Unfortunately, it wasn’t up to him. Hell, none of this was really his plan. It was all—inherited. No doubt, the kid with the mop of hair that matched the velvet in the slots parlor had picked the casino precisely because it was loud, brash, and flashy. Everything about that damn kid had been loud. The minute the kid had walked off the bus from the clearing center in Walpole, cursing at the screws as they went through the admission routine at Shirley, jawing with any inmate near enough to catch his attention, the cons had begun taking bets on how quick the kid was going to end up in the infirmary, or worse. Nick himself had been on the over at four days. And maybe that was the real reason Nick had approached the kid in the TV room on his second day inside; not some internal need to help out, some unaccustomed sense of empathy, but to protect his wager.

Still counting doors as he moved down the hotel hallway—621, 623, 625—Nick could picture the look on the kid’s face as he’d laughed away the hoots and catcalls from the other inmates in the day room, the shouted threats and promises. In that, he was right; it wasn’t the noisy, pumped-up idiots and short-timers he had to worry about. Sure, they might throw a punch to earn some cred from their buddies, but they weren’t out to do any real damage. It was the quiet ones, the ones who wouldn’t even look at you as they stuck you with a shiv. Not for cred, not to make a name, but to keep order, keep things quiet and smooth. The redhead and the short-timers were just visiting. For the cons, Shirley was home.

But the kid had just laughed, bragging that his lawyer was going to get him out in three weeks, tops, and everything was going to change after that. Because he had something big planned after he was out, something monumental. And that’s when the kid had taken something out of his shirt pocket and showed it to Nick.