Editing magic performed by KJ24 and Shyqash, plus contributions by the regular gang of brigands and neer-do-wells.

The 'hero' of this tale might be considered a Libertarian, though the label means nothing to him. He is not completely sane (by some people's definition of the term).

*****

[DISCLAIMER]

*This tale is an "exercise" with some themes that I am experimenting with in other stories. It is the start of a new, seven chapter, story line. It is posted for your entertainment; but please, do not post any "Do more" or "Oh no, don't stop story X" notes. Just skip this if you feel you might fall prey to such urges.*

Main Cast of Characters:

Vance (Vardan) 'V' Vardanyan - He has thick, black hair kept short. His skin is a dark-brownish olive complexion - Armenian-American. Medium brown eyes. Square jawed. Broad chested, with powerful arms, thick neck with more body-hair than the norm. A stocky frame (six foot tall, 240 lbs.). 33 years old.

Dabney Curtiss - She has long, wavy light-brown hair with blonde streaks and highlights. Her skin is fair and lightly tanned and feels silky to the touch. Golden-brown eyes. Heart-shaped face. 34DD sized breasts with pale, broad areolas and puffy nipples. Athletic body type, with robust buttocks, thighs and calves. 26 years old.

Georgianna 'G' Norquist - She is a natural honey/amber-blonde. Her skin tans easily and is currently darkly tanned and smooth. Oval-shaped face. Clear grey eyes. Her body is fit, tone and statuesque; a smidge on the slender side suggestively rendering her 32D-sized breasts looking bigger than they actually are. 39 years old.

{Las Vegas - September 8th, 2014}

On the north end of the Strip was the Stratosphere. As I was entering the casino around midnight, I noted a woman passing me - heading out - regarding me quizzically. She had long, wavy light-brown hair with blonde streaks and highlights - still damp. She was mildly tanned. I was willing to bet it was because she had fair skin. Otherwise, nice rack, athletic body and commendable lower chassis - butt, thighs and calves.

"Vance?" I heard from behind me. The woman I had seen exiting the building had called out to me. I turned and looked her over. She was a call girl - an escort - and by her high-quality light weight jewelry, perfect teeth and an absence of back alley tattoos, doing better than most.

"Vance, don't you remember me?" she smiled. I didn't have on a name tag and Vance is not what you call a randomly selected john. I turned fully to face her. Nothing.

"I'm afraid not," I gave her a cautious smile. She would have been more attractive to me if she wasn't advertising so much. She didn't look crestfallen which I found unusual.

"Dabney Curtiss," she informed me. Then it clicked.

"Dabney...little Dabney," I grinned. She was the baby sister of a girl I partied with in High School. Sammi, Dabney's sister, and I had not dated, but I hung out at her house a good deal. Hell, I had taught Dabney to shoot pool, ride a bike, swim and dive, plus we often partnered together in 'chicken fights' and water polo.

"I'm not so little anymore," she smirked. She posed for me provocatively then caught herself in the reality that to any natives of Las Vegas' underbelly she was clearly a whore. Her spontaneous joy was fading fast.

"Hey," I took three steps forward and hugged her. "You are right - not little anymore. Do you want to talk?"

I avoided the whole issue of how she was dressed and if she was the master of her own timetable.

"Sure, that'd be great," her smile returned. Doing what you needed to survive was also a fact of life we poor Las Vegans had grown up with. We made our way to Roxy's Diner, one of the food establishments inside the Stratosphere. "You seem to be doing well for yourself." I didn't mind her prodding.

"Eh," I shrugged. "I joined the Navy straight out of school, ended up being a corpsman - that's what they call medics in the Navy. Now, I've got a job lined up with MedicWest." That was a horrifically abbreviated history of the past few years.

"MedicWest?" Dabney asked.

"It is an ambulance service," I told her. Of course, she wasn't likely to know that.

"How in the hell did you end up being a doctor-type," she giggled. "You used to be such a bad-ass in school." I shrugged. "Does it pay well?" Hey, I wasn't insulted. We had been tight long ago.

"$33,000 starting," I answered. I could tell she wasn't overly impressed. "I'm not too much of a 'not-bad ass'," I added.

"No kidding," she reached across the table and squeezed my well-developed biceps. "I don't remember you being so...big." Another smile.

"The Navy stresses physical fitness," I lied somewhat. "I also spent some time with the Marines."

"I thought you said you were in the Navy?" she cocked her head to the side. It was odd to see such a 'womanly' move from a person I last knew as a kid.

"The Navy provides medical personnel for the US Marine Corps," I enlightened her. "What about you and Sammi?"

"Ugh...Mom and Dad finally split up ten years ago," she sighed. Her parents never fought in my presence. They never interacted at all, as far as I knew. It was a strange thing to watch.

"Sammi married Dwight Bell about... a year after you left," she continued. "They had two kids, divorced then were getting back together when Dwight ended up dead in a drug deal gone bad." I remembered Dwight. He was a year ahead of Sammi and me. He was big, black, crude, too eager to resort to violence and not all that bright.

He used to bully me until my junior year when I put his head through a car window. I was an angry, directionless troublemaker back then.

"She hooked up with this Samoan guy who I hated. I called him Shamu," she took a long pull on her soda straw. "He did 19 months for grand theft auto, violated his parole and left town afterwards. Last I heard he went down for some heavy time in Idaho.

Once she got him out of her system, she got her act together, took some online courses and now works at Well-Crest Construction Co. in Henderson," she looked me over. "Do you think you want to... you know...see her some time?"

"Sure," I agreed. "I'll give you my number. I've come off a rough stretch so I'm not looking for anything serious."

That made her happy. She had my number without having to ask for it. I could tell she was interested in something more than the ¼ pound juicy hamburger, milkshake and onion rings I was paying for. My issue was that Dabney was a hooker and that meant she already had a 'man' in her life. Speaking of which, her phone rang.

I knew that look. She was debating doing something she knew was wrong (not answering the phone) and deciding to do what she knew was wrong anyway. She sent the call to voice mail before forcing a smile back on her face and looking at me.

"How come we never hooked up, Vance?" she let her golden-brown eyes get all big and innocent.

"Dabney, you are seven years younger than me," I pointed out. "When I left, you were eleven."

"I always liked you," she batted her eyelashes. I was somewhat her protector since Sammi and I ran with a rough crowd, did drugs (I abstained for personal reasons) and got drunk (a lot) way too early in life.

Her parents had been as cold to their children as they were to one another so for three years I sort of fell into her male role model, which probably explained our current awkward situation.

"I knew," I assured her. "I didn't want to leave, Dabney, but if I had stayed, bad shit would have happened."

'Bad' as in my best friend, Eric Uno being gunned down over pointless idiocy - macho bravado, two pistols and no common sense. If I had stuck around, I'd have gone after the people who did it and ended up either in jail, or dead.

"That was messed up," she nodded.

Eric had died over nothing and he'd left nothing but two, perpetually poor, working-class parents behind, wondering why their only child was dead and wanting me, his best friend, to make sense of it all for them. I couldn't, so I ran away...into the loving embrace of the USN. "You came around to say good-bye..."

"Hey, you were the only one not asking me what was I going to do about 'it'," I replied. "I knew you'd be alone when I left - I felt I owed you. I asked Sammi to keep an eye out for you," I tacked on lamely.

"She did...she tried. At seventeen, I lied about my age so I could land a part-time job at a phone sex place and was working my way through CSN (College of Southern Nevada - the city's main community college) working on a Hospitality degree."

She was working herself up to something that had to be bad in more ways than one. She was unloading on me - that meant she didn't have any other trusting relationships to fall back on. From my point of view, the Dabney of my youth was gone. She'd been a rather small, scrawny kid when I left fifteen years ago and now she was beautiful if a bit tawdry. That was why I hadn't recognized her.

"I started partying hard and doing drugs," she studied me while pretending to look elsewhere. "We both know how that ended up. I did finally go to rehab and got clean...but I owed the wrong kind of people some money that a minimum wage job wasn't going to fix. Now I'm here, with you, sitting at Roxy's reminiscing about old times." Money problems meant gambling.

"And not answering their calls," I cautioned her. I didn't want trouble yet we'd once been close and I was the last person to be condemning her. "Cool." That made her happier. I wasn't ragging on her about getting hooked on drugs, getting in trouble, or ending up being a prostitute. So we talked on into the wee hours. Much of downtown Las Vegas never sleeps - a 24/7 money making enterprise.

{The Back Story}

My reason for being at the Stratosphere arrived about an hour later. Georgianna 'G' Norquist was another 'blast from the past' yet from a different world, or she had been. When I was sixteen, Eric's dad got Eric and me part-time jobs at a private sports facility. It was real menial, unskilled work with lousy pay and a snobbish clientele, but we had Friday and Saturday nights off plus could use the courts, pools and other amenities when there weren't members around.

Eric was running some errand late one night when some rich spoiled brats, drunk off their privileged asses came by the main indoor pool. They did the classic strip naked and chase each other around the pool that I had been attempting to clean. To them, my irritation was worth some mockery and little else. Well, they kept drinking, pool policies be damned so I called the night manager.

He took one look at the menagerie's leader, told me to do my job somewhere else and then departed. I was putting the equipment away when said rich moron woke up and decided to take a trip off the diving board. He busted his fool-head open in the attempt and flopped face first into the pool. I was half tempted to walk away. He wasn't trying to right himself.

I may have been a thug-in-training, but I wasn't sadistic, or brain damaged. Not only didn't I plan to let the dummy drown, I knew that he was a VIP and I was the LIP (least important person) on the scene. Letting him die would have been a poor life choice. I dialed 911 as I kicked off my shoes giving the operator the bare bones, put my phone down and dove in.

I had pseudo-CPR training courtesy of TV and movies. I did manage to flip him face-up and swim us over to the pool's edge in the proper manner. By dint of good instincts, some luck and a smidge of knowledge, I got his heart going and his lungs somewhat free of water. I saved his life. I would have gladly walked away except I had failed to inform the manager of what happened before I dove in and I couldn't leave the dying kid until the real EMT's arrived.

By that time, it was too late for me to get away from the publicity I didn't desire. Two police officers were on the scene along with the ambulance. The police called the kid's parents before the night manager could save his own career. The cameras showed the whole story, including my boss letting the rich boys both drink on the premises and hang around a large body of water while they did it.

Despite my heroics (and maybe because of my juvie record), the officers kept me around until the lawyers showed up. Maybe one reason I went into the medical field was that those two paramedics laid out in no uncertain terms that I'd saved the boy's life ~ so I was ruled out as an attempted murder suspect. After six hours of investigation by a surprising number of detectives, the surveillance tapes verified my version of events. They let me go.

When we showed up the next afternoon for work, Eric was sent off on our daily routine while I was called to the manager's office. The old night manager was...no longer associated with 'our' organization so I was talking to the 'weekend' supervisor. It was now his duty to keep the facilities running until a new night manager could be hired and trained.

Later I heard something 'nasty' happened to my old boss - a hit and run resulting in a ton of injuries and no health insurance and, oh yeah, the dummy's father sued his ass. That 'dad' was Lloyd Pharris, one of Las Vegas' most powerful lawyers and chief partner of the most prestigious legal firm in the American Southwest. I had saved his only son and oldest child. He was beneficent.

I also got to meet his new trophy wife, Georgianna, and his other child, a daughter named Wynn. The boy, Ford Parrish, was my age - 16, while Wynn was 14 and Georgianna was 22. Lloyd was 39 at the time. For whatever reason, he decided that I deserved a reward. I could become his personal house boy/pool cleaner. Since the pay was three times more than I was making and a third of the work, I took it.

The assignment was really an eye-opener to how the better half lived. It turned out that Ford was an okay guy when he wasn't trying to impress his prep school crowd. I wisely put up clearly defined sexual barriers with Wynn on my second day - I liked the job that much. Georgianna - 'G' - was okay, just way too sizzling hot to be hanging around in a micro-bikini, sunbathing while I was trying to work.

No, nothing happened. No pool boy fantasies for either of us. I did note that Lloyd liked to parade her around in...ah...highly flattering clothes. Ford and I became cautious friends. I was smart enough to know that becoming a sycophant for him and his friends would only end badly for me. I took their condescension and flirting in stride. I was surprisingly self-confident at that age.

I didn't want to fly down to Cancun to be some rich girl's plaything, not matter how sexy she looked. I was getting plenty of tail in my own neighborhood and my high school. I chose another way to get in trouble. I became Ford's spine. Lloyd was the coldest, smuggest, most manipulative Bastard of all Bastards. I didn't like him from the moment he offered me the job.

It was obvious to me that he was giving me a handout and I had better be damn happy with his largesse. After watching the Pharris household dysfunction for two weeks, I hated him. Georgianna was his property and she had best not forget it. He psychologically undermined his kids whenever the mood took him. I had hoped it would never be aimed my way. I was wrong to hope.

