Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Woman, though. Not that tall, even allowing for stiletto heels.

Max shrugged and shouldered his way closer, keeping his knees bent and his face down, looking past the hat brim.

She was leaving the hotel. That conviction sent a shock wave of jubilation through him.

Outside it would be much easier to follow her, even if she used a cab.

But she didn’t. She was walking down the long, curving pavement toward the Strip, on heels but walking fast.

Max slouched after her, taking in the shiny black-patent trench coat so much more costly than the hooker heels. She wore real hooker heels, extreme and cheap enough to glitter and be easy to follow. She too wore a hat, black with a floppy brim. Made it hard to see what was hair and what was hat.

Max ran the stats through his mind. Around five-feet-three. Black hair. Max got a sudden vision of aqua eyes, probably contact lens enhanced. No doubt about it. She must be Kathleen O’Connor, his implacable enemy.

How the bloody hell had she ended up in nightly collusion with Matt Devine?

For a moment, he savored outing ex–Father Perfect, but that was petty.

Even as he paused in shock to absorb his conclusion, the crowds were thinning enough for him to realize another shocking fact.

He was the second in line.

Someone else was tailing Kitty the Cutter—and from the way she kept her right hand buried in the coat pocket, she might well be carrying a switchblade—another guy, not so tall as he but as unremarkably dressed. In a hat. A baseball cap.

Not law enforcement.

Some new player in the game.

Max stuck his hands in his black denim jeans and fell into step where he belonged … behind everybody.

*   *   *

Max Kinsella watched the dawn come up on the desert. He’d driven east after his long night of surveillance. It wasn’t hard to leave Las Vegas if you drove east or west.

Kathleen had lost them in the Treasure Island’s tropical greenery. Not Max, but by then he’d been more curious about who was following her than where she went. There was always tomorrow night to track down Kitty the Cutter.

The other guy was either an amateur or aware of Max on his tail and not minding it. He not only lost Kathleen, but he did nothing to lose Max. Maybe he didn’t know Max was behind him all the way to his home ground.

Max’s suspicions were uncertain as to his exact identity, but the possibilities gave him a chill. In fact, what he was concluding was impossible. Isn’t it?

No way he could throw out this new development for speculation on Temple’s round table of crime. This was even more shocking, to him personally, than Matt Devine’s hookup with Kathleen O’Connor.

Chapter 43

Cat Tails

I pause in a shadow made by the slight instep rise on Goliath’s left sandal.

One of the wonders of the ancient world was the Colossus of Rhodes, a mighty 110-foot statue of a giant man guarding that Grecian island’s harbor before the turn of the first century.

Naturally, this is just the thing to re-create in the Mojave desert.

When Las Vegas hosts a hotel named the Goliath, one can be sure the several-story statue of the biblical giant David toppled with a slingshot will be even taller, if less tasteful, than the Old World inspiration.

Essentially, every man, woman, and child who enters the Goliath Hotel and casino must walk under the figure’s skirt. Perhaps I should describe it as a battle kilt. Those Greek and Roman gods and men were not ashamed of showing a lot of knee and thigh.

Call it statutory gape.

Anyway, I would not normally pause under a landmark of such vulgarity, but I am a wee bit weary and the hour is even more wee. My quarry has gone to ground inside the Goliath, and it is now nigh on four o’clock in the morning. I have been on the prowl since before midnight, being carried concealed during two car rides and now wondering what to do.