Texas Hold 'Em

by Christie Craig

  His cell rang. He didn’t recognize the number. Leah?

  “Hello?”

  “Austin?” She said his name. She had one of those lyrical voices.

  “Leah?”

  “Yeah. What happened?”

  He’d worked on his story. “I saw your door open, I knocked and called your name, and this guy, I’m guessing he was there to rob your place, came at me. I tried to stop him, but he got away.”

  “My cats?” Her voice sounded strained. “Are they okay?”

  He looked at the bedroom door, which he’d shut when he noticed all four of them were in there. “They’re fine.”

  “What did the guy look like?” she asked.

  “I didn’t get a good look at him.” He spouted out a lie. “It happened so fast.”

  “Was he Hispanic?” she asked.

  No, but were you expecting him to be? Did she think her half brother had done this? While the guy hadn’t been DeLuna, he could still be behind it. But why?

  “He could have been. I’m not sure.”

  “How big was he?” she asked. “Smaller than you? Thin?”

  Austin weighed her words. Smaller, thinner, and Hispanic. A perfect description of DeLuna.

  “Bigger than me,” he said, thinking about having to explain how he got a black eye. “I didn’t call the police, I thought you…”

  “No,” she said quickly.

  He’d been prepared to try to talk her out of calling the police. Nothing was taken. No harm done. The cops probably wouldn’t even come out. His black eye was going to be the only thing hard to make light of.

  “Did he take anything?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then there’s no reason to call the cops.”

  “I guess not.” He was getting what he wanted, but it was too easy.

  “Did he break in my door?” she asked.

  “No. He must have picked the lock.” Or I forgot to lock it after I picked it. “You should get a new lock. The locks on these apartment doors are a joke.”

  “Yeah.” She paused. “Is the place ransacked?”

  He walked out of the bathroom, stepped over the broken lamp, and headed into the kitchen, where the bozo had emptied out the drawers. If the guy hadn’t been robbing the place, what had he been looking for? “A little.”

  “Okay, I’m going to see if they can do without me the rest of the afternoon at the clinic and I’ll head that way.”

  “You sure you don’t want to call the police?” If she was, he could replace the bugs.

  “Positive.”

  “Okay.” His suspicions grew. “I’ll see you when you get here.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “No thanks needed.” He continued to look at the contents spilled out of the kitchen drawer. The line had gone silent when he realized something was missing. Squatting down, he rummaged through the items. Her little black book wasn’t there. And it had been in the drawer.

  Why would someone want that?

  The same reason he’d looked at it. To find someone, but who? Was someone else looking for DeLuna?

  Roberto was finishing up for the day when his cell rang. Hoping it was Brad, he snatched his phone from his jeans. He’d tried to call him back but hadn’t gotten an answer. The fact that he cared about the big bruiser wasn’t good. Caring about anyone associated with DeLuna could be detrimental to his cause. Caring about anyone could be detrimental. When you cared about someone and they were yanked out of your life, it just hurt too damn much.

  “Hello?” he answered.

  No one said a word. “Hello?” he repeated.

  The click of the call being disconnected sounded ominous. Was Brad in trouble? Roberto cut his phone off and then checked the number.

  It wasn’t the same number as before. Had Brad ditched one cell and gotten another? He hit redial and listened to the phone ring. And ring. It went to voice mail.

  “I’m sorry, the person at this number is not available. At the beep leave a message.”

  He hung up.

  “Hey, Rivera,” someone called out.

  It was Patrick, another of Cruz’s main guys.

  “Yeah?”

  “Cruz called to make sure you dropped by the office when you leave.”

  “Got it,” Roberto said. But he didn’t get it. And he liked it even less. Something bad was about to happen. He felt it in his bones.

  “I just got off the phone with Nance,” Austin said. “He’s agreed to drive up here and bring the gun back. I was hoping you could get Tony or Rick to run a check for us.”

  “What gun?” Dallas’s voice bellowed from the phone.