Lloyd liked to tear people down. He liked to do it in front of an audience to impress upon that everyone he was the man in charge. At the start, I was a servant; beneath his notice. Only when Ford and I began to hang together outside of my household duties did that change. It began when Ford, a buddy of his named Kristoff Declan (a good guy) and I went to a part of town those two shouldn't have been in.

Kristoff considered himself to be a playboy and would hit on every pretty girl he set his eyes on. Normally, it was flirtatious - he wasn't a man-slut. Our problem was that the girl he was talking up that night was with someone who took offense. He and three of his home-boys decided to teach him a lesson in the parking lot. Kristoff wasn't street-smart enough to know he should have taken their insults and run for the car.

No, they threatened Kristoff and he taunted them right back - it was fun and games to him. He wasn't used to people who resolved disputes with their fists. They jumped Kristoff, Ford ran for the car and I ran to help Kristoff. In our favor, Kristoff was in pretty great shape - he loved to play tennis and squash - and I was healthy for my age and a scrapper.

None of it was fancy. It was body blows, kneeing, low kicks and wrestling. It took a dozen scrapes and bruises for us to escape, but we did it with some of our dignity intact. Ford had taken his high performance auto and left us. Initially, Kristoff was furious with Ford. That faded as he came to rationalizing Ford's response.

Ford was chicken-shit because his father openly and vocally considered him to be a weakling and a cowardly failure without Ford ever getting a chance to prove otherwise. Ford was simply living down to his father's expectations. We walked off our pain for two hours before Kristoff called his mother to pick him up. She was an aeronautics engineer at the nearby Nellis Air Force Base.

I bumped into her a few years later on another air base, but we can't talk about it for the next 43 years, assuming those records ever got declassified. Once she picked us up, Kristoff told her the whole story. First she told him that she was happy to see him alive and not in the hospital. Then she told him what a fu-bbly fu-blup (her version of cursing without cursing) he was for not walking away from the fight.

She asked my opinion. I informed her I wasn't stepping into their family feud. She bitched out Ford in absentia...and ended up thanking me. She reminded Kristoff that his fight had not been my fight and I could have run off with Ford. Before Kristoff could reply, I informed Mrs. Minerva Declan that Kristoff wouldn't have left me either. At the time I didn't know if that was true, or not.

My words mediated the crisis. Kristoff shot me a grateful look. I suggested that they drop me off at the closest highway exit to my house. Mrs. Declan took me in anyway, so they got to see the rundown dump of an apartment complex I lived in. I could see the look in their eyes - they pitied me and my poverty. Mrs. Declan said they'd wait until I went inside.

I counter-offered and promised to wait on the sidewalk until I was sure they got back on the main road. Honestly, I didn't think a carjacking was in the offing, but I could tell it made them feel safer. Kristoff held off on talking to Ford until I came back to work at the Pharris household two days later. Initially, I wanted nothing to do with Kristoff's intervention.

Ford looked like he expected us to start kicking his ass over what had happened. With Kristoff in the lead, we three went over the events instead. He ran. Neither of us was happy with that, yet we jokingly said he'd done the smart thing. We did wish he'd circled back for us. Kristoff then regaled us with a vivid recounting of his dad ripping him a new asshole the next morning over the phone (his Dad was in the Philippines at the time).

Forward one month with Kristoff handling Ford in the mornings, me on the afternoons I worked and both of us on the occasional evening outing. It took some work and both of us acting 'bad' to coax Ford along. Despite what Kristoff thought, I was as influenced by TV as he was when it came to playing a 'tough guy'. I WAS a bad-ass in school; I didn't need to act like one.

So much of youthful free time revolved around shopping and malls. The lives of sixteen/seventeen year olds in Las Vegas were no different. Charli (Ford's GF) and her BFF Reagan talked Ford and Kristoff to go to some midnight sale. Reagan got in a tousle with another girl ~ it is too often women getting me in trouble. Blows were exchanged, Reagan won (she was sporty), had the girl tossed out (Reagan was a 'good girl') and they bought their stuff.

The other girl? She went out and rounded up some friends - nine of them, both genders. Well, those four saw an ass-whooping coming their way and ran...right past me, Eric, Sammi and Anna (my sort of date aka no sex for me that night) as we were exiting the cinema. Kristoff's and my eye's met. Any hope I had of sitting this event out went away with his holler for help. He stopped, his buddies rushed into him and the fight was on.

Eric was the kind of friend that never asked why you were being a moron even when helping guaranteed pain. He jumped in. Sammi was violently inclined, so she jumped in. Anna would have sat it out had the pursuers not gone after her. I was pretty sure Ford would have kept running if one of the other guys hadn't tackled him.

Between saving Reagan's butt from being shanked (earning me a cut to the back of my right forearm) and breaking Ford free of a wrestling hold, I got pretty banged up. That way we got to hang around for the grand melee which was ended by four of Clark County's Finest and a half-dozen security guards.

Eric, Kristoff and Reagan got tasered, as did three from the other side. We were all so engrossed in kicking each other's asses we ignored the warnings. Four of our opponents escaped as did Anna. It was a first time for all of us in the paddy wagon. The rich four insisted we poor three, and the other enemy six (who all turned out to be middle class gangster wannabes) had experienced this before.

The kids on the other side were getting RPC's (Released into Parent's Custody), as did Charli and Sammi. Due to a pending vandalism charge, Eric and I got to stick around. Kristoff, Ford and Reagan had their parents tell them to 'suck it up', so Reagan got to go play with the Junior Miss Lesbians Cotillion while we four guys got acquainted with the Las Vegas 'on the fast track to earning their prison tattoos' Youth League.

Ford was in full-on panic attack mode. Some black gentleman misread the situation. He was under the impression that Ford was having a bad drug reaction and thought he was easy prey for a shakedown. Out of nowhere, Ford clocked the guy. His victim toppled over, catching himself from landing on his ass. It was on for the second time that night.

Ford was already scared. Faced with what he thought was a gang assault/prelude to being somebody's butt-bitch, Ford jumped on the bigger guy like a crazed animal. Kristoff, Eric and I made sure no one else was going to come to the black guy's rescue then separated them. Kristoff got Ford; Eric and I got the black kid. Had the fight gone on for ten more seconds, the black kid would have started whaling back, so we saved Ford from a second round of punishment.

In the post-skirmish phase, we kept hold of the black guy until I was sure he'd calmed down. Kristoff did the same with Ford. Then the whole common room acted like nothing had happened when the jailors showed up. Ford was barely coherent and the black guy wasn't going to tell them that some smaller, pampered rich brat had smacked him around.

When the jailors left, Ford became suddenly giddy. His fear-addled mind had altered his perceptions of the bout until he'd convinced himself he fought like a titan. In his mind, only Kristoff had stopped him from killing the creep. Kristoff saw that as progress. Next morning at court, Mr. Pharris was there representing the five of us (Reagan had done okay with the ladies).

"Hey Dad, I beat up some punk in prison," were the first, proud words out of Ford's mouth.

Lloyd wasn't happy with any of us. I had little doubt that his plan was for Ford to be traumatized by the experience, not exultant. Ford was in danger of becoming a man. From that day forth, Lloyd decided I was worth picking on. In subtle ways, he threatened my father's employment, he had law enforcement shake me down on the way home from work and would withhold my pay from time to time. That was okay; G would slip me the money later.

To top it all off, at the end of the year, he had me 'randomly' audited by the IRS.I was looking at some stiff fines and penalties ~ I was a seventeen year old (by that time) roughneck, paid in cash. Of course I didn't file any tax returns, damn it. Kristoff bailed me out all on his own initiative and Lloyd never figured out how I'd pulled it off...though I had about a dozen equally random drug screenings at school over the next two months.

{Flash forward fifteen years}

I was hanging up my shingle back in my hometown after a long absence. I was converting twelve years of military service and three years working for Certified Infrastructure Agronomics into what I hoped would be a meaningful career with less likelihood of death. I had all my certifications completed and updated. I even had a position lined up with a local ambulance company.

The pay sucked for someone living in Vegas, but money wasn't really my concern. I'd closed on a worn down, 1950's style bungalow on the edge of Vegas and North Vegas (sometimes we dropped the 'Las'). On the plus side, it was all mine, bought and paid for with carefully laundered money.

I didn't have a lawn, or a garden - I had nice, crunchy pebbles with strategically placed larger foot-stones all around - all on top of a poly-fiber cover with pressure sensors; so no yard work - ever. The back and sides had tacky, eight-foot high concrete block walls the previous owners had painted pink roughly 20 years ago.

I was finishing the process of moving in when I noticed a commotion across the street. Two of my old buddies in Khaki &Brown - LVMPD (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department) officers - and two county privatized housing specialists were putting one of the resident of the duplex across the street out on her ass. They had been towing her car away when I arrived. She looked past caring, sitting on her former stoop, totally forlorn. She was sitting on her ass, arms folded one over the other. Her forehead was pressed down on her folded arms.

My current life plan included keeping my private life private, my social life distant, and not doing anything that involved attention from law enforcement. I didn't have any Wants, Warrants, or outstanding convictions, nor was I a bail jumper. My juvenile history was history. It was gone, gone, gone. I had a former business acquaintance do that for me. Supposedly even the hard copies had been eliminated.

I just didn't like cops. Mind you, I didn't mind the concept of law enforcement. I simply didn't enjoy people not in my chain of command telling me what to do. Over the years, I'd gotten really good at skating the law and only listening to people I trusted with my life.

I figured the guys across the street were doing their job. It was past foreclosure time and that was that. Besides, her furniture looked shitty. At least I bought the real deal - hardwood, steel and stone were my preference. Then, life threw me two curveballs at once.

The first -

"And Ma'am, we are also going to have to cite you for littering if you don't get that furniture to a storage locker, or a landfill in the next thirty minutes," Officer Black - he was a black guy - told the distraught woman. She began to sob. To add insult to injury, the two moving guys dumped her clothes unceremoniously on top of her curbside furniture.

They were being mean and the cops were being jerks. So, I tossed out my game plan and crossed the road. Officer Latino - because he was Hispanic - saw me coming and moved to intercept me on her side of street.

"Is there a problem, Officer?" I inquired. We both had sunglasses on, so no eye contact. It was September in the Southwestern desert with 5% cloud cover, bright and sunny. It was also pretty freaking warm at ten in the morning.

"Mister, you need to go back across the street," he tried to look tough. I've had a fanatic telling me that I was about to meet Allah by means of beheading. This guy needed to seriously step up his game. "This is none of your business, so move along." Fuck him.

"I'm here to help her move into my place across the street, Officer L. Hernandez (his name tag)," I lied. I also memorized his badge number and about fifty other extraneous tidbits of information.

That caught him by surprise. It took him a few seconds to counter which I used to move toward the lady in question. Hernandez looked to his partner, Officer T. Ilger (the black guy).

"Is this man with you, Ms. Norquist?" Officer Ilger asked the woman. She looked up through tear-stained eyes at me.

The second -

"V?" she gulped. When I started calling her 'G', she had retaliated by calling me 'V'. Yeah, it was ole Lloyd's wife, - most likely ex-wife as evidenced by her current circumstances - Ford's and Wynn's stepmom and a total mess. I had seen people at the end of their tether before and she qualified.

"Hey, Ms. G," I smiled. "If we wait much longer, the Sun is going to cook us. Let's get your stuff inside."

"Ummm..." Officer Ilger grumbled.

"Yes...yeah, sure V," Ms. G hurriedly ran back into her old place. "Let me get the last of my things."

If it was a yappy dog, I was going to make it 'disappear'. It wasn't. It was her CD/DVD collection. Her life was still in shambles. My prospects of remaining a hermit were bleak.

"Make it quick," Ilger harried her.

"Can I see some ID?" Hernandez asked me. I gave him the twice over.

"No," I answered then walked past him. I needed to start moving G in.

"What?" he put a hand on my elbow. It wasn't a grab, merely a 'hold up there buddy'.

"What crime do you suspect me of?" I replied. "I'm not driving a vehicle, or onboard commercial transit, so I don't have to show you my ID. It is in the law books; look it up some time."

Yeah...I had an attitude problem with police. I was a hell of a good sailor though. Military orders I could follow - no problem. I even liked NCIS and SP (Shore Patrol) people.

There was just something about civilian law enforcement...I now had Ilger's attention as well.

"Is there a problem with you identifying yourself?" Hernandez pressed.

"Nope and I'm pretty sure you can't fine someone for littering thirty minutes after evicting them either," I kept a positive outlook.

"Okay, wise guy," Hernandez got feisty. "Lie down, hands out to your sides, face on the ground then cross your ankles." I complied.

There was a huge gulf between detaining someone and suspecting them of a crime. His pat down ended up with a plain black slip of plastic in the shape of a credit card, a pair of nail clippers and my house key. I didn't like key chains. They made noise.

