It raised his suspicions that she’d been talking to Stone Barrington, even though Ziggy had been led to believe that Stone Barrington had left the casino with the rest of his loud and obnoxious family and friends. This whole mess — this silly, elaborate plan at the behest of Li Feng — was layer upon layer of ridiculous deceit. Ziggy left his office and went to a small cubicle in the workroom where he liked to watch security footage. He typed in the keywords needed to bring up the video feed from the time Dale Gai was talking to Stone Barrington in the security suite.
After watching the conversation forward and backward several times, he used the mouse to draw a box around Stone Barrington’s face, copied the image, and then pasted it into a box off to the side of the video feed. The casino’s facial recognition software would pull up any other video feeds from the last seven days that matched. Nothing came up.
Ziggy rewound the video feed back to the time he knew Stone Barrington checked in and switched to the camera views from the front desk. When he found video of Stone checking in, he did the same search. This time multiple video results came up, but not the conversation with Dale Gai. Ziggy grunted in disgust and went back to the bookmarked video of the conversation with Dale Gai. It was obvious to him now that someone had pretended to be Stone Barrington, and that Dale Gai had seemed to have known.
He zoomed in on their conversation and saw her give a room number to the impersonator before walking away. On his way out of the security suite, Ziggy retrieved a black pole the hotel security used for disengaging the security bars on locked room doors, a contingency used mostly in the event that they suspected a guest may have fallen sick within a locked room. It was time to pay a visit to Dale Gai.
18
Teddy removed his Stone Barrington disguise and made it to the room Dale Gai had mentioned to him with five minutes to spare. Dale quickly pulled Teddy into the room and slammed the door shut behind him. She looked tired, and the right side of her face was red and swollen.
A tea service sat on the table in the far corner of the room, and Dale went to pour a cup.
“Would you like jasmine tea?” she asked Teddy.
“Do you have anything with more of a kick?”
They were interrupted by the sound of the lock on the door electronically disengaging. Teddy tensed and spun toward the door. He made a motion with his hand for Dale to remain quiet. She took a step back and picked the teapot up off the table. Teddy silently moved toward the door as it opened.
Dale had engaged the security bar, so the door could only open so far. Teddy was preparing to slam the door shut when a thin black pole with a hook on the end poked through the opening and disengaged the security bar.
Teddy waited until he saw a foot inside the doorway, then he pulled the door back before smashing it forward into whoever was on the other side.
He heard the pole drop and threw the door all the way open. Ziggy Peng was in a crumpled heap halfway in the hallway and halfway in the room. Teddy picked up the pole with one hand and with his other he dragged Peng into the room by his shirt.
Peng quickly regained his composure and hopped to his feet. Dale threw the teapot at Peng’s head with perfect aim and it exploded in a spray of ceramic and liquid. The commotion gave Teddy enough time to get both hands around the pole and take a swing at Peng’s head.
Two handguns and a rifle were locked away securely and unhelpfully in Stone Barrington’s suite, and he was defending them from the rogue chief of casino security with a metal pole and pieces of a broken teapot.
Peng was still down, clawing at his burning skin when Teddy smacked him again in the head with the pole. Peng finally went still, and Teddy stepped back in relief. He started to turn to check on Dale, but Peng twitched, then jumped to his feet and reached for the pole in Teddy’s hand. Teddy’s instincts and training gave him the advantage, and he spun away from Peng and swung the pole backward over his shoulder. When the pole connected with Peng’s head, Teddy heard an explosion.
A small hole appeared in the middle of Peng’s forehead seconds before he fell backward onto the floor. Teddy turned to see Dale Gai holding an ornate derringer in her hand.
Teddy raised his eyebrows but said nothing... for now. Her aim with the gun and the teapot were better than any mere assistant’s should have been, but there was no time for clarifications on her skill set.
“Is that a clean gun or registered to you?”
“Clean.”
“Do you have any sentimental attachment to it?”
“I was going to wipe it down, then throw it away.”
“That’s my girl.”
“We need to get out of here.”
19
Millie rode in the back of the SUV while one of the other agents drove. They’d thrown the wreckage from the drone into the cargo area of the SUV for the CIA’s tech guys to examine at a covert warehouse near the pier. The drive to the warehouse only took about five minutes according to the clock on the dashboard, but to Millie it felt like a decade. By the time they pulled up to the warehouse, Millie’s tension and fear had been replaced by disgust and anger. She knew Arrow Donaldson was behind this. His file outlined a long history of intimidation tactics and punitive behavior. She knew he bankrupted innocent businessmen who got in his way, tied up all his opponents in endless legal battles, and engaged in public mudslinging against anybody who tried to fight back. But she’d never believed he could kill an innocent woman.
As she looked around the area surrounding the warehouse, Millie realized she’d probably made a mistake leaving the penthouse. She tried to convince herself that they’d been in danger, that the woman was only the first target and the rest of the team would have been next, but she knew that wasn’t the case. Once the drone was shot down, the danger had been eliminated.
As if on cue to confirm her suspicions that her move had been a bad one, another black SUV, with the look of a U.S. government vehicle, pulled into the lot. Two men in gray suits got out and came over to Millie. They both flashed badges that Millie recognized as CIA, but only one of them talked.
“I’m Agent Parks and this is Agent Malmon. We’re with the Agency’s Office of Inspector General.”
Millie’s stomach dropped, but she tried her best to keep the fear off her face as she held out her hand for Agent Parks to shake.
“Millie Martindale. I’m here at the request of Lance Cabot.”
“We’re aware of your assignment here. We operate independently and report to Director Cabot as well as to the ranking members of the congressional intelligence committees.”
“Thank you for the thorough explanation,” Millie said. “What can I help you with?”
She held out hope that this was just follow-up on the casino assignment and would be over with quickly. But that hope was dashed when Agent Parks frowned and stepped back from her.
“We’re here about the drone in your vehicle,” he said.
Her stomach sank almost to her feet this time. She continued trying to regulate her reactions and her emotions, but she had one big question and she didn’t realize until it was too late that she’d asked it out loud.
“How did you get here so quickly?”
“That’s an odd question to ask,” Agent Parks said.
“I just... Normally it seems like it takes forever to get anything done around here. You know?”
She thought that was a competent enough answer. Agent Parks went from looking at her skeptically to looking at her condescendingly. That she could deal with.
“We’re going to need to get into your vehicle and to talk to the other members of your team.”