Faber turned to whisper back, “You were supposed to stay out of sight.”
“Yeah, right, in this town?”
Faber glared at him. “Enough, Vince. Go away.”
The thug, Vince, straightened, regarded the boss a moment, scowling, then went back to his guard post.
Ben didn’t flinch, didn’t glance, didn’t give a sign that he’d heard. In fact, he tried to ignore them, because it didn’t mean anything. Would anyone even notice he’d gone missing? Sure, Kitty would. At six o’clock, when he was due at the chapel.
He looked at his pair of cards. An ace and an eight. Start of a dead man’s hand. Swell.
They played.
“So. Ben. What is it you do?” Faber asked. Small talk. Real small.
“I’m a lawyer,” Ben said, and this was just like any other party, the way people reacted. The raised eyebrows, the twitches. It was like lawyers were their own species. People made so many assumptions, these guys probably even more than most.
Faber didn’t flinch, didn’t change his expression. “Yeah? You some kind of hot shot assistant DA type? Prosecuting the lowlifes, cleaning up the streets?” The thugs chuckled. What did you call a group of thugs, anyway? A crowd? A flock? A brute—a brute of thugs.
“Criminal defense,” Ben said, deadpan. And that got the guys to look up. A couple of the bodyguard thugs even nodded to each other, like, Yeah, he’s all right. Ben wanted to tell them, don’t get that idea. I’m not one of you. But he knew all about guys like them. He knew what made them tick.
The four extra guys Faber brought in were either pros or near enough to it not to make a difference. They watched the table with stone cold gazes, pretended they weren’t looking at each other. Never glanced at their cards a second time. One of them spun a chip between his fingers, a complicated bit of fidgeting that drew Ben’s eye. Distracted him. They were playing mind games with their intimidating fronts. They’d won just about every pot, and Ben’s stack of chips was dwindling.
They all deferred to Faber. Subtly, the way they let him make the calls, waited for him to signal the next round, didn’t call for drinks until he did. Faber was the alpha in this room. Ben suppressed a smile at the thought—and had to suppress another one when a couple of gazes turned his way, noticing the change in expression.
They thought they caught something. They thought they’d spotted his tell. They were all sitting there thinking Ben was in way over his head. But that wasn’t a big secret—anybody could tell that just by looking.
He tried to avoid the beginner mistakes. Threw out more hands than he bet on, played tight but not too tight, tried not to walk into any traps, and so on. At the same time, he wondered what Faber was hoping to discover with all this. Did he think Ben was some kind of poker genius?
And again, his mind wandered from the game.
He shouldn’t be able to win at poker at all. He hadn’t studied the game, never put together any real strategy. It was an excuse to drink beer and socialize. He hadn’t gotten any better at the game, really. But he was so much more aware. He didn’t have to know what the cards were doing because this was all about the people. The way Faber didn’t seem to look at anyone. The way his flunky only looked at Faber—hungrily, with his hands opening and closing. Ben thought he knew what that meant. Knew a look of tightly masked challenge. Mr. New York thug wasn’t happy being the enforcer. Wanted to maybe move up the ranks like Faber had.
The girls here were messing everything up. Their smell—too much perfume, hairspray, sex. The way two of them brushed his shoulders every time they walked behind his chair. They were supposed to be distracting him. His shoulders grew more tense. Back at the casino, when he’d been focused, everything had been so clear. Now—he might as well have been wrapped in cotton. His mind wasn’t on the game at all.
Kitty was going to think he stood her up.
Amazing, that he’d discovered advantages to being a werewolf. The most obvious: shacking up with Kitty. They’d have never hooked up if he hadn’t become a werewolf. He’d have never had the courage to ask her out if she hadn’t jumped him while they were naked in the woods. Not to mention, you didn’t ask out clients. Well, that wasn’t true. He might have asked her out, eventually. If he’d had a chance to get to know her like he did now. But so many things could have gotten in the way of that . . .
He wasn’t the kind of guy to believe that things happened for a reason. He’d seen too much random shit in his life for that, too many good people gone bad, too many bad people getting a free ride. Chaos, all of it.
But maybe this had happened for a reason.
Six p.m. came and went, and oddly enough, Ben’s anxiety lessened. The time for the wedding, here and gone. People definitely knew he was missing by now. Assuming Kitty didn’t think he’d gotten cold feet and left town. She had to know he wouldn’t do that. Right? He hoped she’d know.
He’d see her again soon. He kept telling himself that. Had to believe it.
On the other side of the table, a hand flinched where there shouldn’t have been any movement at all. Ben caught the flicker of movement. Like a rabbit twitching in a forest.
“You just palmed a card. Probably an ace,” he said to Faber. He didn’t look up from the cards under his hand, from the modest stack of chips in front of him.
Faber paused; the other players looked at him, then at Ben, until they were all staring at Ben, who didn’t look back at any of them. He’s going to shoot me, Ben thought. Right here, just on principle. It was like nobody breathed, the room was so still.
Then Faber turned his hand over, and there it was, the ace of diamonds, nestled out of sight.
If this had been a real poker game, there’d be a fight. Shouting, at least, righteous demands for their money back. But this was Faber’s game, and nobody argued. Who the other players looked at with more suspicion was up for grabs: Faber, or Ben.
“How’d you do that?” Faber said.