by Nell Stark
For a long moment, there was silence. “But it does,” Sandra said finally.
“Yeah. It does.” Nova’s anger began to ebb, and fatigue rushed in to fill the void. “Somebody in the government must have been tipped off to what my holding company was doing, because now my money is frozen. And I have no legal recourse to get it back.”
“What are you going to do?” Emily asked.
Feeling a headache coming on, Nova rubbed her temples. “I don’t know. I put a call in to Royal Flush. They sponsor me. I’m hoping…” This was the hardest part. “I’m hoping they’ll take care of me.”
She looked around the room, taking in the dubious glances. “You guys, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I put you through this. I—” A telephone ring interrupted her. It wasn’t coming from their landline, but from her laptop. The name flashing on the screen was Evan Hunt, her contact at Royal Flush. “I have to take this. Back in a bit.”
In her haste to leave the room, she almost tripped over a box protruding out into the hall. Thankfully, the balance she’d honed for years on the surfboard came to her rescue. As soon as her feet were back under her, she accepted the call.
The screen resolved into a slightly pixilated image of a dark-haired man in a turquoise jacket, seated behind a desk. Colorful posters advertising several online tournaments, all sponsored by Royal Flush, hung behind him. Nova had only met Evan once, at an event in London the year before, but he hailed her like an old friend.
“Nova, baby, how you doing?”
She turned into the room she was currently sharing with Emily. Its bare walls mocked her. “Honestly, Evan? Not that great.”
“Understandable, understandable.”
“Do you have any idea how this happened?”
Evan’s used car salesman’s smile faltered. “Well, our best guess is that your transaction got the feds’ attention.”
Nova dropped into the worn leather chair. “What?” She felt as though she’d taken a blow to the head. “I did this?”
“Oh, they won’t come after you personally. They must have been watching UAS for a while, and your transfer was probably the—”
“Nail in the coffin.” Nova felt like she might be sick. How many people had been affected? How much money had been frozen? Would they ever be able to get it back? What if someone had really needed that money, not just for a house but for their kid’s college tuition or medical bills or—
“Look, don’t beat yourself up. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else.”
“You think it was only a matter of time?”
“I’m sure it was.”
His certainty made her feel slightly better, until she realized he was probably just saying what she wanted to hear. Swallowing hard, Nova decided to lay all her cards on the table. Bluffing had never been her strong suit. She’d never told a convincing lie in her life, and now wasn’t the time to start.
“I’m going to be honest with you. Without my online bankroll, I don’t have a lot of options at this point.”
“Nova, Nova, Nova.” He clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Would we leave you out in the lurch? You’re the champ! You’re our girl.”
His voice sounded as slick as his hair looked. “I am?”
“Of course!” Evan leaned closer to the camera. “I spoke with David Sterling this afternoon, and here’s what we’re prepared to do. The World Series of Poker starts in just over a month. We’ll fly you out to Vegas and put up the ten thou buy-in for the main event.”
Nova frowned. Free travel and a free spot in the most popular poker event in the world? That sounded good. Too good. Free lunches were as mythical as unicorns—especially in the gambling world.
“What’s the catch?”
“Catch? There’s no catch, baby—just a deal. If you win a bracelet, we’ll get you set up with a brand-new contract. If you don’t, we’ll part ways amicably.”
“Wait a minute.” Nova blinked hard, trying to make sense of the words rattling around in her head. “You’re saying that if I win the main event, Royal Flush will continue to sponsor me, but if I don’t, you’ll cut me loose?”
“You got it.”
“Evan, I’ve never played a hand of live poker in my life. In my life! And now you want me to win the event at the biggest poker tournament on earth?”
He raised his hands in a gesture that was probably supposed to be placating. “Listen to me. You’re one of the best online players in the world, but you’re still a new kid on the block, without a lot of international cachet. The online game is dead in America—at least for the moment. So if you want to keep your career alive, either you move overseas, or you learn to win live hands.”
