Ramos raised his brows at me, but didn’t question Nick’s comment, and explained how he needed to find a neutral location for the game. He handed Nick the paper with Carson’s suggestions. “We need to check those out, but also see if we can find something else. I’d be happier if we found a place Carson’s never been before. The game starts at five tomorrow, so that doesn’t give us a lot of time. Can you work on that? Manetto has a few contacts here. They might know where to look.”
“Sure, I can do that,” Nick agreed, thinking that would give him just the excuse he needed to talk to Manetto.
I glanced at Ramos. “You’d better call Uncle Joey first and let him know what’s going on. Do you think he’ll be upset?”
“No,” Ramos said forcefully. “This is my operation. He’ll be fine with it, but I’ll call him as soon as we get back if that’s what you want.”
“I think that would be best,” I said. Glancing back at Nick, I asked, “Do you know how to play poker?” He nodded, but he was thinking that he didn’t want to be involved in any part of my downfall. Sheesh, talk about a confidence killer. “Since we’re stopping for office supplies, maybe we should get a deck of cards and one of those dummies books on how to play poker. I could study that tonight at least.”
Ramos started to chuckle. “I’ll teach you how to play.”
“She has a point,” Nick spoke up. “It’s one thing to know how to play poker, but another to actually have the experience. She’s going to have to play all day tomorrow with one of us just to get the gist of the game, if she’s going to even have a chance at winning tomorrow night. Premonitions or not, most of playing poker is strategy.” He ran his fingers through his hair in agitation. “I can’t believe you’re actually going through with this.”
My heart sank. Was he right? Could I learn the strategy in time? “He has a point, doesn’t he Ramos? Are you sure this is going to work?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice firm with conviction. “With a little training and your advantage, it will work like a charm. Don’t worry so much. What you can do is every poker player’s dream. You’ll be great.”
“Okay,” I said, somewhat relieved. If Ramos thought I could do it, then I might as well start believing it myself. Plus, it was lots better than thinking I would fail.
We found a store, and while Ramos and Nick gathered the things we needed, I found the “Poker For Dummies” book and slipped it onto the counter just before Ramos got out his credit card to pay. He glanced at me with his eyebrows all scrunched together, thinking it was a waste of money, but shook his head and paid for it anyway.
I smiled my thanks at him, and he rolled his eyes, thinking that I had a lot of nerve after he’d promised to teach me. I feigned offense and smacked his arm. It lightened my mood until I caught Nick’s suspicious thoughts, wondering what was going on between us. Talk about ruining the moment. After that, I insisted on sitting in the back seat and perused my new book until we got home around ten p.m.
Ramos hurried out to the deck to call Uncle Joey in private, and Nick headed to the computer room to find information about the venues on the Internet. I needed to call my husband and dashed upstairs to my room.
“Hi Chris,” I said, out of breath. “Sorry I’m calling you back so late.”
“That’s okay.” His voice was gravelly, like he’d been asleep. “What’s going on?”
Taking a deep breath, I plunged right in. “I’m scheduled to play poker with Carson tomorrow night, so I should be able to come home day after tomorrow. What about you? How are things going at home?”
There was silence on his end for a few heartbeats before Chris finally spoke. “Isn’t Carson the guy who killed Warren?”
“Well, not technically, but yeah…his guy with the snake tattoos did. Oh and I found out his name was Cobra. Isn’t that nuts?” When he didn’t answer right away, I continued, “You know, like from the cartoon?”
Chris sighed heavily. “Where’s Ramos? I really need to talk to him.”
“Um…he’s on the phone with Uncle Joey, but he might be off by now. Just a minute and I’ll check.” I hurried down the stairs, hoping I could hand the phone over to Ramos and he’d take care of this, because seriously…I didn’t know what else to say.
Ramos was still out on the deck talking. “It looks like he’s still on his phone, but we can chat until he gets done.”
“Um…sure,” Chris said.
