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.
13
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.
Before touching anything in the closet, Cassie stepped back, aimed the Polaroid and took a photo of the clothes. She then squatted down and took a second photo of a pair of shoes and a pile of dirty clothes lying on the floor of the closet.
Cassie stepped back into the bedroom and put the developing photos on the bed. She then began photographing the entire bedroom, covering every angle of the room with the remaining eight photos in the Polaroid cartridge.
When she was confident she had thoroughly documented all areas of the suite she would possibly be disturbing, she went back to the closet, shoved the clothing to the side and looked down at the safe. The information from Leo's spotter was on the money. It was a Halsey five-number combination safe. The five-digit electronic LED screen said LOCKD but she reached down and checked it anyway. It was locked.
As she backed out of the closet and into the bedroom her eyes moved over the walls and up to the ceiling. There was one smoke detector. It was located on the wall directly over the headboard of the bed. She decided that a second one in so large a room would not seem too unusual. She fixed on a spot on the wall just above the entry to the bathroom/closet alcove. Locating a camera there would give her a full view of the bedroom and it would mean only a short run with the Conduct-O tape into the closet.
Having decided on the installation plan, she went back to searching the suite, looking in drawers and on shelves for any weapons or other protection devices that Hernandez might have brought with him. On a shelf above the wet bar in the living room she found a doorknob alarm – a cheap electronic gizmo that is hooked on a doorknob and sounds an ear-splitting alarm if a clip squeezed into the doorjamb is disturbed.
Cassie knew that the alarm was so painfully loud that most users of the device never checked them before inserting the clip into the doorjamb. Instead, they relied on the red signal light that indicates a battery has juice. She used a small screwdriver to remove one screw and then unsnap the outer casing. With pliers she snipped the conductor and ground wires, then pruned a quarter inch of rubber sleeve off each wire and wound them together, closing the circuit usually closed by the clip when it was slid into the doorjamb.
She turned the device on and the signal light came on, indicating good battery. No alarm sounded although the clip was not in place. She turned it off and returned it to the place she had found it on the wet bar shelf.
Cassie went back to the suite's entrance hallway and sat down on the floor. From her backpack she pulled the pair of knee pads, which she strapped on over her black jeans. She then knelt in front of the door and went to work. She picked the drill up off the tool display, put in a Phillips bit and began removing the screws from the cover plate of the interior door handle and deadbolt. The homemade drill cowling dampened its sound considerably. Cassie figured someone would have to actually be listening on the other side of the door to notice the noise.
When she had the cover plate off she put a penlight in her mouth and pointed it into the interior of the lock apparatus while she used a screwdriver to pop the lock washer off the bolt axle. She then gripped the bolt switch with a pair of rubber-tipped pliers and pulled it out of the apparatus, using both hands. She leaned in and looked closely at the interior mechanism.
Cassie took the light out of her mouth and exhaled in a low whistle of relief. Leo had called it correctly. The lock mechanism relied on a half gear to drive the bolt home. Despite knowing this was a problem six years ago,
