Death Plays Poker (27 page)

GEORGE

Fiona was out. Good for her. It wasn’t like they were a couple and George had any right to know where she was.

George sipped his Scotch. He told his fingers to do what they wanted with the keyboard. Trouble was, they wanted to go nowhere. George threw on his jeans and dialed Fiona’s cell again. This time she picked up.

“George?” She sounded tiny.

“Fiona? You don’t sound like yourself.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I took your advice.”

“My advice?” George pulled a rake through his brain. “What did I suggest?”

“I left. I rented a car and I got the hell out of there. Oliver can run the technical side of things. I’m sure the network can find another commentator. There’s no shortage of staffers who would kill for a turn in the spotlight.”

“But . . .”

“Ha ha. I guess I might even mean that literally. I got another note. The Dealer wants things back on. And — this is the fucked-up part — he seemed pissed off that I’d stopped the broadcast.”

“Wasn’t it him who told you to stop?”

“That’s why it freaked me out. If this guy is losing it, maybe I
am
next on his list.”

“Do you think he’s bipolar?” George asked.

Fiona snorted. “Bipolar is manic depressive. Are you talking about split personalities?”

“I guess.” George laughed, though nothing was funny. “Or maybe there are two Dealers and their agendas have diverged.”

“And thanks, George. I would never have got up the balls to leave if you hadn’t convinced me it was smart.”

“I wanted to come, too.” George picked up the red T-shirt he’d slung on the back of his chair. He thought of putting it on while he was talking, but he didn’t want to pull the phone away from his ear for even a second. “I didn’t mean for you to take off on your own.”

“I don’t want you here.”

George’s head felt weird. He pushed his Scotch aside.

“That sounded harsh,” Fiona said. “I didn’t mean it to. You’ve been awesome to me these past few days — these past few years, really. But I don’t even want to trust you right now.”

George crunched his phone between his shoulder and ear and moved to put the shirt on anyway. He needed to be dressed. He needed to take action. “Are you at the airport?”

“I’m not saying.”

George opened Safari on his computer. He could at least find out where the nearest Zipcar location was. “Fiona, please. Think about it. I can write a book from anywhere. I can help keep you safe. We’ll run together.”

“God, that sounds so tempting.”

“We’ll go somewhere tropical. Somewhere they don’t extradite.”

“You really love me, don’t you?”

George closed his eyes. “I really do.”

CLARE

Clare opened her hotel room door to let Noah in. He looked scruffier than usual — at three a.m., his morning facial hair was already starting to surface. “No one followed you, right?”

“Right.” Noah sank into the armchair. “Our cover characters are sworn enemies. What did you tell your handler?”

“Nothing about you,” Clare said. “And by the way, you owe Joe Mangan twenty grand.”

Noah’s jaw fell.

“Joe knows what he’s doing. Got me off in record time, and now he’s playing poker dressed as Snow White. Twenty grand’s a bargain. You want a coffee? Something from the minibar? It’s on me — actually, it’s on the
RCMP
. To say thanks.”

“Are you mad at me?” Noah unzipped his navy blue hoodie. “Did you call me here to gloat?”

“No.” Clare opened the minibar and pulled out a beer. Bud, because she wasn’t pretending. “I called because I have a plan. I think you were right earlier. I think we
should
work together.”

“I’ll have one of those, too.”

Clare passed the first beer to Noah and grabbed another for herself.

“What’s your idea?”

Clare still wasn’t sure if she was playing this the right way. She should be running this by Amanda — including telling her she’d officially been made. In a perfect world, Amanda would then check to make sure Noah was for real, and Clare could go ahead with her collaboration.

But Amanda might not react that way. Her most likely reaction would be to pull Clare — there were too many doubts surrounding her role already. In fact, if Clare were in Amanda’s place, she’d think the safest thing would be to pull her.

But the safest thing wasn’t always the right thing — or the most effective. If Clare’s plan
did
work, they might actually catch the Choker before the Vancouver tournament ended. A lot of people planned to leave the scene after this — there was even talk about the Canadian Classic shutting down. It would be too easy for the killer to slip out into the world to kill again. It wasn’t only her own career Clare could save with this collaboration — it was the lives of future victims.

She smiled grimly. As weak as it might be, she had her justification.

