by Cassie Cole
“No, I understand,” I said. “I can’t believe you made it to the final table! What was that all about with Yegorovich?”
He shook his head with annoyance. “He was at the final table with us. I was the one to knock him out with a Full House.” He shuddered.
“You think he’s angry at you? Over a game?”
“I don’t know what to think, but if I never have to shake his hand again I’ll be a happy man.”
I made my face into a mask of pain. “I’m really sorry you lost. It’s stupid that a flush beats a straight.”
But Bryce was all smiles now. “The third place purse was $5,000. So all in all I had a very good two days, even if I didn’t win overall. Plus I had fun.”
“That’s good,” I said. “And you know what? This means we can discuss our plan tonight after all.”
“It sure does. I’ll text the team so we can meet up.”
21
Sage
We didn’t go to the diner. Too public for this, the big meeting to come up with the final plan. For this we needed privacy.
Instead, at 1:00am we met across the street in the room we’d been using for the stakeout since apparently Eddie had it booked for another two nights. I saw him in the lobby fiddling with his phone.
“There you are,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you before our meeting. Alone.”
I could still remember the way his fingers felt inside me, how he’d twisted them just right while holding my body down. “Oh?” I managed to squeak.
He looked embarrassed. Or uncomfortable. It was strange seeing the normally stone-faced security guard like this.
“About last night.”
Shit. I’d been afraid of this. He hadn’t texted me about it, and he’d seemed weird when I saw him at the casino. It was a mistake. He regretted it. And now things were weird.
Weird was never good.
“I wanted to make sure we were cool,” he said in that deep baritone. “That we didn’t do anything you… Regret.”
“Why would I regret it?” I said, caught off guard.
“I don’t know.” He leaned against the wall and flashed his white smile. “We were caught up in the excitement of it all. Sometimes people do things they would not have done otherwise.”
“Do you regret it?” I forced myself to ask, though I was terrified of the answer.
“No!” he said, eyebrows shooting up his forehead. “I don’t regret it at all. If anything, what I regret was that we were interrupted.”
“Me too!” I said. Warm relief filled my chest like a shot of Russian vodka. “I wanted to text you…”
“Same here!”
“But I didn’t know what to say,” I said.
Eddie wrapped his arms around me in a warm hug. In his embrace I felt safe. Cared for.
“So you don’t think it was a mistake recruiting me into the job?” I asked.
He pulled away and let his face linger against mine, nose to cheek. “I never thought it was a mistake. I was just being a dick.”
“I hope you’re not expecting me to disagree with you,” I said.
“Hey!”
“Just saying. You were definitely a dick. But understandably so with so much money on the line.”
“Glad you understand.” He looked around. “Let’s head upstairs. You go first and I’ll follow a few minutes later.”
He squeezed my shoulders one last time and let me go.
There was no better feeling in the world than having an awkwardness lifted. No more over-analyzing the situation in my head or staring at my phone, waiting for a text. Everything out in the open.
I didn’t even care about my no dating rule anymore.
I giggled to myself as I took the elevator to the 32nd floor. But when I got off and turned down the hall I found another man waiting for me.
“Hi,” Bryce said. His blond hair was perfectly combed into a wave, and he’d changed out of his fancy poker clothes and into jeans and a button-down. His face lit up when he saw me.
“Long time no see,” I said.
He walked down the hall to meet me away from the door. “I wanted to talk to you real quick.”
There’s a lot of that going on tonight.
“Oh?” was all I said.
He leaned in real close so he could keep his voice low. His eyes were perfect sapphires as he fixed his full attention on me.
“I haven’t forgotten about our night together. How much fun we had, even after.” He tugged on his shirt. “I’m even wearing the dress shirt you put on when I refused to retrieve your clothes.”
“Oh hey,” I said. I’d forgotten about that.
“I just wanted to let you know that,” he said in a rush. “That it was still on my mind. You are still on my mind. And I hope…”
He hesitated, searching for the words. “Yes?” I asked in a small voice.
“I hope I’m still on your mind too.”
I looked up at him and poured as much emotion into my smile as I could. “Oh, Bryce,” I said, touching his chest. “You’ve definitely been on my mind.”
“You’re not just saying that? I’m not trying to make you break your rule about dating…”
“We’re not dating,” I said matter-of-factly. “We’re planning a job together. It’s different. And if it means we have to see a lot of each other…” I shrugged as if it couldn’t be helped.
“Well when you put it that way…” he grinned.
We turned to walk back to room 3226, and our hands sort of fell into each other’s as if it were totally natural. We only held hands for about 15 feet down the hall but it made me as giddy as a 15 year old on her first date with a boy.
“There you are,” Xander said when we went inside. He wasn’t wearing his cowboy hat, and he had on a sweatshirt with a hood like he’d come here in secret.
“Here I am,” I said. “What’s that? You brought a white board?”
It was the kind you would find in a classroom, with wheels so you could push it around. A pack of unopened dry erase markers waited on the bed next to it.
Xander put up his hands. “Don’t look at me. Bryce brought this.”
