Seven-Card Stud

by Ava Drake

  A waitress came, and they ordered drinks. Then Gun surprised him by ordering two surf plates. The waitress smiled, obviously flirting with Gun, and retreated.

  “What did you just order for us?” Collin asked.

  “Surfers work up a big appetite and need to carb and protein load. The local version involves steak and potatoes. You burned a crap-ton of calories staying warm in that cold water, plus swimming around, and you need to recharge.”

  The surf plate turned out to be a mountain of mashed potatoes topped by a boneless ribeye steak, rare, topped by three fried eggs, the whole thing drenched in hollandaise sauce.

  “There must be two thousand calories on this plate!” Collin exclaimed.

  “Oh yeah. Easy.”

  He shook his head, pushed aside the eggs and as much of the sauce as he could, and carved neatly into the steak. He polished off the meat and shocked himself by finishing most of the potatoes. And then the eggs. Good call on the huge meal. His body had been craving the energy.

  “So. What brings you to the El Rocca?” he asked Gun. “Are you a dealer or a player?”

  “Player. You?”

  “Same.”

  “So I guess we’ll be, like, mortal enemies.”

  “Assuming we end up playing at the same table at some point. And odds of that are—”

  Gun interrupted, “Approximately fifty to one in the first round, say a diminishing player base of twelve per round, ten or so rounds of play summed—”

  Collin interrupted back, “I get the idea.” That flash from Gun of the math genius poker player he would expect at a tournament like this one was more intimidating than he cared to admit. Note to self: don’t underestimate the competition, even if they come off like brain-dead surfer bums.

  “Bitchin’ good times.”

  And the surfer bum was back.

  “You get a load of the monster yacht that pulled into the marina overnight?” Gun asked around a mouthful of eggs, potatoes, and sauce.

  “Sorry, no. I was busy watching you nearly get killed and then trying to find your body.”

  “It’s a beast. Has to be six hundred feet long.”

  “That’s not a yacht. That’s practically a cruise ship.”

  “No shit, Sherlock. And nobody seems to own it.”

  Collin frowned. “How do you know that?”

  Gun shrugged. “While you were cooking in my shower, I did some online research. The Erebus is not registered anywhere I can find. And I’m a great researcher.”

  Huh. Collin was a professional intelligence analyst. He would stack his researching skills up against this guy’s anytime. When he got back to his room, he’d have to look up the yacht himself. And if he couldn’t find it, the entire Wild Cards, Inc. staff bloody well could. “Erebus? That’s its name?” Collin responded aloud. “As in the Greek god of darkness?”

  “Yuppers.”

  Huh. That was certainly a creepy mythological reference to choose for a boat name. “Maybe it’s registered under some other name but displays the name Erebus to protect its owner.”

  “Yeah, but who needs that much identity protection? Especially because it’s bad luck to rename a seagoing vessel.”

  “Maybe a player in the tournament?” Collin guessed aloud. Privately he hoped it was the director of the tournament making a grand entrance. Maybe his or her arrival would signal the beginning of some answers about who was behind this whole tournament and why it was being run so secretly.

  Gun shrugged.

  “Have you heard anything about the rules for the tournament?”

  Another shrug from Gun. “They don’t really matter, do they? The cards will be dealt, the bets will get made. Shit’ll happen.”

  “Are you mainly a Hold’em player?” He’d read that it was a variant of the older poker standard, seven-card stud, but modified to make play faster and betting more interesting.

  “I prefer straight poker. Made my living playing seven-card stud until—” Oliver broke off.

  Until what? Collin sensed a mystery. “Why the shift to Texas Hold’em?”

  “It got popular a few years back, and all the big casinos started running nothing but Hold ’em tournaments. From a bettor’s stand point, the better statistician you are, the more you win. Fewer cards dealt means less luck of the draw in play. So professionals prefer Hold’em to the stud poker games—” He broke off again. “Christ, I’m rambling. Of course you know that.”

