The men and women didn’t look like the mob types I had become accustomed to at the Four Horsemen. They looked like law enforcement.
In the span of half a second, I worked through all three options once more, then took door number four.
I didn’t cash out the chips I had just won. I could come back and do that. With one sweep of my arm, I filled my purse with the chips, then wove through the casino, slipping through a door opposite where Jude had been taken.
Something lingered in the back of my mind.I’ll find you after. I promise.
Jude knew this was going to happen.
He had prepared me for it.
The first thing I needed to do was get our bags out of the hotel room. The bags had our supplies. Clothes to change into. Cash. His burner phone. I didn’t know who I could trust, but Jude trusted Cole. Even though I had never even seen the man, I knew I could trust him too.
If Jude had gotten caught for his involvement with Valentine, they probably knew about the hotel room. Cameras were everywhere. Elevators could be stopped, so I headed for the stairs. I kicked off my shoes andran.
I counted the landings until I found the floor we were on, then pulled the room key out, slipped into the room, and grabbed the bags.
Wait.
W.W.J.D.?What would Jude do?
He’d leave a decoy.
I emptied my purse and the necessities from his backpack into the backpack that I had been carrying all day. I left a few thousand dollars’ worth of chips in Jude’s bag, then shouldered both and slipped out.
I dropped my empty purse in a trash can but kept moving. Trashcans in a high-end resort would be emptied regularly. I couldn’t hide anything beneath the trash bags. I highly doubted that there was a secret cellar I could slip into. I eyed the sign for ice and vending at the end of the hall and considered burying the backpack at the bottom of the ice machine. The problem was, the bag was canvas and, depending on how long it took me to get back to it, the phone could get soaked.
Hiding in plain sight was the best option.
My heart thundered as I raced down the stairs and bolted into the lobby, coming to a skidding halt as I saw a caravan of FBI vehicles with flashing lights parked outside the front doors.
“Oof! Sorry!” a drunken woman said as she ran smack-dab into me.
I slipped behind a gaudy display of tropical plants and water features and watched as Jude was shoved into the back of an SUV.
“Ex-cuseeeee me,” the drunk woman said to a man behind the front desk who looked like he wanted to be anywhere but at work. “I lost my purse, and it’sveryexpensive.”
Not as expensive as the cheap bag on my shoulder.
The man huffed. “What’s it look like?”
“It’s a Birkin. You know—like Her-meeze.” I cringed at her pronunciation of Hermes.
The man barely withheld an eye roll. “I meant, what color is it?”
She blinked, obviously startled that someone didn’t care about the brand as much as she did. “It’s blue.”
“I’ll check lost and found,” he grumbled before loping around the corner.
I slipped out from behind the plants and followed him like I had somewhere to be.
Jude’s adages floated through my mind.Act like you belong here.
I passed by the desk clerk just in time to see him punch a code into an electronic keypad.
060226.
I didn’t need an eidetic memory to remember that. I kept walking, slipped into the women’s restroom, then waited a minute before coming back out.
