Hold ’Em Hostage Read online

  “Excuse me.” I tapped his arm. “I have to go to the ladies’ room.”

  He hid his irritation by smiling. Practiced and perfect. I halfway relaxed again. “Of course, we’ll find you one,” he lied to me, still listening to his caller and choosing a path deeper into the gardens instead of toward the reception desk and possible restrooms.

  Hmm. I really didn’t want to put him on guard by asking if he was really a cop. As much as I didn’t like spending time with the cops, I probably would like spending time with someone pretending to be a cop less. The caller was apparently upsetting him, because he picked up his pace and forgot to keep me in front of him. It was perhaps my only chance.

  I ducked behind the next palm tree. Why hadn’t I thought to ask for any credentials? Because, you stupid girl, you were so convinced you could manipulate him you didn’t consider he was already doing that exact same thing to you. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Considering I’d found myself caught with the wrong person in the wrong place a few times too many on my last trip to Vegas, I should’ve been more careful. Of course, if he was a cop, I was in bigger trouble than I was before. If he wasn’t one, however, I was in even worse trouble, of an undefined variety. Why would a non-cop want to spirit me away anyway? My heart raced.

  What was I going to do? I didn’t know to which interrogation room the authorities had taken Ben after he’d chosen the exact wrong time to visit the potty (or so he said). Shana was still rolling around semiconscious in the arms of the hottie in the poker room. Frank was still in another state. I was on my own. I slid into the depths of a gardenia bush as my escort came marching back down the path, pocketing his phone and muttering obscenities under his breath while maintaining a poker face I’d kill for. Oops, I’d better not even be thinking that. The security at these casinos was so high tech I wouldn’t be half-surprised if they’d installed mind reading devices under the leaves. If my friend here had connections with the hidden cameras, he would soon know where I was hiding.

  I sucked in a deep breath and did an inventory of what I knew before I was discovered. My escort wasn’t wearing a badge but the Image wouldn’t have stood for any uniformed rent-a-cops running around under their tony roof anyway. Each casino had a culture, I reminded myself, and my ability to properly play security would hinge on my understanding of those cultures. For instance, there was a certain casino on the south end of The Strip where they could back a paddy wagon next to the craps tables and none of the patrons would bat an eye. Now, a serial killer could be playing twenty-one in the middle of the Mellagio and they would still send in an undercover security dude in a three-piece suit to lure him into the basement before they cuffed him so as to not offend the sensibilities of the high-priced clientele there.

  Suddenly I knew how to out my escort—I’d approach the concierge desk as a semihysterical woman and claim I was being stalked. He’d have to identify himself if he were on the level or disappear if he were up to something nefarious. I crept through the garden toward the opposite side that dumped out near the hotel’s reception desk. The only problem was the lagoon between here and there, with only the very public bridge as the connection. I tiptoed through the leaves and plastic rocks to the edge of the water, which, unfortunately for me, was the only thing real about the Image lobby. Damn.

  I glanced up and saw the bridge did have a handy if rather flimsy-looking catwalk underneath, I suppose for the maintenance department’s benefit. I’m not one for heights, and although this would mean dangling only about fifteen feet above the water, dangling was dangling. I considered scurrying across the bridge until I saw my escort, anger beginning to tighten his poker face, marching back, looking now into the gardens right where I’d been huddled. I steeled myself, grabbed the metal bar and heaved myself up onto the catwalk.

  And nearly broke my ankle.

  Unfortunately, Angel’s stilettos weren’t the best choice for cat walking. One heel was firmly wedged in between two slivers of metal, bending my ankle at an incredibly uncomfortable angle. Reluctantly, I slid my foot out and left the shoe, unbuckling and slipping the other off too. I placed it next to its pair, which I freed with a yank, in the hopes I would be able to come recover them soon. I guesstimated the distance from the top of the bridge to the stilettos and thought I might be able to reach them later on if I lay on the bridge and really stretched. Maybe if I got a hanger I could snag them by the straps. I backed up and fastened both buckles, trying not to let the sudden lurches in the catwalk make me too nauseous.

