Chapter Twelve First, Arrive Undetected
Adelina
“This is for you,” Joseph says chipperly as he slides an old black flip phone toward me.
I eye it suspiciously. It’s as clunky as it is an eyesore. “What is it?”
“Your new burner. Each of us has one, and I’ve already programmed our numbers onto them. We’ll communicate using these, and if anything happens, just toss it.” He winks at me. “Keeps the pigs off our tails.”
I take the phone and stuff it into my pocket. That makes sense. In the unfortunate event that we’re caught by the authorities, the last thing I need is to link myself to the others on my personal device.
“Is there a reason West isn’t traveling with us?
” I ask over the rush of wind past the train windows.
The French countryside is breathtaking, wide swaths of golden farmland beneath a crisp blue sky, the landscape speckled with rustic homes and a wash of luscious trees.
It’s a stark contrast to the city. Don’t get me wrong—they’re both equally lovely, but in their own way.
One is a gorgeous scenic painting, while the other is a bustling center of vibrant culture.
If I had to choose, it would probably come down to a coin toss.
We boarded at the Gare de Lyon to Marseille Saint-Charles, where we’ll catch a connecting train to Nice (which I learned is pronounced like niece and not nice).
I wasn’t even aware that there were high-speed trains in France, but I’ll fully confess to North American ignorance on my part.
I’m not exactly a world traveler. The farthest I’ve ever managed was Massachusetts, never mind Europe.
“He’s in another car somewhere,” Diana says coolly, not bothering to peek over the edge of her newspaper.
She sits across from me next to Joseph, a bolted-down table dividing us, her impeccable posture making me look like a curled-up shrimp in desperate need of a chiropractor.
“Berruci has eyes all over Nice who may be able to identify him. It’ll be more inconspicuous for us if we arrive separately. ”
“Blackjack!” Joseph exclaims, his attention glued to his phone screen. A passenger somewhere farther down the aisle shushes him. “Pardon,” he replies sheepishly.
So much for being inconspicuous.
My laptop sits open before me on the table, my code only a third of the way written.
It’s not something I can magically throw together overnight, though I’m certainly trying.
It’s nothing like the movies, where the actor slams his hands over the keyboard and—bam!
I’m in. God, I wish. I’m so tired and travel-weary that I find myself missing functions left, right and center.
Staring at the screen for extended periods of time has my eyes going a bit crossed.
With any luck, I’ll have time to do a few test runs and work out any bugs, but the stakes are high and the clock is ticking.
While I’m confident in my abilities, the consequences aren’t lost on me.
What happens if I fail? Will West turn me in to the cops? It’s entirely possible that he would hand me over to Berruci just to save his own neck instead.
I wipe my clammy palms on my jeans. “How do you two know West? Or…Mathieu, I mean.”
Diana sets her newspaper down, her lips pursed. “Why should we tell you?”
I frown deeply. “Did I do something to piss you off?”
“You are an outsider,” she replies simply. “One who hasn’t even given us her name. The playing field isn’t even, so excuse me for being cautious. I don’t know what you’re capable of, what connections you might have, or what your reason for joining us even is.”
“I’m in it for the money,” I reply fluidly. Not technically a lie, but not the whole truth either.
Her eyes flit over my face as though memorizing my features.
“I don’t believe you,” she says, the corner of her lip tugging up into a grin.
There’s nothing friendly about it. It’s cool and calm and self-satisfied in a way that makes me squirm.
“I’ll be the first to say it, since Mathieu—or West, as he goes by now—seems adamant about keeping you on the team: I don’t trust you.
He seems to have a lot of faith in your capabilities, but faith doesn’t get the job done.
For all I know, you may end up being useless. ”
Useless.
The word ricochets around the inside of my skull and sends my heart stuttering. Do I somehow have the word tattooed onto my forehead, but I’m the only one who can’t see it?
I might have been able to forgive Diana for her combative nature.
She’s just trying to keep herself safe, same as me.
But this is a slap across the face, one hard enough to knock the air from my lungs and superheat my blood past the boiling point.
I gave West shit for wanting a demonstration back in Vancouver, but now my pride has been thoroughly bruised.
I want nothing more than the chance to prove her wrong, to show Diana and all her doubts that I am, in fact, more than enough.
