Chapter Twenty-One
The next day Amanda wasn’t ready for the real world again, but Halle had said the contract was time sensitive.
She set her tea mug on her desk and booted up the laptop.
It didn’t take long to find the forward.
She swiped the email open and read Halle’s message above the original sender’s delivery information.
I am so jealous that you’re closer than I am. See below.
Amanda scrolled down. The initial email had been sent to their company’s generic inbox.
The sender appeared to be a Lebanese government official.
Amanda tapped her fingernail on the desk.
They didn’t have any current clients in Lebanon, and the location alone wasn’t enough to make Halle jealous of a work opportunity.
Amanda scrolled to the greeting and formal introduction of Imad Nasrallah, deputy minister of the treasury.
Mr. Nasrallah offered a concise explanation of Lebanon’s gambling tax earned from Casino de Gemmayzeh.
Now she had an idea where this might be going and why Halle wished she could work the gig.
According to Mr. Nasrallah, Casino de Gemmayzeh entertained high rollers and slots aficionados alike, and the country owned a majority share of the casino.
“Oh, that’s interesting,” she muttered, then mentally noted, if not a conflict of interest. The country earned taxes and shareholder dividends, and Amanda bet that combination brought in a sizable fortune.
It didn’t matter that some countries, like the United States, had a travel advisory on Lebanon.
Casino de Gemmayzeh was sure to be a cash cow, as many Middle Eastern countries outlawed gambling.
This casino would be able to service a hungry consumer group with few options.
“All very interesting, Mr. Nasrallah, but what’s your problem? ”
Amanda scrolled through bullet points better suited for a tourist agency until their content focused on the year-over-year growth of taxes, shareholder dividends, casino guest headcounts, and total games played.
The final bullet point referred to an attached spreadsheet.
She had her computer scan it, and the document came up clean, but she still wasn’t a fan of opening attachments from unknown senders.
She didn’t doubt that Halle and Shah would’ve checked the email and attachment also, but Amanda opted to follow their overly cautious standard operating procedure.
She turned to a second, air-gapped laptop that she kept at the ready, and, after saving Mr. Nasrallah’s file to a portable drive that she’d destroy after using, she safely opened the spreadsheet on the separate device.
The spreadsheet had column after column of data.
Most of it was unneeded but showed an effort to be transparent.
“Boring, boring, boring.” She switched tabs and scrolled again, casually reading line items that had been extracted from the country’s fiscal budgets.
Her eyebrows arched. If the numbers were correct… “Not so boring.”
Without double-checking Mr. Nasrallah’s numbers and without the ability to reference the document’s Arabic footnotes, she understood the problem before he spelled it out.
The annual income and taxes had grown steadily over the decade; however, within the same ten-year period, that growth didn’t keep pace with the steady increase of players and bets made during the same time period.
The discrepancy was slight, and nearly impossible for a governmental budget office to notice.
Amanda and Halle counted several casinos as clients, and only with that background could she see the red flag.
She opened a calculator on the screen, and, after several calculations, Amanda whistled. For every two months of spot-on expectations, one month stumbled a tenth of a percentage.
Her phone chimed and interrupted her chain of thought.
She stood and stretched, hardly giving it a second glance until she remembered giving her number to Hagan.
A warm whoosh of excitement made her giddy.
She grabbed the phone. Not him. Just Shah.
And, as fast as she’d floated from the ground, disappointment leveled her back into place.
“Don’t be like that,” she scolded and tossed the phone to the desk. Everything always went bad when she let a man distract her.
Amanda stretched and thought through her questions before she finished reading Mr. Nasrallah’s email.
Any number of factors could explain the discrepancy, from a corrupt comptroller’s office to a machine that had failed to report correctly.
Not everywhere had the same oversight as the Las Vegas Gaming Commission.
What people saw in movies influenced what they assumed to be standard procedure.
Amanda and Halle had found that even if the solution to their problem was waiting to be found in the data, they still needed to spend time on the ground to pinpoint where they might look.
She stood and stared at her two laptops.
The casino had been screwed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Maybe more. Without more time and a full data set, she couldn’t say.
But her mind drifted elsewhere. Maybe she could text Hagan and ask him about the notes written in Arabic.
Or maybe she should run them through Google Translate like normal.
Her phone pinged again. She didn’t want to talk with Halle or Shah and needed to focus on how casino grifters might’ve worked slow and steady, nearly un-noticeably, amassing a fortune of stolen wealth, then come up with a plan for a site visit.
She reached for her mug and saw the notification.
Got any plans for later?
Hagan. Her stomach leaped. But work called. Amanda reread the message. “Later,” she told herself. “You can do later.” Couldn’t she? Quickly, she responded and hit send before she could backtrack.
No. I’d like to hang out with you.
The little word under her message changed from Delivered to Read. Every part of her tingled. Three bubbles appeared on screen as he typed. No matter what he said, she’d focus on work. The dancing dots disappeared. Her breath caught. There was nothing worse than a message that didn’t arrive.
Her phone rang. Amanda nearly jumped out of her skin, then laughed. “I didn’t expect you to call.”
His laughter rumbled. “I wanted to hear your voice.”
She moved to the couch and curled with him to her ear, unable to hide her smile. “Now, I’m not sure what to say.”
“I don’t think that’s true. What are you doing?”
“Work.”
“Very specific.”
She laughed. “I’m about to use Google Translate to read footnotes in a budget.”
“Exciting stuff. What language?”
“Arabic.” She bit her lip.
“You could use me instead.”
She flushed and thought of several ways that could be done. “I want to finish before tonight.”
“I could help you now,” he suggested.
“You’re not working today?”
Hagan sighed. “Boss Man and I have avoided each other today.”
Shit. That wasn’t good. “That’s my fault.”
“I’ll deal with it later. Don’t worry.”
But she did. Hurting others was her specialty, and now she’d found a new way to cause problems. “Hagan—”
“If I promise to help, I could come over now.”
“I’m not dressed yet—”
“Perfect. That’s a yes; come on over now?”
She giggled. “I’m wearing clothes—”
“Pity.”
“Hagan!”
“Should I come over now or later?” he asked.
“Now.” He was too good to be true. Amanda couldn’t wait.