Banging.
Not inside her head like a hangover, but outside her head.
More banging.
A man’s voice yelling from far away.
Softness and warmth around her, and her mouth tasted like morning breath and garlic.
The diamond earrings were still heavy in her earlobes.
Knocking thudded through the hotel suite.
Kylie slitted open her eyes to look around, muttering, “Hey, dude, I think someone wants to talk to you.”
But no one answered.
And the blond Italian was nowhere in sight.
Kylie crawled over to the edge of the wide bed and stood up, her blue evening gown falling around her ankles. “Hey! Guy! Someone’s knocking!”
The door to the bathroom was ajar, and Kylie pushed it open, wincing at invading the blond Italian’s privacy while he was taking a poop or something.
But the bathroom was empty. The towels were still folded, unused.
She stumbled to the living room, taking off the diamond earrings and dropping them in her purse as she passed it on the coffee table. “Just a minute! Coming!”
When Kylie angled her eye and looked out the peephole, one bellhop and two men in suits stood outside the suite. One of them was huge and muscular, like a bouncer.
The guy in the middle was dressed like a manager in a cheap suit and pounded on the door with the side of his fist. “Kylie Miller! We know you’re in there. Open up!”
Those guys should not know her name. This was wrong. There was no way that the blond Italian guy from last night, whatever his real name was, could have gotten the name Kylie Miller from anywhere.
Unless they had a warrant for her arrest.
But there shouldn’t be a warrant out for her. Cops don’t arrest con artists. She wasn’t stealing from people. She was just very convincing, and she got people who were doing a wrong thing to do one more dumb thing. It was all on them. She told them a good story and made them feel like they were part of the action while she did it. That wasn’t illegal, or it shouldn’t be.
Unless someone was framing her.
Dammit. That son of a bitch.
But Kylie was confident she could talk her way into or out of anything because that’s what she did.
She opened the door. “Can I help you?”
The three guys barged past her, shoving the door farther open.
The manager-looking one said, “We need you to put down another credit card on your suite now.”
Kylie made her astonished face. “This isn’t my suite.”
The manager guy looked at a tablet he was holding. “You’re Kylie Miller,” he stated.
She squinted at him. “Who’s asking?”
The guy flipped his tablet around. “You’re Kylie Miller,” he repeated.
The tablet’s screen showed a driver’s license with Kylie’s face, and her body went as cold as if she’d plunged into the Atlantic Ocean surf in January. She slapped her best stone face over her expression.
But Kylie didn’t get flustered when talking to people who wrongly thought they were in charge. Right away, she was analyzing the driver’s license on the screen, and something about it was off. “That’s a fake license.”
“It’s got your face on it.”
It was a fake license, but it wasn’t her fake license. “I don’t think it looks like me,” she lied.
It wasn’t quite the same picture as on her fake ID, and it wasn’t her Kylie Miller fake driver’s license. The motor vehicle department number across the top was different. Hers had HKN in the number, and this one was all Cs and Fs like her high school report card.
As she looked at the image on the computer tablet, other problems popped out.
Lots of them.
The font spelling out NEW JERSEY at the top was just slightly wrong. The downstrokes on the letters were too spindly, and the hologram of the state outline looked flat.
Kylie looked up at the managerial guy, who was a shade paler than the basic beige with anger reddening his nose and cheeks. “That’s a fake license. You didn’t run it through the MVC, did you?”
New Jersey called their state motor vehicle registration department the Motor Vehicle Commission, the MVC.
The manager frowned.
“So, you didn’t run it through the MVC, ‘cause if you did, you’d know it was a fake. That’s your problem.”
“Yeah, what’s your name then?”
“I don’t have to tell you that. But I am telling you that I am not Kylie Miller, and I did not give you that fake driver’s license.”
“Well, someone did.”
“Besides, it says on there that the person’s height is five-eight.” She pointed to the screen and looked up at the manager, a Jersey short king, himself. “Do you think a New Jersey MVC clerk would let me get away with listing five-eight on my license?”
It was good that she wasn’t wearing her stiletto strappy sandals from the night before. She’d kicked them off during the night because her toes had been going to sleep.
The manager frowned down at her because she was maybe five-four on a big hair day. “Probably not.”
