Upon entering the casino, Phoenix casually opened Lu Jia's passport that he had just received from the security guard.
His gaze paused for a moment on the page with personal information. In the passport, Lu Jia was smiling brightly, and her delicate and refined facial features were frozen at the most perfect moment.
After staring for a while, he quickly closed the passport and handed it back to Lu Jia.
The passport was very important to Lu Jia. At this time, she gave him an unhappy glare and then carefully put the passport into the inner layer of her bag.
At the same time, while looking around at the different casino facilities, Phoenix said, "Stay close to me."
Lu Jia was already very tired. Yesterday, she had experienced a car breakdown and then drove for several hours. And in the evening, she had to come to the casino with him. Now all she wanted was to go to sleep. She had been forcing herself to stay awake all the way here.
Hearing what he said, she couldn't help but close her tired eyes and pinched herself hard to stay awake.
When one was unlucky, even drinking cold water could make one choke.
Phoenix first took Lu Jia to exchange the one-hundred-dollar bill for round plastic chips, and then they walked through almost half of the casino and went straight to a fan-shaped gambling table with a croupier standing there.
Lu Jia had always been completely ignorant about these things. The reason she came to Las Vegas was just that it was a famous tourist destination in the western United States, and she just wanted to try her luck by the way.
Phoenix seemingly casually joined a gambling table, put down the smallest chip representing ten dollars, and signaled the croupier to deal the cards.
It took a long time before Lu Jia realized that they seemed to be playing blackjack. She could figure it out thanks to a movie she had watched before called "21". It told the story of a group of high-IQ people who won five million US dollars in the casino by counting cards.
Thinking of this, as if she had thought of something, she suddenly straightened up and looked nervously at Mr. Phoenix sitting in the middle of the gambling table.
... Could it be that he wanted to make a fortune from the casino with the one hundred dollars in Lu Jia's hand?!
How was that possible?
Lu Jia remembered that after watching the movie, she had searched for the real story behind it. It was said that casinos had already changed their strategies now, and such a thing couldn't happen anymore.
However, while Lu Jia was thinking this, the result of this round of the game on the gambling table had already been revealed.
— Phoenix won.
It should just be good luck, right? After all, it was normal to have wins and losses.
However, to Lu Jia's surprise, although Phoenix also lost some rounds later, he won most of the time. Originally, there were only a few chips in front of him, but不知不觉中竟然已经积累成一摞了.
Two hours had passed unknowingly, and even the other players at the table had changed several batches, but Phoenix was still sitting there.
By this time, Lu Jia's sleepiness had completely disappeared. She stared at Phoenix without blinking, and a bit of admiration grew in her heart. Even the croupier dealing the cards at the table had an ugly look on his face.
Phoenix, on the other hand, still had a calm expression on his face. His long fingers gently tapped on the table, signaling to continue the game.
However, this casino was not large in scale. Although the chips Phoenix won were not that many, it was enough to trigger the restrictions here.
Before anyone knew it, two fierce and burly security guards suddenly appeared behind Phoenix, who were even two times stronger than him.
Seeing the security guards arriving, the croupier couldn't help but show a sneer. "Sir, professional players are prohibited from playing blackjack here. If you insist on continuing, then I'll have to limit your bets."
Lu Jia was startled by this sudden change. The admiration on her face disappeared immediately, and her face turned pale in an instant, and her heart was pounding.
She had always been a well-behaved person since she was a child, a good girl in the eyes of her parents and teachers. For the first time in her life, she had become an accomplice of someone else. And now she was even being watched by two burly security guards who looked like they could kill someone with one punch.
Phoenix raised his eyebrows. He didn't seem surprised at all and nodded in understanding, as if he had expected this long ago.
Finally, he slowly got up. Under the surveillance of the two security guards, he picked up the stack of chips he had won on the table and took Lu Jia to the exchange point.
Lu Jia was now following Phoenix stiffly. She could always feel the two hot stares from behind on the back of her neck.
Even so, Phoenix's two hours of playing were not in vain. After he exchanged the chips, Lu Jia was shocked to find out that he had earned nearly twenty thousand dollars with the principal of one hundred dollars!
