Chapter 8 Waking up, I feel Amanda lying next to me, my arm stuck beneath her as she cuddles into me. I immediately start to pull away but stop not wanting to wake her. With that in mind, I ease my arm out from under Amanda, causing her to roll over onto her other side. I’ve noticed, over the last couple of days, that I don’t need quite as much sleep anymore. It has only been about five and a half to six hours since Amanda and I fell asleep but here I am wide awake. I lean in, giving her a light kiss on the back of the head, catching a whiff of her shampoo. It smells quite nice, a sort of earthy-floral scent reminding me of tea tree oil. I should probably go for a workout since I didn’t exercise much yesterday. At that thought, I hop out of bed and write her a quick note letting her know where I went in case she wakes up before I get back. Downstairs I quickly get directions to the fitness center. They have a surprisingly nice gym that rivals most of the actual gyms back home. It’s been quite some time since I’ve been to a gym so I’m not entirely sure where to start. I eventually decide to warm up on an elliptical machine for thirty minutes before moving on to a diverse weight-lifting workout, my higher endurance and enhanced recovery allowing me to do a bit of everything without having to worry about overworking a muscle group. I arrive back up to the room, about an hour and a half later, to find Amanda still sound asleep. Though, without me there, she has moved around quite a bit tossing most of the covers off leaving her beautiful body almost completely visible. Admiring her for a couple of minutes caused me to grow quite aroused, but she looks far too adorable for me to wake her. taking one last glance, I head into the bathroom to take a shower. While washing my hair and face, I hear the rustle of the shower curtain being pulled aside. I still have soap on my face so I can’t open my eyes to look, but as I turn back to wash it off, I feel Amanda press up against me from behind. Her breasts depressing against my back as she kisses my neck. I laugh as her hands trail up and down my chest and abdomen before going a bit lower...We have a quick reenactment of last night's festivities before washing each other. “Good morning,” I say with a bright smile on my face as we dry each other off. Blushing slightly with an equally bright smile she wishes me a good morning back. “I checked out the website for that shooting range you mentioned. I was thinking we could have a Humvee come pick us up around noon. That gives us a couple of hours to eat and gamble a bit before we go shoot. I think I wanna go for the Sniper package, I’ve shot a bit here and there but I’ve never shot long range before.” “That sounds fun, do they have a pretty long range?” “Ahh I don’t know, it was listed as long-range when I googled it and they have a sniper experience so I would assume so. I guess we’ll find out when we get there.” I use my phone to schedule a pickup as we head downstairs. We take the elevator down and head to the buffet for breakfast, we got comped a few free buffet tickets last night when we were winning quite a bit. I get a plateful of hashbrowns, half smothering them in ketchup, with some scrambled eggs and bacon on the side. She makes herself a bowl of mixed fruit and grabs a blueberry muffin. She laughs at me when she sees my plate of hashbrowns practically dyed red with ketchup and makes the usual joke about wanting hashbrowns with my ketchup. I, being the mature gentleman I am, give an overly fake laugh before sticking my tongue out at her, getting a giggle in response. We spend the next fifteen minutes bantering while we eat. Finishing up we continue on to the casino to play slots again. We are on a bit more of a schedule now, and it is a bit easier to leave a slot machine more quickly than it is a poker table. We don’t have quite as much luck this morning, most of the slot machines that I feel good about are already occupied and the few available, while still good, aren’t paying out quite as much as we were getting last night. My phone starts vibrating in my pocket, I set an alarm to remind me of the time. I figured we might want to deposit some of our winnings as well so I set it to go off about forty-five minutes before we were supposed to leave. The bank is just around the corner and if it doesn’t take too long we can always gamble a little more. “We should go grab our money out of the room and deposit most of it before the Humvee gets here, we have about forty-five minutes, I’m not entirely sure how long it will take to deposit this much money though.” “Okay, one more roll,” I chuckle as she rolls two more times before winning on her third roll getting back the money she bet on the previous two. She shoots me a fake glare before sticking her tongue out at me and