Texas Hold 'Em Read online

  Kaylee said my badge gave me too much permission to isolate myself and not try when it came to men.

  I wasn’t sure how true that was.

  I left through the emergency exit door at the end of the hall. Jameson, or Tex as everyone in the Devil’s Luck seemed to call him, had offered to let me drive his hunk of shit Chevelle if I needed to run errands while I was gone. He didn’t seem too thrilled about the idea of me leaving on my own. He said he thought it would be best if I laid low for the most part and kept my head down. He was probably right, but every now and then a girl had to get out, stretch her legs, and get some real carbs that had a hell of a lot more calories than a bowl of oatmeal.

  I slid into the front seat of the old car and stuck the keys in the ignition. The leather seats were full of cracks and tears, and exposed foam along the seam of the seat smelled like my old gymnastics gym. The car sputtered before lurching forward and the radio suddenly came on, blasting a rock song so loud I nearly leapt out of my skin.

  I turned the volume all the way down and turned onto the two-lane road that led back into Reno.

  “What a shit bucket,” I grumbled as I checked the mirrors. The car spat dark gray smoke out behind me.

  While I drove into town, I considered what Jameson and the others would discuss today.

  They should have included me in their plans.

  I hated being sidelined like this. Without me, Mason would be dead. Admittedly, without Mason, I would also be dead.

  I shuddered as I remembered the way Bates had turned his single blue eye on me when I intervened at Mason’s house. Moss was kicking the shit out of him and I knew Mason wouldn’t be able to take much more, so I tried to buy him some recovery time by stalling. We knew Jackson and the others were on their way and I figured Mason would survive if I kept Bates appropriately distracted.

  Turns out I’d woefully underestimated the depth of Bates’s cruelty.

  I remembered the vise-like grip he had on my wrist when he dragged me toward him and held the burning end of his cigar over the inside of my wrist. I could feel the heat of the ember as he smiled at me.

  If Mason hadn’t intervened, I’d have a permanent circular scar on my skin.

  I scratched at the inside of my wrist at the thought.

  Some way or another, I would have to get Jackson and the others to trust me enough to let me in on their conversations about Bates. I was a resource for them to use, not a pretty face to be left out of the game.

  What did they think of me?

  Did they think I was weak? That I couldn’t handle myself? Did they crack jokes about my Ranger uniform behind my back? Did they think I was nothing more than a do-gooder?

  I cringed at my own insecurity rearing its ugly head.

  Why should I care what they thought of me? They were the criminals. They were the ones who got in over their heads and dragged me down with them.

  Sort of.

  I might have thrown myself onto the burn pile despite being warned to stay away from the Devil’s Luck. Repeatedly. By literally everyone.

  Before long, Reno opened up before me. A few turns led me to a small bakery with windows full of hand-drawn pictures with window markers of animated bagels dancing together. The shop wasn’t busy. There were only two other people in line ahead of me. Both were middle-aged women wearing cardigans and yellow-gold wedding rings.

  I studied the bagel options in the display case while the women waited for the employee to get their orders together.

  “It was Ledger’s house, you know,” the woman in the yellow cardigan said. “My husband has been telling me that something bad was bound to happen with those Devils sooner or later. I guess I never expected it to be a shootout with the police in such a safe neighborhood.”

  “Something has to change,” the woman in the coral cardigan said. She shook her head and clicked her tongue. “They’re giving Reno a bad name. We’ve come a long way. Now every other day there’s a headline about a shooting.”

  “Or those hooligans are riding by on their monstrosities,” yellow cardigan said bitterly. “They’ve been disturbing the peace too long.”

  Hooligans, I mused. I doubted these women would use such a casual word if they understood the true scope of what Jackson and his boys were up against.

  The women took their bags of bagels and made room for me to step up to the counter. I ordered half a dozen and had no intention of sharing them with Jameson after his attitude this morning. They’d be my breakfast today and the next five days. He could settle for his plain old oatmeal.

