27. Emmett

Chapter 27

Emmett

The Casino Rocher felt different this afternoon. Typically, it was a place I visited for fun, but it was all business today. I rarely had a problem mixing work and pleasure, but it usually meant having a beautiful woman on my arm. If only Jenn were that woman, and not someone I was looking out for.

Could Noah have been behind the break-in?

Maybe he’d spotted Jenn in town, assumed she was working with Reynolds Recoveries, and planned on gathering intel. But he wouldn’t make a rookie mistake like moving any of her items, let alone replacing the housekeeping door hanger in the wrong direction. Noah was damn good at his job and wouldn’t slip up like that.

I scanned the room, taking in the layout. As fate would have it, the natural cavern formation mimicked the Monte Carlo Casino—some said the Casino had been designed based on the cavern, which predated the Casino by millennia. Three huge central rooms with several offshoots. One large room off the second for a small restaurant, another for special events, and yet another offshoot from the third main room that led into the storage areas. Any item already delivered for the auction would be in secure storage.

I ducked into the men’s room for privacy. The restroom was like the rest of the casino, built into the stone, with marble and porcelain fixtures gleaming under soft lighting. Two men stood at urinals, and another washed his hands. I slipped into a stall, the cool metal door closing behind me with a soft snap. I retrieved the hidden earpiece from my wallet and popped it in.

After following Will’s instructions to connect it to my new watch, I heard his voice crackle through.

“I have—from Emmett. To—me?”

The watch connection worked, but the signal was shit. I flushed the toilet to avoid suspicion and left to wash my hands.

Will’s voice came through again. “I don’t—signal?”

I lathered up and extended my hands under the water. “Water’s a bit warm, isn’t it?” I said, loud enough for the man next to me to hear, but more importantly, to find out if Will could hear me.

The man grunted in agreement, but said nothing.

When no response came from the team, I strolled out of the men’s room and whispered, “Can you hear me?”

Will replied, “—but the—not good.”

No kidding, the signal wasn’t good. “I’m turning off my mic,” I said slowly, letting each word hang in the air. “Will can do some work on the signal.”

Hopefully, enough of the message got through, and they could piece it together. I wouldn’t focus on communicating with the team. Having the earpiece in was all about Will fine-tuning the equipment from his place in the cavern. I’d listen in on the team’s conversation, but they didn’t need me narrating my progress.

The rest of the team was exploring the caverns beneath the Exotic Garden, searching for the magic path that would deliver Jayce to the Casino Rocher. She was a talented thief and sneak, but there was no way she’d bypass security at the main door or the water door. The latter was lower security, but still had metal detectors. And they didn’t allow just anyone to use that door.

But if they found the secret path from the Garden to the Casino?

That she could navigate, then sneak through the Casino during its busiest hours.

My goal inside the Casino was twofold. One, I’d see if the manager would sell the scarab before the auction. A long shot, but possible. The starting bid listed in the catalog was two million euros, which gave me plenty of wiggle room to get up to four million, the purchase limit my team had set.

And two, I was there so the team could ping the GPS in my watch and use me as a target in their exploration. Hopefully, the GPS signal was better than the comms.

The game room at the back housed the higher limit tables, and another small offshoot from the back led to the private gaming salon for the true high rollers. It wasn’t likely full at this hour, but sometimes people went in early.

I slowed to observe a poker hand starting at a table near the back. Not Ultimate. Traditional.

My breath caught in my throat, memories of the last game I played flooding back. My knees were weak, and I shoved my hand into my pocket to grip the old poker chip. The smooth surface grounded me, a lifeline to reality.

Deep breaths, Emmett.

The kidnapping. It was in the past.

Deep breath. There’s no bag over your head.

Someday, I’d sit at a table again. Instead, I stood still for several more minutes, studying the players as they went through hand after hand.

A woman in a V-neck sweaterdress dominated the table. At the end of the third hand, she strung along the last man standing, who was talking himself into a frenzy. He flattered her, she smiled politely, he insisted she was bluffing, and she returned to a neutral expression.

A husky female voice with a lyrical French accent filled my ear. “Does she have him beat or no?”

I didn’t turn around. The woman speaking to me was the one I’d been looking for. “I’ve only watched a few hands so far, but if I were him, I’d be all in. I don’t think she’s got anything.”

The woman came to my side and threaded her arm around mine. “She’s a former model from Greece who started coming here three years ago. She usually sticks to the high-value tables. Her practiced disinterest fools a lot of men.”

I nodded, keeping my eye on the model’s opponent, who continued to waffle on whether to fold. “I imagine her cleavage has a lot to do with it, too.”

The woman next to me hummed in agreement. “Swimsuit model.”

The man at the table finally folded, and his opponent collected her winnings without revealing her cards. Still agitated, he said, “You’ve got to show me what you had.”

