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Authors: Heather Graham
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tables or in slot machines in a matter of minutes, it was still small change.
The audience ranged from age two up to twenty-one. The older kids were usually there because they had younger siblings—and because eighteen-to twenty-one-year-olds still couldn’t legally step out onto on the casino floor or drink.
The show itself was mostly improvisational banterpunctuated by carefully choreographed dance numbers. The cast played pirates who had somehow wound up stuck on Lake Mead, and they sang traditional pirate songs as they searched for treasure.
It was when the kids were shouting, trying to point out to her rather ditsy pirate queen that the treasure chest was right beneath her nose, and she was spinning around searching, that she saw him.
He was standing just outside the room, leaning against a wall painted with a mural of the high seas and pirate ships flying the Jolly Roger, and he was staring through the glass wall that surrounded the theater space, watching her. He was wearing a suit, and he somehow managed to look both real and not real…
He wasn’t even a foot away from Grant Willow, one of the four security men—all of them highly skilled but able to relate to the kids without intimidating them—who took turns standing watch in the vestibule, and he seemed totally oblivious to the other man.
She knew the watcher’s face. She had stared at that face in the most uncomfortable circumstances imaginable. He couldn’t possibly be there—and yet he was.
She blinked.
And then he wasn’t.
She must have come to a dead halt, stunned, because Aaron Beaton, playing the role of Captain Gray-specked Blackbeard, started prompting her. “Bonny Anne, Bonny Anne, have ye found it? Have ye found me treasure?”
She stared at him without any idea how to respond as her blood grew cold.
He hadn’t been real.
She had simply conjured him up in her mind’s eye.
Or he had been real, just someone else. Someone who only looked like a dead man.
After all, a man had died on top of her last night; she had a right to be traumatized. To be seeing things. There was nothing odd about it at all.
“Bonny Anne?” Aaron said sharply.
“ Your treasure? My treasure!” she insisted, dragging herself back into character.
Her declaration started a mock battle that was really a carefully choreographed dance piece. She battled gamely, whirled and jumped, then looked back to the doorway and almost missed a beat.
He was back.
And he was watching her with huge eyes and an expression filled with both tragedy and remorse.
Since the promo poster Dillon had seen the night before pictured Jessy Sparhawk, it was a reasonable assumption that if he headed to the Big Easy she was likely to be working.
She was.
The pirate party was scheduled daily from one to six, giving the parents a full afternoon of worry-free gambling. Dillon wondered how many of them forgot to come back at closing time, but he assumed the casino had a plan for dealing with that.
The theater was surrounded by glass walls, and the outer vestibule was decorated with pirate paraphernalia and wall paintings. Inside the room, the stage held animpressive pirate ship that seemed to float above shimmering blue water, an effect caused by lighting under a glass stage floor. There were interactive areas for the kids, and each seating section sported a different-colored pirate flag, dividing the kids into teams so they could root for their color-matched “champions” onstage. There were huge treasure chests around the room that held soda, candy and chips, along with healthier soy snacks and natural iced teas. It was a top-quality production, designed to appeal to kids of all ages—along with the occasional adult he saw in the audience. He noted that the smaller children were together in one area, and there seemed to be at least three employees wearing pirate-themed casino uniforms to attend to every nine or ten children.
Onstage, the pirates were going at it.
He
The audience ranged from age two up to twenty-one. The older kids were usually there because they had younger siblings—and because eighteen-to twenty-one-year-olds still couldn’t legally step out onto on the casino floor or drink.
The show itself was mostly improvisational banterpunctuated by carefully choreographed dance numbers. The cast played pirates who had somehow wound up stuck on Lake Mead, and they sang traditional pirate songs as they searched for treasure.
It was when the kids were shouting, trying to point out to her rather ditsy pirate queen that the treasure chest was right beneath her nose, and she was spinning around searching, that she saw him.
He was standing just outside the room, leaning against a wall painted with a mural of the high seas and pirate ships flying the Jolly Roger, and he was staring through the glass wall that surrounded the theater space, watching her. He was wearing a suit, and he somehow managed to look both real and not real…
He wasn’t even a foot away from Grant Willow, one of the four security men—all of them highly skilled but able to relate to the kids without intimidating them—who took turns standing watch in the vestibule, and he seemed totally oblivious to the other man.
She knew the watcher’s face. She had stared at that face in the most uncomfortable circumstances imaginable. He couldn’t possibly be there—and yet he was.
She blinked.
And then he wasn’t.
She must have come to a dead halt, stunned, because Aaron Beaton, playing the role of Captain Gray-specked Blackbeard, started prompting her. “Bonny Anne, Bonny Anne, have ye found it? Have ye found me treasure?”
She stared at him without any idea how to respond as her blood grew cold.
He hadn’t been real.
She had simply conjured him up in her mind’s eye.
Or he had been real, just someone else. Someone who only looked like a dead man.
After all, a man had died on top of her last night; she had a right to be traumatized. To be seeing things. There was nothing odd about it at all.
“Bonny Anne?” Aaron said sharply.
“ Your treasure? My treasure!” she insisted, dragging herself back into character.
Her declaration started a mock battle that was really a carefully choreographed dance piece. She battled gamely, whirled and jumped, then looked back to the doorway and almost missed a beat.
He was back.
And he was watching her with huge eyes and an expression filled with both tragedy and remorse.
Since the promo poster Dillon had seen the night before pictured Jessy Sparhawk, it was a reasonable assumption that if he headed to the Big Easy she was likely to be working.
She was.
The pirate party was scheduled daily from one to six, giving the parents a full afternoon of worry-free gambling. Dillon wondered how many of them forgot to come back at closing time, but he assumed the casino had a plan for dealing with that.
The theater was surrounded by glass walls, and the outer vestibule was decorated with pirate paraphernalia and wall paintings. Inside the room, the stage held animpressive pirate ship that seemed to float above shimmering blue water, an effect caused by lighting under a glass stage floor. There were interactive areas for the kids, and each seating section sported a different-colored pirate flag, dividing the kids into teams so they could root for their color-matched “champions” onstage. There were huge treasure chests around the room that held soda, candy and chips, along with healthier soy snacks and natural iced teas. It was a top-quality production, designed to appeal to kids of all ages—along with the occasional adult he saw in the audience. He noted that the smaller children were together in one area, and there seemed to be at least three employees wearing pirate-themed casino uniforms to attend to every nine or ten children.
Onstage, the pirates were going at it.
He
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