Merry with a Gambler (Love Beach Holiday Collection)

Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

Stack (Dax)

When I dropped Boots off, I made sure she was safe with my brother at the bar then headed out for my assignment. Slipping onto the Faro’s Lady in an ill-fitting suit with a slight belly pooch, scraggly wig, fake beard and cheap watch I draw little attention.

Everything on the main deck seems pretty typical. I saw a couple attempting collusion, a dealer make a false deal and another with a cold deck. I suspect the dealers were practicing more than anything. Neither of the tables were big stakes. Just mom and pops having fun. The real draw will be when I get invited to the high stakes game that we know is held privately. It’s also where we suspect more than cards are being dealt.

I got my call name in basic because I can stack a deck. I can also count cards, have an almost photographic memory for the cards played and can calculate odds like adding two-digit numbers. My real talent is being able to read people. Spotting a tell is as instinctual as walking for me. Bottom line, I rarely lose and always come away ahead.

At midnight when the ship officially returns the guests to port, I hang around to see what scum floats to the surface. I send the photos to the team to review. I’m pretty sure one of the faces belonged to a local politician. Then the ship sets sail again under the guise of returning to its permanent dock three miles up the coast. There it will refuel and be cleaned before the next excursion. We suspect the return to dock is where the real activity is taking place.

When I get back to the bar to pick Boots up, I can tell somethings wrong. She seems dejected. It’s more than her being tired. I’ve studied her too many nights not to know the difference. Pax didn’t notice anything, but he promised to go through the security tapes or see if I-Tee has time to do it for him. It might be a couple days before I know.

After making sure she eats, I wait to take her home. This is going to be tricky once I fully get into my undercover role. Pax and I need to get a plan in place for her protection when I can’t be with her. I’m having a hard time buying that the break in at her place was random.

Once home she heads directly to the shower. She’s dead on her feet, barely holding on. I leave my office door partially open so I can listen in case she needs me while I shoot off my notes from the night. Steel will want a debrief later this morning, but this will do for now.

“That’s not where you’re sleeping!”

Swiveling in the chair, she’s standing in the doorway staring at the loveseat in my office. Her face skewed in disbelief.

“You told me you had a place to sleep. That—” she waves her hand. “Isn’t even long enough for me and I’m a good foot shorter than you. You lied to me!”

“I didn’t lie to you?—”

“You did! I hate being lied to.” She turns to leave.

“Boots, I didn’t lie. Look at me.”

She looks over her shoulder. I grab my ranger roll from the floor by the loveseat. “I was in the military for twenty years and I’ve spent as much time on this as I have in a bed. When I’m on the road or here working, I stretch out in this room on it, more often than not, while I wait for a response. You may not like this answer, but it’s the truth.”

Glancing at my desk, the multiple computer screens and keyboards she frowns. “You’re not a biker are you. What do you really do?”

“I do contract security. Companies hire me to assess their security operations and make recommendations. I sometimes provide personal protection or private investigations and interventions.”

“Rescues? Like those women who were being abducted up the east coast and here?”

“Sometimes,” I hedge. Shit, Steel is going to go ballistic. We try to keep a low profile for a reason. But I won’t lie to her.

She studies me a few more minutes before her eyes widen. “You know Pax. He worked for a security company. HARD something. You started coming in when Nyla was in trouble. Is she in danger? Is someone after her again? Does she know?” She takes a step back. “Are you the one after her?”

“Pax is my brother—same parents kind of brother. He and I work for the same company. HARDCORE INC. Yes, Nyla knows. I’m here undercover on an assignment.”

“Oh, so I’m just part of your cover.”

“No. We’re…friends.”

She worries her lip before releasing a sigh. “Am I under investigation? Is that why you’re watching me? Look I know my parents were into a lot of shit, but I had no part in it. Until today I didn’t even know he was back. I have absolutely no clue what they’re up to this time.”

“Who’s back?”

“Eddie, my father and probably my mom, Blanche.”

“Is that what has you so upset, on edge? What did he say? Do? I’ll deal with him.”

“I went out between games to clear the patio. He was there. Apparently, I have a little sister. I refused to talk to him. I don’t know what he wants. But I can guess.”

Tossing my roll on the loveseat, I slip my hand in hers. “Let’s get a drink and you can start at the beginning.”

In the kitchen I put on the hot pot. “How about some herbal tea? I want us to be able to sleep.”

Climbing onto the stool at the breakfast bar she nods. When the tea is ready, I take the seat across from her.

“It was between games and a lot of the afternoon crowd had cleared out. I’d been behind the bar most of the day and wanted a little fresh air. So I offered to bus the patio. I was almost done. There were only a couple tables left on the side with the bathrooms. He had his back to me and the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up. I didn’t realize it was Eddie until our eyes met.

“He said he came to see me, then told me I had a little sister.” She turns and digs into her backpack that’s on the chair next to her and pulls out an envelope. “He gave me this.”

Inside are two black and white pictures printed on paper of a dark-haired girl that looks to be three or four. Puss is printed to the side of one of the images.

“Puss?”

She cringes. “They used to joke about me needing a sister named Puss. Puss-n-Boots.”

Jesus and she grew up with these idiots. No, she grew up, they’re just the sperm and egg donors. “What do you think?”

“I try not to when it comes to them. They’re chronic liars, opportunists and druggies. Everything was a scam with them, everyone was a mark. But…”

I study her. “But?”

“I—if she’s my sister…. I don’t want her to go through what I did.”

“Did he ask for money?”

“No, but I didn’t give him the opportunity. He played it pretty cool.”

“Did he leave anything else? A number to reach him?”

“No. He’s smarter than that. He’ll just show up somewhere, sometime. I wonder how he found me. I never go near the places we’d hide out when I was with them. I have no contact with any of their lowlife friends.”

“Have any of those friends tried to reach out to you lately?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“Did he know your ex-boyfriend?”

“Not that I’m aware of. It was three years after they left when I met the douche.

“I was sixteen when my parents dropped me off at school one day and never came back. When I tried to go home that night, the landlord charged out of his first-floor apartment screaming at me because they stiffed him for six months’ rent.

“I took off. I got a job at an ice cream place near my school and was showering in the gym and sleeping under the bleachers. I claimed some clothes from the lost and found to get by. It was over the holidays when they caught me and put me in the system.”

“How long were you in foster care?”

“Little over three months.”

“What happened, Boots?” She twists her mug around and around until I cover her hands with mine.

“What happened?”

She shrugs. “The fosters let me keep working at the ice cream place as long as I shared my wages with them. I got home late one night because the guy who usually did the cleaning didn’t show. I volunteered to stay for the extra cash.

“Foster mom was at the table, half drunk. She handed me a glass and told me to take it up to foster dad. He was waiting for me, stretched out naked on the bed stroking himself.”

Only years of training keep me from launching from my chair and going after the SOB right then.