  Collin circled back to the question that had brought him here. “Aren’t you the slightest bit curious about all of the mystery around this tournament?”

  Gun’s expression went guarded. Closed. Whoops. He’d pushed too hard. Collin backed off, saying, “I’m just antsy to get going. I don’t like to wait while everyone sits around sizing up the competition.”

  “I hear ya, bro. That’s why I swim. I surf when I can. I’m told there are decent waves by Tarifa, but I haven’t had a chance to check them out yet. Surf report yesterday over there was for glass and bad fetch.”

  “What, pray tell, are those?”

  “Glass as in glassy calm water, and bad fetch means the wind’s blowing onshore. An onshore breeze knocks down the waves and turns them into unsurfable mush.”

  “Ah.”

  “You’ve never seen Endless Summer, have you?”

  “The movie?” Collin frowned.

  “Classic surfing flick. Legit stuff. Shows why surfing rocks. You should give it a look.”

  He couldn’t tell if Gun meant the movie or surfing, but either way, he’d skip the look.

  A group of men came into the bar talking loudly in some Slavic-sounding tongue.

  Gun murmured, “The mob contingent.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Way I hear it, they’re Albanians. Staked a couple of players to the tournament.”

  Collin leaned in close enough to Gun to smell the salt in the guy’s hair and muttered, “There’s such a thing as an Albanian mob?”

  “Fucking A. Their players will band together against everyone else. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’ and all that crap. After the outsiders are taken down, then they’ll turn on each other. They’ll go at it like rabid dogs and tear each other apart in the end.”

  “Lovely,” Collin replied.

  “Watch out for them. If a couple of them are playing together, they’ll cheat the table.”

  “How?” he asked in surprise.

  “They’ll signal cards back and forth, and they’ll gang bet against a single player to squeeze him or her dry.”

  “Aren’t tournament referees supposed to prohibit that kind of behavior?”

  Gun gave him a strange look, like that had been a deeply amateur question to ask. “Of course they’re supposed to. Doesn’t mean the tournament referees always see it or that they choose to take action once they spot it. The house gets the same cut of the pot no matter who it goes to.”

  “What’s the house cut in this tournament?” Collin asked.

  “One hundred percent, the way I hear it. Rumor is we’re not playing for the stake money.”

  “What, then?”

  “No clue.”

  “Doesn’t that worry you at least a little?”

  Gun grinned. “Hey, I just came to play some cards.” But his eyelids flickered a little as he said the words. This surfer dude was hiding something. He knew more about this weird tournament that he wasn’t sharing. Not that Collin had any business casting the first stone over secrecy. He wasn’t about to go around announcing that he was the British government plant at this event.

  As he pushed the last of the mashed potatoes around his plate, Collin considered the revelation that there was no monetary prize at the end of this event. Who in their right mind tossed away a million bucks just to play some cards? Gun was surely in it to win, or he wouldn’t be here. Behind that casual façade had to lie an intense but well-concealed competitor. Why else would he be here pitting himself against the most skilled, ruthless card sharks on
earth?

  “Do you know any of the other players?” Collin asked.

  “Some of these pros were around when I used to play.”

  “Used to?”

  “I’ve been out of circulation for a while. Thought I might stick my toe back in.”

  Collin was not a highly effective intelligence analyst for nothing. A person did not stick their toe back in by ponying up a million bucks to play in an illegal cutthroat poker tournament. Gun’s story was not adding up. Collin glanced around the restaurant. Who else’s story here was a lie?

  Was anybody here who they appeared to be?

  Chapter Three

  GUN looked around the ballroom, crowded with semicircular poker tables overseen by silent men openly carrying sidearms. It was loud and already smelled of sweat and testosterone, and they hadn’t even started dealing cards out of the shoes—the wooden racks that held up decks of preshuffled cards.