“I think we should mix things up,” Clare said. “I think we should deliver notes around the scene — like the one you gave Fiona, only everybody gets one — we sign them ‘The Dealer,’ and gauge people’s reactions.”

Noah cocked his head to the right. “Do you have specific notes in mind?”

“I have a rough plan.” Clare nodded. “It would help if we had a better handle on who’s cheating. You said you had a spreadsheet. How close are you to narrowing the field?”

GEORGE

George wandered into the high stakes poker room — bad move, no doubt — and gave the dealer five thousand dollars to change into chips. He was even glad when T-Bone sat down beside him.

T-Bone changed twenty thousand and said to George, “I never seen you play these stakes. Feeling lucky?”

George shook his head.

“So get away from the table,” T-Bone said. “You’re a shit player anyway.”

“I don’t care if I lose.”

T-Bone tilted his head, peering into George’s eyes. “The fuck’s got you down?”

“Fiona,” George said, too despondent to keep things to himself. “She panicked. She left. I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again.”

“What do you mean, she left? Where did she go?”

George shrugged. “She won’t tell me.”

“It’s the middle of a fucking tournament,” T-Bone said. “Does she want them to freeze the fucking game again?”

“The cards can be dealt without a commentator,” George said.

“Changes the fucking point. This is supposed to be television — we got names to maintain, books to promote. You should care, too — your book is newer than mine.”

Before George could respond, Joe walked in. Or rather, Snow White walked in, and only Joe Mangan would wear such an outrageous costume at the poker table.

“Who wants to be my dwarf?” said Joe’s voice from inside Snow White.

T-Bone groaned. “Not me.”

“Is Elizabeth back from dinner?” George didn’t want to be at the poker table. T-Bone was right; he’d only lose if he stayed.

Joe shook his head. “She’s staying at her parents’ place. I can gamble ’til dawn like when I was single.” Joe rubbed his hands together. “Who wants to be my first victim?”

“Not me.” George got up and took his chips with him. “Good luck, though.”

“Hey, thanks,” said Joe. “You said that to me earlier, in the ice room, and I got really lucky.”

George rolled his eyes. “I guess you won the prop bet.”

T-Bone was still disturbed. “You hear anything about Fiona bailing?” he said to Joe.

Snow White shook her head. “Like, bailing bailing? Never coming back?”

“Yeah,” T-Bone said. “George here says she spooked. I wonder how that could have happened.”

“Beats me.” Joe pulled out his phone and typed out a message to someone. “So are we going to play some poker?”

“Fuck that.” T-Bone stood up. “This Canadian scene is going to shit. First Loni gets killed, now we’re not even going to be on
TV
anymore. I’ll stay because I still have chips in the tournament, but after that I’m getting the fuck out of here. I’m going back to the States as soon as this shit game is over.”

“So go sulk,” Joe said. “You bailing too, George?”

“Yeah.” George picked up his chips.

“From the scene, or from the table?” Joe’s voice sounded like it held a smile, though it was impossible to tell behind the Snow White mask.

“I don’t know,” George said. “Maybe I’ll go online and see if I can find Fiona.”

“You think she put her location up on a website? Maybe Facebook?”

“No.” George knew he probably shouldn’t be saying this out loud, but his head was swimming, and he’d been drinking, and . . . “Fiona has an iPhone. I can track her anywhere in North America.”

“You need her password for that.”

“I know.”

Joe’s phone beeped. He picked it up and typed another message.

T-Bone was still standing listening. “If you find her, tell her to get her ass back here for tomorrow morning.”

NOAH

Noah watched Clare stretch her legs out then curl them underneath her as she leaned into the headboard.

“Pretty close.” Noah reached into his canvas shoulder bag and pulled out a clunky-looking black laptop. It actually wasn’t clunky at all — it was supremely fast, with built-in satellite technology so he could be online anywhere on or near Earth without anyone’s wifi being able to hack into it — but the plain casing would fool most observers.

He opened the file with players’ statistics.

“I think Joe is cheating for sure,” Noah said.

“Really?” Clare looked skeptical. “I thought Joe was some genius player. He even wins consistently at cash games — where there are no cameras to run scams off.”

