rubbed a hand over his burning eyes and turned away from the window, and from the mesmerizing sway of eucalyptus branches. Sinking onto the couch, he reached for the remote, thumbed it off Mute and began to click his way through ESPN’s late-night offerings, rejecting an old George Foreman fight, some pro billiards and a NASCAR documentary before settling on a Texas Hold ’em poker tournament. Maybe, he thought, if he could get into the strategy of the game it would take his mind off the damn case.
He’d watched enough poker to know this wasn’t a current tournament, more likely one from a few years back. He was familiar with some of the players, particularly the more colorful ones. Others, not so much. The commentators seemed to be excited by this event because of the fact that a woman had made it to the final table, something that evidently had been almost unprecedented back then. It didn’t hurt any that the woman in question was young, blond and cute, either. Billie Farrell, her name was, and Holt thought he’d probably seen her play before. Anyway, she looked familiar to him.
Damn, but she looks familiar…
He felt an odd prickling on the back of his neck. Leaning closer, he stared intently at the TV screen, impatient with the camera when it cut to one of the other players at the table, tapping his fingers on the remote until it came back to the one face he wanted to see.
She was wearing dark glasses, as so many of the players did, to hide their eyes and not give anything away to steely-eyed opponents. She had short, tousled blond hair, cut in layers, not quite straight, not really curly, either. An intriguingly shaped mouth and delicately pointed chin, like a child’s.
He really needed to see her eyes.
Take off your glasses, dammit.
He got up abruptly and crossed to the dining room table that served as his desk, half a foot deep now in manila file folders and stacks of papers he hadn’t gotten around to putting in files yet. Nevertheless, he didn’t have any trouble finding the one he wanted. He carried it back to the couch, sat, opened the file and took out a photograph. It was a picture of a fourteen-year-old girl, computer-aged twenty years. He didn’t look at the photograph—he didn’t have to, because it was etched in his memory—but simply held it while he stared at the face of the poker player known as Billie Farrell.
He wasn’t conscious of feeling anything, not shock or excitement or anything in particular. Didn’t realize until he fumbled around for his cell phone and had to try to punch the buttons that his hands were shaking.
It took him a couple of attempts, but he got the one he wanted. Listened to it ring somewhere in the Texas Hill Country while he stared at the TV screen with hot, narrowed eyes. When an answering machine picked up, he disconnected, then dialed the number again. This time a man’s voice answered. Swearing.
“Okay, this better be an announcement of the Second Coming, or else I just won the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes. Which is it?”
“Tony. It’s me, Holt.”
“Dude. D’you know what time it is?”
“Yeah. Listen, is Brooke there?”
“Of course she’s here. She’s asleep, what did you expect? At least, she was—” There was a sharp intake of breath. “Wait. It’s Brenna, right? God, don’t tell me. You found her? Is she—she’s not—hey, Brooke. Baby, wake up. It’s Holt. He’s found—”
“Maybe,” Holt interrupted. “I don’t know. I need Brooke—”
“I’m here.” Brooke’s voice was breathy with sleep, and shaky.
“Okay.” Holt took a breath. Told himself to be calm. “I need you to turn on your television. ESPN. Okay?”
“Okay.” Her voice was hushed but alert. She’d been married to a deputy sheriff once upon a time, so Holt figured maybe getting phone calls in the middle of the night wasn’t all that unusual for her.
“I don’t know which channel,” he told her. “Just keep clicking until you find the poker tournament.”
After a long pause, she muttered, “Okay, got it.”
“Watch for her—the woman player. Okay, there she is. Tell me if—”
He didn’t get the rest of it out. There was a gasp, and then a whispered, “Oh, God.”
He felt himself go still, and yet inside he was vibrating like a plucked guitar string. “Is it her? Is it Brenna?”
He heard a sniff, and when she spoke in a muffled voice he knew Brooke was crying. “Oh, God, I don’t know. It could be, but she was just a little girl when she…It’s been so long. I’m not sure. I can’t see her eyes! If I could just see her eyes…” And then, angrily, “Why doesn’t she take off the damn glasses!”
Holt held the phone and listened to soft scufflings and some masculine murmurs of comfort while he waited, eyes closed, heart hammering. After a moment Tony’s voice came again, gruff with emotion.
“Hey, man, I’m sorry. She can’t tell for sure. It’s been what—eighteen years? She says it might be her. But you’re gonna go check her out, right?”
“Yeah,” Holt said, “I’m gonna go check her out.” He picked up the remote and clicked off the set.
An hour later he was in his car on I-15, heading east toward the rising sun and the bright lights of Las Vegas.
He hit the jackpot right off the bat. The casino manager at the Rio was new, but Holt found a couple of dealers who’d been around awhile, and had actually worked the poker tournament he’d been watching on ESPN reruns.
Although, even if they hadn’t, they would have remembered Billie Farrell.
“Sure, I remember her. Cute kid. Pretty good poker player, too,” Jimmy Nguyn said as he lit up a cigarette and politely blew the smoke over his shoulder, away from Holt and the other dealer. Jimmy was a guy in his late thirties with a Vietnamese name and an American-size body—five-eleven or so and hefty. He had a cardsharp’s hands, though—big and long boned, with nimble, tapered fingers. He wore a pencil-thin moustache and his hair slicked down and looked like something out of a 1930s gangster flick.
The other dealer snorted and moved upwind of the smoker. She was a tall, angular woman with sun-damaged skin and long blond hair she wore pulled up in an off-center ponytail. She’d told Holt her name was Cricket. Now she popped a piece of chewing gum in her mouth, tossed the ponytail over her shoulder and said, “Come on, Jimmy, she was more than ‘pretty good.’” She looked over at Holt. “She had talent, that one, plus charisma up the wazoo. That year, the one you’re talking about? Came this close to winning a bracelet. Woulda been a big star in the circuit, if she’d stuck around.”
“Stuck around?” Holt felt his stomach go hollow.
Cricket shook her head. “Quit right after that tournament you saw, didn’t she, Jimmy? That’s the way I remember it, anyway. I guess it was…I don’t know…pretty hard for her to tough it out, after what happened.”
“What did happen?” Holt kept his voice low, hiding the despair that was rolling over him like a bank of cold Pacific fog.
She
