To Die For

Jake shook his head. "No. Reginald doesn't know and he can't find out. Regardless of your relations.h.i.+p with your uncle, he can't be trusted and I can't afford a leak."

"But you think I can be trusted? Aren't you taking a big chance, Agent McMillan-if that's even your real name?"

His expression s.h.i.+fted ever so slightly at her last statement, and Mallory knew she'd hit on the truth. She didn't know a single thing about the man in front of her, except that he claimed to be FBI and he was using an a.s.sumed name.

Jake stared at her for a moment, then sighed. "I'm taking a huge chance. One that could cost me my job and other things far more important, but I'm out of choices. I have to bust Silas Hebert. We both want the same thing - in a manner of speaking - it's just that my way is going to take a little longer. I need your help if this is going to work. And you need me to win if you're going to get the money you need for the tax note."

Mallory blinked in surprise. "How did you know about the tax note?"

"I heard it at J.T's Bar this evening. I figured nothing in this town was a secret for very long and if you were working the tournament, someone at the bar would know why. I had to know where you stood on all this before I could confide in you."

Mallory sighed. "The joys of living in a small town." She shook her head, then focused back on Jake. "What does the FBI want with Silas Hebert? Not that I care, mind you. I'd love to see him arrested for anything, but why now? Why this tournament?"

Jake's expression hardened and his mouth set in a thin line. "I can't tell you everything. h.e.l.l, I'm not supposed to tell you anything at all, but I will say this - the FBI wants to bust Silas for money laundering and counterfeiting. We have reason to believe he's been laundering counterfeit cash through casinos for years. Dealing is the only way I have a chance of getting my hands on cash directly from Silas. Once it's put into a casino system, we have no way of proving the funny money came from him."

Mallory felt as if she'd been hit by a truck. Money laundering? Counterfeiting? Surely it wasn't possible, but if what Jake said were true, it all made sense. And meant that the last time her father had gone to prison, he might have been telling the truth when he said he hadn't done the crime. A flood of emotions ran through her, and she struggled to maintain a normal expression. The last person she felt like discussing her embarra.s.sing family with was Jake.

She cleared her throat and tried to make her voice as controlled as possible. "So that's why you need Silas to win some of the hands. If he leaves too soon, you won't be able to collect more buy-in money. But if he still thinks he has a chance to win it back-"

" - He'll continue to play. Another dealer, Brad, overheard Silas this afternoon saying he might leave early. If he does, everything is over for me." Jake paced a couple of steps across the room, then back again. "We both want the same thing. My way is just more subtle. That's why I need you to turn down the volume, or whatever it takes to bring me to a more normal playing level."

Despite her shock at Jake's earlier revelation, Mallory couldn't hold back the smile that crept across her lips, "So you're finally willing to admit that I do have the ability to cool cards?"

Jake ran one hand through his hair and stared past her at the wall. "Yeah, all right, I'll definitely give you that something weird happens if you touch people. I don't know how, and quite frankly, I don't want to. I just need you to control it so I can do my job."

Mallory frowned and sank down on the edge of the bed. "Do you think it's that easy? Jesus Christ, Jake, if I could just turn it on and off like a faucet, my life wouldn't be the miserable wreck it usually is."

Jake blinked and stared at her. "You don't have any control? You mean to tell me you've made it to adulthood walking around as a ticking time bomb?"

"Basically, and I'd really appreciate it if you could skip the reminders. I don't need them. I live it. I know how it is."

Jake plopped down on an ottoman near the dresser. "Wow. That wasn't what I expected to hear at all. I thought you worked up the whammy, touched someone, and then it was all over but the crying."

"I wish. If it were so easy to direct, I would keep it from coming back on me." She let out a big sigh and shook her head. "Did they tell you at the bar that I have a master's degree in civil engineering?"

Jake stared at her in obvious surprise. "Then why in the world..."

"Don't I work for some big construction company in New Orleans constructing office buildings and churches?" She let out a single laugh. "Yeah, that would have been great. And don't think I didn't try, but when the insurance company refuses to underwrite a site as long as you're an employee, it cuts down a bit on job opportunities."

Jake stared at her a moment. "Oh, man, that sucks."

