Seven-Card Stud

by Ava Drake

  Collin tilted his head considering Oliver closely. “Why?”

  “Call it a hunch.”

  “A hunch? You’re a mathematician. You rely on observable facts, not guesses or gut feels.”

  “I’ve got layers, dude. I’m an onion.”

  Collin snorted in humor. “Right. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Isn’t this the part where you offer to peel me?”

  Collin drew himself up to his full six-foot height. “I am classier and far more subtle than that when I make advances toward someone, I’ll have you know.”

  “I dunno. You invited yourself up to my room. That’s pretty damned forward where I come from.”

  Lord, he liked Oliver’s quick wit. Even the rough edges were starting to grow on him. He had to get out of here fast, or else he was going to do something he really regretted. As he opened the door, he tossed out lightly, “The way I hear it, everyone is forward in California, Oliver.”

  “True dat, brah. True dat.”

  Chapter Four

  OLIVER was sharp the next night and went up almost a half million dollars. When he checked the leaderboard at the end of play, he was pleased to see that Collin was still in the tournament and had actually pulled back to nearly even at a million in chips. Another dozen or so players went out, their chips distributed among the other players as chip totals for the leaders started to climb.

  The women were more aggressive in the restaurant tonight, but then the players were more aggressive too. They’d figured out that there was no charge for the services of the ladies and were availing themselves freely of the fringe benefits of this junket.

  He didn’t see Collin in the buffet line. Was the guy avoiding him after that kiss last night? Dammit. He’d pushed too hard. Although why he was worried about moving too fast when he should be worrying about moving at all on him, he didn’t know. Not only was something weird about this event, but something was definitely weird about Collin too. The guy had no business being here.

  Oliver had poked around on the Internet and found no record of a Collin Callahan working for either the British or US government, so that part of his story seemed to hold up, assuming the guy wasn’t some sort of deep undercover operative, of course. However, a spy probably would have come to this event a lot better prepared to pass as a real poker player. So who was Collin, and why was he here?

  Oliver crashed in bed without coming up with any answers. But he dreamed of Collin wearing a tuxedo and acting like James Bond. Instead of a hot actress, though, Collin/Bond took him to bed. A slow strip tease, an escalation of seduction, and Oliver woke up sweating bullets and so turned on he could hardly breathe. Collin cast in the role of secret agent was a good fit for the guy. He had that air of sexy mystery about him.

  Oliver looked at his alarm clock. Nearly two in the afternoon. He didn’t have to get up for another hour. But no way was he getting back to sleep after that smoking-hot dream. Might as well go down to the beach and take a swim.

  He donned his wet suit and swam past the marina, past the gigantic yacht moored there, and paralleled the sandy flats that were a newly built, man-made beach on the east coast of Gibraltar. The developer who’d built El Rocca must have backfilled the rocky shore with entire shiploads of sand to create the beach. Contemplating the cost of such an endeavor was staggering. But then, land had to be incredibly valuable in this tiny country.

  As he stroked onward, Oliver calculated the depth and volume of the concrete pilings that would be necessary to render the foundation of any building on this reclaimed land stable, taking into account erosion and the scouring action of water and sand. The numbers he came up with were daunting. But it wasn’t like money was any object in a place like Gibraltar. The country was both a banking haven and a playground of the rich and famous. It was a prosperous little city-state, clinging to the base of its famous rock. Space was the real commodity here, hence the extension of this stretch of coast into usable beachfront.

  Curious, he looked back over his shoulder at roughly where he’d been swimming when that Jet Ski had nearly made chum of him. The driver should have been able to see him. The prevailing direction of the swells and the lighting conditions out there were perfectly straightforward. Weird.

  Ahead, he was surprised to see a cluster of men in business suits down by the water’s edge. He recognized several of them as security men from the poker tournament. They waved him away as he swam a little closer. Then they surprised him by physically closing ranks, apparently trying to block the object behind them on the beach from his view. But he had excellent eyesight, and they didn’t wave him off soon enough. He’d gotten a brief, but decent, look at what they were clustered around.

