AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Hello, Julie,” he said. He’d seen the name tag on her uniform vest. Nothing magical about it.
“But you’re a magician,” she said.
“There are different kinds of magic.”
“You’re not talking about pulling rabbits out of hats, are you?”
“Not like that, no.”
They were moving against the flow of a crowd; a show at one of the theaters must have just let out. Grant moved smoothly through the traffic; Julie seemed to bang elbows with every single person she encountered.
They left the wide and sparkling cavern of the casino area and entered the smaller, cozier hallway that led to the hotel wing. The ceilings were lower here, and plastic ficus plants decorated the corners. Grant stopped at the elevators and pressed the button.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“You really should take a break, like your pit boss said.”
“No, I want to know what’s going on.”
“Because a cheater is ripping off your employer?”
“No, because he’s ripping off me.” She crossed her arms. “You said it’s the same person who’s been doing this, but I couldn’t spot him. How did you spot him?”
“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. How would you even know what to look for? There’s no such thing as magic, after all.”
“Well. Something’s going on.”
“Indeed. You really should let me handle this—”
“I want to help.”
The doors slid open, and Julie started to step through them, until Grant grabbed her arm so hard she gasped. When he pulled back, she saw why: The elevator doors had opened on an empty shaft, an ominous black tunnel with twisting cable running down the middle. She’d have just stepped into that pit without thinking.
She fell back and clung to Grant’s arm until her heart sank from her throat.
“He knows we’re on to him,” Grant said. “Are you sure you want to help?”
“I didn’t see it. I didn’t even look.”
“You expected the car to be there. Why should you have to look?”
She would never, ever take a blind step again. Always, she would creep slowly around corners and tread lightly on the ground before her. “Just like no one expects a housewife or a businessman from the Midwest to cheat at table games in Vegas.”
“Just so.”
The elevator doors slid shut, and the hum of the cables, the ding of the lights, returned to normal. Normal—and what did that mean again?
“Maybe we should take the stairs,” Julie murmured.
“Not a bad idea,” Grant answered, looking on her with an amused glint in his eye that she thought was totally out of place, given that she’d almost died.
Down another hallway and around a corner, they reached the door to the emergency stairs. The resort didn’t bother putting any frills into the stairwell, which most of its patrons would never see: The tower was made of echoing concrete, the railings were steel, the stairs had nonskid treads underfoot. The stairs seemed to wind upward forever.
“How do you even know where he is? If he knows you’re looking for him, he’s probably out of town by now.”
“We were never following him. He’s never left his room.”
“Then who was at my table?”
