Cool Hand (25 page)

Mine!

Diana. Savannah. Claude. Me. Whatever it takes to get out of here. No kneejerk reactions.

“They’re mine,” I said again, more growl than words.

“I’ve lost pack to their Athanate House,” Zane said. “Our healer. Our young. Bode’s own cousin. Why not give them to him? Why should your claim be better than his?”

We all matched the new bet.

I was working on automatic, all my attention locked on the alpha.

“You want them so bad?” he said, eyes trailing over me. “What are you offering?”

When I didn’t reply, Fuller snorted. “She’s all show and no touch, like some stuck-up bitch finds herself having to work in a fucking strip club.” He rolled his shoulders and his voice took on a ‘we’re guys together’ tone. “Not like yours,” he said, his eyes passing over Haz and Rita.

Zane didn’t blink, didn’t acknowledge Fuller, but his eyes shaded golden.

Was he angry at me, or Fuller?

There was no time to think about it.

“What are you offering?” he snarled at me again.

My wolf came back and a growl built up inside. Breath was coming shorter. I had to find a way. Appease the wolf. Get momentum behind me again.

I took a swig of my drink. It was every bit as bad as it looked and smelled. It gave me no pain to turn my head and spit it as far as I could across the room.

“Shit, a bottle with a neck that narrow,” I gasped, not acting at all, “what I want to know is, how’d you get the buffalo to piss in it?”

Bode had come up onto the balls of his feet as soon as I’d spat.

There was absolute silence in the room. I was focused on Zane, but he was as tight as a metal drum.

Still, I could feel Haz, and she’d bitten her lip to stop herself from laughing. If she was going to laugh at my jokes, I’d have to adopt her, and to hell with Zane and Bode. I let my eyes linger on her neck. My jaw pulsed pleasantly.

She’ll learn to like it.

I felt queasy when I had that thought.

Zane lifted a commanding finger, breaking the moment. Haz turned back to the cupboard.

Now she held a tall glass jar, a damned pickle jar with an aluminum screw top. The sort of jar ’billies used for keeping their ’shine in the ramshackle shed way up on the hill where the po-lice didn’t go.

That’s what she’d been laughing about. Not my joke. I was about to get a good reminder of what’s outside of the frying pan.

Haz casually tossed my buffalo piss onto the floor and poured me a slug of ’shine, with only a slight tremble in her hands.

I sipped. It was strong all right, eye-squeezing strong, but helluva smooth and—what was the word Jen used for a well-made drink?—
assured
. Orange rind and pinewood campfire.

“Thank you,” I whispered hoarsely. “That’ll do just fine.” Haz ignored me and repeated the service with Zane’s glass.

The others kept their buffalo piss.

Evans looked like he’d swallowed broken glass. I blew him a kiss.

Damn. I’d just won the first round.

No,
said Tara.
That’s what a hustler always lets you think.

We were several hands into the game.

It’d gotten quiet. Despite the stakes, the game had developed a rhythm around the playing styles.

Iversen was a percentages man. He knew the odds and worked them, but he had no feel, no presence at the table. He wouldn’t lose much, but he wouldn’t win.

Evans had gut cunning, but he had a tell and no balls to speak of.

Fuller took dumb-ass risks. He’d made a comment about Rita joining the game so he could win the shirt off her back. Rita’s eyes passed over him like an undertaker gauging dimensions.

But none of the others at the table were important.

The alpha opposite me was like death at a banquet, which in a manner of speaking, he was. He and I were still circling each other, looking for weaknesses.

We’d taken small wins. Neither up nor down.

Whenever I felt his eyes on me, I’d lick my lips or tilt my head and watch him right back.

He’d respond, trying to unnerve me by staring fixedly at my breasts.

Iversen and Evans were furious at the byplay.

Fuller alternated between looking at me and Savannah.

Good. I was distracting all of them.

That gave me time to think.

What the hell was Zane getting from this? As he’d forcefully pointed out to me, he held everything and everyone here.

If he didn’t want a deal with the Confederation, maybe he wanted information from Iversen. Could I use that?

New hand. I had a pair of tens.

“Tell me, Iversen,” I said as he picked up his cards, “since the Confederation claims to work on consensus and benefits all, why did you use the Medicine Bow pack to subdue the Cheyenne pack?”

That was information I’d picked up from Alex’s files. I hoped it was good.

“That’s a lie!” he snapped.

“That so?” I said. “Strange. No one remembers them having any quarrel before Medicine Bow joined you.”

Evans bet five hundred and I matched him. Fuller followed, but I could tell he didn’t want to.

Iversen looked at his cards again, frowning.

“That’d have been right after the Rock Springs alpha challenged Medicine Bow,” I said. “Not the old alpha. The new one that you installed.”

Evans tapped his fingers on the table. It was his tell. He wanted to push this hand.

“Why don’t you come clean about it?” I went on. “The Confederation is nothing more than the founders trying to extend their territories by bullshitting or beating other packs.”

“Just shut up.” Iversen said. He was from Wind River. The other two founder packs were Bozeman and Bighorn.

“And Colorado’s a big problem, because either you keep growing, or all the packs you’ve tricked and beaten will start tearing you apart from the inside.”

“Shut up!” he said again.

He folded his hand. Sweat sprang up on his forehead. His reactions were giving him away and he knew it.

The Central Mountain Confederation were stuck. They’d gone as far north along the Rockies as they could; at Fort St. John up in Canadian British Columbia, they’d run out of sizeable packs. And southward, they’d been stopped at Colorado by Felix. If New Mexico refused to deal, they’d have to expand sideways, away from the Rockies. Those packs were smaller, more widely spaced. Everything would become more difficult to control.
Much
more difficult.