“And it says that person has green eyes.” She looked straight at him, widening her dark brown eyes. “Do you think they’d let me list green eyes, either?”
“It’s not my fault you uploaded a fake ID and a stolen credit card when you reserved this room online.”
“I didn’t do it. If I’d uploaded a fake driver’s license, it sure as hell wouldn’t have had my picture on it, or close to it, anyway. If you look at it, it’s not quite right.”
Oh, it was a picture of her, all right, but the image was too pixelated for a real driver’s license, like it had been copied from social media.
Now that she looked at it, that picture was from a group photo on Insta that Priyanka had posted with the four of them “partying” with a group of car salesmen three months before. The square neckline and spaghetti straps of the black dress she’d worn that night were visible in the picture, and the background had been badly photoshopped out.
But this was an elaborate con, and she needed to get the hell out of there.
She stepped toward the door, but the bouncer stepped in front of her and stared her down, his washed-out blue eyes narrowing.
Kylie turned back to the manager. “I didn’t reserve this room, and my name is not Kylie Miller.”
The manager’s jaw bulged. “But it says right here—”
“I told you that’s a fake. I don’t know who’s trying to frame me, but they gave you a fake ID.”
The manager turned and spread his arms as if he had the ultimate winning hand. “Yet your picture is on this fake driver’s license, and here you are in this suite.”
He had a point. “I never checked in. Check your surveillance video and see who checked into this room.”
The manager frowned harder and tapped the screen a few times, and then dammit, he smiled. “We don’t need to go to the surveillance footage. It was a no-contact mobile app check-in, and the QR access code was sent to your phone to act as the room key. You bypassed the reception desk.”
Goddammit, that son of a bitch. “Not me. I didn’t check in because it’s not my suite. What was the phone number on the phone with the QR code?”
He told her, and she memorized it. “That’s not my phone number. I have a South Jersey area code.”
“Maybe you got one of those computer VoIP phone numbers and called it in.”
Yeah, she did that all the time. “Where was the reservation made from? I haven’t been out of the tri-state area my whole life.”
Now with a prim smile, the manager tapped the screen again, but worry crept back onto his features. “San Francisco, but that doesn’t prove anything. You might have used a VPN. And you can’t prove that you weren’t in California two weeks ago.”
“Two weeks ago? That license and credit card were uploaded two weeks ago?”
He nodded. “Yes. The last week of September.”
Damn, this con was a thing of beauty. If she’d had the money, she would have paid the hotel just out of appreciation for the scam’s organization. “How long has he been staying here?”
The manager tapped the screen. “A week.”
Jesus H. Fucking— “A week? Jesus! What’s the room rate?”
“Fifteen hundred a night.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! What else did he spend?”
The manager shrugged. “There are room charges for in-room dining, gaming chips, Tiffany and Company, and dining at the casino restaurants.”
Tiffany’s? He’d bought her the earrings and then stuck her with the bill? That asshole. “What restaurants did he eat in?”
He consulted his tablet. “Last night at Angeline.”
“Right. And before that?”
“The night before was at the B Prime Steakhouse.”
The blond Italian had been right there when Kylie had pulled the lesbian breakup con with Rita. He’d been watching her. But for how long?
She asked, “What’s the total?”
“Eighty thousand dollars,” the manager said.
“Eighty—” she gasped. “Eighty—holy shit, are you serious?”
Kylie’s throat closed, and she coughed. No way. No goddamn way. Her chest compressed around her flailing heart, and her lungs fought for air and battered her clenched throat.
The bouncer pounded her on the back. “You okay?”
Kylie gasped, “I’m being framed for a scam that’s not my fault. I didn’t reserve or check into this room.”
“Then why are you here?”
She braced herself on her knees and let the outrage pour out. “I met a guy in the casino last night, and I came upstairs to the suite with him for just this night. I sure as hell haven’t been in this room for a week.”
“But it’s just your word against nothing,” the bouncer said.
“No, it’s not.” Kylie stood up so fast that the bouncer stepped back before she head-butted him in the face. “There’s a surveillance camera in the hallway and another one in the elevator. It’ll show the guy with the entry code on his phone last night, and I assume it’ll show him staying in the room for a week. I wasn’t here.”
“I will check with security. In the meantime, you’re coming with us. You can sit in the security office while we check the footage.”
