Deadly Gamble

by Linda Lael Miller

“Unless you’ve been married and divorced again since last time I saw you, yes. If she’s not on medication, you might suggest it.”

  He looked anxiously around, then met my gaze again. “What happened?”

  I don’t think Brian was concerned about my personal safety. He just wanted me to spit out whatever I was going to say and get away from his table.

  I told him about the cart ramming, and the death threat.

  He paled.

  I wondered what I ever saw in the guy.

  “You have four kids, Brian,” I said, bringing it on home. “They’re living with a crazy woman. You might want to revisit the custody agreement.”

  The pallor gave way to a flush. “I can’t take care of four kids,” he shot back in a hissing whisper. “Hell, two of them aren’t even mine.”

  Double what-did-I-see-in-this-guy. “Okay. Then maybe some concerned citizen—like me, for instance—ought to call CPS and get a social worker to look into the situation.” I got out my cell phone.

  “Wait,” Brian rasped, as a pit boss glanced our way. I could have played a hand or two, for cover, but blackjack isn’t my game.

  I raised an eyebrow. Didn’t put the cell phone away.

  “I’ll talk to Heather, okay?” Brian blurted. “I’ll tell her to leave you alone.”

  I must not have looked satisfied.

  “And I’ll make sure the kids are all right.”

  “You’re a shoo-in for Father of the Year,” I said dryly, but I dropped my weapon. I was by no means reassured that the innocent offspring were out of the parental woods, but I wasn’t Lillian, and I couldn’t snatch the mini-Dillards and take to the road. I had a life.

  Well, a semblance of one, anyway. I hadn’t completely given up.

  I left Brian to his dealing and headed for the “car bank,” a group of slot machines just inside the main entrance. There’s always a gleaming new vehicle parked on a high platform in the middle; you have to hit three of something, on the pay-line, to win it.

  I’ve seen it happen, so it’s legit. Sometimes, the same rig sits there for weeks on end, and sometimes they give away two of them in a day. I’d have worked my mojo and snagged one for myself, but I liked my Volvo well enough and, besides, I didn’t want to pay the taxes and license fees.

  I sat down at my favorite, a certain twenty-five-cent Ten Times Pay machine, shoved in my comps card—hey, I could eat free for months on the points I’ve racked up, and you never know when you’re going to get poor all of the sudden—fed a fifty dollar bill in to buy two hundred credits.

  I drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, and tried to align myself with the Cosmic Flow. Even the best casinos are energetic garbage dumps, with all that greed and desperation floating around, and it’s important to get Zen. Lillian taught me the trick, and when I play, I usually win.

  If I get the mindset right, that is. I had to shake off the Brian influence.

  That night, I’d burned through seventy-five credits before I got a hit. Ten Times Triple Bar, nine hundred virtual quarters. I rubbed my hands together.

  “Come to mama,” I said.

  I didn’t focus on the guy who dropped into the seat at the machine next to mine right away, though I got a glimpse of him in my peripheral vision as soon as he sat down.

  He was good-looking, probably in his late thirties, with a head of sleek, light brown hair and the kind of body you have to sweat for, often and hard. I wanted to ignore him, but I could tell by the way he kept shifting around and glancing my way that he wanted to talk.

  Shit, I thought.

  “I’m just waiting for a spot to open at one of the poker tables,” he said.

  “Mmm-hmm,” I replied, hoping he’d take the hint and leave me alone. Watching the reels spin is a form of meditation for me, and I like to focus. It unscrambles my brain in a way nothing else does, except maybe really good sex, and even on a generous gambling budget, it’s a lot cheaper than therapy.

  Come to think of it, it’s cheaper than really good sex, too, from an emotional standpoint.

  “I think I’ve seen you somewhere before.” Mr. Smooth.

  I suppressed an eye-roll and pushed the spin button with a little more force than necessary. He wasn’t even pretending to play his slot machine anymore; just leaning against the supporting woodwork, with his arms folded.

  “I get that all the time,” I said tersely. “I must be a type.”

