“Well, thisjobmight just bore me enough that I fall asleep.”
As they looped back toward the staff hallway, Elvis whistled “Viva Las Vegas,” earning him a glare from a dealer and a confused look from a tourist.
Hawk shook his head. “Don’t you think that’s a little too on the nose, even for you?”
“What can I say? I was feeling the moment.”
“At least you’re not singing.”
Elvis glanced up at the ceiling, looking for more gaps in the surveillance. “Did you know Elvis Presley had over 600 recorded songs, but never once wrote a single one himself?”
Hawk glanced at him, his brow furrowed. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
“It’s called legacy, my friend. That’s why he was the King.”
Hawk shook his head. “Yours will be ‘died singing off-key in the shower.’”
Elvis smirked, hands in his pockets. “That just means I wasn’t alone in the shower if someone knew I was singing when I bit it.”
Hawk rolled his eyes. “You’re terrible.”
But Elvis ignored him, his mind already turning over which Elvis song he’d butcher at the afterparty before hooking up with Bella again. He’d at least remember her name this time.
Tonight would prove to be a long, boring evening. However, for now? The King had returned.
CHAPTER TWO
DELANEY RHODES TAPPED THE stylus against her tablet screen, barely paying attention to the firewall schematic in front of her. Lines of code swam into each other like an anxious current, and her brain had snagged on something it couldn’t quite name. A whisper beneath the noise.
Obsidian Analytics, the company she founded, was there at the request of the casino to do an audit of their security team, and so far, while she had been told this assignment should have been smooth as silk, it left something crawling beneath her skin like static. Perhaps it was the cybersecurity summit going on at the same time, one they had invited her to attend while she was there as a bonus to entice her to take the job. And she would, of course. Why not? It was a high profile conference with international stakes that could open doors for her and her company down the line. She’d done bigger assignments, of course. Dirtier and even hotter, but this might just be the opportunity she needed to take her company to the next level, even if Deke was completely against it, which he was extremely vocal about.
“You’re doing that twitchy thing again.”
She didn’t look up, her eyes still scanning the lines of code in front of her, looking for anything that didn’t belong. “What twitchy thing?”
“You know, the one where your mouth goes all murdery and your eye does this weird squint like you’re solving a conspiracy from season three of Homeland.”
She sighed as she scrolled through her tablet. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. And for the record, I prefer NCIS. That guy who took over for Mark Harmon. Yowzaa. You and I have been together for three years. You should know this stuff by now, Roman.”
Roman Calloway grinned as he pushed his wire-rimmed glasses back up his nose, showing how much of a pain in her ass he had been over the past few years. “I call it like I see it, D. And what I’m seeing is your Spidey senses tingling. Again. And that’s not good. You promised me this would be a calm trip, with no surprises. I have the text to prove it too. I was looking forward to some slot machines, a few drinks, maybe finding a redhead to corrupt me.”
“What is it with you and the redheads?” She shook her head. “And they’re not tingling.” She tapped a few keys as she pulled up the digital surveillance logs. “They’re… just concerned.”
“Like that’s a better description.” He shook his head.
She finally glanced up at him, exasperated. He sat there wearing black-rimmed glasses with his hair too messy to be accidental, and possessing a sarcasm addiction that should’ve come with a twelve-step program. The man looked like a college TA, even though he was in his early thirties, just a couple of years older than her, who’d just rolled out of bed and into a hacker collective. Which, to be fair, was mostly accurate because that’s where she found him when she approached him about a job.
“I don’t get why they called us in now,” she said, dropping her tablet to her side. “They got this big summit going on, whichis taking up almost the entire hotel. They even called in another security firm to bolster their own men. Wouldn’t it have been better to wait until it was a quiet week to let us do the audit?”
He shrugged, seemingly nonplussed. “Maybe that’s the point. They want us to see them at their busiest to know if something’s off or not. Easy to hide things when it’s quiet.”
She sighed. “Perhaps.”
“What do we know about the additional team?” he asked. “Anything we should worry about? And doesn’t the fact they had to call in extra help say something about their weaknesses?”
She moved over to sit in one of the desk chairs. “I know they weren’t the first asked to fill the spot. The casino asked for a firm called Garrison Security Innovations first, but they were shorthanded. Instead, they recommended Silver Security out of New Orleans. From what I gather, it’s a group of brothers whose sister works for GSI.”
“Ah, nepotism. Gotta love it.”
