Chapter 13 Theo
The elevator opens on the third floor and I stand in it for a moment before I step out.
It's stupid. The doors are open. I negotiated for this.
Dom agreed. The ankle monitor is a steady weight above my left shoe and I can feel it with every step, the slight bulk of it against the bone.
If I go past the front door, an alarm goes off somewhere and whatever goodwill I've bought myself evaporates.
But I can leave the floor. I’ve been in there for over two weeks and it was starting to feel like I would stay there for the rest of my life.
I step out. The corridor is wide, low-ceilinged, with that same thick carpet that swallows your footsteps. The lighting is warm. There's music somewhere, piped in at a low volume. This floor is restaurants. I can smell kitchens.
My stomach turns. The nausea has been worse the last two days. It’s far early for me to know if I’m pregnant. Far too early. It has to be stress, but still I can’t get the thought out of my head.
I walk. I pass a steakhouse with dark wood paneling and a hostess station where a woman in a black dress smiles at me as if I'm a guest. I go past a sushi bar, then an Italian that smells gloriously like basil and garlic.
I'm not going into any of them. Novikov has told me that everything is going to be comped so money isn’t an object, but right now I’m hungry for escape.
The more I know, the more information that I gather, the sooner I can get out of here and be on my way.
I pay attention to everything, mapping every corridor and door in my head.
I find conference rooms on the fourth floor, the empty ones locked.
On the fifth, there’s a gym and spa with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city.
More rooms. A spa with a reception desk and the smell of eucalyptus leaking into the corridor.
More restaurants and cafes on the sixth.
Then it’s hotel floors: long corridors of identical doors, housekeeping carts parked at intervals, the occasional guest emerging with a keycard.
I count cameras. It's habit. There's one at each end of every corridor and one at every elevator bank. The stairwells have them on each landing. Novikov wasn't exaggerating when he said he knows everything that happens in this building. He probably has someone watching me right now. I wave at a camera on the ninth floor just to make a point. He’ll know I’m doing it. I’d be surprised if he expected anything else.
Before long, I've mapped the building's general layout in my head. There are no easy exits, not without going down to the casino floors and I have been strictly forbidden from entering those.
Now isn’t the time to test those restrictions. Novikov will have me locked back up in his suite before I have time to even see the light of day. I won’t get a second chance.
I can’t face spending more time in Novikov’s suite but I need to finish mapping out the entire structure of the operation.
I head back upstairs, go inside long enough to grab the laptop and then go back down to the eight floor to a lounge at the end of the hotel floor.
There’s a small bar that’s serving alcoholic drinks but also cake and coffee.
I order coffee and a carrot cake, then take my laptop over to a table by the window.
The window overlooks the front of the hotel, including the parking lot. My Honda is still out there, gathering dust and I wonder where the keys are. They weren’t in the bags that were brought up to the suite. I might have to abandon the car.
That means I’ll need to work out the closest bus routes. Or I could try hitchhiking. Whatever gets me out of here the fastest.
But first, I need more ammunition. I need to swap information for more freedoms.
I open the laptop and take a look at what I’ve missed while I was busy in Novikov’s bed.
The casino kept running and the network kept operating and whoever is pulling the strings kept pulling them. I open the surveillance archive and start with the night my heat began. Table by table. Camera by camera. Hour by hour.
It takes me three hours to get through the first two nights. By then I've seen enough.
The operation didn't pause while I was out. It didn't even slow down. The runners kept coming. I spot two new faces in the first night alone, both playing the same mid-range tables with the same unremarkable bet sizes and the same quiet exits.
It’s all getting too big to keep in my head. It’s too complex and there are too many players, once I take out the staff.
I am also going to need to do some math to get the probabilities right. But the moment I write anything down, then I lose my leverage.
I lean back in the chair and press my hands against my eyes.
I’ll need a code. I spend the next hour planning it out, using the mnemonics that are personal to me: favorite songs, lines from films. By the time I’m done, I have a list of codes for people, types of con and dates and times that make sense to me, but will be nonsensical to anyone else.
I order another coffee, with an additional shot of espresso and get to work.
I’m so absorbed in what I’m doing that I don’t even notice when Novikov arrives until he sits down in the chair in front of me.
My prime match fills every space he enters. He's in a suit, dark, no tie. His sleeves are rolled to his forearms. I resist the urge to take in a deep breath to get as much of that glorious scent as I can.
"Working already," he says.
I don’t pretend to lie as to my reasons. “I want out of here. This is my ticket.”
"I need to ask you some questions."
"About the network?"
"About you."
My hands go still on the keyboard. I look at him. His face is calm, neutral, giving me nothing. This isn't the man from the penthouse kitchen who smirked and made eggs. This is the man from the security room.