I don’t need to be everyone’s best friend, but the least I require is a sliver of respect.
“Joseph, what casino website are you using?” I ask him.
He looks up from his phone. “It’s called Triple Golden Jackpot.”
Diana huffs at him. “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?”
“What can I say? I’m a hustler, my darling. There’s always money to be made.”
“Do they have slot games?” I ask him.
“They do, but the odds are always shit. I prefer live tables.”
Returning my attention to my laptop, I pull up the site in question and am immediately bombarded by all manner of flashing ads and bright colors. Good Lord. It’s a good thing I know how to protect myself digitally. One misplaced click could probably overload my laptop with malware.
“What’s your username?” I ask him.
“JoeLeManGeeOh.”
I frown. “Seriously?”
Joseph shrugs and chuckles. “What? I thought it was funny.”
“Enter a game,” I instruct, squinting at the tiny font that floats onto my screen.
Diana snorts, crossing her arms over her chest with an impatient click of her tongue. “What’s the point of all this?”
“Give me a minute and you’ll see.”
Hacking into a website is easy enough. There are several possible routes I can take (a brute force attack, clickjacking, SQL injection, spoofing the DNS, cross-site scripting, etc.), but a quick glance at the code tells me I don’t have to put in nearly that much effort.
There are holes in the security everywhere.
It’s frankly a miracle that Joseph hasn’t had his personal information stolen, or infected his phone with a plethora of viruses.
Now, I would normally hesitate to mess around with someone’s website, but these big online casinos are predatory as hell.
(And I sincerely doubt some sweet old grandma is the one running it.) Much like in a real casino, the odds are stacked in favor of the house, preying upon those foolish enough to think they have Lady Luck on their side.
Some people are desperate for the money, for a quick solution.
Others may be predisposed toward compulsive gambling.
It isn’t right to take advantage of people like that.
It takes me a few minutes to sort through all the junk code, but when I finally find the specific algorithm in charge of setting the digital slot machine’s odds, a shot of electricity bolts through me.
It’s set to 1 in 5,000 for minor prizes (a couple bucks here, a bonus pull there) and 1 in 35,000,000 for the major jackpot.
Unbelievable. It’s no fucking wonder some people lose their life savings to the slots, all while some greedy hotshot takes and takes and takes.
I’m sure they have their twisted justifications—that they didn’t force anybody to bet their money—but that’s a straw man’s argument.
I draw the line at designing a system meant to bleed a person dry.
Once I trick the website into believing I’m logging in as admin, I inject a few lines of custom code and change the odds in Joseph’s favor. “Go ahead and play,” I tell him.
Joseph arches a brow but taps his screen with a shrug of his shoulders. The flashy numbers spin around and around, slowly coming to a stop on—
“Triple sevens!” Joseph gasps.
“Play again.”
He does so, this time landing on the images of three red cherries. “I can’t believe it,” he says with a laugh.
While I’m glad Joseph is impressed, Diana looks the furthest from it. “It’s all luck,” she says.
“Is it?” I reply, dipping back in to delete my work. It’s important that I don’t leave a trace. West being able to sniff me out was a terrible oversight on my part, and I’m determined never to let it happen again. “Go ahead and make another bet,” I tell Joseph.
He does so with an almost fiendish glint in his eye, but his joy swiftly drains away when he loses all the money he just earned. “You turned it off?”
“That’s what I can do in ten minutes. Imagine what I can accomplish with a dedicated couple of days.” I close my laptop and rise from my seat. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to the food car for some breakfast.”
I make my way down the aisle without so much as a backward glance, the train jostling slightly underfoot.
My face is warm, my heartbeat erratic. I shouldn’t have let Diana get under my skin like that, but if there’s one thing I hate, it’s when people doubt my work.
I was one of the only girls in my computer science class in high school.
In college, I had to endure an entire classroom full of boys with massive egos, always the first to laugh when I made a mistake or sling dirty looks my way when I outperformed them.
Maybe I have an ego of my own. My pride simply couldn’t stand Diana’s skepticism.
God forbid a woman have talent, drive and a thirst for knowledge only to have her efforts diminished as little more than luck.
To be written off as some Mary Sue. Diana wasn’t there to see all the hours I put in to get to where I am. She doesn’t know what I sacrificed.