  I ordered a plain black coffee too and sipped it the whole drive home while the bagels in the passenger seat filled the Chevelle with the scent of salty goodness. As soon as I got back to the apartment, I put one in the toaster, smothered it with butter, and devoured it. I licked my fingers clean before tidying up after myself and doing what I promised myself I wouldn’t do.

  I snooped through Jameson’s stuff.

  He made me curious, and besides, shouldn’t I know as much as possible about the criminal whose bed I was sleeping in?

  Easy answer. Yes, I should.

  So I sifted through drawers, explored closets, and opened bathroom cabinets.

  I found nothing of interest. Jameson was a normal dude with abnormal pastimes. That was all.

  But one way or another, I was going to have to find a way to get close to him. Jackson wanted to keep me at arm’s length, but I needed a way into the fold, and since Jameson was the one I was closest to? Well, he’d be the pin I had to knock over.

  I smiled to myself.

  I saw the way he looked at me when I came out of the bedroom in nothing but a T-shirt this morning. Even if he didn’t want to admit it, he was already noticing my body. If I had to use it to my advantage?

  So be it.

  Chapter 3

  Jameson

  “Does she snore?” Abel threw an arm around my shoulders and jerked me back and forth as we walked across the gravel in Grant’s backyard. “Or does she whisper sweet nothings in your ear all night long?”

  Gabriel, who walked alongside us, cracked his back with a sharp twist to the right before scratching at stubble under his chin. “The Ranger’s a good girl, Snake. She wouldn’t get in bed with the likes of our Tex.”

  Abel grinned and released me with a playful shove. “Yeah, do you suppose she’s more into lawyers or realtors, huh?”

  I waved them both off. “Beats the hell out of me. All I know is she takes up more space than she’s worth.”

  Gabriel threw his head back with a snort. “All five feet and two inches of her? I know you’re a particular motherfucker who likes his shit a certain way, but you can’t convince me a chick with a body like that is in the way.”

  “Look, Joker,” Abel said, “we know you wish Jackson sent her home with you, alright?”

  “I’d treat her right,” Gabriel said innocently.

  “You’d send her running right back to Austin,” Abel said.

  We hit the back steps to Grant’s porch, where all the others lounged on old wooden chairs with their boots kicked up on the coffee table. Jackson played absently with the dog tags around his neck while Grant twirled a toothpick around his tongue and pinched it between his teeth.

  Suzie and Mason sat in one corner, wedged between cushions with their fingers knit together. Brody and Knox chuckled about some joke muttered under their breath and looked up when we reached the top of the stairs.

  Abel nodded around at the others. “Good news is Tex hasn’t run the girl out of Dodge yet.”

  “Unless she’s packing her shit to hit the road as we speak,” Gabriel added.

  “She’s not running,” I grumbled. “She’s comfortable. She’s been spending every night in my bed, in fact. I’m a better host than I look.”

  Jackson looked up at me from beneath his brows before leaning forward in his chair to rest his elbows on his knees. “You’re fucking her already?”

  “What? No.” />
  “You just said she was sleeping in your bed,” Jackson said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “and I’m crashing on the couch.”

  Brody snickered. “Ouch.”

  Abel smacked my shoulder. “You’re letting her walk all over you, man.”

  I saw a flash of Carrie’s yellow bedsheets pulled tight over my mattress and grimaced. “She’s been through a lot. I wanted her to have a room she could go to and close the door. You know, for privacy.”

  Suzie chimed in. “I think that’s sweet.”

  Mason chuckled. “You hear that, Tex? She thinks it’s sweet. Has anyone ever used that word to describe you before?”

  Jackson laughed.

  I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck. “Just your mom, Mace.”

  Everyone laughed, including Mason. Suzie pushed up out of her seat with him and brushed past me with a sympathetic look. “Ignore them. There’s a reason Jackson asked you to take her in, not one of these guys. She’s better off with you.”