"And that is why I do demolition. It seems my natural ability lies in destroying things, not creating them."

Jake shook his head. "I don't even know what to say. I never thought about this being beyond your control. h.e.l.l, the truth is, I don't really want to think about it at all. It crosses into a territory I don't know anything about and have never believed in. It's a lot to take in at one time." He rubbed one hand across his jaw. "I guess I just went for the simpler reason for the demolition job. I figured since you were friends with the owner, you worked for him. At least, that's what it sounded like at the bar."

"Harry's more than a friend. My mother took off when I was thirteen. Dad was in prison again, one of his many visits. Reginald talked to Harry and his wife and they took me in and raised me as their own. No questions, no government handouts, nothing. Just like that, I had the home I could never have gotten from my own parents."

Jake gave her a curious look. "Why didn't Reginald keep you himself?"

"It's a difficult situation all the way around, but the truth of the matter was, Reginald didn't want me raised around his business. I guess he figured the only way I had a chance to break the criminal cycle was to go to a home where people made their money legitimately." She shrugged. "He's helped me along, you know, but he's always maintained somewhat of a distance from me. I think he worried that I would follow in my parents' footsteps."

"And all of that is why getting the money for the tax note is so important to you."

"My whole life depends on getting this money. Without Harry's business, I have no future."

"And without getting an exchange of cash, I can't bust Silas. Somehow we have to find a way to make them both work."

Mallory shook her head, wanting to help Jake bust Silas, now more than ever, but too afraid to gamble what was at stake. "It's too risky. Even if I tried to swing the table, Silas is too good. He'll capitalize at the right time and never go in for more than he can afford to lose on the downswing."

"I'm way better than an average player," Jake protested, "and I've been preparing for this a long time."

"Look, I'm not trying to insult you, but

Jake jumped off the ottoman and started pacing again, his face filled with frustration and indecision. "Look, our source indicated that Silas will be leaving the country after this tournament - for good. If we want any chance of taking him down, it has to be now."

Mallory heard the strain in his voice and knew this wasn't just a ploy from Jake to get her to help. "Maybe your source was mistaken. Can you check again?" His source had to be wrong. Everything couldn't come down to the next four days. It just couldn't.

Jake shook his head, the look on his face pure misery. "The source was my partner, Mark. He was undercover in Silas's organization and went missing about a month ago. If we don't bust Silas now, I may never know what happened to him. His wife and kid may never know what happened to him."

Mallory sucked in a breath. She couldn't imagine the thought of Scooter or Amy disappearing and her never knowing what had happened. Never being allowed to fully grieve. And as much as she loved them, neither of them was her spouse or a parent.

Her mind immediately flashed to Harry. He may not be her biological father, but he'd filled all the other requirements and those were the important ones. How would she feel if Harry was to disappear and she never knew why? If she and Thelma lived the rest of their lives not knowing?

"Are there other agents looking for your partner?"

Jake nodded. "Yeah, we've traced the location of every call he made to the agency and canva.s.sed those areas, but we've come up with nothing. We have agents placed at both of Silas's homes with listening devices, infrared cameras, the works. It's like he disappeared into thin air. I was hoping to find some leads during the tournament, you know, someplace to look that the FBI couldn't trace back to Silas, but he's barely talked at all and when he has, it's only been about cards."

"I'll help you," Mallory said, before she could change her mind, "but it has to be on my terms."

The relief on Jake's face was apparent. "All right. How do you want to do it?"

Mallory thought for a moment. "We can't really risk being caught together at the tournament. That kissing stunt you pulled today could easily have been seen by Reginald, and he would have thrown you out on your ear."

"Maybe," Jake agreed, and Mallory gave him a hard stare. "Okay," he said, "more like certainly, but we still have to find a way to s.h.i.+ft things. I can't keep throwing hands or Reginald's likely to notice the same as you."

"Okay. How long did the kiss take to wear off?"

"How would I know?"

"When bad things stopped happening. What's the last bit of bad luck you can remember?"

Jake considered this for a second. "My watch stopped at the casino, the heel came completely off my shoe at the bar, I got a flat tire on the way to the motel, and I cut myself shaving about thirty minutes ago - but I always do." He shrugged. "How do I know what's you versus regular life?"

