Windermere woke up in Mathers’s bed with her phone ringing and the big lug snoring beside her. It was dead dark in the room. Her head hurt. The clock on the night table read half past one.
Windermere let the phone ring a minute. Lay back and stared into the darkness and tried to decide how she felt about what she’d done with Mathers.
They were both adults. Mathers was a good-looking guy, and she liked him. He didn’t come off as a whack job, and he was pretty damn good in bed. She’d had fun with him, and now it was over, and in the morning they could go back to work.
This was the part of the whole ordeal where she was supposed to feel guilty, she knew. She was supposed to look over at Mathers, at the junior agent’s broad expanse of back, and wonder what the hell she had done. Windermere sat up in bed and pulled the sheet around her. Looked at Mathers, listened to him snore. Didn’t feel guilty at all, to be honest.
She wondered if Mathers would be weird in the morning. If he’d think of what had happened as anything more than a fun night in a strange town with a good-looking colleague. She hoped not. The last thing she needed right now was a boyfriend. After Mark, hell, she’d pretty much resigned herself to spending the rest of her life alone.
Mathers was a young kid. He was a good-looking cop. No doubt he had plenty of girls chasing him. He wouldn’t jump to conclusions. He’d understand she wasn’t looking for any repeat performances.
The phone was still ringing. Loud and insistent. Windermere chased Mathers from her mind and fumbled for the phone on the nightstand. Three missed calls. Shit. She answered. “Windermere.”
“Carla.” Windermere’s stomach flipped. It was Stevens. “Guess I woke you.”
“You know I don’t sleep, Stevens.” Windermere swung her feet over the bed and hurried into the bathroom. “What’s up?”
“I got a call from Drew Harris just now. Said he heard something out of Vegas that might help our case.”
Shit. “My boss called you?”
“Said he couldn’t get ahold of you or Mathers. You guys hit the clubs or something?”
Windermere locked the door and turned on the light. Caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and quickly turned away. She sat down on the toilet and ran her hands through her hair. “Turned in early,” she said. “So?”
“So listen,” he said. “Harris is keeping tabs on our case. Apparently the whole Bureau’s watching.”
Mathers knocked on the bathroom door. “Carla?”
Shit, shit, shit. Windermere covered her phone. “One second,” she said. “Be right out.”
“You on the phone?”
“Home base,” she said. “Be out in a minute.”
“Who was that?” Stevens asked her when she was back on the line. Windermere shook her head, rubbed her eyes, laughed at her predicament.
“Room service,” she said. “I skipped dinner. You said something about Vegas.”
“Yeah. Right. So according to Harris, some kid snuck into the Bellagio with a pistol today. Broke into a guest suite on the thirty-fifth floor. From the LVPD description, it sounds like O’Brien.”
“Shit.” Windermere stood. “Holy shit. He kill someone?”
Stevens paused. “No,” he said. She could tell he was smiling. “That’s the best part. He bugged out for some reason. Got away, but the target’s still alive.”
“Still alive,” she said. “And we’re sure it’s Killswitch.”
“Young kid, skinny, matches the description. LVPD’s faxing you a sketch and some security cam stills, but on the surface it sounds pretty damn close.”
Windermere looked at herself in the mirror again. Looked a hell of a lot less tired than she had five minutes ago. “Good stuff, Stevens,” she said. “How soon can you meet us on-site?”
“Vegas? I figured you guys could—”
“Bull,” she said. “This is your lead. You’re working it with us. Don’t act like you don’t want to be here.”
He paused. “You know I do.”
“I’ll get you a flight, Stevens. See you in Sin City.”
She ended the call just as Mathers knocked on the door. “One second,” she told him. Then she stared at her reflection. Stevens, she thought. Mathers. Sin City. Things were bound to get messy.
No time for that now. She had a lead to work. Windermere pushed away from the mirror and opened the bathroom door. Found Mathers waiting for her, wrapped in a bedsheet. He smiled at her, sleepy. “Everything cool?”
Windermere brushed past him. Looked around for her clothes. “Rise and shine, big guy,” she said. “We’re going to Vegas.”