Hooper, Kay - [Hagen 09] (11 page)

Jennifer heard a soft laugh escape her throat in a sound
that held no humor. "What am I going to do, Mama?" she
murmured. "What am I going to do now?"

* * *

It was sheer luck Dane didn't get stopped by the highway
patrol on his way back to the hotel. He handled the car with an
expert driver's automatic awareness, but made no effort to leash
the Ferrari's powerful engine. More than one speed limit sign
quivered in the wake of his passing, and more than one other driver
felt his own vehicle lean toward the shoulder of the road as if
cringing away from the low-slung white fury rocketing by.

Dane slowed the car at last when he reached the hotel.
Moments later, he was up in his suite with no memory of having parked
the car or walked through the lobby. He paced without thought, and
when the phone rang minutes or hours later, he picked it up and
answered automatically.

"Hello?"

"Dane, it's Raven." Her innately cheerful
voice was brisk. "Have you got anything yet?"

He pondered the question for a moment, until the
submerged, professional part of him fought its way to the surface of
his numb mind. "Something," he said without inflection,
remembering what Skye had found out last night from Brady Seton. "But
it may be only half the story. I'd rather not explain until I know
for sure. A few days. I think."

There was a pause, and then Raven said, "Are you
all right? You sound . . . very tired."

"I'll be all right," he said, and wondered how
long it would be before that statement became true. If it ever did.
"Kelly's a night owl; he likes to play until dawn."

"If you say so." She didn't really sound
convinced. "I wanted to remind you. If you need more money –
"

"No. I can't use your money now, Raven. I'll wire
it back first thing in the morning."

"What? Dane, this whole thing was my idea, my
problem. You can't bet your own money when you're helping me!"

He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "It's
more than that now. It became personal to me. I have my reasons, and
I'll tell you about them later. In the meantime, just accept
that I have to beat Garrett Kelly with my own money."

"What if you lose?" she asked soberly.

"I won't. This time, winning's too important."

She was silent for a long moment, then sighed. "I
hope you know what you're doing, pal."

"I know. I'll be in touch within a few days,
Raven."

"All right. Good luck."

"Thanks."

He cradled the receiver and stood gazing at nothing. He
knew what he was doing. He was keeping a promise. No matter what
happened or what it cost him, Jennifer would have her Belle Retour
back when it was over.

The clock on the mantel ticked steadily on in the quiet
of the room. The only light came from a lamp suspended low over
a round table near the window. Cigarette and cigar smoke rose
upward to disappear Into darkness, each tendril following the eddies
and currents always present in even the most still room and
caused now by air-conditioning and the breathing of the five men
seated in comfortable chairs, cards in their hands or stacked neatly
or flung down haphazardly on the green baize of the game table.

For serious gamblers such as these, poker chips
remained in a caddy and out of the way: the rule was cash on the
table. Stack of bills, arranged according to individual habit, lay
before each man, and in the center of the table was a careless
heap of money, all hundred-dollar bills.

The current pot was somewhere in the neighborhood of
fifty thousand dollars.

Three men had folded, and they sat back, smoking or
sipping their drinks, watching silently as the remaining two
played the hand out. It was a game of bluff now, and had been for
more than an hour, each man steadily raising the stakes in an effort
to make the other lose his nerve and fold. Neither of them had
requested a new card since it had become a duel. In fact, Dane's
cards were stacked facedown near his relaxed hands, and he
hadn't so much as looked at them in almost half an hour. Each time
Garrett Kelly tossed a stack of bills into the pot, Dane simply
matched, then raised the bet.

And it became increasingly difficult for Kelly to
duplicate Dane's relaxed, almost indifferent air. He toyed with
his cards, putting them down and picking them up a dozen times. He
lit cigarette after cigarette. His peculiarly colorless eyes probed
sharply across the table as he sought to find a hint of strain
in that tranquil, handsome face, some sign of hesitation or
uncertainty in the vivid eyes.

