Deadly Odds (25 page)

This woman. She might be perfect. He dipped his head, kissed her quick. Screw the cameras. Screw the lecture from Don.

For years his career had come first. Always. Now, he might want a life. One that included Kate.

* * *

Kate stepped into the surveillance room and found Don studying a computer monitor.

“Anything?” she asked.

He turned toward her. “Nothing on our end. We’re checking Dominion’s files. If we don’t find him, I’ll make calls.”

“Fine.” She pointed to an empty chair. “I’ll find out what else he’s been playing. See if there’s anything suspicious.”

“Go ahead.”

She logged into the system spliced a photo of Dillon Reegs and ran it through the casino’s facial recognition software.
Bam
. Plenty of hits. Mr. Reegs hadn’t been a regular since the casino opened but had been here enough that he should have wanted a player card.

Huh
. “Let’s see what you’re up to, Reegs.”

She went back to her monitor, cued up video from Reegs’ first visit, studied it frame by tedious frame, checking his hands, his facial expressions, his playing with his chips, all of it.

Nothing suspicious. No odd ticks.

In Kate’s view, all that nothingness created a fun challenge.

She backtracked to his first day in the casino. He’d played poker for thirty minutes. Same table, two different dealers. She watched the entire segment and found nothing amiss. Still, something niggled at her, nudged her.

What? What? What?

She’d figure it out. If it took three days in front of video, she’d figure it out.

She clicked a link, waited for it to cue up, spotted Mrs. Miller at the table, a healthy stack of chips in front of her. Good for her.

Kate homed in on Reegs’ habit of lifting his chips, letting them fall then lifting them again. She swiveled to every angle, watching his motions, his body language, anything that indicated deception. A sleight of hand trick perhaps that let him swap out a counterfeit chip or two.

Nothing.

Next video.

Thirteen more to look at. Depending on how long Reegs played during each visit, she might be here a while.

She clicked the next link. Mr. Reegs at mini-bac. Now she had to stay sharp. She sat back a little, stretched her neck while the dealer shuffled cards for the next hand.

There. Kate shot straight in her chair.

“Whoa.”

She paused the video, dragged her gaze from Reegs to the dealer then back to Reegs.

Whoa,
whoa
. A wicked blood rush sent her pulse pounding. She couldn’t get too antsy here.

Relax.

Rewind the video. Check it again.

That’s what she’d do. Several times. Just to be sure.

On the second pass, she switched to slow motion and—
there
—saw it. Definitively. “Dammit.”

Don wandered up behind her. “You find something?”

“I think so.”

“Reegs?”

“No. The dealer.”

Chapter Twelve

“What are you talkin’ about?”

Kate held up her hand before Don started yelling. “Just take a look.” She glanced at the surveillance techs then waved Don closer.

People, no matter how trustworthy, tended to gossip.

“Watch the shuffle.”

“Dammit, Kate.”

“I know. Just watch.”

She replayed the segment, stopped it and pointed at the screen. “Watch. Right here.” She started the video again, backed it up and replayed it in slow motion. “See it?”

Onscreen the dealer split the deck in two halves and pushed the two stacks together.

At an angle.

The angle, that slight tilt, had caught her eye.

She tapped the screen. “Watch when he pushes the two halves together.”

On the screen, in slow motion, the dealer shoved the two stacks together, sending them straight through so each came out the opposite side.

Intact.

“Son of a bitch,” Don said. “Push through false shuffle.”

“You see it too. Good.”

The dealer cut the cards again, the two stacks still in their original order.

All within seconds.

“Son of a bitch,” Don repeated.

Don Sickler, a man who prided himself on his ability to sniff out crossroaders, had a bad dealer in his casino.

The false shuffle they’d just witnessed, the one that preserved the order of the cards from the last hand, proved it.

And in mini-bac, the order of the cards was essential. If a player knew the order of the cards, they’d know when to bet heavy and when to back off. All based on which cards were about to be dealt.

Kate drummed her fingers against the mouse. “Here’s what we’ll do. I have all the video of Reegs’ play. Let’s narrow down how much he won on which nights and crosscheck which dealers he had.”

“If he’s continuously scored at mini-bac with this same dealer, we’ve nailed them both.”

* * *

Ross sat at his desk, working through a mountain of emails when Don, followed by Kate marched into his office. Don closed the door.

Never a good sign.

Whatever this was, it wasn’t good.

He held up a laptop. “Kid, we got a problem.”

“Crap.”

“Something like that,” Kate said.

Ross motioned everyone to the small table by the windows where they could huddle around the laptop.

Kate sat and opened the laptop while Ross and Don stood behind her. She clicked a link and sat back. “Focus on his hands. The shuffling.”

“What do we think we have here?”

“False shuffle,” Don said.

“Shit.”

“Exactly.”

“We’re sure?”

Kate nodded. “As sure as I can be from watching these videos. I’ll check the dealer’s other shifts. See if anything looks suspicious. I’m crosschecking if the dealer has interacted with our friend Mr. Reegs.” She held her hand to Don. “Agreed?”

“You bet your ass. As soon as we’re done here, I’m gonna talk to him.”

“Hang on,” Ross said. “What do we know about this Reegs?”

“Nothing,” Don said. “He’s clean.”

Kate pointed at the laptop. “I went through about half of the video footage we have on him. I’m logging which nights he won and from which dealer. If it’s the same dealer we suspect of doing the false shuffle…”

“They’re working together.”