“So we can draw diagrams of our plan,” he said defensively. “I’m a firm believer in visualizing something to make it real.”
“Oh lordy,” Xander muttered.
“Just wait—you’ll see how useful it is,” Bryce said as he ducked into the bathroom and closed the door.
Xander rolled his eyes at me. “That man…” He waved it off. “I spent the evening back stage practicin’ what you showed me. Going up and down my range. Got some strange looks from the sound crew, but I think it helped with my performance! What did you think?”
“I, uhh…” I cringed. “I missed your performance tonight. I was so focused on watching the mules, and then I checked in on Bryce at the poker tournament…”
“Oh. Yeah, right, of course you’re busy,” he said.
“I normally listen to you on my shift!” I said. “The card tables are just within range of hearing your stage.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
I grabbed his hand and squeezed it in both of mine. “I’ll be sure to pay attention tomorrow. I promise.”
I could tell that made him happy, but he tried to play it off like it was no big deal. “Only if you get a chance,” he said.
There was the electronic swipe of a card and then the door opened. Eddie slipped inside and closed it behind him just as Bryce came out of the bathroom.
“We ready to do this or what?” He gave a start. “What the fuck is that thing?”
“It’s a dry erase board,” Bryce said.
“For what?”
“For diagrams. So we can visualize.”
“We’ve all been to the Volga. We know what everything looks like.”
Xander and I shared a look as the two of them argued about the stupid board.
The small hotel room was cramped with four people, but we managed to make it work
. The guys offered me one of the two chairs, and then Eddie plopped down in the other one. Xander leaned against the wall by the window and crossed his arms over his chest.
Bryce stood in front of the white board and looked at each of us in turn. Without ceremony he said, “Here’s what we know. I checked the flight manifest for the Volga helicopter. It brings in celebrities from all over Las Vegas, but the flights on Saturday night always come from McCarron Airport. It stands to reason that the dirty money is arriving on a private jet.”
“It also stands to reason that we’re not going to rob someone at the airport,” Xander said. “Unless we want the feds crawling all over our asses.”
Bryce nodded. “According to the flight manifests from the past six weeks, the helicopter arrives Saturday night between 8:00 and 9:00. That’s our window. Three armed men with machine guns escort the money on the helicopter itself. They wait on the roof while it’s delivered, leaving a few minutes later.”
“Why do they wait on the roof?” I wondered out loud. “Why don’t they escort it the entire way?”
“I wondered that myself,” Eddie said. “Maybe they’re not Yegorovich’s men. They might work for one of the other oligarchs laundering money through Yegorovich.”
“Those oligarchs don’t always get along with each other,” Bryce said. “They’re kind of like rival mafia bosses. Yegorovich himself might insist the men stay on the roof rather than enter his casino. His turf. Regardless, the money is handed off to two Volga security guards who load it onto the hand cart. They’re armed with pistols and tasers. They transport it down the elevator to the main casino level, then across that employees only hallway to the service elevator. From there the money is handed off to two more guards, meaning there’s a total of four in the hall for a brief moment. One guard stays behind, and the other three take it down to S3.”
“Where it’s stored in the vault,” I said.
“Shortly thereafter, Yegorovich himself goes down to the vault. Presumably he’s checking on the delivery, that whatever agreed upon amount has been received. My assumption is that the men on the roof are waiting for Yegorovich’s confirmation that everything is good before leaving. Then the money is handed off to the mules to inject into the casino’s cash flow.” Bryce spread his hands. “And that’s the whole scheme, start to finish.”
There was a moment of silence as that sank in.
“Let’s steal it,” I said.
Bryce nodded. “There are several avenues for doing that. Backing up for a moment, the most important thing is to steal the money without anyone learning our identity. It’s not just important to steal it and get away—we need to steal it, get away, and have Yegorovich clueless that it was us. We can’t spend our prize if we have the Russian mob chasing us for the rest of our lives.”
“No thank you,” Xander said. “I don’t like looking over my shoulder.”
“So whatever plan we decide, we have to take the money in secret and escape without detection. This isn’t a smash-and-grab job.”
He waited for all of us to nod.
“Now let’s talk about points of entry.” Bryce grabbed the package of dry erase markers and tried to open it, but it was one of those theft-proof packages that were impossible to open. We watched as he struggled to rip it open, face going red with effort.
“Gimme that,” Xander finally said, pulling out a pocket knife and stabbing the package like it was his enemy. Markers fell out of the package and thudded to the carpet, but Xander didn’t seem to care.
“Thanks,” Bryce said, bending down to pick one up. He wrote five lines in the top corner of the board:
Roof
Elevator 1
Hallway
Elevator 2
Vault
“The most obvious plan is to steal the money out of the vault itself. Once it’s inside we have lots of time to try to get at it. Days, even, though the money dwindles each night as the mules spend it. However, the vault is also the most hardened point of entry. We’ve got multiple levels of security to penetrate: the badge reader in the service elevator, physical guards that may be stationed on S3, and then the vault itself. Eddie?”
