Truth or Die (17 page)

Including Special Agent Valerie Jensen.

“It’s your action, Ms. Sands,” said the dealer with a slight nod. The betting had been checked around to her.

Valerie reached for the sunglasses that had been resting in her blond hair, dropping them down across her blue eyes. Slowly, she lifted up her two hole cards on their edges, pulling them toward her across the felt as if she were giving the table a shave. Game on.

This one’s for you, Dad….

VALERIE WASN’T sure when the exact moment would come. Only that it was coming.

It could take an hour. Maybe upward of three or four. Or maybe only twenty minutes, over and done lickety-split. The cards had to cooperate, of course. But so did Al Dossari. And so far, he was.

Educated in the States—Yale undergrad, Wharton MBA—Al Dossari was as Americanized as a Saudi could ever be. He loved Tennessee whiskey, New York Fashion Week, and shoot-’em-up Hollywood movies, but most of all, what he loved was women. He worshipped them. Never mind that they were treated like second-class citizens back in his homeland. That was there. He was here. America. Where women had all the power.
Just so long as they were pretty.

While the pros at the table maintained their well-trained discipline, paying far more attention to the action in the middle of the table than to the eye candy seated at one end of it, Shahid Al Dossari was a man distracted. Never a good thing in a high-stakes poker game.

In fact, forty-five minutes after sitting down, Valerie was fairly convinced that the only reason he flat-called her raise from out of position was so he would have an excuse to introduce himself. Maybe even flirt a little.

The moment had come.

Valerie had raised the initial bet of twenty-five hundred dollars, making it ten thousand. Al Dossari called quickly, while the remaining players all folded, including the initial bettor.

That left just Valerie and Al Dossari in the hand. Heads-up action, as the saying goes.

The dealer promptly buried a card and proceeded to turn up three cards in front of him, otherwise known as the flop.

7♣ 9♥ 8♥

It wasn’t just any flop; it was an action flop. There were straight possibilities. Flush possibilities. In fact, with two cards still to come, there were very few hands that
weren’t
a possibility at this point.

The betting was on Al Dossari, who promptly checked with a silent tap of the felt. Valerie had been the one who’d raised preflop, so this was hardly a surprise move. She had control of the hand, but the only way to keep it that way was for her to increase the pot. A “continuation bet.”

“Twenty thousand,” she said, reaching for her chips.

Behind her sunglasses, though, she wasn’t looking at her chips. Her eyes were focused on Al Dossari, hoping to see a reaction of some kind—a tell—that would give away the strength of his hand.

But he barely blinked. Instead, he snap-called her, tossing two ten-thousand-dollar chips into the pot.

So much for the easy way
, thought Valerie. Besides, easy was boring….

Again, the dealer buried a card before flipping over the “turn”—the fourth card—faceup next to the other three. It was the ace of diamonds.

The betting opened with Al Dossari, who checked as he’d done before. As much as he was staring at Valerie, he still hadn’t said anything. At least, not out loud. The fact that he’d called her last two bets, though, was definitely telling her something. It was time to find out more.

“You wouldn’t happen to be stringing me along, would you?” asked Valerie, flashing the most disarming smile she could muster.

Al Dossari kept his stare, and for a moment or two remained silent. But it was no use. Beverly Sands, the buxom blonde dressed to the nines, was exactly his type. She was his Miss America.

“I was actually thinking the same thing myself, that you were stringing me along,” he said, smiling back with perfect teeth. “I’ve been known to have a weakness for women.”

That got a few knowing chuckles from around the table. Al Dossari’s reputation preceded him.

“So that ace of diamonds on the turn didn’t help you?” asked Valerie.

Al Dossari dropped a forearm on the padded rail of the table, leaning forward over his stack of chips. “Who said I needed help?”

And there it was, an absolute rarity at the poker table. Someone telling the truth. Al Dossari had a made hand. Valerie was sure of it. Because that’s what men do when they’re trying to impress a woman.
They talk too much.

“In that case, I’ll check as well,” she said.