“What did you guys have for dinner?” I asked, needing to start somewhere. Chris answered, and we ended up talking about the kids for a while. “You know, someday we’ll look back on this and laugh.”
“I sure hope so,” Chris answered. “Are you going to be okay? I’m really anxious about this. Maybe I’d better catch a flight out there first thing in the morning.”
“Yeah? I would love that, but you’d probably better talk to Ramos first.” Hearing the sliding door, I glanced up. “It looks like he’s done. Just a minute and I’ll get him.”
Ramos came in frowning. Manetto had brought up some things Ramos hadn’t thought about, making it more complicated than he wanted, but it could still work. He just had a lot to do between now and the game.
As I came toward him, his gaze caught mine, and noticing the phone, he knew it had to be Chris. Sighing deeply, he took the phone from my hand.
“Yes?” he said, impersonally.
“Is Shelby going to be all right? Because if anything happens to her, I’m holding you personally responsible.” Chris was speaking so loud I could hear him over the phone. “What have you gotten her into? She said something about playing a poker game with Carson. Won’t that be dangerous? How can you let her do that?”
“She’ll be fine,” Ramos said, his tone harsh. “I have plenty of backup, and nothing’s going to go wrong.”
“Are you sure? Should I catch a flight out there in the morning?”
“No,” Ramos said. “That’s unnecessary. I won’t let anything happen to her. You have my word.”
More silence then, “You’d better mean that, because I’m holding you to it. Now let me talk to my wife.”
Ramos handed me the phone with a shake of his head, and stormed back outside onto the deck. Yikes! “I think you made him mad,” I said.
“Good.” He paused to get under control.
“Chris, I know this is hard, but I’ll be okay. I’ve got my super powers remember? I’ll know if anything bad is going to happen, and Ramos can take care of it. I’ve been in worse situations than this, and I’ve come out fine.”
“That’s true,” he agreed. “You’ve been awfully lucky. I just hope your luck doesn’t run out anytime soon.”
“Geez! Lighten up. You’re giving me the creeps. Everything will be okay, and learning how to play poker is bound to come in handy, right? Now quit worrying.”
He sighed. “Okay…sure. Hey, Savannah’s here, she wants to say hi.”
“Sweet, put her on.”
Talking to Savannah was like coming home and remembering what it was like to be normal. I didn’t even mind answering all her questions about the friend I was helping, where I was, and when I’d be back, although I had to keep it light, without going into a lot of detail. It was easy to turn the focus back to her, and she chatted on and on about what she’d been doing the last few days. I enjoyed telling her all about the hair hat I bought at the airport, and she couldn’t wait to see it and try it on herself. Finally, she put Chris back on. To my relief, he sounded more like his old self, and after I promised to call him the next day, we said goodnight.
Ramos was still outside sitting by the pool, and I quickly joined him, ready to do damage control. “Thanks for talking to Chris. Sorry he was so hard on you. He’s fine now.”
Ramos grunted, thinking he didn’t like the way Chris had talked to him. He was good at his job, and Chris’ accusations stung. He didn’t deserve being talked to like that. He’d take care of me, and it made him mad that Chris didn’t respect that. Of course, I was Chris??
? wife, so he had to cut him some slack. It almost made him feel guilty for even asking me to help him catch Carson. How stupid was that?
“What did Uncle Joey have to say?” I asked, wanting to change the subject. “What did he think about me playing poker with Carson?”
Ramos’ lips turned up in a wry grin. “He thought it was great. He said it was something he’d like to see for himself, and wished he could be here just to see the look on Carson’s face when you beat him.”
“Really? So he thinks I can do it?”
“Shelby…of course you can. We’ll go over it all tomorrow.”
“I’d rather start tonight, if that’s okay with you,” I said. “I don’t think I could sleep anyway.”
He nodded. “Okay, but there’s a few things I need to do first. Manetto doesn’t trust Carson, so I need to have a back-up plan in case things go bad.”
“Couldn’t Nick help with that?”
“Yeah, let’s go talk to him.” Ramos moved to stand.
