Authors: Adrienne Giordano
He could fix a lot of things. This one? No clue. In the last fifteen minutes, two people, dead.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
She kept her hands at her sides, her body stiff. In his three seconds of not knowing what to do, he’d damned near accosted her.
She lowered her forehead to his shoulder and raised her hands, set them against his chest and, insensitive moron that he was, he liked that. The way her body fit with his. He shook it off. Concentrated on what he needed to do to help her.
“I just found out,” she said. “I talked to him this morning and now he’s gone.”
“What can I do?”
She shook her head. Then, as quickly as she’d leaned into him she lurched backward. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Totally inappropriate. You’re dealing with your own loss here and I’m…” She flapped her arms.
Now she was worried about appropriate? She wasn’t human? Wasn’t allowed a minute to process rotten news?
“Kate, in this situation, I’d say you’re entitled. Was this a close friend?”
“Mark. We worked together at the FBI. I called him to—”
She paused, met his eyes and…what? There was more. He knew it, sensed it in the way she broke off.
Sure, she could have meant to simply say she’d called him. No qualifying statement.
I called him to set up a date. I called him for information.
Nope. None of that.
Yet, there was more. And whatever it was, she didn’t want Ross to know.
Still, he pressed. “You called him to?”
“Nothing. Catching up.”
Catching up after she’d just said she spoke to him that morning. Huh.
Working in the gaming industry, sometimes surrounded by degenerate gamblers and hustlers—grifters generally looking for a score—he’d learned to recognize liars and their ticks, the body language that came with dishonesty. And standing in front of him was a woman who hadn’t necessarily lied, but she hadn’t told the truth either.
And that was a problem.
“I think,” she said, “I’m in shock. That’s all.”
“I’m sure.”
“It’s an odd feeling. We weren’t terribly close. And with that job, you go in knowing any day could be your last.”
“It’s still a loss,” Ross said.
He’d just experienced it himself when Samuels dumped the Dale Cousins news on them. No pre-amble. No warm up. No gently breaking it to them.
Whap
. Hit them with it.
“You know,” he said, “it’s been a wild day. We should all regroup and start fresh tomorrow.”
In his mind, class-A plan. Kate could go home, he could get some time alone in his office to deal with any fallout over Dale and in the morning, they’d hit the security review hard.
Except, Kate put her shoulders back, straightened the sleeves on her dress and raised her chin. Total trooper.
“I have work to do here. Your boss would have a fit.”
“He has a fit every day. I’ll deal with it. You’d be doing me a favor. I need to get caught up and I can’t do that with you here.”
Not with the distractions she provided. On a business and personal front.
He let out a harsh laugh, ran a hand down his face. What a damned day. “This day has been a cluster.”
“It certainly has.”
Someone knocked and Ross stepped back, putting extra room between them. Marcia popped her head in. “I have HR for you.”
“I’ll be right there.”
When the door closed again, he glanced down at Kate’s notebook, a half page of neatly handwritten notes sitting under her phone on the table. “It’s up to you if you want to knock off for the day. If it were up to me, I’d send you home. We’ll hit it hard tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. After he’d had time to deal with HR and communicate to the staff that one of their own had been murdered.
And, oh, yeah, figure out what to do with the gorgeous consultant about to rip his operation apart.
* * *
By 6:30 the following morning Ross had put himself through a vicious, body numbing workout, one he reminded himself he hadn’t done in four days.
The endorphin rush helped bust up the stress of the day before and set his mind straight. Freshly showered, he’d picked up a quick breakfast at the cafe and headed back to his office to start clearing the debris known as emails. By now, his daily revenue report should be ready. He’d read it and then face a day stacked with meetings. Two days of meetings packed into one and dealing with the redheaded consultant who distracted him at every turn.
A slow panic filled his chest and he walked faster trying to burn the igniting negative energy. After the encounter in the conference room yesterday, the vulnerability Kate had shown had every part of him—
every
part—roaring.
Not good when she was tasked with finding holes in their security. His life was normally a roller coaster, but this? This was pushing it.
At least she’d given him a break and taken off when he’d suggested it. At that point, they were all too strung out to deal with the intricacies of casino security.
Focus here.
Get organized. Over breakfast, he’d sort out the day. Take five minutes to figure out how to handle Kate. Or maybe he’d back off. Stay out of her way. Her and her slaying green eyes would be off his radar.
But that meant
not
seeing those slaying green eyes. Or her legs. Or her perfect little ass.
I need to get laid.
Sure did. But in this scenario, he needed to follow Don’s advice and let her do her thing. Between he and Don and their combined experience and intelligence, if Kate found something, it wouldn’t be major. That, he knew. Damn straight.
He strode into the executive suite, found Marcia already at her desk. Not unusual for her. Like him, she was a workhorse and liked to get a jump on the day. By now, she had enough comp time racked up that she could take three months off.
She held out a stack of folders. “Morning, boss. Here’s your stuff. Any schedule updates I should know about?”
“You’ll know when I know. Next week take a few days off. You need to use that comp time.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll get right on it.”
What a load that was. Ross snorted. “I won’t hold my breath.”
“Best not to.”
He held up the cafe bag. “I’ll be in my cave. Kate’ll show up at nine. As of yesterday, she said she wants to spend the day with surveillance so she shouldn’t need me. Which means, I have half a shot at getting through everything on my schedule.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing you’re not already doing. I saw the memo HR put out about Dale. Let’s keep tabs on any employees who get press calls.”
