Page 53 of Double or Nothing
“The Imperial Hotel and Casino.”
Interesting.
The same hotel owned by Giovanni, and where Seven’s show is located.
I hear Kit slowly coming down the stairs and I hastily pass off my cup to Natasha.
“Here’s your freshly squeezed orange juice,” Kit says, handing me the glass. “I hope Natasha talked you into resting for a while.”
“I tried,” Natasha says. “I will leave you now.” She wags a finger at Kit as she walks past him to the stairs. “Don’t bother her while she works. She won’t rest until it’s finished.”
“I promise I won’t,” he says, once again taking up his spot on the sofa Eva provided for him.
“I’m almost finished,” I tell him when Natasha leaves. “Only a few more hours and this part will be done, and then I’ll rest.”
“I can’t wait to take you home,” Kit says with a smile. “You look exhausted. Still as beautiful as ever. I’m worried about you. We all are.”
“Don’t be,” I tell him. “I live for this kind of thing. I love it! You look worn out, too. Why don’t you close your eyes and rest? I’m not going anywhere.”
He nods and tries to arrange his large body on the small sofa in an attempt to get comfortable. Finally, he crosses his arms, closes his eyes and falls dead asleep. I’m envious of how fast he can do that when my mind usually whirls for hours when I’m trying to sleep.
I’m tempted to go over and lay my head down in his lap for just a minute. But I know if I do, I’ll lose precious time when I’m so close.
I rub my eyes, put my head down, and keep working.
* * *
Two hours later,the code finally finishes running.
“I’m done,” I text Natasha.
“Coming down now,” she texts me back.
I’m eager to test the slot machine to see if my reverse engineering works. The basement door opens and shoes clank loudly on the metal stairs as Natasha and Eva make their way down. Natasha dashes across the concrete floor of the basement and wraps her arms around me in a big hug.
Her impulsive action catches me off guard. “You did it,” she says, releasing me with a big smile before hugging me again.
Eva walks up behind us and gives me a quick pat on my back with her manicured hand. “Good job, Jade. Show us what you’ve accomplished. We’re excited.”
“The code is finished running, but I haven’t worked out the exact details of the best way for us to use it,” I say. “I’m not that far along in the process.”
“Don’t worry about that part,” Eva says. “We already know what to do with the code. We’ll do the same thing the Russians did. Except improve upon their method and be smarter about it so we won’t get caught. The plan isn’t complicated. In fact, it’s very simple.”
“Okay,” I say, taking a deep breath. “Here goes nothing.”
I reach for one of the twenty-dollar bills Eva supplied me with for testing. Unlike the slot machines I’ve played at the casino, this one accepts cash along with credit cards. Sliding it into the machine, I hit the spin button.
An assortment of cute penguins, puffins, treasure chests, letters and numbers pop up. The colorful characters are spaced four rows across and five down. The screen remains still for only a split second before spinning again. I quickly memorize the characters each time before they rapidly change.
“Each spin’s twenty characters are linked to a code in the machine,” I explain. “They look random, but are actually predetermined. Without a computer, it’s near impossible to crack.”
It may be impossible for them, but not for someone with a photographic memory like me. That’s the one secret of mine that I haven’t shared with anyone.
Not even Kit, Seven or Vulcan.
After ten spins, I stop to rapidly type in the numerical code for each character combination into my laptop.
“Now I’ll input the numbers to figure out the machine’s state,” I say. “Once we know that, we can predict the next win. Timing is crucial; hit the spin button too late, even by half a second, and we lose.”
