Deadly Odds Read online

  And, way out here in a resort surrounded by mesas and foothills and state parks, distractions other than the ones Fortuna provided were limited.

  Abandoning the landscape outside his window, Ross got to his feet and took in his other favorite view—the casino floor. Right below him was where it all happened. Even on a Monday morning the high rollers threw their dice, placed their chips and smacked buttons on the slots. Slowly, Ross scanned the tables, not really focused on one thing, but making sure anyone who looked up would see him watching. Always watching.

  “Is Dominion’s revenue still down?” Ross asked.

  “Only mini-bac. Samuels is shitting elephants.”

  “He should be. My buddy at the PD said whoever this cheat is, he’s good. Three casinos are down a total of fifteen million. And they can’t catch him.”

  Don waved that off. “They don’t have me, Wonder Boy. With the cash coming through this place he—or she because it could be a broad screwing these casinos—won’t be able to resist coming out here. And when they do, I’ll be waiting. I’ll take their goddamn fingers off.”

  And therein lay the difference between Ross and Don. Casino magazine may have featured Ross’s face on their cover, but it wasn’t because he’d dealt with a cheat the old fashioned way. They loved his ability to give the gaming industry respectability. That was him, Ross Cooper, the young genius who managed a casino like a Fortune 500 company. He could run numbers, figure profits and losses to the penny, manage cash drops, and develop marketing strategies.

  But he needed a whacked-out geezer like Don Sickler to scare the hell out of the cheats.

  Together, he and Don were unbeatable.

  The crow’s feet around Don’s eyes deepened as he squinted. “What is it, bubbie? You miss Vegas? Nobody here to admire your Ferragamos? Has it been three hours since you got laid?”

  Total ball breaker, this guy. But speaking of women…

  Ross stopped his scan of the casino when he got to the stunning redhead sitting at blackjack. Table eight.

  Bam. She had his attention.

  And it wasn’t just her long, wavy hair or her creamy fair skin. Something in her body language, the tilt of her head…something.

  Something not good.

  He spun back to his computer, tapped a few keys and brought the video feed up on the bank of monitors lining his wall.

  “Redhead,” he said. “Table eight.”

  He zoomed in on the table. And the woman. Don rose and walked to the wall, studying the live feed as the dealer shuffled and the redhead’s luscious hair draped over her shoulder. Damn, she was gorgeous.

  “She’s watching the dealer,” Don said.

  “Yeah.”

  As the dealer shuffled, Ross tightened the zoom. The woman turned her head, took in the pit area, the other tables, her eyes shifting, moving, studying, all of it happening but not obvious. If he hadn’t had the zoom so tight, he’d never have seen it.

  She’s good.

  Then she looked straight ahead at something beyond the pit and she straightened up.

  “Whoa,” Ross said. “She saw something she didn’t like.”

  Seconds before the dealer started the hand, she cashed out. That fast.

  Ross tapped a few more keys. “Let’s see who she is.”

  Nothing. No player information for position three, table eight. She must have declined a players’ card.

  “We got zip,” Ross said. He spun back to the glass wall overlooking the casino floor, watched the lovely redhead slide from her seat, her trim figure drawing his gaze down to where the fitted dress hugged her lean hips and perfect ass. And the legs? Jesus. Even under the dress, he saw they went for a mile.

  Trouble.

  “Let’s keep an eye on her,” Ross said.

  But Don was already on it, texting—yeah, the old man knew how to text—and most likely giving orders for a full report on the redhead.

  She disappeared into the lounge, out of Ross’s sight, which was too damned bad, but Don would take it from here. His area anyway.

  He spun away from the glass. “Is there something you wanted when you came in here? Or are you just generally breaking balls?”

  Don shrugged. “Just generally breaking balls.”

  “Perfect.” Ross took his seat again. “Since you’re here, let’s review the security plan for that kid—the reality star—coming in on Friday. Apparently, he has a monkey.”

  “I heard about that. No fucking monkeys on the floor. I’ll set up a cage somewhere.”