Nova leaned back in her chair. Online and live poker played by the same rules, but otherwise, they were night and day. She had tried to watch the World Series of Poker on television a few times but always ended up switching the channel. Online poker was fast, furious, and anonymous. Live poker seemed so ponderous and messy by comparison. Besides, she was a numbers person. Not a people person. And the odds of this plan working were extremely slim.
“Deal or no deal?” Evan prompted her.
“No deal!” Nova pointed her index finger at the camera. “The professional live poker players are always talking about how crazy the main event is. Now that it’s gotten so huge, it’s practically a crapshoot. Craps is a game of luck, Evan. I don’t play games of luck. I play poker. I’m not staking my entire future on a roll of the dice.”
“Hey, you can leave the deal on the table if you want. No sweat. We’ll find another player to stake. As you said, there are plenty of ’em out there.”
His cavalier dismissal inspired a surge of adrenaline that would’ve been pleasant in any other context. Desperation warred with fear as her mind raced, quickly cataloguing and then discarding possibilities.
Suddenly, a solution materialized. “Counter offer!” she exclaimed, more loudly than she’d meant to. “You do what you said you’d do. But you also stake me in two other events. If I win the bracelet at any one of them, Royal Flush continues to sponsor me.”
Evan scratched at his chin, appearing to mull this over. “No deal,” he said finally. “Some of those games have steep buy-ins. But if you want to use your own money to enter another event, then sure. Win one bracelet, any bracelet, and you’re golden.” He flashed a sharp, white smile. “Literally.”
Nova rubbed her sweaty palms on her jeans, glad he couldn’t see the movement. How was she supposed to hide her nerves while betting millions at a live table, when she could barely hold herself together right now? But if she didn’t accept his terms, the only other option was finding a job to pay the rent. That, or going back to school.
“Hell no,” she muttered under her breath. And then she looked into the camera and straightened her spine. “Okay. Done.”
“Excellent. You’re coming to Vegas, baby!” He flashed her the thumbs-up. “I’ll fax over some paperwork and then cut you a check. One of the hosts at Valhalla owes me a favor. I’ll ask her to show you the ropes once you’re there.”
“Great.” Nova tried to sound enthusiastic, but she wasn’t sure she pulled it off.
“Oh, and one more thing.” He waggled a finger at her in clear admonishment. “Quit talking to yourself. That’s a surefire giveaway at the tables.”
The screen went blank. In an effort to ease her cramped shoulders, Nova tilted her head back to stare at the ceiling. The room seemed smaller than it had this morning, even though she knew that was just her mind playing tricks. Instead of freaking out, she had to focus—to try to process what had just happened.
She was going to spend the summer in Las Vegas playing poker. Live poker. With her entire livelihood on the line.
Chapter Two
“He’s dead?” James’s voice bounced between the cubicle walls and the low ceiling to fill the office.
Vesper stopped typing in mid-sentence. There wasn’t much capable of torpedoing her concentratio
n—certainly not James, whose bombastic outbursts were as reliable as splitting aces in blackjack. Under ordinary circumstances, she would have ignored him. But two minutes ago, he’d been in the middle of a conversation with his secretary about Davis Beauregard’s compensation package for his upcoming trip. Beauregard was Valhalla Resort and Casino’s top spender, and James never let any of them forget it. His entire career had been built on the man’s coattails.
Lenny poked his head around the wall of her cube. His eyes were wide. “Holy shit. Has the Killer Whale gone belly-up?”
“Sounds like it,” she whispered. The office was suddenly as quiet as a graveyard.
A Texas oil tycoon, Beauregard had earned his nickname over a decade ago by placing gargantuan bets at the craps table. He habitually wagered hundreds of thousands of dollars on a single roll of the dice. Anyone who gambled even half as much was known as a “whale,” but Beauregard was the fiercest of them all. And now, if James’s sympathetic stuttering into the receiver was any indication, he was gone.
Vesper stared at her screen without truly seeing it. She didn’t like James, but in that moment, she felt sorry for him. The life of a casino host was almost as uncertain as the luck of the gamblers they served. At least he had plenty of other fish in the sea. She thought of her own small client base and felt a twist of anxiety.