With a simple tap on the felt, Valerie surrendered any leverage she had in the hand. But leverage can be a tricky thing.

And there was still one more card to be played.

THE DEALER tapped the table with a closed fist, the deck cradled tightly in the palm of his left hand. He peeled off the burn card before turning over the final card, the “river.” It was a jack of spades. The board was now complete.

7♣ 9♥ 8♥ A♦ J♠

Gone was the chance of a flush or anything higher on the pecking order of poker hands. Still, there remained a lot of possibilities. A pair. Two pair. Three of a kind. A straight. And, of course, nothing at all—which on paper would be the worst hand you can have.

But poker isn’t played on paper.

For those with the balls to bluff, the worst hand can easily turn into the winning hand. Those same balls are what usually separate the pro from the amateur. Or the sharks from the fish.

Al Dossari, however, wasn’t bluffing when he reached for his chips to open the final round of betting. Valerie had already seen the way he glanced at her stack to see how much she had left. Bet-sizing was as much a part of No-Limit Hold’em as anything else.

“Twenty-five thousand,” he said, slowly sliding the chips out in front of him.

The amount was a little less than half the pot, not exactly small but hardly big enough to force Valerie off a decent hand. Al Dossari was making the classic “value bet.” He wanted her to call.

But Valerie had no intention of calling.

“Raise,” she announced.

She made a move for her chips and then stopped, instead resting her forearms against the railing. It looked like indecision. Maybe even nerves. At the very least, Valerie wanted it to appear as if she were thinking, doing the math in her head and then doing it again while trying to calculate the right amount to come over the top of Al Dossari and get him to fold.

Once again, my darling daughter, poker is a game of lies….

There was no more thinking to be done. No more math, either. Valerie already knew there was no chance that Al Dossari was going to fold.

Finally, she lifted her hands, gathering them behind her entire stack of chips. That motion meant the same thing at every poker table in every language, but it wouldn’t be gambling—or any damn fun, for that matter—if you didn’t say the three words out loud in crystal-clear English.

“I’m all in,” she declared.

Al Dossari didn’t ask the dealer for a count of how much he now needed to match her bet. Nor did he give it much thought. He simply continued staring at Valerie for another few seconds, oblivious to the other woman who’d just sidled up next to her. Lady Luck.

“I call,” he said.

Valerie was supposed to show her cards first, but Al Dossari couldn’t wait. If he wasn’t about to win the hand outright, he thought for sure it would be a chopped pot—that they would both have the same straight.

Confidently, he turned over his two hole cards. “I flopped it,” he said.

Valerie, along with the rest of the table, looked at his 6♣ and 10♣. Sure enough, the first three cards on the board of 7♣ 9♥ 8♥ A♦ J♠ had given him a ten-high straight. It was a made hand, and the best hand, even after the ace of diamonds on the turn. But then came the river.

Saying nothing, Valerie reached for her cards. Everyone else at the table—all the pros—knew what she was about to turn over. She was no fish, and neither were they.

Al Dossari looked across the felt to see the 10♦ and Q♦ staring back at him. Valerie had a queen-high straight. It was the nuts, the best hand possible.

The pot? Over four hundred thousand dollars.

Al Dossari’s expression? Priceless.

But not because he was upset. He couldn’t care less about the money. Nor did he care about losing to a woman.

In fact, it was quite the opposite. And exactly what Valerie was betting on.

Al Dossari was more than intrigued.
He was aroused.
The fish was on the hook, all right.

Now it was time to reel him in.

“DEALER, WHERE would I find the ladies’ room?” asked Valerie, calmly raking in the pot.

The question wasn’t exactly the prototypical reaction after winning a big hand. In fact, a few of the pros around the table even let go with wry smiles.
All in a day’s work, right, lady?

If they only knew. Poker pros were awfully good at reading people. Not that good, though.

Valerie knew exactly where to find the ladies’ room. She simply wanted to make sure the Saudi knew where he was going. After stacking her chips, she stood up from the table and walked away, not once looking back at Al Dossari to make sure he was watching. Hell, that would’ve been redundant.