  “That’s what I told his manager. If nothing else, he’ll bring his loaded friends with him. Give me all the grief you want about being a Wharton guy, but I know how to get the twenty-five-year-olds from behind their computers and into a casino.”

  “Yeah, even if you are stuck in Bumfuck, Nevada.”

  “You had to remind me?”

  Chapter Two

  Forty minutes.

  That’s how long Kate had until her meeting with the Fortuna folks. Being a decent blackjack player, she could get a lot done in forty minutes. Might as well attempt a little something. See how good Cooper and Sickler really were.

  Considering their boss knew she planned to test his security by cheating. If she were any good at her job, she wouldn’t get caught. Too bad for Cooper and Sickler, but for her? Pulling that off would solidify her reason to be here.

  She snagged the lone open seat one table over from the last table she’d visited. Next to her a middle-aged man with a beer belly looked her up and down.

  Great.

  “Ma’am.” The dealer nodded a greeting and Kate set her stack of chips on the table.

  Ten thousand dollars of her boss’s money. She pulled her hand away, allowing the surveillance cameras full access to the exchange, and the dealer called out to the pit boss. All money and chips needed to be set on the table before the dealers could touch them. No direct exchanges. The cameras had to see everything.

  “Barneys please,” she said.

  The dealer counted her chips, restacking as he went, then counted out the five hundred dollar chips Kate had requested for betting.

  She glanced up and—oh, my—approaching from the opposite aisle was a tall man with black hair and a face so perfectly chiseled she doubted the world’s best plastic surgeons, even the ones visited by the folks in this place, could recreate it. Dressed in a tailored suit, he was fit and broad shouldered, his stride confident in that commanding way only a lucky few possessed.

  That’s him.

  Prior to coming to Fortuna, Kate had done a quick internet search on Ross Cooper and had found a wealth of photos. When it came to the social aspects of a bachelor in Vegas, the man was no homebody.

  From a quick glance, Mr. Cooper’s expensive clothes and flawless grooming spoke volumes about his life. One that included flashy women, fast cars and a jet-set lifestyle. So not her style, but she could see it on him. A man like him stripped a woman naked with barely a smile.

  At least that’s what the internet had said.

  Kate pulled her gaze from Cooper and his extremely compelling presence. How could it be humanly possible for the man to be better looking than the images in all those photos?

  He strode by the two roulette tables at the end of the row, scanning the area as he walked.

  The dealer slapped a card in front of her and the red jack nearly spat at her—busted. Damn it. She didn’t exactly have unlimited funds for this assignment, and those funds would go fast. Call it research, but each time she entered a potential client’s casino, the first thing she did was sit at the tables and play. She liked to quietly observe the normal day-to-day activity, watch the dealers, the pit bosses and, of course, the other players. All of it gave her valuable background info before her arrival was announced and everything got buttoned-up.

  She shifted her gaze back to Ross the Greek God. In the next ten seconds he’d walk through her sight line. After, of course, he finished giving the blonde at roulette a little
extended eye contact. Sex on steroids. That’s what he was. Without a doubt, the man excelled at working a room. Something cinched low and deep in Kate’s belly and she breathed in.

  Despite herself she was mesmerized. But she had a job to do. An important job that had her sitting at this table frittering away her boss’s money.

  She shifted slightly and her dress rode up on her thighs. Not a good thing considering the pig next to her had been ogling her since she’d sat down. Right about now, she could really use the comfort of her snakeskin cowboy boots and ripped Levi’s.

  Across the aisle, Ross Cooper kept moving, businesslike but in no hurry. A shout came from the general area of the craps table. She’d never quite understood the allure of craps, but people sure had fun playing it.

  Cooper moved past the blonde. With a simple glance, he’d let her know that yes, he’d noticed her and yes, she was beautiful, but she would have to work for his attention.

  The dealer at Kate’s table cleared the cards and started a new hand. Ffftt, ffftt, ffftt. The next round of cards landed in front of the other three players. Kate’s card came next. A king. Nice.