“Did Beauregard seriously bite it?” Lenny asked loudly. James must have hung up the phone. She rose from her chair and walked toward his cube, where the entire office was quickly assembling. From her vantage point, all she could see was the shiny crown of his bowed head.
“Heart attack. Last night.” He raised one fist and brought it down on the desk with a dull thud. “Motherfucker!”
Vesper turned away. By now, there wasn’t so much as a glimmer of naïveté left in her heart, but that didn’t mean she had to like his attitude. Worse, everyone around him was commiserating. “Rough luck,” she heard one man say. “I’m so sorry,” said another, as though James were the one who had been closest to the dead man.
For a long moment, there was silence. Vesper had just opened her calendar to double-check that everything was in order for the Hamiltons’ visit, when he spoke again.
“Maureen, send something tasteful and expensive to the son. Eugene.”
“Of course. And to the widow as well?”
“Why not?” James said after a pause. “But don’t go overboard. She never showed an ounce of interest in anything but jewelry shopping.”
He was already pursuing the bereaved family, Vesper realized. They were the ones with the money now, and he was going on a full-court press to ensure they gambled it at Valhalla. In fact, this same conversation was probably happening in casino offices up and down the Strip. Davis Beauregard had been loyal to Valhalla for two decades, but his heir was up for grabs. Eugene was about to be hunted as fiercely as Moby Dick.
James seemed to have written off the widow, though. Priscilla. Vesper had seen her frequently over the years—a plump woman with neatly coiffed white hair who always wore large earrings, bright colors, and gem-encrusted necklaces. She concentrated on the image and tried to remember whether she had ever seen Priscilla trying her own hand at a table or slot machine, but she couldn’t recall. As she stared blankly at the bouncing roulette ball that was her screen saver, an idea began to coalesce. What if she let the boys fight over Eugene and set her own sights on Priscilla?
She had a few spare minutes, and there was no sense in wasting them. After saying a quick good-bye to Lenny, Vesper hurried down to the mall level of the casino. First, she stopped at the spa and ordered a basket of their high-end skin treatment products to be shipped immediately. Then, she went to the jewelry store and chose a Cartier brooch in the shape of a starfish, made with eighteen-karat gold. When the saleswoman told her that she couldn’t comp it, Vesper ignored the shrill voices in her head—one of whom sounded like her mother—insisting that she walk away. Instead, she paid the three thousand dollars with her own credit card. Her palms broke out in a sweat as she signed the receipt, but she forced her hand to remain steady. This was a gamble, and as a rule, Vesper avoided rolls of the dice. Sacrificing a chunk of her savings account was completely counterintuitive, but neither could she afford to pass up this kind of career opportunity. If she managed to nab Priscilla Beauregard, she would call it a worthy investment.
A hot rush of shame washed through her at the mercenary thought. Was she really no better than James? With a shake of her head, she signed her name to the receipt and glanced at her phone. This wasn’t the time to engage in self-recrimination. The Hamiltons’ plane would land in just a few minutes.
When she stepped out of Valhalla’s employee entrance, the cool desert breeze made her pull her shawl more tightly across her shoulders. The temperature had peaked in the high eighties today, but with the onset of darkness, the heat had fled. She walked quickly toward the curb, where a long row of black limousines waited. Bypassing the super-stretch varieties, she approached a slightly more modest car sporting the vanity plate UR XS. After a quick rap on the window, she ducked into the back.
“Good evening, Ms. Blake.” Jeremy turned to acknowledge her across the lowered privacy partition, his sparkling eyes belying the formality of the greeting. His curly black hair was neatly trimmed, and his baby face was partially masked by a goatee. A hint of aftershave lingered in the air—spicy, but not too strong. His sports coat was neatly pressed, and the collar of his shirt was stiff with starch.
“Hello, Jeremy.”
“Carl and I placed a bet on whether TJ’s bringing a girlfriend. Want in?”
Vesper laughed. “Do I ever want in?”
He smiled at her in the mirror. “Someday you will. Carl and I have a bet riding on that, too.”
