The Gambler

by Molly O'Keefe

  I sent a quick prayer heavenward and called in the cavalry—Nora Sullivan.

  Luckily, she was working late and once she was filled in on the situation, she was practically out the door.

  “Just keep Ramon away from those kids. Do whatever you need to, but keep those kids away from their father and out of jail.”

  With my orders in mind and the kids safely upstairs, I tossed open the front door, sickened by the men that stood there.

  “Owens,” I said with a sneer. “Can I ask why you’re stinking up my brand-new porch?”

  “Watch it, Tyler,” Owens said, hooking a thumb between his gut and his gun belt. “We’re here on police business.”

  “Where are my kids?” Ramon shouted, his wide, dark face streaked with blood, his eyes poisoned with anger.

  I clenched my fists, trying to keep myself under control, trying to stall for time so Nora could get here. “They’re not here,” I said, and stepped back to slam the door, but Owens quickly got a foot in the door.

  “Hold on a second, Tyler. I got some questions—”

  “I know they’re in there!” Ramon shouted. “Miguel spends more time here than he does at home. You’re trying to steal my kids—”

  “Steal!” I cried. “Like you care, you drunk son of a bitch—”

  “Hey now,” Owens said, holding up a hand, but Ramon tossed aside the bloody towel and charged me, and I met him with a joyful heart and a serious right hook.

  Ramon stumbled and I launched myself forward, knocking the man to the ground. My veins humming with bloodlust, I straddled the man and punched him, feeling the cartilage in Roman’s nose go to mush, sending blood spraying across the white porch.

  Owens tried to get involved but I shoved the police officer back.

  I lifted Ramon by the neck of his shirt, his head listing sideways, covered in old and fresh blood. “You don’t deserve those kids. You don’t—”

  Owens’s fist came out of nowhere, catching me in the eye and I toppled sideways before being yanked to my knees by my own neck, which Owens had wrapped his arm around.

  “You just don’t know when to quit, do you?” Owens asked, squeezing even harder until I saw stars. “Now I gotta take you down to the station.”

  Owens called in help to take Ramon to the clinic and I waited in the back of the squad car. I hoped, prayed that with me in custody, Owens would lose interest in the kids.

  “I’m going to check the house,” Owens told the other officer, “see if those kids are here.”

  Crap.

  With nothing else at my disposal, I went ape shit. Screaming, spitting, kicking at the window, anything to get Owens back to the car and away from the house.

  I didn’t want those kids taken away in a squad car. I didn’t want them held in a cell when their night had been horrific enough. I wanted them at The Manor until someone who loved them could find them.

  “Don’t make me taze you!” Owens said, sliding into the front seat.

  He started up the car and I watched the window of my upstairs bedroom, where Miguel stood.

  “Stay,” I mouthed to Miguel. “Stay right there.”

  JULIETTE

  * * *

  I stood in my dark living room, surrounded by the glow of my television, and felt the world go sideways. It took five minutes for the story to come back around, but there it was. Richard Bonavie being led away from the Los Angeles airport in cuffs, illuminated by a hundred flashbulbs.

  “Richard Bonavie was found with the thirty-karat Pacific Diamond that was stolen from the Bellagio Ancient Treasures Exhibit seven years ago. Bonavie was initially a person of interest in the crime but was released due to insufficient evidence. Bonavie is now being transferred to Nevada for questioning.”

  “Tyler was in Las Vegas at that time, wasn’t he?” Dad asked.

  “He doesn’t know anything about it,” I snapped, though as the words came out of my mouth I knew I was lying. He might not have known about the gems seven years ago, but he sure as hell knew about them now.

  It was just too much of a coincidence that Richard left The Manor a week ago, and now he gets arrested with a gem that had been missing for years.

  Maybe Tyler didn’t know Richard found the gem, I told myself, trying to put the brakes on my anger.

  He said he didn’t.

  If you love him, you’ll go with that. At least until proven otherwise.

  But I had a bad feeling.

