Right now, that’s what she wanted. To take a chance on Ross Cooper.
Get to work.
She stood and, still in her suit, slipped on her shoes. “I’ll call you back in twenty minutes with his name.”
“How are you getting his name?”
“The old fashioned way. I’m going to flirt with him.”
* * *
Having been summoned to the surveillance room, Ross hauled-ass and found Don hovering over the shoulder of one of the techs. The poor guy had to love that.
“What’s up?”
“Our physical office guy is back.”
Don pointed at one of the screens. Kate sat at a poker table, her long hair swept over one shoulder—vixen style—as she leaned toward the goofy guy they’d been watching that morning. She set her hand on his shoulder and laughed at something he said. What the hell was she doing?
He knew. Sure he did. Even if her body language was all wrong.
All wrong for Kate anyway.
And, yeah, ass that he was, he didn’t like it. If this is what emotional entanglements got him, no wonder he’d stayed clear all these years.
“What’s she doing?”
Don laughed. “She’s doing what women do best.”
And if Don meant to irritate the crap out of him, he was doing a damned fine job.
“What does that mean?”
“He doesn’t want a player’s card. She’s working him for his name.”
“Seriously? This is what it’s come to?”
Don shrugged. “Can’t say I have a problem with it.”
Ross locked his jaw. Best thing to do. Engaging him would cause Ross to lose his patience. Don knew that.
After years of working together, they each knew how to push buttons.
Not this time.
“Fine,” Ross said. “Keep me posted. I’m heading down to do a walk-thru.”
He left the room, pausing in the hallway for a few seconds. A breather to clear the sight of Kate hanging on some guy. He had to get straight about this woman. Not let his emotions rule. She had a job to do. They all did. And with Samuels on the warpath, Ross couldn’t blame her for using whatever tricks necessary.
Just as he reached the elevator, the door dinged and slid open. Kate stepped off and he stopped moving, waited for her to look up and notice him. To smile at him and lock on with her man-destroying green eyes.
“Hi there,” she said.
He halted in front of her. “Hi. Don called me. I just saw you at poker.”
She nodded. “I was able to get a name for our suspicious player. Dillon Reegs. Do recognize it?”
“Uh…no. Can’t say that I do.”
She cocked her head, squinted a little. “What’s wrong? You look like something is up.”
Oh, something was up all right. And he didn’t like it. Not one bit. After he’d touched every inch of her skin, put his lips places his mother would smack him for, he didn’t want her hanging on other men. There. Done.
But he wouldn’t be stupid enough to say it. Nope. He’d just save this rapid form of torture for himself. Idiot.
“I’m good,” he said. “Tired.”
The corner of her mouth quirked and she stepped closer, the soft scent of her lotion hitting him, bringing him back to focus. She tugged on the front of his jacket. “You know I’m doing my job, right? I was trying to get a name. I got it and I walked away.”
Ross shook his head, ran a hand over his face. Had he always been this much of a dumbass? He took a few deep breaths, focused on the end result. She got his name. She did her job. “You’re right. Sorry. I’m—” he rolled his hands, “—churned up. With what’s gone on with you this week, I don’t like you putting yourself in these situations. I reacted emotionally to a business situation.”
“The lines are blurring.”
“Ya think?”
Her lips quirked.
“I get it,” he said. “Now. A couple of minutes ago, all I saw was you and another man and something snapped in my brain. It was dumb and it won’t happen again. Maybe a little warning next time though? So I know it’s coming.”
“Sure. I’m sorry too. This situation is new. I’ve never dated a man I worked with. John was different. He was LVPD and I was FBI. We were both law enforcement but not in the same office.”
“Believe it or not, I can say the same. I don’t like mixing my personal and business lives. Complicates things.”
She curled his tie between her fingers. “I don’t know what we have here, but I know it feels good. I haven’t felt that in a long time.”
“Yeah?”
“John and I were…a habit. It was nice and settled and…”
“Boring?”
She twisted her lips. “Routine.”
“Unh-huh.”
She poked him in the chest. “You are not routine. Completely opposite of what I usually go for. You love Vegas life, and I love being on a ranch.”
“That doesn’t scare me.”
“Well, it terrifies me. But it’s early yet. I’m trying not to think too far ahead.”
Kate glanced over his shoulder, nudged her chin and he angled back to find Don standing in the hallway. Son of a bitch.
“Dillon Reegs,” she said to Don, “That’s all I know. Run him.”
“Alright. Good work.”
Don shook his head at them then swung back into the surveillance room. There’d be a lecture. No doubt. But when Ross turned back to Kate, she hadn’t backed away, hadn’t put distance between them.
“Ross, we’re making progress. Let’s just figure out what’s going on in your casino. Quit worrying about me.”
“After what’s happened to you this week? I’d be nuts not to worry.”
“Okay. I’ll give you that, but under this roof, with all the security you have around me? I’m not afraid. I’m motivated. And when we catch whoever this crossroader is, it’ll be even better. Just be patient.”
