Cool Hand (26 page)

Fuller dealt the next hand.

I barely looked at my cards, my mind working furiously. If Zane was going after Iversen’s companions, was he after mine too? Rita knew I wasn’t here alone. Had she told Zane? Were his people hunting Tullah right now? What would they do if they found her?

Rita’s face gave nothing away. She might as well have been a statue.

What could I offer Zane, to prevent him from harming her?

Would saying anything only bring his attention to her?

Say nothing. Stay focused. Diana, Savannah, Claude, me. That’s what I was here for.

The less attention I brought to Tullah, the safer she was.

At least I hadn’t mentioned to Rita what Tullah was. They might think Tullah was Athanate, which meant they would be searching for a marque.

I had to concentrate.

“You sure twisted his tail,” Fuller was saying to Zane.

Groveling little creep.

The alpha didn’t reply. With the remains of Iversen’s money already in the pot, and a large ante, he opened the betting big.

“So, you’re claiming to be Gold Hill?” Zane said to Evans. “Nothing to do with Denver?”

Evans nodded, his expression guarded. He matched the bet.

“Since when?”

“Since he got kicked out for convincing his friend to challenge Felix,” I said.

Evans glared at me, but held his tongue.

I matched the bet. Fuller and Zane followed.

“Not long ago, from the look of it,” Zane said, “if that’s when you got those bruises.”

I laughed. “No. Not long, but he got those from me.” I leaned across the table. “Want to tell them what happened, Bonehead?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Evans yelled, getting half out of his chair before a growl from Bode sent him back down.

“Recently arrived at Gold Hill, then,” Zane said, drawing two cards.

Something clicked in my head, and as Fuller drew three cards, I realized what he had brought Evans here for.

It was the old joke about how fast you had to run to get away from a tiger: not faster than the tiger, just faster than the guy next to you.

Fuller couldn’t have known beforehand what was going to happen to Iversen’s teams, but some animal cunning made him realize he’d be safer if he had another pack member with him. A throwaway.

Whatever story he’d spun Evans, the man hadn’t seen it, and he wouldn’t see it now. Although he’d sat down at Bode’s threat, his face was red with anger. He wouldn’t be thinking straight for a long time. Probably right up until it hit the fan.

That was his problem, though. Not mine.

I glanced down at my cards. I had nothing in my hand, and the stakes were high.

It’s not the hand, it’s the way you play it,
Top whispered in my ear.

It wasn’t just the biggest pot of the night, it was the breaker, the pot you get to when the true shape of the game emerges. The point where the losers know they’re going to lose, if they’ve got any sense. The point where winners think they could win it all.

Pull out.
Athanate.

No. Take them. You can do it
. Wolf.

I stretched slowly and ran hands through my hair again.

I thought of Diana in Romero’s hands.

Savannah, walking into the Were club to find her brother.

Tullah, Olivia, Alex, Jen. Waiting on me.

My heart on fire, I matched the bet.

“How many you want?” Fuller said, his hands nervous on the deck.

“None.”

Both Fuller and Evans twitched. My asking for none had them mentally running around in circles: exactly what I wanted them to do.

Zane didn’t twitch. He wasn’t that kind of player; he went very still.

Fuller matched as well. He was way down on his stake, to the point where even he had to realize there was no way back for him.

Zane started the final round of bets. Again, he went high. His face said calm, but his pulse didn’t.

He’d sensed it too. We’d reached the endgame. There was blood in the water.

What kind of hand has he got?

“You say there’s no deal between Larimer and Gold Hill?” Zane said to Evans.

Evans shook his head, his eyes staring at the back of his cards as if he could magic a royal flush out of them.

“And Pack Deauville is sharing territory?”

“Yes,” I said, before Evans could speak. “Bet or fold, Bonehead.”

Evans folded, seething with an ugly hate directed at me.

My turn.

This was a
real
cool hand.

They knew my heart rate had been all over the place. I let it ramp back up at the thought of the gamble, and then I focused on Rita.

Reached out. All the way across the room. Synced with her heart. Everything calm.

She frowned, sensing something.

“All in,” I said, and shoveled everything into the center.

This is insane!

“I can’t match that,” Fuller’s voice rasped.

I just ignored him. I wasn’t hunting him.

Zane took a swallow of his ’shine, leaned back in his chair and stared at me.

My bet was more than he had left on the table.

“I’ll take your marker, Zane. A big, bad boy like you, I bet you’re good for it. Or you could work it off.” I dipped a finger in my drink and licked it. “Or you could give me back my kin and answer a few questions. Help me out a little.”