  “The guy had a gun.” As soon as Austin had spoken to Leah, he replaced the bugs and called Nance, the nineteen-year-old college kid who worked at Dallas’s wife’s art gallery and who did odd jobs for them. Then he’d called Dallas and Tyler to fill them in.

  “You didn’t say anything about a gun,” Dallas snapped. “Were shots fired?”

  “It was unloaded.” Austin glanced at his watch. Leah could be walking through the door any minute.

  “What kind of criminal carries an unloaded gun?” Dallas asked.

  “A stupid one.” Austin answered. And a big one. He touched the knot on his head.

  “Wait a minute.” Tyler spoke up, letting Austin know they were on speaker again. “Do you think this guy’s connected to DeLuna?”

  “I don’t know,” Austin said. “That’s what I’m hoping to find out. I’m hoping we’ve got some prints. But my gut says he’s involved.”

  “Why?” Tyler asked.

  “Because I’m pretty sure he took one thing.” And Leah’s not wanting to call the police was suspicious as hell. For some reason he hadn’t told them about that.

  “What?”

  “Her little black address book.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Tyler said.

  “I know,” Austin said.

  Tyler spoke up. “I started snooping around Roberto’s past. I might have stumbled onto something.”

  “What?” Austin asked.

  “I don’t want to say until I make sure I’m right.”

  “Just spill it,” Austin said.

  “Not until I know for sure,” Tyler said.

  “He won’t tell me, either,” Dallas said.

  Austin heard the ding of the elevator opening. “Gotta go. But Tyler, I want to pick your brain about Leah Reece tonight.”

  “What?” Tyler asked. “You didn’t do your research before you left.”

  “Don’t make me kiss your ass. Because then I’ll want to kick your ass.” Austin clenched his fist and realized his eye wasn’t the only thing swollen. Footsteps echoed outside the front door. “Later.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  LEAH STOPPED AT Austin’s door and considered knocking, then decided to check on her cats first. Besides, she needed a few minutes to confirm she was doing the right thing by not calling the cops. Oh, she knew the right thing, as in the good-citizen thing, would be to report it. But she’d tried that when Snowball had been killed. And what had the cops done?

  Not a damn thing.

  They’d patted her on her shoulder and told her they needed proof. She’d asked them how seeing the scumbag leave the box wasn’t proof, but they’d informed her that investigating a dead cat wasn’t what the city’s taxpayers intended them to do with their money. As if their sitting at the donut shop down the street, stuffing their faces with jelly-filled donuts, was better. She knew they were jelly-filled because the big guy wore the drippings on his shirt.

  In their defense, if she’d told them why the cat had been killed—in retaliation for her storming into her half brother’s drug house, slamming a bag of weed on the table, and putting him in his place in front of his boys—they might have gotten involved. Involved by way of arresting Luis, or her, for that matter.

  Decision made. Not calling the police was the right thing to do—at least for now
. While she hated admitting it, her reasons were only partly due to wanting to confirm Luis wasn’t somehow involved. God help him, and her, if he’d let Rafael pull him into some illegal shenanigans. But her main reason for not calling the cops was Rafael’s threat. Even years later, it stayed with her. Talk to the police again, Sister, and the body you’ll be finding on your front step will be your little brother. She still didn’t know how he’d found out she called the police when she’d found Snowball. Did he have cops working for him, or was he watching her place? Either way, it was a risk she didn’t want to take.

  But what did this all mean? Was Luis associating with DeLuna and Cruz again? She loved her little brother with all her heart, but if he was up to that again, she was going to kick his ass all the way to tomorrow. She hadn’t sacrificed all she had for him to go do something enormously stupid. But wasn’t Luis smarter than that now?

  Oh, hell, she didn’t know. And she wouldn’t because Luis wasn’t calling her back.

  Moaning, she checked her phone again to see if he’d returned one of the fifteen calls. Nope.