This woman. She might be perfect. He dipped his head, kissed her quick. Screw the cameras. Screw the lecture from Don.
For years his career had come first. Always. Now, he might want a life. One that included Kate.
* * *
Kate stepped into the surveillance room and found Don studying a computer monitor.
“Anything?” she asked.
He turned toward her. “Nothing on our end. We’re checking Dominion’s files. If we don’t find him, I’ll make calls.”
“Fine.” She pointed to an empty chair. “I’ll find out what else he’s been playing. See if there’s anything suspicious.”
“Go ahead.”
She logged into the system spliced a photo of Dillon Reegs and ran it through the casino’s facial recognition software. Bam. Plenty of hits. Mr. Reegs hadn’t been a regular since the casino opened but had been here enough that he should have wanted a player card.
Huh. “Let’s see what you’re up to, Reegs.”
She went back to her monitor, cued up video from Reegs’ first visit, studied it frame by tedious frame, checking his hands, his facial expressions, his playing with his chips, all of it.
Nothing suspicious. No odd ticks.
In Kate’s view, all that nothingness created a fun challenge.
She backtracked to his first day in the casino. He’d played poker for thirty minutes. Same table, two different dealers. She watched the entire segment and found nothing amiss. Still, something niggled at her, nudged her.
What? What? What?
She’d figure it out. If it took three days in front of video, she’d figure it out.
She clicked a link, waited for it to cue up, spotted Mrs. Miller at the table, a healthy stack of chips in front of her. Good for her.
Kate homed in on Reegs’ habit of lifting his chips, letting them fall then lifting them again. She swiveled to every angle, watching his motions, his body language, anything that indicated deception. A sleight of hand trick perhaps that let him swap out a counterfeit chip or
two.
Nothing.
Next video.
Thirteen more to look at. Depending on how long Reegs played during each visit, she might be here a while.
She clicked the next link. Mr. Reegs at mini-bac. Now she had to stay sharp. She sat back a little, stretched her neck while the dealer shuffled cards for the next hand.
There. Kate shot straight in her chair.
“Whoa.”
She paused the video, dragged her gaze from Reegs to the dealer then back to Reegs.
Whoa, whoa. A wicked blood rush sent her pulse pounding. She couldn’t get too antsy here.
Relax.
Rewind the video. Check it again.
That’s what she’d do. Several times. Just to be sure.
On the second pass, she switched to slow motion and—there—saw it. Definitively. “Dammit.”
Don wandered up behind her. “You find something?”
“I think so.”
“Reegs?”
“No. The dealer.”
Chapter Twelve
“What are you talkin’ about?”
Kate held up her hand before Don started yelling. “Just take a look.” She glanced at the surveillance techs then waved Don closer.
People, no matter how trustworthy, tended to gossip.
“Watch the shuffle.”
“Dammit, Kate.”
“I know. Just watch.”
She replayed the segment, stopped it and pointed at the screen. “Watch. Right here.” She started the video again, backed it up and replayed it in slow motion. “See it?”
Onscreen the dealer split the deck in two halves and pushed the two stacks together.
At an angle.
The angle, that slight tilt, had caught her eye.
She tapped the screen. “Watch when he pushes the two halves together.”
On the screen, in slow motion, the dealer shoved the two stacks together, sending them straight through so each came out the opposite side.
Intact.
“Son of a bitch,” Don said. “Push through false shuffle.”
“You see it too. Good.”
The dealer cut the cards again, the two stacks still in their original order.
All within seconds.
“Son of a bitch,” Don repeated.
Don Sickler, a man who prided himself on his ability to sniff out crossroaders, had a bad dealer in his casino.
The false shuffle they’d just witnessed, the one that preserved the order of the cards from the last hand, proved it.
And in mini-bac, the order of the cards was essential. If a player knew the order of the cards, they’d know when to bet heavy and when to back off. All based on which cards were about to be dealt.
Kate drummed her fingers against the mouse. “Here’s what we’ll do. I have all the video of Reegs’ play. Let’s narrow down how much he won on which nights and crosscheck which dealers he had.”
“If he’s continuously scored at mini-bac with this same dealer, we’ve nailed them both.”
* * *
Ross sat at his desk, working through a mountain of emails when Don, followed by Kate marched into his office. Don closed the door.
Never a good sign.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t good.
He held up a laptop. “Kid, we got a problem.”
“Crap.”
“Something like that,” Kate said.
Ross motioned everyone to the small table by the windows where they could huddle around the laptop.
Kate sat and opened the laptop while Ross and Don stood behind her. She clicked a link and sat back. “Focus on his hands. The shuffling.”
“What do we think we have here?”
“False shuffle,” Don said.
“Shit.”
“Exactly.”
“We’re sure?”
Kate nodded. “As sure as I can be from watching these videos. I’ll check the dealer’s other shifts. See if anything looks suspicious. I’m crosschecking if the dealer has interacted with our friend Mr. Reegs.” She held her hand to Don. “Agreed?”
“You bet your ass. As soon as we’re done here, I’m gonna talk to him.”
