Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 30448 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 152(@200wpm)___ 122(@250wpm)___ 101(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 30448 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 152(@200wpm)___ 122(@250wpm)___ 101(@300wpm)
Beck let out a low whistle. “Sneaky sons of bitches.”
“And organized,” I added. “With how much money Paul’s burned through, this has to be bigger than some backroom poker game, right?”
Deviant nodded. “Agreed.”
“We gotta take them down,” Beck muttered, still watching the footage like he wanted to reach through the screen and drag Paul out of it by the throat.
I flipped back through the notebook, fingers brushing over worn paper as an idea niggled in the back of my brain. “We’ve got odds, dates, dollar amounts. But how does Paul know where to show up? What if the two columns I couldn’t figure out are some sort of code for that information?”
Beck quirked a brow. “You think so?”
“Maybe.” I flipped through the notebook pages full of dollar signs and numbers until I reached one that had jumped out at me when I was putting them into my spreadsheet. Tapping my finger against the paper, I muttered, “See this? I couldn’t figure out what the little dot was doing here when none of the others had one. I thought it was just a mistake. That Paul had dropped his pen or something when he was making this entry,”
Deviant leaned in so he could see too. “And now?”
“What if he skipped the dot on all the rest because it wasn’t necessary—he already knew what these numbers meant? But this time, he started to include it because he wasn’t paying attention.” I grabbed a blank piece of paper and wrote out the odd series of numbers, this time including a round dot and the letter “N” after the first one, adding a minus sign to the start of the second, and then putting another round dot and the letter “W” after it.
Deviant shook his head. “How the fuck didn’t I see that?”
“What’s the set of numbers for the date on the video we just watched?” Beck punched the digits into the map app on his phone as I rattled them off to him, formatting them like coordinates. After he hit the search button, the address for the gas station popped up on the screen. “You figured it out, baby.”
“Which means the column next to the dates are the military times without the colon,” Deviant added. “They match up, too.”
We checked a few more videos to test our theory, confirming that the times and locations where he went after withdrawing money from the ATM matched up with the numbers listed in his journal when converted to military time and longitude and latitude.
“This is it,” I whispered. “The notebook isn’t just a record of his bets—it’s how they pass along the info to show up at the right place at the right time. Who to talk to. Where to go.”
“The bastard is in a coma but left us a damn playbook,” Deviant muttered.
“One that screams organized crime,” Beck added.
Deviant shut his laptop. “Which means there’s someone at the top calling all the shots.”
“Exactly,” I agreed, adrenaline humming through my veins. “And now we have a way to trace it back to them.”
I sat back in the chair, the notebook resting in my lap like it had suddenly doubled in weight. We had locations. Times. A way into something that wasn’t supposed to be traceable.
“So now what?” I asked, glancing between Beck and Deviant. “You guys stake out the last entry and hope someone shows since it’s dated for tomorrow night?”
Beck flashed me an approving smile. “That’s a great idea.”
“If we want to know who’s running this and find the guys who beat Paul and came after me…” Beck’s jaw ticked, but he didn’t say anything. “Then someone needs to go inside.”
10
PHOENIX
Deviant paced a tight circle in my office, muttering under his breath as he scrolled through whatever was on his tablet. His mind worked fast, and I let him spitball while I stood with my arms crossed, leaning against the edge of my desk, watching Lindsay flip through Paul’s notebook again.
“Alright,” he muttered, tapping the screen of his tablet. “Next drop is tomorrow night at 2100. Coordinates match a warehouse near the quarry entrance.”
“And it’s off the main road,” I added. “Perfect spot for a backroom game. Quiet. Isolated. No foot traffic.”
Deviant nodded. “If someone shows, you going in?”
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “If I walk in wearing my cut, they’ll assume I’ve already been invited or told where to go. Not like they're gonna piss off an Iron Rogue until they’re sure I’m alone. I’ll play dumb and win a few hands.”
“Gotta win a lot,” he reminded me. “Enough that they think you’re a threat to the house take. If they realize you’re counting cards, they’ll want a talk. That’s when we’ll get answers.”
“I’ll play offended and get ’em talking shit.”
Deviant gave me a look that was full of warning. “You’ll be on your own unless you give the signal. If they get even a whiff that you have backup, they’ll clam up and shut the operation down before we learn anything.”