Page 22 of Vicious Vows

“Luke, seriously…” Micah’s hand points at the monitor in front of her, but she looks at me. “Come look at this.”

I glance at Christopher, who looks up and in Micah’s direction. He scowls and sighs, then says, “Yeah, it’s a glitch. We’ve been tied up watching those jokers trying to scam us out of money at blackjack. I’ll get to that next week, probably.” His head drops to his keyboard, and he continues working, but I walk over to stand by Micah.

The camera seems to be on a loop, showing the same woman—a waitress—walking up the hallway toward the kitchen on repeat. Each time she walks past the screen is identical, meaning our software has picked up the footage and is replaying it, not showing the new current feed.

“That’s strange,” I say aloud, watching the woman for the third time already. I turn to Christopher. “What’s going on with this?”

Tony and Mark exchange glances and looks of concern, and I notice Micah leaning in to examine the screen more carefully. We’ve been so focused on the card counters, things like this haven’t even piqued my interest, but maybe they should.

“It happens a few times a day. The camera probably needs to be reset or replaced. It just records like normal, but every now and then, it plays it on loop. It will go back to normal in a second.” Christopher doesn’t even look up at me as he gives his explanation, and I know he would never purposefully put this business at risk. He’s very busy doing everything I’ve already asked. He doesn’t have time to worry about camera glitches when we’re already dealing with a large issue. Still, it needs to be addressed.

“Can you fix it?” I ask Micah, and she shrugs.

“Probably. Just point me to a computer.” As she turns, Christopher looks up long enough to point at an empty chair across the room. During peak season and later at night, he has two men in here to keep tabs on things. Micah claims one of their chairs as her own and sits down, already hacking the system before I even walk up behind her.

I lean over her shoulder and watch her work her magic. Every system is different, but she seems to know them intuitively as if she’s their creator. Her fingers speak a language all their own. And after only a few minutes, she is humming and hawing.

“Wow,” she mutters and shakes her head, still typing.

“What is it?” I ask her, now gripping the back of her chair.

“Someone has been in this system. It’s taking commands from a VPN that’s been onionized.” Her fingers move so fast now that I’m not even sure what she’s doing. Christopher, however, must understand perfectly. They start an interchange of commands and retorts that has my head spinning.

“First, we need to isolate the affected cameras from the network. Then, we dive into the logs and see if we can trace the intruder's steps.” Christopher’s fingers click away at the keyboard beside Micah as he stands hunched over it.

“Isolation? That's your solution? We're not amateurs. We should be deploying some real-time intrusion detection systems.” Micah sounds angry, and all I can do is step back and let them work.

“Real-time IDS won't do squat if the attacker's already entrenched. We need to cut off their access first.”

“And leave our surveillance blind?” Micah scoffs, “No way. Let's deploy honeypots instead. We'll lure the attacker out and study their tactics.”

“Seriously? That's a surefire way to tip our hand. We need to contain this quietly. We won’t know who’s done it unless we catch them in the act. We can’t scare them off.” Christopher slams his hand down on the keyboard, and I get the picture that Micah has taken over. I’m not educated enough to know who is right or wrong, but I agree with her. We can’t lose surveillance for any time at all. Something’s going on here.

“Quietly? We're not playing spy games here.” She types away, and in seconds, the live feed is back up and she huffs out a sigh but keeps working. I get the feeling our friends at table seven have done more than count cards.

“It’s a distraction…” I mutter, pulling myself away from where Micah sits fixing our issue, which Christopher failed to even flag as an issue.

“What?” he asks, following me.

“They’re creating a diversion.” I point at the camera feed for table seven and notice one of our not so friendly gamblers take a phone call. He looks straight up at the camera and glares at it, then nods at his buddy, and the two of them get up and leave without even taking their chips. “They’re counting cards on purpose to distract you and keep you preoccupied. They don’t care about the fake winnings. That’s why they haven’t pulled out even though I’ve taken back every cent.”

“You mean I have!” Micah calls out across the room.

“They kept me busy watching them at the tables so I’d ignore the supposed camera glitch.” Christopher scowls and rubs his forehead, then scurries back to his desk and sits down, and I follow him.

“Besides the kitchen, what’s down there?” I know this place like the back of my hand, but for some reason, I can’t pull it up in my memory right now.

“The vault. Through the kitchen and into the storage area. We have millions in there, unmarked, untraceable. And we have gold in there too.” Christopher pulls up the feed and does some sort of coding on a black screen, and when his input is denied, he slams his fist down. “Look, they can’t get in the vault without heavy security measures. They’d have had to dress up as casino staff.”

“Which the lack of surveillance in that area would have given them plenty of time for.” Micah finishes her work and stands, then joins me in standing behind Christopher.

“My point is, there is no way they’re getting into the vault without some heavy tools, a pound of C4, and several men to carry the loot out. Our kitchen staff would have caught that.” He shakes his head, and Micah scoffs.

“Well, if they’re posing as staff, you have a problem.” She rolls her eyes and crosses her arms over her chest as I nod at Tony and Mark. They vanish instantly, and I watch them on the cameras as they descend in the elevator and head down to the kitchen to check things out. I’ll have to have security in place now to re-vet every employee recently hired and be on standby in case someone tries to make a move.

“Excellent work,mia cara,” I tell Micah, pulling her against my body. I plant a kiss on her lips and feel supercharged, like I need to unleash the tension in my body after all of that.

“Look, it was a good plan on the bad guys’ part. Christopher is human.” Even in her victory, she is humble, and I want to take her somewhere private and claim her as mine.

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