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notes, and walking off
     with their playbook, so they brought in a boatload of their own security (along with
     their own slot technicians) and issued badges, all set up and approved by Holder Darby.
     Who flew the coop.
    The conference center, an escalator ride up from the east corner of the casino, starts
     with a large reception area, and by large I mean football field, and through the conference
     doors there are three dining rooms, a concert hall-slash-auditorium, an events hall,
     and breakout meeting rooms to accommodate up to a thousand conference attendees. This
     week’s conference, the one Holder Darby dumped on me, required an identification badge
     to get anywhere past the reception area.
    The badges contained microchips. Fourteen different photo IDs, an interview with your
     third grade teacher, and a brain scan were required to get a badge, and if you lost
     it, too bad. No mixing and mingling with the other bankers during keynote banquet
     lunches, no playing in the conference tournament in the evenings, no Dionne Warwick
     Friday night.
    My job, as I understood it (I’ve had this convention job twenty minutes), was to make
     several appearances a day in the reception area, ask if everyone enjoyed the Collateral
     Chicken Cordon Bleu, and get upset about inoperable microphones and light bulbs. In
     other words, once the conference began, Holder’s (my) job was one of hospitality.
     My plan for today was to be hospitable for ten minutes, then locate Holder Darby and
     four million dollars in platinum coins. I had no idea where Holder Darby might be,
     but I knew where to start looking for the four million. That part would be easy.
    My morning list just got one chore longer, because apparently I’m expected to wake
     up conference guests and kick them to the weird conference. I will admit to being
     mildly curious as to why Paragon Protection had its own slot techs, but that’s it,
     mild curiosity. I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation, and as soon as I find Holder
     Darby, I’ll get one. Then all I have to do is find four million in platinum.
    One last glance in the mirror to make sure I barely recognized myself, and, success,
     a total stranger stared back. At this point in my Super Secret Spy career, I’m a master
     of disguise. I use a product called ColorMash, a temporary hair color spray that (comes
     in sixteen brilliantly dimensional shades) smells good, washes out easily, and briefly
     turns my hair a different color. Today my caramel red hair was vibrant chocolate and
     my caramel brown eyes, via colored contacts, were china blue. I put myself through
     this rigmarole because if I spy around looking like myself, I wouldn’t stay super
     or secret very long.
    Today, I dressed in what I thought the rat-fink deserter/missing-in-action Holder
     Darby might wear to meet and greet conference guests, a power suit: navy blue pants
     and blazer, no-nonsense white silk shirt, all Diane Von Furstenberg, and on my feet,
     Kate Spade Yvonne patent pumps. Also new. And several inches of new, because I’m not
     all that tall and eye contact is a large part of hospitality. I looked like a movie
     star FBI agent. (Real FBI agents wear no makeup, cargo pants, sports bras, Reebok
     SWAT boots, and bulletproof vests. Movie FBI agents wear Diane Von Furstenberg power
     suits.) And I might as well have stayed in my pajamas for this, my first assignment
     on the first day of what would be a week of dressing up as an FBI movie star and replacing
     Collateral Chicken Cordon Bleu light bulbs, playing the role of Olivia Abbott, Temporary
     Special Events Coordinator, because the guest in room twenty-six fifty was, as Megan
     suspected, missing. In fact, he was gone. There was no guest in room twenty-six fifty.
    Weird.
    I eyed the closed bathroom door.
    It was way too early for this.
    I tiptoed over and tapped. “Housekeeping. Is anyone in there?”
    From time to time, I think about getting a job at the mall. Or