cashing out. We both won a little over five grand in the last hour, no hand pays but a handful of four to five hundred dollar wins each and a lot of smaller wins. When we get up to the room to get the money I check for directions on my phone. “We might have to grab a taxi or an Uber or something the bank is a bit further away than I realized.” I get into the safe and grab the bags, handing her her money. “You might want to leave some here for later and keep a little with us for the shooting range.” Taking my own advice I grab a stack with ten thousand dollars in hundreds and leave it in the safe. She grabs the same leaving it next to mine. She should have a bit more in her bag than me, I let her get the slot machine that paid out more, and all of our BlackJack winnings were wired straight to our accounts when we cashed in our chips at the cage. When we get back down to the lobby we go to the main entrance and luckily find an empty taxi sitting there waiting for potential customers. I wave at the driver saying hello before opening the door for Amanda, I’m about to close it and go around but she immediately scoots over to the other side. Smiling I hop in beside her. “Where you need to go,” the taxi driver asks. “We need to stop by the Well’s Fargo on,” I look down at my phone, “Howard Hughes Parkway.” “Alright, buckle up,” He says pulling out immediately. It seems we got pretty lucky coming when we did, Vegas is still fairly busy as I’m sure it almost always is but we seem to have come when there were no big events going on which is why our hotel was so cheap and now traffic isn’t too ridiculous. We also get lucky with the intersections hitting every green light, so it’s only a five-minute drive before we pull into the bank.”Thanks, would you be willing to stay while we make our deposit?” “Sure no problem.” Surprisingly he pauses the meter as I open the door. I expected him to keep it running while we were inside. Taking one of the hundreds from my wallet I tap his shoulder and hand it to him, “for your time, we shouldn’t be too long unless there is a huge line.” He smiles and thanks me as we hop out of the car. Luckily the bank isn’t too incredibly busy and we are able to get help after a couple of minutes. It was a surprisingly quick experience, we caught a couple of looks from other customers as we took turns handing over our money, but the bank employees didn’t seem overly shocked. I’d assume, being a bank in Las Vegas, that large cash deposits are a relatively common occurrence. It did take a few minutes to run the money through their machines, counting it and checking for counterfeit bills, but it was fairly routine, and because the money was fairly well organized it went quicker than I had hoped. In the end, I deposited sixty grand and Amanda deposited just under seventy, both of us keeping just over a thousand dollars in our bags for the shooting range and a little more gambling. We get in and out in less than ten minutes, most of the time spent processing our information before they took our money, the money counters being ridiculously quick. Thanks to the efficiency of the bank and our taxi driver, we deposited our money and got back to the casino in less than twenty-five minutes giving us plenty of time before we were to be picked up by the Humvee. Instead of going inside to play a bit before they show up, we get directions to the Uber pickup area, which is where we are supposed to get picked up and wait out there. They actually show up several minutes early so it was a nice coincidence. After a ten-minute drive, we pull in to see a number of other military vehicles. Several different tanks, two helicopters, and many others I don’t know the name of. Getting out of the car, we thank our driver give him a small tip, and head on inside. Talking to one of the employees inside I learn that their range is actually only twenty meters long, which is still decent but not really what I would consider long-range for anything but a pistol. With that information, I decide not to go with the Sniper package, perhaps if it were closer to fifty or one hundred meters but twenty just doesn’t really seem as interesting when talking about shooting a sniper rifle. We look through some of the other packages they offer. When we come to the Operator Experience we smile at each other. It offers seven guns, one of the sniper rifles from the sniper experience included and it lets us shoot a minigun which should be really cool. We had to pay extra to make it a two-person package and it nearly doubled the price to add extra ammo. It is fairly expensive but given our recent “luck” I’m alright with paying for it. With that selected they assign us our “Range Safety Officer.” We get a nice guy named Andrew, he is quite enthusiastic and kind enough to take us on a little tour of the