  I’d gotten about a fourth of the way across when I heard: “I’ll make sure she’s sorry when I find her.”

  My heart pounded. Since I doubted the security staff considered the catwalk a big hangout for their patrons, I thought I was probably relatively safe from video surveillance where I was. As long as I kept quiet. Famous last thoughts. I heard a metallic wheeze then a crack as the catwalk tilted dangerously south on the far end. I know I must have cried out when my shoes slid into the drink. But it really didn’t matter because a moment later came another crack and the cable holding the whole far-side of the walk gave way, and I suddenly knew what dangling really was. My toes brushed the water of the lagoon as my hands gripped the edge of the metal ramp. Since I am woefully behind on my bicep curls, like forty-one years behind, I knew I couldn’t hang on for long. I heard a commotion above me and heads popped over the side of the bridge, pointing and shouting, all except my escort, who smiled slowly and coldly.

  Just then I let go.

  The water was colder than I thought water should be in the tropics. After all, wasn’t this supposed to be a desert mirage where temperatures averaged around 120 degrees? I was in danger of dying of hypothermia. I made a mental note to mark that on my guest satisfaction survey. The water was a lot deeper than it should be in a fake oasis too, by the way—a big waste of the wet stuff in Vegas where every drop of water was prized. I nearly ran out of air by the time my feet hit the bottom and I could catapult myself back to the surface. My hand hit something above me. I felt flesh and cloth under my fingertips and for a moment I thought someone had dived in to rescue me. Until I came even with unblinking eyes and an eerie grin that upon closer inspection was actually a bloody gash that opened the stranger’s throat to his backbone.

  I screamed underwater and still don’t know how I made it to the surface without drowning. Proof that God has a sometimes cruel sense of humor, I guess, because if I’d had to be resuscitated and hospitalized, I might not have been subjected to the next crazy week.

  More screams met me as I gasped for air. “He’s bleeding!”

  I didn’t recognize any of the faces of those leaning over the bridge. Where was my mysterious escort?

  “Murderer!”

  “Is she okay?”

  “Somebody call an ambulance!” A senior citizen with slightly pink hair shrieked.

  “It’s too late for that, lady,” Trankosky deadpanned through the wad in his right cheek. “I think all we need is a body bag for him and a pair of handcuffs for her.”

  I slid sideways as Trankosky unloaded his tobacco wad into the water just inches away from my head and caught sight of my Angel heels sinking out of sight.

  Two

  “So how long have you known Keith Tasser?”

  “I don’t know anyone by that name,” I insisted, shivering under the paper-thin towel the good men of the Clark County Sheriff’s Department were kind enough to find me after I’d been paraded through the bullpen on the way—the long way, I later found out—to an interrogation room, accompanied by several suggestions that wet T-shirt contests be officially changed to wet silver lamé contests.

  “Come on, Miss Cooley, we know better.”

  “Detective Trankosky, I am certain you know most things better than I do, but this is the one case I have one over on you. I don’t know any Keiths, much less one named Tasser.”

  “He was a pro poker player who’s followed the World Series of Poker circuit this year.”

  “Alon
g with about ten thousand other people.”

  “An exaggeration, Miss Cooley. Not many are of your league. Keith was. We know.”

  “Good for Keith.”

  “We’ll find out the connection, you know.”

  “When you do, clue me in.”

  “Interesting you’d use the word ‘clue,’ isn’t it? Freudian, I’d say.”

  I rolled my eyes. He glared and deposited a wet wad of tobacco in the garbage can, that somehow was again near my left knee.

  I’d known a really good member of the CCSD, who was now gone, and a really bad one, who was now dead. This guy seemed to land somewhere in the middle, which might have been okay except he seemed like the type who didn’t like to hear anything but what he wanted to hear. And, nothing I said was what he wanted to hear.

  “We don’t like it when you lie, Miz Cooley,” Trankosky’s partner, Amanda Krane, put in, flipping her ponytail around her finger.

  “I’m not lying. Why would I lie?”