  Okay, that did it. Even if he wasn’t doing something with Rafael, she was kicking Luis’s ass for not returning her calls.

  She went to unlock her door but discovered it wasn’t even all the way shut. Her emotions went from fury to fear in a nanosecond. Butterflies flapped around her stomach. She reached into her purse for her small can of mace. If Rafael or one of his men had come back…

  She hesitated and looked back at the neighbor’s door, but determined not to let some thug make her afraid to walk into her own apartment, she pushed open her door.

  Silence filled the apartment. Telling herself she was overdramatizing this, she stepped inside. Looking around, she walked straight to the broken lamp on the floor. She squatted down to pick it up when footsteps came from her kitchen. She sprang up. Her mace and her heart fell at the same time.

  A scream rose in her throat, but she managed to stop it when she recognized her neighbor.

  “Sorry, I was picking up a few things for you,” Austin said.

  She put her hand on her chest. “I didn’t know you were still here.”

  “Sorry. I thought I told you I was here.” He shrugged. “And considering what happened, I assumed you’d want someone here when you came home.”

  She had wanted that. Or would have if she’d thought it was an option. She wasn’t used to someone worrying about her.

  Right then her thoughts took a total U-turn when she noticed his face. “Oh, my God. Did he do that?”

  “He?” he asked, his one good eye tightening a bit. “Do you know who did this?”

  “I mean ‘he’ as in the person who broke in.”

  Austin nodded. “Yeah, he did this, but I got in a few punches, too,” he said as if the question dinged his male ego.

  “I’m sorry. I asked about my cats and I never considered that you’d been hurt. I… Maybe we should call the police. Or get you to the hospital.” The thought of calling the police gripped her gut, but could she allow someone else to be hurt? She moved in and looked at his bruised face.

  “Not for this.” He pointed to his eye. “Please, when I play basketball, I walk away looking worse than this.”

  “I don’t know.” She noticed his hand was swollen. She caught it. “Does it hurt to move?”

  “No.” He wiggled his fingers.

  Still holding his hand, she frowned at the puffiness and purple color already circling his entire eye. “That looks painful.” Their gazes met and held. “Seriously, I’m so sorry.”

  He frowned. “You know you have a habit of apologizing too much.”

  She recalled her aunt telling her the same thing. Everything isn’t your fault, Leah. Sometimes the wind just blows shit your way and it ain’t nobody’s fault. So stop taking the weight of the world on your shoulders, girl.

  This was different. This wasn’t her blaming herself for her mom’s death or their father’s abandoning them. “You got this trying to protect me… well, my… apartment.”

  “True, but I’m fine.” He slowly pulled his hand away. Then he raked the injured fingers through his blond hair.

  She tossed her purse on the small breakfast table. “Sit down and let me get some ice.” She pulled out a chair. “Sit down.” When he didn’t move, she snapped, “Sit.”

  “You’re being pushy again,” he muttered, reminding her of their conversation last night.

  “Only because you took on my role of being difficult,” she answered.

  “So you admit you’re difficult?” His left eye crinkled with a smile.

  This was no time to restart the flirting. Pointing to the chair, she didn’t move until he dropped into it. Hurrying into the kitchen, she stepped over the mess on the floor. “Tell me what happened?” She glanced over her shoulder.

  “I told you.” He lifted his gaze from the clutter she’d just stepped over. “I saw the door open and thought it was strange. So I stuck my head in and called your name. A guy came running out of the hall. We fought.”

  Pulling out a bag of frozen peas and a bag of corn from the freezer, she suddenly noticed the absence of her furry pets. Her heart clutched. “My cats? Where are they?”

  “In the bedroom,” he said. “I closed the door to keep them contained.”

  She exhaled the growing sense of panic and hurried back to stand in front of him.

  Only the sight of his painful-looking eye allowed her to ignore her need to see that her cats were all unharmed. Then she spotted a dark red stream of blood oozing down his temple.