"What's this?" Hernandez waved the card in front of my face. At the same time...

"V? What's going on?" G sounded worried.

"Ma'am, do you know who this man is?" Ilger turned back on her.

"Ah...yes. He's V.I knew...met him years ago. He was the friend of my stepson," she responded nervously.

"Is V part of his last name, first name, or a gang name?" Ilger pressed. As for Hernandez's question;

"It is a memento from a friend," I told him. It wasn't a complete lie. I'd liked the guy, but we weren't really friends.

"Don't worry, Ms. G," I called out. "This whole take-down is going to look great on my home security system." All three people looked over to my house. Sure enough, I had four visible cameras - one over the detached garage door, one facing to the front left, one to the front and one to the front-right. I had others on the sides and back as well.

They weren't my real security system. They were functional, but I didn't rely on them. They were just decoys for the true security system I'd installed. Call me paranoid if you wish, but I'd had a hand in killing some evil, dangerous, mean, fucking people over the past 15 years and some of their relatives, co-religionists and business partners held grudges. My identity was safeguarded by the Department of Defense.

To me, that meant some obnoxious Senator, or WikiLeaks freak, with an axe to grind over the violation of the civil rights of deceased murders, rapists, drug kingpins and thieves would eventually dredge it up then leak it to Amnesty International, or some Human Rights Commission to prove what a great humanitarian he/she was.

Then some truly brave people in some really dark places around the globe would get killed and I'd have to contemplate snuffing out the life of an elected US official. Canceling the life of a hacker/information peddler was another matter...tough to find, easy to kill, but still considered a crime by people who thought holding their guardians to high moral standards stopped evil shit from happening.

I didn't want to go down that road. My second employer, the CIA, told me they had taken care of those records...except that they were in the 'hold something back for a rainy day' business. There were also some unanswered questions about the tidy little fortune I had retired with.

If pressed, I would swear on the Bible, the Koran and the Anarchist Cook Book it had been the monetary funds of people who no longer had need of them. It wasn't like I'd dirtied the hands of the CIA by handing it over. If that happened they might have had to explain what me and a few associates were doing, receiving those bank codes, talking to the very influential / connected / protected criminal, scumbag money-men moments before their demise.

To be fair, they also gave us the information we were sent to get along with the money. We didn't murder their families because we had promised to spare them if they cooperated. We were professionals and kept our integrity, if not our word. We also wanted to make damn sure those cock-suckers paid for the sins the financial services made possible ~ and to impress upon their associates that they weren't as 'untouchable' as they'd been led to believe.

My team leader thought this alteration to our assignment would be more effective. We all agreed. I was the only one who decided to retire after that. It did impress upon me that my current career would only go downhill from that point. I was also the only one with marketable skills that didn't trace back to my former livelihood. I really was a paramedic. My official records with the US Navy showed each and every training course that elevated me to the status of official life-saver.

"I don't know. I've always called him 'V'," G had most likely forgotten my real name in the intervening years. "As I said, he was my stepson's friend." Hernandez tried something new.

"Come on, V.A little cooperation will clear this up," he pretended to be nice. I was watching this ant scurrying toward my nose as I lay on my stomach, face pointed down.

"A little of you guys getting in your patrol car and driving away would also resolve the matter," I countered. "If a crime has been committed and you have reasonable cause to suspect me, then Nevada law requires me to show you some ID and identify myself. So, what crime has been committed, or are you illegally detaining me?"

"Are you a Libertarian?" Hernandez pressed his knee to my back. I pretended it hurt.

"Is Clark County using police officials to determine the political affiliation of private citizens, or is this a voter registration drive?" I openly contemplated.

"You are a wise-ass," Hernandez observed quietly. The moving guys - job finished - drove off.

"Are you surprised that I've been told that before?" I coughed. That ant...she'd gotten close...so I ate it.

"Did you just eat an ant?" Hernandez gasped.

"Are you now suggesting I'm so starved that I can apply for Food Assistance from the county?" I snorted.

Finally, the officer figured out I was a hard case. He assumed I was an ex-con. I wasn't because stints in County Jail and the Juvenile Court Systems didn't count...not to me anyway. I had been in a prison before, just not as a prisoner, or a guard. I was there to make 'a withdrawal' which was my buddies' jargon for a jailbreak. I had thought saying we 'liberated' the person sounded better. Sadly 'liberating' was already the jargon for stealing stuff.

Hernandez got off me. I was smart enough to wait for his permission to stand before doing so. G and I began moving her into my house - most of her furniture went straight into the garage. I'd drag it off to the dump later. Half way through, they ticketed Georgianna anyway. It was on! Did I mention I have a really low tolerance for police abusing their authority?

I went into the house, selected the proper tool for the mission, waited until they were haranguing G so much she started to cry then confronted them. I acted more like an annoyance than a prick. Had I been a prick, they would have kept an eye on me. G bending over to pick up some spilled clothes was the distraction I was waiting for. I took the opportunity to use a clear epoxy to stick their AC in the 'Off' position and the windows up.

They got in. I kept them around long enough to epoxy their doors shut before they drove off. They left smugly arrogant in their victory. I watched them drive away educationally confident in American ingenuity. As I got the last of G's stuff into my house, I noted it was already ninety degrees outside and it wasn't even noon yet.

In my experience, they'd be tearing that AC nob off sometime around the tenth minute. Give it twenty more and they'd really begin to cook in their polyester and body armor. They'd call in, reporting their difficulty, pull over...and try to get out of their 'easy-bake oven'. Then the real fun would begin.

To be safe, I dropped the epoxy tube in a small crock pot of acid I keep around on the kitchen counter for such chores - like destroying evidence. No police cruisers showed up the rest of the day to question me about the event. Considering what G told me in the meantime, it all made sense.

Two years ago, G figured out the Mr. Pharris was having an affair with another, much younger woman. She preemptively sought out a divorce attorney. Lloyd found out about it, concocted all sorts of charges - including her sleeping with both Ford and Wynn - and, after an expensive legal battle on her part, it was 'discovered' that the legal battle had left Lloyd penniless.

She was saddled with a mountain of legal bills. All of the Pharris assets were owned by off-shore entities which charged him a pittance to rent. All very neat. I'd seen covert US black bag operations use the same tricks. Nothing belonged to anyone you could locate and the appropriate taxes were paid on time, so there was no great rush for any governmental agency to investigate.

When the divorce settlement was handed down, she tried to skip town. Before she could, two Detectives with the LVMPD showed up and told her what a bad idea that would be. No, she had to stick around, wandering from crummy job to crummy job. Whenever he felt like it, Lloyd would have her fired then open up another door - all down the road of degradation. There was no sane reason for him to do this to her.

Georgianna's first question after she'd calmed down a bit was what I'd done to my house. To start with I'd reinforced the entire structure so the building could support extra weight. I'd fortified it. I'd constructed blast resistant barriers along all the external walls.

No bars on the outside of the windows for me. I had folding ceramic mesh shutters on the inside. My windows were twin sheets of clear aluminum and ballistic glass that darkened unless an electric current passed through them. If the power 'suddenly' went out, I had one-way mirrors. When the shutters extended, there were three bars I could flip into place on each one. Fully deployed that equated to 4 inches of high-tech armor.

I had rebuilt the entirety of the door/sill area; front and back. One-eighth of an inch of false front followed by ballistic scales, ceramic plates, high-impact gel packs and a flexible yet durable polymer backing. The whole thing was 3 inches thick. I also had one-half inch steel mesh 'screen' doors. Both sets of doors had key locks. The main ones had a key code and a magnetic lock system for when I slept, or was out of the house.

In the internal walls and ceiling, I had removed the old, cheap insulation and replaced it with fire-retardant, shock-resistant foam. I'd elevated the entire floor two inches, filling that space in with seismic and sound absorbing material. It gave the floor a slightly springy feel. The twin purposes were to displace shockwaves against the entire building and to disguise the two spots where I'd dug two underground compartments, both entryways being18 inches deep.

One underground space (it was 4'X6'X4' - not tall enough to stand upright in) was the brain center of my wired, automated systems and back-up computers. The second spot was 6'X8'X8' and housed the majority of my arsenal. It was all legal. It was also hard to get at. I had a decoy gun locker on the house level to mollify anyone who broke in, or if I need something in a hurry.

I would have liked a 'safe room', except all my interior work had eaten up 20% of my floor space and the only room that had all interior walls was my tiny bathroom. Every piece of furniture was designed to be bullet resistant, because you can never be too safe and secure. Things were placed to minimize the concussive effect if someone did manage to blow open a door, window or wall.

I had an extra 80 gallon water supply, a deep freeze, batteries recharged by solar cells and a generator that could run for 48 hours; all inside. The roof was festooned with solar panels (it kept my power usage to a minimum) which made it harder to spot my disguised satellite hook-ups and air vents.

The roof also had its own improved layer of protection. My security, motion sensor, wireless, wired and phone systems were all filled with redundancies and deceptions.

"What have you done to your house?" G asked. She saw why her furniture wouldn't fit in my place.

"Hurricane-proofed it," I gave her a lopsided grin. A) Hurricanes happened on the East Coast. Westerners called them cyclones. B) While Vegas had a 'monsoon' season, it was hardly the thing sane people went to extremes to protect themselves from.

"I never saw you working on your house," she noted.

"I mostly worked at night. I've been warned that I may end up on nights at my new job, so I'm adjusting," I lied. I worked at night so that no one would notice me, or spot my illegal activities around the neighborhood.

"Are you expecting trouble?" she gazed at me cautiously.

"Yes G. I find that preparing for trouble is the best way to insure that trouble isn't all that troubling," I joked. Her eyes widened.

"I don't remember you being so witty," she relaxed slightly.

"You get the bedroom. I'll get the sofa tonight and get a folding bed tomorrow," I gave her the new plan. There was a flickering spark of decency still alive inside her.

"V, you don't need to do this." Her words were overflowing with depression. "You are getting involved in something you don't want any part of. If you can lend me some cash and a ride, I'll get a motel room for the night and figure something else for tomorrow."

"Tell me what the deal is," I requested. She did, though it took serious coaxing and three beers (we went out for a bottle-six pack - I didn't keep liquor on the premise) to finally know the score. Lloyd had slowly been stripping her of everything she valued - her social position, her friends, her mansion-home, her sources of income, her car and finally her dump of a duplex. She had a job at the Stratosphere in Customer Service. Lloyd hadn't been able to pry her out of that job yet.

Lloyd didn't rule this town. I had no doubt he wanted to and no doubt there were people in Vegas that didn't want him to get that powerful. Wynn was thirty-one; a college dropout, married, divorced, married, divorced, lesbian affair - broken up and living at home once more. She was jobless. She had refused to testify against Georgianna at the trial and she was being punished for that.

Ford had his law degree - both kids had always been smart - and worked at his dad's law firm. He had been engaged, but that fell apart. He was a drunk, living at home as well. Ford had even testified in court that G had molested him right after she married Lloyd. Ford's ex-fiancée? She was the latest Mrs. Pharris and all of 24 years of age; Ford had to love that. Lloyd, at 56, was popping the Viagra for sure. He was also richer and more corrupt than ever.

My old pal Kristoff Declan was now USAF Lieutenant Colonel Declan, Air Force Academy graduate with a masters degree in Aeronautics Engineering and an Air Force pilot who was working on the next generation of jet fighters, or had been two years ago. He touched base with Ford from time to time. I told her I'd been a US Naval corpsman, working at hospitals and whatnot. She was glad I'd pulled my life together.

When we finished catching up, we shared a lousy meal of frozen burritos then I drove her to work in my ageing 1987 Audi 5000 Turbo Quattro. It didn't stand out in this neighborhood, had some serious horsepower in its rebuilt engine if needed and was easily replaceable. I had another in the garage (the nice one) plus two other cars stashed in the area.

I had bought a 'distressed' property two blocks over and up in North Las Vegas (it is its own town) with a separate law enforcement department. Three blocks to the southeast, in Las Vegas proper, I was paying an eighty year old lady to stash a car in her backyard. She got some tax-free cash to help her make ends meet and I got to feed my paranoid fantasies of the unseen forces being out to get me.

On the verge of getting home from G's casino I spotted the unmarked car with two occupants down the street. I've never been diagnosed with a paranoid disorder and, trust me, I've had some Navy Psychiatrists intensely question me on the subject. What I had was an unhealthy aversion to being unexpected diversions. I had a few contingencies for unwanted questioning by the authorities.

I parked in the wrecked property, hiding my car then snuck back to my house. First I checked the cameras I had planted on various phone poles, cacti and trees in a three block radius. They were alone. I needed to dress in black, head to toe, before implementing my plan so I bagged up my current wardrobe (in case I was questioned, I would be in the clothes I'd been seen in earlier) and then 'adjusted' my internal surveillance files to show that I had not returned home.