The winner simply shook her head. “What I have is your money.”

I leaned in to kiss the woman on my arm on the cheek. “A pleasure to see you again, Martine.”

“It’s been too long, Emmett.”

I raised an eyebrow at her.

Martine patted my arm. “Fine, fine. It’s been too long, Reginald.”

She was a stunning woman in her mid-60s who’d been working at the Casino Rocher for as long as I’d been coming. My mother had originally put the two of us in touch.

I’d thought they were simply old friends. But now? Was Martine one of Evelyn’s sources from her MI6 days? Did Martine know her as Evelyn Stone? Was she secretly smiling every time she heard me called Reginald Stone?

This knowledge about my mother changed things. So many things, it was hard to list them all without stepping through my entire life.

I said, “I understand you’re hosting an auction tomorrow.”

Martine used my arm to turn me away from the poker table, where the Greek model and her opponent switched seats, so they sat beside each other. Perhaps she was planning on using the proximity to win more at the table or to win something in the bedroom this evening.

Martine said, “Have you seen the catalog?”

A server approached us with two glasses of champagne on a tray. Martine’s standard. Both of us accepted the glasses but remained arm in arm.

“I have. But at least one piece in the auction is stolen, and we were in Monaco looking for it. If someone had told us you had it?—”

Martine said, “You know I don’t deal in stolen goods.”

We both knew she would. She’d been the Casino’s manager for years, walking the narrow line between black and gray market on the regular. It was the perfect position to gather secrets from the ultra-wealthy, wasn’t it? Would she also have been MI6? French intelligence? Just a source?

“Sometimes provenance research is challenging,” I said. “No one would accuse you of doing anything like that intentionally. However, if I can provide evidence, perhaps you’d consider releasing this particular piece early? Immediate purchase instead of sending it to the auction block?”

Martine took a sip from her glass. She surveyed the crowd as she always did. Watching? Waiting? “If I did that and word got out, what would my clientele say? Why, I’d be little more than a consignment shop and not an auction house.”

I chuckled and took a drink of my own. “You’re the manager of one of the best casinos in the world. You’re not Sotheby’s or Christie’s.”

Martine stopped us at a roulette table. The dealer spun the ball as the wheel turned, its rhythmic click pairing with the players chanting under their breath.

I suppressed a head shake. The house always wins. That’s why I preferred poker. It wasn’t about the house. It was about the players.

“The Egyptian authorities have been searching for it for some time.”

Martine gave me a long glance and fluttered her eyelashes. “Oh, Reginald, darling,” she drawled. “Don’t even pretend you think the police will do anything about my auction.”

I kissed her cheek again. “I wouldn’t dream of it. But I would suggest some particularly enterprising young Egyptians might take it upon themselves to retrieve it.”

“Or some particularly enterprising Canadians?”

“How about a trade? Is there anything I can do for you that might change your mind?”

The roulette ball landed on red twenty-three, and two men jumped up from beside the table, arms in the air—a five-hundred-euro win on a straight-up bet.

Had I given too much money to Jenn? How much of it had she spent? How much of it had she lost? Jenn and Scarlett often played cards with their other two best friends—their game was poker or Euchre, only for dimes, and Scarlett always lost.

Such a strange relationship she had with those women. Which was the real Scarlett? Heist crew mastermind who strategized high-stakes thefts around the world or the woman who couldn’t bluff her way past her best friends?

Or was she somewhere in between?

Martine urged me along, each of us sipping our champagne. The dealers didn’t acknowledge us, but everyone saw her.

More than that, it was clear they all saw me with her.

She said, “This is an appealing offer—a trade of favors. But I cannot. The auctions are a gateway to more and bigger business.”

This would make things difficult. I hadn’t expected Martine to agree to any of it, so talking to her had been a calculated risk. She now knew the Reynolds team might attempt to take something, and when the scarab turned up missing, she’d know it was us. She’d be more cautious and put more security on the inventory. If we stole it during the auction, that would be a problem for her. And as one of Evelyn’s contacts, what was bad for Martine was bad for Reynolds.

“And what if this item went missing, but no one realized it?”

“Someone always figures it out.” Martine frowned playfully. “No matter how good your replica is.”

How did she know we had a replica? Because she’s your mother’s friend. After imaging the scarab in Washington this past June, Will had constructed a perfect copy, right down to the gold base and the worn hieroglyphs. Short of running chemical analysis, no one would figure it out.

Although whoever created the fake Constable painting no doubt thought the same, and our contacts still identified it.

“What if...” I lifted my champagne flute to disguise my lips moving. “What if we do a job for you?”

A sly smile slid up Martine’s face. She leaned toward my ear, using her hair to conceal her words. “Why don’t I call your mother, and we can sort out the details?”