by Harley Slate
Sociopaths were famous for their charm. Yet it was impossible for Lana to think of Mel as a sociopath. That awkward moment when they were talking about Lana's mother... Mel hadn't reacted in that false, just-smooth-it-over way so many people did. She'd touched Lana with care. Known when to look into her eyes and when to step away.
Were sociopaths really that good?
It was too hot. Lana couldn't keep sitting here. Holding her phone low to find some shadow, she sent a text to check in with Alva back in the Dragonhoarde's sky.
―All chill with P?
The reply came right away.
―She's chill. She's always up for extra hours.
―You seen the big D?
―He's not on the schedule until 9.
―What I thought. Just checking.
Lana hadn't seriously believed Durrell could already be back at the Dragonhoarde. She and Mel hadn't spent that long in the shower. Besides, he'd need to stash the money somewhere. His house? Unlikely. Connor and Mel were both right about one thing. Everybody who worked at the Dragonhoarde was going to be looked at by state and federal investigators. Durrell couldn't take the risk of stashing the money at his own place.
She didn't remember pulling out of the lot, but she was on the road, making good time at ten miles an hour above the speed limit. The air blasting from the vents was cool enough to raise goose pimples on the back of her arms.
Banks and casinos were constantly under scrutiny for their money-tracking paperwork. Amateurs trying to get away with ten or twenty thousand dollars were going to get caught. The big professional organizations, though, somehow kept tens or hundreds of millions in circulation. With that kind of cash, you could buy all the insiders you needed. Lana didn't like to think about dirty cops, dirty special agents, dirty judges, but they were a fact of life.
Who could she take this to? Some of the FBI guys who looked the most straight-edged seemed the least trustworthy to her. The Mormon mafia, she'd heard them called at the academy. Not a clique eager to welcome an out lesbian into their ranks.
Then again, she had her own clique, with its own nickname. The gay mafia.
I should have kept in better touch with those guys.
At the time, it was too hard. Her mother took her own life, and where had Lana been? In Quantico, on the opposite side of the country. Maybe if she'd been home, maybe there was something she could have done, maybe, maybe, maybe...
All those endless maybes. Not to mention all the endless shame. Everybody else at the academy seemed so well put together. Lana felt like the only mess, the only person who was falling apart.
Her brother said he felt the same way. That there was something he should have said. Something he should have tried. And he was there on the spot, establishing his law practice in Vegas. Mom could have called him for help at any time.
Instead of not even picking up the phone when he called her.
“Everybody feels that way,” Gary said. “Everybody thinks there's something they could've done or said. And there just isn't. Addiction, despair, depression... it was always a disease waiting for her, always something out of our control.”
Her brother was so smart. Like her fellow FBI trainees, he was so strong and well put together. So maybe he was right.
But it still hit Lana hard. Like she was somehow to blame.
This was an unproductive line of thought. She pulled into a roadside truck stop. Ordered pie and coffee. The pie came with ice cream on it. Had Lana ordered that? She jabbed it cautiously with her spoon, then picked up her phone again.
“Hey, girlfriend. Long time no see.” Greta London's loud voice seemed even louder in the earbuds.
“Yeah. Sorry.” Lana couldn't find the words to explain.
“It's all right. I heard about... that had to be rough. I'm real sorry for your loss.”
Lana didn't want to talk about her mother. “I heard you were in the Vegas field office now.”
“I am. I should have called, but...”
You thought I wouldn't want to hear from you or anybody else who got through their training.
“Right now, I'm working surveillance for the Dragonhoarde Casino in north Vegas. Out in the burbs. Maybe you know the place.”
“Think so. Sure.”
“I might have something for you.”
“All right.”
“Not over the phone. You got some time free this evening?”
“Always for my best girl.” That was just Greta being Greta. It was well-known she was in a long-term relationship. Hell, maybe Jenny and Greta were married by now. Vegas was good for impulsive weddings.
They arranged to meet in one of the grimmer exurban sports bars. Outside, it was still a hot August afternoon that was going on forever, but inside the multiple screens did nothing to illuminate the dark, chilly space. A haze of blue smoke like a hangover from the nineties fogged the room, even though there were only four or five unenthusiastic patrons slumped into their seats.
Greta had already arrived and ordered a bourbon rocks. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman with an assertive presence that told you she was wearing her service weapon under her gray jacket. A couple of barflies glanced at her and then glanced away.
They probably made her as law enforcement the minute she walked in.
“I've stumbled into something.” Lana rubbed her hand over her eyes, something she regretted the minute she realized she was doing it. A trained FBI special agent like Greta London would recognize the micro-gesture for the nerves it was. “I met someone.”
“And she's smoking hot.”
Lana tried to smile. She doubted it was convincing.
Greta said nothing more, an investigator's technique. Leave an empty space for the other guy to fill. Oh, Lana knew exactly how it worked, but it worked anyway. Besides, she needed to talk. That was what they were here for.
“Smoking hot, and we hooked up, but turns out she's working for the dark side. Somehow, they're getting chips into machines, so they can time when they pay out. Then she plays at the right time and somehow puts in the right code to win the jackpot.”
