Overturned Read online

  “Mom!” I was arguing about getting to leave school? The world had gone mad.

  “Get your things,” she demanded. “We’re going.”

  Principal Flagstaff stood as Mom did. “Mrs. Tate, that’s your decision. Certainly. But isn’t this a bit of an overreaction?”

  “If there’s paperwork, email me. Nikki!”

  I was on my feet, gathering the cards off the desk. Mom left the office.

  “Sorry,” I said to my principal, though I wasn’t sure what I’d apologized for.

  News radio squawked on our way back to the casino, occasionally interrupted by Mom’s mumbling. She wasn’t talking to me. It could be a while before we engaged in anything resembling civil discourse. I’d seen her like this before, most memorably during the early days of Dad’s incarceration, when Andromeda’s had been on the brink. More on the brink. I’d stirred up something she didn’t want me near. It was breaking her.

  “Mom.” I didn’t know how to continue.

  The radio announcer’s voice boomed, “BREAKING NEWS,” followed by the station’s synthesizer theme. “Body discovered in Northeast Las Vegas this morning. Police are reporting that Daniel Bartholomew Harris, a local attorney, was found dead in the predawn hours, the apparent victim of a brutal robbery …”

  “Oh god.”

  Back off or else.

  Not a prank, as my mom said. Not a prank at all.

  Freaked wasn’t the proper term after hearing the news about Harris.

  I sat in Andromeda’s back office, pressing my palms flat on my desk because it was the only way to make them not shake. Mom, more freaked than me, insisted I stay within earshot. From her office, hunched over the phone, she’d break her conversation every few minutes confirming we were okay. Though we weren’t.

  “Nikki?”

  “Still here.” With four of the local news websites open on my monitors, all of them with similar reports. Pictures of Dan Harris from younger, better days.

  Sitting there was torture, but when I broached the possibility of retreating to my room, Mom insisted I stay. She had lunch brought in and put me to work on a few spreadsheets. Anything to keep me near.

  It went on like that for hours.

  Davis: molly told me.

  I held the phone beneath my desk, constantly flicking glances toward Mom’s office.

  Me: molly told everyone.

  Davis: how could someone get to your locker?

  Me: idk. that’s not the worst thing. dan harris is dead.

  A text bubble with animated ellipses appeared while he typed something back. It stayed there a minute. Disappeared. A few seconds and it returned. Vanished again.

  Me: still there?

  Davis: not from natural causes, i take it.

  Me: the news says a “robbery.”

  Davis: i’m worried about you. this is getting way out of control.

  Me: i must be close to something. all this wouldn’t happen if i wasn’t.

  Davis: thus the back off message. this is scary. you SHOULD stop.

  Me: did you get in a lot of trouble?

  Davis: you’re changing the subject. someone else is DEAD, nikki. DEAD.

  Me: mom’s calling me. gotta go.

  She wasn’t, and I didn’t. Needed to think.

  Davis: text me later please. i’m trying to help.

  I stared at the phone a while. Why didn’t it feel that way?

  Mom rounded my cubicle’s corner. I slid the phone into my bag.

  “We’re done in here,” she said. “Come with me.”

  On the gaming floor I examined every patron with new suspicion. Back off or else.

  “I’ve got a meeting with some prospective buyers in a few minutes,” Mom said. “I want you to wait for me upstairs.”

  “Buyers.” She was really going through with this. Andromeda’s wasn’t going to be ours anymore.

  “They haven’t made an offer, but this is a first step. We’ll see.”

  “Buyers,” I said again.

  “Nikki, we haven’t been communicating on good terms in a while. I want to fix that tonight. There’s too much happening to be keeping each other in the dark. I have to do this first, so please, go upstairs.”

  More handling, more treating me like I didn’t halfway run this place. If there was a meeting with buyers, I should’ve been included. “Sure, Mom. Whatever you say.”

  She continued farther onto the floor without me, angling toward a group of four well-heeled Japanese men huddled together near one of the Star Wars–themed digital slot machines, where you dropped tokens through one of the vents in Darth Vader’s faceplate. They weren’t playing. Only observing.

