Kincaid's Dangerous Game

“What can I say? I have a sweet tooth.” She picked up an almond cookie and nibbled on its edges while she studied him through her dark glasses. She tilted her head and let him see her dimples. “See, the thing is, how do I know if I can help you if I don’t know who you’re looking for?”

“A young woman,” Holt said easily. “About your age, actually.”

“Uh-huh…and you think she’s here in Vegas?”

“I think she might be, yes.”

“All right, here’s the thing.” She dropped the cookie onto her plate, barely noticing that it landed in the pudding. “If I seem like I’m being a little bit cautious, it’s because I’ve had to be. You understand? I’ve been in this town a long time. Nowadays, poker is pretty respectable, mainstream, but back when I first started playing, some of the people you brushed elbows with might not be the most upstanding citizens, if you know what I mean.”

The detective nodded. “Like Miley Todd?”

She let go a little bubble of laughter and was grateful again for her shades. She picked up a grape and popped it into her mouth. “O—kay…so you’ve been checking up on me. Why am I not surprised?”

“I’m an investigator,” he said with a shrug. “It’s what I do.” He pushed aside his plate and leaned toward her, forearms on the table. “Look, I know you and this guy, Todd, used to be partners, and that a few years back he got caught cheating and banned from the casinos.”

Billie gave a huff of disdain. “He was an idiot. Card-smart, maybe, but people-stupid. A little bit of success and he started thinking he was smarter than everybody else.”

“So, how did you get involved with this guy?”

She didn’t move or gesture, but he could almost hear the doors slamming shut. It occurred to him that even without being able to see her eyes, he was learning to read her. “It was a long time ago. I was young—what can I say?”

He almost smiled at that, given how young she still was—a lot younger than he was, anyway. Instead, he said casually, the way he might have asked her if she liked wine, “What kind of partners were you? Professional, lovers…”

Unexpectedly, she smiled. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see that coming.”

He smiled back.

The air between them seemed to change subtly…become heavier, charged with electricity. She thought of the wild Texas thunderstorms she’d loved as a child, and realized with a shiver of fear that it was the first time in years she’d allowed herself to remember those times. She wondered why. Why now, with this man?

Still smiling, she hitched one shoulder. “I know how guys think. It was the first thing you thought of. But the answer is, no, we weren’t lovers. Not that Miley didn’t have ideas along those lines when he first met me.” She picked up another grape and crunched it audibly between her teeth. “Until I told him what I’d do to him if he ever laid a hand on me.”

“Ouch.” He gave a pained laugh and shifted in his seat. Moments passed, and Billie could almost hear thunder rolling away in the distance. Then his gaze sharpened, focused on her again. “So…your partnership was strictly professional, then. I’m not clear on how that works in poker.”

She shook her head, mentally reining herself in, sharpening her own focus. Reminding herself of her game plan. “Partnership probably isn’t the right word. Miley was more like my mentor, I guess you could say. Protector, too, sometimes. At first.” She paused. “Vegas could be a rough town, back then.” Don’t kid yourself, it still is. “I’ll tell you one thing, though.” She sat back in the booth, as far as she could get from that plateful of sweets, having lost her appetite completely. “He was a good teacher.”

He sat very still, regarding her without changing his expression, and it occurred to her that in a very short time he’d become very good at controlling those unconscious tells of his. Either that, or he’d been playing her all along. A small frisson of warning sifted coldly across the back of her neck.

“Do you ever take off those sunglasses?” he asked in the same soft, uninflected voice he’d been using to ask about her relationship with Miley.

“During a game, never,” she shot back just as quietly.

“That’s what this is to you…a game?”

“Sure it is. It’s a lot like poker. We’re both holding cards the other can’t see and would really, really like to.” She paused and gave him her game smile—confident, apologetic, serene. “And you know…sooner or later, one of us is going to have to call.”

He expelled air in an exasperated puff, then looked over at the buffet tables, frowned and muttered, “I need some dessert,” the way someone might say, “I need a drink.”

“Have some of mine.” Having obviously rattled him, she was enjoying herself again.

He aimed the frown at her, then at her plate. His eyebrows rose. “Is that pudding?”

“Yeah, and you’re welcome to it.” She slid the plate toward him, then rested her chin in the palm of her hand and watched him pick up his spoon, scoop up a bite of the stuff, frown at it, then put it in his mouth. She felt an absurd and totally unfamiliar urge to giggle.

“So…” Still frowning, he took another bite. “Who’s going to call—you or me?”

“You really aren’t much of a card player, are you?” She was feeling amused, relaxed, confident, sure she had the upper hand again. “If I call, you’ve got two choices—fold or show me your cards.”