place. Just outside the vault, there are a couple hundred guns from modern pistols to a series of gold plated guns for their “Warlord Experience” which, of course, has to include a gold plated AK. Inside the vault, they have just as many if not more guns, Andrew points out and talks about a lot of the rarer guns but I’m so preoccupied taking it all in that I don’t catch half of what he is saying. Before we enter the actual range he provides us with eye and ear protection and goes over the basic gun safety protocols. Always assume the gun is loaded. Don’t point the gun at anything you don’t intend to shoot. Keep your finger outside the trigger guard until you intend to shoot. Keep the gun unloaded until you are ready to shoot. Mostly common sense stuff but they likely have to say it all for legal and safety reasons. With that taken care of Andrew brings us out to the range, they have a little pushcart with our guns and the loaded magazines ready for us. “Let's start with the Glock 17,” Andrew says. He takes the Glock off the cart racks the slide a couple of times and says, “so, the Glock 17 doesn’t really have an external safety outside of the person shooting it. It has two internal safeties and a trigger safety but there isn’t anything to actually switch off, if you pull the trigger it will fire. This means muzzle awareness and keeping your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot is very important with this gun. Now, with that said whose shooting first.” Amanda and I look at each other, and I can see the excitement in her eyes so I smile, nod to her, and tell her to go ahead. She smiles back and walks over to Andrew, Taking the gun she looks it over for a second, and just before Andrew goes to explain loading the magazine she quickly takes it inserts the magazine, and racks the slide with practiced ease. He looks at her for a second and just smiles and waves her on to proceed. She gets into a good shooting stance and lines up her shot before squeezing the trigger. Her first shot is up and to the right several inches from the torso bullseye. She quickly squeezes a second and then a third shot. The second is much closer only a handful of centimeters from the bullseye. Her third shot hit the bottom-right edge of the bullseye. Having gotten a feel for the gun she empties the remaining fourteen bullets in a matter of seconds, all of the remaining bullets joining her third shot in and around the bullseye. Placing the empty gun on the bench in front of her she turns around to look at us with a knowing smirk on her face. “I bet you can’t beat that,” she says smiling up at me. I bark out a laugh, “I see, you’re a competitive little thing, aren't you?” Letting out a cute laugh she says, “yup, at least when it comes to shooting anyway; my dad and I go at least once a month and compete to decide who is paying for dinner.” “So what does that mean I get if I win?” She laughs at my suggestively quirked eyebrow and is about to answer when gunshots from a couple lanes over start ringing out. We look over real quick then she smiles and yells, “I guess we’ll have to decide what we win later,” and waves toward the gun telling me to go ahead. Smiling I walk up, take the gun and look it over. I hit the mag release buttons on either side catching it and placing it next to the fresh magazine, I then insert it but with not quite the same finesse as Amanda before flicking the slide release, loading a bullet into the chamber. I got a decent idea of how the gun shoots while watching her so, aiming at the head, I hit just inside the bullseye with my first shot. I look back at her and smirk, she has a bit of a surprised look on her face but smiles back at me when she notices my look. I quickly empty the magazine almost all my shots go in or just outside of the bullseye. “Very nice,” Amanda says, “do you go shooting pretty often?” “Not too much anymore, I used to shoot quite a bit when I was younger but this is the first time I’ve been in several months, but I got to see you shoot first so I had an idea of how the gun shoots. You want me to shoot the next gun first so that it's fair?” “Sure, sure,” she says, “what are we shooting next Andrew?” He walks over to the cart and grabs a submachine gun and says, “Next is the Heckler and Koch MP5K,” he unfolds the buttstock, “with a collapsible buttstock.” he goes on to describe the gun and how it is used before placing it on the table ready to load and fire. It has three firing modes if you include safety, then semi-auto, and full-auto. We switch out the targets so we can keep better track of who is hitting where. Taking the gun I insert the magazine and slap the cocking lever down to load a bullet into the chamber. I start with semi-auto taking a couple of shots then switch and squeeze out some bursts of full-auto. It’s a lot