Chapter 4
“I lost her,” Sondra said into the phone. She was carrying her phone around the house as she worked her way to the bedroom, where Michael was already reading in bed.
“How?” Brian asked.
“She is really, really tricky. Figured out I had looked into her and then she bolted like Jason Bourne or something. I’ve been driving the roads to catch her on her bike but nothing, so I came home. Then she called me.”
“She called you?”
“She wanted to know if I had queried NCIC or you had. Used the acronym. She was worried that I had. Said, and I quote, a snatch and grab team would have likely already been dispatched if I had done it. Claimed her hometown law enforcement is compromised. Wanted me to warn you of hacking attempts and political pressure. Said we should just forget her.”
He scoffed. “She doesn’t know you well at all, does she?”
“Actually, she kind of does, but she said that I definitely don’t have the resources to stop whoever is after her, and she doesn’t think you do either.”
“Ouch. I forgive her because she doesn’t know.
But because of her tattoo catch, the Major Crimes group already has the New York attack well in hand, so my team has been freed up.
Therefore, we’ve been digging into your mystery teen.
Actually, Red started it. You know how she is with a puzzle, and your little Cassandra is quite a puzzle. This is what we know.
“Rifle Springs has one main employer: the Rifle Springs Casino. Loosely tribal in origin but in recent years, it has taken on significant outside investors, including billionaire William Cramer. More on him in a minute.
“As far as the town goes, it seems that most young men who lack a direct career plan in Rifle Springs join the military for a term, then come back and get hired as security at the casino. Cassandra’s grandfather was head of security in his day.
But her dad, a decorated Ranger, couldn’t get a security job there, blocked by the guy that took over from her granddad.
Rayer Floyd, ex-CIA. Instead, Ryan Blake worked as a blackjack dealer, a job that has high turnover at this casino.
But he didn’t quit and instead began to excel.
We tracked down a couple of his coworkers, who told us a little before they clammed up.
It seems that he met a woman nineteen years ago who was playing at his table and winning.
One thing led to another, and Cassandra was born.
But the mother, Kaitlyn, could only abide five months of motherhood before she took off and was never seen again.
“His parents stepped up to the plate and helped him raise his daughter. Grandmother had her own business.”
“A diner,” Sondra said.
“Exactly. When Cassandra was twelve, Ryan was recalled to active duty and deployed several times over two years. All hush-hush. He was discharged for a second time, and it stuck, but it seems he came back with cancer inside him. Several cancers, actually, that ate him up during her high school years. He died eight days ago, and she disappeared right after his funeral. Her graduation was supposed to be two days ago.”
“She said she got a college degree.”
“Oh, she did. Her school records go on and on about how smart she is. There’s a note that she may have deliberately missed three answers on a test in order to not be valedictorian or salutatorian.”
“Why did she leave?”
“We don’t know, but we surmise it had something to do with the casino.
Both sources indicated that her father wouldn’t let her go into it even when he was working.
When she turned eighteen, he was too sick to stop her, and she went on her own.
Six times. Played blackjack mostly. Won every time.
The best we can estimate, she won something like forty thousand dollars over two weeks.
Never got greedy, never pushed too far, but won every time.
Then, the last time, she entered a poker game. Won it easily.
“When her dad died, he was cremated. They held a small funeral and then she was just gone. Lot of folks in the casino were very interested in her whereabouts.”
“Forty thousand dollars is nothing to sneeze at, but I don’t see why they would hunt a kid for it.”
“Red was able to hack camera footage for one of her blackjack sessions. It’s… unusual.”
“Why?”
“She never made a single mistake. Folded when she wouldn’t have won, pressed on when she needed to, split doubles perfectly every time. It was like a master class.”
“Earlier you texted me that her father was tier one military, but I’ve never heard of the Regimental Reconnaissance Company. I looked it up. Pretty intense.”
“Very. It’s the spec ops intelligence unit of the 75th Ranger Regiment. Everyone knows of Delta and Seal Team Six, but these guys are farther under the radar.”