That done, I initiated an automatic system that activated the interior house lights and TV, giving the impression someone was at home. Right on cue, the two plainclothes officers exited their vehicle and headed toward my front door. My walkway was made of nice white pebbles so I could track their progress by the sound of their footfalls.

At the appropriate moment, I set off a pre-recorded series of noises in the backyard. Their sense of entitlement took hold. One decided to come around the side of the house while the other repeatedly knocked on the door. I keyed the light-switch monitor to cut off all the illumination. The other cop walked toward the sounds emanating from near the rear door, hand on his pistol, exposing his badge.

As the detective stepped on the well-positioned tarp, leaning over to uncover the noise, I struck him with a pipe from behind. My goal was to hurt him without making him bleed. Blood meant DNA evidence that might confirm he'd gotten his ass kicked in my backyard. Thin steel pipes were great for this. Using PVC risks fracturing and imbedding fibers in the cracks.

The man's pained gasp alerted his partner that something was wrong. The partner up front called out. The guy I was crippling was in no shape to respond. On came the guy from the front door. I slunk back into the shadows. When he thought he was safe, he knelt over his unconscious partner. That was when I shot him in the left ear with a compressed air gun firing a beanbag round.

The blow stunned and staggered him, giving me plenty of time to start bludgeoning him as well. Zip ties on their hands behind their backs and around their ankles, wax in their ears plus surgical tape over their mouths and eyes followed. ID's, wallets, cell phones, badges, keys and guns all went into a plastic bag after I examined them.

Two ladders, one on my side of the back wall and one on my backdoor neighbor's yard allowed me to get them off my property. After a short jog, I picked up a slender tube with one end wrapped in gauze, a funnel, and two bottles of Jack Daniels. Next on the agenda: I took their car and drove it around the block, picked them up and off I went.

While driving to a construction site two miles away, I researched these two assholes using the police database console in their car. They were not on duty, there was nothing on the police blotter to suggest they were on official business and their access codes were pathetically easy for me to copy. I kept their badges ~ I'd need those later. The rest of their stuff I would return when I was done for the night.

When we reached our destination, I took them out of the trunk one at a time before applying the proper pressure to their carotid artery to make them pass out. Done correctly it doesn't leave a mark. Once they were helpless, I applied the tube and funnel then poured a bottle into their bellies. After giving them thirty minutes to absorb the liquor, I called the wife of one of the bastards, told her he and his partner were drunk, I didn't want to 'get him in trouble' and where she could find her husband and keep him clear of any difficulties with the rest of the LVMPD.

Mission accomplished, I jogged to the ruined house, stashed their badges changed back into my normal clothes and drove home. After bleaching the tarp, I hung around long enough to see if SWAT came knocking - they didn't. My assessment had been right ~ they were two Robbery/Homicide detectives doing some private work for Lloyd.

Those two couldn't explain why they were drunk as skunks, much less trespassing in my backyard. They couldn't describe their attacker and, except for some swelling of the second guy's ear, they had no visible injuries. Their LVMPD comrades wouldn't be asking any embarrassing questions, so they had a reason to not sic the entire 'Brown Shirt' brethren on me. I drove to the Stratosphere an hour early to pick up G from work, ran into Dabney and the rest is history.

{Current}

I was tossing a tip on the table when my well-cultivated threat precognition kicked in. He was a short ~ 5' 2", 180 lbs. (mostly from weight lifting), and bald (shaved) Hispanic guy. His glare aimed at Dabney was one of sadistic fury and he was feeling entitled (aka Dabney's pimp). He didn't scare me. It was the Universe reminding me that living beneath the radar was a desolate dream.

I didn't make eye contact. That would have warned him of my intention to intervene.

"Dabney," he seethed. She spun around.

"Pablo...I can explain," Dabney pleaded. The danger wasn't immediate. Pablo wasn't going to make a scene in the casino.

What he was promising was some pain for Dabney the moment he maneuvered her to vulnerable spot.

"Vance?" she looked over her shoulder at me.

"Hey," I greeted the guy like I was a goof-ball. "Is there a problem?"

"Vance is an old family friend," Dabney was trying to placate the dude. That spoke to the perpetual viciousness of this short placental reject.

"I don't give a crap about your old friend, or your former personal life," he grabbed her upper arm. "I care about you not answering your damn phone and missing clients."

"Well, it was nice to catch up with you, Dabney. Maybe later," I tried to sound nervous. "Come on," I took hold of G's right hand in my left.

Dabney looked crestfallen while Pablo leered ferally at her. This shithead shouldn't have taken his eyes off me. When I made my first step past him, I pivoted and drove my right hand into his kidney. As Bruce Lee proved, it isn't the distance the hand travels that matters - it is the speed. I quickly let go of G's hand, put my left hand under his right armpit and moved him into Dabney's old chair.

With the agony he was in, Pablo wasn't calling out to anyone. I switched my hold on him before he recovered. To the surveillance cameras, it looked like he'd sat down on his own. My left hand landed on his left shoulder and clamped down. My right ended upon the crux of his neck and right shoulder. I leaned in and spoke.

"Pablo, this is your first, last and only warning," I whispered. "If you ever lay a hand on Dabney again, I'm going to toss you into a pit full of scorpions and prove to you that I don't give a crap about size. I care about pain. Listen up shit-for-brains," I menaced, "I've strangled a man with his own tongue, I am well-versed in torture and I am certainly not someone you want to disappoint."

"Asshole," Pablo tried to rise. My left hand clamped down even harder as I pushed him back the two whole inches he'd managed to get up. "You don't know who you are fucking with" My left hand snapped his collarbone while my right squeezed his windpipe so that his scream wasn't vocalized. I let him ride out the first wave of suffering before releasing his throat.

I had hunched my body over him so the damage I was inflicting wasn't obvious.

"I know exactly who I am fucking with, you bastard," I said quietly. "I haven't seen, or talked to Dabney in fifteen years, so she hasn't a clue what I've been doing, or who I have become. On this Planet Earth, of all the people I've sworn to kill, only three are still alive. They are all far tougher than you."

"Now, we are going to walk away. I suggest you get to an Emergency Room and have your shoulder looked after because you are suffering from a compound fracture to your clavicle. You don't want those bone fragments working their way deeper into your muscles. Good-bye," I let go of him. Pablo was a sadist, not a sadomasochist. He proved it by not bouncing out of his chair.

He didn't turn, or swivel because his pain was that intense. By his choking sob, I figured we were safe to leave. Only as we approached the exit, did either of the women speak.

"Vance, I'm in serious trouble now," Dabney fretted.

"What did you do to him?" G added. "He was crying like a baby."

"Dabney, why don't you crash at my place for a few days - give me your phone." I stated. "You and G can share the bed. It's big enough. Let's give Pablo a few days to calm down then we can fix this." Dabney gave up her cellular device.

"Pablo is not the problem," she mourned. Of course he wasn't...

I had managed to make enemies of an insanely rich powerbroker, four corrupt police officers and now someone in the criminal underworld all in the span of sixteen hours. To most people, this would have been enough incentive to pack some necessities and be out of Vegas before sunrise. For me...it reminded me of Basra (Iraq).

Caracas (Venezuela) was better; Kobanî (Syria) was worse. In Kobanî, everyone and their grandmother carried a Kalashnikov and were all very eager to shoot somebody. All three burghs had beautiful women. In Caracas they wore less. Being Armenian-American, I could fit into either place, though my Spanish was better than my Kurdish and Arabic. Once at the car;

"Who is the problem?" I asked Dabney. I was scanning around to see if Pablo had given somebody a heads up that we were coming out, or was recognizing my younger friend.

"I work for Circe," she groaned. Okay, Circe was a Las Vegas urban myth.Circe was the Queen of the Whores in the City and had been since I was a kid.

No one I knew had ever met this Circe; it was always the friend of a friend who knew a guy, or a girl who had...Most Vegans believed she was some phantasmal entity that the pimps used to help keep their rebellious stables in line. Pimps didn't kill hookers - Circe had hookers offed when they caused problems.

Rumor had it that she collected 'taxes' from every sex industry in Clark County too. I'd never met anyone who claimed to actually know the witch before. Dabney kept talking.

"I'm serious," Dabney said. "I met her once, by accident. I worked for a guy...well, his payments went up his nose instead of to the 'tax' collector.

"We were at a club when some big guys came around and summoned him to a meeting. He got scared and insisted I come along. We met her and she wasn't happy," That was probably a massive understatement. I motioned for G to get in the car and shut the door while Dabney and I chatted. She didn't need to be hearing this. Her life was horrible enough without walking into this mess.

"She had this sidekick. Circe told this woman and two men to take Jamar (her old pimp?) into another room," she continued in a low voice. "Half a minute later, she came back alone. Circeasked me if I would be a good girl. Of course I said 'yes'. Then she asked her sidekick for her opinion. I was so fucking scared," Dabney shuddered.

"'Reagan, what do you think?' she asked the younger woman. She studied me like I was an insect. I've never been so terrified in my life," Dabney was close to tears from the memory of that night.

"What did this side-kick look like?" I asked.

"I shouldn't..." she shivered. My granite face said it all. "She was tall, fit, dark tanned skin kind of Asian-like. Long black hair and black-rimmed glasses. Very serious." What were the odds? Was this really 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon'? 'Reagan' was hardly a unique name after all.

"What did Circe look like?" I kept pushing.

"No Vance, please..." her near-terror wilted her normal buoyant personality. She described the older woman. Yeah, I'd met Circe a few times at Pharris family functions ~ if there was any doubt, I was a step-and-fetch-it; not a server, or a party-goer. I could usually bring Eric along and we both got paid, so all was good.

The woman Dabney described was Reagan's mom, Sandra Cho. I recalled that she was a widow. Sandra was an Anglo with a sweet English accent. Reagan was half-Chinese. Her father had been some big wheel in Hong Kong before the English handed it over to the PRC. Small, small, small fucking world. I wondered if Lloyd knew. I sure as hell wasn't going to tell him.

"You know who Circe is?" Dabney's eyes grew wide. In both our minds, this was not a good thing.

"I got this," I comforted her. I formulated a plan. "We go by your place and we cancel all your credit cards and then we stop by a bus terminal."

You shut down the accounts because normally their pimps carried them, not the prostitute. It was a means of control. I knew a credit agency that handled mass cancelations quickly, efficiently and for a reasonable fee. I also wanted to back trace these cards to see how they were being paid off. High-end escorts took electronic money all the time. It usually got shuffled around, but there as always an umbrella corporation that made those minimum payments.

My first stop was at her place where I forced her to pack light. Next was the Greyhound bus terminal. Dabney purchased a ticket to Los Angeles with cash while I deposited her phone on the bus in the luggage section where it wasn't likely to be found anytime soon. These were merely precautions on the off-chance anyone came looking for Dabney in the next few 24 hours.

My home which I had designed to be a comfortable, close-quarters hermitage was now hosting three, two of which were women. I had one bathroom designed to be a snug fit for one. My kitchen was big enough, I'd devoured my dining room to make one large common area - privacy was at a premium.

I called a friend I knew in Amsterdam. She was a hacker who owed me a few so I had her run down the credit cards so I could get a better feel for what I was up against. I barely had those two settled in before I headed off for my first day on the job.

{MedicWest}

Monday wasn't my first time at MedicWest Ambulance service. I'd done the initial interview, second interview, the background checks, on-site certifications (proving I knew what my resume said I knew) and their three day orientation process. I was a solid guy, considered bright and perpetually calm. They said I'd fit right in. My trainer/partner's name was Lorenzo Torrent; a five year veteran of MedicWest.

He was twenty-six, a graduate of the CSN, married with a two year old son. He was shorter than me (5' 6" and 160 lbs.), swarthy and uncertain what to make of me. For the next six weeks, he was to make sure I belonged to the MedicWest family. After that, I could be reassigned to another ambulance - first, second, or third shift), but I was guaranteed a paramedic slot. I hadn't trained so hard just so I could work in an office.

"So, they tell me you were in the Navy," Lorenzo asked once we rolled out on our first call.

"Yep."

"What was it like?"

"Going full speed ahead, aiming high, being all I could be while being one of the few and the proud and part of the action."

"What?" Lorenzo momentarily took his eyes off the road to gauge my mood.

"Those are the five catchphrases of the armed forces. The Coast Guard's is 'be part of the action'," I explained.

"So...you don't want to talk about it," he nodded.

"Basically, yes," I grinned. We took care of the first emergency - a kid took a header off an overpass. Rumor had it he was running away from some other kids. Why they weren't all in school was unclear.

"So, have you ever killed somebody?" Lorenzo asked out of the blue.

"Are you seriously asking a medical specialist if he's killed anyone?" I chuckled.

"Oh..."

"Ask me at the end of the day," I joked. "I'll rate your performance as well."

"Do you ever answer a question truthfully?" Lorenzo mused.

"No."