He found no crack in Dane's composure, and by this
fourth night of playing against him, no man at the table was
surprised by it. At least two of the men had gulped silently upon
discovering that Dane never raised the bet in increments of less than
five hundred dollars, but they were wealthy men and experienced
gamblers, and had adjusted. What they continued to find incredible
was Dane's utter stillness.

He appeared boneless in his chair, requiring neither
cigarette nor drink as a prop, and having no apparent need to change
position to ease the strain of sitting for so long. At the beginning
of the hand, when there was much more activity around the table, his
deep, charming voice had been heard as often as the other men's,
but once the play had come down to only two, he had fallen silent.
And as Kelly's tension increased, Dane seemed to become even more
unruffled. His brilliant eyes appeared as serene as twin violet
lakes, his lips remained curved in a crooked half smile; and his
graceful hands moved only to flick more money into the pot.

It was just after midnight, and they had been playing
since eight.

Kelly, still with a respectable pile of money before
him, matched Dane's last bid of four thousand dollars, and was about
to raise by another thousand when his opponent's lifted hand stopped
him.

"Before you decide to raise," Dane said
lazily, "maybe you'd better look at this." With his right
hand only, he turned his top card faceup on the table. It was the ace
of diamonds. Slowly, he turned the next three cards up. In a neat row
before him lay a very possible royal flush in diamonds, ace, king,
queen, jack. The fifth card remained facedown, and Dane tapped it
lightly with an index finger.

"If this is a ten of diamonds," he said, still
lazy, "you can't possibly beat me. There are no wild cards in
the game, so you can't have five of a kind. And although it may be
remotely possible that you're holding a royal flush yourself, it
would be a first for me in twenty years. So you'd better decide if my
hole card is a ten of diamonds."

The other three men leaned forward, their eyes moving
from Dane's imperturbable face to Kelly's strained one. This, they
all felt, was poker at its best, a game of strategy. Was Dane
bluffing in a carefully calculated show of confidence, his hole card
worthless, or did he Indeed hold a hand Kelly wouldn't be able to
beat?

A long moment passed, and then Kelly nodded jerkily at
the bid he had already placed into the pot. "Call."

Smiling faintly, Dane tossed another ten thousand into
the pot. "Raise," he said.

Kelly hesitated, but then his nerve broke. Swearing, he
slapped his cards facedown. "I'm out," he said heavily.
Then, as if he couldn't help himself, he said, "Were you
bluffing?"

Dane didn't have to answer that, but he quite
deliberately flipped over his hole card. It was a three of
diamonds.

Kelly closed his eyes briefly, then reached for the hand
he'd abandoned and showed it to the others. He had been holding a
straight, king high, in hearts and clubs. He would have won if he had
called Dane's bluff.

The tension in the room eased, and a murmur of
discussion broke out. While Dane was collecting his winnings, as
tranquil as he'd been all along, Kelly glanced at his watch and then
rose.

"I think we could all use a break, gentlemen.
Stretch your legs if you like, while I get some sandwiches for us."
A bit stiff from having sat for so long, he walked slowly from the
room.

The other men rose as well, stretching and wandering
around. Someone turned on a few other lamps, so that the room looked
more like a parlor and less like a gambling den. They left cards and
money on the table, Just as Dane did when he rose with his usual
grace and strolled casually out of the room.

"He's not human," one of the men muttered to
another.

Out in the hallway, Dane grimaced faintly as he heard
the comment, but didn't pause or turn around. And it wasn't until he
reached the portrait gallery that he flexed his shoulders to ease the
ache between them. Wandering down the long hallway, he looked
absently at the paintings. The only illumination In the corridor came
from the portraits' individual lights, which were always on at night.
Dane had made it obvious that the paintings fascinated him, to the
point that Kelly was no longer surprised to find him wandering along
the corridor at odd times staring Intently at the portraits.

The real reason Dane came here was that it was a central
location in the house, and a perfect place to make contact with Skye.
This was the most dangerous time for them, both inside the house,
with Kelly's remaining security man roaming about. Dane wasn't
even sure Skye would be here yet. He had planned to use at least the
first few hours of the poker games for sleep, while Dane could watch
their quarry.

