The first thing Nick saw was the girl. Blond and slim and preppy, tan legs sprouting from a tight white skirt. The same girl he’d seen running into the elevator in the casino lobby, being chased by security. At the time he’d figured it was nothing more than a dine and ditch; maybe she’d stolen a coin cup from an aging drone draped over a slot machine and was making a run for it. Bumping into the security guards had been more instinct than anything else: someone running, someone chasing. He’d certainly never expected to see her again, and definitely not here.

She was standing with her back to him on the other side of the hotel room, facing a chair. As she heard him enter, she swung around, and he saw her face, which he hadn’t gotten a look at in the elevator. Pretty, but much paler than the legs, porcelain even, and the look in her eyes was pure terror. Then his attention moved to the chair, and the body sprawled across it, still mostly in a sitting position, one arm belted to the wood.

“Christ,” Nick murmured.

The girl took a step toward him. Her whole body was trembling, and something slipped from under her arm—a purse. It hit the floor with a clatter, its clasp breaking open, casino chips spurting out across the carpet.

The girl dropped to a knee and started scooping at the chips.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” she said, as she jammed handfuls back into the purse. “I mean, I found him like this.”

“He’s dead,” Nick said.

He’d stopped in the doorway, the door still open behind him.

“Yeah, I figured that much out myself.”

Then she paused, looking up from the floor.

“You’re not hotel security.”

“He’s been shot,” Nick said, ignoring her. “Somebody shot him.”

The girl paused. She was reading his face in a way that made him instantly uncomfortable.

“You know him,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

Yes, Nick knew the man in the chair. Not personally, but he knew him. He’d spoken to him on the phone twice from prison, and once since he’d gotten out. The first time to explain that he’d “inherited” the deal from the red-haired kid, and that he needed to push back the meeting a couple months. And then right after he’d gotten his parole.

“Jimmy O’Leary. Jimmy the Lip, they call him. I mean, because of, well, you know.”

The girl then noticed for the first time, the dark discoloration on the man’s lower lip. A birthmark that went from one corner halfway to the other.

“And you’re here to see him,” she said, rising back to her feet. “Well, I think you got here a little late.”