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a big show for us. I don’t know what I’ll do without you. I need you there. You don’t have to go to any of the big events if you don’t want to. Just come along. Please.”
    And to her relief, Greg nodded.

Chapter Three
    He was okay with his assignment changing when it had barely begun. That happened all the time. He didn’t mind being responsible for Kayla Landon, her brother and her poodle all of a sudden—especially since she was turning out to be different than what he’d expected. That someone wanted the client in his protection dead and Nash had few clues, no leads beyond the dog’s death threats, was par for the course. He liked a good challenge.
    But that Kayla wouldn’t openly acknowledge him as her bodyguard bugged the hell out of him. He couldn’t take charge in any capacity. Even Dave and Mike outranked him.
    “You’ve been in the dog business long?” Mike asked as he made his way toward him, down the aisle between rows of seats, Dave not far behind as the plane flew above a solid layer of clouds toward Las Vegas.
    The two men looked enough alike to be related, maybe cousins. They had the bodies of linebackers, plus the whole Secret Service haircut and body language. But Nash had seen plenty of badasses to know that deep down these two weren’t real tough guys. The best that could be said about them was that they would look good playing tough guys on TV.
Which meant he was pretty much alone on the job. He felt like someone entering a high-speed chase while being forced to drive from the backseat.
    “You two ever been in the service?” He folded his arms, putting his tattoos in plain sight, letting the two men draw their own conclusions, showing an admirable amount of self-restraint.
    Resist the urge to take over everything , had been the last thing Welkins had told him, and, keep the client happy .
    He was doing good so far. They were going to Vegas, not that he didn’t absolutely hate the whole dog-show business. At least he’d prevailed in having the entire first-class section reserved for Kayla and her staff.
    A flight attendant came by with drinks, drawing Mike and Dave’s attention temporarily.
    They were on a commercial airline with 231 possible villains—to give himself a break, Nash wasn’t counting the crew, just the regular passengers. It was enough to give a man a headache. But Kayla had put her foot down and insisted that on the Landon jet she would have been an even easier target. And at the end he’d agreed. Sometimes there was safety in numbers.
    “I’ll beat the pants off you in blackjack,” Elvis, the makeup artist, said, joking around with Fisk, Kayla’s agent, and Ivan, her manager, up front.
    The two had tagged along because at the last minute she had decided that she would agree to some advertising deals. Since the full amount of income from the ads would go to dog-related charities, her agent and manager were coming to lay the groundwork and take advantage of the media coverage that would already be present.
“Just as long as you know that everything under my pants belongs to my wife,” Ivan, a stocky black man, countered with a good-natured laugh.
    Greg, Kayla’s brother, had been playing some video game obsessively since they’d boarded. He sat in the first row, keeping out of the conversation.
    Tsini was gently snoring in the middle of the aisle, not impressed by any of the grand plans for Sin City that were being hatched by the humans. Tom, Tsini’s professional handler, was watching an action movie, pretty much ignoring everybody.
    Nash was currently running background checks on each of them, plus on the staff who had stayed in Philly: Kayla’s secretary, her stylist, everyone she met with regularly, even her uncle. He should have the results by the time the day was out. Her immediate environment seemed like a good place to start looking. Then, as he uncovered more clues, he could widen the circle.
    “Semi-pro football,” Dave put in, resuming their