# Chapter 2: The Bitcoin Gang
Andy Melone waited until his lunch service was over to check his phone. He'd felt it buzz twice during the risotto course, but he'd ignored it. The kitchen had its own rhythm, its own demands, and you didn't step out of that dance for anything less than a fire. In Bosnia, he'd learned that focus could keep you alive. In professional kitchens, he'd learned it could keep you sane.
The text message was from a number he didn't recognize. The content he recognized immediately.
*We know you have it. Room 412 was just the beginning. Transfer 5000 BTC to the address below by midnight or we start killing staff. First the sommelier, then the night manager. We know their schedules. We know where they live. Don't make us demonstrate.*
Below that was a string of characters—a Bitcoin wallet address. Andy stared at it for a full minute, his thumb hovering over the delete button. Instead, he archived it and opened his second phone.
The second phone was a cheap Android, prepaid, registered to a name that didn't exist. He used it once a month to check a wallet that also didn't officially exist. The balance showed 51,284 BTC. Untouched since last night.
He'd never wanted this. He'd wanted to help a friend. Peter—his real name, not Henderson—had shown up at the hotel three weeks ago, frantic. The heist had gone wrong, he'd said. Not the theft itself—that had been perfect, a thing of beauty. They'd siphoned the Bitcoin from an exchange in Singapore, bouncing it through seventeen wallets, tumbling it until the trail was colder than a walk-in freezer. Fifty million dollars in crypto, safe in their collective wallets.
But the crew—Peter called them the Consortium, which Andy thought was pretentious as hell—had turned on each other. The plan was to sit on the money for six months, let the heat die down. Instead, Marcus—their logistics guy, the one who'd set up the hotel rooms and the false identities—had decided six months was too long. He'd tried to move his share early. Got himself noticed. Got them all noticed.
Peter had shown Andy the messages. Threats from the other three members of the crew. They thought Peter was planning to run. And maybe he was. He'd been the hacker, the one who'd broken the exchange's security. Without him, the money was just numbers in digital space.
"I need you to hold it," Peter had said, those blue eyes that had once laughed over late-night whiskies now desperate and darting. "Just until I figure this out. They won't look for it with you. You're clean. You're outside all this."
Andy should have said no. Should have told his old friend from another life that some bridges you burn for a reason. But Peter had saved his life in Bosnia, dragged him from a mortar strike that had turned their field hospital into matchsticks. You didn't forget debts like that. You carried them in your skin.
So he'd agreed. Transferred the entire haul to a wallet only he controlled, one Peter didn't even have the seed phrase for. "For safekeeping," he'd said. "Until you sort your crew out."
Peter had been dead eighteen hours later.
Now the crew was here, in Andy's hotel, his kitchen, his life. They knew about the wallet. Somehow, they'd traced it to him. Not definitively—if they were certain, they'd have taken more direct action. But they suspected enough to kill Peter and leave him as a warning.
Andy deleted the text and powered down the prepaid phone. Then he walked back into his kitchen and started prepping for dinner service. Cooking, at least, made sense. You followed recipes. You controlled heat and time and ingredients. You created something that lasted exactly as long as it was supposed to and then was gone.
Unlike stolen cryptocurrency. That lasted forever and could get you killed in an instant.
---
Resa spent the afternoon in the Hotel Post's security office, which was a grand name for a closet with two monitors and a DVR that looked like it predated the internet. Philip Chen hovered nervously while she scrolled through footage.
"The camera in the fourth floor hallway," she said. "It's been on a loop for the past forty-eight hours. Same forty-five seconds, over and over."
"I don't understand how that's possible."
"Someone who understands digital security made it possible." She rewound to the timestamp when the loop began—2:14 AM, two nights ago. "Right after your dead guest checked in. Someone didn't want anyone seeing who visited him."
The lobby cameras were more revealing. She spotted Peter—"Henderson"—arriving on Monday afternoon, carrying just a laptop bag. He'd checked in, gone to his room, and hadn't emerged again until dinner, when he'd eaten alone at the Copper Kettle, sending his duck back to the kitchen.
But the interesting footage was from last night. At 8:47 PM, a woman entered the lobby. Late twenties, athletic build, hair in a ponytail. She went straight to the elevators without checking in. The timestamp said 8:47:12. At 8:47:33, she was back in the lobby, walking toward the exit.
Twenty-one seconds. Just long enough to ride to the fourth floor, shoot three bullets into a man's chest, and ride back down.
"Do you recognize her?" Resa asked Chen.
"No. She didn't stop at the desk."
"She's not a guest. She knew exactly where she was going."
Resa pulled out her phone and took a photo of the woman's face from the screen. It was blurry, caught at an awkward angle, but it was something.
At 9:15 PM, another figure appeared—a man this time, tall, wearing a baseball cap pulled low. He took the elevator to the fourth floor and stayed for eleven minutes. When he left, he was carrying a black duffel bag that hadn't been there when he arrived.
"He took the hardware," Resa said to Mike, who'd joined her in the closet. "The laptop, the phones. He cleaned out the room."
"But left the wallet?"
"Maybe he didn't find it. Or maybe the wallet was never there. Maybe our dead guy moved it before they got to him."
