As she anticipated, the turn was a ten of spades. Annie sighed to herself, staring off into the crowd as she mentally calculated the odds of the river card being the nine or ace of hearts. It was astronomical. Having one in the same hand as someone with a four of a kind made it damn near impossible. Well, at least when one of the parties wasn’t cheating.
The murmur of speculation ran through the crowd as everyone saw the cards and came to the same realization. Everyone knew the hand would be determined by the river card. An almost unbeatable hand was about to be tested in a glorious fashion. The kind of moment that video montages of poker tournaments would play for years to come.
Annie closed her eyes and held her breath. That was all she could do.
* * *
“What the hell is she doing?” Nate cursed and pushed his rolling chair back from the panel of screens. “She’s deliberately trying to take Tessa out of the game.”
He shouldn’t be surprised. She was doing what she had to do to protect her sister and her own stakes in the game. He’d given her no choice. Tessa might not like it, but if she had any idea what Annie had just done for her, she wouldn’t complain.
“Whoa.” Gabe shook his head. “That’s a helluva hand they’ve both got. Might backfire on her.”
Nate leaned in. If the last card was the nine or ace of hearts, Annie would win and Tessa would be out. He was a casino owner. The odds were miserably against her. And yet she was determined to take Tessa down. He stood and took a few paces away from the screen. He couldn’t watch.
“Well, I’ll be damned! The ace of hearts, man. Tessa is out.”
“Damn!” He slammed his hand onto the console, making the screens flicker just slightly.
“We didn’t get anything on her.”
Nate sighed and shook his head. “Have security quietly escort Tessa upstairs. We didn’t get anything conclusive, but she doesn’t know that. She’s young and inexperienced. With a little pressure, her mouth will start running like an old faucet.”
Eleven
Annie knew better than to go up to the suite after the tournament was done for the day. There was a fight waiting for her there, she just knew it. Instead, she started wandering aimlessly through the casino. She wanted to get as far away from the poker tables and the cameras as she could. She turned down a narrow corridor, relishing the quiet and solitude. A placard on the wall indicated she would follow the route to get to the hotel gym and day spa.
Perhaps now was a good time for that manicure.
She turned to continue down the hall, then stopped when she found Jerry, the Sapphire’s floor manager, standing in her path.
“Mrs. Reed,” he said with a smile.
“Afternoon, Jerry,” she said. “I’m off to get my nails done as a reward for another successful day of the tournament.”
“Well, I’m sorry to interrupt your plans, Mrs. Reed, but I’m going to have to escort you upstairs.”
Annie’s blood froze instantly in her veins. Nate must be furious with her if he’d sent his casino manager to collect her. Her gaze dropped from Jerry’s apologetic smile to the gun held close to his side. In an instant, she knew she no longer had the advantage in this hand.
“Jerry, I...” she started, taking a step back toward the chaos of the casino.
Jerry surged toward her, reaching out to grip her upper arm with his free hand. “It will be best for everyone involved if you come with me without making a scene.”
Annie ignored the cruel fingers digging into her upper arm and nodded softly. He tugged her forward and she fell into step beside him. At first, she’d thought perhaps she was getting an inside view at the rougher side of casino security. But the farther they moved away from the part of the hotel where the surveillance and interviews took place, the more concerned she became. Casino managers didn’t carry guns. And security would’ve taken her upstairs if she’d been implicated. Things had just gone unexpectedly awry.
Now it was too late. They walked the quiet, abandoned hallways, moving deeper into the bowels of the casino, away from the possibility that someone could help her or spot her on the security monitors that Nate was always watching. If she’d only kept that wire on instead of throwing it in his face...
They took one of the staircases up a few floors and into a hallway of guest rooms in one of the older segments of the hotel. Annie had never been into this part of the property. This portion was original to the casino Nate’s grandfather had built. The shiny blue tower of fancy suites had been one of her husband’s additions. These rooms here were nice, but you could feel the age, still smell the faint cigarette smoke from back before it was banned in most of the facilities.