  Across from her, Cooper and his Italian suit made a sharp left and bee-lined for the pit boss standing four feet from her chair. Don’t watch him. In the next thirty minutes she’d be in his office and, even though his boss had said he’d alert him to her visit, she wanted to go in without him having seen her at the tables. She glanced back at the table in time to see the dealer slap down an ace of spades. Blackjack.

  Curiosity ruled and she glanced—again—at Cooper and the pit boss and found Cooper’s dark eyes pinned to her. Oh, my. For the second time in five minutes she’d been busted. Short on options and not wanting him to see her at a complete loss, she did the only thing she could and…and…fanned herself.

  Fanning? Totally off script here.

  And God help her, Ross Cooper grinned like a madman.

  “Blackjack,” the dealer said to her.

  Back to the cards, Kate.

  The beer-bellied man next to her leaned close enough that his nasty, hot breath slithered over her cheek. He might be rich, but his manners needed work.

  “Good job,” Beer Gut whispered as the dealer counted out her chips.

  She angled away and imagined slamming this idiot to the ground and shoving her forearm against his throat. Now that would be fun.

  While she attempted to give old Beer Gut the brush off, Ross Cooper arrived at her table and stopped just inches away. The muted scent of his soap, something musky—earthy—reached her and she breathed in. Having worked primarily around males at the FBI, she’d grown to appreciate the ones who didn’t smother themselves in cologne.

  “Good morning, everyone,” he said in a voice that was warm brandy on a cold night. Pure sin, this man.

  He drove a leave-the lady-alone look into her admirer and the man bolted upright. Without a word, Ross Cooper had spoken.

  “Thank you,” she mouthed.

  He held out his hand. “Ross Cooper.”

  I know. She’d keep that quiet for the time being. This wasn’t exactly the place to announce her status as a security consultant. She clasped his hand and the pure perfection of his body heat seeped into her palm. It shot right to her core where that low squeeze happened again. “Katherine Daniels. Nice to meet you.”

  He watched the dealer push the small mountain of chips her way. “Well,” he said, his smile teasing and warm. “I’d like to say it’s nice to meet you, but if you keep winning like this, you’ll get me in trouble with my boss.”

  How she loved a man with a sense of humor. The dealer slipped another hand of cards out of the shoe. Fffttt, fffttt, fffttt.

  “Funny,” Kate said, checking her card. Six. “You don’t strike me as a man afraid of trouble.”

  He swept his gaze over the people sitting at her table, landing on Beer Gut. “Depends. In my casino, I don’t like trouble. In other places, trouble can be interesting.”

  The dealer slid a second card in front of her. Three. Seriously?

  The pit boss appeared behind Ross and whispered something. After a moment, he held his hand out again. “I need to go. Don’t disappear on me, Katherine Daniels.”

  She tapped the fat stack of chips in front of her, then grabbed his hand. “Call me Kate. And I’m not going anywhere.”

  I can promise you that.

  * * *

  After finishing in pit eight, Ross’s crashing sugar reminded him he’d come downstairs for a reason. Other than his annoying curiosity about a spectacular and highly suspicious redhead, his body begged for sustenance.

  Too early for lunch, but he needed to eat and with another ten hours of meetings ahead of him, he might not get time again.

  He hit the cafe for a sandwich. Turkey. On whole wheat—one hundred percent whole wheat—heavy on the lettuce and tomato. He left the cafe carrying a black plastic tote emblazoned with the gold Fortuna logo on both sides. One thing about Samuels, he didn’t skimp on the details. Even the take-out bags were high quality.

  Thunderous yelling came from the craps table where, no matter what time of day, a crowd gathered. People couldn’t resist the rush and the yelling and the camaraderie. At this particular table, a group of guys from the Middle East high-fived. Keep playing, gentlemen. The house wanted to win its money back.