Mallory smiled. "I'm h.e.l.l on watches. That's why I don't wear one. The shoe is odd enough that I'll take credit for that one too, and probably the tire. If you always cut yourself shaving, that one was probably you. But you might want to rethink using a regular razor until after the tournament is over - just in case."

"What in h.e.l.l have I gotten myself into?" Jake shook his head. "Lunch tomorrow is T-bones. Like I have any business around a steak knife."

"Maybe you should consider soup and salad." She did a quick mental calculation and thought about the options. "Okay, that's about four and a half hours, give or take."

Jake nodded in agreement.

"If we could arrange to meet tomorrow before the tournament starts - somewhere where we won't be seen - I can probably manage enough bad luck to last until lunch. After that it will appear that the table has s.h.i.+fted to you. Would that work?"

"It's going to have to," Jake said simply. He studied her for a moment, then finally spoke. "What exactly are you going to do to me?"

Mallory smiled. "I'm an engineer. We usually go with proven methods, so it looks like another kiss is in order. Think you can handle that?"

"That's fine," he said, the relief on his face so apparent that Mallory had to laugh.

"What in G.o.d's name did you think I was going to do to you?"

Jake shrugged and had the decency to look a bit embarra.s.sed. "I don't know. h.e.l.l, you people are far from what I consider normal. I have no idea what you do around here for fun."

"Mostly we kill stuff and mount it on our walls, but I don't think we'll have to take this that far."

Even though it had seemed like their conversation had taken forever, the night was just getting started when Mallory pulled away from Jake's motel. She should head home and do some thinking - G.o.d knows she had a lot to think about, a lot to work out in her mind, but for whatever reason, she felt like hanging out with a crowd of people.

And Mallory Devereaux didn't often crave the company of others.

She automatically turned her truck toward J.T's. It was the one place she could go where she felt almost normal, even if only for a couple of hours, and tonight the need to feel normal was almost overwhelming. A bunch of locals drinking beer and hustling out-of-towners over pool was just the fix she needed. Country music pumping over the sound system and women wearing too much makeup and not enough clothes. You had to love it. Plus, J.T. always had a stock of her brand of beer in plastic and no one made any moves to duck or avoid her as she walked through the bar, the way some people did when she was in town doing her weekly domestics-grocery shopping, post office.

As she stepped inside the bar, Mallory saw Amy sitting with her b.u.t.thole boyfriend, Patrick, at a table in the corner. Amy motioned for Mallory to join them, so she waved her hand at them and hoped she could get through the most basic of conversations without throttling Patrick.

The long-standing feud between the two of them was a result of the very first night they'd met a little over six months ago-when Mallory had caught Patrick propositioning a hooker at a bar in New Orleans and had gone straight to Amy with that information. Of course, the a.s.shole had played it off as a joke to her naive friend, but ever since then, the line was drawn. Patrick was a loser and a cad, and any time Amy had her back turned, Mallory inflicted her wrath on him.

If they hadn't been in the same master's program at the university, Mallory doubted seriously that Patrick would ever have gotten on Amy's radar. But no matter her efforts to separate her friend from the louse, Patrick had remained a fixture. For whatever reason, Amy refused to acknowledge the truth concerning her boyfriend, and until Amy was ready to face the facts, there wasn't a darn thing Mallory could do. In this one way, her friend reminded her entirely too much of herself.

Plastering a smile on her face, she took the final steps to Amy's table.

"Hi, Mallory." Amy greeted her with a huge smile as she approached. "Have a seat."

Mallory slid into a seat across the table from Patrick. He looked disgruntled but then what else was new? Patrick lived disgruntled. Until the entire world bowed down to Patrick's greatness, the man would remain a miserable b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

Which meant Mallory would pretend politeness while at the same time, ribbing the h.e.l.l out of the loser whenever an opportunity presented itself. "Hi, Patrick," she said, knowing that merely her greeting the man would irritate him. "Haven't seen you in a while." Thank the heavens.

Patrick barely glanced at her. "This place isn't exactly up to my standards, but it seems to fit yours perfectly."

"It used to."

Patrick sputtered, but nothing seemed to be forthcoming any time soon. Not wanting to watch the painful motions of the idiot trying to come up with a witty retort sometime in this century, Mallory ignored him and turned to Amy. "How was the rest of your day?"

