Seven-Card Stud

by Ava Drake

  A cold pit formed in Oliver’s stomach. Him? Target of an assassination attempt? He was a surf bum who hadn’t played poker in years. Any threat he might have once posed should have been long gone. But apparently, enough of his reputation lingered to provoke an attack on him. “How did your boss find out about Leon?”

  “Leon Tran splatted in the middle of a busy street. Local news got ahold of it.”

  “Maybe it was an accident,” Oliver offered. “Or even a suicide.”

  “Would you kill yourself when you’re one of the chip leaders in possibly the richest poker tournament of your life?”

  Oliver shrugged. “No. But maybe he was depressed.”

  “A witness apparently told a reporter it looked like he was pushed.”

  “That’s easy enough to determine. But we’d need to get over to where he died and take a few measurements.”

  Collin frowned. “Why?”

  “Simple trajectory motion problem. We can measure the distance from the point of impact to the cable car line and calculate whether he would have been able to jump hard enough to land that far away or not. I’ll bet you a hundred bucks he was pushed.”

  “That’s not a bet I would take,” Collin responded.

  “Good call. It’s a sucker bet.”

  Collin grabbed a brochure off the nightstand and shoved it into Oliver’s hand.

  “What’s this?” Oliver asked.

  “Map. We need a cover. We’re going out sightseeing.”

  Oliver snorted. “And we’re obviously not taking the cable car.”

  Collin grinned back. “News coverage says it’ll be shut down until a thorough investigation is performed on how the door opened in midair.”

  Oliver was disoriented as they stepped out into a dark night. Right. While they played poker, the rest of the world slept. “When did this ‘accident’ of Leon’s happen?”

  “Within the past hour or two, apparently.”

  “This cable car thing is a twenty-four-hour-a-day operation?” Oliver asked skeptically.

  Collin knocked on the window of a white minivan parked at the taxi stand, and a sleepy driver pushed the cap off his face. “We need to go to Gardner’s Lane. Near where the cable car crosses it. By the way, are the cable cars running now?”

  “No run at night,” the driver replied in a heavy Spanish accent.

  Oliver and Collin exchanged wordless glances as they slid into the back seat. Tran’s death had been no accident, then. Suicide or murder. But which?

  It took about fifteen minutes to wind around the north end of the rock, parallel the airport, and then head south along the west side of the rock to where Leon had died. The narrow, winding streets were deserted, but when they approached the scene of the death, a mob of police cars lit the cobblestone street like a festive party. Collin slipped the driver a twenty-pound note to wait while they checked out the spot where Leon had died.

  The police had outlined the spot on the pavement where Leon hit with white chalk like some old-time police drama. Oliver muttered, “I’m gonna pace off the distance to the cable line.”

  While Collin quizzed someone about what had happened as officiously as he could, Oliver counted off the paces until he stood directly under the steel cables snaking up into the darkness. He rejoined Collin, who was chatting up a fireman.

  At a lull in the conversation, Oliver injected, “How high is the cable over the ground here?”

  The local fireman looked up. “I’d guess it’s about fifty feet at this spot. Most of the time, the car is closer to the slope of the rock, but there’s that cliff over there, and the ground falls away from the cable a bit extra right here.”

  Funny, that. As if someone knew exactly where to push Leon out to ensure he would hit the ground with sufficient force to die. Oliver made a sympathetic sound, already running the simple projectile motion calculation in his head. Collin must have done the same, for in a moment, his brows slammed together, and he threw Oliver a worried look.

  Collin murmured to the fireman, “We’ll let you get back to your work, then.”

  Oliver piled into the cab beside Collin. They rode in silence back to the hotel as pink and peach tinted the sky in the east beyond the still Mediterranean Sea.

  When they got to Collin’s room, he insisted on running his little black device over the walls and furnishings again before speaking. As he stowed the gadget, he murmured, “So. He was pushed.”

  “More like thrown to have traveled so far from the cable car.”

  “Two killers, then?”

  “That would be my guess,” Oliver answered.

  Collin sat down at his laptop and pulled up the poker tournament’s website, specifically the leaderboard. “With Tran out of the way, one of the Albanians moves into the top ten.”

  “The tournament director is splitting up the top players so each of us sits at a different table. We don’t have to face each other yet and potentially weaken or eliminate one another,” Oliver commented. “So now the Albanian guy is protected from having to play another top-ten guy.”

  “You think the Albanians are knocking out the competition?” Collin asked.

  “It’s as good a guess as any. They have a reputation for violence. Although any of the remaining players could be the killer.” He shrugged, then added, “Will the directors cancel the tournament?”

  Collin answered grimly, “My boss thinks the director will have no problem with players eliminating each other as long as they keep the shenanigans off-site.”

  Oliver stared. “So this is what? Combat poker?”

  “Something like that.”

  “That’s sick.”

  Collin shrugged. “It would explain the inclusion of known criminals and players of questionable moral fiber. No offense intended.”

  “None taken.”

  Collin remarked, “I’ll bet some thug is getting his ass chewed as we speak for not being more subtle and for not hiding the body.”

  “No kidding. What do we do now?”

