EUPHRATES PENTHOUSE

His: 2014

Yours: 2015

Return envelope with all contents to the VIP desk She studied the first line and felt a turning in her stomach. She leaned her head against the phone. The penthouse of the Euphrates Tower was familiar to her. It was the place where dreams and hopes had ended for her. It was one thing to come back to Vegas, another to return to the Cleo. But to go back to the penthouse… Cassie fought the urge to cut and run. She reminded herself of all that was at stake. She had gone too far to turn around at this point.

She tried to change her thoughts. She looked at the note again and picked up the card key. One key for two rooms meant she was holding a pass key. That explained the last line of instructions on the note. The key had to be returned because all pass keys probably had to be accounted for. If any investigation followed the crime she was about to commit, pass keys would be inventoried.

She slowly crumpled the note in one hand and looked at the photo. It showed a baccarat table where there was only one player: an obese man in a suit with a large stack of chips in front of him. Diego Hernandez. The photo had a date-and-time stamp on the corner – it had been taken that afternoon. It was obvious to Cassie that the photo had come from a casino surveillance camera. The pass key and the photo told Cassie that the spotter Leo's partners had was deeper inside than she had thought.

She committed the image of the fat man to memory and then put the photograph and the crumpled note back into the envelope. She folded it twice and shoved it into a zippered pocket on her backpack. She then headed back to the casino floor.

Without raising her head she scanned the table signs in the casino until she saw the one over the baccarat salon. She took the long way, skirting the edge of the gaming area until she came to the railing that ran along the perimeter of the baccarat salon. She put an elbow and an arm along the railing, nonchalantly leaned back against it and looked out across the casino. Her eyes encountered no one looking at her. She was cool. Slowly she turned, as if noticing the baccarat salon behind her for the first time, and shifted her position so that she was looking into the room.

He was still there. The mark. Diego Hernandez. The man was short but obese, the girth of his stomach making him appear to be sitting away from the table. He was overdressed in a baggy dark suit and tie. As Cassie watched, she noted that he played with an economy of physical movement, his eyes constantly scanning the table but his head not moving. On the table in front of him were several stacks of hundred-dollar chips. Cassie estimated that he had at least ten thousand dollars on the table.

Cassie watched a few deals but never held her eyes on Hernandez for more than a few seconds. At one point he suddenly looked up and out toward the railing. She quickly looked away. When she surreptitiously glanced back, his eyes were back on the table. He apparently had paid little mind to her.

She needed only one thing from Hernandez before going up to the penthouse. She focused her attention squarely on his hands as they moved chips and handled his cards. It took less than a minute for her to decide that he favored his left hand. The clincher was when the right cuff of his suit coat caught on the edge of the table's elbow pad and drew back to expose his watch. Cassie had what she needed. Hernandez was left-handed. She stepped away from the railing and proceeded, head down, in the direction of the elevator alcove of the Euphrates Tower.

As Cassie entered an elevator in the Euphrates Tower, she saw that a card key had to be inserted in the panel before the penthouse button could be engaged – a security measure that had been added since the last time she had been in the hotel. She pulled the pass card from her back pocket and engaged the button. She stayed close to the doors and averted the impulse to look up at the lighted numbers over them, assuming there was a camera somewhere above her. She looked at her watch and saw it was already almost nine o'clock. She needed a minimum of an hour in the room and knew she was now pushing it.

On the twentieth floor Cassie came out of the elevator alcove, looked both ways in the hall and found she might already be riding a piece of luck. There was no housekeeping cart in the hallway. It was apparently after VIP turndown service. The only thing in the hall was a room service table topped with a white tablecloth and the detritus of a candlelight dinner, including an empty champagne bottle floating upside down in a silver ice bucket.

She went to her right to find room 2015 but as she first passed by the door to room 2001 she gave it a wide berth, moving all the way to the left side of the hallway and averting her eyes from the door and the memory behind it. She said a silent prayer, calling on Max to be with her tonight.

The hallway was dimly lit by wall sconces to the left of every door. She found rooms 2014 and 2015 directly across from each other near the end of the hallway and the emergency exit. That was a good break. In case something went wrong, the stairs were right there. Cassie knocked on the door of room 2014 and also pushed the glowing button to the left of the door frame. She heard a soft chiming sound from the other side of the door and she waited.

As expected, no one answered the door. She took the card key out of her back pocket again, looked up and down the hall once more, and then used it to open the door.

As she stepped into the room she felt the immediate jangling of adrenaline coursing through her veins. It felt like a flooding river inside her, powerful enough to take anything in its path.

CASSIE used an elbow to close the door and turn on the light switch. She dropped quickly to her knees, putting her hat and the gym bag on the floor and then swinging her backpack down in front of her. From the small front pocket of the backpack she took a pair of latex gloves and pulled them on, making sure they were tight around her fingers and short-cut nails.

She quickly removed and untied the rubber satchel that contained her tools. She unrolled it across the carpet and dragged a finger across the tools, making sure she had everything. She then pulled the Polaroid camera out of the gym bag, got up and began a survey of the suite.

It was a VIP accommodation, the kind given to comped guests of the casino. It was one large living room with double doors leading to the bedroom to the right. The furnishings were plush and Cassie knew that in most of the hotels the VIP suites were refurbished annually to keep them looking pristine and their inhabitants thinking they were among the few who got the privileges of the comped.

She became aware of the heavy odor of cigar in the air – Hernandez was helping her without even knowing it. She moved into the bedroom, for it was where she would do all of her work. She flicked on the light, revealing a large room containing a king-size bed, a bureau and a small writing desk in addition to the floor-to-ceiling television cabinet. She noted that the turndown maid had already been in the room. The bedcovers had been folded back neatly and there was a foil-wrapped mint on the pillow next to a morning room service checklist to be hung outside the room on the door handle.

There was an alcove to the right with an open door to the bathroom on one side and a double set of louvered doors on the other. Cassie opened these to reveal a wide and deep closet. This action also revealed that when the doors were opened an interior light automatically went on. Cassie bent down and saw the room safe anchored to the floor, partially obscured beneath a sport coat and several long, flowing shirts Hernandez had placed on hangers.