my hands up and considered knocking him over with a gust of wind, but the steady stare of the gun made me abandon the idea. He looked like a guy who could shoot straight through a hurricane, if necessary.
He gestured silently. Sign language for get your ass out here. I shuffled cautiously out, hugged the wall, and stared at the gun some more. It was an automatic, I knew that much. It looked black, angular, and deadly efficient.
"You Joanne Baldwin?" he asked me. He had a nothing kind of a voice, not deep, not high, not impressive. A trace of a West Coast drawl, maybe. I nodded. I couldn't seem to take my hand away from my aching throat. "Good," he said. "You got the bottle?"
I shook my head and coughed. My lungs throbbed.
The gunman reached over and shut the door. "Poison gas, right?" he asked. "Damn. Guess it's not a good idea to go in there and toss the room just now."
I shook my head. He holstered the gun and held out his hand, and just like that, he came into focus for me. A wallpaper kind of guy with black hair, a clever face, and light brown eyes. Two-day growth of beard.
"Nice to meet you. My name's Quinn," he said. "I'm here to rescue you."
FIVE
Chill Factor
Some rescue.
When it became clear I wasn't the damsel in distress-or at least not the kind Quinn could save me from with his heroic.45-he grabbed me by the elbow and hustled me down the hall, into the elevator, and out through the casino in record time.
I was getting tired of being hustled.
As we stepped outside onto the wide portico, with its huge sweep of overhang and constant stream of limos and taxis dropping off money, I yanked myself loose and stepped back, hands in fists at my sides. At last. Out in the open-more or less-and breathing natural air.
"Hey!" I snarled. Quinn's eyebrows did a funny little up-and-down jerk, and then his face went reflectively impassive. "Pal! Back off, will you? I don't need your damn help! I had things under control!"
"Yeah, it really looked like it," Quinn said. He calmly reached into his pocket and took out the gun again, in full view of the uniformed doormen. One of them looked alarmed and reached for a phone; Quinn also moved his coat and revealed an official-looking gold badge in a black holder snapped over his belt.
Quinn was a cop.
"Let's take a drive, sunshine," he told me, and steered me out into a holding pen reserved for taxis and cars for hire. A dark brown Ford Taurus sat among them, shiny as a roach, and Quinn popped open doors and put me in like a criminal with a hand on my head, into the backseat. I immediately tried the door, but of course it didn't open. Childproof locks had a lot to answer for.
Quinn's driver's-side door opened, and he bent over to fix me with a look out of those light toffee-brown eyes. "Play nice," he said. "Don't make me cuff you."
I put my hands pointedly in my lap. The car's upholstery groaned slightly as he got in, and then the engine fired and we were moving down the long driveway into blinding Las Vegas sun, heading for a huge sign that spelled out the current Bellagio attractions in glowing starlike lights.
"I'm under arrest?" I asked. "What's the charge?"
"Criminal stupidity," Quinn said.
"And you're full of shit. I told you, I didn't need rescuing, and if I'm not under arrest, Detective Quinn-"
"Consider yourself a material witness in an ongoing investigation."
"An investigation of what, exactly?"
He took a right turn onto Flamingo Road, negotiated with a Lexus for a lane change, and headed the car down Las Vegas Boulevard. "Murder," he said. "I had a guy pitched out of that window about a week ago, you know. Messed up my sidewalk something terrible. I guess you know that nobody else can see those knuckleheads up there. You must be a Warden, right? Wardens can see them."
Now that the panic was starting to subside, I felt tired and achy. Groggy with leftover adrenaline. "And you? You're a Warden?"
He held up his right hand. I made a pass in the air, concentrated, and saw the telltale sparkle of wards reflected on his skin. Quinn's aetheric tattoo was an ankh, the Egyptian symbol for life. Which didn't match the stylized sunburst I'd expected to see.
"Not a Warden. What the hell are you?"
"Need to know, sunshine."
"As in, I don't need