Lucky Bastard Read Online Free Page A

Wow. Maybe I was over him. As I let my breath ease between my lips, the ache in my chest returned. Okay, maybe not completely over him.
    “Oh.” Romeo chewed on his lip as his eyes turned toward the ceiling, and his brain shifted gears. “No cameras in here?”
    “It’s the only place in the hotel without internal monitoring, if that’s what you’re getting at. Look around,” I swept my arm toward the showroom. “There’s nothing in here but some expensive Italian iron. Nothing much to pocket and take home. So, only the external door alarms, the front door into the Bazaar as well as the exterior doors, are wired into hotel security.” As the detective opened his mouth to speak, I silenced him with a raised finger. Flipping open my phone, I pushed to talk. “Jerry?”
    “Lucky? You ever go to bed, girl?” The voice that came back belonged to Jerry, our head of security. Me and Jer went way, way back…all the way back to the beginning. I kept the guests happy; he kept them safe—flip sides of the same coin.
    Feeling the burn of their penetrating stares, I turned my back to Romeo and Dane. “Sleep isn’t part of my job description. Nor yours, apparently.” I pressed the phone to my ear and lowered my voice. “Did you guys get an alarm on the front door to the Ferrari dealership?”
    “Funny you should ask. I was just heading down there.”
    “Why?”
    “According to my staff, the alarm lit up at... ” He paused, then said, “Two oh three.”
    “You guys didn’t respond?”
    “No, the alarm was silenced with a code shortly after. As procedure dictates, we called down there. The woman who answered the phone had the magic word. But this is coming to me secondhand. I was dealing with what’s looking to be more and more like an inside ring of thieves working the guest rooms when I was called away to handle one of the poker players in town for the big wingding. Not only is he a wiz at poker, he’s a pretty good card counter too.”
    “So you enlightened him as to the dim view we take of that skill?”
    “Hell, he’d already been enlightened—we had him under contract to not play blackjack. Guess the lure of a new shoe, a young dealer, and the time of night got to him.”
    “What did you do?”
    “I’ll probably regret it, but I gave him a slap on the wrist and let him go. I didn’t finish up with him until just a couple of minutes ago—wanted to scare him a little.”
    “You’re going soft on me. If that got around it’d be regarded as an invitation,” I half joked.
    “Yeah, well, maybe they’ll give me my gold watch. They’d be doin’ me a favor. But before you put me in for early retirement, the kid was deaf. I cut him a break. Some of the other players had been hassling him and it ticked me off.”
    “Gotcha. Had he qualified for the Smack Down or was he a hanger-on?”
    “Neither. He’s a player but he missed the final table by a few spots—finished pretty high in the qualifying as I understand it, though. He was flashing a wad around.”
    “Inviting attention. Thankfully, not my problem, but this alarm at the dealership? That one has landed in my lap. Anything more you can tell me?”
    “Not much, that’s why I was coming to check it out myself.”
    “If she had the proper word, what piqued your interest?”
    Alarms were double-checked with a phone call. Each authorized person was assigned a unique code word. If they could repeat that word when security called, then all was clear and security had no other duty to perform.
    “The time of night raised a red flag, although test-driving a Ferrari at two in the morning isn’t that odd of a request. Seen it before.” Jerry sounded like he was reciting statistics as he gave me the rundown. “But to be honest, a woman with the owner’s code word? I know DeLuca’s a player—runs through the ladies like a slot addict through quarters. But, the kid who took the call didn’t ask to speak to Mr. DeLuca—a breach in protocol—he