“Walk it back. Tell me exactly what you knew and when you knew it.”
Lana did, glancing around from time to time to see if their fellow gamblers were paying any undue attention to their conversation. An eighty-year-old with an old-fashioned print newspaper and a stinky cigar had settled in a few tables away. He wasn't looking at them, just the paper and the races. Everybody else was making a real effort to avoid eye contact.
“You don't have much evidence.” Greta gazed thoughtfully into her bourbon. “Two jackpots paying off to one person, the odds are against it, but there is such a thing as a run of luck.”
“She didn't meet Durrell in East Bumfuck to hand over a Gucci bag because she just hit lucky.”
“Agree about that.”
The cocktail waitress returned with another round. There was a pause until she drifted out of earshot again.
“The thing is, this goes down tomorrow night,” Lana said. “Somehow, they've got it set so she's going to hit a five-million-dollar jackpot. Durrell told me he's working with the feds, that they're setting up a trap, but what I saw didn't feel like a trap for Mel Lysander. I think it's going to be a real ripoff, that they're all of them going to take off with that money.”
Greta turned the fresh glass in her hand but didn't drink. “And you think somebody from gaming is in on it, maybe somebody from Metro.”
Lana took a deep breath. “Maybe somebody from the FBI too.”
Greta sighed. “I won't say you're wrong.”
Lana could read a micro-gesture too. “You've heard something.”
“Maybe. Maybe. There have been other situations cropping up around the country that didn't pass the smell test. Progressive jackpots have been hitting a little too often in a few small, vulnerable places in the Midwest. The organization might have been rehearsing the techniques before they moved into the big leagues. We have more of the mat
h guys in the Vegas field office, so they asked us to take a look at the statistics, and there's definitely something out of whack.”
“And now it might be the same team moving into Vegas. Testing their luck at the Dragonhoarde. And maybe that's only the beginning. If everything goes smoothly, they might have other people in place to help them take down big progressives all over town.”
“That almost goes without saying.” Greta put down her glass. “Look, this doesn't happen in Vegas without involvement at a high level. This isn't a couple of hackers reprogramming some chips. This is bigger than that. There are multiple security checks to prevent bad chips from being hacked or installed. There are multiple checks before big progressive jackpots get paid.”
“I already know somebody high up has to be involved. I already know we're not talking about amateurs. You don't have to treat me like a civilian, Greta.”
“Actually, I do. I appreciate you coming to me with this, and now I'm going to have to ask you not to approach anyone else. Don't talk to anybody. Don't breathe a word. From here on out, I need you to step away from this.” Greta too was telling Lana to stand down. “You could blow up my entire investigation if you spill the beans to the wrong person.”
What did you expect? You're not the FBI agent. She is.
“I have Melody Lysander's trust.” Did she? “I can try to get more information.”
Greta shook her head. “Right now, it doesn't look like there's more information to get from that player, and I don't want to risk scaring her off. I need you to stay quiet and let us track her back to the bigger fish.”
“But...”
But what? What had Lana really expected? That Greta would clap her on the back, issue her a badge and a service weapon?
Lana was nothing more than just another FBI informant. She suddenly hated that word. Informant. It seemed sneaky somehow.
And yet it was the right word, wasn't it? She'd called an FBI agent, told her everything she knew about what was going down.
There was no nicer way to put it. That was who she was now― an FBI informant, actively working to put Mel Lysander in federal prison.
“I've got to do something. I can't just stand by with folded hands. This is my casino they're hitting. This is my job they're attacking.”
“You are doing something. Here.” Greta pulled out a flat plastic box, maybe an inch square and an eighth of an inch deep. It looked like the kind of thing you might use to carry a precious stamp or a valuable coin. “You drop this on Salvatore Durrell, and then you go about your business. You don't do anything else, you don't get creative. You go to work, you act normal, you don't do any more of this private eye bullshit. We're the professionals. We'll track Durrell and his contacts from here.”
Chapter Fourteen
Go on with your life. Act like everything's normal. Nothing to see, keep moving along.
Yeah, right. Look at how well that worked out when Mom was in trouble.
Lana could no more sit on her hands and wait than she could learn to breathe underwater. Somehow, she found herself back on the road north out of town. Tipping off Mel that she'd talked to the FBI was almost certainly a crime. An aggressive prosecutor might see it as obstruction of justice, an attempt to interfere with an FBI investigation. Yet it didn't seem like a crime. She'd told the FBI everything she knew that they needed to know, and they'd told her to back away.
That was bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit.
The VACANCY sign was lit up by the time she returned to the cheap motel. Since two of the neon letters failed to shine, it actually read VA_AN_Y. There was no Ford Fusion in the lot, no lights around the edges of the cheap blinds at the window of cabin five.
She knocked anyway. No answer.
She walked over to the front cabin with the glass gas station window. A small button like an old-fashioned light-up doorbell invited her to buzz. After a minute, a woman in her fifties appeared behind the smeared glass. “Help you?”
“I'm looking for Melody Lysander. Cabin five.”
“Around the corner.”