“Wait a second.”
Kylie ran back to the bedroom, and they followed her in. The blond Italian’s black roller bag still sat on the luggage stand by the door to the bathroom, and she flipped open the lid.
Empty.
Not even a scrap of paper or dust.
“No way,” she whispered.
“That’s enough,” the manager said. “No more stalling. You’re coming with us.”
The security office was a tiny gray room with a desk and two hard chairs, obviously meant to resemble a police interrogation room.
Kylie flung her purse on the desk and waited there, still wearing the previous night’s dark blue gown and no underwear.
She sat there for two hours, stewing in yesterday’s sweat, until she finally got pissed enough that she plucked her phone out of her purse and made a phone call.
She said, “I’m in the holding pen at the Borgata, sir. No, it was nothing I did. I’m being framed. I swear to God.”
A deep male chuckle emanated from her phone. With a Philly accent, the guy said, “That’s what they all say. I’ll take care of it. But this is going to cost you.”
“Yeah, I know. Whatever. Just fix this, please. And my name is Kylie Miller, sir.”
“I know what you say your name is.”
A chill swept over her. She’d counted on being able to run with the name Kylie Miller if she’d ever needed to.
Ten minutes later, a different security guy came in and locked the door behind himself.
He sat down on the other side of the desk, bracing his bulk on his hands as he lowered himself to the chair. “What proof do you have that you didn’t give your QR entry code to that guy after you checked in?”
No niceties, and she wasn’t being released. Dammit.
However, they’d obviously seen the guy from the previous night on the footage of the past week because they were asking about him.
That was a relief. She’d worried that the guy hadn’t gone to the room until she was with him. “You can’t transfer those between phones. Even a screenshotted image won’t work.”
“You can if you forward the email before you download it.”
“Fine.” And good to know. “I can show you my MGM Rewards mobile app that shows I was playing blackjack and slot machines last night. It’ll show that I don’t have a room rented on it.”
The guy scowled. “Maybe you have two different accounts.”
Kylie rolled her eyes at him. “I’m a local. I’m not going to split my rewards between two different accounts.” She glanced at his security badge. “Besides, Kelvin, I think we can agree that I’m just not that smart. That guy is trying to frame me.”
“What’s his name then?”
“John Miranda,” she said, hoping she’d snapped that out quick enough. Because that asshole had never told her his goddamn name. “At least, that’s what he told me his name was. But evidently, he scammed us both.”
The security guy squinted at her. “Miranda isn’t a last name.”
“Sure, it is. Like, Miranda warnings. The cops have to advise you on your rights to remain silent or have a lawyer present, and it’s called a Miranda warning after the guy who took it to the Supreme Court. What, you’ve never watched Law and Order?”
Kelvin’s weak jaw moved back and forth as he ground his teeth. “You did this. You did this, and we’re going to prove it.”
“Sir, I really didn’t. I don’t know how that guy I met last night managed to do all this and frame me so thoroughly, but he did. What you’ve got is that I was in a suite that I didn’t reserve or check into and a fake ID with my picture. I know that isn’t a real driver’s license because, as I told the other guy, the biometrics are all wrong and that’s not my name.”
And it wasn’t her real fake ID, either.
Kelvin the security manager scowled harder at her. “If that’s not your legal name, then what is?”
Footsteps clomped in the hallway outside, coming closer.
Kylie said, “It doesn’t matter what my name is because my friends should be getting me out right about—”
The door opened, and yet another new security guy stuck his head in. “Miss Miller, you’re free to go.”
She grinned at Kelvin. “—now.”
Damn, she was glad Salvatore had come through.
Kelvin squinted his eyes so hard that they disappeared between the folds of his fleshy eyelids. “I thought you said your name wasn’t Miller.”
Kylie stood. “It doesn’t matter what my name is. This guy says I’m free to go, and he looks like he’s your boss. So I’m leaving. Caio.”
She swished out of the security office and beat feet through the casino and out to the street, swiping on her phone the whole time so that a rideshare car was waiting for her as she emerged from the sliding glass doors.
Eighty thousand dollars. That blond Italian asshole had nearly conned her for eighty thousand dollars.
But she’d walked away from the con and took the diamond earrings worth half of that amount with her.
Kylie told the driver, “Get me outta here.”