  Maybe she had a point there.

  “Does she at least make you breakfast?” Abel asked.

  “Has she asked you to help her paint her toenails yet? You’ve got a real steady hand, don’t you, Tex?” Gabriel said.

  “I’ve got a real steady fist too, dickhead,” I said.

  Suzie patted my arm. “Ignore them.”

  I sighed and slumped into one of the open chairs. Bastards.

  “Anyway, she’s not going to sit still much longer,” I said. “She’s getting antsy. I can feel it.”

  “Well, she’s going to have to deal with being uncomfortable for a little while longer,” Jackson said.

  “She’s not used to waiting,” I said. “She’s used to being in on the action. She’s used to calling the shots.”

  Jackson shrugged. “Now isn’t the time for her to get too big for her britches. She knows what she got herself into. If she doesn’t want to take orders, she can take her ass back to Austin.”

  None of this felt that simple to me. For starters, I didn’t think Carrie was getting too big for her britches at all. I thought she was a strong woman who could handle her own shit, and from where she was standing, she probably thought we were the dipshits standing around with our cocks in our hands not having a damn clue what to do next.

  She was capable. Very capable.

  “Maybe we should cut her some slack,” Mason suggested.

  Jackson shook his head. “Now isn’t the time. We lie low while Hogey’s trial moves ahead. Carrie keeps her head down. We let the dust settle.”

  Luckily, things were moving ahead after Hogey’s arrest the way we all had hoped. Our efforts to move the corpses of two of Bates’s men into Hogey’s storage facility to frame him had been a success, and we no longer had the full heat of the police’s attention on our backs.

  We had room to breathe. To recalibrate.

  I didn’t know exactly what was going on in Jackson’s head, but I knew what was going on in mine.

  This fight was getting bigger than the Devil’s Luck. Much bigger. As Treasurer, it wasn’t my place to step up and tell Jackson what I thought he should do, but one of these days, the other shoe was going to drop and we weren’t going to get out of the fire without being burnt.

  If we wanted to get out of this alive, we had to be as ruthless and relentless as Bates. I wasn’t sure if we even had that in our blood.

  He was a fucking psychopath.

  Jackson stood and nodded toward the shop in the yard. The bay doors were open, exposing the shop’s insides and the half-dozen bikes inside. The rest of our bikes were out on the driveway. “We should head to the Well,” Jackson said. “We have work to do.”

  More construction bullshit. More nails. More splinters. More tedious work that didn’t bring us any closer to putting Bates six feet under.

  Regardless of all that, we followed our President down the steps and to our bikes. Suzie kissed Mason goodbye before heading into the shop to tinker with some of the bikes that belonged to paying customers.

  We rode for the Well. The engines of our bikes growled in unison as we traveled in a pack. Cars kept right for us and other riders on the road didn’t dare turn down the same street as us.

  The wise ones pulled over and let us pass.

  Chapter 4

  Carrie

  I pinched my phone between my ear and shoulder, and I opened Tex’s fridge for the tenth time that afternoon, hoping that, by some miracle, new food might magically appear.

  My colleague back in Austin, Dan Abbot, spoke with reservation on the other end of the line. “I’m just worried about you, Carrie. I don’t like that I’m not there to back you up.”

  “Be glad you’re not here.” I closed the disappointing fridge with my knee and slumped against the door. “It’s hotter than hell and I have quite literally zero friends in the department. They’re all assholes.”

  “They’d have to be to not take a liking to you.”

  I smiled. “I miss you.”

  “I miss you too.” Dan sighed.

  I chewed the inside of my cheek. How long had it been since I saw Dan last? Two months? Two and a half? Something like that. We’d worked together for just shy of five years, and when I first made Ranger, he’d been the guy to show me the ropes in Austin once I was placed at a station. He was a tall drink of water who made the Ranger uniform look damn good—and that wasn’t an easy feat.

