Deadly Gamble Read Free Page B

“I’ll pass,” he said lightly, but his green eyes were watchful, and slightly narrowed. “You okay? You’ve got dark circles under your eyes.”
    Between Bert and Tucker, I was pretty clear that the current look wasn’t working for me. “I’m fine, ” I said, a little too quickly.
    Tucker pretended to dodge a blow. “Excuse me for asking,” he said.
    I finally got my legs working again, and made for the stairs. “Things to do, people to see,” I explained airily over one shoulder, concentrating on 1—putting one foot in front of the other, then repeating the process, 2—not spilling my coffee, and 3—not running back to Tucker and jumping his bones in the parking lot. “Nice seeing you again.”
    He didn’t answer, but I felt his gaze on me as I mounted the steps.

    L ILLIAN WAS NOT having one of her good days, as it turned out.
    She sat in her wheelchair, in front of the one window in her fusty little room, a shrunken and fragile figure, arthritic hands knotted in her lap. A worn but colorful afghan covered her bony knees, and a lump rose in my throat as I remembered the woman she used to be. Her stepdaughter, Jolie, had crocheted that afghan for her long ago, as a Christmas present. Lillian had been luminous with delight that day, her laughter rich and vibrant, her brain and body in working order. Those painfully curled fingers had been busy, competent, glistening with shopping-channel rings.
    Lillian was my babysitter, before my parents were murdered.
    Shortly after the killings, she’d been my kidnapper.
    I swallowed the lump, blinked back tears and crossed the room to stand next to her, bending to kiss her lightly on top of the head.
    â€œHello,” I said gently.
    She looked up at me, and for a moment recognition sparked in her sunken eyes. She grasped my hand, squeezed it with a strange urgency and made a soft sound that I chose to interpret as a greeting.
    I dragged up a chair to sit knee to knee with her, opened the bag of doughnuts I’d picked up on the way down from Cave Creek and offered her favorite, a double-frosted maple bar.
    She shook her wobbly head, like one of those bobble-figures they give away at baseball games, but her watery eyes were full of longing. Lillian had been an off-the-rack size 16 ever since I could remember, but now she looked almost skeletal, with big dents at her temples and under her cheekbones. It was as though her skull were eating its way to the surface.
    I broke off a piece of the maple bar and held it to her lips. She took a nibble, like a baby bird being fed in the nest. My heart twisted.
    Laboriously, Lillian gummed the morsel and swallowed.
    â€œYou look good,” I lied.
    â€œCods,” Lillian said.
    I frowned. “Cods?” She wanted fish?
    â€œCods,” Lillian insisted.
    â€œShe’s talking about these,” a female voice put in, nearly scaring me out of my skin.
    I turned to see a pudgy nurse’s aide standing by Lillian’s neatly made bed, holding up a familiar deck of cards. Of course, I thought. The Tarot cards.
    I didn’t recognize the aide. The turnover was huge at Sunset Villa.
    Lillian began to squirm in her chair, reaching with what seemed a desperate eagerness. “Cods!” she croaked.
    â€œThey’re the devil’s work,” the nurse’s aide said, with a self-righteous little sniff. She was overweight and looked like she might attend one of those churches where they drink antifreeze and juggle snakes. “Only thing worse is them Ouija boards, if you ask me.”
    â€œI didn’t ask you,” I pointed out, crisply polite as I dropped the maple bar back into the bakery bag and went to claim Lillian’s deck. They were her most treasured possession, those creased and battered cards. When we were on the run, after my folks were killed, she’d sometimes given readings to pay for a tank of gas or a meal in some