Amy, who had been frowning at her boyfriend, turned to her with a smile. "I got rid of the guy with the ball cap by mid-afternoon. The one I told you about at lunch?"

Mallory nodded. "Thought all women were stupid. Yeah, I remember."

"He's from Louisiana," Patrick interjected. "He doesn't have a lot to go on."

Mallory looked at him and smiled. "Oh you mean like the women sitting at this table, for example? By the way, how's that master's calculus cla.s.s going this time around?" She turned back to Amy. "Anyway, you were saying?"

Amy lowered her eyes for a moment, a flush creeping over her face, then finally looked back at Mallory and took a breath. "He went all-in on three of a kind, when he knew I'd only taken one card and hadn't folded."

"Moron. Good thing he has a lot of money and a good attorney. He'd never be able to defend himself."

"What does he need an attorney for?" Patrick asked. "I thought this was a private poker tournament."

"Oh, Amy didn't tell you? This poker tournament is special. It's a festival of criminals. The guy Amy shut down this afternoon was the prime suspect in three murder investigations in the past five years - all were female - two were his wives." Okay, so she might have made that part up, but it was all in good fun.

Patrick looked at Mallory, then back at Amy, obviously waiting for Amy to laugh or otherwise indicate that Mallory was jerking him around but that signal was not going to come. "Amy? Is this true? You're dealing poker to a bunch of criminals?"

Amy stared down at the table. "Seem to be, yeah."

Patrick jumped up from the table and glared down at her. "What the h.e.l.l are you thinking? Getting involved with men like that - beating them at poker? Are you trying to get yourself killed? And what about me? I don't have anything at all to do with this cla.s.sless adventure of yours, and just being with you, I could be at risk."

"Not likely," Mallory interjected. "He only kills girls." She looked up at the red-faced Patrick and tilted her head to one side, studying him for a moment. "Well, maybe you should worry a little."

Patrick glared at Mallory. "I'm going to the bathroom," he said to Amy. "If it's even usable. Then we're blowing this h.e.l.lhole." He spun around and headed across the bar, knocking shoulders as he went.

Mallory shook her head as she watched him stalk away. "He'll be lucky if he makes it to the men's room without getting in a fight with the way he's walking." She turned back to Amy. "I'm sorry, Amy. I could have been nicer, I suppose, but he just rubs me the wrong way. I shouldn't have said anything about the tournament, though. It was wrong of me to put you in that position."

"He would have found out anyway. There was a reporter at the docks when I got off the boat this evening. Reginald's little showdown is going to be all over the newspapers tomorrow."

"Really? Wow, I never expected to see my uncle's picture in the paper unless it was directly above a `Wanted' declaration. Reginald must be fit to be tied with the news broadcasting how stupid he was to host such a fiasco."

Amy nodded. "He had a couple of the dishwashers make them leave the parking lot, but some of the attendants had already talked to them."

"Not smart if they want to keep their jobs."

"No," Amy agreed, then was silent. After several seconds, she let out a sigh. "I'm sorry about Patrick. It's not you, Mallory, and I know that. I think he just has so much society raising that he lacks social skills outside of his cla.s.s."

"Oh yeah, what cla.s.s is that? Pompous a.s.s?"

"He really is different when we're alone, I swear."

"Great, then as long as you two marry and move to Iceland, the whole relations.h.i.+p should be a raging success." She looked across the table at her clearly miserable friend. "C'mon, Amy. You know you can do better."

Amy placed a crumpled napkin on the table and rose from her chair. "Actually, I can't. I guess I better go to the restroom before I leave."

Mallory frowned but knew better than to waste her time arguing. "Did you ride in with him? I can give you a lift if you want to stay."

Amy shook her head. "We met here, so I've got my own car, but I'm really tired and I need to get some rest before tomorrow." She turned from the table and began to thread her way through the crowded bar.

Mallory slumped back in her chair, wanting so desperately to help her friend but not having any idea what to do.

"You have a run-in with Mr. Personality again?" Scooter asked as he slid into an empty chair next to her.

"Oh, yeah. Did you expect any less?"

"No, but I don't get it-why does Amy keep dating that guy?"