  He chuckled. It was a rich, confident sound, low in timbre, and it struck some previously unknown chord deep inside me. It could have been fear, it could have been annoyance. All I knew was, it wasn’t anything sexual; I’m a one-man woman, even when the man in question is thoroughly unavailable. “And not a very friendly one, either,” he observed.

  I gave him a brief look. Ever since the first Nick episode, I hadn’t trusted my own eyeballs. “You’re not dead, are you?”

  He shrank back, but with a grin, and extended one hand. “What a question,” he said. “Do you run into a lot of dead people?”

  I ignored the hand, took in his boyish face, his wide-set, earnest gray eyes, his strong jaw. In the next moment, I leaped out of my chair and backed up a couple of steps. I know my eyes were wide, and my voice came out as a squeak.

  “Geoff!”

  My parent-murdering, cat-killing half brother contrived to look affably mystified, and threw my own line back in my face. “I must be a type,” he said. “My name isn’t Geoff. It’s Steve. Steve Roberts.” He actually fished for his wallet then, as though prepared to show me his driver’s license or something, and prove his identity.

  “Maybe now it is,” I retorted, snatching up my purse so I could get out of there. I didn’t even push the “cash out” button to get a ticket for my credits, that’s how rattled I was. Still, I couldn’t resist asking, “When did you get out of prison, Geoff?”

  He sighed. He had one of those give-your-heart-to-Jesus faces, good skin, good teeth, neat hair. And there was a cold knowing in his eyes that bit into my entrails like a bear trap.

  “You must be mistaking me for somebody else,” Geoff said sadly.

  I turned on my heel and bolted.

  Midway through the casino, I turned to see if he was following me, but the place was crowded, and even though I didn’t catch a glimpse of him, I couldn’t be sure. I found a security guard, told him I’d won a major cash jackpot, and asked him to walk me to my car.

  Even then I didn’t feel safe.

  I locked the doors as soon as I was in the Volvo, and my hand shook so hard as I tried to put the keys in the ignition that it took three tries before I got it right. I screeched out of the parking lot, checking my rearview for a tail every couple of seconds, and laid rubber for the 101, hauling north.

  My heart felt as though it had swelled to fill my whole torso, and my blood thundered in my ears like a steady thump on some huge drum.

  Geoff.

  Parent killer.

  Cat murderer.

  He hadn’t turned up at the casino by accident, that was too great a coincidence, so he must have deliberately followed me there. How long had he been watching me, keeping track of my movements? Did he know where I lived?

  Was I on his hit list? And if so, why? He’d already done his time. What did he have to fear from me?

  He killed Chester. The reminder boiled up out of my subconscious mind. What other reason could he have had, except pure meanness?

  My dinner scalded its way up into the back of my throat. I swallowed hard. I might have been scared shitless, but I wasn’t about to vomit in the Volvo. You can’t get the smell out.

  I got back to Cave Creek without incident, and for once, I was glad to see Tucker’s distinctive bike parked in the lot. I sat there in my car, with the engine running and the doors locked, and felt frantically around in the depths of my purse for my cell phone.

  It eluded me, so I upended the whole bag on the passenger seat, scrabbled through the usual purse detritus until I closed my hand over high-tech sa
lvation, and speed-dialed Tucker’s number.

  “Mojo?” he said, after three rings. I heard the sound of pool balls clicking, and the twang of some mournful tune playing on the jukebox.

  Thank God, I thought.

  I tilted my head back and closed my eyes, hyperventilating.

  Tucker tried again, this time with a note of urgency in his voice. “Mojo? Is that you? Where—? Damn it, say something.”

  “I saw him,” I ground out. Then I had to slap a hand over my mouth for a moment, because I was either going to puke or start screaming.

  “You saw who?”

  According to the Damn Fool’s Guide to English Grammar, he should have said “whom,” but this was no time to split hairs. The man was an ASU graduate, for God’s sake. If he hadn’t mastered the language by now, there was no point in correcting him.

  I spoke through parted fingers. “My b-brother.”

  “I didn’t know you had a brother,” Tucker mused. “Where are you?”