  Beyond craps, slot machines lined the aisle, their blinging sounds loud and inviting. The sounds of heaven. At least for Ross. He lived for this. Even with the stress and Samuels constantly on him about everything from the restroom soap to profit margins, he couldn’t get enough. Running a casino brought excitement and change and risk. All that chaos offset any chance of boredom setting in when it came to number crunching.

  And he’d just met Kate Daniels, a woman he’d be tracking down as soon as he got to his office. A woman he wouldn’t mind, as he’d told Don, keeping an eye on. Chances were she was a hotel guest. After watching her, both from his office and now from the pit, he didn’t peg her as a crossroader, a cheat.

  But something was up there.

  Given that he spent fifteen hours a day at this place—and female distractions had been in short supply these last few weeks—he’d have plenty of time to learn all he could about the lovely Kate.

  Yeah, a little downtime by way of a gorgeous redhead might even out his mood. Even if this particular redhead was more girl-next-door than vixen. Unusual for him. But, he liked that hair and her creamy skin that begged to be touched.

  Pretty much, he needed a woman. That woman.

  In a bed.

  Soon.

  He passed the elevator bank and hooked a right, pushing through the emergency exit. No sense taking the easy way when he could use the stairs. His dawn workouts had suffered since the opening of Casino Fortuna and he needed to get back to the gym before he wound up with extra weight and a heart attack.

  For Ross, a mind numbing, body-shredding workout attacked stress and demolished the insanity that came with running a casino.

  He set his thumb against the pad at the door, waited for the beep and pushed through the third floor entry, where he was met by the double doors leading to the executive suite. Once again, he scanned his thumbprint and waited for the beep.

  Don’s office was the first on the left and Ross’s was last on the right. In between were the offices of the V.P.s of finance, hotel operations, human resources, and marketing. All reporting directly to Samuels and wearing the battle scars to prove it. Working for Samuels meant sustaining the constant pressure that came with a guy who loved the tiniest of details. Nothing was too small for him. Even the toilet paper.

  Some called him a lunatic. Probably a fair assessment. Lunatic or not, Ross was grateful. Samuels had given him the job of his dreams.

  At the end of the hallway, he reached the open area across from his office and found Marcia, his assistant and all-around girl Friday pounding away on her keyboard. Her long dark hair was twisted on top of her head and secured wi
th a pencil. How the hell she managed to get that pencil to stay in there, he had no clue, but he chalked it up to the magic his assistant could summon at will.

  He’d brought her over from Dominion because she’d figured him out long before any of the other assistants had. In short, she’d had his number. A few years older than him, she knew his moods, when he was schmoozing to get his way and, most importantly, when he was about to blow his stack. Marcia also kept him on schedule and she didn’t take any nonsense.

  Not from him.

  Not from anyone.

  In short, Marcia was the gatekeeper.

  Still typing, she glanced up. “You have a visitor. Kate Daniels from Casino Consulting.”

  “Kate Daniels?”

  Marcia’s eyebrows lifted, but she kept typing. “I didn’t have her on your schedule. Figured you went rogue when she said you were expecting her. I put her in reception. Did you see her?”

  “No. I took the stairs. Didn’t go through reception. She’s a redhead, right?”

  “Right.”

  “She said I’m expecting her?”

  Marcia stopped typing and handed him a file. “Yes, Ross. She said you were expecting her.”

  “Well, I’m not.” He jerked his thumb toward the doors. “I just met her downstairs. She was playing blackjack. Who the hell is she and why is she up here?”

  “Read the file. I knew you’d ask and since I was unaware of her appointment, I did research.”

  And this was why he’d stolen Marcia from Dominion. “Don’t take this wrong, but I adore you.”

  Using both hands, she waved him off. “Blah, blah.”

  Ross took a second to peruse the information in the file. Security consultants? What was up with this Kate Daniels? And why, if she was a security consultant here on business, was she sitting at his blackjack table?

  Checking them out, that’s why. Which explained her behavior—the shifting glances, the studying—at the table. The fantastic Kate Daniels was planning a pitch to convince him he needed her services.