  “If I were sitting back in England watching this from afar, I’d tell myself to watch my back. And for God’s sake, to stay out of the top ten.”

  Oliver stared in chagrin.

  Collin’s eyes popped open in surprise. “Hey, man, I’m sorry—”

  “No need to apologize for telling the truth. And besides, if you’re right about the Jet Ski incident, I’m already targeted for elimination.”

  Collin moved quickly to stand in front of Oliver. “I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe.”

  “You can’t watch me day and night.”

  “Why not? There’s no rule against players spending time together.”

  “Yeah, but you could get hurt if you’re too close to me the next time Jet Ski guy tries to kill me.”

  Collin answered quietly. “I’ll take my chances.”

  Gratitude flowed through Oliver, but he had no words to express it. Instead, he stepped forward and wrapped Collin in a bone-crushing hug that said everything he could not.

  Somehow, Collin’s head got turned toward him, and his got turned too, and their mouths brushed across one another. And then they latched on to each other desperately, kissing as if this were the last time they would ever see each other.

  It was probably a terrible idea to fall into the sack because they were scared and looking for comfort. But damned if Oliver didn’t want to. He had been quite the slut over the years, willing to sleep with anyone, anytime. After all, it was just sex. And if it felt good, why not do it if the other guy was willing?

  But Collin wasn’t his usual easy pickup. He was tense as hell about sex, practically closeted. Not to mention that whole honor and integrity thing Collin seemed stuck on. Not the kind of dude to crank the wank and walk away without looking back. Like I would. Hell, like he had a hundred times.

  Oliver took a shaky step back. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to derail the conversation about what we’re going to do next.”

  Collin�
�s gaze was clouded. Confused. Like the emotional whiplash of making out and then going back to talking shop was too much to process.

  Oliver knew the damned feeling. Staring at the back of Collin’s neck as he turned away to gaze out the window, Oliver couldn’t help but notice the strong lines of tendon and corded muscle in his neck. God, he’d give anything to see those straining in the throes of pleasure. But instead they were tensed, obviously, against his abrupt rejection.

  He raised his hands. Started to take a step forward. Opened his mouth on an apology.

  But before he could do any of that, Collin announced briskly, “You’re right. We need to focus on work. And right now, we need to figure out who’s running this tournament and why.”

  Oliver’s hands fell to his sides.

  Collin sat down at the laptop and started typing rapidly. “Let’s see how good El Rocca’s security system really is.”

  Oliver blinked, startled. “Be careful. If they’ve got countermeasures in place, you could lead them right to us.”

  Collin looked up from his screen at that. “Do you trust me?”

  With his life? “I guess so.” Even to his own ears, Oliver sounded doubtful. “Give me your key card. I’m going to run down to my room. I’ll be back in a minute.” He slipped out and headed down the hall.

  Oliver grabbed a change of clothes, basic toiletries, and his own laptop computer, threw them in a backpack, and headed back upstairs. He paused in front of Collin’s door. If he walked away right now, kept his head down, and made sure to stay just out of the top ten players going forward, he should be able to hang around until the end of the tournament and then take his shot at winning.

  But if he stepped through that doorway, he would be going all-in with Collin. He would be committing himself to helping Collin’s investigation, with the intent to rip this tournament open and expose its secrets to whomever Collin worked for.

  What if his father was somehow mixed up in this mess? Did he dare tangle with his old man? He knew better than most just how formidable a foe George Elliot could be. Two men were already dead, and Oliver had possibly been targeted for elimination as well. Did he dare expose himself to even more danger?

  Did he dare try to survive in this jungle on his own?

  He ought to go it alone, if for no other reason than to protect Collin from danger.

  But Collin was so damned noble.

  And so damned sexy.

  But so damned naive.

  And clearly out of his depth in a violent situation.

  But he wanted Collin.

  And shouldn’t have him.

  Fuck.

  Chapter Six

  COLLIN looked at his watch. He had approximately thirty hours before play began again. And he suspected he would need all that time to hack El Rocca’s security. Unlike if he’d been sitting back at HQ sipping a hot cup of English breakfast tea, if he screwed up here and got caught, he was a dead man. Furthermore, Oliver was likely a dead man too. No pressure there.

  He vaguely heard Oliver return but was surprised when a laptop plunked down on the desk beside his and a chair dragged close. “What’s your plan of attack?” Oliver asked.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You didn’t think I became one of the top mathematicians of my generation without knowing a crap-ton about computer security algorithms, did you?”

  “Oh! Um, cool. I thought I’d make a run at some harmless admin system and then backdoor my way into the server.”

  “The reservation system?” Oliver suggested.

  He shook his head. “Credit card numbers in there. Encryption will be a bitch. I was thinking about going after the scheduling of housekeeping.”

  “That’s pretty low-level stuff. You think you can climb into the main system from there?”

  Collin shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

  It was child’s play to bust into the spreadsheet the housekeeping manager used to tell the maids which rooms had checked out, which ones were needed for early check-ins, and how many rooms had to be cleaned by what time. From there, Collin was able to jump into the housekeeping manager’s desktop and clone it. Now it was just a waiting game until the woman came in to work in an hour or two and typed in her username and password.

