by Cherry Adair
“Oh, this is so cool.” She scooted the chair closer to the table, all bright-eyed and eager and as girlie as she could be. “Thanks, guys.”
Darwin’s dark, wrinkled face scrunched up into a grin. Lots of teeth there. Big teeth. “¿Conoce usted el juego de cartas Texas hold ’em?”
Acadia shook her head, her ponytail, intentionally high and ingénue, bobbing on her shoulder as she gave him a wide-eyed look. “Just tell me the rules. I’ll learn as I go.” She turned to give Fejos a self-deprecating smile guaranteed to make him believe her IQ had just dropped another ten points. “I don’t want to slow you down or anything. But can you try to not take all my money too quickly? I’d like to play awhile—at least until my husband wakes up!”
The police chief gave her a spotty recap of the rules, leaving out a few pertinent details. Of course.
If she’d been Dogburt, she would’ve wagged her tail. Subtly, of course. Just because the cards weren’t in her hand yet didn’t mean the game didn’t begin now. Her poker face came wrapped in an airhead smile.
“I will be generous and lend you twenty American dollars, yes? Ladies first,” Police Chief Fejos told her expansively. Everyone anted up, and he dealt each player two cards. Acadia glanced at her red cards. Not bad. A ten of diamonds and a ten of hearts. A pocket pair.
Fejos ran his thumb over the pile of banknotes in front of him. As her daddy used to say, an obvious tell. He was anxious to bet. Bring it on.
She could afford to lose several hands before she had to win a little to stay in the game. Three or four hands should be enough to read the men and learn their tells. She’d lose this hand; she frowned at her cards.
“I’m not so sure about these cards.” she asked timidly, clutching them too tightly against her chest. “What do you call it when you don’t want to bet?”
José looked up at her. “Tap the table and say ‘check.’”
Acadia awkwardly tapped the table twice as if she wanted a second drink at a bar. “Check!”
The chief threw the equivalent of five dollars into the middle of the table. Darwin and gangster-prisoner Gomez followed and muttered, “Fold.”
Fejos glanced up and looked away. Oh, yes. The slime bucket had a decent hand, as well. He threw another five dollars into the pot.
Her turn. “I guess I’ll call?” She looked up innocently. José dealt the flop and put three cards faceup on the table. King of hearts, queen of spades, and ten of spades. Acadia noted the twitch in his lip and concluded he had either kings or queens in his hand. A pair, unless she was misreading the signs—and she knew she wasn’t.
Her heart twinged. God, she missed her father; he and his poker pals would be howling with laughter if they could see her now. Gomez threw the equivalent of ten dollars into the pot.
The chief leaned back in his chair, feigning disinterest while he stroked his stack of bills with his sausage fingers. “I’ll see your ten and raise you five.” He took a puff of his cigar and blew out a cloud of smelly smoke.
Acadia turned a cough into a sigh of frustration. “I don’t think I should bet this hand.” She threw her cards faceup so that the whole table could see them.
Gomez smiled at the perfectly good three of a kind she’d thrown away and glanced up at Fejos, whose eyebrows rose in surprise. “Next time, señora, throw your cards facedown,” he said with irritation.
“Oh! Sorry!” She reached over and flipped the cards over, giving him a sheepish look.
Alberto folded, the openmouthed cobra on his neck looking on a little too realistically, and the chief raked in the first pot. She felt a pang as her St. Christopher medal was swept up into a pile of crumpled banknotes, bits of chip, and cigar ash.
She played several more hands, carefully reading her opponents, noting their barely suppressed excitement. She held on to her very small winnings, feigning surprise and pleasure when she won and frowning with disappointment when she lost.
The chief dealt her a five and a four. Frowning, she shook her head, ponytail bouncing. “How come I keep getting such horrible cards?” Everybody bet a dollar all the way around.
The police chief’s pupils dilated in pocket-ace excitement. Oh, she’d seen that look before; he had a decent hand. Too bad she didn’t. Crap.