  Hot women floated around the room, leaning down far enough in their skimpy dresses to flash tits out one end and ass out the other end. Those were undoubtedly some of the eye candy brought in especially for the pleasure of the players. He wasn’t entirely opposed to pussy, particularly if it was tight and hot. But he preferred boys. Or more accurately, men. And the more unattainable they were, the more he enjoyed their fall into his bed.

  Speaking of unattainable, he didn’t see Collin. But the Brit had to be here somewhere. Poor guy was going to get chewed up and spit out by this bunch. He obviously wasn’t skilled enough to hang with the big boys once this tournament really got rolling.

  Hell, he didn’t know if he was skilled enough anymore. It had been years since he’d run the complicated, lightning-fast mental calculations of odds and percentages required to excel at Texas Hold’em.

  The game was simple. Each player was dealt two cards facedown that only they peeked at. Then, one by one, the dealer turned over five more cards. Everyone at the table paired their two cards with the dealer’s five to make the best possible poker hand, winner take all.

  Excitement rippled across his skin as the women sashayed around, placing wire baskets of chips in front of each player. Everyone would start with a stack of chips whose denominations added up to one million dollars. The first thing he’d learned long ago was not to think of the chips as money but only as numbers printed on disks of clay. At the end of the day, poker in any form was just a bunch of mathematical calculations with an element of chance thrown in. And even that chance had its own mathematics if a person was skilled enough at the required calculations.

  He sized up the other players at his table. He knew two of the five from his days as a pro in Las Vegas. They were both competent, if not the most imaginative of players. A third player looked and acted like a rich businessman who probably kicked all his poker buddies’ asses back home, wherever home was, but who was too excited to actually belong here. Players four and five were unknowns. One was a burly Eastern European, maybe Polish, and one a stone-faced Asian who wouldn’t give away a thing with his expression. Trick with guys like that was to watch their hands. And right now, Asia was fiddling with his chips compulsively.

  A male voice boomed over the public address system. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the World’s Ultimate Poker Tournament. The game is Texas Hold’em, no-limit pots, ten thousand to open, minimum raise twenty thousand. We will play ten-hour sessions starting at 4:00 p.m. each day with a one-hour break halfway through. We will take a one-day break every three days until the field is reduced to one hundred players. When you are eliminated from the tournament, you will be expected to pack your bags and leave El Rocca immediately. Transportation to the airport will be provided.”

  All pretty standard.

  The announcer continued, “Once the field has been cut to one hundred players, there will be modifications to the rules, but those will be announced at that time.”

  Interesting. He’d never heard of a tournament that changed things up midcourse. Maybe it was arrogant of him to assume he would be around to find out what those rule changes would be, but at one time he’d been one of the best poker players on earth. Before the burnout set in, and the drugs and sex and bad life decisions.

  Not that he was innately self-destructive. He’d just gotten sick to death of his father continually interfering with his life, pushing him to enter the family business, demanding that he monetize his talent for numbers by making big money and succeeding at everything he did. The man was always nagging him and yanking his chain. Eventually he’d rebelled against all of it.

  Chucking everything and everyone out of his life had been the first and best adult decision he’d ever made for himself. He barely scraped by nowadays, doing odd jobs, fixing peoples’ computers, and tutoring a few rich brats he met on the beach in math. Which was to say he did their math for them while they surfed away their school years. It would bite them in the ass later when it was time to start managing daddy’s fortune, but the surfer kids would figure that out for themselves. And in the meantime, he was surviving all on his own.

  He’d slept on beaches and in the back of his car, worked as a dishwasher in a burger joint, and even panhandled to scrape together a few bucks to buy food or wash his clothes. All in all, it was a good life, though. No commitments, not beholden to anyone for anything, drifting along free of everything and everyone who’d made him crazy.

  And then that invitation had come in an e-mail to him, asking him to play at the most exclusive poker tournament ever put together and offering to pay the stake money for him. Whereas the world championships of poker that were widely publicized only attracted the relatively honest players from around the world, this one promised to pull in the best of the best regardless of moral or ethical compasses. Not that the invitation stated the case so baldly. It merely emphasized that the tournament was open to all players, regardless of their standing with casinos or other gambling establishments.

