Her response was immediate. I’ll give you the time and place tomorrow. You’ll have fifteen minutes to meet me at the designated place.
Her demanding attitude pissed him off, but she held the cards and clearly knew it. He might be threatening her, but he needed something from her. Once he got it though, it would be a different game. Forcing himself to remain calm, he texted her back. Soon he’d have to ditch this phone and the other burner he’d texted her with.
After he’d seen her entering that media event from the floor of the casino he’d waited until the room had been locked down to text her. He just wished he’d been able to see her expression when she’d received it and the mention of her shirt color. She’d probably thought he had a visual on her right then. Which was what he wanted.
Ellie needed to stay on her toes, to be worried that he was watching all the time. Her fear would keep her from doing anything stupid, like trying to double-cross him.
Chapter 13
“She’s safe in the suite. We both swept and secured it before letting her enter,” Roman said the moment he picked up Jay’s call.
“Thanks,” Jay said, hating that he wasn’t with Ellie right now. He was downstairs getting the room directly underneath the one that housed the Dragon Collection prepped for the would-be robbery, but it felt as if he was hundreds of miles from her.
She was in good hands though. The twins were better trained than anyone on the security team and the fact that Wyatt had been willing to give Ellie two of his best men said a lot. “What’s she doing now?”
“Not sure. She kicked us out. Said unless someone came down from the roof and had a glass cutter, no one was getting in the room and she wanted privacy.” Roman chuckled lightly. “She’s right too. Wyatt had this floor built with security in mind.”
“I know.” He’d been there when his boss had gone over the extra design features with the architect. Plus he knew Ellie had one of his weapons with him. He wouldn’t have left her unarmed even with guards.
“I’m pretty sure we were followed,” Roman continued.
His heart rate increased a fraction, even though it wasn’t totally unexpected. “How many?”
“I saw two vehicles, but I think the second was following the guys tailing us.”
Jay frowned, but listened as Roman went over the details about both vehicles he’d spotted. As of now Roman and Logan just knew that there was an increased security threat and Ellie was a top priority. They were being vigilant and doing their job, but not asking more questions, something Jay was thankful for.
Jay had already heard from Ellie that she’d texted Kevin with vague meeting details for tomorrow. Which was something Jay couldn’t even think about right now. He didn’t want her anywhere near that piece of garbage, but the file she needed to give him was simply too big for email. They’d discussed using cloud storage via a file hosting system but it was still too risky that the information she was giving him could become public or even be accessed by an employee of the hosting system. So in-person it was.
Once they disconnected, Jay relayed everything to Vadim who’d already tracked down the phone Ellie had received the text from. A standard burner phone with no other incoming or outgoing calls. Basically useless for now. V was still keeping tabs on the other phone Kevin had called her from though. Whatever his relationship with the owner of the phone, Tadeo Bejar, they seemed to be decent enough friends from what V had been able to pull up on the two men.
Jay wanted a tail on Kevin 24/7 but knew that would be a stupid move. If the man got even a hint that he was being watched it could screw up their plans. And it would only have to be one small thing to tip him off. He couldn’t risk Ellie getting hurt.
“Check this out.” V held out his laptop to Jay.
Taking the laptop, he eyed the screen, watching himself and V on the live feed. They were sitting in the middle of the empty room directly underneath the display case for the Dragon Collection—which was being replaced with fake jewels as they spoke. Wyatt was going to put the real ones in one of the vaults and he and Iris would be the only ones who knew exactly where they were.
“Tell me what I’m looking at,” Jay said.
“Hold on.” He reached over and tapped a button.
On screen, a small light green crisscross pattern covered the entire ceiling. Jay looked up and saw nothing. “The invisible sensors?”
“Yes. I made the openings tighter and I’ve linked the silent alarm to send alerts to all of our phones.” Meaning, him, V, Wyatt, Iris and Hayden. In a couple hours Wyatt would be filling Roman and Logan in on everything but for now they were keeping everything close to the chest. “And after tomorrow I’ll temporarily disable the alert to the police station.”
“Wyatt’s orders?” Jay asked. It was against the insurance company’s requirements. The police alert had to be live at all times so in the event the jewels were stolen, they would be covered by the company.
“Yeah, if a call goes out over the radio, Wyatt doesn’t want anyone listening to scanners picking up a message.”
Jay nodded. They had the robbery part ironed out, but Wyatt was still working out the logistics of coordinating with the police. And his boss was being very quiet about everything, though they were supposed to get the final details tonight. “You done in here?” Jay asked, handing the laptop back to him.
“Yeah.” He stood and Jay followed suit. “Let’s head to the security room. I should have gotten some hits by now.”
Jay knew he was talking about the facial recognition software the casino used to weed out people who’d been banned, or for other potential serious threats. V had plugged in Kevin and Tadeo’s pictures earlier so if they’d been in or on the premises recently, the team would know soon enough.
Upstairs in V’s office, Jay and the others all stood in front of the four screens on the wall. Each of the security team with management titles had something similar in their office.
“You’re sure that’s him?” Iris asked, eying the video critically.
Vadim nodded, his expression stoic. “Yeah. I got sixty percent of his face and the ears are right. It’s a high statistical improbability that the computer screws up those measurements.”
A man wearing a baseball cap, jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt stood in front of a slot machine, almost absently pulling on the lever as he watched the nearby elevators. He kept his face angled down, as if he didn’t want to be seen by any cameras. And he must know there were a ton of them considering he was in a casino.
Jay tensed as he watched Ellie exit the elevator with Roman and Logan surrounding her. It didn’t matter that this was a recording, he hated that her ex was anywhere near her after what he’d done. The car bombing wasn’t an idle threat. Wyatt was behind her with his team, but the man never took his eyes off Ellie, watching her head toward where Jay had been waiting for her earlier this afternoon.
“And I’ve got a couple more clips of him,” V interrupted Jay’s rage-fueled thoughts that Murrell had been so damn close to Ellie.
So close and Jay hadn’t even realized.
On one of the other screens, a recorded feed of the showroom for the Dragon Collection appeared. The place was busy, people milling in and out and sure enough, Kevin was there. “He’s taking pictures,” Jay muttered.
“Yeah but so is everyone else,” Iris said. “He’s acting like a perfect tourist.”
“When is this?” Jay asked.
“An hour before the shot with Ellie.” He paused the feed, then pointed his controller at another screen. “And this is right after Ellie leaves with Roman and Logan.” There was a clear shot of him getting into a minivan, but the windows were tinted, not giving them a visual of the driver.
“I bet it’s his buddy, Tadeo. You get the license plate?” Hayden sounded as annoyed as Jay felt.
“Yep.” V sounded smug. “There’s no such license plate.”
“As in the numbers don’t exist in any system?” Wyatt asked.
&nbs
p; V nodded. “They probably took two halves of different plates, then welded them together.”
“Smart, impossible to trace so even if the vehicle is stolen we wouldn’t know where to start looking,” Jay said. Vadim shouldn’t even have access to DMV records but he wasn’t going to ask how the man knew the license plate didn’t exist. If he didn’t know, it gave him plausible deniability.
“What’s interesting is this vehicle…” V trailed off as he zoomed in on a dark truck that pulled away after the minivan. “I was able to track them for a couple miles by hacking into CCTVs and this truck was definitely tailing them. I ran the plate and it exists, but I couldn’t find out any details about the owner which tells me it might be a government vehicle.”
“It is,” Wyatt said, causing all eyes to turn to him. Even Iris looked surprised.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Because I know the driver. I couldn’t say anything until I was certain we were good to go, but remember Cody from the strip club?” Wyatt asked, looking at Jay.
Jay nodded.