He dealt out three more cards. Acadia’s heart raced, and she struggled to look deflated. A ten and a two. Nothing by itself, but matched with the other three twos on the table, she knew she had it. “Check.”
Alberto bet five. Darwin and Gomez both called. The chief called and raised. Acadia just called, knowing she had to look weak. One more card.
An ace.
The police chief draw in a telling breath. He had aces, and everyone else at the table had—Her mind raced, calculating the cards she’d already seen with the probabilities of folded hands—a possible full house.
The four men played each other with bluffs. The pile of money in the center of the table grew and grew.
There was one last community card to be dealt. The fifth card, the river card, make or break. The jack of spades.
Alberto checked.
Darwin checked.
Gomez checked.
The police chief rolled his cigar from one side of his fleshy lips to the other, the saliva shiny on the outside of the tobacco. He could barely contain himself and pushed all-in.
Acadia called without hesitation. But she made sure her eyes were wide and guileless as she did so. Alberto paused and called. Darwin called. Gomez called.
With an innocent look, she asked the chief, “Is it okay if I see your cards?”
His grin smeared from ear to ear as he turned over his aces. “Aces over deuces. Completo.” Full house.
Alberto couldn’t beat the hand. He folded. Darwin and Gomez folded.
Fejos stared at Acadia, who maintained a serious, if slightly puzzled, expression with some effort. She wanted to punch the air.
“What do you have, señora?”
She slowly turned over her ten. “I’m not sure … I think I might’ve have won?” God, she loved seeing the dawning realization that she’d wiped the floor with all four of them.
Beginner’s luck, or skill? They’d never know.
Acadia plucked a stained bill from the pile of cash she pulled closer and set it in front of him gleefully. “What a fun birthday. Here’s the twenty you fronted me, Chief. Thanks for letting me play!”
His eyes narrowed. “Your other card, señora.”
With a wide grin, she flipped over the ten and slammed down the two. “Yes,” she said with a good deal more cheer than maybe she should have, “I do believe I did.” She scooped up the pot and shoved the notes into her pockets. “Thanks, guys, that was really fun! We’ll have to do it again. I better go check on my husband now, I bet he’s waking up and cranky at being cooped up inside.”
Shoving away from the table, she picked up her St. Christopher medal and dropped the long chain over her head, then strolled past the table.
Apparently old Saint Chris had ducked out for a coffee break. Hard fingers snapped around her wrist. Acadia’s heart plummeted into her stomach.
“Un momento, señora,” the police chief said, silky except for the underlying threat in every syllable. “I think you are mistaken.”
“No,” she began slowly, eyes darting to the three other men at the table, who stood with deliberate intent. Oh, crap. Did she really think it would be that easy? Her lashes flared, wide as she could, as she asked uncertainly, “I won, right? That’s how people win.” Assholes. “Right? And I paid you back, so now you don’t even have to withdraw the money from my bank account,” she added brightly, to remind him he had plenty to gain by letting her go.
The fingers on her arm were brutally tight, but the expression on his face changed. He had forgotten the bigger prize. He held on as he decided if he wanted both the cash and the lotto fortune, which didn’t take long. But before José Fejos could say or do anything more, the doors behind Acadia slammed open.
Acadia winced. She was not an alcoholic, ungrateful wife. She was getting them money to get her impatient husband the hell out of here! Still, she gritted her teeth, bowing her head. “I’m sorry,” she said plaintively, and slid José a sideways glare. “I was just going back to the mission, if Police Officer Fejos is done.”
Sister Clemencia fired off a rapid spurt of Spanish that had José’s lips tightening to a thin, pale line. “Sí,” he all but growled, letting her go. Perhaps he’d settle for the lotto fortune after all. He gave the other men a quelling look and, turning his face away from the fierce little nun, a knowing smirk.
Acadia, shoulders hunched, dutifully moved to the old woman’s side as Clemencia shook a gnarled finger at all of them. She didn’t catch all of it, but she got enough to know that the diminutive nun didn’t think highly of men who encouraged a young wife to sin.