  A human corpse.

  Holy shit! His smooth crawl stroke hitched, and he thought fast. He raised an arm to wave back casually, like he thought the men were just waving a friendly hello to him. Then he put his head down in the water and swam with deliberately slow, relaxed strokes, casually pulling away from the group of men and the corpse and being sure to breathe on the side of his body facing away from shore. Meanwhile, his thoughts churned like mad. Surely he was wrong….

  No. He’d seen a dead body before. A surfer drowned a year or so back at Mavericks and had washed ashore the next day. That pale, bloated shape of seawater-soaked human flesh was unmistakable.

  In that instant before he’d obeyed the men and turned away from the beach, he’d registered a plethora of details. He reviewed them as he swam, fixing them firmly in his memory for later retrieval.

  First, he didn’t see any police, which was strange as hell. Why wouldn’t the tournament’s staff call the police if they found a dead man? Second, it had looked like the security men were preparing to roll the corpse into a blue tarp stretched out on the sand. Surely they should leave the body alone and not move it until the authorities arrived. Third, and most importantly, the security men’s body language shouted that something fishy was going on behind them. No shit, Sherlock.

  He swam back toward the El Rocca, his shoulder blades itching like he was being watched. It was a struggle to resist the impulse to lift his face out of the water and look back over his shoulder, but he managed not to. He was careful to keep his stroke turnover down to a rhythmic, unconcerned pace as he returned to the resort.

  He strode up the beach, unzipping the top of his wet suit. What was he supposed to do now? If he called the police, even anonymously, those men down the beach would know exactly who’d made the call. His wet suit was neon yellow, lime green, and bright blue, and to his knowledge, he was the only poker player going out for ocean swims.

  But he had to tell someone….

  Collin. The guy had to be some sort of agent of some official agency. No real poker player was that uptight or inexperienced.

  Intent on reaching Collin, he hurried inside but spied a surveillance camera sticking down from the ceiling in its black bubble. Dammit. He forced himself to slow down and stroll casually through the lobby, toweling off his hair as he went.

  He really ought to call the police, risk to himself be damned. But by the time the police got out to the beach, that body would be gone, wrapped up and hauled away by the security men. He would look like a crank caller and potentially get in trouble with the law, assuming those thugs on the beach didn’t make him disappear too.

  One thing he knew for sure, now—this was not a friendly game of poker. This was a test. Survival of the fittest. Literally.

  He went straight to Collin’s room still wearing his wet suit. He knocked and Collin opened the door, fully dressed, shaved, and showered, if his damp hair and smooth cheeks were any indication. Talk about feeling underdressed all of a sudden.

  “What are you doing here?” Collin asked in surprise. “I’m not really in the market for a hookup—”

  “Good. Neither am I.”

  “Then what—”

  “Inside,” he muttered, pushing past Collin.

  “What’s going on?” Collin as
ked tersely.

  Oliver grabbed a piece of hotel stationery off the desk and scribbled on it, “These hotel rooms may be bugged.” While he showed it to Collin, he asked, “Do you have plans for your time off tomorrow? I thought I might do some sightseeing and wondered if you’d like to come along.”

  Collin looked shocked for an instant but recovered his composure fast enough that Oliver grew even more convinced his hunch about the man’s real line of work had been correct. “I don’t know,” Collin answer evenly.

  “Is there a way to find out?”

  Collin laughed as he moved over toward his suitcase. “I wouldn’t have the faintest idea what to look at. Why would anyone bother sightseeing? It’s just a dinky little peninsula with a giant rock in the middle.” As he spoke, he pulled out a black gadget that he plugged into his cell phone. He commenced passing it over the wall painting and lamp. Sonofagun. The guy was a secret agent or something spy-like after all!