  I uncovered my mouth, but screaming and puking were still viable options. “In the parking lot,” I squeaked.

  “You’re calling from the parking lot?”

  Screaming squeezed out puking and took a solid lead. “No, damn it! I’m calling from the freakin’ roof!”

  “Chill,” Tucker said. “I’ll be right out.”

  I watched, still clutching the phone to my ear, as the side door swung open and Tucker ambled out of Bad-Ass Bert’s. He scanned the lot, got a fix on the Volvo, and sprinted in my direction.

  I rolled down the driver’s side window about an inch.

  “He might have followed me,” I whispered.

  Tucker braced his hands on the side of the Volvo and peered in at me. “Open the door, Mojo,” he said.

  “He killed my cat,” I said. Not to mention my parents.

  “Christ,” Tucker snapped, and pulled at the door handle.

  I popped the locks, and he almost fell on his very attractive ass in the gravel.

  “I need help,” I told him.

  “That’s for damn sure,” Tucker agreed. He sounded testy, but I could tell he was concerned by the way he kept sweeping the lot with his gaze. He reached into the car, unfastened the seat belt and tugged me out, onto my feet.

  I landed hard against his chest, and I’ll admit it, I clung for a couple of seconds.

  “I saw him,” I repeated.

  Tucker held me up with one arm, reached inside for my purse and car keys with the other. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you upstairs. Can you make it on your own, or should I carry you?”

  The offer was tempting, but I had a thing about standing on my own two feet whenever possible, literally and figuratively. Besides, Tucker and I were officially Not Dating, and I was just scared enough to go from being carried to being laid without passing Go and certainly without collecting $200.

  I gave a moment’s forlorn thought to the credits I’d left in the Ten Times Pay machine when I fled the casino. I could have made my car payment with that money.

  “I can walk,” I said, though it was still pretty much a theory.

  Tuck squired me up the stairs, unlocked the door and swung it open.

  Chester sat waiting in the hallway. There was a faint, greenish glow around him.

  I burst into tears.

  Tucker muttered something, steered me to the couch and bent over me to look deep into my weepy eyes.

  “Booze,” I said.

  “You’ve been drinking booze?”

  “No. I want to drink booze. Now.”

  Tucker nodded, probably relieved that he wouldn’t have to bust me for drinking and driving, went into the kitchen, rifled the cupboards and came back with a double shot of Christian Brothers in a jelly glass. I hadn’t touched that bottle since the last bad bout of cramps, but if things kept going the way they’d been going, I’d be hitting the sauce on an hourly basis.

  I took a few sips, holding the jelly glass with both hands. Chester jumped onto the back of the couch and nestled behind my neck, purring. Tucker dragged over an ottoman and sat down, his knees touching mine.

  “Start at the beginning and take it slow,” he said.

  I knocked back the rest of the brandy and set the glass aside. My nerves, all trying to break through my skin only seconds before, collapsed with dizzying suddenness.

  “When I was five years old,” I said shakily, “my half brother shot my mom and dad to death.”

  Tucker’s face tightened. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

  I drew another deep breath. Let it out.

  “Go on,” Tucker urged.

  “I was there, but if I saw what happened, I don’t remember. A neighbor found me hiding in the clothes dryer. I was d-drenched in blood. Their blood—”

  I gagged a couple of times.

  “Easy,” Tucker said, and took both my hands in his.

  His strong grasp felt so treacherously good that I immediately pulled free.

  “My half brother—his name is Geoff—was arrested that night, according to the newspaper accounts I read a lot later. He confessed, so there wasn’t a trial, and they sent him to a youthful offenders’ program in California.”

  Tucker nodded in solemn encouragement when my voice faltered again, but he didn’t say anything. He might have looked like a biker, but he was in cop mode now.

  “I saw him tonight, Tuck. At Talking Stick. He sat down at the slot machine next to mine—” I swallowed, pushed my hair back with the palm of my right hand. “It was the Sizzling Sevens.”

  A faint grin flickered at one corner of Tucker’s mouth, gone as quickly as it appeared. His eyes were dead serious.