“I already knocked. She's not there.”
“Well, I ain't her mom.”
“I was wondering if she checked out.”
“I'm wondering how that's any of your business.”
Too bad Lana wasn't FBI. Flashing a casino gaming badge just wasn't the same. “I'm a friend, and I, um, maybe I could leave her a note.”
“If you're such good friends, why don't you send her a text?”
Deep breaths. Count to ten. Be glad you're not carrying a firearm.
“It's just a note. You can pass on a note, can't you?” Lana pulled a five out of her wallet.
The light went on in the clerk's bleary eyes. “I guess maybe. Just this once.”
Lana needed something to write on. Hell. She usually made notes to herself on her phone's voice recorder, so she wasn't in the habit of carrying paper. In the end, she pulled out a one-dollar bill and scribbled her message on that.
FIBBIES KNOW. WALK AWAY.
She passed the two bills through the opening in the glass. The woman pocketed the five, read the message on the one.
“That really isn't meant for you,” Lana said.
“I ain't passing on a message I never read. This is a decent place. What does the FBI want with that girl?” This clerk had too much spare time on her hands to watch television. Lana hadn't expected her to recognize the slang term for federal agents.
“Nothing. It's just a joke. A role-playing game, you know?”
The woman squinted her eyes. “Like Dungeons and Dragons, only with no dungeons and no dragons.”
“Yeah, that's right. That's exactly it.”
“There better not be any damn paintball involved. I run a clean place.”
WORK WAS WORK, BUT it felt different now, knowing what she needed to do. Durrell's jacket hung over the back of his rolling chair like an unanswered question.
The man himself stood at the refreshment station stirring white powders into burned coffee.
In one easy motion, never taking her gaze away from where he stood, Lana slipped the dime-sized GPS tracker into his pocket. The thing was amazing. It even looked like a US dime, at least to the superficial gaze. Durrell, like many men, never used the outer pockets of his jacket, the better to preserve the line of the fabric, but it was always possible he'd slide a hand inside. Even so, the biggest risk was that he'd spend the dime, not that he'd recognize it for what it was.
And nobody spent dimes anymore. Who had time to count out small change?
This'll work. I'll show you who's the FBI wanna-be.
Durrell's crack still stung. It wasn't like Lana washed out because she was incompetent. She'd washed out because her mother had died.
Had killed herself.
Lana closed her eyes. She couldn't help her mother. She hadn't even been there for her mother. Everybody said you shouldn't blame yourself, but how could you not?
If Mel gets hurt, I'll never forgive myself.
I have to stop this, even if she can't stop it herself.
Mel Lysander was the face of this heist. Did she really believe they'd let her live after she walked away with all that money? She was the known link between the cash and the crew.
They'd want to cut that link.
Going to prison wasn't pretty, but it was better than ending up as buzzard food in the high desert.
Durrell, coffee cup in hand, joined Lana at the bank of monitors. Early Friday night in August. Too damn hot for anything outdoors. People poured into the place, all of them eager to go big or go home. There was a long line at the booth where the slot club was validating free-play coupons. There was another long line at the entrance to the buffet. On a night like this, you'd never suspect the place of being the subject of bankruptcy rumors.
The jackpot sirens kept going off. Tax paperwork was triggered if you hit for as little as twelve hundred dollars, and the slot attendants were kept hopping. It felt like everybo
dy was a winner tonight, even though most of them were probably only getting back what they'd fed in over the past few weeks. People smiled, laughed, and drank. The cocktail waitresses circled the players who tipped like sharks in a school of sardines.
“Well, lookie who's here.” Durrell's raspy voice sounded oddly normal.
“Should I call the host to make contact?” Lana asked.
“Sure. We don't want her stuck in that line. He can validate her free-play coupon.”
The coupon made a good excuse for a casino employee to touch base with Mel Lysander. She was, after all, a valued guest. Delia Grant, who normally only came in on days, was hanging on her arm. Was Grant the great-grandmother? Or was she just one of those convenient casino friends, somebody Mel greeted and glad-handed to make herself fit into the scene?
The two of them moved slowly in the direction of the Dragonshifter progressives. With a top jackpot of over five million dollars― life-changing money for anybody who patronized a place like the Dragonhoarde― it was attracting a lot of attention from gamblers who believed it was due. There were no open seats at the moment, and Mel settled Grant into a quarter machine that gave her a good view of when the next seat might come open.
Mel either didn't get or didn't care about Lana's note. Maybe it had been a mistake to write it on a one-dollar bill. The motel owner might have been cheap enough to pocket it along with the five.
You tried. All you can do is try.
Still, it hurt, the thought of this night ending with Mel in cuffs. It felt like there should have been more time for the two of them. Somehow.
No red jacket tonight. Instead, she was wearing a long-sleeved button-down black shirt with pearl buttons and elaborate floral embroidery. Along with the ostrich-skin boots, skinny jeans, and red bandanna knotted at her neck, she looked like a country music singer pretending to be a cowboy. An expensive look, but maybe she thought it blended in better with the Dragonhoarde's cheap jeans and outlet mall sneakers.