What did a lion do when he started feeling sorry for the gazelle? Such a lion would have to adjust his diet or perish. But, hopefully, with the money from this job, he would never have to worry about being hungry again.

He just needed to convince himself that he was the king of beasts for a bit longer, and then he’d be able to hang up his claws for good.

“How long before they start showing symptoms?” Kruger asked.

“Thirty minutes. Give or take,” Raskin replied.

“Then we had better get on with it.”

He closed the vault room door and checked all his weapons. Once locked and loaded, he said, “Are you ready?”

Raskin seemed hesitant to speak, as if she had something to say but was trying to be a silent partner, as he had instructed.

“What’s on your mind, doctor?”

“We had an agreement. No loose ends.”

“Are you suddenly questioning my resolve?”

Raskin narrowed her eyes and leaned close, her insolence and confidence slowly returning.

“I’m just concerned that you may be getting soft toward your little Indian princess,” she said.

He chuckled and shook his head. “You handle the science and tech and leave the killing to me. She’ll die along with the others. Zarina will see to it that there are no loose ends. No one sees our faces and lives. As I told you from the start, nothing ever goes exactly according to plan. We’ll deliver everything we promised. Now, are you ready to deliver your end?”

That smug, self-important gleam had returned to Raskin’s eyes. He just hoped she was half as smart as she claimed.

“How will I know when it’s safe to come out?” she asked.

He checked his weapons a second time and said, “When the shooting and screaming stops, that will be your sign that it’s safe to follow.”

Chapter 44

Nic stepped from Burke’s 1967 Firebird and stared at the unassuming entrance to The Horse’s Head. There was no name on the door or the building’s facade, no neon beer signs, or even so much as an open sign. Not that you would be able to see any sign like that through the mirrored windows. They were the same type of glass found in interrogation rooms, which meant the people inside could see out, but no one outside could see in.

The Horse’s Head was a private club occupying a three-story brick building only a few minutes from the lights of Vegas. To say it was off the beaten path was an understatement. It rested down a dead end street bordered on one side by a residential area filled with condos and older but newly renovated homes and a string of warehouses on the other. The locale gave the place a sense of standing apart from the rest of the world, and in a way, Nic supposed that it was somehow separate, to step inside was like stepping back in time to when the New York families and the Chicago Outfit ran Vegas.