She flinched as the nun rounded on her. “Your husband,” she said flatly. “He is awake and seeking his wife. You go. Be a good wife.” Or else hung in the air just long enough for Acadia to march beside the nun across the bar and toward the door.
The men watched her all the way out into the evening light.
As the door swung closed behind Sister Clemencia, Acadia sucked in a breath, whispered, “Muchas gracias,” and ran like hell across the street back to Zak.
Happy birthday to her. She’d just won safe passage out of there.
55836232859675625355565583623285967562535556558362328596756 …
Zak saw the same unending sequence of numbers moving continuously in his mind’s eye with crystal clarity, streaming left to right like some goddamned securities exchange ticker.
They weren’t going away. In fact, they seemed to be permanently lodged in his head. Day or night. Lights on, lights off. No matter where he looked, the numbers were superimposed over the bottom edge of whatever he was looking at. If he closed his eyes, he saw them just as clearly. The only time he didn’t see the damn things was if he was asleep.
Morse code? Some sort of algorithm? An encryption?
Fuckit. He had to stop trying to make sense of something that was a figment of his imagination.
He never got sick. Hell, he rarely went to doctors for anything short of the required travel vaccinations or getting a broken bone set, but he’d get on this shit quick. It was both distracting and cause for real concern. He didn’t like it, even though he imagined—hoped like hell—it was some sort of temporary hallucination. It looked damn real to him. Maybe it was a lingering sign of fever? Or the knock on the head back at the hotel where this had all begun must’ve knocked a screw loose.
Wouldn’t Gideon find that amusing?
He and Acadia sat in a long curiara—a wooden dugout canoe; an elderly Pemon man and his grandson were taking them down the Orinoco River as far as Ciudad Bolívar.
The sky was a deep blue. Not fully dark yet, but several stars were popping up in the vast overhead canopy. The trees lining the riverbank were filled with flocks of red, yellow, and blue squawking parrots, and hundreds of large black-and-orange troupials, with their long tails and bulky bills, swooped and dived, feeding on the insects swarming the water. A heron stood on one leg and watched them skim by. A log or alligator lurked between the tall grasses on the bank. Zak kept an eye out for any quick movements.
“I’ll miss him,” Acadia said as the kid stood on the riverbank waving madly, the skinny dog at his side.
“He probably gave us fleas.”
“Nah.” She waved back just as enthusiastically, causing the canoe to list. “Not Dogburt.”
“Sit still before you tip us over. Pace your excitement, it’ll be a while.”
Even in the wilds of the rainforest, anything was possible when one threw money at it. Acadia and the kid had shown up at the mission clinic within minutes of one another. The kid was there to retrieve his dog. Acadia, flushed and heart-stoppingly beautiful as she’d bounded in, had surprised the hell out of Zak by emptying pockets full of cash.
It was like providence. The kid’s uncle’s brother’s second cousin—he was sure he’d missed something in the colloquial translation—had a boat. He was also unafraid of the police chief whom Acadia had relieved of his cash.
Something Zak didn’t share, not with her cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling and hands full of money, was that he was scared shitless that Piñero would finally track them down. He wanted them out of there, immediately. Zak had ignored Sister Clemencia’s admonishment that he wasn’t well enough to leave. He’d died, she reminded him. Several times. God had a plan for him.
Yeah. Meet with his brother. Uncover who the fuck the kidnappers worked for, get back to his life. It was a fine plan. But he couldn’t hold a candle to Acadia—the woman planned everything down to the last peso. He wished he’d seen her playing poker against the crooked police chief and his cronies.
She was an intriguing female.
“What do you think happened to Piñero and her men?” Acadia stared at him like she wanted to see inside of his head. No, thank you. Too damned cluttered as it was.
The old man and his son paddled them into the center of the river, where the water was clear and deep, and the current helped move them along briskly. “Maybe she just gave up.”