harder to control on full-auto but I still manage to get most of my shots within a couple of inches of the bullseye. Since I was shooting at the head there were a couple of shots that hit the white space surrounding it, missing the outlined part of the target completely. She shoots just about as well, shooting at the torso, all of her shots hitting the target most outside the bullseye. We continue like this with the rest of the guns, after the MP5 we shoot an Uzi, then the Colt M4, and after that, we shoot an AK-74. We moved the target back to the fifteen-meter mark when we started shooting the ARs, we had it at the ten-meter mark for the pistol and sub-machine guns. Amanda gave me the win at this point since it was obvious that my shots had all hit in a smaller spread and more of the bullseye was missing on the heads of our targets. I hadn’t really needed it at this range, but as we were shooting I began to get a sense of when to pull the trigger and when to let off. I’m guessing that when we made it a bet my luck stat took effect and started to help guide me. We decided to save the M249 and the Minigun for last, so, after the rifles, Andrew grabbed the M107A1 Barrett sniper rifle and set it up for us. I paid quite a bit extra to get a full ten-round magazine for it. I got a chair so I could sit and shoot. As I set up to take the shot I start to get pretty excited so, wanting to do well, I take a couple deep breaths to settle my nerves before leaning in to look through the scope. I could feel each beat of my heart as I lined up the shot on the target's head, the target's only twenty meters out so with the sight it’s like they are only ten or so feet in front of me. I honestly don’t know why I’m taking it so seriously, there’s just something about shooting a 50-caliber rifle that makes it feel more real to me. As I start to squeeze the trigger time seems to slow to the point where several seconds seem to pass between each heartbeat. I can see that I started to squeeze a bit too quickly and pulled my shot slightly off-target of the bullseye. I make the slightest correction just before the trigger is pulled that last little bit. I feel a kick to my shoulder and the bullet tears through the air and rips through the target so fast that it leaves a surprisingly small hole dead center in the bullseye. The air is practically visible as it shoots out of the muzzle brake, diffusing most of the kick. Even with my slowed perception of time, it seemed to all happen in an instant. I let one more beat of my heart pass and then between that thump and the next I fire four more rounds all within millimeters of the first, most, partially, overlapping each other. I take in one more deep breath, and let it back out as time starts to speed back up to normal. “WOOO, that is a fucking rush,” I exclaim, flip the safety, and turn to look back at Amanda and Andrew with a huge smile on my face. Andrew and Amanda stare at the target with surprised looks on their faces. “What,” I ask, looking back at the target. I see that there is one fairly large hole where the bullseye used to be. “Oh, come on, it's not that surprising. The target is only twenty meters away and that's a high-powered rifle with a high-powered scope all sitting stable on a shooting bench. The only way I could really miss at this range is if the scope sights were miscalibrated.” Clearing his throat Andrew says, “It's not that you hit the bullseye, it's that you hit the bullseye with each shot while firing that fast. I’m pretty sure you shot all five shots in less than a second and, from what I can tell, none of them strayed more than a centimeter from where your first shot hit.” I look back at the target, thinking about what he said for a minute then I shrug and say, “Just some lucky shots I guess, in the moment it felt a lot longer than one second though, felt like I had all the time in the world for each shot.” After that Amanda goes up to take her five shots, getting all of hers in the bullseye as well, though she took her time on each shot. We moved on to the M249 which was pretty fun, then to the Minigun which was kind of crazy. You see how fast it shoots in games and movies but that doesn’t really prepare you for what it's like shooting it yourself. We had one hundred rounds each and it took less than three seconds of actually holding the trigger down to go through them all. As we are leaving the range Amanda says, “You are a far better shot than I expected.” “So what you’re really saying is that you expected to kick my ass,” I say with a chuckle, “And that you are surprised I held my own.” “Ha, I wouldn’t say you held your own, I’d say it was my ass that got kicked. I think that means you won our little bet, so what exactly would you like for winning?” I look over at her and, with a smile, I say, “Well, as much as