To Die For

Reginald shrugged. "Maybe he was telling the truth that he didn't know. Or maybe he was in it up to his neck, and he's the one who took the fall. Doesn't matter. He would have involved himself anyway. He wasn't a good man, Mallory. And he was never gonna be."

Mallory thought about Reginald's words for a moment, then nodded. "But why the curse? If Silas loved my mother, why would he curse her?"

Reginald blew out a breath and shook his head. "The line between love and hate is a fine one, but Silas's feelings for your mother were more obsession than love and ultimately, that's what scared her away."

"Then why does Silas hate you so much? I mean, it was her decision to leave him, right?"

Reginald tapped his fingers on his desk. "Not exactly. You see, I knew your mother would never have left Silas on her own."

"So you helped."

"Yeah, I helped. I found out Silas was working for a small-time mob boss out of New Orleans, racketeering, drug running... I put the cops onto him and the charges stuck. Silas never had proof, but he knew I had turned him in. No one else but your mother and I knew what he was into."

"So Silas went to jail and my mother got away," Mallory said.

"I convinced her to go off to college, even footed the bill by working two jobs, but in the end it didn't do much good."

"She traded Silas for my father."

Reginald nodded. "And I had to admit that the real problem was my sister, not the men she was with. When she came up pregnant with you, Silas had just been released and was under the impression that she'd waited for him. When she told Silas that she was going to marry your father, he lost it. Blamed the pregnancy for forcing her into marriage. Blamed me for her turning to another man."

Mallory shook her head, incredulous. "So he cursed my mother and me, and set up my father to go to prison. It's too much to believe."

"It's incredibly messed up is what it is," Reginald said, his voice beginning to rise. "In the end, I didn't give a d.a.m.n about the two of them. They made their beds." He looked her straight in the eye. "I looked for you, Mallory, I swear it. Spent two years and G.o.d knows how much money trying to find you before it was too late, but I never turned up a thing. To this day, I still don't know where she went or what she did for money. By the time she came back..."

"It was too late to reverse the curse," Mallory finished.

"I'm sorry, Mallory. Sorry for everything."

"My own mother," Mallory said, too numb to feel anything at all. "How could she?"

"My sister was always a selfish person. Even as a little girl I knew she'd never be a good wife or mother. Everything was for her. Your father was the same way, so I guess that's why their relations.h.i.+p worked." He looked her straight in the eyes. "What I do know is that none of this is of your making. You never deserved them as parents, and they sure as h.e.l.l didn't deserve you as a child. You were better than them, Mallory, and it was apparent from the beginning."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Reginald dropped his gaze down to the desk. "Why? So you'd know your own mother despised you and blamed you for her ruined life even though it was all of her own making? So you'd be constantly aware that your life was overshadowed by something you didn't ask for and couldn't control?"

He looked back up at her and shook his head. "I'm sorry, Mallory, but I couldn't do it. Harry and Thelma did a fine job raising you. You're my pride and joy even though we've had to maintain distance all these years because of the way I do business."

"Like the distance you maintain with Glenda?"

Reginald looked at her in surprise.

"Jake and I kinda came across her two nights ago when we were investigating a lead on his case," Mallory explained. "She told me about the two of you."

"Yeah, well," Reginald looked down at his desk and thumped his knuckles on the surface. "Glenda's the whole reason behind me going legit. I was almost there before this bulls.h.i.+t with the ATF came up. If I don't get the money to pay back the loan shark, I'll never be able to turn things around."

Mallory shook her head. "That's not going to happen. This is all going to work out right, I feel it in my bones." She looked over at her uncle and smiled. "And thank you, for everything you've done for me. If I didn't think it would break your watch or sprain your wrist, I'd hug you right now."

Reginald rose from the desk and stepped around in front of her, his eyes misty. He reached down and pulled her up to him, circling her shoulders with his arms and hugging her tight. "It's worth the risk."

Mallory made it back to the casino just in time to get everyone to take a much-needed break. Amy's face was flushed with aggravation, Jake's with frustration. Scooter stood posed at the top of a ladder, drilling a tiny hole in the ceiling and apparently oblivious to the scene beneath him.

"It's not going to work," Amy said. "He's not going to be able to learn all this in"-she looked down at her watch-"seven hours."

"Well?" Mallory looked over at Jake.

He ran one hand through his hair and paced a couple of steps, then turned and paced back to face her. "It's too much information. I'm not doubting her work - she's proven it will fly, but I don't think I can commit it all to memory before the tournament starts again."