But Dane wasn't surprised to hear his partner's low
voice just as he reached the end of the hallway, because Skye
required little sleep, especially when they were working.

"Kelly still hasn't replaced Seton; has he
mentioned his lost security guard?"

"Interestingly, yes," Dane replied in an
identical soft tone that couldn't have been heard from three feet
away. "One of the other men commented that there seemed to be
one less security man. Kelly said something about it being
unwise to hire relatives."

"Relatives? Damn, we missed that."

"Something else. Kelly's openly scornful that his
relative flunked out with quote, some federal outfit up north,
end quote. So when Seton told you he was carrying a badge during his
clumsy feint at Josh Long, he may well have been telling the truth."

After a moment, Skye said, "Hagen."

"That's my bet. We'll find out for sure once we
have Kelly wrapped up nicety."

"Let me be the one to tell Raven if that's the
case," Skye requested. He sighed. "We should be about ready
to wind down on this. You could have taken him with that hand,"
he said, having obviously been close enough to the parlor earlier to
hear what had transpired there. "He would have kept raising."

"Probably," Dane agreed in a murmur, standing
where he was and gazing at the portrait hanging before him. Skye was
to his left, completely hidden in the darkness of a doorway. "But
we haven't found the press yet, and he hasn't passed any phony money.
I don't want to panic him with just one hand."

"He has to be feeling the strain," Skye
observed thoughtfully. "How much have you hit him for so far
tonight?"

"Fifty thousand, more or less. He had close to a
hundred in his safe the other night. The way it stands since that
last hand, he's lost two thirds of what he started out with."

There was a short silence, and then Skye said, "We
won't find the press in the house, you know that. I've already
checked nearly every room. You're going to have to win all the cash
he's got, and force him to lead us to it."

"Yes. I know."

"What's on your mind?" Skye asked
perceptively.

After a moment, Dane answered, "Tomorrow night's
game – if I manage to win it all tonight. Kelly's sure to want
another shot at me."

"So?"

"I did some figuring this afternoon. If our
information on Kelly is accurate, his only assets are this
plantation and house. The plantation is the biggest in this part
of the state, more than three hundred acres, mostly rice and timber.
It's in the red at the moment because he's borrowed heavily against
it and the income just barely covers the mortgage. Even so, the
market value is easily into seven figures, and he could expect to
stake close to a million with it discounting the mortgage. The
house is crammed with two hundred years of history, most of it
valuable, so add another million at the very least."

Quietly, Skye said, "Your promise to Jennifer."

Dane nodded, still gazing at the portrait of a proudly
erect Chantry in the uniform of a Confederate soldier. "I can
match Kelly's assets unless he goes berserk and prints a few hundred
thousand worthless dollars. In that case, I'll have to accept them at
face value, and even if I win every dollar on the table tonight, I
may not have enough to force him to stake Belle Retour."

Skye sighed. "Then, somehow, we've got to prevent
Kelly from printing any more than a hundred grand
without
alerting him that we're on to him. You're better with machines
than I am; when we find the damned thing, you'll have to cripple it –
slightly."

"And so carefully that he won't know it was
tampered with? Damn. I'd better make some calls tomorrow. I don't
suppose you know anyone who knows how to gently disable a counterfeit
press?"

"Not offhand, no."

Dane said something a great deal stronger than "damn."

"It's your own fault," Skye reminded him
dryly. "You
will
keep on making promises." With no
change in tone, he added, "Speaking of which, how's Jennifer?
You haven't mentioned her the last couple of days. Have you even seen
her?"

Dane had hoped to avoid that subject with Skye; though
the men he played poker against might well believe his composure was
nearly inhuman, his partner knew only too well there was a very
normal, feeling man beneath the tranquil mask. But Dane had to
answer, because in their life, the truth was all too often
possible
only
between the two of them.