He stared at the spoon, his frown deepening. “Yeah, but you have to pay for the privilege, as I recall.” His eyes lifted and shot that keen blue gaze right into hers. As if he could see through her dark glasses. As if he could see into her soul.

Cold fingers took another walk across the back of her neck. A reminder that with this guy she couldn’t afford to let her guard down, not even for a moment.

“This isn’t poker,” she snapped, no longer amused, relaxed or confident. “And let’s quit the poker analogies, which I could think of a whole lot more of, but what’s the point? Here’s the deal—I don’t give a damn who you’re looking for or who you’re working for, and if you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay with me. Now—” she slid out of the booth and stood up “—are we done here?”

“The person I work for,” Holt said, pushing aside the dessert plate and reaching for his wallet, “hired me to find his two younger brothers and twin sisters. So far, I’ve found the brothers and one of the twins.” He took out some bills and laid them on the table, then looked up at Billie. “That twin’s name is Brooke Fallon. Her sister’s name is Brenna. She ran away from home when she was fourteen.” He tucked his wallet away again and waited.

The silence at the table was profound, but inside Billie’s head was the tumultuous crashing sound of her world falling apart.

“So?” she said, and could not feel her lips move. She was vaguely surprised to find she was sitting down again.

“So, I thought you might be my client’s missing baby sister,” he said softly, as he slid out of the booth. “And if you were, I thought you might be interested to know you’ve got a family that’s looking for you.”

She shook her head…pursed her lips, stiff though they were. “Sorry. Not me. Don’t know her.”

“Hmm,” Holt said, gazing down at her, “if that’s true, I’ll be really disappointed. I guess I’ll have to wait for the DNA to tell me whether I have to keep looking for Brenna Fallon, or whether I’ve already found her.”

“Wait.” A breath gusted from her lungs. She reached out and snagged his jacket sleeve as he turned away. “What are you talking about? I’m not giving you my DNA. You’re not a cop, you can’t—”

His smile was gentle. “Oh, but you’ve already given me what I need.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out what appeared to be a folded paper napkin. Unfolded it and showed her what was inside.

Only years of practice at keeping her face and body under strictest control prevented her from blowing it completely. She stared at the thin wooden stick nestled in white paper in complete silence, and her mind was empty of thought. But somewhere in the primal recesses of her consciousness, a terrified child was screaming—Run.

Chapter 3

Still smiling, Holt tucked the folded napkin and its contents away in his inside jacket pocket. The smile was only for show. He didn’t have any idea whether DNA could be recovered from the wooden skewer, and he didn’t know whether Billie would see through his bluff. Or, as she would no doubt put it, call him on it.

Waiting at the cash register for the mother-daughter duo to process his credit card, with his peripheral vision he could see her still sitting just as he’d left her, staring straight ahead, apparently at nothing. He wondered what in the hell she was going to do now. Was she really going to let him just walk away? He was her ride back to the garden shop, of course, but it wasn’t that far if she decided she’d rather walk.

What was going through her mind right now?

He wished now that he’d taken a little more time to study her playing style before rushing off to Vegas to meet her. He had no clue how this woman’s mind worked.

He signed the receipt, tucked it and his credit card in his wallet and returned the wallet to his pocket, then turned to check once more on his erstwhile lunch companion. His heart did a skip and a stumble when he saw that the booth where she’d been sitting was now empty.

Swearing, he slammed through the double doors and half ran to the parking lot. She wasn’t there. Since there was no way she could have gone farther in the time available, he reversed course and got to the restaurant’s foyer just in time to meet her as she came out of the restroom, drying her hands on her jeans and looking completely unperturbed.

“Ah, there you are,” Holt said, hoping she wouldn’t pick up on the fact that his heart was pounding and he was breathing like a marathon runner. “I was about to go off without you.”

“Yeah, right,” she said as she walked past him and pushed through the double doors. She was smiling that damn little half-smile of hers, the one that made her seem ancient and all-knowing.

About halfway to the car she threw him a sideways glance and said in an amused tone, “Do you really think you can get DNA from a wooden stick?”

“I don’t know,” Holt replied. “I guess I’m about to find out.”

She laughed. It was a low, husky sound, but like a shrilling alarm clock, it awoke the sensual awareness of her that had been dozing just below the levels of his consciousness. His skin shivered with it, a pleasurable sensation he tried without success to deny.

Determined to ignore it, he unlocked her side of the car and went around to do the same to his, since his restored 1965 Mustang didn’t come equipped with power door-locks. He slid into his seat as she did hers, and from the corner of his eye he saw her run her hands appreciatively over the black leather upholstery. He was suddenly acutely aware of the warmth of the leather seat on his backside. Although it was comfortably cool outside, the air in the car seemed too thick to breathe.

