Back in Her Husband's Bed

Nate needed to see what had set her off and hoped that there would be a video clip of it. Nearly every square inch of the casino was monitored with surveillance cameras, so he was certain it was on film. It was just a matter of locating Annie in thousands of hours of digital recordings.

“I’ll be right down.” Nate dressed quickly and headed downstairs to the security offices. He found Gabe facing a panel of surveillance screens, cuing up a clip of tape date-stamped the day before. “What did you get?” he asked, leaning over Gabe’s shoulder.

“Well, it took me a while, but as you know, I have no life. I was able to narrow down the tapes based on where you saw her last and the time. Although I do have to warn you, I ended up finding more than you probably bargained for.”

A sinking feeling settled in Nate’s stomach as the gray screen unscrambled and began to play.

“You said you saw her take off around this time, so I’m cuing up the video a couple minutes before.” Gabe tapped a finger against a woman’s image on the screen. “You can see her here, walking through the casino.”

Nate watched as Annie moved through the crowd, stopping to watch another table still in play. She looked interested, nodding and clapping appropriately as hands were won. “What table is she watching there?”

“Five.”

Nate flipped open his file and started looking at yesterday’s play statistics. The winner of table five had been Tessa Baracas. She’d outplayed quite a few big names. “Tessa beat Paul Stein?”

“I know. It would take a miracle for her to beat out a former champion. Or maybe just a little help. Check out the name of the dealer.”

Nate’s gaze ran over the sheet, and what he saw forced a muffled curse. “Darrell Thomas. I know we let him keep dealing so we could catch him in the act and not tip off the others, but please tell me you got him for something.”

“Darrell hasn’t taken a leak without a security shadow since we caught wind of his involvement, but even then we’ve got almost no evidence to charge him. I keep letting him deal in the hopes we’ll have a break. Whatever they’re doing, they’re good. Watch this.”

Nate looked up to watch the video again as Annie’s passive expression changed. Her face stiffened, her eyes visibly widening despite the poor video quality. Her head shook subtly from side to side as she looked at someone off camera. Then she started to hyperventilate. Her hand flew to her chest as she spun and disappeared from the frame.

“Wow.” Whatever she’d seen at that moment had not only been bad, but unexpected. And yet she hadn’t run to him with the news, either.

“That’s what I said. She didn’t like what she saw. Made me curious, so I kept digging.” Gabe fiddled with the digital files, bringing up a clip from another camera. “This one was from the overhead camera on table five.” His finger brushed over the tops of the remaining players’ heads. “We’ve got Paul here, Tessa here and then Darrell Thomas dealing, of course.”

They watched in silence, trying to detect what happened, but it was hard to see. Darrell dealt her cards. She looked at them, pulling them toward her, and then sat fidgeting with her hair. That had to be when it happened, but if they’d cheated in that moment, it would be hard to prove in court with a video like this.

“Run it back again.” The recording ran a second time, but there was still nothing to see. Nate’s frustration was mounting. There had to be something. A slight detail he was missing. Something, anything, to nail them with.

“Wait, watch this next part,” Gabe encouraged.

Nate narrowed his eyes at the screen as Tessa looked up from her cards and gazed into the crowd. From the angle, they couldn’t see her face, but after a moment, she turned back to her cards and continued to play.

“I think Annie saw it happen. Whatever they did.” Gabe cued up the tapes to the exact same time on two adjacent screens and paused them. “It’s hard to tell, but Tessa is looking in the direction where Annie is standing. Right after that, Annie shakes her head. Perhaps they had some sort of private exchange that panicked Annie and sent her running.”

“Damn.” Nate flopped back into a chair and clapped his hands to his thighs. He felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. “No wonder she was upset. She knows she has the proof we need.”

This was exactly what Nate had been worrying about. Why he’d kept his feelings for Annie to himself even as she looked at him and silently pleaded for him to respond in kind to her declaration of love. There was something about it that hadn’t rung true.