She huffed out a breath, shifting to get comfortable on the hard bench seat across from him. “With sixty million U.S. dollars up for grabs? No, she didn’t.”
Loida Piñero hadn’t given up. And if she hadn’t given up, where was she? Zak scanned the lush vegetation on either side of the riverbank, as if Guerrilla Bitch might suddenly appear like a jack-in-the-box from among the trees.
While he didn’t have the itch on the back of his neck he usually got when shit was about to hit the fan, he had a distinct waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop feeling lying like a stone in his stomach. Sixty million American was a shitload of ransom to give up on. And Piñero hadn’t looked to Zak like a woman who gave up easily, if at all. No, she was after their asses.
She just hadn’t sprung out at them. Yet.
Another possibility—one he didn’t even want to consider—was that they’d caught Gideon, and would use his brother as bait to get to him. But Gideon was smart and resourceful, so that scenario was as unlikely as it was unwelcome.
“What are you going to do?” Acadia asked. “You and Gideon.”
“Turn the tables, and hunt her down like the bitch she is. She has answers we want, and I sure as hell don’t like having to look over my shoulder. Something tells me she didn’t instigate the kidnappings. But dollars to doughnuts she knows who did. Gideon and I are professionals at shaking bushes and rattling cages.”
“You could just go home to …?” She left it hanging, waiting for him.
The muscles along his jaw flexed. “Seattle,” he supplied, “and not just no. Hell, no. Not until this is over.”
“Okay, then.” She trailed a finger in the water. “Are you going to recover physically before you hare off on this wild scheme? Or are you hoping to push yourself until you’re really sick, and you—” He noticed she caught herself before she asked him if Gideon was right, if he really did want to die. Again.
“Until you can’t do anything but lie in bed flopping like a—like a beached tuna?”
God, she was funny. A beached tuna? Where the hell did she come up with this shit? His lips twitched. “I’m plenty recovered.” Except for the annoying numerical crawler in his brain, he actually felt surprisingly great for a guy w
ho’d died recently. “Get your hand out of the water,” he added. “Things bite down there.”
Her eyes widened and she snatched her fingers back into the boat so quickly, he had to double-check that something hadn’t taken them already. “Then why are you scowling?” she demanded, with a scowl of her own.
He rubbed his eyes with one hand. “I’m not.”
“You have a headache, don’t you?”
He watched an anaconda swish through the water a few feet from the curiara. Thing was as thick as his thigh, and six feet long if it was an inch. “Even my mother never gave a rat’s ass if I had a headache.” His tone lashed. “Don’t mother me, Acadia; I don’t need it.”
“Everyone needs mothering once in a while.” Her gray eyes were calm, mouth set in the lush line he was coming to recognize as Acadia Gray at her most determined. “What happened to yours?”
“Twenty questions?” His shoulder ached, and he shifted to ease the dull pain, annoyed and out of sorts that he couldn’t help with the rowing. He tried to figure out what the numbers could be. A bank account number? Safety deposit? Hell, random numbers with no rhyme or reason? There were a lot of fives …
She did some ultra-feminine thing with the high ponytail and twisted it into an untidy nest on top of her head. Her nape was going to be feasted on by mosquitoes. Zak reminded himself he wasn’t her mother either.
She dropped her hands to hold on to the sides of the canoe. “Got anything better to do?”
He could think of a few—Whoa. “Has anyone told you that you talk too much?”
“Strangely, no.” She cocked her head, and the muted light streaming across her clear skin made her eyes look almost transparent. They got dark and smoky while she was being fucked. And hazy and foggy when she was limp and replete in his arms afterward.
“Okay, yes,” she admitted with a rueful smile that pleasantly kick-started his heart. “Once in a while. And do you know why?”
“I probably don’t, but tell me anyway.” He liked listening to her talk. Liked hearing how her agile, funny mind worked, how her brain ticked through problems, and how she came up with solutions in her own convoluted way.