"Why?"
“Why do you think?”
I look away. That’s when I notice the bartender has gone from behind the bar and there is no one else in the lounge. There’s a sign at the entrance saying ‘Closed’. He’s cleared the space for us and I was so deep in the data that I didn’t even notice.
“You’re still not sure that I’m not in on it. I'm not connected. I told you.”
"Then you won't mind telling me where you've been for the last eight years. All of it. Every city, every casino, every name you used. Just so we can check your story."
I mind. I mind very much. Eight years of careful invisibility and he wants me to hand over the map.
But I'm sitting in his building wearing his ankle monitor. I am not negotiating from a position of strength.
"Where do you want me to start?"
"The beginning. You left the city. Where did you go?"
I tell him.
The first year I was a mess. I had no plan, no skills, no money beyond what was left from the Bureau registration payment.
All I could think of was ‘away’. I worked cash-in-hand jobs.
I washed dishes in a diner for three weeks until the owner grabbed my ass and I walked out.
My next job was cleaning motel rooms for less than minimum wage.
I slept rough when I couldn't afford a room, which was most of the time.
I found the counting by accident. I was in a bar in Atlantic City, twenty dollars to my name, watching a blackjack table because there was nothing else to do. I’d always been good at math, even as a kid.
The count was running in my head before I realized what I was doing. I sat down and turned twenty into three hundred and the world changed. I didn’t even realize that what I was doing was against the rules until I got thrown out of my first casino.
I tell Novikov this. He listens. He doesn't interrupt and he doesn't write anything down.
I tell him about the years after that. The system I built. The rules. Never more than two thousand in a session. Ninety minutes maximum. Never the same casino twice in six months. Rotate the disguises. Pay for everything in cash.
I give him the cities. Scranton, Harrisburg, Atlantic City, then south. Virginia, the Carolinas, Mississippi.
The riverboats were good. They have high traffic and staff who turned over too fast to remember faces.
Then west. Oklahoma, New Mexico, Nevada.
Reno was steady money for almost a year.
Vegas I hit twice and then stayed away because the surveillance there is too good and the databases are too connected.
He asks about contacts. I tell him there aren't any. He asks about friends. Same answer. He asks whether I've ever worked with another counter, or a spotter, or any kind of team. The answer is never.
I tell him the truth because the truth is the only thing I have that's consistent. I've been completely alone for eight years. I've spoken to motel clerks and dealers and cashiers and bartenders and none of them ever know my real name.
"The IDs," he says. "Where did you get them?"
"A guy in Reno. Cash deal, no names. He does them for half the working girls on Fourth Street. He doesn't know me and wouldn't remember me if he did."
"And no one in eight years has found you. Not the Bureau, not anyone else."
"That was the point."
"Ever heard the name Castellano?" he says. "In eight years of moving through casinos, did you ever encounter anyone connected to them? Even peripherally."
"I know the name. Everyone does.” My stomach sinks. I hope like hell that’s not who is behind this.
“Why come back?”
"It’s been years. I wanted to take a break from everywhere else. I thought a night or two at a high-traffic casino wouldn't be a problem."
He looks at me. I look at him. The lounge feels like it’s getting smaller and his scent is filling it. I breathe through my mouth because I can't afford to lose focus right now.
"I'm not working for anyone," I say. "I've never worked for anyone and I don’t want to."
He leans back in his chair.
"I'm going to bring you into the operation," he says. "Not just the data. The whole thing. Viktor, me, you. Three people. Nobody else knows what we know."
I study him. He’s telling the truth. It’s the logical choice. He doesn’t know who to trust.
If the Castellanos are involved, then he can’t trust anyone. I want to tell him he probably shouldn’t trust Viktor either, but then, he shouldn’t trust me either.
“What’s in it for me? Why should I help? You’ve made it clear you won’t let me leave.”
He shrugs. “It’s too late for you. You’re my prime match. The Castellanos will know about you soon if they don’t already. Your best bet is to throw in your lot with me and hope we win. If you leave, they’ll grab you and try use you to persuade me.”
My skin turns cold. It’s too late for you. It’s the truth in the words that grips my heart so tight that it feels as if it has stopped beating.
The realization hits that it was too late for me the moment that the prime match notification came through. I’ve managed to steal eight years for myself, but it was too late the moment that the system matched me to Dominic Novikov.
The knowledge must be showing on my face because something shifts behind Novikov’s eyes. "You stay close to me. You don't go past the boundaries I set. The monitor stays on."
This time he says it in a way that is meant to be comforting.
"And if they come for me?"
"They won't get to you."
He says it the way he says everything, as if the outcome has already been decided and reality just needs to catch up. I have never met anyone as sure of himself as Novikov. There is something weirdly reassuring about that.