Lu Jia felt that her perception had gone wrong. She knew that Phoenix had earned a lot, but she didn't expect it to be so much. She just followed Phoenix out of the casino area of this hotel in a daze and came to the unoccupied elevator to wait for it.
"My face should have been recognized by the casino's face recognition system and recorded in the database. If we're unlucky, the FBI will get my whereabouts within 48 hours, so..."
While lowering his voice, Phoenix turned his head and looked fixedly at Lu Jia.
Lu Jia immediately had a very bad feeling in her heart.
"... So what?"
"We have to leave here quickly."
...?!
Lu Jia looked at him in disbelief and growled at him in a low voice, "Do you know what time it is now? It's already three o'clock in the morning! I haven't even slept yet, and now you're asking me to leave with you?"
"If you want to leave, leave by yourself. Anyway, it's not me who's being watched by the police."
Phoenix turned around and suddenly reached out his hand to touch Lu Jia's cheek affectionately.
"What are you doing?"
Lu Jia subconsciously took a step back, vigilantly feeling his slightly rough thumb slowly moving on her cheek. "Your charm won't work on me!"
"Are you sure?"
"There are surveillance cameras here. They can see our every move."
"So when they find you, they will use all means to interrogate you, like water torture, sleep deprivation... and more things that you don't want to know."
The blood in Lu Jia's whole body froze. Her face turned pale, and her whole body was trembling.
The next second, realizing what was going on, she slapped Phoenix's hand away and then realized why this man had been doing these ambiguous actions to her since just now!
He did it on purpose!
Lu Jia still wanted to slap him in the face, but the next second, Phoenix tightly grasped her raised hand.
She didn't react for a moment. She just felt that her waist seemed to be hugged by another hand, and then her body was lifted off the ground and completely lost its balance.
"Ah—!"
"Let me go!"
Lu Jia exclaimed. Everything in her vision flipped 850 degrees. Her straight black hair hung down, and her abdomen was suddenly bumped by something hard.
— Phoenix directly carried her on his shoulder with his arm around her waist!
The elevator opened at this moment. Phoenix carried the struggling Lu Jia into the elevator and pressed the floor where their hotel room was.
The elevator doors slowly closed, and Phoenix's gaze fixed on the camera outside the door was cut off.
*
Ten minutes later, Phoenix carried the unconscious Lu Jia on his back along with her luggage that hadn't been opened yet and came to the parking garage under the cover of the night and the colorful neon lights.
He first carefully placed Lu Jia on the not-so-spacious back seat of the car and then put her luggage in the trunk.
The headlights of the car lit up. Phoenix sat in the driver's seat and started the car.
He had actually not slept for more than 24 hours. He had only taken a short nap for about half an hour when he hitchhiked to Las Vegas, and during that time, he had always been on guard and didn't dare to fall into a deep sleep.
At this time, he had already driven out of the prosperous Las Vegas and was driving on the highway according to Lu Jia's original travel plan. On both sides of the desolate highway, it was pitch black, and only the headlights shone on the white lane lines that were constantly moving backward.
After driving dozens of kilometers in the night, Phoenix finally found a temporary residence and slowly parked the car beside a rather dilapidated motel.
A man was dozing off at the front desk. Phoenix gently knocked on the table and finally woke the man up.
"One twin-bedded room."
The man squinted his sleepy eyes, looked Phoenix up and down, and impatiently threw the room card onto the table. "Eighty dollars."
After checking in, Phoenix went back to the parking lot outside. He first carried the luggage upstairs and then went downstairs again to carefully pick up the still-unconscious Lu Jia in his arms.
Probably because Phoenix's appearance at four o'clock in the morning to book a room and his repeated going up and down the stairs were really too strange, the front desk clerk took a few more glances at him.
With one glance, he saw that Phoenix was actually carrying an unconscious Asian woman upstairs.
However, it was so late at night, and this was quite normal. He should be carrying his already asleep girlfriend upstairs.
After getting this reasonable guess, the clerk immediately put this matter behind him and continued to fall asleep.
It was still not dawn yet, and he could still sleep for a long time.