  I reached into my pocket and turned on my phone, which immediately began ringing.

  I didn’t check the caller ID, sure of who it was.

  “Tyler,” I said, “what the hell is going on?”

  “This isn’t Tyler,” Officer Kavanaugh said, and something in his voice turned my blood to ice.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Well,” he said, huffing a deep sigh. “I figured you’d want to know, we’ve got Tyler O’Neill in a holding cell with a black eye and Owens is filling out paperwork charging Tyler with assaulting an officer.”

  Holy. Shit.

  “That’s not all. Ramon Pastor is at the clinic, with a broken nose and about twenty stitches in his head.”

  “Where’s Miguel?”

  “No one knows.”

  “I’ll be right there,” I said. I hung up and headed for the door.

  “Everything okay?” Dad asked.

  “No,” I said bluntly, standing at the door. My whole world was falling down around me and I didn’t know where to begin. Find Miguel? Talk to Tyler? Deal with Owens?

  I put my hand against the wall for just a moment, feeling as though my knees might buckle under the weight of everything that was going wrong.

  “I’ll come with you,” Dad said, turning off the TV.

  “Dad, you can’t get involved.”

  “I won’t.”

  I snorted.

  “I know I’ve screwed up and I’m more sorry than I can say. But I just want to be moral support. You don’t have to do this alone.”

  Not doing it alone sounded good, and maybe I was being a coward, and quite possibly making the wrong decision, but my Dad was there. Sturdy and solid in a world gone liquid.

  I nodded and he followed me out the door.

  A few minutes later, the door into the squad room opened with a bang and I stomped into the room, ready to breathe fire over my entire staff, over the entire town, for that matter. “What the hell is going on here?” I barked.

  Owens, who’d clearly disobeyed my orders to stay on dispatch, made no attempt to disguise his smirk.

  “Answers, Owens,” I said, coming to stand right in front of him, a hairbreadth away from his sweaty face. “And I better like them, or it’s your badge.”

  “Ramon Pastor called around 7:00 p.m., saying he’d been attacked by his son. I went to check it out—”

  “Why?” I asked, propping my hands on my hips. “You’re on desk duty. Furthermore, you were on dispatch.”

  Owens managed to look abashed. “Kavanaugh had it covered.”

  I glanced over at Officer Kavanaugh, whose expression said he was mad as hell to be tied up in this.

  “Disobeying orders,” I snapped. “This night is not going to go well for you, Owens. Keep going.”

  “Mr. Pastor had been hit over the head with a bottle but he said he knew where the boy was—”

  “And you took him? You took a drunk, angry father with you to find his son? That’s flagrant breach of protocol.”

  The snide expression slowly melted off his face, replaced by worry. “He knew where the boy was but he wouldn’t tell me unless I took him.”

  “And you’re not a good enough policeman to figure it out?” I demanded. “This whole town knows Miguel’s been spending time with Tyler. You knew where Miguel would be and you took Ramon with you to watch the fireworks, didn’t you? Maybe get Tyler in trouble?”

  Anger seethed in me, my hands shaking with the desire to tear Owens apart.

  “And what’s this about ass
aulting an officer?” I asked.

  Owens shot a dark look at Kavanaugh.

  “Eyes up here!” I boomed, and Owens snapped to like a scared puppy.

  “O’Neill hit me, shoved me off his porch.”

  “And what did you do to Tyler?” I asked. “If I go back into that cell what kind of shape will he be in?”

  Owens’s neck turned red and splotchy. I put my hand over the paperwork he’d been signing and crumpled it up in a ball. I tossed it, right in front of his face, into the garbage.

  Dad cleared his throat behind me and I whirled to face him.

  “You got a problem with how I’m handling this?” I asked.

  It took a moment but he shook his head.

  “Disobeying orders and breach of protocol on top of the letters in your file are enough,” I told Owens.

  “For…” Owens looked over my shoulder at my father. “For what?”