He got the engine turned on and the air-conditioning going full blast, and as he was waiting for it to take effect, she said in that same throaty voice, “I really do like your car, by the way.”

“Thanks.” Good God, what now? Was she actually flirting with him?

“Did you restore it yourself?”

“No. I got it from a grateful client.” He backed out of the parking place, then abruptly shifted gears and pulled back into it. “Tell me something,” he said as he slapped the gearshift into Neutral. “Why should you be afraid of the DNA result anyway?”

“Who says I’m afraid?”

“It’s not like you’re wanted by the police,” he went on, “or a suspect in a crime. All this is, is a family that’s trying to find their missing sister.”

Sister. Sistersistersister… Thank God he couldn’t see inside her mind, see that word pulsing there like the gaudiest neon on the Vegas Strip. Thank God for the years of training that would keep him from knowing the pain she felt with every starburst.

“Yeah, well,” she said, hating the gravel in her voice, “see, that’s the thing. I’m nobody’s sister. Okay?” Don’t deserve to be. Don’t you understand? I lost that right a long time ago.

“Pity,” Holt said softly, putting the Mustang once more into reverse. “These are some nice people. You couldn’t ask for a better family to be a part of.”

Yeah, right, Billie thought, and it was all she could do to keep from erupting in derisive laughter. Nice didn’t come anywhere close to describing the brother she remembered.

Then…something he’d said. Something that had been blasted out of her head at the time by the sound of that name: Brooke Fallon. But…she remembered now. He’d said brothers. Plural. But how could that be? She only had one brother.

“So, tell me about ’em,” she said, concentrating everything she had on keeping her tone light, making her interest seem only casual. Inside her head was a cacophony of thoughts, a jabbering madhouse of incomprehension and confusion, a babel of questions she couldn’t ask without giving herself away.

“Why should you want to know?” He tossed her a look as he headed out of the parking lot. “If you’re not, as you say, the person I’m looking for, it’s got nothing to do with you.”

Panic seized her. It was only a few short blocks to the garden center; he’d be dropping her off in a minute or two. But she had to know. She had to know.

She could feel herself beginning to tremble inside. How much longer could she keep him from noticing?

She shrugged with elaborate unconcern. “Hey, it sounds like an interesting story, okay?” Paused at a traffic light, he looked over at her again, smiling sardonically. She gave him back her most winning smile. “I’d really like to hear it.”

Holt felt a quickening, a swift surge of exultation. He’d never been fishing in his life, but he imagined this must be what a fisherman experienced when he felt that unmistakable tugging on his line. “It’s kind of a long story,” he said with doubt in his voice. “Don’t you have to get back to work?”

There was a moment of absolute silence, yet he could hear her sigh of frustration like a faint breath, hear the crackle of tension in her muscles and joints like the rustling of fabric on skin. He wondered if it was because he couldn’t read her the usual way, with his eyes, that he seemed to be developing the ability to pick up on her with his other senses.

The garden center loomed ahead. Holt slowed, turned into the parking lot. He pulled into the first empty space he came to and stopped, leaving the motor running, then looked over at Billie. She was sitting motionless, facing forward, and from her profile he could see behind her glasses, for once. Her eyes were closed. For some reason that jolted him, and he saw her in a way he hadn’t been able to up till now.

Vulnerable.

“Yeah. Okay, sure.” She let out a careful breath and gave him a thin, empty smile—no dimples, this time. “Listen, thanks for lunch.” She opened the door, slid her legs out, then looked back at him. “And good luck finding her—the person you’re looking for.” She got out of the car.

He was in a quandary, letting her go. He wondered if this was what a fisherman would call letting the fish “run.” If it was, he decided he didn’t have the nerve for it. He had her hooked, he was sure of it. Had her almost literally in his hands. Yet, short of bodily kidnapping her, he couldn’t reel her in. Not yet, anyway. He couldn’t bear to let her walk away from him, but at this point, what choice did he have?

The funny thing was, he was pretty sure she didn’t want to walk away from him, either. If she was Brenna Fallon, as he was dead certain she was, her insides had to be a mess right about now. He’d just dropped a hand grenade into her life. She had to have a million questions she was dying to ask but couldn’t, not without admitting who she was. Or, to use another one of those damn poker analogies that seemed to be everywhere lately, folding.

Again, he couldn’t be sure, since he hadn’t watched her play very much, but he had an idea Billie Farrell didn’t fold very often.

She’d paused, standing in the V of the open car door, and in that moment he heard himself say, “I’m going to be around awhile…”

She ducked down to give him her knowing half smile. “Right—for your sister’s wedding.”

He gave her back a huff of unamused laughter. “If you really want to hear the story, come by my hotel after work. I’ll buy you a drink—or you can buy me one.”

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