  Mom bowed when they noticed her, and they returned the gesture. They moved in a pack to the Constellation Grill.

  I passed the elevators for the staff entrance into the kitchen. Took a corridor I hadn’t used in far too long, descended stairs into my card room.

  Navigating the dark, I found the breaker box and lit the room, breathed stale air. The card table was as I’d left it, all the folding chairs collapsed and leaning against it. The door leading out to the alley was barred. At the old blackjack table, a change. A folded sweatshirt rested there.

  The hoodie I recognized. Gavin’s. Forgotten the last time we’d all been here.

  The folding was new. I’d been to Gavin’s house. They didn’t fold anything.

  Housekeeping? No. They never came down here. Circling the table for a closer look, I found more strangeness in the floor, out of sight. A cardboard box of files with the lid askew, a half-empty bottle of bourbon, and an iPhone charger dangling from an outlet.

  Dad had been here.

  I forgot about Gavin’s shirt, examining this left-behind nest. Not only was Dad here. He was here often, judging from the bottle.

  My back against the wall, I slid down, sitting as I imagined he did. The bourbon was top-shelf, probably straight from our bar. This space—this nook—felt cramped. Claustrophobic. He’d chosen this over a seat at the poker table that used to belong to him.

  Did we drive you here? Mom and her obvious crush? Me and my anger? Did you get used to being alone, the same way we got used to being without you?

  Taking the lid off the box revealed a yellow folder resting atop the other files. I flipped through. A lot of forms. City records, supply invoices, receipts. Financial relics of fiscal years gone by.

  There was no way to know what Dad ultimately sought in these files where the smudged debits and credits bled into each other. The only significance I saw in any of it was the dates. These were records from the year Andromeda’s Palace opened.

  I rifled through more folders, gawking at the astronomical amounts it took to get the casino up and running. Each subsequent file like time travel, tracking backward from opening day to when the first patch of starry carpet was laid.

  The last batch of folder tabs were marked “mortgage” and “loan docs” and “business plan—final.” I almost ignored them, anticipating more nonsense numbers. The business plan struck my curiosity. How did Dad convince a Las Vegas bank to back his cardplayer paradise?

  It was in a regal red file folder made of fine card stock, more like fabric than paper. Definitely meant to impress whoever got their hands on it.

  Spreading the folder in my lap unveiled an introductory letter I’d never ever read in its entirety. I got stuck on the names above the salutation, written in fancy script:

  Bertram Carlino, Nathaniel Tate & Jonathan Reedy

  Doing Business As the Poseidon Group

  “They were partners!” I slammed the business plan on the table, generating a thunderclap and a jittery start from Mom and her guests. “Not just friends. Partners!”

  Mom recovered fast, plastered on a congenial grin. “Excuse me, gentlemen.”

  She picked it up, touched my shoulder oh so gently, and guided me away.

  Her smile remained fixed, her words oozed anger: “Have you lost your entire mind?”


  “Dad started this place with Mr. Carlino and John Reedy? You didn’t think that was important enough to tell me before?” I jabbed a finger at the folder. “The Poseidon Group? All that construction around town? We’re a part of that?”

  “No,” Mom hissed, “we are not. Not anymore.”

  All the struggles that had blurred together over the years—short payrolls, cutting the hours of Mr. Héctor and workers like him, fears of shutting down. The Poseidon Group was everywhere. Rich and dominant and set to rival the biggest developers in Vegas for the next century. My dad, our family, had a hand in the origins of a rising god.

  But no more.

  Tendrils uncurled and stretched in my head, reaching for answers that felt as close as Mom, yet as distant as the highest peak of the Nysos. My parents’ reaction to Davis, all those Poseidon Group Property pictures in Dad’s phone, the folder and the bourbon and the charger in my card room. Was Dad looking through this stuff on the night he died?