“Look at his historical win rate.” Noah pointed at the graph. “Joe came onto the scene four years ago. He did well right away: in his first year he cashed in one out of four tournaments, netting him an
ROI
— that’s return on investment in trust fund princess language — of close to 300%. But look at his win rate since Halifax. He’s been in the money every tournament but one. His
ROI
is up over 1000%. He might not need to cheat to be a winning player. But the stats say he almost definitely is.”

“Okay,” Clare said. “Who else? T-Bone?”

“T-Bone’s on my maybe list,” Noah said. “His win rate took a dive a few years back, when new players came on the scene. It stayed low until . . .” He pulled up T-Bone’s stats and looked at them. “Yeah, okay, until Halifax.”

“What’s his
ROI
now?” Clare slid down the bed so she was lying on her back. It was just past three a.m., but Noah was nowhere near ready to sleep.

“It’s up there. Maybe 500%.”

“T-Bone knew what I had.” A realization seemed to be hitting Clare. “That hand in Niagara Falls when I doubled through him. I think he wanted to push me off the hand — and for all I know, I probably should have folded — but he knew before the cards were flipped over that I had him beaten.”

“You sure?” Noah said.

“No. I’m sure I need to sleep, though. My mind is shutting down hard.”

“We don’t have time to sleep. We have to solve this case.” Noah was wired. Since Clare had left his room that afternoon, he’d drunk about ten gallons of coffee while staring at his computer and trying not to think about what Clare was saying to her handler.

“Okay.” Clare pulled off her jeans and tossed them onto the floor. Noah must have been staring at her legs in an obvious way, because she said, “I’m not taking my clothes off to turn you on. I’m getting under the covers. Keep working if you want. I’m going to sleep.”

“If you weren’t planning on getting any work done tonight, why did you invite me over?”

“I didn’t know I was going to crash so hard. Joe has a gorgeous cock; too bad it’s circumcised.” Clare yawned widely and stretched her arms behind her.

Noah walked to the window and looked down at the boats in False Creek. “What’s wrong with circumcised? I thought women preferred that.”

“Maybe women who don’t like cock.” Clare slid out of bed and moved, bare-legged, to the coffee maker. “It might have been the beer that knocked me out. I’ll try making coffee. So do you think Joe’s the cheating ring’s instigator, or just some guy who’s been profiting?”

Noah wasn’t sure. “My guess is some guy who’s been profiting.”

“Doesn’t Joe fit the psychopath stereotype perfectly?”

“Because he’s charming?” Noah snorted. “There’s a little more than that to profiling a serial killer.”

“Not only because he’s charming,” Clare said. “I felt more guilty than he did for cheating on Elizabeth. And P.S.: just because you’re with the big-time American
FBI
doesn’t mean you’re smarter at profiling than your Canadian counterpart.”

“Right,” Noah said. “We don’t even get assigned a horse.”

“A horse?”

“You’re a Mountie, aren’t you?”

“I’m on loan.”

“Oh, so you only get a pony?”

“Are you stupid?” Clare turned and stared at him. “We don’t ride horses, we’re not from the backwater, and the average Canadian
IQ
is twelve points higher than the American one.”

“You’re making that up.”

“I’m sure it’s true.”

Noah laughed. “Just because you wish it was true doesn’t mean you get to say it like a statistic.”

“Oh.” Clare poured water into the coffee maker. “Does the
FBI
get to tell me how to speak now?”

“Clare!” He wanted to pull off his own jeans, toss her back into bed, and see where things went from there. But he fought the urge — he had to respect her monogamous mindset — he actually, grudgingly, respected her for it.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing. Sorry I thought you got a horse with your job.”

“You didn’t really think that.”

“I really did.”

“Do you also think I grew up in an igloo?”

“No. You’re from Toronto. They have buildings there — running water and such.”

“I’m from Orillia. It’s Tiffany who’s from Toronto.”

“Where’s Orillia?”

“About an hour and a half north of Toronto.” Clare put the coffee bag into the machine, but she didn’t press On. She sat back down on the bed, instead.

“An hour and a half by horse, or by dogsled?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“I guess I’ll have to.” Noah closed his computer. He could see Clare was tired. He zipped his hoodie back up and steeled himself for the cold night ahead. He didn’t plan on sleeping.