  Personally, he’d been banned from every major casino in America, and a bunch in Europe and Asia, on general principle as well. It wasn’t that he’d cheated. He simply was too good a card counter and too good a mathematician to let play. So this tournament had been right up his alley. The question was, who knew that about him and had sent him the invitation?

  Moreover, who had known where to find him and how to contact him? He’d gone completely off the grid. At least until one of his surfing buddies announced that he’d gotten an e-mail containing a request to pass it on to Gun Elliot. It was all very mysterious, which also was totally irresistible to him. He had his suspicions as to the identity of the invitation’s sender; he only hoped he was wrong.

  The announcer called the start of play, and cards were dealt, chips pushed out, and bets made. He folded out early in the first couple of hands on mediocre cards, which was a boon. It gave his stomach time to settle and his nerves time to steady before he actually started betting.

  He won the first hand he played on a pair of queens. In the second hand, he got an unlucky turn on the river card—the fifth and final board card exposed—but he won his third hand easily, raking in a big pot.

  The overexcited businessman turned out to be a shrewd better who was a hell of a lot better player than he let on, and Asia fiddled harder with his chips the better his cards were. The guy wouldn’t last long with such an obvious tell. But it wasn’t his job to point that out to the poor bastard.

  Play was relatively slow as everyone worked the numbers and tried to pick up tells on their opponents. Gun kept up his beach bum façade to the best of his ability. For the most part it worked; the other players underestimated him consistently.

  By the end of play that night, a dozen players had been eliminated, and another dozen or so were short-stacked on chips and on the verge of elimination. He was up $150,000 and well pleased with the day’s efforts, given how rusty he was. The hotel put on a free buffet for all the remaining players, and he piled his plate with salad, fruits, and raw vegetables.

  “Hey,
handsome. What’s your name?” A leggy California-blonde type draped herself along his entire left side.

  “Gun.”

  “Ooooh. That’s an awesome name. Mine’s Desirée. Desirée Moorhead.”

  Best. Prostitute. Name. Ever. He looked up from the serving tray of pasta. “Is that seriously your name?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die. It’s on my birth certificate.”

  “God. I’m so sorry,” he mumbled, moving on to the fruit and cheese trays.

  “Can I be your dessert? I love to play with whipped cream. You can even eat my cherry.”

  Gun grinned at the tanned blonde. That was one of the worst come-on lines he’d ever heard. But she delivered it with such sincerity that it totally worked.

  “Thanks, Desirée, but I think I’m just going to finish my meal and get some sleep.”

  “Some other time,” she purred.

  Not freaking likely. But hey. Who was he to rain on her parade?

  “What happened to the surfer breakfast?” a familiar voice asked from behind him.

  “English. You still in the tournament?”

  “Of course I am. You?”

  He snorted. He was planning to win this thing, thank you very much.

  “Are you already sitting with anyone?” Collin asked.

  “Nah. These aren’t my friends.”

  “Mind if I join you? A redhead named Angeline seems to think I’m the most sexually deprived man on earth. I swear, she’s stalking me.”

  Gun grinned broadly. “The tournament director’s paying for their services. You should take her up on undepriving you.”

  “She plays for the wrong team,” Collin murmured low.

  He glanced up quickly, catching Collin’s gray gaze on him. Dude, that man was easy on the eyeballs. The Brit was square-jawed and clean-cut in a movie-star kind of way. His dark hair was thick and wavy, in spite of being cut short on the sides, and painfully neat. The guy’s suit was conservative, effectively hiding most of the wholly fuckable brawn beneath. But then, there was a lot more to Collin Callahan than met the eye.

  Collin was astronomically not his type. He liked them a little dim, a lot casual, no challenge in the mental acuity department, and no strings attached. Just a fuck.