"Judge Easter and Elias Cummings should arrive this evening. Wong and Emery are coming to judge a free martial-arts exhibition to be held at the Babylon. Your. . .uh. . .Sisters are preparing for their trip out here. Someone broke into the FBI lab and stole the beaker of ashes that were being tested to authenticate whether they were human or not. They were. Those guys at the Bureau are a bunch of clowns. Navarro has a lock on the nomination, and the announcement that he will be installed immediately is imminent. Espinosa is working on my stuff as I feed it to Maggie. I have to share a byline, but that's okay. The media, with the exception of the Post, has suddenly gone low-key on the ninja activity. Orders from the White House is the scuttlebutt.

"By the way, where are you going to stash Miss Marble Rose?"

"What makes you think I'm going to stash her anywhere? She has a home. She strikes me as a very independent kind of gal. She can stay with us if that's her choice. Okay, we're here," Lizzie said as she pulled into the same parking slot in the marked VISITOR PARKING that she'd used before. She looked over at the car parked next to hers. Her brow knitted in a frown.

"What?" Ted asked, an edge in his voice.

"See this car parked next to me? It's a Bugatti Veyron. It costs $1,700,000. There's a guy that lives here in Vegas who's a car freak. He owns the ten most expensive cars in the world. He built a special climate-controlled warehouse to store them. He has armed guards who live on the premises to monitor his cars."

"And I need to know this. . .because?"

"Because the owner is on his way into the police station. Do you see him?"

"You mean that human tank whose feet are as big as canoes?"

"Yes."

Ted sucked in his breath. "Who is he aside from being the owner of that fancy set of wheels?"

Lizzie turned to look at Ted. She smiled, and Ted shivered. "He's the mouthpiece for the Nevada Gaming Commission. I think he's here to see me."

"No shit! Are you saying he's the eight-hundred-pound gorilla?" Worry crept into Ted's voice. "You can take him, can't you, Lizzie? You know what I mean, you can outlawyer him, right?"

Lizzie smiled again. Ted started to shake all over. His fingers kept hitting the wrong keys as he valiantly tried to text message Maggie with the new information. After he sent his message, he looked over at Lizzie, and asked, "Are we deliberately sitting here so you can make an entrance, or are we sitting here because you don't want to go up against this guy?"

Ted got the evil smile again. His stomach tied itself into a knot when Lizzie asked, "What do you think?"