Right on cue, he was waiting for Valerie when she stepped out of the ladies’ room a couple of minutes later. He was pretending to be finishing a call on his cell. She was pretending to be surprised to see him.

“Well played,” he said.

“The right card fell for me, that’s all,” she answered. “But thank you.”

He took a step toward her, extending his hand. “My name’s Shahid, by the way.”

Valerie extended her hand in return, smiling when he held on to it for a split second longer after she let go. “I’m Beverly.”

His black suit was clearly custom-made. The white shirt was silk, and the open collar showcased a gold chain that was gaudy but not quite rap star–esque.
Some men will never learn that outside of a wedding band, jewelry is best left to the women.

“Where are you from, Beverly? I’m assuming not from here.”

“Back east,” she said. “DC.”

“I know the town well. I actually do a little business there.”

More than a little
, Valerie was thinking.
None of it legal, either.
This charade, the entire operation, was all about proving it.

“And what about here?” she asked. “Is Vegas business, too?”

“Sometimes it is, yes,” he said. “This particular trip, though, is simply for pleasure.”

“I hope I didn’t just ruin it for you.”

He smiled. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether or not I can buy you a drink.”

“If I’m not mistaken, we’re in a casino, Shahid,” she said. “The drinks are free.”

His smile widened. “In that case, I’ll buy you two.”

Valerie inched closer to him. It was subtle but unmistakable. “You’re quite the charmer, aren’t you?”

“Is that bad?” he asked, playing along.

“It may not be good.”

“According to Oscar Wilde, it doesn’t matter,” said Al Dossari, flashing his Ivy League education. “It is absurd to divide people into good or bad. People are either charming or tedious.”

Valerie tried to bite her tongue. The trickiest part of any undercover operation was forgetting who you were in light of who you were supposed to be.

She knew the quote. She even knew the Oscar Wilde play it came from,
Lady Windermere’s Fan
. But between her and Beverly Sands, only one of them had been a drama major at Northwestern.

Still, she couldn’t help herself. Besides, the goal was to beguile Al Dossari, wasn’t it?

Valerie took another step toward him, this one far less subtle. They were close now, very close. Had it been a Catholic school dance, the nuns would’ve surely separated them.
“We are all in the gutter,”
she whispered.
“But some of us are looking at the stars.”

Immediately, Al Dossari took a step back. He was genuinely surprised. “You’re familiar with the play?”

Considering she’d just quoted another line from it, it was a rhetorical question. But Valerie wasn’t about to point that out. Neither was Beverly Sands.

“The girl can do more than just play poker,” she quipped.

He stepped toward her again, his crocodile loafers barely touching the ground. “I’d like to learn more about you, Beverly.”

Valerie smiled, the kind of smile that suggested the feeling was mutual. She’d practiced it many times in front of a mirror.

I want to learn more about you, too, Shahid. And I intend to. Far more than you could ever imagine, far more than you ever thought possible….

IT WAS more like a pit in the brain, as opposed to the stomach.
I’m going to miss Claire’s funeral.

The thought had been lodged in the back of my head, if only because the rest of me was still grappling with the fact that there was going to be a funeral in the first place.

Maybe, just maybe, I’d thought, the fact that I couldn’t be there—or even, for the time being, explain why to her sister—would get easier to bear as the days pressed on. Instead, it was only getting more difficult. Especially after Owen and I left the city.

Every man has his price. For the driver of the livery cab who took Owen and me all the way from Manhattan to Washington, DC, it was nine hundred dollars. The guy made a big stink about having to get it all in cash. Little did he know that was the only way we could pay him.

Our credit cards, each and every one, had been canceled before we even crossed the George Washington Bridge into Jersey. A few attempts at some online purchases in an open Wi-Fi hot spot were all it took to find out. Presumably, our ATM cards were shut down, too.

So that was the game now. They—whoever “they” were—knew there was no point trying to find us courtesy of Amex, Visa, or MasterCard, or any bank withdrawal. That left the flip side, cutting off our funding and hoping it would limit our options travel-wise. It’s always harder to hit a moving target.