Mallory blew out a breath and looked at Amy. "Are there any shortcuts? Anything smaller you can teach him to help, not necessarily the entire package?"

Amy shook her head. "It just doesn't work that way. I narrowed this down to the simplest method possible. But even the simplest method is going to be complicated. We just have to keep working and hope for the best. Maybe enough of it will sink in so that it will give him an edge."

Mallory nodded. "I'll get you both some coffee. Okay?"

"That would be

By the time Mallory got back with two huge mugs of coffee, Reginald had emerged from his office to supervise Scooter's camera work. Mallory set the two mugs on the card table and went to see Scooter's handiwork firsthand.

"What do you think?" she asked her neighbor. "Will it give you enough of an angle to get anything?"

Scooter looked down from the ladder and nodded. "About as good as I thought. Probably three out of ten times if we're lucky."

Reginald looked from the tiny hole in the ceiling to the card table. "Anything to help at this point." He nodded toward Amy and Jake. "I don't think that's going so well," he said to Mallory, keeping his voice low.

She looked over at the table. "I agree that optimism is at an all-time low at the moment."

Amy dealt the last card for Jake's hand and looked at him. "Three of spades. Stay or fold?"

Jake studied his cards, turned face up for the sake of the training, his brow wrinkled in concentration. "Fold?"

Amy looked at him. "Are you sure?"

Jake blew out a breath. "No. But that's what I'm going with."

Scooter climbed down from the ladder and shook his head. "Man, you're not even close. You're down what... two-thirds of the deck and over eighty percent of the face cards have been played? That puts you at a 472 by Amy's counting method, which makes you ripe for an inside straight. You should stay and raise."

Amy sucked in a breath and stared at Scooter in amazement. "Oh, my G.o.d, that's right."

Mallory whipped around to look at her neighbor. "Scooter? How in G.o.d's name did you figure that out?"

Scooter pulled a larger drill bit out of his toolbox and began to replace the current one on his drill, then shrugged. "It just makes sense. Those numbers Amy's using are like measurements - like building stuff. They all come back around to the same thing eventually." He started up the ladder again and began to drill a second hole, cleverly disguised by a chandelier.

Mallory stared after Scooter for a moment, then turned to look at the others, all looking at Scooter with varying degrees of disbelief. The total ridiculousness of the situation sank in and Mallory started to chuckle.

"I don't believe it," Jake said. "For G.o.d's sake, the man has his s.h.i.+rt on inside out."

Which only made Mallory laugh harder.

"I don't see what you think is so funny," Jake said. "It doesn't do us a d.a.m.n bit of good if Scooter understands Amy's method. He's not the dealer."

"No, he's not a dealer," Mallory said as she flopped into a chair and wiped the tears away from her eyes. "But there's nothing to stop us from putting a camera on your hand and having Scooter watching it and calling the shots."

Jake stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. "Wouldn't work. How would he get the information to me?"

"We were going to work out some method of communication for the thirty percent we were hoping to gain, anyway. We'll just need something more elaborate than hand signals from across the room. You're the federal agent. Surely you can come up with some fancy electronics."

"I can hardly wear an earpiece while dealing," Jake objected. "I think Silas would catch on to that."

Mallory shrugged. "So I'll wear one. Don't tell me the FBI doesn't have something that will pa.s.s as earrings. We'll work out a series of signals - something that Silas won't be able to get. I'll take the information from Scooter and pa.s.s it to you during play."

Scooter climbed down from the ladder again and scratched his head. "Does that mean I can't drink beer tomorrow if I'm doing all this numbers stuff?"

Reginald let out a huge guffaw and slapped the other man on the back, moving him about six inches. "Don't worry about it, boy. You help Jake win this tournament and I'll see to it that you never worry about beer again."

"Even Silas Hebert couldn't manufacture enough money to keep Scooter in beer," Mallory declared.

"At the rate my casino business was increasing before all this mess, I won't have to manufacture anything," Reginald said. "I'll be able to run free and clear. Legally."

Mallory looked at her uncle and smiled. "First time for everything, right?"

It was barely dawn when Jake finished fixing Mallory's earring with the earpiece. "You're going to need to wear your hair down," he said. "This is good, but it's not perfect. The earring covers most of the device, but I still have this clear piece that I have to place inside your ear. Otherwise, you'll never hear enough of anything to be of any use.

Mallory nodded and slipped the large gold disk into her ear, then wrapped the thin clear wire around the bottom of her lobe and placed the end piece into her ear. She signaled to Jake that she was ready, and he walked out of Reginald's office with a radio.