I’d like to take advantage of you, perhaps we should do something simple. How about you pamper me with a nice meal. I believe there is a nice steakhouse near our hotel, perhaps we can go do a little shopping and then go out to eat. I think it is a bit pricey but given our recent luck I have no doubt we can afford it.” As I’m looking at her she seems both happy and a bit disappointed that my request wasn’t of a more sexual nature, although I could just be projecting. The Bellagio has a number of stores inside so we just walk around and explore for a bit. The clothes are extremely expensive but we have money to burn at the moment so we both get a few things. I end up spending far too much money on one outfit, I get a nice t-shirt, some pants, underwear, and socks for over two thousand dollars. Amanda spends around the same on a cute dress. One thing they have going for them is that the employees are incredibly nice, that being said I’ll likely never pay this much for casual clothing ever again. I might be willing to spend this much on a tailored suit or something but not a t-shirt and pants, it was more of an “in the moment” purchase. Luckily after we finished shopping Amanda decided she wanted to go do some more gambling while we waited for the steakhouse to open, so we had the chance to get back all that money we’d just spent. We basically just followed the same route we followed last night but incorporated a bit more poker and fewer slot machines into the night's festivities. We still play some slots and end up making quite a bit of money at them but not quite as much as yesterday. At the BlackJack and Texas Hold’em tables, however, we end up making quite a bit more and we play it a bit smarter this time transferring our winnings from the slots into chips for the poker tables so that we aren’t walking around with tens of thousands of dollars on us. I’m still playing it a bit cautious, making sure I lose here and there but I make higher bets so that overall I’m still winning more money in roughly the same amount of time. She is a bit more reserved and bets similarly to what I was betting yesterday. I don’t keep an exact count between casinos but I’d estimate that by the time we were heading back to our hotel I’d won somewhere along the lines of three hundred thousand, I’d guess Amanda got at least half to two-thirds of that. We arrive back at the hotel just in time for the walk-in reservation I made at the restaurant. Obviously, we both end up ordering steak and spend most of the meal just enjoying the food and each other's company. There are snippets of conversation here and there. About our day… about last night and her hesitancy to go further than we had, but it’s not long until we finish eating and it’s time to figure out what to do next. I’d kind of like to go see a show or something but at the same time, I haven’t really met my quota for how much I need to earn if I want to buy my house and we have our flight home fairly early tomorrow morning. Luckily she is more than happy to go back to gambling and I still haven’t tried playing roulette. Apparently, it has some of the worst odds but has the potential for some of the greatest payouts. Our hotel-casino has one of the highest limit tables in Vegas at ten thousand dollars. I go up to our room to grab the money we left in the safe before heading back down and cashing it in for chips each of us getting ten thousand dollars. As we arrive at the table there is a little sign listing the max bets, inside and outside. The inside max bet is one thousand dollars and the outside/table max is of course ten thousand. (Where the inside is the individual numbers 1 to 36 and includes 0 and 00. The outside includes 1-12, 13-24, 25-36, 1-18, 19-36, even, odd, red, black, and the columns.) I had read up a little about this but to be sure I ask the dealer, “if the inside max is one thousand but the table max is ten thousand does that mean I can make ten inside bets of one thousand?” “Yes sir,” she quickly replies “Okay thank you,” I say as I look down at the table and try to get a feel for which number might win. As my eyes pass over the numbers they always seem to get glued to fourteen so I quickly place a one hundred dollar chip on 14 then I place four split bets, bets on two numbers, around the 14 covering the 11, 13, 15, and 17 surrounding the fourteen. I do the same for the four quadrants, or corner bets, surrounding the 14 and then a street bet which covers the row the 14 is on. This doesn’t make for the best odds but it ensures the biggest payout if the ball lands on the fourteen. I look up from my bet and notice everyone giving me a weird look, including Amanda and the dealer as she raises her hands and calls out “no more bets.” As she starts the ball spinning a spike of adrenaline flashes through me and my nerves skyrocket. I take a deep breath and as I let it out time appears to slow again, as it did at the gun range, and I watch as the ball bounces around on its last legs spiking my adrenaline further as it bounces over the fourteen only to tap the edge of the next number and bounce back, settling on the fourteen. Everyone stares in surprise for a second as the dealer calls out, “Fourteen-Red,” before breaking out in applause and cheering as she starts divvying up chips. Because all of the individual bets I made include the 14 I get a far greater payout than if I’d just bet on the 14 itself. I get paid 35 to 1 for my first bet, so thirty-five hundred. 