Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

there was always a wide-eyed crowd gathered around Shane’s replica of the mythical gold sheepskin that had sent many an ancient treasure hunter on a chase to the ends of the known world.
    With the soul of a poet welded to that of a pragmatist, Shane believed that the myth of the fleece had its roots in ordinary reality. Ancient gold miners had washed gold-bearing gravel in wooden sluice boxes. By the time the gravel reached the end of the sluice, everything heavy had dropped out of the water. Except the gold dust. It would have kept on flowing out with the waste water, and out of the miners’ pockets, but for the sheepskin at the bottom of the sluice. At the end of a day’s or a week’s work, the miners shut down the sluice and shook out the gold dust that the fleece had collected from the rushing water.
    As a centerpiece and crowd magnet for his new mega­resort/casino, Shane had bought the biggest sheepskin available and designed a sluice box such as might have been used for mining gold two thousand years ago. He had stretched the sheepskin crosswise to the water’s flow so that the fleece would comb out the bucket of gold dust he had poured into the clean water. Then he put it all inside a big aquarium, turned on the pumps, and waited.
    Through the minutes, hours, days, weeks, the sheepskin tirelessly filtered the almost invisibly fine gold from the water. When the fleece could hold no more gold in its dense wool, it glittered like a fantastic dream just beyond the reach of man.
    And there it stayed suspended in a cage of clear water, a great shaggy sculpture of gold just waiting to launch new generations of treasure hunters into the Golden Fleece’s casinos.
    “Good morning, Mr. Tannahill.”
    Shane turned toward Susan Chatsworth, one of his four executive assistants. A former police officer, she was his liaison with the security department. Because she had school-age children, she took the day watch at his casino. Her husband, a captain on the Las Vegas police force, worked swing shift, yet somehow they managed a good marriage.
    Susan wasn’t in uniform, unless Las Vegas Casual could be considered a uniform. With her frothy shoulder-length brown hair, silk shirt, jeans, and strappy sandals, she looked like a guest who just happened to carry a big purse along with her big smile. Inside the purse her walkie-talkie, cell phone­computer link, and gun stayed safely out of sight.
    “Morning, Susan,” Shane said. “Have you combed the ice cream out of your rug yet?”
    She laughed and shook her head. “It was quite a party. I’d forgotten how much noise a group of squealing twelve-year-old girls can make. And thank you—Amelia loved the CD you gave her for her birthday. How did you know that every preteen girl’s secret desire is to shriek along with Swivel Jack and the Sweat Rats?”
    “A wild guess.”
    Susan shook her head. She knew better. Her boss was anything but a wild guesser. “She told me to give you a kiss and a hug, so consider yourself kissed and hugged.”
    “Good way to start the day.”
    He began walking. She fell in beside him. Shane’s unpredictable rounds through his huge entertainment complex were famous among the staff. Whether the toilet or VIP lounge, at any time—day or night, holiday or workday—Shane could and did appear. If his stone green eyes missed anything, no one had figured yet what it was.
    “Any urgent problem areas?” He didn’t look at her while he asked the question. All his attention was on the lobby activity, the check-in and check-out lines, the VIP escorts, the crowd around the glittering fleece, and the empty paper cup that better not be on one of the lobby’s coffee tables when he came back.
    “Just one at the moment,” Susan said. “I don’t know if you’ve gone over yesterday’s hold yet.”
    “I have.” Examining the hold—the gross profit the casino earned in twenty-four hours—was the first thing Shane did every morning, even on the mornings when he had been up most of the night.
    “Then you know we had six big jackpots yesterday on the wall of Solid Gold Slots.”
    “Yes.” That was improbable, but not impossible. Gambling was a game of odds. Odds were quirky in the short run and utterly reliable in the long run.
    “I went over the tapes,” she said, referring to the digital record that was made of everything that went on at the casino. “I suspect we’re getting hosed by a techno-team.”
    Shane made a note to look at the