once said of her that she was just like the city she grew up in. A chameleon, a changeling, an impostor.
Yes, true. Survival demanded it.
“You checked on the opening bet. Played slow. What do you have?” he said in a low whisper.
He was searching, hoping to see something. All night she’d been building the fake tell for him to see. Three times she’d bluffed and when she did, she’d pulled her bottom lip in between her teeth and chewed lightly on it. If he picked that up, he would jump all over her.
She pulled her lip in and gnawed away.
Beth could see nearly all the casinos from where she sat and she was outlawed from just about every one of them. Because of her card counting days, she was forced to use disguises when she did attempt entry. Now she mostly played in high-stakes private games like this one.
“You didn’t hit a set, did you?” he teased.
She didn’t respond.
The city below was laced with traffic, like a vast tangle of white and red snakes, and in the darkening sky to the east planes stacked up like a string of bobbing Chinese lanterns as they descended on McCarran International Airport.
Her eyes rested, she returned her focus to the game.
This twenty-three-hour marathon of Texas Hold ’Em was nearing its denouement. She glanced to her left at the man she was heads-up with: black shaggy hair, an angled face and whiskey-colored eyes. She could smell blood, see it in his play, the faltering steps of a confused and tiring animal.
She knew her adversary was a member of a sophisticated cheating crew, but tonight he was freelancing.
The owner of this house was a friend of hers and knew something was going on between her and the man she was now heads-up with. The man was an addicted gambler who believed that, with or without cheating, he could take down anyone, especially a woman.
Beth knew a lot more about him than she had told her friend. She knew he needed a big score to service his debts.
She’d set the bait and her prey was ready to walk into the trap. Just you and me, babe.
She gave him a stone-cold stare and worked her lip.
The buy-in for this winner-take-all game had been fifty thousand. The quarter-mil take would pay the bills for a long time, but Beth had another use for her money.
She had two income streams, both intermittent. Playing cards for herself, and getting paid to bust cheating crews on behalf of those who’d been taken by them. But this particular game was strictly personal.
The man she was about to crush belonged to one of the largest and most sophisticated cheating crews working the international circuit, a crew that had started twenty years ago in Vegas. The one her father had once belonged to before he was murdered and dumped in a garbage bin sixteen years ago.
The crew was directed and financed by a secret backer who was either her father’s killer, or knew that killer’s identity. To find out who the backer was she had to flip one of his people. She’d chosen carefully.
She knew the one she’d chosen as the weak link was mortgaged to the hilt, his sources tapped out and in deep hock to loan sharks. He’d borrowed heavily for this last stand and she was going to snatch the prize away from him.
Once she had him at her mercy, she’d make him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
He did as she expected and came over the top of her bet with an all-in push. If she followed him in and won, it would be over.
A dog without tricks, she thought, as she followed his all-in, much to his surprise and chagrin.
When she laid down her set, she said, “You’re right, I do have a pair of fours, and one extra.”
He was stunned. “You limped in, then slow-played when you had them from the get-go?” He seemed amazed and angered that someone would do that.
“It’s called a winning tactic.”
He stared at her cards, his face twisted in bitter fury mixed with that sick feeling all gamblers know so well. The shock of falling into total ruin.
“I’ve had crap all damn day,” he protested, throwing his cards across the table.
“Maybe it’s not the cards,” she said. “Maybe it’s how you play them.”
She could see the rage in his eyes. He wanted to lunge across the table and grab her by the throat, but the other men in the room were her friends on the poker circuit, not his. He continued venting his anger verbally.
At that moment Beth got yet another buzz from her PDA, at least the fifth or sixth since the game had started. She’d been ignoring the outside world’s attempts to contact her, but now that the game was over she reached in her black shoulder bag, glanced at the message and swore under her breath.
It was the last person on earth she wanted a message from right now—Delphi, her contact with Oracle.
She interrupted her opponent’s verbal tirade. “Sorry, I’ll have to catch your trash talk on another day.”
In the wake of his swearing and the laughter from the other men at the table, Beth slipped out through the glass doors onto the balcony.
She read and reread the text message with consternation and disbelief. This was incredibly bad timing. She was being mission-tasked and Delphi wanted her at the Oracle town house in Virginia ASAP. In the past, she’d been assigned missions that were analysis-based, math and statistics being her area of expertise. This sounded very different. And agents were almost never summoned to the Virginia office.
Why now? Why today?
Using her thumbs like little pistons, she sent a message back requesting a replacement because she was involved in her own urgent business. She could have called Delphi and spoken to her, but not here.
A negative reply returned instantly. Code red. That meant critical and it meant now.
For the first time in her career, Bethany seriously considered the ramifications of refusing an assignment.
She knew if she was working directly for the Feds, NSA or CIA the problem would have been simple. Take the assignment or resign.
But Oracle agents worked for an intelligence agency that existed without mandate or congressional oversight. It didn’t show up on any traditional radar, and Beth wasn’t sure what the protocol was for refusing a mission.
I’m not going to Virginia, she thought. Not now. I’ll call in later, when I’m home. She decided that if Allison Gracelyn was available, she’d talk to her. She’d understand. Allison worked with Oracle, too, and she was the one person who could get Bethany released from the assignment.
She went back inside. The men were drinking cognac and smoking cigars, except for her nemesis. He had made a hasty and bitter departure. She’d find him later with her proposition.
“Some of us are better losers than others,” Manny Kirk, the owner of the house and
