It was like eating in a library—hushed and reverent—but the food was out of this world. Letty wouldn't drink but insisted Christian have the wine flight. She had been worried going in that the conversation would be heavy, but they found common ground.

Politics.

Children.

Movies.

Letty sat on a velvet couch, propped up with pillows. Rich royal purple drapes everywhere she looked. Ivy walls. Candlelight.

She had the best lamb she'd ever tasted. Must've been fed gold flakes and the milk of the gods.

The bread cart was legendary.

Like baked clouds.

Everything plated as beautifully as jewelry. The artistic detail more precise than coinage.

Over espressos, Christian said, "I hope that whatever has really brought you to Vegas won't keep you from seeing your son again."

"It's a risk. But I just have this fear that if I were to walk away and drive up to Oregon to be with my son, that within a few months, I'd be broke. Living out of a motel. Strung out. Maybe dead."

"Sounds like your business here could produce the same end result."

"Yeah, but at least I wouldn't be doing it to myself. Truth is, I think about dying all the time. I think about my son finding out. And of all the possible scenarios, Jacob hearing that mommy was found OD'd and decomposing in a motel, is the worst."

"So you are back in the game."

"Are you judging me?"

"No."

"Look, it fills this hole in my soul that I used to throw drugs at."

"Your son doesn't fill it?"

"Only part way."

"So you're saying it's either crime or drugs for you. Can't live without one or the other."

"If I take drugs I will definitely die. If I... ..."

He finished her sentence: "Steal?"

"Then I'll only maybe die. I'm fighting for my life here, Christian."

"And this thing—it's tonight?"

"Yeah."

"Are you afraid?" he asked.

"Of course."

"And do you find fear to be a help or a hindrance?"

"It helps. For sure."

"How so?"

"It keeps me uncomfortable and sharp. Heightens my senses."

"And you have no doubts about going through with it?"

"Jobs like this—they're the only time I don't think about using. You helped me to see that. You haven't asked for any details," Letty said. "Thank you."

"And you haven't asked me if I'm going through with my plans tonight. Back at you."

"Are you?"

"What exactly are you doing?"

They laughed.

"Sounds like a big night for both of us," he said. "The suicide and the thief."

"What would it take?" she asked, "for you to keep on keeping on?"

"It's funny. That's all I've been asking myself lately."

"And?"

"I don't know. Some new experience maybe? Something that made me feel like a different person. Like I was living a different life."

"I hope you find it."

# # #

They rode back in the limo.

It was ten o'clock. She could feel the job looming, but she pushed it out of her mind just a little while longer.

She looked up at Christian as they passed Paris Las Vegas. All of the lights and the neon playing across his face like an ecstasy dream.

Then they were parked out front at the Palazzo and the driver was coming around to get their door.

They embraced in the lobby.

Christian said, "Take care of yourself, Letty."

And she said, "You too. Thanks for everything."

Neither asked the other to reconsider.

Neither said goodbye like how the moment called for it. Like goodbye forever.

The elevator ride up to her room was the only window in which she allowed herself to cry.

15

Room 968 at the Wynn looked like a construction site.

Between the end of the bed and the mini-bar, a folding ladder stood in a pile of sawdust and plaster dust. A man high up the rungs was waist-deep in the ceiling, a large segment of which lay in pieces on the floor.

Letty locked the door after her and made her way inside.

Detected a muffled hum—the work of a quiet motor.

Dust rained down out of the hole in the ceiling.

She spotted a large black duffel bag in the corner, bulging.

Unzipped it.

Zip-ties.

Kevlar vests.

Face masks.

Ball gags.

Shotguns.

"What's this, Ize?" she said, lifting a semi-auto tactical shotgun.

"S'all good," he said.

"How exactly is this all good? Aside from the fact that you said 'no guns,' you fire off one shell and you'll wake the entire Strip."

"We won't be firing any shells."

"How's that?"

"Keep digging."

She thrust her hand deeper into the duffel until her fingers grasped a cartridge the size of a twelve-gauge shotgun shell. She lifted out a clear capsule packed with copper wiring and a four-pronged electrode. TASER XREP had been engraved into the plastic.

"What is this?" she asked.

"Nasty is what that is. It's a taser on steroids. Fires out of a shotgun and delivers debilitating pain for up to twenty seconds. I let Jerrod pop me with one. Standard Taser ain't no thing, but I'd hate to meet a man that shell can't drop."

"It's not lethal?"

"Nah. Only makes you wish you were dead."

Over by the window, Jerrod was cranking down on a clamp that held a large suction cup to the glass.

Isaiah knelt over an REI store's worth of climbing equipment, just the sight of which tightened Letty's stomach. He was in the process of outfitting each harness with a locking carabiner and an ATC belay device.

She stepped over a neat coil of climbing rope.

Ventured a glance out the window.

The view was east over the lighted pools and a maze of lower rooftops dotted with AC units. Beyond it all, a golf course shone green in the night.

"It's just seventy feet down to the rooftop below," Isaiah said.

"That's supposed to make me feel better?"

He dropped the harness he'd been working with and rose to his feet.

Tapped the glass.

"Once we get down there, we gotta make it across the convention center roof. Mark will be waiting for us with the van at the top of the parking deck."

Letty stared at a tower of empty duffel bags in the corner.

"Lot of bags."

"Lot of cash."

"We going to be able to carry it all out?"

"It's a concern—our abundance of riches."

Jerrod said, "Should I start scoring this glass?"

"Yeah, get that shit done." Isaiah lifted one of the duffels. "Assuming the denominations are high, best case scenario, we fit about four mil into each bag."

Letty watched as Jerrod applied cutting fluid to a wide circle.

Using a Bohle tool kit, he carefully scored a circle with a four-foot diameter into the glass.

"How many pounds we talking?" Letty asked.

"Twenty-two pounds per million dollars."

"That's eighty-eight pounds per bag. I can't carry that."

"Nobody expecting you to. That's all on me and my badass friends. If the haul comes in at thirty-five or thirty-six, that's nine bags. Three trips across the convention center rooftop."

"That's a helluva lot of time humping back and forth out in the open."

"Well aware."

"Lot of time for things to fall apart."

"I ever say this would be easy-peasy?"