"How do you and your girlfriend communicate?"

"Non-verbal clues...Taiko if she is in another room," I answered. I was not pouring out any part of my private life to some person I'd known less than two hours.

"Taiko?"

"A Japanese drums style," I informed him. It took him a few seconds.

"That's the first honest thing you've said today - outside of your job. I see that you know your stuff," he rambled.

"The first? Don't count on it - thanks for the compliment about my work," I responded.

"I'm still not sure if I like you, or find you annoying," he noted.

"I've been referred to as 'The Green Stool Sample'," I teased. "As long as you've drunk the Kool Aid, I'm okay." It took him a moment to figure it out. Green poo was an indicator of IG, or liver issues...unless you ingested food dyes, which normally, and harmlessly, turned your crap green as well.

Lorenzo laughed for a whole minute. It was medical humor. We continued to bond over the quirks and oddities of our profession. By the end of the shift, I was pretty sure he was going to give me a glowing review. It helped that I handled every crisis with unflappable poise. To pay me back for my good deeds, saving lives and doubling down on the White Knight gig, I walked into my house with a just-bought folding bed to find G doing aerobics.

Because, you know, when you are living in close proximity to women you want to recycle out of your life as quickly as possible, you want to envision them as eminently fuckable - or not.

"Hey, V," she greeted me. Okay, for a millisecond, I believed she was playing with me. Then repercussions rolled around. Had Ms. G gotten close to somebody, Lloyd would have found out about it and punished them both - dipshit.

While I was going over the 101 best ways to forget about G's heaving, sweaty bosom and sensual curves all wrapped up in a painfully thin, white leotard, she clued into my difficulties. She sidled over to the sofa and grabbed her rather ineffective hand towel. I went into the kitchen. Half a bottle of water and some supplements later, G showed up.

"Ummm...Dabney and I were talking..." she stammered and wouldn't make eye contact. "You said you had cameras in all the rooms...yes?"

"Yes."

"Does that mean you are recording us in the shower?" she blurted out.

"Yes, it does and mine is a closed system. No one can hack the control center," I stated. "No, I'm not going to disconnect the cameras, or show you were they are located. That would defeat their effectiveness in monitoring my home."

"But why?" she gazed at me with those deep, sexy grey eyes.

Ms. G was a natural blonde, though hers ran to a honey-amber color instead of Dabney's dyed, white-blonde locks. In hindsight, I could tell that she was all real too - no enhancements necessary. I also know that being 39 did not render her into a sexual tundra. The confusion her body was projecting confirmed that.

"If something happens in the house, I want a record of it. Say you let someone in and they plant some drugs in the toilet tank so the cops can bust in and put me away for 5~10 years," I enlightened her. "We both know someone who would do that to me...and you. So I keep the around the clock surveillance."

"I'm not trying to creep you both out, or make you move out. I understand your feelings and concerns. That doesn't translate over to me changing the way I live for either of you," I laid down the law. "Is Dabney still asleep?"

"No. She called her sister to see if she was okay," G said. "She sounded concerned so Dabney borrowed your other car (my 2014 black corvette!). She said she might spend a few days there." Why the fuck do I bother? I had stressed to both of them to NOT call anyone, or go anywhere until I got back. I had left them $200 as an emergency fund and the car keys - for a FUCKING emergency! Working with 'normal' people was turning out to be more complicated than I recalled.

I had faith in two things at that moment. My plan to lead Circe hounds away would have worked. Any competent network would have still watched the normal places Dabney might show up - places like her sister's. To put the second thing in context, you had to understand the nature of the vice trade in Vegas.

50% of the sex workers in the city were 'cast-offs'; runaways, druggies, failed dreamers and those of questionable hygiene. They usually had pimps, but those pimps were losers. The only 'ass' they would kick was their girl's. They were too cowardly to mess up tourists and the local population knew the score. They were the bleakest, darkest corner of the profession and the turnover rate was high.

The next 40% were your real working girls. They 'earned' for pimps who ran more than two girls, they had a modicum of healthcare and protection. Their life expectancy and longevity were better. That didn't mean they'd exit their career with that much more money. The whore striking it rich was a fallacy, best kept to movies. Odds were if they married an out-of-towner, it was a scam.

You could also lump in the strippers who made some on the side in this group. Someone in the clubs - the manager, or a connected bouncer - ran them and took their cut. They walked a fine line between being exotic dancers and true whores. The lucky performers went in another direction as soon as possible. Technically, anyone in this group could work for 'escort services', but they weren't escorts.

In the top 10% were the call-girls; what people thought escorts should be. Their pimps had muscle plus good legal back-up, cops on the take, or both. Their time started at $150/hour for the basic package and escalated rapidly from there. For your money, you got a good time. These ladies were the real pros. You were paying for something better than a simple fuck. You were paying for companionship.

You were paying for the illusion that she cared and liked what you did for her. When they lied, you wanted to believe it. Dabney was one of those. Like G, she had an overabundance of erotic sex appeal which made her a good earner. She had five or six more years in her and then she'd quit, or tumble off the roster down to the second tier.

Dabney must have panicked after I left for work. The truth of the matter took hold. The boy she knew fifteen years ago was a reckless brawler. She had no idea what I was actually like, or capable of. She wanted me to be the protector from her youth yet the past eight years of her life told her that men would let you down, or hurt you. Pimps weren't inclined to let their high-earning escorts just walk away, or go independent.

That is why they kept several credit cards in their names as well as high-interest loans. Hanging onto their social security cards, copies of ID's and a list of your closest contacts was also normal. Even if their bitch did manage to get away, the next seven years of her life would be hell as her credit rating went to crap and her creditors foisted off her debts to a collection agency.

I'd put a stop to that last night. Every bank loan taken out in her name would under investigation for the next few weeks. We could have made good use of that time... but no, she had to go to her sister's. The urgency of the matter from her pimp's perspective was based on the fact that Dabney knew what Circe looked like.

True, the word of a woman with a host of prostitution convictions versus a pillar of high society was relatively worthless. Circe had gambled once by letting Dabney live. It had been a business decision, a lesson in resource management for Reagan, plus Dabney was a 'nobody'. Sadly, last night another 'nobody' had put a hurting on Pablo and then vanished with the girl. Circe didn't need the worry wrinkles.

I looked up Sammi's name in the Henderson directory and made the call following my standard paranoid sequence. I linked my phone call to a cell tower fifty miles outside of Vegas then dialed Sammi's number. If they had Dabney, there was already a hiccup in their plan if they wanted to snare me as well.

The blithely ignorant who made up the human masses had phone numbers that could be linked to a physical location, or a billing address. That way, when one of Pablo's associates grabbed Dabney, they would ask her if she had my number. She did. It didn't matter. Due to this nutjob's persecution fantasies, my phone number led to a Pet Shop a good ways away from my domicile.

Breaking into a small, struggling business and creating a phone tap was insanely easy. I'd done it to several different locations. I sent the burn code to that communication cut out, the battery fried the chip and that became another dead end in case they did go looking in that direction. Dabney could inform them of my new job. I wasn't terribly worried about them cracking MedicWest's database.

Even if they did, my contact information was...misleading. I'd gone to UNLV, hung around the campus advertising boards until I spotted the properly desperate individual. I wasn't looking for someone looking for a service. I was looking for someone posting their poverty to the world by offering to tutor something inane.

The promise of a constant trickle of dollars convinced him to cover my upfront contacts. He didn't know me and I didn't know him. If something bad happened to him, there was no leverage to use against me. Going after G wasn't likely.

As a rule, rousting casino personnel wasn't good for business as those institutions were well-heeled and politically connected. The Stratosphere had no loyalty to G; this was standard practical policy to not let outsiders influence their employees.

Anyone thinking my car's registration led back to my home hadn't been paying attention to my 'cautious' nature. Even my GPS device didn't cut on until it was half a mile away from my location. I doubted Dabney would have recalled the precise route - panicky decisions affect recall like you wouldn't believe.

"Hey Sammi," I spoke into the phone. "This is Vance Vardanyan." Yeah, I got teased about the 'double V' growing up, thus my kick-ass predilections. To make matters more confusing, my given name was Vardan, not Vance. That was a bit complicated. "I know; long time, no see. Is Dabney there?"

"Oh God, Vance...yes, Dab was home when I got off work earlier today. About thirty minutes ago, two guys came looking for her. She was really scared but she left with them." Sammi hurriedly informed me. "How much trouble is she in?" We hadn't grown up in the 'are they in trouble' tax bracket. We expected trouble automatically.

"Plenty," I said with confidence. "What do you know of her situation?"

"She's a high-end call-girl in the city and works for some leech named Pablo. About a year ago she showed up, all scared about something. She wouldn't tell me what it was. Pablo came knocking on my door the next day. This guy wasn't Pablo though..." she left her desire for more information hanging.

"Don't call the cops, Sammi. I broke Pablo's collarbone last night when he threatened Dabney" I began.

"Oh damn it, Vance!" Sammi interrupted. "She's not a kid anymore. You shouldn't have gotten involved...especially after you picked up and left all those years ago."

"As I was saying, I busted him up then told Dabney to stay with me for a few days until I could figure a way to deal with this problem," I explained.

"What in the hell are you going to do?" Sammi was moving past being scared for her little sister's life to being annoyed at me for interfering where I didn't belong.

"I was planning on having a chat with Pablo and come to a jointly acceptable solution to Dabney's dilemma," I said.

"What on Earth makes you think you could do that? Have you had your head up your ass for the past twenty years?" she groused.

It was fifteen. It didn't seem relevant to correct her on at the moment.

"Dabney said you are a paramedic," she grumbled. "Did you lie to her?" About being a paramedic? Who lies about that? I guess if some schmuck was trying to polish up his sensitive side, a guy might do that...but that's not me.

Had I told her I was a twelve year armed services veteran, a former-Navy Special Amphibious Reconnaissance Corpsmen (SARC) One (Petty Officer First Class) assigned to Marine Force Recon then to a SEAL team before ending up in the DEVGRU (some of the baddest sons-of-bitches who have ever lived; trust me) Dabney would have justifiably thought I was some lying, over-compensating, pseudo-macho, wing-nut failure of a National Guardsman - at best.

To complete the fairy tale, I had spent three years in the CIA's Special Operations Group (SOG). She would have assumed I was lying. I barely believed it and I had lived through it. Expecting people who hadn't seen me once in the past fifteen years to believe me was purely delusional thinking.

"I am a paramedic."

"You?" she scoffed. Why was it so hard for everyone to believe I'd become a care-giver?

"Yes, me. The pay may suck, but the work is spiritually fulfilling," I told her. Pause.

"Please don't let anything happen to Dabney, Vance. She really liked you," Sammi turned all motherly on me - someone else's mother. "Keep me in the loop."

"I will," I replied. Maybe I would and maybe I wouldn't. I'd see how things worked out first. "We'll talk again later." I hung up. It was time for a meal followed by a nap.

"What are you going to do?" G asked me as I assembled my collapsing bed. I was too tall to sleep comfortably on the sofa.

"Getting a nap," I said.

"But what about..." she murmured.

"They have my number, G. I don't have theirs," I yawned. "They will call. That won't do them any good, so they will be waiting for us at the Stratosphere. If they call you back, tell them they can find me at the first place we met." That was Detective 101: go to the last place the guy was seen. I called my pal in the Netherlands. She gave me the skinny on Dabney's credit card trail. It wasn't good news.

It was a rotating account system that collected money from 'cells' (aka money-making schemes) that went to a series of feeder accounts. Every few hours, those accounts rolled over to another account, off-shore banks to a place that didn't like giving out information on their private clients. Instead of popping a $1million to one account, setting off all kinds of alarm bells off at too many governmental agencies, they dribbled money constantly, thus flying beneath the radar.

Her hacking in one of those shady banks to do some real damage was beyond the scope of our relationship, but she clued me into the systems' weaknesses for me to hopefully use later. I picked up a random e-mail service, created a throw-away identity in twenty minutes that would serve its limited purpose. That done, I rested my head on my pillow.

I was asleep inside of two minutes. As predicted, no one called, so they were definitely going for the intercept. There still was the first fuck-up to deal with. As I was getting ready to leave with G, two police officers came knocking at my door. I opened the interior security door while leaving the outer, steel lattice door shut and locked.

"Mr. Vardanyan?" asked the lead officer, a woman with the tag of C. Rothschild.

"Yes, Officer Rothschild?" I answered. She tried and failed to open the outer door.

"Would you open the screen door please?" she asked. Her partner, a white guy named B. Shell, looked around cautiously.

"Would you show me a warrant for my arrest, or a search warrant, please?" I parroted her.

"We are here to request your assistance with an ongoing investigation," she responded.

"Thank you for the offer. I choose to decline," I calmly informed her. "We can move right past your gentle insistence, my intransience and confront your inability to legally detain me, my clear desire to be of no assistance and my need to be somewhere else right now."

