Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

Cherelle managed it. “Help me with this, baby-chick. She gestured to the case. You saying that this is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars?”
    “That’s what I’m saying.”
    “Hooooo- ee !”
    “And I’ve got a piece arriving in a few days that we just paid four hundred thousand for.”
    “One fucking piece?”
    “It’s in excellent condition. High artistry. Very old. Very, very special. We were lucky that we found out about it before Gail Silverado.”
    “Who’s she?”
    “She owns the Wildest Dream casino. She loves beating Shane out on everything gold and Celtic. He’s had to pay ridiculous prices to keep her from outbidding him for good pieces.”
    “Like four hundred thousand dollars?” Cherelle asked without really caring about the answer. She was still trying to wrap her mind around that much money in one piece of gold.
    “Actually, that price was fairly reasonable,” Risa said. “A few years ago a single Celtic fibu—er, pin—sold for one million pounds at auction. That’s about one and a half million dollars.”
    Cherelle’s breath rushed out. “Christ Jesus. Hold me down and beat me like a stepchild.” She closed her eyes and fought a wave of dizziness. “A million and a half dollars. One pin. ”
    “One very unique pin. Most aren’t worth a tenth of that. Or even a hundredth.”
    “A tenth.”
    “Yeah. About one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. A hundredth would be fifteen thousand dollars.”
    Cherelle leaned against the case because she didn’t think she could stand up without help. A second-rate or even a third-rate pin was worth more cash money than she had seen in her whole life.
    And she had a trunkful of stuff that looked better than anything she saw in Risa’s fancy case.
    “Are you okay?” Risa asked just as a knock came on her locked door. “That’s lunch. Or maybe your drink.”
    Cherelle blew out another long breath and started grinning. “Baby-chick, I hope it’s the drink. It’s been a long life, but it’s worth every bit of shit I ate just to kiss the asshole it came from.”
    Throwing back her head, Cherelle laughed and laughed. She had done it. She had really done it.
    And it was one hell of a big score.

Chapter 18
    Las Vegas
    November 2
    Early afternoon
    S hane’s fingers sped over the keyboard of his specially modified computer. No one at the casino had the access he did to all the various television eyes that recorded every corner of the casino, lobby, public hallways, and employee rooms.
    Usually Shane let security watch over the casino, but not this time. He didn’t want to ask them to spy on Risa. He didn’t even want to do it himself.
    While he called up the digital sequence from Gabriel’s Horn, he thought of all the more useful ways he could spend his time than seeing who his curator was meeting for lunch. If his instincts hadn’t sat up and howled over Risa’s reaction to the phone call, he would be spending his time doing something more productive—working to put together an even fancier firewall to protect his computer or going over the casino’s electronic books, for example.
    Normally he spent at least one day a week matching every department of the casino’s hold from one week to the next, comparing it to the hold for the same week the year before and the year before that, all the way back to the first week the Golden Fleece opened. It was a time-consuming job and, lately, not as interesting to him as it once had been. But it was the way he picked up trends for specific games, for cards versus slots, for sports betting versus baccarat, new scams or new variations on old favorites, and which insurance fraud was going through Vegas like a flu. Juggling figures was also the best way to pick up the trail of employee theft, dishonest dealers, and the occasional brass-balled hacker.
    The success of the Golden Fleece owed a great deal to Shane’s ability to draw truths and trends from the complex database of numbers that made most people roll their eyes and head for the nearest bar. While he was beginning to feel the same way about massaging the data, the job still had to be done.
    Eventually.
    No. Soon.
    With an unconscious sigh, Shane promised himself that he would take the electronic books apart byte by byte just as soon as the Druid Gold show was launched. At least he had put in an updated firewall last week. Two months late, to be sure. The good news was that none of the data suggested that the Golden Fleece was