  “You’re bleeding.” She dropped the frozen veggies in his lap and grabbed her phone out of her purse. “I gotta call the police.”

  In no hurry to see Cruz, Roberto had gone to his apartment and taken a shower. Now about a block from the office, he pulled over at a park entrance and tried to think. The sound of innocent laughter bounced around the trees. His gaze involuntarily went to a mother chasing her little boy around the playground.

  Closing his eyes, he tried to calm the swell of doom growing inside him. He wanted to chat with Brad before he saw Cruz. If the shit was about to hit the fan, he needed to know exactly what kind of shit was coming.

  But Brad wasn’t answering. Not his regular phone or the number he’d called him on after lunch. What happened? Had Brad got himself caught up in something and was behind bars? Or worse, dead?

  Had Cruz had his own brother-in-law killed? Roberto wouldn’t be surprised.

  Pulling up his recent calls, he studied the number of the hang-up he’d gotten earlier.

  He still didn’t recognize it.

  It could’ve been a wrong number. A butt call. Somebody trying to sell him funeral plots. Hell, if so, he ought to get back with them; he might be needing one.

  He hit redial. It rang.

  “Hello?” a feminine voice hesitantly answered.

  Who the hell was this? Had to be a wrong number.

  “Hello?” she repeated.

  “Yes…” He thought he recognized the voice. “Uh, someone from this number called me earlier.”

  “Yeah, that was me. It’s about Spooky.”

  Spooky? “About who?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, you don’t know his name.”

  “Know whose name?” Was this some kind of prank call?

  “The cat you brought in.”

  “Sara?” He said her name. He hadn’t given her his number. Then he remembered the first time he’d gone in, he’d filled out paperwork hoping Leah Reece might call him.

  “Yeah, but I’m calling about the cat. Not… anything else.”

  “Okay,” he said, not sure what else to say.

  A long pause hung in the air and he felt the need to fill it.

  “What’s up with the cat?” he asked, feeling guilty for not giving her… closure. For not calling her back after their lunch date and just tossing out some stupid excuse why he wasn’t interested in seeing her again. Right then he knew the reason he h
adn’t, because he had been interested.

  That felt so wrong.

  “We think we’ve found a home for him, and before we place animals that were brought in by someone, we check to make sure they haven’t… changed their minds.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Yeah, you want the cat?”

  “No, I meant, yeah I get why you called. But I can’t take the cat. I work construction and I’m sometimes out of town.”

  “Okay,” she said. “That’s all I wanted. Thanks for—”

  “Sara?” He interrupted her hasty good-bye.

  “Yes?”

  “That’s why…”

  “Why what?” she asked.

  “Why I didn’t call you,” he said. “I had a job come up and I had to go.”

  “Right,” she said, and he realized his lie sounded as false as hers in the beginning. “Well, have a good… life.” The last word came out snippy.

  “How’s Brian?” he blurted out before he could stop himself.

  His question drew silence.

  “Sara?”

  “You… remembered my son’s name.” Had that made her nervous?

  “Yeah.” Actually it surprised him that he remembered, but hearing her voice brought a lot of their conversation back. Brought back the way her eyes had lit up with love when she’d talked about her son. “You talked about him a lot at lunch that day.”

  “That’s because he’s important to me,” she snapped.

  “Whoa, I didn’t mean that in a bad way. I was just… making conversation.”

  “That’s the reason you didn’t call me again, isn’t it?” she asked. “Well, let me tell you—”

  “No. I thought it was great that you cared so much for your son.”

  “But he’s extra baggage that you don’t want to deal with, right?”

  “I already said that wasn’t it.” Her accusation stung.

  “Oh, right. You suddenly had to go out of town and couldn’t find the time to call.” She sighed. “Hey… forget I even said anything. It doesn’t matter. Sorry I bothered you. We’ll place Spooky in a good home. Bye!”

  She hung up. “Damn it!” Without thinking, he hit redial.

  “What?” she answered.