  Watching Collin sweep the room for bugs, and realizing the conversation was patter for any possible surveillance devices, Oliver flopped down on the bed hard enough to make the springs squeak and said, “I suppose you’re right. I’m just tired and wired after the last couple of days. Thought it might do me some good to get out and see the town.” He asked casually, “How’d your cards drop last night?”

  “Not bad. Yours?” Collin moved on to checking the television and furniture with his little gadget.

  Oliver replied, “No complaints. We’ve got a sleeper at our table. Acts like a rich, dumb mark ripe for the picking, but he’s actually a hell of a player. He’s wiping out everyone else at the table, and I’m mostly staying out of his way while he takes them down.”

  Collin turned to face him grimly. “The room’s clean. Wanna tell me why you thought it might be bugged?”

  “Doesn’t this whole tournament strike you as sneaky and nefarious?” he asked. “I figure the crookedness of this event might not stop at its setup.”

  Collin looked skeptical, like he thought that was a thin excuse. Which it was. Oliver had a sick feeling in the pit of the stomach that he might know who was behind this tournament, and if he was right, the man wouldn’t hesitate to bug the players.

  Collin interrupted his speculation, asking, “What do you want to talk about so bad that can’t be overheard?”

  Oliver spoke quietly, still nervous about the ears and eyes all over the resort. “I was out for a swim just now. Went north toward the marina and was passing the beach when I saw a dead body that looked like it had washed up on shore.”

  “Have you called the authorities?” Collin asked quickly.

  “Here’s the thing. The tournament’s security team was there, and they waved me away before they thought I saw it. I played dumb and swam away casually like I hadn’t seen anything. There were no police present, and it looked like they were getting ready to wrap up the corpse and move it.”

  Collin caught the implications of that immediately. “Why would they hide a fatality?”

  “I have no idea. Gibraltar isn’t the kind of place that’s going to have frequent drownings, though.”

  “Drowning?”

  “The body was bloated and waterlogged.”

  “Describe it,” Collin ordered tersely.

  “Umm, like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man? You know. White and puffy.”

  An exasperated huff. “Thanks for that mental image. What I meant was, did you see any details like hair color and length? How tall did the person look? Male or female?”

  “Oh. Male. Bald. Maybe six feet tall. Probably paunchy even before the bloating.”

  “See? Now that’s useful information.” Collin thought for a moment. “Have the tables each player is assigned to this evening been posted yet?”

  “Totally. Play resumes in about an hour. You should be able to pull it up on your laptop,” Oliver answered.

  Collin sat down at his desk and signed in to the encrypted website for the tournament. Oliver leaned over his shoulder as the table assignments popped up. Mistake. Collin smelled better than a new car and hotter than an Italian underwear model.

  Oliver forced his attention back to the computer screen, a cursory glance revealing a discrepancy to him. “We’re down one extra player from yesterday,” he announced.

  “Which one?”

  Oliver scanned the player list quickly. “Jesus. Antonio Mastrianak. The guy I pointed out to you in the restaurant who’s the chip leader in the tournament. Correction: was the chip leader. And now that I think about it, he was a balding guy about six feet tall with a big beer belly.”

  “Oliver, I’m starting to agree with your gut that something is definitely off about this whole tournament. Above and beyond the fact that no one knows what prize they’re playing for.”

  Collin looked sidelong at him, and Oliver’s pulse leaped. He was still leaning down over Collin’s shoulder, ostensibly looking at tonight’s roster, and their faces were less than a foot apart. He ought to straighten up, ought to step back, ought to break the circuit of sizzling electricity flowing between them.

  But damned if the memory of that smoking-hot dream of Collin as James Bond didn’t roar back into his mind in all its vivid detail just then—the sexy slither of a bow tie from around Collin’s neck, taut muscles revealed as starched cotton peeled away from Collin’s physique, the slow dance of skin on skin. He’d practically been humping the bedpost by the time he woke up.

  Collin’s gaze dropped to his mouth, and Oliver’s pulse notched up even more.

  “Where would they take Mastrianak’s body?” Collin murmured.