HR had instructed all employees to forward any statement requests from the press to the company’s in-house public relations department. Ross didn’t expect a lot of calls at Fortuna, considering Dale hadn’t worked there, but some of the dealers had come over from Dominion and might be contacted.
He entered his office, went about his morning ritual of hanging his jacket and organizing the folders Marcia had handed off. The all-important revenue report sat on top of the stack in the tattered red folder marked CLASSIFIED.
Marcia and her humor. Kept things light.
He sat at his desk, dug his breakfast sandwich from the bag and the aroma of the spicy mayo and bacon sent his stomach growling. He flipped open the folder and scanned the summary report.
Whoa
.
Revenue from yesterday compared to the day before was down. Only by half a percent, but since the opening they’d developed a month-to-date average and table revenue had either been flat or up.
Until today.
“Where’s this coming from?”
He dropped his sandwich, wiped his hands and flipped to the detail pages. Blackjack up four percent, Keno down one percent, mini-bac down twelve percent.
Twelve percent.
That number he hadn’t seen before. Mistake. Had to be. “Marcia?”
In seconds, she appeared in the doorway. “Yes, master?”
“Do me a favor. Have Jackie pull the hit sheet and check these numbers. Mini-bac specifically.”
“Something’s off?”
He glanced up. “I hope so. Wait. Never mind, I’ll do it.”
“Ross, I can do it. You’re already imploding your schedule.”
“I know. But this one I need to handle.”
Either that or he’d have a stroke while waiting on an answer.
He scooped up his desk phone and dialed Jackie, his numbers guru.
“Hey, Ross.”
“Jackie, good morning. Question on the reports.”
“Sure.”
“Mini-bac is down twelve percent.”
“I noticed that too. I triple checked it. According to everything I have, that’s the number.”
A triple check. And Jackie was good. If she took the time to triple check it, it had to be right.
Crap.
“Thanks. I’ll call you back if I need anything else.”
He hung up and perused the numbers again. The error might have occurred before the numbers had gotten to Jackie. Machine error in the count room? Or maybe one of the vault employees miscounted the banks delivered from the count room? Hell someone could have entered a wrong number into the system.
Could happen.
But with all the checks and balances, someone would have caught it. He spun to his laptop, pulled up the reports from the count room. Identifying which table was short would take him all of twenty seconds. A couple of clicks later and there it was. MB18, Mini-bac18 down ten percent and Mini-Bac 17 down two percent.
Seriously wacked numbers. Ross sat back, stared at the hateful report that had just ruined his day. With numbers like these, a double-digit revenue loss when they typically only saw single digit losses, it could be a freak occurrence. One of their whales could have had a landslide of a win after Ross had left last night.
That, or the lovely Kate Daniels might have her first assignment.
* * *
When Kate approached Marcia’s desk just before 9:00 the first thing she heard was Don Sickler’s voice.
“Are you
fucking
kidding me? Twelve percent?”
Great. She’d spent the entire ride up here, prepping herself, getting her emotional armor in check after the scene in the conference room yesterday only to walk into a crisis.
Maybe it was a good thing. Something she could latch onto. Something to distract her from her friend’s murder.
Something
that would force her to ignore the sizzle between her and her client.
Marcia leaped from her chair, a cheery smile in place. “Good morning. How was the drive? Okay, I hope. I know he’s expecting you.”
Even as she spoke, she speed walked to Ross’s office and casually closed the door. No wonder he liked her. The woman had an obvious efficiency about her and multi-tasked like a demon. In this case, her chatter occupied Kate while separating her from the discussion happening in Ross’s office.
Whatever Ross Cooper did in his professional career, he should never, under any circumstances, let this woman go.
“Good morning,” Kate said. “The drive was actually quite lovely. The foothills are calming.”
“They are, aren’t they?”
She waved to the seating area beside her desk. Corporate’s mini-reception area with a loveseat and cushioned chairs. At the pace these people moved, they needed it.
“Have a seat while I let them know you’re here. It should only be a second.”
“Of course.”
Before Marcia could get to her phone, the office door opened a crack and Ross stuck his head out. Marcia swooped her finger to Kate. “Kate’s here.”
He ripped off that crooked smile she’d seen all over the internet and knew exactly why women dropped for him.
Dangerous.
“Morning,” he said. “Come in.”
He stepped back, locking eyes with her as she approached and the heat poured right into her. Devastating man. Simply devastating.
Don stood by the window, leaning against the glass and Kate’s mind drifted back to childhood. Back to being warned never to lean on windows because she might fall out. To this day, she wouldn’t chance it. “Good morning, Don.”
“Ha!” he barked. “Helluva day so far.”
Kate settled into one of the guest chairs and retrieved her notebook and pen from her briefcase. Unlike many in the business world, she preferred taking notes in a notebook. She found it easier to flip the pages back and forth rather than up and down on a legal pad. Call her quirky, but it worked for her. The notebooks had gotten her more than a few stares from FBI agents and casino executives.
Ross? Not even a glance. Preoccupied obviously.
She tapped her pen against her notebook. “What’s up?”
Don grunted.
Whatever it is, it’s bad.
Ross dropped into his desk chair and scooted forward, resting his elbows on the desk. “Mini-bac revenue from last night is down.”
“I’m assuming it’s a lot?”