"Did you get it? That's going to be an awesome picture," the young man said. His friends all agreed then backed up.
I bristled and stepped up behind him. "You almost kicked me in the face for a candid shot?"
"Yeah, man, it’s no big thing. I'm a fan," he said.
"No big thing? Here, how about I almost kick you in the face and then we'll see how you feel," I said.
The young man scowled. "What a buzzkill. Can't you just be cool?"
"Cool? I'm not the one assaulting people just for a funny picture." I stepped close enough to smell the alcohol on his breath.
"Back off, man."
"Or what?"
The kid had no choice but to try and shove me. I thought of how Kya was half his weight, but twice as effective. It was like kerosene on the spark. I bumped my chest against his hands and he bounced back. While the young man was off balance, I stepped forward and swept a leg under to trip
him. He fell, a limp swing at my face missing by six inches. I answered with a punch that slammed the carpet next to his head hard enough the repercussion made his skull bounce.
The young man started yelling and flailing his arms more like an overgrown toddler than a man defending himself. I twisted his arms together and pressed them to his chest. With an openhanded knock across the top of his head, I punctuated my point.
"Don't mess with things you can't handle."
A second later, three large men from casino security lifted me off the so-called fan and hauled me outside. I was not allowed back inside.
"Not even if I win the title fight?" I asked.
"Come back then and we'll talk," the largest security officer said. "But if that little display back there was any indication, I'd say you have a ways to go."
I let fly a swarm of obscenities until I could think of something else to do. It would be too easy to go find Talia and even the thought of the wrong woman made me more frustrated. What the hell had Kya Allen done to me?
I dug in my pockets for my phone, but I had left it in my suite before meeting Kya. I did not want Kev interrupting or Aldous scolding me for being out past his arbitrary curfew. All I found was the address Matt Smith had given me.
The private investigator had assured me my sister was in Las Vegas. It could have been a scam; I had been scammed by people helping me locate her before. Only Matt Smith was fully vetted and the man took his job seriously. If he said he had seen her in Vegas, then he had.
"Call a cab for this address?" I asked the uniformed man at the cabstand.
"Sorry, Mr. Morris, I saw you get kicked out. I'm not supposed to help people who get kicked out," he said.
"I'm not asking you to sneak me back in. I'm asking for a cab out past Fremont Street. Come on, don't you think your bosses want me as far from the Tropicana as possible right now? Well, you can make that happen," I said.
He looked doubtful, but flagged down the next cab in line. He gave the cabbie the directions then knocked on the car roof to send us on our way. It took longer than I thought to traverse the tight Vegas traffic. It gave me too much time to think about Kya. Though as the neon signs changed to strip clubs and peep shows, my mind started to shut down completely.
I cringed away from the thought of my sister working there.
The cab driver let me out at the door, but I could not bring myself to go in. I paced up and down the street. Every time I came within twenty feet of the door, some guy handed me promotional cards for the girls inside. When I looked down and saw Dana Maria's face, a red haze filled in the rest of my sight.
"You realize these are people's sisters, mothers, right?" I asked the guy.
"So what? They're getting paid. And, most of them like it," he said.
"Like getting eye-groped from mouth-breathers like you? I don't think so," I objected. I stepped into the guy's face.
He did not want to back down. It was late, but there was still a crowd of people on the street and they slowed down at the hint of a fight. I imagined Kev already on the phone with the Tropicana and decided to step around the guy and go inside.
It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the dim entryway after the blinding lights of Fremont Street. I blinked as a woman came up to me. She stopped with one fist on her hip.
"Honey, you are in the wrong place," she said.