“Wait.” I put my hand on his arm, keeping him in his chair. “If you keep Nick busy, I think that would be best. I don’t want him around while I’m learning the game. He might figure out I can read minds, and I really don’t want him to know.”
“Yeah…okay. But once you learn the basics, I want you to play him. It would be a good test.”
Overwhelmed, I dropped my face into my hands. “Are you sure I can do this?”
“Yes, now come on.” He grabbed my wrist and pulled me up. I followed him into the house just as Nick came into the kitchen from the computer room.
Nick was thinking that after talking to Manetto, he’d underestimated me. He couldn’t figure it out, but Manetto didn’t have a problem with letting me play poker with all that money, so my premonitions had to be real. Whatever that meant. “Manetto gave me some names to call for backup,” Nick said. “Did he tell you?”
“Yes,” Ramos said. “We have to assume that Carson’s not just going to hand over the money,” he explained to me. “So we need to expect him to do something, and have some friends around in case we need them.”
“I got some names and phone numbers to call,” Nick added. “They’ll help us find the people we need as well as a place for the poker game. I’ll go get started.” Nick went back into the computer room and closed the door, leaving Ramos and me at the table.
Ramos opened the deck of cards. “You ready to play?”
At my nod, he began with the hand rankings, like a pair, two pair, and all of that, and I had to stop him to write it all down. I’d heard of them before, but I didn’t have a clear picture about which ones were better, like the difference between a flush and a straight.
After that, he taught me the basics of Texas Hold’em. The flop, the turn, and the river were all new to me, plus I had no idea how to bet, raise, or fold. Ramos was patient, and I tried to soak it all in. It wasn’t until he assigned monetary amounts to the chips that I panicked. “You mean this one chip will be worth twenty-five thousand dollars?”
Ramos took in my stricken expression and raised one eyebrow, thinking “duh.” My eyes widened further, and he sighed before checking his watch. “You know what? Let’s call it night. It’s almost midnight and we’re both tired. My side is bothering me and we’ve got a big day ahead of us. Sound good?”
“Your side?” That caught my attention. “Oh my gosh! You don’t think it’s infected do you? You’d better let me take a look. If it’s infected you’ll need to go straight to the emergency room.”
“I’m sure it’s fine.”
“Maybe you need a tetanus shot.”
“No. I’m up to date on all my shots,” he said.
“At the very least, you should have gotten a shot of penicillin.”
“Shelby stop!” He grabbed my arms. “I didn’t mean it was bothering me that much. I’m fine.”
We stared at each other until he finally let go of me. I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms. “Good,” I bit out. “But I’m not going to bed until I see it for myself. I can at least put a new bandage on it.”
“I already did,” he said. He was thinking that he didn’t need anyone to take care of him, and he especially didn’t want or need that from me. Not right now.
“That’s not what I’m…” I held my breath as it hit me. What was I doing? Had I just crossed that invisible line between us? The line that changed us from friends to something more intimate? Was he putting me in my place? But what if his wound was infected? Good friends still cared about each other, didn’t they? “Did you get a good look at it? Are you sure it’s not infected?”
He glanced up at the ceiling in frustration before pinning his gaze on me. “If I let you look at it, will you go to bed?
“Sure,” I agreed.
His lips thinned, then with one quick move, he pulled off his shirt and turned so his injured side was facing me. I had to give him credit for putting on the bandage without help, because it looked pretty good…just like the rest of him. He didn’t try to remove the bandage, but glanced at me with a raised eyebrow and a clear challenge to do it myself.
I knelt down beside him and started to peel off the tape. It was sticky and wouldn’t come off very easily, but I just kept pulling. I could hear Ramos thinking that I should just rip it off, but for some reason, I took perverse pleasure in pulling it off slowly. Studying the wound, I could see he’d left the same butterfly bandages I’d put on, and they needed to be replaced, but the rest of it was healing nicely with no sign of infection.