  “How are Diane and the kids?” I asked after a beat.

  I heard the smile in Dan’s voice. “Good. They’re good. Andrew started a new daycare last week where they’re teaching him how to spell better than I can.”

  “An easy task really.”

  “Watch it, Hart.” He chuckled. “And baby Reggie is starting to look less like me and more like Diane, so she’s thrilled.”

  There was a time—a brief time admittedly—when I used to believe that I might get the white picket fence life with Dan. We fit together like puzzle pieces. Our values matched, we craved the same career success, and we both wanted two kids and a dog in a two-story house with a backyard made for entertaining.

  Trouble was, there was no sizzle. No fire.

  Sure, we fit, but we didn’t thrive together. We were stagnant and we both knew it. After our breakup, we took some time apart and slowly rekindled our working relationship, and then our friendship. I suspected the only reason we were able to do such a thing was because we were so similar.

  “You sure I can’t come back you up?” Dan asked. “I could ask the department to transfer me. Just for two weeks to check in on you, help check some boxes, cross some t’s. You know the drill.”

  “No.” I might have spoken a little too quickly. I rubbed at my temple and took a deep breath in an effort to sound neutral. “No, it’s alright, Dan. I’ve got it covered. It’s tedious and slow going, but I’m coming to the end of it. I can feel it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Besides, it’s not like I don’t have any backup.”

  “I thought you said the department there was full of assholes?”

  “It is, but I have a pack of wild animals backing me up.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  I laughed. Good lord, what would Dan think of me working with a criminal biker gang of heathens? His head would spin. “I’ll explain everything when I get home.”

  Dan was quiet as he processed. “Can I at least help you dig? What’s the name of your person of interest?”

  “Dan,” I said softly.

  Bless him. Helpful was his middle name. His heart was always in the right place, and I knew I could lean on him if I needed to, but I couldn’t this time. This mess I was in was too dirty. Too bloody.

  Dan couldn’t come anywhere near it for the sake of his own neck, and for the sake of his wife and kids.

  This job was mine alone.

  “Can you just tell me you’re safe?” Dan pressed.

  I looked around at the cinderblock apartment. “I’m saf
e.”

  He exhaled.

  “Listen, I have to go,” I said. “But thank you for calling and checking in on me. I’m going to have a beer and get some work done. Boring paperwork bullshit. Nothing serious.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that before. Have a beer for me, will you?”

  “Done deal.”

  Dan chuckled. “Stay safe, Hart.”

  “You too.”

  He ended the call.

  The silence of Tex’s apartment echoed around me. Overhead, I peered into cobwebs clinging to exposed pipes in the ceiling.

  Having Dan here would have changed everything. I hadn’t realized how much I was craving comfort until I heard his voice on the other line. The warmth in his greeting and the way he genuinely wanted to make sure I was okay, it reminded me I needed a friend.

  “Or a distraction,” I said as I moved from the kitchen to the couch. I collapsed into it, collected my laptop from where I’d left it on the coffee table, and set it up in my lap. Research had always been a trusted companion. When the going got tough, there was nothing I couldn’t drown in Google searches.

  So I typed the name “Walter Bates” into the search bar.

  Dozens of links flooded the search engine page, all unrelated to the Walter Bates I was looking for. I pursed my lips. I needed to get more specific.

  So I typed “Walter Bates, Reno” and hit enter.

  Just like that, a bunch of stuff popped up. No photos appeared, but there were tons of brief articles about all the things that had happened in the past couple of months. I already knew about those, though. On top of that, there were honorable mentions in police documents about donations from him and his association.

  “Association,” I scoffed. “More like trailer-park syndicate.”

  A couple more clicks and I found myself looking at a picture of a beautiful woman with shocking white hair and red lipstick. The name under her photo read “Caroline Bates.” His daughter.

  I studied her features. She looked nothing like her father except for her brilliant blue eyes. They were sharp and calculating, even looking into a camera lens.