Mike leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "We ran Peter Henderson's prints. He's actually Peter Novak. Computer science degree from MIT, worked for a blockchain security firm in San Francisco until six months ago. Then he just... disappeared. No credit cards, no phone in his name, no social media activity."
"Off the grid."
"Until he checked into the Post."
Resa pulled up the staff roster on her tablet. "Let's see who else went off the grid recently."
She cross-referenced the Hotel Post employees against databases, looking for anyone who'd had a sudden influx of cash, unusual travel, or gaps in employment. There were the usual minor financial crimes—a dishwasher with a DUI, a bartender with a restraining order, a night manager who'd declared bankruptcy three years ago.
And then there was Andy Melone.
His financials were pristine. Too pristine. No debt beyond a modest mortgage, credit cards paid in full each month, a car that was ten years old but well-maintained. He'd worked at the Post for twenty years, lived in the same apartment for fifteen. His bank account showed regular deposits from his paycheck and withdrawals for groceries, utilities, the occasional restaurant bill.
But six months ago, there'd been a withdrawal of ten thousand dollars. Cash. And then nothing. No large deposits, no unusual spending. Just the same steady pattern as always.
"Ten grand in cash," Mike said, reading over her shoulder. "That's a lot of kitchen equipment."
"Or it's seed money for something you don't want traced." Resa zoomed in on the transaction date. Two days after Peter Novak disappeared from his job in San Francisco. "I want to know where he was before the Post."
"Military records show he was in the Army. Bosnia, '94-'95. Combat medic."
"He told me that. What about after?"
"Culinary school in New York. Then a series of restaurant jobs—New Orleans, Chicago, Denver. All legit. All taxes paid. The man cooks for a living and does it well. His restaurant reviews are stellar."
"And yet he's connected to a dead hacker with two billion in stolen crypto." Resa stood, stretching her back. The security office's chair had been designed for masochists. "Let's pay our chef another visit."
They found Andy in the walk-in cooler, organizing inventory. The cold hit Resa like a physical wall, fogging her breath. Andy didn't look up from marking his clipboard.
"Detectives. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"You didn't mention you knew the victim," Resa said.
"I told you he ate in my restaurant."
"You didn't mention you served together in Bosnia."
That made him look up. His eyes were hard, the color of winter sky. "You have my military record. Good for you. Peter and I were in the same unit. We lost touch after I rotated home. He showed up three weeks ago, wanted to catch up. That's not a crime."
"It is if he gave you stolen cryptocurrency."
Andy set down his clipboard. "I don't know anything about cryptocurrency."
"Then you won't mind if we look at your phone."
"I would, actually. I mind quite a bit. Get a warrant."
Mike stepped forward, his good-cop smile in place. "Chef, we can get a warrant. But that takes time, and in that time, more people might get hurt. Peter Novak was murdered in your hotel. Whoever did it is probably still here. If you're protecting something—or someone—you're putting yourself and your staff in danger."
Andy was quiet for a long moment. The cooler hummed around them, a mechanical lullaby. "I'm not protecting anyone. I'm just trying to run a kitchen."
"Then help us understand why a man with two billion dollars in stolen Bitcoin chose your hotel to die in," Resa said.
For the first time, she saw something crack in Andy's composure. Just a hairline fracture, but it was there. "Two billion?"
"Fifty-one thousand Bitcoin, current market value. You understand how much money that is?"
"I understand that kind of money makes people stupid and violent." Andy picked up his clipboard again. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have a dinner service to prep. Unless you're arresting me?"
"Not yet," Resa said. "But we're not done with you."
They left him in the cooler, his breath fogging the air around him. In the hallway, Mike turned to her. "He's hiding something."
"He's hiding everything," Resa corrected. "But he didn't know the amount. That surprised him. Which means he knows about the Bitcoin, but not the specifics. Peter trusted him enough to give him the wallet, but not with all the details."
"So what now?"
"Now we find out who else is in this hotel looking for that money. And we watch Chef Melone like he's the last soufflé in the world. Because if I'm right, he's either the next victim or the next suspect. Or both."
Back in her car, Resa pulled out her notebook and started a list. Names, connections, timelines. At the top, she wrote:
*Peter Novak - dead, Suite 412. Hacker. 51,284 BTC stolen.*
Below that:
*Andy Melone - chef. Ex-medic. Connection to Novak. Possible wallet holder.*
And below that, the unknowns:
*Woman - 8:47 PM. Killer?*
*Man - 9:15 PM. Cleaner?*
*Three more crew members - who?
She underlined the last line three times.
The Bitcoin gang was here. She could feel them, moving through the hotel like smoke, leaving traces in hallway loops and midnight meetings. They were close to their money, close enough to kill for it.
And somewhere in the Copper Kettle kitchen, Andy Melone was standing between them and two billion dollars.
Resa started her car and pulled out her phone. She had a contact at the FBI's cyber crimes division. It was time to bring in bigger guns.
But first, she was going to have dinner at the Copper Kettle. She wanted to see what kind of food a man made when he was sitting on a fortune and waiting for killers to come knocking.
She had a feeling it would be the best meal of her life.
Or her last.
