Page 90 of Russian Roulette
“No, I lived alone in a dumpy rundown studio apartment below a Korean grocery store. It was all I could afford, and the older couple who owned the store were kind. They kept me from starving by giving me food that was expiring. For two years, I lived off Korean food.”
“Did you quit college?” Seven asks.
“I prefer not to call it quitting,” I say, frowning at him. “I’m good at math. I begged and pleaded my way into advanced math and statistic classes. My faculty advisor took a special liking to me and he allowed me to bypass undergraduate requirements.”
“A special liking, huh?” Vulcan asks. “Care to go into more details?”
“No, that’s far behind me,” I say. “I spent two years learning everything I could about math, computers, coding, statistics. During this time, I also taught myself how to hack and how to navigate the dark web. Hacking became a hobby for me. Something fun to do when I was alone.”
“Who did you hack?” Kit asks.
“Assholes mostly. Married college professors who were preying on students. The first person I hacked was one of my professors. He was carrying on affairs with multiple students. Meanwhile, his pregnant wife sat at home wondering how grading term papers could keep him at work until midnight.” I grimace in disgust, remembering how he’d walk around the room, casually touching a girl’s shoulders or her hair. “Lucky for him, I wasn’t one of his targets. I saw what he was doing, though. One day, I thought it would be funny to play a joke on him. I hacked into his laptop and told him I had files of all his computer porn history and emails to his female students.”
“That’s my girl!” Vulcan says, laughing. “I bet he shit his pants. I would’ve loved to have seen his expression.”
“I saw it,” I say with a grin. “The dumbass didn’t cover his webcam. I recorded him while he was jacking off, watching the nastiest porn you can imagine. It makes me want to gag even now.”
“What did he do?” Vulcan asks.
“He offered me money to go away,” I reply. “A lot of money not to tell his wife. He was afraid of being bankrupted in a divorce. I didn’t even need to ask for it. Blackmail wasn’t my original intent. What started out as a joke turned into a lucrative business opportunity for me. The men deserved everything I did to them.”
“Please tell me you didn’t blackmail someone in the Russian mob,” Seven says. “I’m not sure we can protect you from them if you did.”
“No, I’m not that stupid,” I say. “I hacked a man who turned around and hired me for bigger jobs. When I hacked him, he recognized my abilities and saw better opportunities for us both. He’s the one who hired me to hack into the Russian’s computers.”
“Do you think he’s still alive?” Seven asks.
“I doubt it. The only way the Russians could’ve traced the hack back to me was through him. They probably got to him first, and he thought he could save himself by giving me up. Now that I’ve had time to think it over, I’m sure they killed him. Either before they came for me or after.”
“What did you find on their computers?” Seven asks. “You never told us exactly. Does they have something to do with the girl you’re trying to find here in Vegas?”
Now is the moment of truth. Can I trust them? I slowly look each of them in the eyes, searching for clarity because there’s no going back from here. Once the genie is out of the bottle, I can’t shove it back in.
Kit takes my other hand and squeezes gently. “You can trust us. I see the doubt and fear in your eyes. We’ve got your back. We’ll prove that to you over and over again until you finally believe us.”
I sit up straighter on the sofa and grimace when the pain shoots through my leg. “This part of the story is a little complicated. I’ll try to simplify the math part so your eyes won’t glaze over.”
“Please do,” Vulcan says with a groan. “I hate math with a vengeance. Always did.”
“There’s a young woman here in Vegas. Her name is Natasha. She fled here from Ukraine. When she left, she stole something from the Russian mob, and they want it back.”
“What did she steal?” Seven asks.
“A video slot machine,” I tell them. “A very cute, colorful machine called Peggy Penguin.”
They stare back at me with blank expressions. “What’s the big deal?” Seven asks. “There are at least a hundred and fifty thousand slot machines in Vegas. Most of those would be video slots. What’s special about one machine? I don’t get it. In fact, there are Peggy Penguin slot machines in the Imperial Casino. Usually with a little, old white-haired lady sitting on the stool in front of them.”
“This is where the story becomes more complicated, so hang in there with me,” I say. “Years ago, Putin shut down the casinos in Russia. When he did that, over one-hundred-thousand slot machines were put on the open market. They were sold to casinos all over the world. Peru, Macao, Nice. Some were secretly sold to private buyers. These wealthy buyers brought in hackers to open the machines and crack the computer code.”
“And that means what exactly?” Vulcan asks, holding up his hands. “You’re already going way over my head.”
“First, you need to understand that slot machines work by randomly generating numbers. They’re called RNG’s.” I hold up one finger. “Except there is no such thing as a random sequence of numbers in anything man-made. Only events in nature are truly random. Ocean waves, for example.”
“We’re listening,” Seven says, leaning forward. “Not understanding everything, listening just the same. I’m with you so far.”
“Every Peggy Penguin slot machine contains the same source code,” I continue. “That’s not the best part. The icing on the cake is that every single machine made by the Australian manufacturer, Prestige Gaming, also contains this same code. The developers were sloppy and lazy in their work. Russian hackers could reverse engineer the codes with only a fast laptop computer and time. It took them less than a week to do it.”
“Once the machines were reverse engineered, then what happened?” Seven asks. He’s the only one who appears to understand anything I’m saying. I’m impressed. I sensed our minds worked the same. “The Russians shipped those hacked machines out to casinos?”