  Oliver reluctantly forced his mind to the puzzle, intrigued with solving it in spite of all the snap, crackle, and pop arcing back and forth between them. “If not to a hospital or the police, they would have to bring the body into the hotel. Where in El Rocca would they stash a—I’ve got it! Surely the kitchen has some sort of walk-in refrigerator or freezer.”

  “It probably has both, and you’re probably right.”

  Collin’s voice was a sexy wash of whiskey and suede against his skin and sent shivers coursing down the back of his neck. Oliver swore mentally. Too much more of this and he could forget standing upright for a while. A raging hard-on was building in his blessedly tight wet suit, which would prevent the whole pokey-tent-pole problem, if not the horny bulge. However, there didn’t seem to be a damned thing he could do to stop his attraction to this man when what he really ought to be worrying about were the implications of a dead poker player and whether or not his own life was in danger.

  Collin spoke slowly, his stare never leaving Oliver’s throat. “Why would somebody hide a drowning from local authorities?”

  “To keep from drawing attention to the tournament?”

  Collin shook his head thoughtfully in the negative. “It’s known that there’s a party going on here. No reason to hide an accidental drowning.”

  Accidental being the operative word. “But if it wasn’t accidental—” Oliver broke off, appalled at where this line of reasoning led. He might have his guesses as to who was behind this tournament, but surely his main suspect would never stoop to outright murder.

  Collin’s grim gaze lifted to meet his. “If it wasn’t accidental, we’re left with murder.”

  Fuck. Collin had gone to the same place he had. If the directors of this tournament were willing to hide bodies, odds were excellent that they knew something about the cause of death, and had a reason to hide it. And it was likely criminal in nature. Oliver’s blood ran cold at the possibility. If he was right about who it was….

  He didn’t want to think about the ramifications. Surely he was wrong. His father couldn’t possibly have anything to do with this mess.

  “Who would kill Antonio Mastrianak?” Oliver asked, desperation to be wrong coursing through him.

  “Who had a motive?” Collin responded, his voice low and sexy.

  Ay chihuahua, that man was edible. “Someone from Mastrianak’s personal life
who followed him here? An enemy or business deal gone bad, or an ex-wife, maybe,” he suggested, desperate to be wrong about his hunch. “How do you suppose he died?”

  Collin frowned. “We’d have to look at the body to tell. He might have been killed and then dumped in the water. Or somebody could have held him under until he, in fact, drowned. He could’ve fallen overboard from a boat. Or he could’ve gone for a simple swim and had a heart attack. I’m not ready to definitively call it murder.”

  “A heart attack wouldn’t prompt a cover-up, would it?” Oliver responded.

  “Probably not.”

  Grimly, Oliver took the next leap of logic. “The tournament’s security team has to suspect foul play or be directly involved in foul play, or else they wouldn’t hide the guy’s death.”

  Collin nodded. “Given that Mastrianak has been here at the resort for at least the past four days and no outsiders are being let in, if there was foul play, we can logically deduce that someone in some way associated with the poker tournament did him in.”

  “Well, that certainly puts things in a different light,” Oliver declared.

  They stared at one another, him in dismay, and Collin in unhappy confirmation.

  Oliver blurted, “Why aren’t you more surprised?”

  That elicited a short, humorless laugh out of Collin. “Not a lot about human beings surprises me anymore. I’ve seen the worst people can do.”

  “Where?” he asked quietly.

  “My job.”

  Thank God. For a second, there, he’d worried that Collin might have had a horribly violent or tragic past. But if it was his work, then he hadn’t been the actual victim of the twistedness he’d seen. Which, of course, begged the question of what sort of work Collin did, exactly. Aloud, Oliver asked, “What do you know about this tournament that you’re not telling me?”

  “I don’t know anything. Other than how suspicious the whole setup is. Why include hustlers and banned players in a legitimate event? It makes no sense.”

  “Is that why you’re here? To solve the riddle of why it’s an open invite?” Even though he was no expert in being a super spy, that sounded like a flimsy cover story.