  In the meantime, Collin got to work setting up a few additional firewalls in his laptop just to be safe. Oliver looked on as he loaded the last one. “You think that’s good enough, Collie?”

  “Collie?”

  “Hey, you wanted to call me Ollie.”

  “I’ve never had to kill anyone before, but I am not averse to doing so,” Collin snapped.

  “What kind of James Bond are you if you haven’t killed anyone?”

  “The smart kind who doesn’t have to resort to brute force to accomplish one’s mission.”

  “Let’s hope it stays that way,” Oliver muttered.

  Indeed.

  The housekeeping manager was an early riser, apparently, and at barely 7:00 a.m., Collin’s computer screen leaped to life. Username and password duly captured, he and Oliver went to work on the main prize: the resort’s primary computer server. Not that they were competitive or anything, but they both worked like dogs, heads down and typing until their computers figuratively smoked. Oliver sat back first, announcing, “There. Now I just have to let that run.”

  Collin had opted for a delicate, probing approach, searching for backdoors or system weaknesses gently enough not to trigger any alarms. He’d already run across a cache of child pornography bad enough to get one of the night managers jailed in any country. And someone in the security office was pirating pay-per-view movies off the resort’s account. But so far, the El Rocca firewalls were holding. It was only a matter of time, though, before he found a chink in the armor.

  “Okay,” Collin announced a few minutes later. “My system’s running autonomously. You hungry?”

  Oliver grinned. “I’m always hungry. What have you got in mind?”

  “I thought we might go to Old Town on the other side of the rock. Grab a bite to eat. Do a little sightseeing.”

  “Sightseeing? With murderers on the loose?” Oliver squawked.

  He shrugged. “There’s safety in crowds and public spaces. And what would we normally do if we had a full day off? I don’t know about you, but it would be more suspicious if I holed up in my room and never came out than if I went out and took a look around Gibraltar.”

  “Good point. I don’t tend to stay indoors or inactive for long,” Oliver allowed.

  They had the front desk call a taxi for them, and in a few minutes, they passed through the tunnel that dumped them out at Europa Point at the far southern tip of the Gibraltar peninsula jutting out into the nine-mile-wide Strait of Gibraltar. It was a clear, bright morning, and they could see Algeria, Morocco, Spain, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea simultaneously.

  “Strategic little place, this Gibraltar,” Oliver commented.

  Collin made a sound of agreement. It was an interesting choice for an international gathering of the world’s best poker players. He kept coming back to the question of why the tournament had been set up, though. What was so special about a bunch of guys like Oliver…?

  Collin blurted, “Is it possible that the event’s organizers are not trying to find the world’s best poker player, but rather the world’s best math-on-the-fly person?”

  Oliver stared at him. “What for? Computers can outperform a human brain by orders of magnitude.”

  “Intuitive analysis still requires a human brain.”

  “Intuitively analyzing what?”

  Collin turned over the question, applying some of the same human analysis he was talking about. Computers still could not take intuitive leaps of logic like a living, breathing analyst could. He spoke slowly. “Let’s assume this is some sort of talent search. Why poker, and why this set of players? Obviously, they want a person who isn’t hung up on morals or ethics. Otherwise they wouldn’t have included hustl
ers and criminals in the player list.”

  Oliver snorted. “That doesn’t narrow down the possibilities much. Since when are bankers or stock traders especially moral or ethical?”

  Collin shrugged. “Where there’s money, there’s always greed.”

  “Poker players bring more than fast math to the table. Guts. Steel nerves. The ability to bluff. Reading fine nuance in human body language. Maybe those are the skills the tournament directors are measuring by using poker as this hypothetical test.”

  “Or all of the above,” Collin replied.

  “Okay, then. Who needs the same skill set as a professional poker player, and what would they use it for?”

  Collin frowned. “Politicians. Negotiators. Decision-makers handling large sums of money.”

  Oliver added, “Military strategists. Entrepreneurs. Venture capitalists. Con men.”

  A vague shape was starting to form in Collin’s mind, but the picture was far from complete. His gut said they were on the right track, though. This whole tournament was some sort of elaborate job interview.

  They left Europa Point and headed for the city center, driving past the old bastion walls and plentiful boutiques bearing top designer names. Gibraltar was a popular cruise ship stop, and the high-end retail industry was ready and waiting to suck up tourist dollars.

  They walked the length of Main Street, a mostly pedestrian cobblestone affair that ended in Casemate Square, ringed by cafes whose clientele spilled out onto the broad square at umbrella-covered tables. Collin led the way to a table inside a dimly lit coffee shop, where they sipped fresh-roasted coffee and ate pastries that made him seriously consider giving up any attempt to watch his waistline ever again.

  They’d been people-watching and relaxing for perhaps a half hour when Oliver muttered, “Well, lookie there. It’s the Albanians. And friends.”

  Collin looked out into the sunlit square. Sure enough, both the Albanian poker players from the tournament and two tall, gorgeous women had just taken seats at a cafe. The usual Albanian bodyguards weren’t present, however.

  “Hey. That’s Desirée Moorhead with the Albanians,” Oliver announced.