“Of course you do.” Vesper knew she was in the minority of casino employees who didn’t partake of the gambling culture they peddled to others. Enticing others to take risks was her job. Avoiding them herself was her life.
“Which side did you take?” she asked, wondering what TJ would say if he knew his relationship status had inspired Valhalla’s employees to wager their hard-earned money.
“He won’t bring anyone here,” Jeremy said confidently. “He’s been nursing a crush on you for years.”
“Which he’ll outgrow soon enough, if he hasn’t already.” Vesper suspected her own love life was a bigger topic of conversation than their clients’. She didn’t particularly want to think about that.
“We’ll see in a few minutes.”
After that brief exchange, Jeremy focused on driving. That was part of what made him so good at his job—he read people well and adapted to what they wanted. They had met several years ago in a Psychology of Gambling course at UNLV, where they’d been assigned to the same peer group for final projects. Jeremy had been on crutches as he struggled to rehab a knee injury and return to the basketball team. Vesper was employed as a floorman at Valhalla and trying to find a way to move up in the ranks. They had worked well together, taking the bulk of the project from their lackadaisical group members and receiving the highest grades in the class.
The following February during Chinese New Year, Valhalla’s fleet of cars had been overbooked. As a newly promoted host, Vesper suddenly found herself unable to deliver the free ride from the airport that she had promised to her middle roller. Desperate, she had reached out to Jeremy. When he proved willing, she sent him to the airport in a rented car. On the ride back to Valhalla, the client had mentioned his fondness for March Madness and his disappointment at not having been able to score tickets to the UNLV game that weekend. Jeremy had promptly called a former teammate and secured him a third-row seat.
That’s when Vesper had realized that she and Jeremy were truly cut from the same mold. She’d managed to convince the Valhalla fleet supervisor to hire him, and now he was her go-to guy. In any other car, she would’ve felt obliged to double-check that champagne was chilling in the fridge. Here, she could relax. As much
as she ever did, at least.
As she watched the glittering rows of light gradually give way to the dark desert, a large, flashing billboard caught her eye. The logo of the World Series of Poker—three black and white chips with red lettering—gleamed against a green background presumably intended to resemble felt. The annual tournament would begin in a few weeks, and if Valhalla’s room reservations were any kind of indicator, it would be a record-breaking year.
How fitting, to have seen that particular advertisement on her way to pick up the Hamiltons. The WSOP felt like a kind of anniversary to her. Three years ago, she’d been mired in the drudgery of life as a floorman—creating dealer schedules, overseeing the maintenance of the casino equipment, and keeping a cautious eye on clients who seemed too lucky. She had taken care to do her job well, even as she watched the hosts with a mixture of jealousy and admiration. They hobnobbed with the high rollers—not only on the floor, but also at concerts, fights, and exclusive parties. Sometimes, they were invited out to a client’s property, or to join him on vacation. But Vesper didn’t care about the perks nearly as much as she cared about the power. Power and influence clung to casino hosts like their tailored suits.
She had done what she could to get ahead—to show her bosses that she had what it took to sit at the big boys’ table. She went above and beyond her banal duties, becoming friendly with the middle rollers and offering them as many comps as she could scrape together from the hosts’ leftovers. Her shift supervisor had alternately praised her ingenuity or cursed her aggression, but he never showed her a pink slip. She was good. He knew it, and she knew it. But she hadn’t been able to slip so much as a toe through the door until the morning three years ago when James had suckered her into babysitting…
As she stooped to inspect the contents of a box on one of the lower shelves, Vesper’s lower back twinged, reminding her that she’d been on her feet for most of the night. Blinking hard, she forced herself to focus. Checking inventory was the most monotonous part of her shift, and after an exceptionally busy night, she was having trouble staying focused. Fortunately, as soon as she finished this, she could retreat to her apartment on the northwest side of the city. It was small, but her balcony had an oblique view of Mount Charleston. After a long soak in a hot bath, maybe she would sit outside with a book and a glass of wine. Or better yet—retreat to her bed and sleep away the afternoon beneath her crisp, white sheets. Perfect.