  “Are you sure it was him? Not just somebody who looked like your brother?”

  “My half brother,” I said. I didn’t want to claim even that much of Geoff, but we had the same mother. The thought made me want to check into a hospital, have all my blood drained out and replaced with somebody else’s. “And yes, Tucker, it was Geoff. He tried to pass himself off as Steve Roberts, but I know who he was.”

  Tucker took a notepad from his hip pocket and scrawled the name on a page, but I knew what he was thinking. There were probably a dozen Steve Robertses in Phoenix alone, never mind all the once-separate cities butting up against its sprawling borders—Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe, Chandler, Glendale.

  “Google,” I said, catching sight of the computer across the room, and started to get off the couch.

  Tucker pressed me gently back onto the cushion. “Take a few minutes to catch your breath,” he said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  An hysterical laugh bubbled out of my throat at the irony of that statement. Then I started to shiver.

  Tucker got off the ottoman, disappeared into the bedroom and returned with an afghan, which he wrapped tightly around my shoulders. I snuggled in.

  “Did he threaten you?” Tucker asked.

  “Not exactly,” I answered, huddling inside a field of yarn daisies. Jolie had made the afghan for Nick and me, years before, as a wedding gift. God, I wished I could talk to Jolie, but she was a workaholic and probably busy in her Tucson lab, sorting bones.

  “How come you never told me what happened to your parents?” Tucker asked. At the same time, he went to the computer, perched on the edge of the desk chair, and logged onto my Internet account. The password was stored, so there was no delay.

  “The time never seemed right.”

  “Uh-huh,” Tucker said tightly.

  I bristled. “We were only together for six weeks,” I reminded him. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Oh, by the way, when I was five, my half brother slaughtered our parents, and a neighbor kidnapped me, and I’ve been living under an alias ever since’?”

  Too late, I realized that I’d given away a lot more than I’d intended.

  Tucker spun around in the desk chair. “What?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

  “You’ve been living under an alias?
”

  “Not now, Tucker.”

  He glared at me for a long moment, then spun back to the computer and started punching keys. On TV, cops usually use the hunt-and-peck method, but Tucker knew his keyboard, and all ten fingers tapped at a steady clip.

  “Don’t think for one damn second,” he warned, without turning around, “that I’m going to pretend we didn’t have this conversation.”

  He paused after a while, and peered at the screen.

  “Is this him?”

  I got off the couch, letting Chester roll unceremoniously to the cushions, and padded over to look at the monitor.

  Sure enough, there was Geoff, smiling out of a Web page.

  I sucked in a breath.

  “I’ll take that for a yes,” Tucker said, and printed the page.

  I leaned over his shoulder, studying the site.

  “Steve Roberts” worked as a private nurse, an RN, no less. He sold vitamins for some network marketing outfit, too, and was available for consultations. Consultations! Have you been thinking of murdering your parents? I can tell you how to do it and get away with a slap on the wrist. Why, in no time at all, you’ll be back on the streets, looking for your next victim!

  I shivered.

  “I don’t think you should be alone tonight,” Tucker said.

  “I’m not going to your place.”

  “Then I’ll stay here.”

  “On the couch.”

  He sighed.

  “On the couch,” he agreed, but belatedly, and with reluctance.

  SOMETHING LANDED heavily on my chest. Sprawled in the middle of my bed, I opened one eye to sunlight and a purring white cat. I felt the familiar mingling of delight and sadness as I looked into Chester’s fuzzy face.

  “I’m so sorry he killed you,” I whispered, stroking his back.

  I heard the shower running and for a moment I was jarred, until I remembered that Tucker had spent the night. I’d no more than formed the thought when the pipes stopped rattling. I eased Chester off my breasts and rolled onto my side; I didn’t want to be caught petting empty air when Tucker put in an appearance.

  He did just that, a minute or so later, standing naked in the doorway, except for a towel around his waist. I put down an unseemly urge to 1—summon Tucker to my bed and 2—lick the little droplets of standing water off every muscled inch of his flesh.