“If we don’t know where he lives, how are we going to find him?” I asked.
“We follow the money.” Vero tossed Cam the remote and put on her shoes. “Don’t open the door until we get back. Finlay and I are going to the casino.”
CHAPTER 15
“How are we supposed to find Pokey in here?” I asked, narrowing my shoulders to squeeze between the crowds clogging the Royal Flush’s casino. The place reeked of cigarettes, liquor, and cheap cologne, but Vero had figured it was a logical place to start. “I thought you said Pokey was broke. And even if he wasn’t, we don’t even know what he looks like.”
“Don’t need to,” Vero said, rising on her toes to scan the room.
I followed her through a bank of slot machines. “Where are we going?” Marbles spun on roulette wheels on the periphery, and onlookers gathered to watch. Vero navigated smoothly through the crowd toward the table games beyond them, slowing her pace to study the dealers and the players. She picked a blackjack table and sat down, passing me a handful of chips as I claimed the empty seat beside her.
She arranged her own chips into neat piles and pushed one toward the dealer.
“What do I do?” I whispered. Aside from the occasional scratch-off ticket in the fast-food drive-through, I’d never actually gambled before. Vero tossed one of my chips onto the bet line.
“Just do what I do,” she said in a low voice. Her eyes tracked the cards as the dealer doled them out. Vero slid another chip forward. “Hit me,” she said, taking another card. She peeped at it, her face revealing nothing as she told the dealer she’d stay.
The dealer pivoted to me. “Hit me,” I said.
Vero frowned. “What are you doing?”
“What? You told me to do what you do. That’s what you did.” She smacked me in the shoulder. “Ow!”
“You have seventeen. If you take another card, you’ll probably bust.”
“You peeked at my hand.”
“I didn’t peek at your hand. When would I have peeked at your hand? You never even looked at your cards.”
“Well, you obviously saw them!”
“Are you accusing me of cheating?” Vero asked a little too loudly. The dealer glanced up at a ceiling-mounted camera.
“Lower your voice,” I hissed at Vero. “You’re making a scene.”
The other players abandoned the table as Vero continued to argue.
“Don’t look now,” she whispered out of the corner of her mouth. “Pit boss is on his way.”
“Who?”
An attractive man in a black-on-black suit appeared behind us.
“How are we doing, ladies?” he asked, resting a hand on each of our seat backs.
“We’d be doing a lot better if my friend here wasn’t so obtuse,” Vero said.
“I am not obtuse!”
“If you had actually bothered to watch the YouTube tutorials I sent you before we came, you might havesomeunderstanding of table etiquette.” Vero pushed a twenty-dollar chip toward the dealer. “I’m sorry she scared away all of your players. We should probably go catch a show instead. I don’t have the patience for this.” Vero opened her purse wide and began scooping her chips into it, revealing a thick stack of twenty-dollar bills she had drawn from the ATM in the lobby.
The pit boss’s eyes locked on the cash. He stopped her as she began to close her bag. “How about I give your friend a quick lesson instead? Then you both can stay and put those chips to good use.” He walked around the table and relieved the dealer of her post, the two of them engaging in some odd ritual that seemed to mark the end of her shift.
“What’s your name?” Vero asked him as he reloaded the shoe.
“Miles. And you are?”
“Call me Patricia,” Vero answered. “And this is my friend Irina.”
