Bad Luck and Trouble

know exactly how much a quarter weighed. Some small fraction of an ounce, obviously, which would add up fast. Tendon damage would be involved, muscle strain, repetitive stress injury. He wondered if casino owners had stock in orthopedic clinics. Probably.
    Dixon said, “Wright already figured it would have to be industrial-scale scamming. He came right out and said so. Dealers, pit bosses, security guys, cameras, tapes, cashiers. It’s not much more of a leap to imagine that apparent cash flow could be massaged. They could have installed a phony program that makes everything look kosher for as long as they need it to. It’s exactly what I would do.”
    Reacher asked, “When would they find out?”
    “When they do their books at the end of their financial year. By that point the money is either there or it’s not.”
    “How would Sanchez and Orozco find out ahead of that?”
    “Maybe they tapped in lower down the food chain and extrapolated backward.”
    “Who would need to be involved?”
    “Key people.”
    “Like Wright himself?”
    “Possibly,” Dixon said.
    O’Donnell said, “We talked to him and a half-hour later someone was trying to shoot us in the back.”
    “We need to find Sanchez’s friend,” Neagley said. “Before someone else does.”
    “We can’t,” Reacher said. “No bar is going to give out a girl’s address to a bunch of complete strangers.”
    “We could tell them she’s in danger.”
    “Like they haven’t heard that before.”
    “Some other way,” Dixon said. “The UPS thing.”
    “We don’t have her second name.”
    “So what do we do?”
    “We suck it up and wait for morning.”
    “Should we move hotels? If Wright could be a bad guy?”
    “No point. He’ll have buddies all over town. Just lock your door.”

    Reacher followed his own advice when he got back to his room. He clicked the security lever and put the chain on. No real defense against a determined opponent, but it would buy a second or two, and a second or two was generally all that Reacher needed.
    He put the Hardballer in the bedside drawer. Put his clothes under the mattress to press and took a long hot shower. Then he started thinking about Karla Dixon.
    She was alone.
    Maybe she didn’t like that.
    Maybe she would appreciate a little safety in numbers.
    He wrapped a towel around his waist and padded over to the phone. But before he got to it there was a knock at his door. He changed course. Ignored the peephole. He didn’t like to put his eye to the glass undefended. Easiest thing in the world for an assailant in the corridor to wait for the lens to darken and then fire a large-caliber handgun straight through it. Such a move would make a hell of a mess. The bullet, plus shards and fragments of glass and steel, all of them through the eye and into the brain and out the back of the skull. Peepholes were a very bad idea, in Reacher’s opinion.
    He took off the chain and undid the extra lock. Opened the door.
    Karla Dixon.
    She was still fully dressed. She would be, he guessed, for a walk through the corridors and a ride in the elevator. Black suit, no shirt.
    “Can I come in?” she said.
    “I was just about to call you,” Reacher said.
    “Right.”
    “I was on my way to the phone.”
    “Why?”
    “Lonely.”
    “You?”
    “Me for sure. You, I hoped.”
    “So can I come in?”
    He held the door wide. She came in. Within a minute he discovered a shirt wasn’t the only thing she wasn’t wearing under the suit.

    Neagley called on the bedside phone at nine-thirty in the morning.
    “Dixon’s not in her room,” she said.
    “Maybe she’s working out,” Reacher said. “Jogging or something.”
    Dixon smiled and moved at his side, warm and lazy.
    Neagley said, “Dixon doesn’t work out.”
    “Then maybe she’s in the shower.”
    “I’ve tried her twice.”
    “Relax. I’ll try her. Breakfast in a half-hour, downstairs.”
    He hung up with Neagley and gave the phone to Dixon and told her to count to sixty and then call Neagley’s room and say she had just gotten out of the bath. Thirty minutes later they were all eating breakfast together in a lounge restaurant full of the noise of slot machines. An hour after that they were back on the Strip, heading for the bar with the fire pit again.

48
    Vegas in the morning looked flat and small and exposed under the hard desert sun. The light was pitiless. It showed up every fault and compromise. What by night had looked like inspired