a nicely fitted jacket and black jeans. He hadn’t been risking big money, but he had played as if he knew something about the game, and he’d been playing the same money since she first noticed him. And he seemed to be watching for more than just the roll of the dice.
He lifted his glass to her and looked over at the dealer as he tossed out two hundred-dollar chips. “Hard ten for me and for the roller,” he said.
“You don’t need to—” she began.
“Jessy, just roll, sweetie,” Coot called to her, then turned to the croupier as he picked up two chips himself. “My money is on the little lady. Throw this on the hard ten, one for me, one for her, please.”
His hundreds went down.
More chips were thrown down on the hard ten, plenty of them for her, and she knew that she was blushing. “Thanks,” she murmured, looking at the man who had started it all. The pressure was really on now. A so-called “hard” bet paid really well.
But there was a lot of money to be lost if she failed.
Her handsome benefactor said, “Don’t worry. It’s going to be a hard ten. And if it’s not, it’s all right. I never put down what I can’t afford to lose.”
She wished she could say the same thing. But at this point, she was desperate. If she didn’t come up with the money, she couldn’t pay to keep Timothy in the home. She could see Mr. Hoskins’ face now, as he calmly told her, “I’m sorry, Miss Sparhawk, but there’s nothing we can do. I’ve been as patient as I can, but if I don’t have that three thousand dollars by tomorrow morning, you’ll have to find another facility.”
She hated Hoskins. He was a thin-lipped, nose-in-the-air jerk, but he only ran the Hawthorne Home; he wasn’t the one who spent time with Tim. And Tim loved Jimmy Britin, the orderly, and Liz Freeze, his nurse. And Dr. Joe, who was a wonderful man, who worked at the home in order to be able to afford to donate his time at several local shelters.
A hard ten. If she rolled a hard ten, two fives, she made not just her own hundred-dollar bet, but…ten times that hundred. Plenty of money to keep Timothy where he needed to be.
She swallowed hard and rolled the dice.
“Hard ten, hard ten!” It became a chant.
She had never seen dice roll for so long on a craps table. A four and a three…and groans went around the table, because a seven meant that she would crap out. But the dice were still rolling….
A five and a three.
A five and a two.
A five and…
A five. A hard ten.
The screaming and shouting was deafening. Hands clapping, high fives all around. She wasn’t sure who picked her up and swung her around, but she didn’t protest that any more than she protested the hugs and backslaps that came her way, or even Coot’s enthusiastic kiss on her cheek. She was simply too stunned.
The one man who didn’t grab her or go insane was the tall, dark-haired stranger. He just watched her, pleased, and yet somehow grave.
Jessy couldn’t believe the number of chips coming her way.
“I’m cashing in,” she told the dealer.
He gave her an odd look. “You’re still rolling,” he reminded her. “If you leave, these folks will lynch me. Don’t pass the roll. Go until you crap out.”
She glanced to the side, looking for the dark-haired stranger.
He was gone; of course. He wasn’t rolling. Still, she missed him. And she had the oddest feeling that things weren’t going to go right, now that he was gone. And she was right, because it wasn’t long until she crapped out. Still, as she collected her chips, which were still worth far more than the three thousand dollars she needed, everyone regaled her as if she were a celebrity. She thanked them, then turned, eager to escape as quickly as possible.
That was when the huge man plowed into her.
Huge. Bodyguard huge. He was bald and built like a wall of solid rock. His eyes were hazel and streaked with red.
“Hey!” Coot yelled indignantly.
It didn’t stop the man, who hit her so hard that he knocked her flat onto the craps table, then fell on top of her.
She was pinned, and when she tried to budge his weight, she couldn’t. She started to ask the onlookers for assistance, but her words were cut short by someone’s shrill, hysterical scream.
And then she felt the blood trickling down on her as she struggled under the man’s weight.
His dead weight…
His glazed and frozen eyes stared at her, and then his mouth moved.
He spoke one word.
“Indigo.”
And then his lips stopped moving and something, some light, went out in his eyes.
She tried to twist out from beneath him, and that was when she saw the knife sticking out of his back, saw the blood, and began to scream herself.
Dillon Wolf heard the screams just seconds after he had stepped into the special “high-roller” section of the casino. He spun around, returning at a breakneck speed, and arrived back at the craps table just as casino security descended on it. He saw the beautiful redhead he’d staked earlier, desperately trying to push the weight of the huge man off her, and he saw the man’s face almost as quickly.
Tanner Green. Hell.
He’d spent most of the night keeping track of who was coming and going, trying to get a handle on who was frequenting the new casino, and the last damn thing he’d imagined was Green turning up dead. The man was a pro. Had been a pro. Not only that, before rejoining the world, he’d worked as a mercenary; there was no way in hell he should have been taken by surprise by anyone. But a knife in the back? That pretty much screamed surprise.
The fact that the police would want the body left in situ didn’t prevent him from diving in to help the redhead free herself as quickly as possible.
“Hey, hey!” one of the security officers said, hurrying forward, but he ignored the man.
“Thank you,” the redhead whispered as he shifted her free of the corpse and she managed to get back on her feet. For a moment, though, her eyes were on his. Huge. A deep, radiant blue, like a cloudless sky. Those eyes had first met his just a few minutes earlier as she rolled the dice. Now he also noticed that she smelled good, not to mention that she felt good against him.
As soon as he saw that she was steady, he delved into his pocket for his ID, presenting it to the security officer.
“Dillon Wolf, licensed P.I.,” he said. “Have the police been called?”
“The 911 has gone in, they’ll be here momentarily,” the security officer said. Two of the men accompanying him had already begun to form an invisible ring around the
