Two days old, it was from one of Tommy Stojack’s accounts. And the subject line read: “Katrin White.”
A chill moved through Evan’s stomach, making the scabbed wound tingle.
He took a moment, then sat down, rolled his chair back to the desk, and read Tommy’s message.
“Bad news: My hook at Harrah’s left. Good news: He moved over to Caesars. Your girl’s in the databanks over there. They couldn’t pin nuthin on her, but she had a run on a poker table that JDLR.”
Stojack slang for “just didn’t look right.”
Evan opened the attachment, an internal report from Caesars. A scanned copy of a gambler rewards card featured a photo. There was that milk-white skin, the emerald gaze, her choppy hipster hairstyle rendered here not in black but a rich auburn. The name beneath: “Danika White.” A header written in party streamers read: “Vegas. Be whoever you want to be.”
His throat was dry enough that it took some effort to swallow. He read on.
Danika was a high roller, working the no-limit tables at Caesars and racking up serious debt, which had been mysteriously paid off on December 7. Two days after Evan killed William Chambers and three days before Katrin White had set the meeting at Bottega Louie. Shared intel with other casinos showed arrears all up and down the Strip, similarly wiped off the books two weeks ago.
The lies compounded. There had been no covert poker circle. No Vegas hit men skinning indebted Japanese businessmen. No trust-baby husband who’d left her in the financial lurch. Danika had simply gotten in over her head gambling too hard for too long. Slatcher — or whoever was behind him — had stepped in and purchased her casino markers; they’d paid their money and bought her outright.
But they wouldn’t have been able to if she hadn’t been willing to make the deal at the outset. In his sordid career, Evan had seen plays like this dozens of times. Reach out to a desperate mark. Offer her the shot of a lifetime. Then once you own her, tighten the screws.
By the time Danika White understood the nature of the pact she’d entered, it would have been too late.
Armed with her real name, Evan’s virtual excavations grew drastically easier. Danika’s parents were alive and well, retired to a planned community in Boca Raton. She had no husband of record and one daughter, twenty years of age.
Her name was Samantha.
In his head, Evan replayed Danika’s reaction in the motel when the gunshot had sounded over the phone: Sam! Dad? No. No. No!
In her state of panic, her first reaction had been a tell. She’d used the proper name of who she’d really thought had been hurt before catching herself.
As each fabrication toppled, it knocked over the next, a domino chain of deception. Vowing to follow it to the end, Evan breached the DMV’s database. Samantha’s driver’s license showed her to be a beautiful kid, the resemblance to her mother striking. After a two-year stint at Santa Monica City College, Samantha had gotten a financial-aid package at UCLA. Though she held down two work-scholarship jobs, her tuition account showed multiple interest charges for late payments. Evan unearthed a cell-phone number for her and dialed.
The voice, young and breezy: “Yeah, it’s Sam?”
In the background Evan heard a bustle of activity, someone calling her name. It sounded like classes letting out, or maybe she was walking through the quad. He exhaled, relieved that she wasn’t being held hostage. A good strategic move on Slatcher’s part — he could get to her readily, so why deal with the complications and risks of detaining her?
“Hi, Sam,” Evan said. “I’m a friend of your mom’s and—”
“Wow. Almost ten months this time. Impressive. I thought she’d finally given up for real.”
“Sorry?”
“What’s she need now? More money? Like I’m not working enough to pay for my own life? I told her — I don’t want to see her or talk to her. And that includes any lame go-betweens.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just … She stopped returning calls the past few weeks—”
“Get used to it. Look, dude, I don’t know who you are, but let me save you some years of your life. At the end of the day, when it comes to Danika, all that matters is Danika.”
Evan approximated a crestfallen tone. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Hey,” Sam said. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m just trying to help so you don’t have to go through what I went through.”
She hung up.
Evan cocked back in his chair and closed his eyes, letting the picture resolve more clearly. Danika — probably at Slatcher’s command — had fashioned Katrin from pieces of her true self. She’d kept her last name and her gambling habit. She’d appropriated Sam’s name for her fake dad. Her fictional husband invested in planned communities in Boca Raton, just as her real parents lived in one.
Evan recalled building his own first operational alias with Jack, toiling by the light of the birch fire in the farmhouse. Jack had taught him to assemble the cover story using more truth than lies, giving him less to remember and less to forget. Evan had learned to align himself with his false persona as closely as possible, forging a true emotional attachment so his instincts would respond accordingly. He’d learned to fall into a role and forget the part of himself that did not believe it.
Slatcher and his crew had done this for Katrin. After acquiring her in Vegas, they’d traumatized her, coercing her into a damaged state that matched what they needed her to display. After Slatcher had seemingly shot and killed Sam, Evan remembered holding Danika on the motel bed, how she’d wept herself hoarse against his chest. Slatcher and his crew must have threatened Samantha’s life, promising to hurt her if Danika didn’t come through. They’d ensured that the guilt and terror thrumming through her body were real. They had to be to allay Evan’s suspicions.
A former Orphan, Slatcher had tailored her cover story to suit Evan. A terrorized woman up against impossible odds, in desperate need of his help. The father with his life on the line, dying because of Evan’s miscalculation. Katrin had laid Evan’s own secret guilt bare. I made a stupid fucking mistake, and my dad’s paying for it, she’d said. Do you have any idea how that feels?
Yes.
This indicated that Slatcher — and his employer — knew about Jack. Had they been behind his death? Evan followed the chain of logic all the way down to the depths and did not like where it led him.
Danika had all but dared him to check her passport, pointing out that she had it on her, leaving it in clear view in her purse at the loft. The salient fact that Slatcher’s employer could generate a real passport as well as a full network of backstops in the databases was not lost on Evan.
He set his elbows on the sheet-metal surface of his desk and rubbed his eyes.
Sam’s dying words to his daughter over the phone had only set the hook deeper: Whoever you’re with, I hope he protects you. Through his suspicions, against his judgment, Evan had protected her. Though their location had been tipped off to their pursuers time and time again, though the Commandments had crumbled away one after the other, Evan had stuck with her right up until she’d skewered him with his own knife. Who better to fill that role than a poker player, skilled at analyzing others, reading scenarios, bluffing for gain? Ultimately, Danika had summed it up best herself.
You’re not playing your hand, she’d told him. You’re playing the other guy’s hand.
Dangling from his pull-up bar, Evan practiced knee raises to break up the fresh-forming scar tissue in his stomach. He moved slow and steady, breathing through the pain. He was focused so intently that he didn’t at first hear the RoamZone ringing.