  “So you wouldn’t have to go to jail?” Trankosky offered.

  “I don’t want to go to jail.”

  They shared a look. “What do you know. She can be honest.”

  “Maybe,” Trankosky tempered.

  “Why did you try to duck out before your interview if you have nothing to hide?” Krane drilled me with a practiced hard look. I thought these guys played good cop, bad cop. Someone was forgetting to play the good cop part.

  I took a breath, “I didn’t duck out, I—”

  “Lieutenant.” A uniformed officer popped his head in the door. “You want to take a look at this.”

  Trankosky disappeared with a warning look at his partner. She asked me why I was in Las Vegas.

  “I’m playing in the World Series of Poker. It starts tomorrow. I mean, today.”

  “So you’re a pro.”

  The disgusted look on her face when she asked made me wonder for a moment what profession she thought I was in. “I am a professional advertising agency owner.”

  “No, I asked about being a poker pro.”

  “No, I’m not a pro. I just started playing a year ago.”

  “So, lots of people who started playing last week call themselves pros.”

  “Well, I’m not one of them. I’d never rely on making a living playing poker. It’s a sometimes lucrative hobby that I wouldn’t want to count on.”

  “But you have a website,” she said accusingly.

  “So do numismatists, mannequinists and alien hunters who do it for fun more than profit.”

  “You’re ranked as a pro on the Internet,” she pointed out. “Number forty-one in 2008.”

  News to me, but I’d been lucky enough to be in the money at a couple of semimajor tournaments when Frank and I had taken a weekend here and there. I’d qualified for the WSOP by winning a circuit event in Tunica. “You probably could find yourself ranked on the Internet as one of the best-dressed police officers in America too.” I pointed out. She slid me a hard but uncertain glance, not sure whether to take my comment as a compliment or a criticism. It was both, actually. Backhanded, to be exact. She wore an off-the-rack pantsuit that fit well but was as unoriginal as wallpaper in a doctor’s office. “The Internet has as much misinformation as good information,” I added.

  She opened her mouth to speak and shut it as the door behind me opened.

  “That video from the Image just answered my question,” Trankosky said as he returned to the room. “You scooted out because you and the perp were trying to escape.”

  “What perp?”

  “The guy you were hightailing it through the gardens with.”

  “I thought that guy was a cop.”

  Trankosky belly laughed so hard it almost made him appealing. “Wearing a thousand-dollar Italian suit. You thought he was a cop? Even cops on the take wouldn’t dress that nice. You watch too much TV.”

  I tried hard to swallow but couldn’t. “Who was he then?”

  “That’s what I’m supposed to ask you.”

  I shrugged. “I really thought he was a cop taking me to be interviewed. You told me someone would be coming to get me. I was hoping it wouldn’t be you and it wasn’t. Polar opposite, in fact.”

  Trankosky glowered, but more at the implications than my snide aside. I thought he might know the guy and was just fishing to see what I knew. “Did this man claim to be a cop?”

  “Not exactly. It didn’t dawn on me at first. We were already on our way when I realized he didn’t identify himself at all. That’s why I hid in the gardens.” They looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Okay, why would I hide from him if I was making my escape with him?”

  Trankosky looked at me like I was the village idiot. I might begin to believe him. “To hide the body.”

  “What body?” My voice rose an octave.

  “The body you were found floating around with.”

  “That—” I sucked in a deep breath. “That was just an accident.”

  “Now we are getting somewhere.” He nodded, his sharp dark blue eyes narrowing. “What happened—did poor old Keith just slip into the knife?”

  “Was he coming at you—attacking you—and you were forced to protect yourself?” Detective Krane encouraged.

  “What?” It took me a moment to realize what they were saying. Or rather, what they were trying to make me say. “No! I didn’t kill the guy. I’d never seen him before I saw him dead in the lagoon. I never saw the knife before either. Who was the guy who dropped the knife on my poker table anyway? Isn’t it your job to catch him?”

  “We thought you could help us with that one. Was that an accident too?” Eyebrow jog by Die Hard, sidelong look at partner.

