“Is your friend gone?” the rider asks, as Brian drives off.
Marty nods.
“I need your radio.”
Marty hands it over and the man—whom the FBI will designate as Rider 1—tucks the earpiece up into his helmet, switches over to the channel monitored by Wynn security, and calls in a brawl outside the Margeaux Ballroom, at the opposite end of the property, eight minutes away on foot. Rider 1 asks all guards to respond.
“Hands,” he says to Marty.
A thick zip tie binds Marty’s wrists to the valet stand. Rider 1 opens one of six tall doors to the Esplanade and inserts a locking steel wedge above the bottom hinge. Heads turn as dry heat and car exhaust pour into the perfumed resort. Marty is saying an urgent prayer for all the folks inside when a second bike rips through the arrivals area and stops behind the first. Rider 1 lays a hand on Marty’s shoulder.
“If this gets called in from out here, by you or anybody else, I’m coming back to put a bullet in your head. Okay?”
Marty nods.
Rider 1 saddles up and the bikes roll through the open door, engines throbbing in low gear.
*
IN THE Wynn’s security command center, three guards scan the ballroom feeds for the reported brawl, ignoring camera 17, which shows two motorcycles moving slowly down the Esplanade, past carousel horses covered in flowers and through a grove of bare trees wrapped in strings of lights. Guests stop and turn; parents hurry children into stores. A knot of college kids whip out their phones and snap pictures while two New York publicists guess that this is a PR stunt, some kind of viral marketing campaign in which the whimsical, colorful world of the Wynn is thrown into sharp relief by racing bikes and riders in black leather. No one dials 911.
*
JEREMY DUNCAN has always been a little different. Tall for a fifth-grader, he walks with shoulders hunched and eyes fixed through thick glasses on his Velcro sneakers, which his mother buys him to assuage a crippling fear that his shoelaces will come undone at the worst possible moment. Jeremy loved fire trucks until he discovered that their job is to extinguish fires, not to start them. These days he’s into motorcycles, and spends hours clicking through old superbike races on YouTube. He loves watching a pack of riders fly into a turn and lay their bikes down so far that their knees scrape the track. Jeremy loves motorcycles. He’s also terrified of them. When his father lifted him onto a Vespa parked outside their local Safeway, Jeremy jumped off so fast that he cut his elbow and ripped his favorite sweatpants with the blue stripes down the sides.
The Duncan family is heading to an early dinner at the Wynn Buffet when engine noise becomes audible over the Esplanade’s smooth jazz soundtrack. Jeremy lights up at the sound. His dad says motorcycles aren’t allowed inside, but Jeremy knows an exposed inline four-cylinder engine when he hears one. His mom says he can run ahead and see, but just around the corner and no farther, which is fine with Jeremy. Around the corner is exactly where the sound is coming from. As Jeremy vanishes into the crowd, Andrea Duncan puts a hand on her husband’s arm.
“Kyle,” she says, “why is everyone running this way?”
*
CYNTHIA IS showing Anna a pale pink princess-cut stone when two motorcycles pull up outside Graff. The men on back dismount, remove their packs, and shift their automatic weapons to their hips. In comes Rider 1, telling everyone to put their hands up and lie facedown on the floor. The voice is male and the helmet makes it sound as if he’s shouting at them from another room. With a flick of the wrist, Rider 3 unleashes an expandable baton and whips it into the rib cage of Rashad Lyons, Graff’s armed guard. While a writhing Rashad is disarmed and zip-tied, Rider 1 scans the store and stops on Cynthia, who knows exactly why he’s here.
The package arrived this morning with an armed escort. Cynthia signed for the delivery, which is how she knows the single item was insured for seven million dollars. The guards showed her the necklace before they placed it in the safe: a cascade of white and Champagne diamonds with a twenty-carat pear-shaped stone hanging at the bottom like ripe fruit. The piece was shipped in from the Paris store, a birthday gift for the second wife of a Shanghai developer. Li Jianrong insisted on an in-store pickup because his new bride, who grew up in Zhejiang Province without running water, loves shopping almost as much as the things she buys. Mr. Jianrong likes privacy and anonymity, but he’s making an exception here. The armed delivery and in-store guard are on his tab. Another guard is due at 6 p.m. to transport the necklace to the happy couple’s suite, which won’t be necessary now.
Cynthia is shaking. Rider 1 spins her gently and steers her toward a mirror-paneled door that leads to the stock room, one gloved hand on his gun, the other on the back of her neck. Cynthia unlocks the door and goes straight for the safe, a head-high custom piece in green and gold. She knows the combination like her date of birth, but somehow gets it wrong.
She whispers, “I’m so sorry.”
“Relax,” the man says. “Breathe.”
She’s retrying when his hand moves from her neck to her arm. Cynthia whimpers and shuts her eyes, but then the man gives her shoulder an encouraging squeeze. It’s almost enough to make her turn around. She gets the combination right this time. The steel bolts in the door retract, and Rider 1 brushes her aside. Out comes the necklace and the tray below it, which contains thirty-six diamond rings arranged by color and weight. Cynthia sees the neat rows in her mind’s eye as the rings rain down into the bag. Outside in the showroom, glass display cases shatter at five-second intervals. The buzz of a zipper is followed by the creak of leather as Rider 1 exits the stock room. Cynthia sits down beside the gaping safe. She’ll stay here until the cavalry arrives. She can still feel the man’s hand on her arm.
*
WHEN JEREMY sees something that excites him, he takes a video with the iPhone he got for his tenth birthday. The behavioral therapist at Lakeview Montessori says Jeremy does this to create distance between himself and things that over-stimulate him. Jeremy’s phone is out when he spots the two modified 1200cc racing bikes with matte-black gas tanks and thick Michelin Commander tires that sit—and this thrills Jeremy the most—on the big red rug outside a jewelry store. He hears his mother yelling but feels certain she would drag him backward by the collar if anything was really wrong. All he wants is a good look at the aftermarket front suspensions. He stops ten feet away, as close as he’ll get to a live engine, and hits record three times with his trembling thumb before the red dot on the screen begins to flash. The riders don’t seem to mind. And then they do. They turn to him in unison, and Jeremy can feel their eyes burning into him from behind the tinted visors. His mother has gone silent. Jeremy stares at the image on his screen and sees the guns for the first time.
*
SHANNON JACOBSON is finally poolside, dancing with a college kid who introduced himself by asking for a lighter. They shared a laugh when he relit her cigarette with a white BIC from his pocket. He’s clearly doing this for kicks, to scratch an itch for older women. Shannon doesn’t mind. He’s not obviously crazy and the kid can dance. The pressure of his hands on her back sends heat waves through her body as the drug kicks in. The opening DJ is wrapping up his set when two security guards almost mow down Shannon and her new friend as they sprint toward the exit.