You have to work twice as hard for half the recognition, Mom used to say.
She was right, but that doesn’t make it any less exhausting.
I step through the sliding doors between train cars and spot a familiar tuft of blond hair sticking out from beneath a navy-blue baseball cap.
West is on his phone, leaning against the wall for stability, his back to me.
He looks unassuming in a pair of gray slacks and a black sweatshirt, wearing sunglasses over his eyes even though it’s nowhere near sunny enough to warrant them.
I guess this is what he thinks it means to go incognito.
“I miss you too,” he says warmly. “I’ll be home as soon as I can. No, you should really go to bed…I love you, too, sweetie.”
Well, this is awkward. I didn’t mean to intrude on a private conversation.
I wasn’t even aware that West might have a partner waiting for him back home.
My imagination gets the better of me as I wonder what they’re like.
Do they know who he really is? Are they aware of what precisely he’s here in France to do?
If I have to hide the truth from the rest of my family, does West need to do the same?
He hangs up and nearly jumps back five feet when he sees me. West throws a hand over his heart. “How long were you standing there?”
“Not long.”
His momentary surprise melts away, quickly replaced by his signature smile. “Did you leave the comforts of first class just to come visit me? You’re too sweet.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I was looking for something to eat.”
He tilts his head to the side, contemplative. “Did something happen?”
I cross my arms. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t play with me. I can hear it in your tone.”
“I don’t have a tone.”
“Riiiiight,” he says. “And I’m eight foot nine.”
A heavy sigh escapes my chest. “It’s not important. Diana’s just…”
West frowns. “What did she do?”
“I don’t think she likes me very much.”
“Don’t take it too personally. This job is a lot of pressure. She has her reasons for wanting to go after Berruci.”
“Why?” I ask, instantly jumping at the opportunity. I worry I’m being too transparent, that West might shut me down the same way Diana did, but the nagging voice in the back of my head burns to know. Who are these people? What’s in it for them?
West chews on the inside of his cheek. I can practically see the gears turning in his head, mentally debating whether or not it’s wise to let me in.
“A lot of money on the line,” he says, but I know he isn’t being forthright.
“Is that why she’s coming with us?”
“I don’t understand.”
“She’s the investor,” I say, as though it were a perfunctory fact like water is wet and the Earth isn’t fucking flat.
“She’s a cautious woman.”
“So she’s babysitting us.”
“Supervising,” he corrects.
I glare at him. “Oh, yeah. That’s way better. Can’t wait to have her constantly breathing down my neck.”
“Diana probably just wants to make sure she gets her cut.”
“Make sure? I have no plans of double-crossing her. Do you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what’s her problem?”
West sighs. “Look, she’s a hands-on kind of investor. She’s honestly not that bad. Give her some time to warm up to you.”
I tap my foot impatiently. “Where did she even get all this money anyway?”
He scratches behind his ear. “Her family owns a successful chain of bakeries back in New Delhi, I think. When she came to France, she opened her own chain. Took the profits and made smart investments. I don’t know the details.
Rich people are always a little dodgy about how they left everyone else in the dust.”
I snort. Truer words have never been spoken.
“Well, it’s a good thing the train ride is six hours long. We’ll really get to know each other. A flight to Nice would have taken an hour, you know.”
West grins. “I know, but you hate flying.”
My heart stutters. Wait, did he do this for my sake?
It’s a simple kindness, yet one I’m incredibly grateful for.
Before I have a chance to think too hard on it, my personal phone rings in my pocket.
It’s the alarm I set—programmed to go off ten minutes before my scheduled text to Lily, arguably the only person in my contacts list whom I trust to raise hell in the event something should happen to me.
West looks at me, and then at the phone as I cancel the alarm and reschedule the message to send in twenty-four hours’ time. The air around us suddenly grows thick.
“The food car is just up ahead,” he informs me, easily slipping on his mask of casual ease. “Do you remember the next part of the plan?”
I nod, stuffing my phone back into my jacket pocket. “Joseph is going to secure a warehouse for our base of operations. Diana is in charge of securing lodging. And we’re heading out immediately once the train arrives to begin reconnaissance.”
“Prepare yourself, Ms. Choi. There’s no turning back now.”