he’s going to stop us from making a dash inside. “Help you?” he says, giving me a doughy look. “I can sure help you out of here.”
“Well, I don’t know where we want to be, actually, in or out. My mom told me to meet her at the loading dock for the House of Blues.”
“And what makes you think the loading dock is back here?”
“Well … I wouldn’t think you’d have your customers loading and unloading stuff, right? Employees would do that. So it makes sense to go to where the employees are?” I give a little shrug. “At least, that’s what we were thinking.”
Heather nods and says, “And you’re wearing blues—that’s what they call them, right? Your uniform? So … we must be on the right track?”
He gives her a little squint. “My blues have nothing to do with the House of Blues blues. That’s music. You know, wah-wah-wah, I got me a breaking heart?”
“Sounds like country music,” I tell him. “Is it a country music place?”
“No! It’s a blues place.” He studies me. “You seriously don’t know what the blues are?”
I give another little shrug, and Heather pipes up with “Personally, I’m just glad we ran into you so you can tell us where to go, because we are so lost, and this whole situation is ridiculous.”
I scratch the back of my neck. “You can say that again.”
Heather deadpans, “Personally, I’m just glad we ran into—”
“All right, all right!” Blues Boy says, then leads us back to the door we’d come through, saying, “Go out to the tram station—”
“There’s a tram?”
He scowls at us. “Do you two always talk this much?”
Heather hitches a thumb my way. “She does. Good luck shutting her up. It’s, like, constant.”
I blink at her. “Look at you right now, yammering away! Besides, I only talk too much when I’m nervous. Or lost in Las Vegas. Or in some back hallway getting cuffed by a cop for trying to find my mother.” I turn to Blues. “So okay, you’re not cuffing me. At least I hope you’re not going to. But—”
Mr. Security’s just staring at me, so I pinch my lips and wait until finally he says, “Yes. There’s a tram. It’ll take you to the Luxor and the Excalibur. But you don’t want to go to the Luxor or the Excalibur, so you don’t want to get on the tram.”
Now he’s talking to us like we’re stupid little kids, but that’s all right. These stupid little kids are tricking their way out of getting detained or arrested or whatever and finding out how to get to the loading dock, all at the same time.
Heather eyes me and I eye her back, and we both just let him keep talking down to us. “You want to go past the tram. Then keep walking around the building. The first down ramp you get to is the loading dock. Can’t miss it.”
I let go of my lip. “Do we go left past the tram or right?”
“Left.”
“And the loading dock is also on the left?” Heather asks him.
He opens the door and gives us a condescending smile. “Very good.”
“Well, thanks,” we tell him, and the minute the door closes behind us, Heather gives a little snort and slyly puts out a fist for me to bump.
So I do.
It’s just a little knock, but still.
Heather and I have bumped fists.
“So let’s find the tram,” she says, and I can tell she’s feeling a little weird about it, too.
“Yeah, let’s.”
So we wander through the casino looking for signs that say TRAM, and pretty soon Heather spots one. “There!” she cries, pointing straight ahead.
So out we go to the tram depot, which is like a train depot only more high-tech and full of people wearing way too much gold lamé and perfume.
“Shoot me if I ever look like that,” Heather whispers about a woman in a pink jumpsuit with oversized rhinestone jewelry.
“I’ve got your permission?” I whisper back. “ ’Cause you know, it seems wrong to first save someone’s life and then shoot them.”
She groans. “Don’t remind me!”
Now, Casey had told me that my pulling Heather up from the bottom of a swimming pool last summer had made her hate me even harder, but it was something I’d never really understood. I mean, would she rather I’d let her drown? Hudson had explained that it was because she didn’t want to owe me her life, especially since she obviously would like to kill me. Still—I’d never really been able to wrap my head around it.
So as we’re heading down some steps and away from the tram holding area, I tell her, “I actually thought it was Marissa at the bottom of the pool.”
Her head snaps to face me. “You did?”
The steps take us down to a walkway that goes through some landscaping between the building and a service road. So I follow that to the left, saying, “You were wearing the same swimsuit, remember?”
“Oh my God!” she cries, throwing her hands in the air. “All this time I thought you were trying to show off how you’re a better person than me.”
“By pulling you off the bottom of a pool?”
“Yeah! You could have sent anyone down after me! But no—you went and did it yourself.” She grabs my arm and actually pogos up and down. “But you thought I was Marissa! You thought I was Marissa!”
“Which means …?”
“Which means I don’t owe you my life!”
I blink at her. “Wow. Hudson was right.”
She stops jumping for joy. “That old guy? With the pink car?”
“Well, Hudson would insist the color’s ‘sienna rose,’ but yeah. He said you hated owing me your life.”
“But it turns out I don’t owe you my life!” she says, letting go of my arm.
“I never thought you did.”
“But I did!”
I shrug. “Well, even if you did, it’s not like I’d make you be my house elf or something.”
She eyes me. “I’d make a terrible house elf.”
“Don’t I know!” I laugh. “So forget it happened, would you?”
We keep on walking, with the backside of the Mandalay building on our left and the service road to our right. There are streetlights that help us see where we’re going, and even though it’s pretty isolated, it doesn’t feel like we’re in danger.
Well, unless we count each other as danger, which if we were back in Santa Martina, would have been a real thing.
Anyway, we finally come to a large opening in the building. It’s like a giant cement garage, only without a roll-up door.
“Do you think that’s it?” Heather asks, and even though we’re still a ways away, she’s whispering.
I give her a nod, then cut off the walkway and through some bushes to get us out of the streetlights. We head toward the edge of the building, and when we peek around the corner, what we see are two cars and a large panel truck parked at the end of a big cement delivery bay that’s lit up by floodlights.
“Do you hear that?” I whisper, ’cause there’s a steady thumping of music, fighting to be heard.
“This must be it!” She gets a little giddy and says, “I can’t believe we’re sneaking in to see Darren Cole!”
“I’m not sneaking in to see Darren Cole. I’m sneaking in to see my mom. And find out who she’s with!”
“What’s it matter anymore? As long as it’s not my dad, right?”
I think about this a minute and grumble, “What kind of ditz comes to Las Vegas with one man and winds up with another?”
“Uh, your mother?” Heather laughs.
“Not funny.”
She studies me a minute. “You’re right. But what does it matter?”
“There’s a lot you don’t know, so just trust me—it matters. And the goal here is to help me find her, okay?”
“Fine, but if we actually do get inside and you actually do find her, I’m going to watch the concert while you deal with your mother.”
“Okay … but then where do we meet afterward?”
She shrugs. “Back at the hotel room?”
“Then your mom will know we split up.” I think. “How about back at the box office?”
“That works.” She eyes my backpack and skateboard. “I know this is gonna be like ripping out your heart, but you have to leave your skateboard here. And nobody wears a backpack to a concert.”
As much as I don’t want to admit it, I know she’s right.
So I take the rest of my reward money out of my backpack and stuff it in a front pocket of my jeans. And at the last minute I take my mother’s picture, fold it, and put it in a back pocket. Then I stash the pack and my skateboard behind a hedge.
“Okay,” Heather says. “Now, how are we going to pull this off?”
My heart’s already starting to pound as I head out of the bushes and into the loading dock. “I have no idea.”