  The Japanese businessmen left their booth, trading anxious, telling looks. Mom spat at me, “Don’t you say a word.” Then, “Gentleman! Would you like more drinks? Please, let the waitress know. Anything you want is on the house.”

  “We are very sorry,” the eldest businessman said, not sounding sorry at all. “We have pressing matters at another property. Your proposal will be taken under consideration. We will be in touch.”

  “But—” They were in motion before Mom finished.

  “Wait here.” Mom chased them.

  Nope. “I’ll see you upstairs.”

  “Nikki!”

  I exited the Grill swiftly, grabbed the first elevator to our floor. Mom’s head whipped between the buyers and me. She quickstepped my way, heels clacking. “Hold it.”

  The elevator doors shut, and I did nothing to stop them. If she couldn’t be open with me, then I wasn’t obeying her. We were going to have this out.

  I prepared for the fight to end all fights. The elevator opened on our floor. I hustled to our room, entering while registering an oddity too late.

  My exterior door was open.

  Inside shadows felt deeper than usual and the temperature was off, like wading into tepid water. Perfect for hiding.

  So occupied with Mom, I let the door close behind me. The lock clacked at the same moment my internal alarms sounded. There was a presence. I wasn’t alone.

  My hand grazed the light switch. A glove clamped painfully over my wrist.

  “Leave it,” the intruder said. “Much more cozy like this.”

  In the dim room, he felt a dozen feet tall with gorilla strength, the power to rip me apart. He exerted grinding pressure on the delicate bones in my hand. The involuntary scream shooting up my throat hit a roadblock when his other gloved hand formed a seal over my mouth.

  “Come on.” He increased the pressure on my arm, using it like a ferryman’s oar to steer me deeper into the room. My mattress caught the back of my knees, forcing them to buckle. He released me and I rocked backward onto my bed.

  Horrors presented themselves. What he might do—what he could do—in this intimate space of mine. I became a pill bug, curling into myself, knees to chest. Prepared to piston my legs at him if he came closer.

  There were no weapons here beyond what might be improvised from disposable nail files or scattered hairpins. I’d fight, though. I told myself that, screamed it inside my head, though the terror kept me from producing actual sound.

  “You need to stop your digging,” he said.

  My muscles unclenched. His words sank in.

  He smacked my foot lightly. “Say you understand.”

  I understood. This was Back Off Or Else, live.

  He pressed, the roughness of his voice ringing false. Exaggerated. “Say ‘I will stop digging into things that aren’t my business.’ I need to know we’re on the same page. Do it before I break your nose.”

  “I will stop digging into things that aren’t my business.”

  “Good. That was easy. Things will stay easy if you mean it. Do you?”

  “I—I do.”

  “You better. For your sake, and your mother’s. Are we clear?”

  “Yes. There’s something you should see first.” I reached for the lamp next to the bed.

  “Careful.” His fingers grazed my shoe.

  “It’s all right.” A switch flip and the room lit. “Behind the drapes, there are photos you should take with you.”

  His black mask swiveled that way, and I quickly took in all that I could despite the sudden brightness stinging my eyes. He wasn’t nearly as big as he’d seemed in shadow, and his excessive dark clothing had a slimming effect. The black denim pants, the leather jacket over his navy-blue turtleneck. A split in the drapes gave a partial view of the photos affixed to the glass, proof that I wasn’t lying. When he turned and crossed to the window, a slash of color broke his ninja motif. The yellow lining inside his jacket was sunshine bright.

  He plucked at the edge of my drapes and dragged one hanging swath aside. Air puffed the mouth of his mask when he cursed in his real voice, the exaggerated gruffness forgotten.

  I’d heard that voice before. Yesterday. At the Carlino’s home, when he returned my bag.

  Delano.

  Photos of the Nysos, each shot with painstaking detail, were taped to the glass in neat chronological rows. My intimidator was drawn by the meticulous nature of it all. His focus on me broken, giving me the only chance I had.

  I ran.