17 to 1 for each split bet adding up to sixty-eight hundred. 11 to 1 for the street bet adding another eleven hundred. Then 8 to 1 for each corner bet for thirty-two hundred. All coming together for a total of fourteen thousand six hundred dollars. “Why not just put one thousand down on 14,” Amanda asks, “Wouldn’t you have won more that way?” “Yeah, if I had just taken the thousand dollars that I bet there and placed it on the 14 I could have gotten thirty-five thousand dollars, but this was more of a test to see if my strategy would work. Betting ten thousand dollars on a single number would be ideal, but the highest inside bet I can make is one thousand dollars, so by making ten individual thousand dollar bets I maximize the amount of money I can make in a single spin given the limit. Outside bets have better odds but the most you can possibly win on a single bet is twenty thousand. Plus, this way, if I guess the wrong number I have eight other chances of getting the right one, four of which would let me come close to breaking even, and with the other four I would still win at least some money. It’s definitely not the strategy with the best odds but it has the biggest payouts when luck is on your side, and luck has certainly been on my side this weekend.” I say that last with a huge grin on my face as I look at her. She blushes and gives me a light punch to the ribs causing me to burst out a short laugh as the dealer calls out “no more bets”. It seems we got distracted talking to each other and missed the next spin. Not that it really matters, we end up spending most of the rest of the night at that table. I steadily increase my bets, I take a number of losses here and there but I stay in the positive the whole time. I make sure several of my wins are on the side bets so I’m not winning quite as much as I could be, and so that it lasts. I imagine if I won a million dollars in less than half an hour they might kick me out and possibly ban me. It was around six pm when we started and by eight we both had won nearly a million dollars. Amanda had been a bit skeptical at first and so it took her longer to start betting the highest amount possible but in the end, she had just under seven hundred thousand dollars in chips and I had just over nine hundred thousand. At this point we had drawn a surprisingly large crowd, luckily the casino was kind enough to provide a security escort to the cashier's window where we have the money sent to our bank accounts. It took a bit of time having the chips counted and filling out the paperwork and by the time we finished the manager showed up. “Hello, Mr. Hawthorne, Ms. Craig,” the manager says nodding to us in turn, “On behalf of the Bellagio we would like to offer you a complimentary upgrade to one of our Queen Suites.” “That’s very kind of you, but we’ll be checking out fairly early tomorrow morning. It just wouldn’t make sense to pack all our stuff up and move to that room only to go to bed and pack up again in the morning.” “I understand, perhaps we could offer you…” He goes on to offer us a complimentary stay for our next visit and asks if they could take our photo, obviously for marketing purposes, and after we finish filling out the tax forms and talking to him we head up to our room. Amanda seems a bit shell-shocked after the events of the night. We won a lot of money yesterday but that was roughly a tenth of what we ended up winning tonight. So instead of fooling around once we get to our room she quickly gets changed out of her new dress and into some sweat pants and a cute shirt before climbing into bed. Watching her get changed, then seeing her look so adorable in her pajamas I can’t help but want to climb into bed with her and fool around, but she seems a bit out of it at the moment so I feel like I should just give her her space for now. We can talk a bit in the morning after she’s had time to process everything that's happened tonight and this weekend in general. I get changed as well but it’s still fairly early so I change into some swim trunks and, taking some spare clothes and a towel, go back downstairs for a workout and a dip in the pool before going to bed myself.