Jack scrambled for a second, then said, “It’s a little embarrassing.”
“More embarrassing than your underwear on the floor?”
Jack laughed. “The owner is a Republican. I don’t throw my dad’s name around, I’m not even using my own name on the reservation, but sometimes people recognize me. I guess he found out I’m here and he’s giving me the royal treatment. Champagne every night.” Jack added, “I didn’t ask for it.”
“I see,” she replied.
Jack popped the bottle and poured two glasses, then he started to lead Élise toward the couch, but a voice in his ear caused him to change his plans.
It was Dominic, and his whisper was barely audible. “Take her out on the balcony. Now.”
Christ, Ryan thought. Dom was somewhere in this room.
Jack said, “Oh, I forgot. You have to see this view.” Jack led her to the balcony, the entire time hoping like hell he actually did have a nice view.
Dom Caruso slipped out of the closet next to the bed, shut the door behind him, and dropped down onto the floor. He belly-crawled across the carpet, keeping an eye on the balcony, and the backs of his cousin and, much more important, his date, the knockout French spy.
When he was certain her focus was firmly on the neon lights of the Strip from the thirty-ninth floor, Dom rose to his feet and left the room quickly and silently.
As soon as he was in the hall he said, “I’m clear. Ding, vector me to her hotel room.”
Ding said, “There is no reservation under her name at the hotel. Either she’s using an alias, or a second alias, or she’s using her real name, or she’s not staying there.”
Dom stopped walking in the hallway. “Well, damn. Okay, Jack, get back to work. Get it out of her.”
On the balcony, Élise turned away from the view and looked to Ryan. Her face had softened. She didn’t seem as cynical or mistrusting.
She said, “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.” She took a sip of champagne.
Jack took a sip from his glass. “No big deal. So, now it’s time for you to come clean. Where are you staying?”
“I told you. I’m staying here.”
Ryan took his time reading her face. Finally he said, “I believe you.”
He heard Clark’s voice in his ear now. “Ryan is telling us she is staying there. Domingo, look for reservations under female names that came on the twenty-fifth of last month. That’s the day before she started work at Valley Floor. There can’t be more than a couple of women who have been here for two weeks.”
There was a pause for a moment. Élise and Jack stood out on the balcony and looked over the lights of Las Vegas.
Chavez called over the net now. “Got it! Only three females who came on the twenty-fifth are still there. One of them is under the name Sophie Brochard from Ontario, Canada. Room thirty-one-twelve. That’s gotta be our girl.”
Dom said, “I’m en route.”
On the balcony of his suite, Jack turned away from the view of the Strip to find Élise going inside to retrieve the champagne bottle. She came back outside, refilled her own glass, then took his glass and did the same.
After she put the bottle down on the table on the balcony, she moved back to the railing, extremely close to Ryan.
Things were moving curiously fast, and now, far from worrying he’d have to find an excuse to keep the beautiful woman away from her hotel room while his cousin searched for the missing mobile phone, Ryan was less concerned about her wanting to leave and more concerned about her wanting to stay.
And then, as if on cue, she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.
Jack was not caught totally off guard, he’d noted her attraction, but there was a difficult moment when she put her hand on the back of his head and pulled him close. The earpiece’s battery supply hung behind his ear. It was out of sight, but it was not designed to go undetected if someone was mussing up the hair of the person wearing it.
Jack pulled away, a show of hesitation.
Clark spoke into his ear, his own voice soft. “Jack, we are not receiving any transmissions from you. Everything okay in there?”
Élise said, “Oh… I see. You are married.”
Jack smiled. “If I were, I think you would have read about it on Google.”
“You’re gay?”
“I guarantee that would have made the Internet.”
“Then?”
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Oh.” She smiled. “No problem. I’ll wait.”
Élise went back into the suite and sat down on the edge of the bed.
Ryan stepped into the bathroom, shut the door, and stood there. C’mon, Jack, what’s the fucking plan here?
Ding spoke through his earpiece. “Jack… Dom’s going to need fifteen mikes minimum.”
“Yeah,” he whispered. “Not a problem.”
Oh, boy.
Dom did not have a key to get into room 3112, but he didn’t let that slow him down. As he stepped up to the door he pulled out a device built by Gavin Biery and his whiz kids at The Campus. It was a microcontroller just larger than a deck of cards, with a small cable that fed from it to a barrel connector.
Dom took the connector and knelt down so he could see the bottom of the key-card door-locking mechanism. Here, hidden from view of hotel guests, was a tiny round port. He pushed his connector into the port and flipped a switch on his device.
Certain brands of key-card locks have these ports for the purpose of recharging the battery on the locking mechanism and uploading the hotel site code, a thirty-two-bit key that provides general access to all locks in the hotel. This is the master key that housekeeping and other hotel workers use so that they don’t need an individual and ever-changing card to get into each room.
When Gavin powered up his microcontroller by flipping the switch, the lock sent the thirty-two-bit key from the lock down to the device, and then the device read and decoded it, and sent it back up to the lock.
The green light illuminated next to the key-card access slot in under a second, even though there was no key in the slot.
Dominic opened the door, unplugged his device, and slipped it back into his backpack.
Ryan stood in the marble bathroom of his junior suite, staring at himself in the mirror, trying to figure out what he was going to do about the woman on his bed.
He’d been surprised by how quickly Élise was escalating matters. They were both single, attractive people, and she had shown some interest, but it seemed more of a curiosity to her and less of a lustful nature.
Jack thought about kissing her. He’d not been able to properly enjoy it because of the earpiece and the chatter from his team, but otherwise it would have been a different story. Still, he was working, and this wasn’t real. The thought of screwing some woman for the purpose of stalling her so someone else could ransack her hotel room made him sick to his stomach.
Clark thought the French spook was herself running some kind of op on Jack, either to compromise him or to gain information or influence, but Jack didn’t see evidence of that himself. Clark was trained to think OPSEC and only OPSEC, while Jack had a lot of recent experience with members of the opposite sex showing interest in him.
He flushed the toilet, ran the water in the sink, and tried to tell himself this wasn’t a harmless TV reality show, this was life or death. The woman in the next room was an enemy operative who was working on behalf of the damn North Koreans, and he didn’t need to give a rat’s ass about anything other than his mission.