It was clear. She climbed out of the van, grabbed the gym bag and then locked and closed the door. She came around to the driver's side, still holding the gun up and ready. The parking lot was crowded with cars but she saw nobody waiting in any of them or watching from nearby.

She unlocked the driver's door and opened it. Before getting in she ejected the Glock's clip and thumbed out the bullets, letting them drop onto the asphalt. She then ejected the last round from the chamber and threw the gun and the clip onto the flat roof of the Aces and Eights.

She got into the van, started it and headed out of the parking lot. She noticed that the dashboard radio had a hole torn in it. The bullet Paltz had fired had gone through the plywood partition and into the radio. It reminded her of the burning sting on her neck and cheek. She turned the overhead light on and checked herself in the mirror. Her skin was red and blotchy. It looked as if it had a poison ivy rash.

She checked her watch next. Paltz's play had put her behind schedule. She turned off the light and drove toward the neon Strip, the glow of which she could see in the distance.

KOVAL Road ran parallel to Las Vegas Boulevard and offered easy access to the parking garages behind the grand resorts fronting the always crowded boulevard, better known as the Strip. Cassie passed by the Koval Suites, the monthly apartment building where she and Max had once kept a safe house, and turned into the multilevel parking garage attached to the Flamingo Casino and Resort. The casino garage was centrally located to the casinos on the mid-Strip, the key being never to park at the target hotel. She parked Paltz's van on the roof of the eight-story garage because she knew there would be fewer cars up there and a lesser chance that her bound and gagged passenger would be discovered. She skipped the elevator in favor of the stairs down to the walkway leading into the casino.

Carrying her black bag over one shoulder and the gym bag down at her side, she went in the rear entrance of the Flamingo and walked through the casino to the front door, stopping briefly along the way in one of the lobby shops to buy a pack of cigarettes, in case she had to set off a fire alarm, and a souvenir pack of playing cards with which to pass the time while waiting for her mark to fall asleep. Once she stepped out the front doors, she crossed Las Vegas Boulevard and then walked the two blocks to the Cleopatra.

Cassie was carried past the reflecting pools on a moving sidewalk that delivered gamblers to the casino entrance. She noted that there was no automatic ride that took gamblers away from the casino after they were done losing their money.

The casino entry walls were lined with hieroglyphics that showed ancient Egyptian figures in headdresses playing cards and throwing dice. Cassie wondered if there was any historic precedent for these depictions but also realized that it was not a necessity because there was no historical precedent for anything about Las Vegas.

Farther past the drawings, the walls were dedicated to Cleo's Club – photographs of the big slots winners over the past year. Cassie noticed that many of the winners posed in front of their winning machines were smiling in a way that suggested they were hiding missing teeth. She wondered how many of the winners used the money to see a dentist and how many dumped it right back into the machines.

When she finally got to the casino floor, she paused and tried to take it all in without raising her face toward the cameras she knew were overhead. A visceral sense of dread took hold of her heart. Not for the job that was ahead this night. But for the memory of the last night she had been in the Cleopatra Casino. It was the night that all things in her life had changed with the permanency of death.

The casino looked no different to her. The same setup, the same interchangeable gamblers chasing desperate dreams. The cacophony of money and machines and human voices of joy and anguish was almost deafening. She composed herself and pressed on, weaving her way through a football field of crowded slot machines and blue felt gaming tables. She was also aware that every move she made was now being recorded from above and kept her head level, if not slightly turned down. She pulled the wide brim of her hat down tight over her brow. The drugstore glasses completed her camouflage. Her scalp was warm and damp under the wig but she knew she had hours to go before there would be any relief from it.

As she passed through the cards and dice gaming aisles she saw many men and a few women in the blue-blazer uniform of casino security. They seemed to be posted at every column and at the end of every row of dealers' tables. She saw signs leading to the lobby and followed. She glanced upward at one point but without raising her chin.

The ceiling rose in a three-story-high glass atrium above the gaming tables. When it first opened its doors seven years before, the Cleopatra had been called the "Crystal Cathedral of Casinos," a reference to its borrowing of the atrium and other design elements from a California house of God that was prominent on religious television programming. Below the partial glass ceiling iron standards stretched from wall to wall and held up banks of lights and cameras. The Cleopatra was like no other casino in Las Vegas in that it allowed natural light to enter the gaming room. It also made no effort to hide the cameras that watched over everything. Other casinos favored contained environments of artificial lighting and placement of cameras behind mirrored walls and ceiling globes, even though not a single player below doubted that every move that he or she made – as well as the money on the tables – was being closely watched.

Cassie's eyes were drawn upward to the balcony that extended like two joined arms out and above the crowded gaming tables. The hands of the arms formed a cup – the crow's nest from which a craggy-faced man looked down upon the gaming floor. He had white hair and wore a dark suit, not a blue blazer. She guessed he had to be one of the men in charge, maybe the man himself. She couldn't help but wonder if he had stood in the pulpit six years earlier on the last night she had been in the casino.

Once past the tables Cassie got to the lobby and went to the far end of the long desk, where she saw the sign for INVITED GUESTS AND VIPS. There was no one in line. She approached the counter and a woman wearing some sort of white tunic that was only vaguely Egyptian smiled at her.

"Hello," Cassie said. "There is supposed to be a package for me here. The name is Turcello."

"One moment."

The woman stepped away from the counter and retreated to a door behind her. Cassie felt her breathing slow as thief's paranoia rose in her chest. If this was all a setup, then now would be the time for the men in blue blazers to come back through that door to get her.

But it was the woman in the tunic who came back out. She carried a large manila envelope bearing the Cleopatra symbol – a line drawing of a woman's face in profile, wearing a headdress of a rising serpent – and handed it to her with a smile.

"Thank you very much," she said.

"No, thank you," Cassie said.

She carried the envelope without looking at it to a nearby alcove of pay phones. There was no one using any of them. She went to the phone in the corner and huddled close to it, using her back to shield what she was doing from the view of any person or camera.

She tore open the envelope and dumped the contents on the marble counter under the phone. A black pager with a digital readout slid out of the envelope along with an electronic card key, a photograph and a note torn from a Cleopatra scratch pad. She quickly glanced at the pager and hooked it onto her belt. She then slipped the card key into the back pocket of her black jeans and looked at the note. Four lines were printed on it.