She waited for a moment, but nothing came through, no voice, no static, nothing. She was just about to call for Jake when she heard him say, "So what kind of underwear are you wearing right now?"

"A thin string of purple lace." May as well give him something to think over.

There was a pause on the other end, then finally the next question came. "Are all your panties flimsy and lacy?"

She laughed and called out down the hall, "Yes, except my Sunday pair. They're a very respectable white cotton."

Noticing a movement to her side, she looked over and found Reginald standing in the doorway to the storeroom. "I don't think I even want to know the other side of that conversation. I take it the earpiece is working."

"Loud and clear."

Jake rounded the corner and gave her a wave. "Did you get that?"

"Yeah, didn't you hear my answer? I yelled it down the hall."

Jake shook his head and fiddled with a k.n.o.b on the radio. "No, I was in the lobby."

"You were in the lobby when you spoke to me? That's incredible."

Reginald gave Mallory a thump on her back. "Yeah, and you were busy yelling about your undergarments to everyone in a hundred-foot radius." He walked back into the storeroom laughing as he walked.

Jake grinned. "If it makes you feel any better, I don't think your panties or lack thereof are a laughing matter at all."

"Really?" Mallory gave him a s.e.xy smile. "That's good to hear since I was thinking of giving you a glimpse of that purple lace to signal 'all-in."'

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Jake pulled out the cards from the shelf beneath the poker table and began to stack them in the shoe. It was a little early yet, but the other dealers were starting to filter into the room. The players wouldn't be far behind. He was just stacking his chips on the side when he looked up and saw Brad standing at his table.

"It's going down today," Brad said. "Reginald is taking the boat in a big sweeping circle. The actual takedown will happen when we're still offsh.o.r.e in order to eliminate the possibility of some getting away on land, but we'll arrive at the docks within fifteen minutes of the arrests. Mid-afternoon is all you've got to get a money exchange. We'll start the takedown soon after the afternoon break."

Jake nodded. "I appreciate you telling me."

Brad shrugged. "Yeah, well, I asked my uncle about Silas. He gave me an earful and none of it pleasant. Even though what I'm dealing with is a bigger problem, if we could take one more like him off the streets that would be a good thing."

"No disagreement there. I just want this over. Get Silas behind bars once and for all. I'm sure you want the same."

"Yeah, we've got the evidence we need, but it's no small feat to take these guys. The only option for getting them all is doing it at the same time or the rest will run. And the only safe way to get them at the same time is on this boat, where we can be certain they're not carrying weapons.

Jake laughed. "Yeah, the whole thing - the boat, the metal detectors - was really a genius move considering the scope of your arrest. I did have one question, though. What about the players who were cut earlier in the week?"

"The scope of the takedown is really only six people. A lot of them we were watching for an indication of involvement, just in case, and we figured if we put them all in one place, they'd talk. If someone we were watching got cut from the tournament early, we would have had agents on him."

"I see," Jake said. "So this whole setup was as much for the spying as the takedown. Makes perfect sense now that I know the situation, but G.o.d, I'm definitely ready to get home. Louisiana is one strange place."

Now Brad laughed. "You got that right. h.e.l.l, if I hadn't lived here my whole life, I wouldn't believe the half of what goes on down in these bayous."

Jake stared at Brad. "I thought you lived in New England."

"h.e.l.l, no. You think I'm faking this accent? Ain't n.o.body that good an actor."

"But you met Mark at a party..."

Brad gave him a curious look. "Yeah, corporate party in New Orleans. That's where he and Janine lived at the time."

Jake swore his heart stopped beating for a moment. "Mark's from New Orleans?"

"Nah, somewhere in the Midwest, I believe, but he did a rookie stint in New Orleans as a cop, waiting for the FBI deal to come through. That's where he met Janine." He stared at Jake. "You didn't know?"

Jake shook his head and stared down at the table, trying to clear the jumble of thoughts that raged within. It wasn't possible, was it? Could he really have worked with Mark for over ten years and not known what his partner was involved in? But if he were innocent, why hadn't he ever told Jake about being a New Orleans cop? In fact, not once, in all the time Jake had known him, could he remember Mark ever mentioning Louisiana at all.

It was an awful thought, but it would explain so much-why Mark kept trying to file the case away as useless and unsolvable, why Silas managed to slip through their fingers on every setup, why Mark had insisted that it be he rather than Jake who secured a job with Silas's crew.

Jake looked up at Brad. "I need to know exactly when you saw Mark in the casino in New Orleans."