Holden tried the roof-access door and got nothing but a dead handle and a keycard reader blinking red an unmarked service entrance that told him plainly it wasn’t for guests.
The Deadline Clock pulsed quietly under his sternum: thirty hours had become twenty-four, and somewhere on the other side of this door, if the keycard trace was right, Doug was still waiting for someone to come get him.
Twenty minutes ago the keycard had been a hunch.
Now it was a location, and a locked door standing between them and it.
“We need to get up there,” Phil said, looking at the locked door like it was personally betraying him.
“I know someone,” Stella said.
She already had her phone out.
Holden watched her work.
Two calls, three minutes, a conversation conducted in the clipped shorthand of people who owed each other and kept receipts.
She hung up and looked at him.
“Ernesto,” she said.
“He runs weekend security for the tower. He’ll give us twenty minutes before the sweep locks it down for the day.”
“What does he want?”
“A favor. Unspecified. He’ll call it in later.”
Holden felt the ledger tilt.
Another line added, another string for someone else to pull.
He nodded.
“Make it happen.”
Stella made it happen.
Ernesto met them in the service corridor behind the Caesars lobby, a compact man in a blazer with tired eyes and the posture of someone who’d seen every kind of mess this city could produce.
He looked at Holden, then at Phil and Stu and Alan, and his expression said he was already regretting this.
“Twenty minutes,” he said, handing Stella an override card.
“The sweep starts at two. If you’re still up there, you’re explaining it to my supervisor.”
“We won’t be,” Stella said.
Ernesto looked at Holden.
“She says you’re good for it.”
“I am.”
“Then we’re square. For now.”
He walked away.
Stella handed Holden the card.
“You owe me,” she said.
“I know.”
“And now you owe Ernesto.”
“I know that too.”
She almost smiled.
“You’re building a very expensive social network, events guy.”
The elevator to the roof required the override.
Holden swiped it, and the panel lit green, and the six of them Holden, Stella, Phil, Stu, Alan, and the baby Alan was still holding because no one had managed to pry it away from him rode up in silence.
The roof was bright and empty and hot.
Holden stepped out into the glare and let his eyes adjust.
The city spread below them, Vegas in full daylight, a grid of heat and glass and money.
The roof itself was maintenance access only, a flat expanse of concrete and HVAC units and ductwork, no rail, no shade.
“Doug!” Phil’s voice carried across the space, too loud, already moving.
Holden walked the perimeter.
Exits first.
Sight lines second.
Places a person could end up unseen.
Alan found him.
“He’s over here!”
Doug was on the far side of an HVAC unit, curled on his side, his jacket balled under his head.
Sunburned, but not badly.
Asleep, or passed out, but breathing.
Alive.
Phil was already there, pulling Doug upright, checking him the way you check someone you thought you’d lost.
Doug blinked. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Groaned.
Squinted at them through the light.
“What,” he said.
“You were on the roof,” Stu said.
“I was on the roof.”
“All night.”
“Apparently.”
“Why were you on the roof.”
“I have no idea.”
Holden looked at the door they’d come through.
Looked at the keycard in his hand.
Looked at Alan, who was holding the baby like it had personally led them here.
The pieces were there.
Someone had brought Doug up here.
Someone with access.
Someone who’d known the rest of them would be too gone to notice.
It would keep.
Right now, Doug needed water and the wedding needed a groom.
“Let’s go,” Holden said.
“We’ve got a wedding.”
They got Doug to his feet.
Got him into the elevator.
Got him water from a vending machine in the service hall.
Doug drank it slowly, his face red from the sun but not blistered, and Holden felt the Deadline Clock ease, just slightly, the pressure dropping from critical to manageable.
Doug looked at him.
“You found me.”
“We found you.”
“No,” Doug said.
“You found me. Nobody else even knew where to look.”
Holden said nothing.
Phil was already spinning it into a story, the rooftop rescue, the way they’d stormed the tower, and Holden let him.
The credit didn’t matter.
Doug knowing mattered.
Stella drove them back to the villa.
Holden sat in the passenger seat, the headache from the Anchor finally fading, the cleanup settling into his chest as a weight he’d carry quietly.
The tiger was handled.
The baby was handled.
Stu’s tooth was handled.
Doug was safe.
The wedding was still possible.
His phone buzzed.
A text, same unknown number as before.
Interesting choice, the roof.
Most people check the hospitals first.
R
Holden stared at it.
Pocketed the phone.
He still didn’t know anyone named R.
Stella caught the look on his face and didn’t buy the calm for a second.
“That’s not your fine face.”
“It’s my fine face. It’s just had a rough morning.”
She almost smiled the real kind, just for a second, before she caught it and put it away.
“You’re racking up a hell of a tab, you know. Ernesto doesn’t forget.”
“I’ll pay it.” The source of this chapter is g.com.
“You always do,” she said.
And then, softer, “That’s the part I’m starting to believe.”
The villa smelled like cleaning solution and regret when they got back.
Someone probably hotel staff bribed into silence had handled the worst of it.
The tiger was gone.
The blood was gone.
What remained was a space that looked like a party had died there, which was close enough to the truth.
Doug sat on the couch, drinking water, his face red but his eyes clear.
He looked at Holden.
“I owe you,” he said.
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“Yeah,” Doug said.
“I do.”
Phil clapped Holden on the shoulder, the gesture warm, the grip just a little too tight.
“Man, I don’t know how you do it, but I’m glad you’re here.”
Holden met his eyes.
Saw the gratitude.
Saw, underneath it, the question Phil wasn’t asking yet.
“Lucky,” Holden said.
“That’s not luck,” Phil said.
“That’s something else.”
The room went quiet.
Stu was staring at his phone.
Alan was trying to convince the baby to eat a piece of toast.
Doug was still looking at Holden like he was trying to solve an equation.
Stella set her bag down.
“I’m billing you for Ernesto,” she said.
“And the override card. And my time. And the part where I now owe a security manager a favor I didn’t owe this morning.”
“Bill me,” Holden said.
“I will.”
She left.
The door closed behind her, and the villa felt smaller without her, which didn’t make sense and also made perfect sense.
Holden sat down.
Let the exhaustion settle.
The window was still tight twenty-two hours, give or take but Doug was here, and whole, and the worst was behind them.
His phone buzzed again.
You’re very good at cleaning up.
I appreciate that.
R
Holden turned the phone off.
Outside, Vegas shimmered in the heat, indifferent and bright, a city built to swallow people and spit out stories.
Holden closed his eyes.
The Anchor had cost him.
The favors had cost him.
The money had cost him.
But Doug was safe.
And that, for now, was enough.
✦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✦
Read more chapters for free at unwrittenrealm.com
✦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✦
TL;DR —
Silver / $6 / 10 ahead
Gold / $9 / 15 ahead
Platinum / $15 / 20 ahead, no weekly wait
That’s it.