“It looks pretty good,” I said, relieved. “Where’s your first aid kit? I need to put some more ointment on this and replace the bandages.”
“You know what? I’d like to take a shower first. If you want to wait, you can put the bandages on then. Otherwise, I’ll just do it when I’m done.” He pushed back his chair and stood, gazing down at me as I knelt on the rug, his mind blank, but his eyes darkening. “You know what? Never mind. Go to bed Shelby. I’ll see you in the morning.” With that he turned on his heel and fled into the backyard, closing the patio door with a thwack, just like he had earlier.
I swallowed and stood, not exactly sure what had just happened, and realized my heart was beating a bit too fast. Scowling, I grabbed the poker book off the table and hurried up the stairs to my room, locking the door behind me. I hoped that if I concentrated really hard on poker and the upcoming game, it would help me forget all about Ramos and the way he’d looked at me with those smoldering eyes.
I threw myself into studying the book and got clear through the chapter explaining Texas Hold’em before the words started to blur and I fell asleep. I woke sometime after three in the morning to turn off my bedside lamp. Turning to my side, I punched my pillow, but my mind kept going over the terms of the game as I tried to remember the sequence of events, when to bet, when to fold, and how my mind-reading could possibly matter when so much of winning depended on the cards.
Between that and pushing away thoughts of Ramos, I tossed and turned for another hour. Finally, I decided I just needed to relax and forget about everything. Ramos was my friend, and nothing more. My worries about the game were based on the fact that I just didn’t know enough about it, and once I had some practice, I was sure to get the hang of it. I had the whole day to practice, and losing sleep over it wasn’t doing me any good. I finally drifted off to sleep, and the next time I woke, relief swept over me to find the sun shining through my window.
The clock read eight-thirty, and with so much happening today, my heart lurched with sudden anxiety. After a nice hot shower, I blew my hair dry and applied my make-up, knowing I would have to go shopping for something to wear to the poker game. But I had no idea what. I didn’t want to wear a slinky dress like the women at the club, but I certainly couldn’t wear the same clothes I’d had on yesterday…which turned out to be what I had to wear again today. What I wouldn’t give for my suitcase!
Downstairs, I found Nick at the table putting copies of the printouts from
the thumb-drive into envelopes to deliver to Carson’s associates. He glanced up at me and murmured a quick good morning.
With my stomach a ball of nerves, I didn’t feel like eating much, so I cooked a piece of toast for breakfast. I kept waiting for Ramos to come down the stairs, but soon realized he was gone. “Where’s Ramos?” I asked Nick.
“He’s checking out a couple of places for you and Carson to play tonight.” Nick was thinking that this little poker game of mine was a lot more involved than I’d ever know, given the extra security Manetto insisted on having, and setting up the place for the game. He sure hoped it was worth it, and that I’d pull through for them. They were all counting on me.
I suddenly lost my appetite and knew today was going to be one of those Mylanta days, and I’d better get some soon. “What are you doing?” I already knew, but needed him to quit thinking about me and how incompetent and untrained I was at playing poker. He explained about the envelopes and that he’d be delivering them once the game started.
“We don’t want them to get this information too soon, or you might not get to play Carson before they come after him.” Nick smiled, tapping the envelopes on the table. “We also don’t want Carson to find out what we’ve done before the game, so while you’re playing is the perfect opportunity to deliver them.”
“Makes sense to me,” I said. “When do you think Ramos will be back?”
“About an hour or so,” he answered. “He said we should play some poker and I could teach you all I know about the game.”
“Okay,” I said, eager to do something. “Let me get my notes.” I ran upstairs for my book and notes. By the time I got back, Nick had the chips out on the table and was shuffling the cards.
We spent the next two hours playing. Nick helped me with the basics of the game, from how the blinds were set up, to who went first and when to bet. Once I got that down, he helped me with what cards were worth betting on, and which ones weren’t. The only thing I didn’t like were the little negative thoughts he kept thinking about me that I wasn’t picking it up very quick.