Read Online Nobody Dies in a Casino by Marlys Millhiser - Free Book Online

the van now,” Evan said, just as happy.
    Distant headlights bobbed toward them.
    â€œGod, let’s pray that’s Toby.” Caryl sketched a sign of the cross between her nipples.
    â€œWomen are so damned negative,” Evan told Mel. “Why is that?”
    â€œDamned if I know. But here’s the cameras and Charlie’s purse. Better get them and our asses out of here. Our trackers have to have seen this fire by now.”
    â€œWhat if everything doesn’t burn?” Caryl insisted as the men rushed her and Charlie toward the approaching lights.
    â€œToo late to worry it now. Life’s a gamble, right?” Evan did his victory whoop again.
    Charlie was glad to be alive. But she could do without that whoop.
    *   *   *
    â€œSee how easy conspiracy is to manufacture, Charlie?” Evan bit into his Big Mac while she stuffed a bite of Ronald’s Filet-o-fish into her mouth. The van sat in a far corner of a McDonald’s parking lot.
    The ride had seemed forever. The driver, Toby, remained cheerful even though Mel and Evan teased him endlessly about his lowly gofer status and about all his uncles. He’d dowsed the headlights, but the farther they got from the burning plane, the more the starry night illuminated the landscape around them. And probably them to anyone looking for them.
    â€œHow did you manufacture the orange light?” Charlie asked. That had impressed her.
    â€œWhat orange light? Anybody else see an orange light?”
    â€œStop making fun of me, Evan.”
    â€œI don’t know about any orange light. I do think you got a little overexcited.”
    â€œOverexcited, hell—she blacked out on us,” Mel said.
    â€œI saw an orange light,” Charlie insisted.
    â€œShe’s remembering the plane burning.”
    â€œThat didn’t look orange to me.”
    â€œDon’t let these jerks get to you.” Toby had a lopsided grin and dark curly hair cut short in back and on the sides, but curls tumbled down over his forehead. He sucked the last of his cola through the straw and started up the van.
    â€œHey, Tobias,” Mel said, “what’s your uncle Louie going to say about tonight?”
    â€œWhy should he even know? He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
    â€œYou tell him everything, don’t you?” Evan did his boisterous guy laugh.
    â€œIs he in for a surprise tonight.” Mel joined his boss in the hilarity. “Isn’t that right, Charlie?”
    â€œPlanes can’t just disappear.” Charlie didn’t know what was going on, but she didn’t find the whole thing a bit funny. “They’ll have search planes out looking for it when it doesn’t come back.”
    â€œAll records have mysteriously disappeared, right, Toby? And all records of my ownership too. Damnedest thing.”
    Toby apparently had this friend who worked at the little airstrip in North Vegas.
    â€œYeah, our gofer here’s got friends in high places and too many uncles.”
    â€œWhat I got, Goodall, is contacts. You’re just envious.”
    â€œClear as the skies were out there, some airliner will spot that fire, and radio it in,” Charlie persisted. She’d gotten involved in real trouble here. “You can’t walk off and leave a whole plane. They’ll find some identifying thing in the ashes, some metal gadget that won’t burn. And they’ll come after you, Evan. Why burn your own plane? Why not just fly off with it?”
    â€œBecause then they’d have had time to scramble and blow us out of the air. This way, they know where the plane is and all trace of any of us better be burned off what’s left of it.”
    â€œWhy are you so hot to involve me in this?”
    â€œI wanted your take, as a conspiracy freak, on Groom Lake. And I wanted you to be able to tell Mitch Hilsten what you saw firsthand. Simple,