  “You’re fired.” I held out my hand. “Badge and firearm.”

  “I’ll fight you,” Owens said, fumbling as he unhooked his badge and firearm.

  “Please do,” I said, relishing the chance to cut this man loose.

  I took his badge and firearm into my office and locked it in the top drawer of my desk, then stepped back into the squad room.

  “Now,” I said, “do we have any idea where Miguel and Louisa Pastor are?”

  19

  Kavanaugh shook his head.

  “Owens?” The shell-shocked man stared down at the picture of his wife, but I could not be moved by sympathy anymore; the man had made his own bed.

  “I didn’t check the house,” he said. “I made sure Ramon got to the clinic and I brought Tyler here. I have no idea where the kids are.”

  I had a hunch that if they had been at The Manor, they’d still be there. But only one person knew that for sure—Tyler.

  I swung open the door to the holding cells and stepped down the long yellow hallway to cell four, where Tyler sat on a bench, his long legs stretched out in front of him.

  His eye going black.

  Still so handsome it hurt to look at him. Still so loved I couldn’t imagine he’d actually betrayed me.

  “Hello, honey,” he drawled, and I stiffened at the endearment. I didn’t know whether the ground I stood on was safe or was about to fall away under my feet. The kids, Tyler, the gem—nothing was a safe bet.

  “You okay?” I asked, nodding at his face.

  “Fine,” he said. “Owens hits like a girl.”

  “And Ramon?”

  “He came after me and I acted in self-defense.” His lip curled. “No crime in enjoying it.”

  I imagined he did. Putting fists to Ramon was something I’d dreamed of many times.

  “Where are the kids?” I asked.

  “You have to trust me, Juliette,” he whispered, and I couldn’t control the sharp bark of laughter that erupted from my throat.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I asked, the anger and doubt spilling out from behind the walls I’d tried to build around them. “Trust you?”

  He stood, uncurling from his place against the wall, and crossed the cell. His fingers touched mine around the bars and I jerked my hand away.

  “What’s happened?” he asked, ignoring my question. “Why are you—”

  Suddenly, his face changed. His eyes flicked from me to the doorway behind me and ferocity filled his expression.

  I turned to see my father.

  “Everything okay in here?” Jasper asked carefully.

  “How in the world did I know you were behind this, Jasper?” Tyler asked, stepping away from the bars. “You just can’t stand having me around.”

  “Dad has nothing to do with this,” I said.

  “Really?” Tyler asked, shooting me a toxic look. “I’m beaten up and thrown in jail. It seems awfully familiar.” He shook his head. “Your father can’t see past the fact that I’m an O’Neill. And you’re listening to him!”

  “Your father,” I yelled, lunging toward the bars, “was caught at LAX with the Pacific Diamond!”

  His eyes searched mine.

  “It’s true,” I said. “It’s all over the networks.”

  “Goddamn it,” he muttered, and turned away.

  Cold seeped into me, leeched from the air and the cement.

  It was real. Every fear and suspicion it hurt to contemplate was accurate.

  “Where’d the gem come from?” I asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Of course it matters!” I shouted. “Because if that diamond came from The Manor, it means you lied to me, Tyler. You lied to my face after swearing you wouldn’t.”

  “What do you want me to say, Juliette?” he asked, his cheeks bright with color. “I found that damn diamond weeks ago in a box in the attic, and you know what that means?”

  “That you lied!”

  “It means that either my mother put it there…or Margot did.”

  I blinked. I hadn’t thought of that.

  “Margot wouldn’t—” I said, but Tyler interrupted.

  “You don’t know that. Not for sure. But you’re the chief of police, so if I told you about the diamond, you’d have to bring my eighty-year-old grandmother in for questioning.”

  “So you lied to me to protect your family?” It hurt. It hurt because I’d pushed away all the family I had left to protect him. It hurt because I’d started to believe that Tyler and I were a family of sorts.

  “And you,” he said. “I wanted to keep you far away from having to make those decisions, because I knew it would kill you.”