"What is your problem? Assistant Sheriff Mahaulu wants to talk with you," she informed me.

Hawaiians were a sizeable minority in Las Vegas, thus a senior police official named Mahaulu somewhere outside of the 50th state made sense.

"I reassert my willingness to be uncooperative, Officer Rothschild," I sighed. "Now, I'm leaving. I have to take a friend to work."

"You know I have an arsenal, Concealed Carry permits and work as a paramedic at MedicWest (paramedics were licensed). No surprises. We tack on that this entire encounter has been recorded, your lack of legal standing and I wish you good day," I said before shutting the door. G was thunderstruck by my blasé attitude. I winked at her before leading her out the back door.

Those two didn't hassle me further. Instead they tailed me all the way over to G's place of employment. I had to leave my pistol and knife in the car as I walked her to work. Caught sneaking a weapon into a casino was a great way to get banned for life. I had to park in a lot while they got to park in the street. It was clear to me they thought I deserved a second chance to meet with Assistant Sheriff Mahaulu.

Just outside the entry way, there was this guy looking for G to show up. Even in Vegas, she was notably more attractive than most. I didn't think there was a current picture of me to go by yet. That would change soon enough. I saw him making a call then pointing the camera phone in our direction.

"Take care, G," I patted her lightly on the back. "I'll be back to pick you up when your shift ends." She nodded, started walking away, then doubled back and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

"Stay safe and good luck," she worried. Off she went.

{Getting Dabney back}

The guy at the door was talking to somebody on the phone. I sped along the process by walking over to him. This lookout didn't know what to make of that. Interrogating him was pointless. He was a 'cut-out'; his job was something any monkey could do.

"Someone wants to talk with you," he held out the phone as if it was a cross and I was a vampire. The cellular device changed hands.

"It's cool," I grinned. "Have they paid you off yet?"

"Aaahhh...no," he stammered. "I only got half. I'll get the other half...after you take the call."

"Take my advice and be happy with half and your life. Your employers aren't the 'loose ends' kind of outfit," I cautioned him. By the look in his eyes, he was going to take that advice.

"Good evening," I spoke into the phone.

"Listen up, you fucker," Pablo seethed.

The slur in his words indicated he was abusing his pain-killers. The doctor had probably told him to take it easy for two weeks and allow the bone to start healing. The dumbass was going to do more damage to himself than what I had inflicted on him.

"Listening," I curtly replied.

"Start walking toward 'Bonanza' (a tourist trap to the south).A car is going to pick you up," he seethed.

"Not going to happen," I snorted in amusement.

"Dude, Dabney's not going to like that answer," he sneered. That was the point where my plan truly sucked. From the moment I found out that Pablo had Dabney, I knew that Circe's middleman was going to have the pimp kill us both. Pablo was a sadist. That meant, no matter what I did, Dabney was going to suffer before she died.

Had Dabney just waited at my house until I cornered Pablo and made him see reason...but she hadn't and we were now in this predicament. Rushing in might get me killed. Dabney was far more likely to be a casualty in the cross-fire which would make the entire drama an exercise in futility.

Following Pablo's instructions wasn't going to deliver any better probabilities as I'd be fighting entirely on his terms. The sad, anti-macho, non-White Knight Reality was that Dabney was about to go through a truckload of pain and suffering that I couldn't do anything about. I didn't blame Dabney. She'd been scared to death. I didn't blame myself.

He'd taken liberties with Dabney. I wasn't going to let him hurt her. Dabney had been my friend ~ no matter how long ago. I knew that breaking Pablo's collarbone would lead to escalating violence. I hadn't correctly predicted that Dabney's lack of trust in men who had abandon her far too often to a cruel fate would make her do this stupid thing.

Now Pablo was dead no matter what. All I could do was arrange events so that Dabney didn't join him. I had to seal my emotions away until this mission was completed.

"There isn't much I can do about that, but Pablo..." I started. I let that hang there.

"What?"

"Do you remember what I told you last night? About you touching Dabney ever again?"

"Big words, small prick," he mocked me.

"I'm glad we are clear about my warning," I removed the emotion from my voice. "Pablo, I know what you look like. I can find you whenever I wish."

"Asshole, you don't..."

"Here is how it is going to go down," I talked over him.

"You don't tell me to do shit, you -" and I hung up. I crossed the street at the light, multi-tasking the pedestrian traffic while I opened up the phone's innards. It rang again once I was on the other/east side of the street.

"Here is what you are -" I belted out my refrain.

"Motherfucker!" Pablo yelled. "If you hang up one more time, Dabney's dead." Pablo was the kind of low-life for which lying and self-deception over his own importance came easy. He couldn't even tell that he was lying to himself. His was an empty threat. He needed Dabney, but he was too drugged up to realize that I clearly knew he needed her to get at me.

"If you want to spend a long time dying, by all means let me know," I bantered. Let him get angry. I was configuring the device with additions of my own, to discover his general location via cell towers. Keeping him talking was exactly what I wanted.

"You are a dead man," he threatened. "When I my hands on you -"

"You mean your right hand, right?" I reminded him. "I doubt your left hand can even wrap around your tiny nub of a cock."

"Fucker, you are going to be the one who is 'a long time dying'," he yapped.

By the tone of his voice, I could tell he was aggravating the repair work the surgeon had done on his shoulder. Even more pain-killers were in his immediate future. He might even overdose before I got a hold of him.

"You can go back to your boss empty-handed if you like," I mused. "I think we both know how your operation handles failure."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" he attempted to both regain the momentum in our conversation while covering up his fear.

"Here is how it is going to go down," I began again.

"Mother-fucker, I -" and I hung up on him again. The phone rang. I had his location down to ten meters.

In most cases, a cellular signal bounced off at least two towers. In urban areas it could be as many as four. The signal bounced off the towers at different nano-seconds because of the difference in distance between the tower and the phone. It is the art of electronic triangulation. He was on the Strip, maybe three blocks south of my current location...moving northward - plenty of time for me to get back to my car.

The phone rang again.

"Fucker," he growled. "How's this." I heard Dabney scream in pain as a stun gun went off. "You want to hear that again?"

"Not really. Now here is how it is going to -" I was cut off by Dabney screaming once more.

"I can do this all night long, Fucker," Pablo taunted me.

"I'll keep this portion of our conversation in mind," I responded.

"Good," his voiced dripped with victory - idiot.

"Here is how it is going to go down -" I tried yet again. Dabney screamed. I hung up.

I had to get into my car anyway. I had the belief I was going to be needing my gun and a blade this evening. I pocketed a few extra magazines - best be prepared. Pablo was definitely not alone. The phone rang.

"Vance!" Dabney sobbed in pain. "Please Vance, do what they say." The phone changed hands.

"Fucker, you are going to -" Pablo got out.

"Put Dabney back on the phone, Pablo," I requested. Dabney screamed. I hung up. I was paying the parking fee when the phone rang again.

"Don't you fucking -" Pablo was losing it.

"Dabney," I repeated my request.

"Fucker -" and I hung up yet again. I drove past the vehicle I suspected held Pablo and company. A gold-flecked Suburban with spinning rims. That baby could hold eight people easily plus plenty of back space. I noted the license plate. At the next stoplight, I accessed the LVMPD database thanks to those two detectives inadvertently giving me their passwords last night. The phone rang yet again.

"Vance," Dabney whimpered. "They are hurting me...please..."

"You hang up again and she dies. We will get you later," Pablo assured me.

"Put Dabney back on the phone," I reiterated my request.

"Fine," he snapped. "She's dead. You are dead too, when I catch you."

I hung up. If they were going to kill Dabney, she'd be dead already. If I acceded to their demands, they'd kill us both. Someone smarter than Pablo knew they needed her around as 'proof of life' to lure me in. The license plate belonged to an entertainment group. I went over a list of various properties, picking the closest, 'Vegas Fantasies'.

Officers Rothschild and Shell turned on their lights in two short flashes to let me know they were starving for my attention. I pulled to the side of the road, stashed the evidence of my illegal endeavor and muted the phone I'd been given. They got out and walked up to both sides of my ride.

"Mr. Vardanyan, I strongly suggest you come with us to meet the Assistant Sheriff right now," Rothschild said.

"Officer, I find myself on a tight time table at the moment, so I'm going to cut to the bare bones. You are exhibiting an abuse of power I find unsettling. I do not want to talk with your superior."

"Now, are you going to trump up an excuse to put me in custody and drag me before him, or not?" I related. "As I said, I'm on a tight schedule."

"Do you mind if we search your car?" Shell said from the passenger side door.

"Yes."

"Why don't you want to cooperate?" Shell grumbled. Rothschild had taken a mental step back.

"I am not civic minded. I find people I don't know making demands on my time to be an irritant. Then there is this fact: you two in particular can't seem to get it through your skulls that I am not interested in your proposal despite my many refusals," I articulated. "Tell your superior I was never inclined to talk to him and I'm even less interested after having you follow me around."

"You are armed," Rothschild reminded me. "That is justifiable cause for a search."

"Except I have a recording less than an hour old where I stated that I was both armed and had concealed carry permits for the weapons in question."

"We'll do it the hard way," Rothschild sighed. "License, registration and proof of insurance, please."

This was a traffic stop where my ability to protect my civil rights were more complicated. Yes, Officers Rothschild and Shell were violating my rights. No judge would side with me on the matter. I did as requested. They wasted five minutes verifying my information.

"I smell marijuana," Shell remarked.

"Do you really want to go down that road?" I met his gaze.

"What does that mean?" Rothschild heated up even as she returned my papers.

"Fabricating a criminal offense, bearing false witness and violating the spirit of the law for the sake of power, Officer Rothschild," I turned her way. "We both know this is what's going on."

"Your record says you were in the Navy - some sort of hospital orderly. I would have thought that you would appreciate the necessity of authority," she countered.

"I'm on a tight schedule," I regurgitated the answer. She pulled out a card and handed it over.

"I strongly suggest you arrange an interview with Assistant Sheriff Mahaulu soon - very soon," she encouraged me. I took the card.

"Done deal," I agreed. That was that. I made sure they drove off in one direction before I chose another. I had someone's life to save. At a store off the Strip, I paid an alcoholic to get himself two bottles of scotch for himself and a pack of road flares, one set of wire clippers, one tube of caulk and a canister of propane. The booze would kill the pre-requisite number of brain cells to make him a lousy witness. The rest was for the IED I was planning to make.

Members of any organized criminal venture had three vulnerabilities: their lives, their reputations and their cash-flow. Unlike normal enterprises, running to the law when someone was picking on you was self-defeating. If you did, you could end up behind bars, your rep was blown and you risked poverty as well as the wrath of your enemies.

That was why criminal gangs had enforcers. They answered violence with violence. If an opposing organization went after your money-makers, you went after theirs. If they killed one of yours, you took out two of theirs. That was what reputation was all about. Living under those restrictions left criminals exceedingly vulnerable to someone like me; a 'lone wolf avenger'.

That wasn't pompousness. It was terminology that came about in Columbia in the 1980's and 90's.Rogue police (sick of the corruption Pablo Escobar's Medellin Cartel had inspired with their drug money and terror campaigns), and relatives of those killed by that cartel got together in a group called Los Pepes.They began attacking the Medellin Cartel, exacting summary justice against its members.

They were not 'lone' as in single individuals. 'Lone' meant a person, or small group, engaged in criminal activities solely against criminals (including corrupt officials) without concern for personal profit of any kind. Their prime motivation was vengeance, so they were referred to as 'lone wolf avengers'.

Pablo called me five times during the second cop shakedown and my shopping trip. He ranted three times to voice mail. The fourth time I picked up, he started to rant again, I asked for Dabney, didn't get her so I hung up. The fifth time...

"Vance," Dabney whimpered.

"Dabney, I know you are in pain and scared witless," I soothed her. "I want you to concentrate on my voice and my words. Can you do that?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"Pablo is a dead man. Every time you look at him, every time he hurts you, remember he is living out the last few hours of his life."

"Last few..." she muttered. Pablo took the phone.

"Okay Asshole, now I want you to listen carefully," he growled with barely contained fury.

"Listening."

"4941 Donavan Way - 25 minutes," he snarled.

"It will take me 45," I countered.

"25, or else..."

"Pablo, I've been driving south for the past fifteen minutes," I lied. "Unless you want me showing up driving like a bat out of Hell with a half-dozen cops on my ass, give me 45 minutes."

"45...46 and she's dead," he threatened.

"Pablo, I'm going to need proof of life now and right before I show up," I conditionally agreed. I wanted to make sure Dabney was around until I'd made my play. "The second time, I'm going to ask her a random question from our past, so don't start thinking you are brilliant."

"45 minutes, Asshole," he exulted in his hate. Forty-five minutes was more than enough time to enact my plan. It was sinfully easy. A masked man was about to break into a low-rent, advertises on the strip with business cards and flyerscall center. They have all kinds of computer systems which the site supervisor can disconnect from the network if the police or a competitor raided the building.