  The door leading into the hallway was not an option. It opened into my room and would cost me precious seconds if I stopped to pull it. I’d learned that playing hide-and-seek with Molly as a kid. The game I was in now would come with a much harsher lesson if I lost.

  Thanks to Mom, I had another play.

  When she removed the locks from my interior door, I never bothered closing it. Now the only barrier between mine and Mom’s side of the suite was her interior door. I threw all my weight at it.

  Please don’t be locked. Please don’t be locked.

  I hit the door without bracing myself, consigned to break my arm and/or dislocate my shoulder if she’d engaged her dead bolt.

  The door gave, swinging away as I flung myself into Mom’s room, my unused key card still in hand.

  “Hey!” the intruder yelled.

  Spinning, I slammed the door behind me, turning the lock in one smooth motion.

  The door rattled in its frame as the man collided with it. I didn’t wait to see how long it held. I ran again, out of the room, praying that lock bought me the time I needed.

  I wouldn’t make the elevator and wasn’t going to try. But I had options. Seven, to be exact.

  The room across from Mom’s had no Do Not Disturb placard dangling from the knob; it would do. I keyed in and closed it softly, bracing it with my back.

  The guest space I’d infiltrated was “housekeeping neat.” The bed was unmade. Soggy towels fragrant with soap and shampoo made a damp mound on the bathroom floor. I faced the door on tiptoes so I could peer through the peephole.

  He emerged from my room, his neck twisting back and forth as he stalked the corridor. Seeing no motion, he went for the exterior door on Mom’s side of the suite, thinking I was still inside. He hammered the door with his fist twice before abandoning the tactic and lifting his knee to piston a kick at the lock plate.

  A clear ding, louder than my slamming pulse, signaled the opening elevator. How long since I’d come up here? A minute? Two? Long enough for Mom to catch a car?

  The masked man turned that way.

  “Hey!” A man’s voice shouting. “Get away from that door.”

  My intruder did a quick about-face, ran. Seconds later another sprinter whirred by. Behind him, my mom, yelling, “Nikki!”

  In a frantic attempt to gain entrance to the room, to me, she fumbled her key card. I popped from my hiding place across the hall. “Mom.”

  She spun and threw her arms around me protectively. Tomás continued chas
ing the intruder. I was glad to see him for the first time in ever. He popped into the stairwell for a second, then returned to the corridor, grim-faced.

  “He’s gone,” Tomás said, lifting his windbreaker sleeve to his mouth like he used to, before remembering he was no longer wired to the rest of the security team. He motioned with his chin. “Open the door so I can call it in.”

  Mom obliged, and we entered the suite together, all three of us—also a first. Tomás got on the phone. “Barry, it’s me. Look, we got a trespasser in the stairwell, likely trying to get out of the hotel. Get someone by the doors and elevators. He’s approximately six two, in all black, masked, but I’d bet he’s lost that by now.”

  Something occurred to me, the bright liner fabric. “He might have on yellow. His jacket might be”—I struggled for the word—“reversible.”

  Tomás side-eyed me but didn’t question it. “Could be wearing a black or yellow top. Call me in the Tate residence when you get him. Do not let him slip through …”

  Rattling off more instructions to his former teammates, Tomás quarterbacked the situation deftly, as he’d always done. Mom sat me down on her bed, examining me for knife wounds, bullet holes, and claw marks. “Baby, are you okay? Tell me what happened.” Her patting and rubbing was a comfort I’d forgotten, triggering the shakes as she massaged away my adrenaline rush.

  I told. All of it. When I recited the stop digging into things that aren’t your business part and said I was certain Big Bert’s man Delano was the one relaying the message, Tomás shot Mom a look.

  “We gotta call this in, Gwen,” he said. “It’s gone too far now.”

  “What’s gone too far?” I asked.

  Mom ignored me. “I know, I know. But how much do we say?”

  “As much as we have to. As little as we can.”

  Stiff nods from Mom. “Make the call.”

  On his cell that time, he drifted to the window, and by the way he talked, the phrases he used, I knew he was on the phone with police.

  “Nikki,” Mom said.