Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

ounce. The thought of what all that food would do to her own hips made Risa cringe.
    “Okay,” Niall said, stepping back from her. “She’s ready. Remember, to trigger the stereo camera you bite down on the gold cap we put on your left back molar. A short bite for one low-resolution frame. Continued pressure for higher resolution. You can store two hundred frames at low resolution. Twenty at highest. How does it feel?”
    She plucked at the loose dark shirt and black jeans she was wearing. Beneath them her black “underwear” nibbled and pinched. “Fits better than the body armor you found for me. Whoever wore this last was at least two sizes smaller in the butt.”
    “Beggars can’t be choosers. Is the trigger loose on your tooth?”
    Risa delicately tongued the cap. She hadn’t been able to stop fiddling with it since he had tapped it into place a few minutes ago. Like a sore tooth, it was irresistible. “No. It just feels strange.”
    “How about the earpieces on the glasses? Do they pinch or give you a headache?”
    “No pinching yet. Headache? Every time I look down, why?”
    “Don’t look down,” Dana and Niall said together. Then Niall continued alone, “Think of them as reading glasses. The focal length is approximately your reading distance. When an object is in focus for you through the glasses, it’s in focus for the camera.”
    “Keep that in mind,” Dana said, licking her dessert fork. “If things go to shit tonight, whatever bytes are stored in the earpieces will be our only record of some internationally important artifacts.”
    Before Risa could answer, the phone rang. She reached for it.
    Shane was quicker. He didn’t lift the receiver. He didn’t let her lift it.
    “If I was the one going in alone with two million dollars in cash, how would you feel about it?” he asked.
    Ring.
    Her eyelids flickered. “At least as mad as you are right now.”
    Ring.
    “Even though you know I can take care of myself with or without a gun?”
    Ring.
    “That’s being reasonable,” she said in a low voice. “Fear isn’t reasonable.”
    He lifted the receiver and held it out to her.
    “Hello?” Risa said, grabbing the phone.
    “What the hell took you so long, baby-chick?”
    “I was counting money.”
    Cherelle laughed. “Two million?
    “Yes. Where and when?”
    “Fifteen minutes. The Midas Motel.”
    Shane started for the door.
    “The Midas Motel?” Risa looked at Dana and followed orders: stall. “Never heard of it. Where is it?”
    Niall barely made it to the front door before it slammed in his face.
    Dana didn’t waste time yelling about what she couldn’t change. She just flipped over the shopping list and started writing down the instructions as Risa unhurriedly repeated them aloud.
    “Okay,” Risa said. “I’m going to read the instructions back to you just to be sure.” Slowly she read off the sheet that Dana handed over. “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
    “Alone,” Cherelle said.
    Risa thought of Shane and wondered if Niall would be able to keep him from kicking down Cherelle’s door. “I don’t like that part of it.”
    “Tough shit. Don’t fuck with me on this one. I’ve been waiting all my life for this break. Ain’t nothing gonna get in my way. Are you hearing me, baby-chick?”
    “Yes.”
    She should have saved her breath. Cherelle had already hung up.

Chapter 66
    Las Vegas
    November 5
    Evening
    S ocks flipped through the motel’s piped-in channels twice before he switched back over to the commercial offerings. He was tired of waiting for the call, but he wasn’t nearly as head-banging fed up with life as he had been on his uncle’s boring houseboat tied to one of Lake Mead’s boring docks under the boring winter sun. After the first few hours even the collection of porn tapes he’d discovered made him yawn.
    When the call had come telling Socks to get back to Vegas and check in to the Lucky Sun motel under the name of Ed Hutch, he hadn’t asked any questions. He just climbed into a rental car, wished it was his screaming purple baby, and headed for Vegas. Now he was waiting again, bored again. If it hadn’t been for the promise of money—and a dead bitch—on the other end of the waiting, he would have hauled his ass out of the motel and gone for some long-overdue raving around town.
    But the chance to make a bundle of money while getting even with Cherelle was just too good to pass up. The cocaine would wait. The pussy would wait.