It was far less useful when a murderous psycho snuck up on her, put a gun to her head and gave her a choice: the codes, or her life. My first action was to caulk the fire door shut (so no one could escape out the back). Next came the locking of the front doors from the inside with the bike locks (the only other exit). Then I rounded up the staff, starting with the site supervisor.

I had the phone/website operators strip down to their underwear, packed them like sardines into a utility closet and got to work. I needed the system active so I could physically link it to my personal computer while accessing a certain black market website where my Dutch friend had left me something to download. This 'package' was a particularly nasty encryption virus uploading into their network.

Barring a super-computer, or a superb tech support unit working for a week, I owned that data. Last, but not least, I attached a time bomb to the virus. In a set amount of time ~ 4 hours in this case ~ the virus would hopelessly corrupt every system it was integrated with. When I uploaded this site's data to 'the Cloud', I also sent the 'raid' code, meaning this place was compromised and the data's security had a theoretical time limit before someone tracked it down.

Dutifully, someone watching the network would then transfer that information, and my virus, into the overall system; the one I suspected was physically located in a country whose laws kept their customers' secrets secret. In the physical world, Circe retained her legions of employees and tangible financial assets. In Cyberspace, she was informational-ly bankrupt. Client lists, employee lists, pay schedules and 'tax' recites were all in danger.

I wasn't going to war with Circe. I wanted to live and let live - sort of. What I wanted was a boon, a visiting peddler seeking favor from the Queen. If I had the chance, I'd hand her my codes allowing her to have everything back and all I wanted were three small favors well within her power to grant. I wanted Dabney set free, Pablo's head and for her to forget I ever existed.

In the final phase of this part of the operation, I set up my IED. I clipped off the nozzle of the caulking tube, used that to sabotage the propane canister's safety feature and set off the flare. I then encouraged ("this place is about to explode") my prisoners to follow me out the front door - I had the key to the bike lock - and we all fled for our lives. I took the bike lock with me. The building going boom in my rear-view mirror was a professionally satisfying sight.

It was no raging inferno, just enough to wreck the place for a few weeks, give Circe an immediate warning that something was wrong and allow the police to check out the place once the fire department was done ruining it with water hoses. Fires do a good job of destroying evidence. Firefighters do it better.

The only thing they could determine fully was what made up the IED and that led back to the rummy, who clearly couldn't' have done the deed. I was still heading for the rendezvous when the virus let me know it had been transferred into Circe network. My time had almost run out. I gave Pablo a call.

"Why aren't you here yet, Mother-fucker?" he snapped. He'd been doping up on pain-killers once more.

"Almost there. You might want to call your boss before you do something stupid, Pablo. I've made alternate arrangements since we last talked."

"I don't give a fuck," he slurred.

"Call the person who sent you after Dabney. Tell them you have a lead on what happened to 'Vegas Fantasies' ten minutes ago," I said. "As a token of faith, I'm still showing up. Part of the deal is that you let me talk to Dabney," I reminded him.

"Vance? Vance, are you coming?" she voiced her terror.

"Who was Ted Parker?" I was double checking. I doubted Pablo was smart enough to make a recording of her voice, but better safe than sorry.

"Ummm...aaahhh...that kid who pestered me in the fifth grade," she mumbled. "You showed me how to beat him up."

"You are the real Dabney," I tried to get her to relax. "Here I come." I stopped long enough to retrieve my ballistic vest from the trunk and put it on before rolling into the empty container yard.

There was the Golden Pimp-mobile. I parked my Audi so that the passenger side faced them. I scanned the area - no lookouts. Did the heat make people stupid? I didn't bother to hide the fact that I had an HK45 Compact Tactical pistol in my hand when I got out because a surprise at this moment would be detrimental to my plan. None of them appeared until after I did.

Pablo, left arm in a sling, got out of the rear passenger door on my side with a sawed-off double barrel shotgun in his right hand, moron. He was the guy I wanted to kill plus how did he plan to reload that scattergun?

The front passenger side door disgorged a big overweight white guy who had watched too many Godfather movies and belatedly realized I had a gun out and he didn't. The driver, coming around the front of their vehicle was tall, skinny and black - no weapon evident. The first guy around the rear of the SUV was Hispanic - Mac-11 - and the final guy was white as well.

He was dragging a terrified Dabney along with him by his left hand on her right elbow. He had the barrel of a chrome plated .357 Magnum pressed against the right side of her rib cage. Dabney looked like hell. That none of the damage to her face looked permanent was the best spin I could put on her predicament. As for the other guys...they weren't a gang, they were a crew.

Gangs tend to be racially-based. Crews are staffed by career criminals. The guy with the Mac was the leader. Pablo...they didn't work for Pablo. They worked for someone else as street-level muscle. That meant they were petty thieves, thugs and all-around bullies who weren't gifted with enough intellect to be involved in consistent money-making operations.

"Did you make that call?" I asked Pablo.

"Fuck you, Fucker," he snapped. "Put down the gun then we can talk." Like that was going to happen. "Put down the gun, or I waste the girl."

"I would take that to be a 'no'," I sighed.

"Do the rest of you know the shitload of trouble Pablo is in?" I addressed the crew. "The people upstairs are very angry with him." Oh, I knew they had no clue who the people 'upstairs' were. Here is how fear works ~ it was like swimming in crocodile-infested waters. Before long, you started seeing crocs everywhere.

Members of the criminal establishment knew that they were paying money to somebody with more clout than them even though all they saw was the collection agent. When a person, or group decided not to believe in 'the system', they met a messy end...just not at the hands of the collectors. That impressed upon the other crooks that there was an upper echelon. A few had aspirations of joining it one day.

Every form of vice had its hierarchy. With the sex industry, it was the legend of Circe, who was turning out to be not so legendary. Only a handful of criminals believed that she was real - she was more like a 'Santa Claus' ... who hated all living things. You paid your taxes because you DIDN'T want to find out if the legends were real or not. That was the dilemma the crew leader found himself in.

He probably knew Pablo. He obviously didn't like the pimp. That was written all over his face and projected by the attitude of his people. Pablo had hired them to kill two nobodies and dispose of the bodies. These guys weren't Mensa. Yet, with a hostage, a pissed off pimp and four armed men, I was the guy acting with total self-confidence - as if I was in control.

"That's bullshit," Pablo roared. Yep, too many pain-killers. He wasn't thinking straight. "Kill the bitch then kill him!" He brought the shotgun up, flinched in pain and blew a chunk out of the real estate half way between me and him. The recoil pushed him back and lifted the gun too high. His second and last shot exited at a roughly 45 degree angle above me and off to my left.

Me and the guy with the Mac-11 came to a telepathic understand. If either one of us moved, a firefight would break out...so we stood still. His buddies shrunk back for some cover, but when those two shots went unanswered, they stepped back from the precipice of violence.

"Mother-fucker!" Pablo screamed. "You dodged." The recoil pressure of a 12 gauge shotgun held in only one hand had to suck. Part of that force being channeled up his arm into his right shoulder would have then been diverted into his crippled left shoulder. Moron.

"If anyone helps Pablo reload his gun, or gives him another, I'll kill you both," I commented dryly.

"We still have the girl," the leader pointed out. Pablo was having issues with coordination. I watched him like a hawk while the rest kept him within their peripheral vision. He dropped the gun, kept cursing me, picked it up then turned around, back to me. He had placed the shotgun down on the car seat and was pulling spare shells out of his pants pocket when I gave the leader a nod.

Since the leader didn't responded yet, when my pistol jumped up and I shot Pablo in the ass, no one decided it was worth returning fire. My gun hand immediately returned to my side.

"No harm - no foul," I grinned at them. "Right guys?" They must have really come to hate Pablo.

Those poor, dumb bastards; they must have been stuck in that SUV with him for hours as he lost his fucking mind. I'd hated him within the first ten seconds of meeting the guy and time had not made my heart grow fonder. Pablo had a new set of difficulties. I'd shot him in the ass-crack and by the increase pitch of his yowls, I'd hit what I was aiming for. I had shot off his nuts ~ not the total package, only the testicles.

That sort of wound was more likely to kill you later with an infection than currently with blood loss. I had warned Pablo that I was going to take my time killing him. My current schedule wasn't flexible enough to repay his sadism with the proper currency. I figured thirty ~ forty minutes max and I'd have my deal, or be dead.

"I suggest you call someone more connected than either of us and pass on the word that you know what happened atVegas Fantasies," I told him. "We can both end up as winners by sunset." It was not even 7 pm yet so that boast had some foundation.

"What happened at Vegas Fantasies?" he inquired.

"I blew it up," I stated coolly. "I had to let Pablo's people know I wasn't to be trifled with."

"So you blew up a place...with a bomb?" the Godfather goombah wannabe gulped.

"Yeah."

"Who the fuck are you?" the leader's brows furrowed.

"I'm a paramedic."

"What...what...is that a nickname? Like the Mechanic?" goombah babbled. The leader had out his phone. Pablo had finished sliding out of the suburban's back seat onto the ground. He gave off another yelp of pain as he did so.

"Help me..." Pablo feebly tugged on the leader's pants leg. The guy kicked him away. Leader-guy had a short, hushed yet intense conversation. Now we were all standing around with nothing to do. I gave it two minutes.

"Do you guys have any water?" I inquired. They looked around.

The leader nodded to the black driver who walked around the far side of their ride, opened the back hatch and began looking around.

"Ah, girls' clothes...condoms...more condoms...old takeout bags...nuthin'," the driver inventoried Pablo's possessions.

"I've got a case of bottled water in my trunk," I offered. "Interested?"

"Is it like, poisoned or something?" the leader examined me.

"Nah. Send your guy," I motioned to the goombah, "over, I'll give him my keys. He'll get the water, give me a random bottle and I'll drink first. Deal?"

They agreed. It was fucking hot, we lived in a desert and the Sun was still up in the sky. A little bit of juggling later, each member of the crew had two bottles plus I'd convinced the boss to pour a bottle into the dirt next to Pablo's face. Not a drop hit his lips. If he wanted any liquid refreshment, he'd have to lick it off the ground. Did I mention that I had been a truly wicked soul until recently?

32 minutes after the leader's first call, his phone rang. He looked at me.

"Yeah. The guy who says he did it is standing in front of me," he replied to someone's question. "Ummm...he's got a gun and he's behind a car..." (the other party was speaking) "Ummm...I don't know," then to me. "What's your name?"

"Tell the person on the other end 'that will cost them'," I responded. More talking.

"How much?" he relayed the request. Hey, I'd blown up a building/profit center. That draws people's attention. I began pointing at each member of his crew.

"One, two, three, four - $20,000, the girl plus I want a specific someone to go away," I answered.

Three of the four crew member realized they were looking at a $5000 payday and were very happy. Yes, I was buying off my would-be killers with some unknown entity's money, exiting Pablo from this mortal plane and, most importantly, getting Dabney back.

"They want to set up a meeting," he said.

"Sure. Three conditions: your crew gets paid ASAP, you four get to dispose of Pablo and the girl stays with me," I demanded. More talking.

"What's to make us - them believe that you won't run off with the girl?"

"If I was going to run away, why didn't I leave town last night? Why did I take out 'Vegas Fantasies'? Why aren't the five of us exchanging bullets right now?" I pointed out.

"Besides, I'd still have to get to Henderson to pick up her sister and kids," I added. "What are the odds of me pulling that off?" Could Sammi run for it? Yeah. Her issue was in how she would get away.

Where?" the leader requested a few seconds later.

"I get Dabney; they get to pick the place," I suggested.

"You know what happens to everyone you care about if you don't show up?" the guy was repeating someone else's words. The crew leader didn't truly understand the threat. The people threatening me didn't understand what threatening me might cost them either. I nodded. "They say they'll be in touch real soon." We waited around all of six minutes until his phone rang again.

This time he walked over to the hood of my car and slid his phone over to me. Someone wanted direct communication.

"Who am I talking to?" It was Reagan. She sounded pissed too. Her computer person must have been on top of their game.

"I'm Rafael Rivera," I answered. Pause.

"You are the first European to set foot in Las Vegas?" she murmured. "You sound very well preserved for a man your age." Considering he did that deed back in 1829, I concurred.

"Either you collect odd bits of historical trivia, or you are a native," I countered.

"I think we should meet, Rafael," she brought some control to her voice. She meant to kill Dabney and me.

"I've told you my name. Why don't you tell me yours?" I asked her.

"Virginia Hill," she lied. Ms. Hill was mobster Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel's girlfriend - the mobster who placed Las Vegas on the map.

"She says to send the girl over," I called out to the crew chief. Never underestimate the power of positive thinking. To the guys; I'd already laid out the game plan and everything was happening as predicted. Even better, I was willing to bet Reagan didn't have the phone numbers of anyone else on the team.