“Hang on,” Ross said. “What do we know about this Reegs?”
“Nothing,” Don said. “He’s clean.”
Kate pointed at the laptop. “I went through about half of the video footage we have on him. I’m logging which nights he won and from which dealer. If it’s the same dealer we suspect of doing the false shuffle…”
“They’re working together.”
“One would think.”
Ross reached around her, rewound the video and watched it again.
Karl Epstein. Really? He’d been at Dominion for ten years before they’d brought him over to Fortuna. Ross liked his easy demeanor and his pleasant banter with the players that stopped just short of being overly friendly.
And his performance reviews had been exceptional.
Why and how the hell did this guy, a man with three kids, teenagers all of them, go rogue on him?
Teenagers. His memory wasn’t as sharp as usual after the last few weeks, but he seemed to remember Karl had one daughter in college. Another in high school. A senior maybe. Then another younger son.
Three kids.
Three kids to put through college. And with what tuition, even at state schools, clocked in at? Forget it. Dealers made good money, but three kids?
But he shouldn’t get too far ahead of this thing. In Vegas, anything could happen for any number of reasons and he wouldn’t assume anything.
Ross checked his watch. Shift change happened an hour ago. “He’s probably off shift. I’ll check his schedule. See if he’s on tomorrow. If so, I say we watch him. Maybe see if Reegs comes back. We might spot something suspicious.”
He walked back to his desk to check the shift schedules, his mind moving ahead, forming a plan. “We need to go back. Find everything we can on Epstein and build a timeline. Then we hit him with it.”
“Goddamnit!” Don stormed toward the door. “I’m on it.”
“While you do that, I’ll call the Gaming Commission. Give them a heads up that we might have something.”
The topper of this week would be Fortuna slapped with a fine for not alerting Gaming to a cheat. By law, all casinos were required to notify the Gaming Commission of cheating. After that, the commission took over the investigation.
For now, until confirmed, Ross would simply put the commission on alert that they were monitoring a situation.
A move to cover their asses and keep them from a fine if this thing played out the way they suspected.
Kate snapped the laptop closed. “I’ll study the rest of the footage and give you a report of which dealers Reegs won the most with.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course.”
“And Kate?” She turned back to him, met his gaze. “Good work.”
* * *
For privacy, Kate retreated to her suite. Here she could jam on the phone, reaching out to her contacts, working all connections while Ross and Don met about the dealer in question. So far, she’d spoken to three casinos, including Dominion and had sent them photos of Reegs. If he was making the rounds, she’d figure it out and help Ross build that timeline he wanted.
Her cell phone bleep-bleeped. A Vegas number. She poked the screen hoping this was someone returning her call.
“Hello?”
“Kate? It’s Mel.”
Mel Cavanaugh. Security chief at Watercress Casino, the closest thing to Dominion’s rival. “Mel, thanks for getting back to me. Any luck on our guy?”
“He’s been here. I’m sending you a download of our video. He looks clean, but have a look.”
Oh, she sure would.
“I will. Thank you. I’ll let you know if I see anything.”
“Appreciate it.”
Another call bleeped through and she disconnected with Mel, saw Dev’s name on the screen.
She updated him on the dealer, on Reegs and the possibility that the two might be working together to bilk the casino.
“Excellent,” Dev said. “What can I do?”
“I have calls into a few of the casinos and they’re all checking Reegs’s photo against their surveillance. You could put some feelers out to the folks you know.”
“Send me his picture.”
She spun to her laptop and fired off an email. While in there, she spotted the file transfer from Mel. “I have Mel Cavanaugh’s downloads already. He said Reegs was in their place. I’m about to go through what he sent, see what I can find.”
“Fine. Keep me informed.”
“Will do.”
She dropped the phone and clicked on the file Mel had emailed.
Mini-bac.
Oh, this just kept getting better and better. She zoomed in on Reegs hands, spotted him doing the same motion with his fingers that he’d done at poker. Nothing, aside from the act itself, seemed unusual.
She zoomed out, took a wider view of the table, her eyes scanning left and right, taking in the dealer’s hands as well as Reegs’. The dealer shuffled and she zoomed again. Nothing suspicious.
She panned wider, spotted movement at the table. A middle-aged man leaving. One spot open.
Not for long. An older woman sat, her silver-gray hair shining under the glare of the lights and…wait.
Kate panned right, zoomed in.
“Well, slap me silly.”
Mrs. Miller.
Kate sucked a breath. Coincidence? Perhaps. But what were the chances the woman would be in the same casino, over sixty miles away, at the exact same time as Reegs, a man suspected of cheating at Fortuna. Also a casino visited by Mrs. Miller and Reegs.
At the same time.
With all the casinos in Nevada? Total stretch.
Kate sat back, blew out a breath as her mind whirled. Ross’s affection for this woman ran deep.
He was flat out crazy about her. Should she alert him to this development? After the near-argument they’d had in the hospital about her not informing her of a suspected murderer in Fortuna, not sharing intel about Mrs. Miller would cause a war.
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