  I forced myself to modulate my tone. “I have no idea what that was. You’ll have to ask the guy you obviously haven’t caught yet. What I meant to begin with was—the reason I was floating around in the water was an accident. I was climbing on the catwalk under the bridge when it broke and I fell in.” I paused, looking at their faces, seeing a lost cause. Hunger, fear, frustration and sleep deprivation morphed together into pure exhaustion. I shook my head. “Never mind, just throw me in jail.”

  They shared a knowing look punctuated by Krane’s smug grin. “No way. We know jail is exactly where you need to be to finish this out.”

  “What?”

  “When you’re ready to confess, give us a call,” she said, handing me two business cards. “Otherwise don’t leave town until we give you clearance and know we’ll be watching you every minute of every day.”

  “And good luck in the Main Event,” Trankosky added. “If you’re lucky, you’ll win. If we’re lucky, we’ll get to take all your money away and shut you down for good.”

  “Shut me down?”

  Another uniformed officer stuck his head in the door. “Detective, we just found out Belinda Cooley’s been in trouble here before.”

  “The good news is, I have a free armed bodyguard while in Vegas,” I told Frank brightly, handing him a wineglass of Perrier and brushing a kiss on his lips. He deepened the kiss for a moment but he couldn’t delay asking the next question for any longer.

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re assigning you a tail. They’re just trying to scare you. And the bad news is?” He breathed onto my neck as he caressed my earlobe with his tongue.

  “The bad news is, the Clark County cops think I participated in a conspiracy to off someone, I lost my cell phone to the cops, and my stay in Vegas has been extended indefinitely,” I answered quickly, turning away from him to glance out the window of our suite at the dancing lights and water of the fountains below and bracing for an onslaught of his protective fury.

  “Depending on your luck at cards, the latter might not be all bad,” Frank murmured, sliding his hands around my waist, surprising me as he ran the cold wineglass along my abdomen. “Depending on how long I can stay, the latter might have to move into the good news category.”

  I moved against him. “You’re not mad?�
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  “Of course I’m mad, but I don’t want to ruin the first time I’ve seen you in forty-one days, three hours and twelve minutes by yelling.”

  “Frank! You can’t think about sex at a time like this!”

  “Who said anything about thinking?”

  “You are such a man!”

  “Honey Bee.” Frank sighed and set down his glass. “Have I ever told you that you are the woman who most makes me want to take a drink and the same woman for whom I want to avoid taking a drink? You are a living dichotomy. In the same moment, no less!”

  Sometimes my undoing was what Frank said so introspectively and so revealingly. Sometimes it was the way he looked at me with those deep brown eyes. Sometimes it was both. Like tonight.

  I know I would have fallen victim to my weak will and raging libido if Ben and Shana hadn’t chosen that moment to walk through the door, Ben brandishing his key card at me. “I see you escaped, leaving us to fend for ourselves with the crime-fighting carrion.”

  I rolled my eyes to the ceiling and met Frank’s disappointed but resigned gaze. My melodramatic brother was, as usual, thinking only about himself. Or was he? He took Shana’s suitcase and walked it into the bedroom to the right. I drew my eyebrows together as I watched him return and put his hand on the small of Shana’s back to guide her to the couch. Hmm. What was up with this? It wasn’t unusual for Ben to have his hands on a sexy woman. It was unusual for him not to have plastered said hand onto a rounded body part, such as a breast or buttock. Shana was my best friend, and I had worked hard over the years to keep them away from each other, but, trust me, my feelings would have never entered into Ben’s equation of behavior if he wanted to have her. I knew Shana had the on-and-off hots for Ben depending on who she was dating at the time, but fortunately, they’d never been the same times Ben had been without a woman. Ben, currently, was without a woman—having ticked off his girlfriend of two weeks by sleeping with one of the flight attendants on their flight back from the Bahamas. Literally, on the flight. With the girlfriend on the same flight. They got kicked off after an emergency landing in Birmingham because the girlfriend drew blood. He’d gotten the flight attendant’s number. She was meeting him for drinks when we got back to Houston.