"No I did not!" Reagan screamed into the receiver. She'd screwed up. The guy with the Magnum glanced to the leader. He motioned the gunmen to let Dabney go and she started heading my way.

"Ms. Hill, they want their money left with a waitress at..." I looked at them speculatively, "at the Italia Express at the Outlet?" The leader nodded. "That's right, $20,000. They will take care of Pablo and be there at?"

The leader looked at his watch.

"8:30 pm," he said after making the calculations - where to take Pablo, how long it would take to dig the grave and the time in transit.

"8:30 pm," I passed it on.

"9:15 pm - East Lake Meade Blvd - the first dirt road on the right past the two mile marker. If you don't show up, you cannot imagine the hell I will unleash on you," she steamed.

"I'll be there, I promise," I spoke calmly. "We'll figure a way so that everyone is mollified, Ms. Hill."

"I'm sure of that," she sweetened up. What a lying bitch.

"She wants me to keep the phone," I told the leader. I made sure Reagan heard that before I hung up. I then switched the phone off because I had little doubt she had more to share.

"Dabney, do you want to say 'good-bye' to Pablo?" I finally addressed my friend.

She was still coming off a panicked high so it took her a few seconds to piece together the past minute of her life. Dabney angrily stomped over toward Pablo. Now the fear was on the other foot, so to speak.

"Don't kick him anywhere you'll get blood on yourself," I added a cautionary note. Dabney obliged, kicking him in the shins repeatedly. She finished up by bouncing medium-sized rock off his head. Pablo was still conscious, enjoying the discussion of his eminent demise, which was a bonus in my book. Once we were out on the road and I was sure there we weren't being pursued, I comforted Dabney

"What happens next?" she muttered. "Sammi..."

"Sammi should be okay as long as the only people she can name are you, me and Pablo. That will be a dead end for the cops, so no one needs to spare her any attention," I explained.

"Really?" she turned her red-rimmed eyes my way. "You really believe they are going to stop ... coming after me ... to kill us?" She found it hard to believe in me.

"Dabney, I'm not going to bore you with my life's story since I left all those years ago. I can tell you this - I've dealt with some really foul sorts over the years and this not my first time finding ways out of dire straits. I'm a pro."

"What...how?" she was seeking reassurance.

"Dabney, I'm a paramedic. We deal with life and death decisions on a daily basis," I attempted levity. Thankfully, Dabney clued in on my intentions.

"What did you do in the Navy? Were you a SEAL?" she began ordering her thoughts.

"I was a hospital corpsman," I reaffirmed. "I didn't lie about that." She thought that over.

"Do SEAL's have corpsmen?"

"Yes Dabney; yes they do," I smiled.

"You've done things you can't talk about," she murmured. "Ummm...okay."

"You've got to promise me one thing?" I said after a bit.

"What is it?" Dabney looked uncertain.

"You pick up G tonight. After I take care of this one final issue, I'm going to need some sleep. If not, I'm going to be a zombie on the job tomorrow," I let her know. She sighed in relief.

"I can do that. We can even drive down Henderson and get your Corvette back," she offered. Thank God she thought of it. I hadn't been sure how I was going to do it on my own. If I brought Dabney home, getting G would be problematic if I was killed at the (hopefully) last meeting of the night. Neither one of us discussed that possible outcome.

{One Final Issue}

The lights of Las Vegas to the west conflicted with the moon- and starlight nature provided. Still, I managed to find the rendezvous point with little effort. I spotted the vehicle farther off to the east, pulled over to the side of the road. It wasn't poorly hidden. I noted it because my perceptions were heightened more than normal. It was a Buick Regal ~ maybe this year's model.

I dimmed my headlights as I turned down the dirt path. There were three more cars to the south. Two were obvious, parked catty-corner to each other. The third was concealed to the southwest behind some scrub trees. Experience suggested that three of the Buicks had a two man team (driver, gunman). The main one would have four (driver, gunman, bodyguard, VIP).

Sure, Circe could afford more muscle if she desired. There was no point in bringing it. If I betrayed her, her people would break off to the southwest and evade until the cops could arrive Circe was risking little. Four identical cars made pursuit more difficult. All each car needed was one shooter to keep aggressors occupied.

One of the two cars before me had the VIP and their bodyguard. Keeping people involved to a minimum was economical. My headlights being off meant I wasn't blinding the people I was there to meet ~ a courteous gesture. Putting these people on edge wasn't a healthy decision. I wanted calm, collected minds to deal with.

I exited my car, my gun holstered and my engine running. I had to wait for their first move. Front passenger doors on both left and right Regal's opened up, revealing two men with pistols drawn. A few seconds passed. The guys with assault rifles would be in the first and fourth car I'd seen.

When the big, close-shaved black guy stepped out of the back passenger side of the car to my left, it was instant recognition on both our parts. He started walking my way.

"Jess?" one of the gunmen to my right called out. The big black guy raised up his hand to let him know things were okay. It was the last step he took that made me feel at ease. He hugged me.

"Hey Brigand. Long time no see," the man chortled.

"Ditto CAM," I chuckled. CAM wasn't his name any more than Brigand was mine. CAM wasn't a nickname either; it was an acronym for Christ All-Mighty. Senior Chief Petty Officer Jessup Alexander had been one of my SEAL instructors and a damn fine human being.

He had been a SEAL team member for years, but a serviceable injury put him on the sidelines were he continued to contribute by training future warriors. That pain had also brought him down. He became addicted to codeine, got in some trouble and was drummed out of the service. Nineteen years of loyal service and he ended up with a dishonorable discharge because some scum ball wanted to prove that the Navy was tough on drugs.

"I'm having a hell of a time not saluting," I grinned. I could see his pain and loss. "You know most of us guys hated what SECNAV did to you."

"Water under the bridge, Brigand," he grinned back. "Water under the bridge. So, Hospital Corpsman, why are we all here tonight?"

"I grew up in Vegas," I began. "This girl I grew up with had a kid-sister. I move back a few weeks ago, all's cool, then we stumble across each other last night. She dodged some work, her pimp got pissed and I felt I had to make him back off."

"What brought you home?" he kept up the questioning. Taking into account our time apart and the fact our relationship was more of a student-teacher deal than bosom buddies, my best bet was playing it straight with Cam.

"As I said, I grew up here. Parents and siblings all left, but here and the service are the only places I felt comfortable in. I'm a paramedic at MedicWest - one day on the job and counting," I related. I didn't ask him what he was doing here. He was an enforcer for a very dangerous pair of women.

"I need to talk to the girl." That meant CAM needed to kill Dabney.

"That's not going to happen," meant please don't try to kill my friend.

"Vardanyan, I'm going to need a better reason than 'you two used to be tight'." He believed it was within his power to save me, but not Dabney.

"Is your boss in the car?" I nodded to the sedan he'd come from. CAM shrugged. He didn't believe she would intervene on my side. I reasoned she was here to make sure Dabney hadn't blabbed to anyone about the night her old pimp was murdered. Letting anyone else ask those questions only meant someone else had to be put on the Death List. I'd planned to talk with Reagan anyway. Having CAM here unexpectedly eased things along quite a bit.

"Vance?" Reagan opened the rear driver's side door on the far side then stood so I could see her. I didn't call out her name...incase not everyone around us knew it.

"Ah, V as in Vance Vardanyan," she laughed. "This is awkward. You don't seem surprised to see me here."

"Dabney and I talked," I admitted. "I was hoping you would let this slide for old time's sake."

"Old time's sake?" she smirked. "We were never..."

"The fight at the mall? I did make sure that bitch didn't bleed you. That's got to count for something," I gambled.

Reagan had to think that over. I did save her some hospital time, if nothing else.

"What do you know?" she prodded.

"Enough to make Dabney and I dead," I answered honestly.

"You shouldn't have come, Vance," she mused softly. There was still a human being inside that cruel crime lord exterior. "Jess, Vance worked with you. What did he do?"

"Brigand here is an honest-to-God healer - we call them SARC's. Brig - Vance, did you ever lose anybody?" Jess inquired.

"Nope, but I never got Buddy's leg reattached either so I only counted that as three-quarters of a success," I jibed.

"I'm going to need a little more than that to let you live," Reagan admitted.

"While you think it over, let me give you a URL," I suggested.

She asked, I provided and she checked it out.

"It's a clock - counting down. What is this about?" Reagan glared.

"You remember all the data from Vegas Fantasies? I uploaded a virus that both encrypts your files and will completely corrupt them when the countdown reaches zero," I let her know.

"Jess, can you?" she looked to Cam/Jess. She wanted to know if Jess could extract the information from me.

"How much time?" he replied.

"One hour, thirty-nine minutes, seventeen seconds," she read off the clock.

"Not this guy," Jess snorted with amusement while he shook his head. "Not this guy."

"Vance, we seem to have a dilemma then. What do you want?" Reagan was all business again.

"Give me five minutes of your time - in private - to present my case," I offered.

"What's to stop you from killing me?" she gazed at me intently.

"Do you deserve to die?" I countered.

"I don't think so," she volleyed.

"Then you have nothing to worry about," I grinned. Jess gave Reagan a curt nod. If I did something homicidal, it was his life on the chopping block as well. I sat in the back seat of her sedan, Reagan dismissed her driver and we were alone. I gave her the encryption key. That clearly confused her. She kept all sorts of purposeless threats to herself.

How much more screwed could I get? Three minutes later, Circe had her computer files back.

"Why? Why go to all this trouble and not even bargain with me?" she was clearly confused about her next move and my motivations.

"There is only one way Dabney and I are getting out of this alive and that is if you know you can trust me," I reasoned. "Screwing you over makes you less rich while still making us both just us dead. Proving I can fuck you over and then not doing it was my best ploy. I don't want to be your enemy, Reagan. Let me keep Dabney in line. I'll take care of things and that's that. No one else has to die."

I could sense the wheels turning behind those dark eyes.

"Do you love this girl?"

"Dabney ... nah. I taught her how to ride a bike, swim, cheat on exams and punch out schoolmates who bothered her. She was eleven when I left. She sure is hot now..."

Reagan extended her hand, I shook it and she smiled.

"Deal," she chuckled. "I'll have to put this before..." Her mom aka Circe.

"If it helps, tell her I always thought she was one smoking hot MILF," I grinned.

"I'm not sure if that would help, or hurt your case. I'll pass it on," she snickered.

"By the way, how do I get in touch with you? You seem to be having phone difficulties," she hinted at something else.

"You don't have my number?" I sounded distressed.

"No."

"Then I'm not having phone difficulties," I teased her.

"You are like Jess. Neither of you let extraneous stuff distract you. Nothing scares him. Does anything scare you?" Reagan said.

"Our profession isn't for the faint of heart," I replied.

"But now you are a paramedic?" she was back to seeking out my motivations.

"I like the craft. I would like not having to kill a few cock-suckers in the middle of keeping some poor kid's brains from leaking out his ears," I explained. "I didn't get tired of killing people. I'm not seeking to redeem myself. When I put someone down, they deserve to be dead. I'm A-Okay with my service history."

"You killed people while you were saving others," she was quizzical. "How do you rationalize that?"

"I don't rationalize it. I honestly don't care either way. I like the job. I've never been much of a people person, so I don't associate real emotions with the widows and orphans I've made, or the babies I've delivered. I succeed at the task and then it's off to the next problem."

"You still haven't given me your phone number, or your address," she gave a twist of the lips.

"It is good to know that we are both up to date with the situation," I told her.

"I'm letting you walk away with your life and the life of your friend and you won't give me your God-damn phone number?" she chuckled.

"That's certainly how I want it to be," I let mirth touch my voice.

"I'll find you."

"Good luck. Carefree people consider me paranoid, but I've never been successfully diagnosed."

"Good night, Vance. It was a pleasant surprise to see you again," she nodded. "Oh, and don't leave town."

That was it. I was dismissed and I was smart enough to make a hasty retreat. I also stashed my car in a safe place before making my way home on foot. I'd check my ride for bugs, tracking devices and explosives tomorrow. It felt good to be alive. Then it dawned on me that I felt alive for all the wrong reasons. I was supposed to have retired from that part of my life and here I was back in Vegas ... fucking things up yet again.

{Epilogue}

{The Lady of Lust}

Circe watched her daughter, Reagan, leave the room. Now it was just her and Jessup Alexander. The former-SEAL was her #2 man in security - she would never trust the top spot to a drug-addict, no matter what their professional background was. Like every asset at her command, he had his uses.

'Yes,' she mused, 'teasing his curiosity would be a good place to start'. Her next order of business was how to redistribute Pablo's business. He'd been a savage little pig which was good for business. Scary pimps made other working girls appreciate their less odious flesh-peddlers. She had an admirable prospect; a hungry young man who compensated for a childhood of poverty by cultivating the supposed 'finer things' in life. He'd do.