Crunch time, and Iversen knew it. They had to take Colorado.

Had I just handed a negotiating lever to Zane?

He wasn’t looking at Iversen. He was looking at me.

I shifted in my seat and ran my tongue slowly over my upper lip.

Evans drew two cards. I took three and ended up holding three tens. Not bad.

Fuller drew five. Plain dumb, with the size of the pot relative to his pile.

Zane took a single card.

“And what’s the reason Denver doesn’t want to be part of the Confederation?” Zane said.

“Larimer doesn’t do deals,” Fuller said.

I couldn’t remember if Alex’s files said he’d tried to approach Felix, but no way would Felix deal with Gold Hill.

“Not true.” I said. “I’m Pack Deauville. We’re a sub-pack of Pack Larimer.”

“That hasn’t been settled,” Evans said.

“If you don’t like that, then try this. The Denver pack has a deal with Altau. That’s nationwide, in case you missed the news.”

The betting went around and I just knew I had Evans. Fuller folded. That left me and Zane staring at each other over the biggest pot of the evening so far.

“You’re full of shit,” Iversen said. “That deal is worth nothing. Altau is overextended.”

“Busy at the moment, I’ll give you that,” I said. “But that’s not going to last forever, and then the Confederation is up against all of North America.” I leaned forward on the table and smiled at him. “Bigger bet than you’re used to, boy. Think you can sit at that table?”

I raised.

Zane matched.

Evans’ heartrate spiked.

“What’s the reason Albuquerque doesn’t want to be part of the Confederation?” I asked Zane, trying to rattle him.

“We came to ask Albuquerque
and
Santa Fe,” Iversen spoke over the alpha. “Maybe I’d have been better off going straight to the top.”

Oh, hell. Albuquerque was a sub-pack of Santa Fe? There was another alpha in New Mexico that was senior to Zane? Someone crazier than him?

How the hell did we not know, right next door in Denver?

Was this a Felix problem?

There was a knock on the door. Haz went over and opened it. Someone handed her a piece of paper. She read it and handed it back. She returned to stand behind Zane’s chair.

His attention broken, Zane folded and held up his hand for Haz to press out a message.

We hadn’t made any rule on escalating. With Zane out, Evans put in only a hundred.

Pussy, but I’d already beaten him. I matched and we showed.

My tens beat his eights.

That put me ahead of everyone, but the game hadn’t shaped up yet.

“Straight to the top? Not your style, going straight anywhere, Iversen,” I said, keeping my voice sweet. “That’s why you ended up talking to a bunch of Matlal renegades to try and con your way into a justification for moving on Denver. Gonna try that with Gold Hill down here?”

Iversen’s face went pale.

“I’m not listening to any more of this.” He leaped to his feet, and all of us instinctively jumped up. Bode surged forward.

“
Sit down!”
Zane’s voice lashed out.

Iversen and the others crumpled back into their chairs, faces sagging in shock.

My knees went like jelly, but my wolf was damned if any Were other than Alex or Felix was ever going to pull that dominance crap on me.

My skin was itching to let her free. Only the sight of Savannah cowering on the floor beside Zane held me back. So I growled and stayed put. I’d ride it out. I could do it. I could do it.

And if this all went to hell in the next few seconds, my HK was just across the table. It would be easier to go for it from a standing start.

Zane ignored the rest of the room.

His eyes bored into mine and he spoke again, quietly. “Sit down.” His dominance washed across the room again, more controlled this time, more like a tide coming in.

I braced myself and stared back.

Haz reached for my gun, her eyes narrowed, but Zane’s hand came out and stopped her.

Then, I sat down. Slowly.

Every heart, mine included, was sprinting. We were all on a hair trigger for fight or flight. Except Rita. She hadn’t twitched. She leaned against the wall, watching.

The silence stretched, until Zane broke it. “You’re done, Mr. Iversen.”

“What do you mean? We’ve spent all our time on this game. We haven’t even talked yet.”

Zane stood and leaned over the table.

“We’ve talked enough.” He scooped up the remainder of Iversen’s pile and threw it into the center of the table. “You won’t be needing any ‘living expenses’ because you’re getting on a plane back to Bozeman tonight. One of Bode’s team will escort you to the airport.”

“You can’t just ignore the Confederation. I’m the accredited representative—”

“That has no sway except where packs have submitted to you. New Mexico is not open to the deal you’re offering. Not Albuquerque, not Santa Fe, not anywhere in New Mexico.” Zane’s voice rose, became harder with each word he ground out. “You and the Confederation will not set foot here again.”

Zane’s dominance and anger seemed to feed each other. He wasn’t my alpha, and I still felt I should be making myself small.

Iversen got to his feet slowly, still pale, his hands still adrenaline-shaky. He was smart enough—and a diplomat enough—to wipe any expression off his face. The Confederation might want to try again, whatever Zane said, so it was his job to back out without burning those bridges.

He was getting out, and I imagined he was secretly relieved.

“One last thing, Mr. Iversen.”

Iversen turned.

“Those teams you had in the state.” Iversen started to deny it, but Zane talked right over him. “The one just out of town here, and the one that hid out in Los Alamos, ready to sneak off into the Carson Park or meet you in Santa Fe. Don’t wait for them at the airport.”

Iversen dropped the pretense. “You’ll send them back a different way?” he said.

“No,” Zane said. “We’ll bury them. You get to go home, Iversen, because I need one person to take my message back.”