  He was right. It would have killed me. But it was my job.

  “So you made the decision for me,” I said. “Just like ten years ago.”

  Tyler threw up his hands. “Yep. You’re right. I lied to protect you. To protect my family. But now Dad’s going to jail, where he should have been all along.”

  “Should have been all along?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

  Tyler stilled. “He stole the gems in the first place. Let his partner, Joel Woods, take the fall.”

  “Oh, my God,” I breathed, backing up a step. And then another. “Why wasn’t…how did he…”

  “Dad was questioned but released because he wasn’t at the drop-off when the cops arrived. There was no evidence.”

  “But he told you?”

  Tyler nodded.

  “And you failed to tell me that your father was a confessed jewel thief?”

  Eventually, slowly, Tyler nodded again.

  I was breathless, weak with hurt.

  “We said no lies,” I whispered. “And you still didn’t tell me.”

  Tyler just nodded, his arms hanging at his sides as if broken.

  A haze filled my head and I could barely see through it, much less think.

  “Don’t you have anything to say?” I asked, wishing there was something he could say that would make it all right but knowing there wasn’t.

  “I can explain,” he said. “But not here. Not—” He nodded toward Jasper. “You have to trust me, Juliette. Please.”

  This wasn’t sex. This wasn’t a boy in trouble. This was my heart. Again. And he’d managed to find the old wounds and reopen them.

  He’d lied, to my face, over and over again. Before we’d slept together, I could almost understand it. But after…the hurt was so deep, so painful, it made me numb.

  “I can’t,” I said. “You’re the same, Tyler O’Neill. And I was an idiot to think you’d changed.”

  I started to walk away.

  “And you have?” he asked, his voice sharp and tipped in poison. “You said you forgave me, but the second something goes wrong you’re walking away with your dad.”

  I ignored the truth in his words, too hurt to contemplate the things I was doing wrong.

  I was in the parking lot before I realized my father had followed me.

  My feet dragged to a halt but I didn’t turn. I wouldn’t show my father my tears so he could mock me, te
ll me he’d told me so.

  “You’re loving this, aren’t you?” I whispered. “You’re right and I’m wrong. And now it can go back to just being you and me. Alone. Forever.”

  “That’s not what I wanted, Juliette,” he said. His steps came closer and I held up my hand, making it very clear I wasn’t in the mood for a fatherly hug.

  “A man like—”

  “Don’t, Dad.”

  “Listen to me,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder despite my no-touch signal. “A man like that will do anything to protect the people he loves. He’ll lie to them, manipulate them. He’ll walk away from them.”

  I turned disbelieving eyes on him. “You’re defending Tyler O’Neill?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. He dropped his hands, holding them awkwardly at his sides as if he knew they should be full or useful and was surprised that they weren’t.

  For a moment I saw him as a man without. A man without his beloved wife, without the career that defined him, without the love and affection of his daughter.

  Dad was a man alone, and in a night full of heartbreak, it seemed like the last straw. I wished I could feel something other than my bleeding and broken heart. Sympathy, or something, but Tyler’s betrayal stole everything out of me, leaving me raw.

  I had to force myself to forget about Tyler, starting right now. Pull every memory out at the root until he didn’t exist for me.

  “I’m not defending him,” Dad said, “because what he did was wrong. But I’m telling you I understand what he did. And why.”

  It was too much.

  “I’m done being lied to and manipulated by the men in my life,” I snapped. “I deserve better. I deserve to be treated like a woman who can make my own decisions. I don’t need protection—I don’t need someone watching my every move.”

  Jasper nodded, his eyes glittering.

  “I don’t forgive you for what you’ve done,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “I need to go find Miguel,” I said, and my dad nodded as if accepting that I had nothing to give him and somehow that was the saddest thing of all.

  “You did a good job back there,” he said. “With Owens. Letting Tyler cool his heels made sense, too.”

  He lifted his hand in a meager wave and then walked away to his car.