I looked up and realized the room had grown brighter. I glanced at the clock. It was 6:38 a.m.; I’d been working for almost five hours straight.
I stood, stretched my cramped muscles, and started up the in-room coffee maker. After brushing my teeth, I wandered out to the walkway to raid the vending machines for breakfast. There was a decent view from the second story, and dawn was breaking over the Strip. To the south, the sun reflected off the windows of the Del Oro hotel in a cascade of molten gold. The air smelled like dust and cigarettes. It felt incredible to be here, to be home.
When I returned to the room bearing three individually wrapped strawberry Pop-Tarts, Dad was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking exhausted.
“Morning,” I said, tossing his breakfast onto the comforter.
He glanced at it, then at Ripley, still passed out on top of the undisturbed bedspread.
“You didn’t sleep?”
“Just woke up early,” I lied, biting into my first Pop-Tart and savoring the sweet rush of high-fructose corn syrup. “I want to show you something.”
I poured us each a paper cup of hot brown water and sat down on the desk chair facing him. I flipped a few pages in his journal and handed it over. He frowned, took a sip of coffee, turned the page. After a minute, he looked up at me, blinking.
“This is . . . How . . . ?” He flipped back a page, reread what I had written, then stood up and began to pace. “Vanish the truck,” he said, and stopped in his tracks.
“There you are, struggling to free yourself from the ropes.” I stood and gestured for effect. “The curtain drops. When it comes back up, you’re still in the tank—but the truck is gone.”
“It could work,” he said.
“I know. All we need is a fast winch, and the Dolby Theatre has one.”
“This could really work.”
“I know.”
He sat on the edge of the bed. “You did all this last night?”
I nodded.
Dad looked at my sketches again, shook his head, and laughed. “Ellie, this is brilliant.”
I smiled. Then he frowned slightly and closed the journal.
“What?” I said.
“It’s an ingenious design,” he said. “But without the props . . .”
“We’ll get them.”
“How?” he asked, raising his voice. Ripley stirred on his bed, and Dad continued more softly. “We don’t have anything to offer Higgins that he can’t already buy.”
I shrugged. “‘An opportunity will present itself.’ Isn’t that what you always say?”
CHAPTER 18
JIF HIGGINS LIVED WAY THE hell out west on Lake Mead Boulevard in an affluent suburb of Las Vegas called Summerlin. It was basically a giant golf course dotted with Costcos and McMansions—but Higgins’s house looked more like a cult compound. Slump-stone walls obscured most of the property, and the barrier on the street-facing side was an elaborate wrought-iron fence with a topiary that must have cost the GDP of a small nation to irrigate.
As the three of us approached the house, Ripley turned to me and said in a half whisper, “Are you sure you want me here? Maybe I should’ve stayed back at the motel.”
“You’re great with words,” I said. “You might come in handy.” Ripley seemed pleased; Dad did not.
When we reached the gate, I pressed the buzzer, and a voice came over the talk box.
“Who is it?”
I was surprised to recognize Higgins’s low, nasal voice; I had expected a butler or a housekeeper or something.
“It’s Ellie Dante,” I replied.
“Oh, yeah. That’s today,” Higgins said. “How do I know you’re really Dante’s daughter?”
There was a camera mounted above the talk box. I looked directly into it.
“Don’t take my word for it.” I stepped aside and motioned for Dad to come forward.
“That old guy is the Uncanny Dante? No fucking way.”
Dad stiffened.
“Who’s the other kid?” Higgins asked.
“He’s our consultant,” I replied.
For ten seconds, he said nothing. Then the talk box buzzed and the gate rolled open.
Ripley let out a low whistle as we walked side by side up the cobblestone driveway.
“This place looks like the lair of a millennial James Bond villain.”
I snorted. Dad shot us a warning look. We ascended three steps, and I smashed a lion’s head knocker against a thick oak door. It opened almost at once.
Higgins stood on the threshold, spindly limbs hanging from a six-foot frame. He was dressed like a teenage boy: gray skull T-shirt covering his beer belly, black skinny jeans. I had expected an older guy, but there wasn’t a hint of gray in his sandy hair, and