Bryce tried to hand the marker to him, but Eddie ignored it.
“If the vault on S3 is identical to the Volga’s primary vault,” Eddie said, “which is likely based on the dimensions and specifications for the wall reinforcements, then the vault has multiple locks barring entry. First there’s a physical key that Yegorovich probably has on his person at all times. Then there’s a 16 digit encryption key that changes every day and is hand-delivered by courier in the morning. Finally there are biometric readers to scan for fingerprint, retina, facial structure… Or all three.”
“Oh, is that all?” Xander drawled.
“Yeah, easy peasy,” Eddie said dryly. “All we have to do is chop off Vlady’s finger. And cut off his face. And scoop out one of his eyes…”
I winced at the mental image.
“I think,” Bryce announced, “we all agree hitting the vault itself is pretty much impossible. So we can cross that option off.” He drew a line through “Vault” on the board.
“You’re right, visualizing the word being crossed off sure helps,” Eddie grumbled. Bryce pretended not to hear.
“On the other end of the chain, there’s hitting the helicopter itself.”
“I like that idea,” Eddie said. “Steal the money, make our getaway in the helicopter.”
“You’ve been watching too many action movies,” Xander said.
“Not to mention someone would have to learn how to fly a helicopter on short notice.”
Bryce waved his palm across his neck at me. Xander let out a long sigh and covered his face with one hand.
“What?” I said.
Eddie hopped up cheerfully. “I’ve got my license!”
“Here we go,” Bryce said.
“You’ve set him off now,” Xander added.
“I got my helicopter license when I first moved here,” Eddie explained. “I wanted to work for one of those companies that give tours of the Grand Canyon. Then I found out they only hire pilots with like a billion hours of experience. So I became a security guard instead.”
“That’s really neat!” I said.
Bryce cleared his throat. “Hitting the helicopter is a bad idea on account of the guys with guns. Did you forget about the guys with guns? Because I’d like to avoid the guys with guns.”
Eddie shrugged and said, “I can take them by myself.”
I tried not to snicker. He was being totally serious.
“Okay, Rambo,” Xander said. “Sure you could.”
“Maybe if you were camped up in this room with a sniper rifle,” Bryce said.
“That’s a great way to draw a lot of attention,” Xander said. “A reenactment of the Vegas shooting last year. I can’t see any problems with that brilliant idea.”
Eddie rounded on him. “The element of surprise goes a long way. If I was on that roof by myself I could easily pick off two before the third knew what was happening. Then…”
“We are absolutely, positively not making our move on the helicopter pad,” Bryce said. “Especially when we have other, better options.”
Eddie sat back down and glowered. “Fine.”
Bryce crossed off “Roof” on the board.
“Option one: we hit the money in the first elevator. It’s only protected by two guards at that point. They’re trapped in an enclosed area where they can’t easily get away. And nobody would see it happen.”
“What about the security cameras in the elevator?” I asked.
“I talked to some guys at work,” Eddie said. “There are certain blackout times on certain security cameras. Yegorovich orders them himself. And whaddaya know? Those elevators always black out on Saturday night for a few minutes. The guys in the security room love to gossip about it. The running theory is that it covers Yegorovich bring hookers to and from his room.”
“I can�
��t decide if that would be more or less scandalous than laundering money,” I said.
“That’s good,” Bryce said, scribbling a note on the board. “If we can find a way to hit the elevator on the way down…”
“But,” Eddie added, “those elevators have a maintenance override feature. Anyone with the credentials can force the elevator to make a direct trip to their desired floor without stopping.”
“And you know they’re doing that?” Bryce asked.
“No, but I’d bet dollars to doughnuts they are. They’d be idiots not to. You don’t want a bunch of maids trying to access the elevator while you’re transporting dirty money.”
“So they’re essentially untouchable the entire time they’re in the elevator?” I asked.
Bryce was pacing back and forth. “What about… I don’t know. What about shutting down the elevator from security? An emergency stop or something.”
“I actually have that ability myself,” Eddie said. “I can turn my key in the maintenance slot outside the elevator and order an emergency stop. But it would draw a lot of instant attention. And I’m sure it would end the security feed blackout. Men would come running, and they would see us in the act.”
“Sounds like the elevator is not an option,” I said.
Bryce looked distraught at this. “Likewise, the service elevator from the hallway down to S3 is a bad idea for most of the same reasons.” He drew a line through both elevator options on the board. “Which leaves…”
“The hallway,” I said.
Bryce switched markers from black to red and drew a quick top-down sketch of the hallway. The hall ran horizontally, with the penthouse elevators on the right and the service elevator on the left. On the bottom was the door to the stage area, and to the left of it was the door to the bathroom hall. On the top were the double-doors leading to the east loading dock.
“The hallway has a lot of things working in our favor,” Bryce said. “There are no cameras to worry about. We have multiple methods of entry: Xander can come and go from the stage area as he pleases, and one of us can enter through the bathroom hall. And most importantly? We have a quick method of escape. The east loading dock.”