“Anyone on your team got any connections. Kessler, maybe?”
“He shook the vines on his Fort Benning connections. Got almost nowhere. Like an almost hostile level of nothing. His contacts gave him a name in the RRC and when he asked the guy about Ryan Blake because Blake’s kid might be in trouble, the guy said it was a shame, but they knew nothing about Blake’s daughter.
Thing is, Kessler used the word kid, and this guy said daughter. ”
“Son of a bitch. They know of her,” Sondra said.
“Yeah. They do.”
“Who is Cramer?”
“He’s another tech billionaire with investments everywhere. Made his money building intelligence command and control software for the government. He’s a little shady but has friends all over Capitol Hill. Lots of Wall Street money, hedge funds, that kind of world.”
“So why would this guy or the casino want her?”
“I’m sending you the video of her blackjack game. It’s… instructive… maybe. Not sure. See what you think, then call me back. ”
“You up for a while?”
“We’re all still in the bullpen. This anomaly has grabbed our attention. Plus, it’s fun to delve into something that isn’t mass casualty related.”
“Send it over.”
Sondra carried her laptop into the bedroom and crawled onto the mattress next to her husband. “Watch this with me,” she said, clicking play on the embedded video from her brother.
Michael set his tablet down and leaned over.
The view was full of static but clearly concentrated on a blackjack table and a brunette Cassandra sitting at one end.
Another girl, extremely attractive and the same age, was sitting beside her, carrying on a conversation without regard for the ongoing game.
“She’s not even paying attention,” Sondra said.
“She is though. She clearly has an extraordinary memory. Maybe even … eidetic. Except she’s eighteen, right? Too old to still have that kind of memory. And she’s not a blond,” Michael said.
“Yeah, Brian already told me that. What do you mean about too old?”
Michael snorted. “Eidetic memories, which is what people mean when they use the term photographic memory, are a phenomenon occurring in children. Never proven in adults.”
“Why?”
“Why not in adults? The theory is that conceptualizing skills and language acquisition replace the image recall that some younger children experience.”
On-screen Cassandra was listening closely to the attractive girl while hitting or standing her cards almost automatically—and winning consistently.
“I would think the dealer would get pissed at the other girl, the one not playing,” Michael said. “Although she looks like a Native American princess or something.”
“The dealer is clearly annoyed, but he’s holding his tongue. Must be a reason. I want to talk to Brian again.”
She redialed her brother and he picked up on the second ring.
“Well?”
“Who is the other girl?”
“Amber Ahmeek, daughter of the casino president. They are obviously more than acquaintances, and my profiler, Chen, feels that the conversation is mostly consultative. Amber is advising Cassandra, who is clearly listening while blowing up the table almost offhand.”
“Michael feels she is demonstrating some kind of eidetic memory. She served up hundreds of orders at Mort’s from memory.”
“Tell him I also think she has extreme pattern recognition skills,” Michael said, leaning forward to watch. “She knows what everyone has played and is accounting for it in her own play.”
“I heard him. Chen doesn’t believe it. Says eidetic memory in adults is a unicorn. Also, we’ve zoomed the video on Amber’s lips and have a lip-reading app running.”
“Sure, that’s why you zoomed on the teenage beauty’s lips, you perv.”
“They are both barely eighteen, sis,” Brian protested. “It appears that Amber is consoling Cassandra to not win too much. For her safety, and also, she mentions that showing her true self is a mistake. She says that he will be interested in her.”
“Well, mysterious he notwithstanding, there isn’t a crime here,” Sondra said.
“Not yet. Although on a side note, Red has detected three attempts to hack our system in the last hour. Your girl was right. Also, my boss called to congratulate us on our extremely fast identification of the New York attack and then pressed me for how we did it and what we were working on now. Something fishy there, as she congratulates no one, ever.”
“You’re suggesting that Cassandra was right about some mysterious actor coming after her and anyone who knows anything about her?” Sondra asked.
“I’m definitely leaning that way.”