“One would think.”

Ross reached around her, rewound the video and watched it again.

Karl Epstein. Really? He’d been at Dominion for ten years before they’d brought him over to Fortuna. Ross liked his easy demeanor and his pleasant banter with the players that stopped just short of being overly friendly.

And his performance reviews had been exceptional.

Why and how the hell did this guy, a man with three kids, teenagers all of them, go rogue on him?

Teenagers.
His memory wasn’t as sharp as usual after the last few weeks, but he seemed to remember Karl had one daughter in college. Another in high school. A senior maybe. Then another younger son.

Three kids.

Three kids to put through college. And with what tuition, even at state schools, clocked in at? Forget it. Dealers made good money, but three kids?

But he shouldn’t get too far ahead of this thing. In Vegas, anything could happen for any number of reasons and he wouldn’t assume anything.

Ross checked his watch. Shift change happened an hour ago. “He’s probably off shift. I’ll check his schedule. See if he’s on tomorrow. If so, I say we watch him. Maybe see if Reegs comes back. We might spot something suspicious.”

He walked back to his desk to check the shift schedules, his mind moving ahead, forming a plan. “We need to go back. Find everything we can on Epstein and build a timeline. Then we hit him with it.”

“Goddamnit!” Don stormed toward the door. “I’m on it.”

“While you do that, I’ll call the Gaming Commission. Give them a heads up that we might have something.”

The topper of this week would be Fortuna slapped with a fine for not alerting Gaming to a cheat. By law, all casinos were required to notify the Gaming Commission of cheating. After that, the commission took over the investigation.

For now, until confirmed, Ross would simply put the commission on alert that they were monitoring a situation.

A move to cover their asses and keep them from a fine if this thing played out the way they suspected.

Kate snapped the laptop closed. “I’ll study the rest of the footage and give you a report of which dealers Reegs won the most with.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course.”

“And Kate?” She turned back to him, met his gaze. “Good work.”

* * *

For privacy, Kate retreated to her suite. Here she could jam on the phone, reaching out to her contacts, working all connections while Ross and Don met about the dealer in question. So far, she’d spoken to three casinos, including Dominion and had sent them photos of Reegs. If he was making the rounds, she’d figure it out and help Ross build that timeline he wanted.

Her cell phone bleep-bleeped. A Vegas number. She poked the screen hoping this was someone returning her call.

“Hello?”

“Kate? It’s Mel.”

Mel Cavanaugh. Security chief at Watercress Casino, the closest thing to Dominion’s rival. “Mel, thanks for getting back to me. Any luck on our guy?”

“He’s been here. I’m sending you a download of our video. He looks clean, but have a look.”

Oh, she sure would.

“I will. Thank you. I’ll let you know if I see anything.”

“Appreciate it.”

Another call bleeped through and she disconnected with Mel, saw Dev’s name on the screen.

She was still mad at him for his disgusting behavior, but he was her boss and she’d keep him in the loop. Even if she did want to carve his tongue out. “Dev, I think we have something.”

She updated him on the dealer, on Reegs and the possibility that the two might be working together to bilk the casino.

“Excellent,” Dev said. “What can I do?”

“I have calls into a few of the casinos and they’re all checking Reegs’s photo against their surveillance. You could put some feelers out to the folks you know.”

“Send me his picture.”

She spun to her laptop and fired off an email. While in there, she spotted the file transfer from Mel. “I have Mel Cavanaugh’s downloads already. He said Reegs was in their place. I’m about to go through what he sent, see what I can find.”

“Fine. Keep me informed.”

“Will do.”

She dropped the phone and clicked on the file Mel had emailed.

Mini-bac.

Oh, this just kept getting better and better. She zoomed in on Reegs hands, spotted him doing the same motion with his fingers that he’d done at poker. Nothing, aside from the act itself, seemed unusual.

She zoomed out, took a wider view of the table, her eyes scanning left and right, taking in the dealer’s hands as well as Reegs’. The dealer shuffled and she zoomed again. Nothing suspicious.

She panned wider, spotted movement at the table. A middle-aged man leaving. One spot open.

Not for long. An older woman sat, her silver-gray hair shining under the glare of the lights and…wait.

Kate panned right, zoomed in.

“Well, slap me silly.”

Mrs. Miller.

Kate sucked a breath. Coincidence? Perhaps. But what were the chances the woman would be in the same casino, over sixty miles away, at the exact same time as Reegs, a man suspected of cheating at Fortuna. Also a casino visited by Mrs. Miller and Reegs.

At the same time.

With all the casinos in Nevada? Total stretch.

Kate sat back, blew out a breath as her mind whirled. Ross’s affection for this woman ran deep.

He was flat out crazy about her. Should she alert him to this development? After the near-argument they’d had in the hospital about her not informing her of a suspected murderer in Fortuna, not sharing intel about Mrs. Miller would cause a war.

But, it could be a wild—extremely wild—coincidence. She’d have to rule Mrs. Miller out before she saw Ross again. Which meant finding any similarities between Watercress’s videos and Fortuna’s.

Particularly any incidents of Mrs. Miller and Mr. Reegs being at the same tables at the same times.

And winning.

* * *

By three o’clock, Ross was already whupped. A hard thing for him to admit, but the week had most definitely caught up to him. Between keeping up with Kate and her doings and the general day-to-day of performing his job, it had been a helluva week.

And a short five hours of sleep after last night’s activities wasn’t nearly enough.