“Hold on there, bro,” Kade said quickly. “Just take it easy. We’ll figure it out, okay? Ray’s dead, but there’s not a mark on him. Maybe it was just natural causes. You know, a heart attack or something. Just let me take a look.”
“Even if it was a heart attack, or stroke, or what-the-fuck-ever, he’s still in our room, dead. And we have no idea how he got here.”
Mannie had crept closer to the tub and now spoke. “Yeah, you’re right. There’s no wounds anywhere or like marks around his neck or anything. He probably just had a stroke or something. Or like you said, a heart attack.”
“See?” Kade said, still keeping a safe distance from Blane.
Blane scrubbed a hand over his face, trying to think of which disaster to handle first.
“We need to get him out of here,” Kade said.
Blane frowned at him. “Get him out of here? I think you mean to say ‘call the cops,’ right?”
“That’s a phrase you’ll never hear me say,” Kade snorted. “No, we need to get Ray out of our suite and dump him somewhere.”
“You’ve got to be joking,” Blane said. “We can’t just go dump a dead body somewhere.”
“Ray’s dead, he’s not gonna care,” Kade insisted. “And if it gets out that he was found dead in our room, then that’s going to bring all sorts of trouble on our heads. They’ll want what he had.”
“And what is that exactly?”
Kade let out a sigh. “I invented a device that could force a payout from a slot machine. Ray was thinking of buying it.”
“You what?” Blane’s voice was loud and Kade winced. “Please tell me you didn’t actually make something that could do that? Do you have any idea how illegal that would be? And dangerous? If any of the casinos knew—”
“I know,” Kade interrupted. “But it’s not like I was advertising it. Ray got in touch with me, told me what he was looking for.” He shrugged. “It was a challenge. And total genius the way I did it.”
His shit-eating grin looked so much like the teenage kid who’d been too smart for his own good that Blane let out a sigh, his anger draining away. No sense being pissed at him. It wouldn’t solve anything.
“So let me get this straight,” he said. “You found a way to force a slot machine to pay out—”
“That’s completely undetectable,” Kade added.
“—and were going to sell it to Ray.”
“Right. But he wanted to test it first, so that’s what we were meeting about. No one else knows about it. I think.”
“But he could’ve told someone,” Blane said. “You realize if word would got out about that, you’d have all kinds of targets on your back.” More than he probably already had.
“How does it work?” Mannie asked. He’s been listening and now stood by Blane, who glanced down at him.
“In simplified terms,” Kade said, looking incredibly pleased that someone had asked, “a slot machine is an electro-mechanical device that is programmed to randomly stop at spots on the wheel. The stops are already mapped to each outcome, so all that happens when someone plays is it generates a random point in time for the map to stop.
“The slot machine already knows the outcome while the wheels are spinning. That’s just for show for the player. So while it’s doing that, my device reads where the machine will stop, then sends a tiny magnet pulse that disrupts and overrides the signal, then forces a new outcome based on where the map was going to be. Thus, ensuring a win. It’s incredibly fast and undetectable. To anyone watching, it looks like the player got lucky.”
Yes, so smart he’s going to get himself killed, Blane thought.
“So is that were the money came from?” Mannie asked. “All the chips on the table?”
“No clue,” Kade said with a shrug.
“Where’s the device now?” Blane asked.
They all went quiet. The repercussions of something like that being in the hands of just anyone was huge. What if Ray had given it to someone else? Or worse, told someone about Kade? There wasn’t enough protection in the world to keep Kade safe from those who’d do anything to destroy a device like that, and make sure he didn’t produce another.
Kade pushed between Blane and Mannie on his way to the bathroom. A pile of discarded clothes was on the floor and he pawed through it, checking pockets and shaking out each item.
“It’s not here,” he said at last, raising his gaze to meet Blane’s. His expression was grim.
“Well, we have to find it,” Blane said.
The goose honked a couple of times, reminding them of its presence.
“Okay,” Kade said, ignoring the noise, “let’s get Ray up and get him dressed. We can start with his business partner.”
“His partner?”
“I’ve only met him once,” Kade said, grimacing as he pulled the plug in the water. “He’s Chinese. Extremely rich. Name’s Péng.”
“And what exactly did Ray and Péng do?” Blane asked, wondering if he really wanted to know the answer.
“They own roughly sixty-five percent of the online gambling market,” Kade replied.
And it gets worse.
“No wonder he was looking for a way to put brick-and-mortar casinos out of the slot machine business,” Blane said.