Viktor is right about one thing. My instincts are compromised. Every cell in my body says Theo is mine but I'm thinking with my cock. I know I am.
I need to know everything there is to know about Theo Holland. If he is playing me, I need to know it. And if he is, then I deal with it.
I look at the blank monitor where the feeds were playing. The casino is running. The tables are open. The dealers are dealing and the runners are running. The pit bosses are managing their sections and the whole machine is turning over the way it always does.
Underneath, someone is taking it apart.
13. Theo
The elevator opens on the third floor and I stand in it for a moment before I step out.
It's stupid. The doors are open. I negotiated for this. Dom agreed. The ankle monitor is a steady weight above my left shoe and I can feel it with every step, the slight bulk of it against the bone. If I go past the front door, an alarm goes off somewhere and whatever goodwill I've bought myself evaporates.
But I can leave the floor. I’ve been in there for over two weeks and it was starting to feel like I would stay there for the rest of my life.
I step out. The corridor is wide, low-ceilinged, with that same thick carpet that swallows your footsteps. The lighting is warm. There's music somewhere, piped in at a low volume. This floor is restaurants. I can smell kitchens.
My stomach turns. The nausea has been worse the last two days. It’s far early for me to know if I’m pregnant. Far too early. It has to be stress, but still I can’t get the thought out of my head.
I walk. I pass a steakhouse with dark wood paneling and a hostess station where a woman in a black dress smiles at me as if I'm a guest. I go past a sushi bar, then an Italian that smells gloriously like basil and garlic.
I'm not going into any of them. Novikov has told me that everything is going to be comped so money isn’t an object, but right now I’m hungry for escape. The more I know, the moreinformation that I gather, the sooner I can get out of here and be on my way. I pay attention to everything, mapping every corridor and door in my head.
I find conference rooms on the fourth floor, the empty ones locked. On the fifth, there’s a gym and spa with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. More rooms. A spa with a reception desk and the smell of eucalyptus leaking into the corridor. More restaurants and cafes on the sixth. Then it’s hotel floors: long corridors of identical doors, housekeeping carts parked at intervals, the occasional guest emerging with a keycard.
I count cameras. It's habit. There's one at each end of every corridor and one at every elevator bank. The stairwells have them on each landing. Novikov wasn't exaggerating when he said he knows everything that happens in this building. He probably has someone watching me right now. I wave at a camera on the ninth floor just to make a point. He’ll know I’m doing it. I’d be surprised if he expected anything else.
Before long, I've mapped the building's general layout in my head. There are no easy exits, not without going down to the casino floors and I have been strictly forbidden from entering those.
Now isn’t the time to test those restrictions. Novikov will have me locked back up in his suite before I have time to even see the light of day. I won’t get a second chance.
I can’t face spending more time in Novikov’s suite but I need to finish mapping out the entire structure of the operation. I head back upstairs, go inside long enough to grab the laptop and then go back down to the eight floor to a lounge at the end of the hotel floor. There’s a small bar that’s serving alcoholic drinks but also cake and coffee. I order coffee and a carrot cake, then take my laptop over to a table by the window.
The window overlooks the front of the hotel, including the parking lot. My Honda is still out there, gathering dust and I wonder where the keys are. They weren’t in the bags that were brought up to the suite. I might have to abandon the car.
That means I’ll need to work out the closest bus routes. Or I could try hitchhiking. Whatever gets me out of here the fastest.
But first, I need more ammunition. I need to swap information for more freedoms.
I open the laptop and take a look at what I’ve missed while I was busy in Novikov’s bed.
The casino kept running and the network kept operating and whoever is pulling the strings kept pulling them. I open the surveillance archive and start with the night my heat began. Table by table. Camera by camera. Hour by hour.
It takes me three hours to get through the first two nights. By then I've seen enough.
The operation didn't pause while I was out. It didn't even slow down. The runners kept coming. I spot two new faces in the first night alone, both playing the same mid-range tables with the same unremarkable bet sizes and the same quiet exits.
It’s all getting too big to keep in my head. It’s too complex and there are too many players, once I take out the staff.
I am also going to need to do some math to get the probabilities right. But the moment I write anything down, then I lose my leverage.
I lean back in the chair and press my hands against my eyes.
I’ll need a code. I spend the next hour planning it out, using the mnemonics that are personal to me: favorite songs, lines from films. By the time I’m done, I have a list of codes for people, types of con and dates and times that make sense to me, but will be nonsensical to anyone else.
I order another coffee, with an additional shot of espresso and get to work.
I’m so absorbed in what I’m doing that I don’t even notice when Novikov arrives until he sits down in the chair in front of me.