Shit, I’m crazier than he is.

Bode and Haz were back alongside his chair. Between them, they’d worked up one of those subliminal growls that I could feel vibrating in my chest.

I let it go. I’d been growled at by the entire Denver pack before. These two were nothing compared to that.

Instead of fear, I let the deep fire in my belly come welling out, lighting up my face. Let Zane look at that. Let him want me.

The first chink of hesitation showed in his mismatched eyes.

The moment stretched—and stretched. Evans and Fuller forgot to hate me and waited with everyone else. No one breathed.

I sucked the last of the ’shine from my finger and smiled.

Zane folded.

Game over.

Fuller reached for my cards and I slammed my hand down on his, claws emerging from my fingers.

“You don’t get to look for free, and you have
nothing
I want,” I snarled at him.

He started to get up and my wolf came out.

Stop!

I could feel my face stretch into a fanged nightmare and the howl building up in me.

No! Diana, Savannah, Claude, me. Stop it!

I stopped.

It felt like an express train had gone past my shoulder at full speed, leaving me shaken and startled in its wake.

Hate this room. Hate these people. Hate. Bite them. Rip them.

Mountains. Cool air. Running.

My wolf subsided.

Calm.

Fuller was twitching in his chair, blood leaking from the back of his hand.

Zane gathered the cards. It was quiet except for the purr of the shuffle in his quick fingers.

He rapped the deck on its end and set it down.

The look he gave Fuller and Evans wasn’t pleasant. Evans certainly realized it, and it was just about penetrating Fuller’s head that they’d made a bigger mistake than he’d realized.

“I have no intention of recognizing Gold Hill and Ute Mountain,” Zane said flatly. “The territories are too small, too close. The way they’re run is backward and constitutes a danger for all of us.”

Fuller tried to speak, and Zane’s eyes narrowed. Fuller shut up.

“I’m speaking for all the New Mexico Were,” Zane said. “There’s one territory there, for one, well-run pack. You have a chance, one chance, to go back and tell them that.”

All
the New Mexico Were.
Shit.

They had a sort of Confederation down here already? Nothing I’d been told hinted at that. To outsiders, New Mexico was simply lethal, keep-out territory.

Which is how they could set up something like that with no one the wiser.

“Make a deal with the Confederation, and it’s a declaration of war,” Zane finished. “Am I clear?”

“Sir,” Fuller stuttered and blushed.

“Should we go?” Evans asked.

Fuller shifted in his seat. Sweat stood out on his brow. He and Evans had gambled away a cabin that probably didn’t belong to them. They had nothing to show for it, but he wanted out of here more than he wanted that cabin back.

“You understand and remember everything I’ve said about Gold Hill and Ute Mountain, Mr. Evans?” Zane said.

“Yes,” Evans said, and then added “sir.”

“Well, I suggest you take your truck, drive straight back up to the border and tell them, then.”

Evans got to his feet slowly, waiting for Zane to dismiss Fuller.

He didn’t.

His fingers flicked at Bode and Haz.

Bode escorted Evans out.

Haz moved to take Savannah and Claude.

Before I knew what I was doing, I was blocking the way.

Mine. You will not take them away from me.

Haz froze in position. Savannah and her brother pulled free from her, but there was nowhere to go.

“They are guarantees against your good behavior,” Zane said from far away. “They won’t be harmed, unless you give us reason.”

I could feel some of the Troll Team gathering behind me.

I couldn’t fight all of them.

Diana. Savannah. Claude. Me. Nothing else matters.

“See that they aren’t,” I said to Haz.

I touched them gently on their arms as they were taken past me, trying to reassure them that I would get them out.

Then I walked back to my chair, every step painful.

Fuller and I were alone with Rita and Zane. And an unconscious Were from Cimarron on the floor.

“And now?” Fuller said, his voice strained. He raised his trembling hands in question and glanced sideways at me.

The ceaseless pressure of Zane’s domination was like being scrubbed with sand, but Rita was fixed on Fuller now and wasn’t sparing me so much as a glance.

“I’ve had enough,” Zane said. “You made some statements earlier, Mr. Fuller. Were you insulting these women specifically, or do you have an issue with female Were and Athanate generally?”

He held his hand up and flicked his fingers.

Rita nudged herself upright off the wall. She’d been standing there without even shifting her weight for the entire time. The whole room felt different with her moving, like a big ornament had been misplaced. Was there something she was broadcasting? Did were-cougars have the equivalent of the Call?

Fuller raised his hands again. “No offense intended to you and yours.” His face was slick with sweat, and his eyes darted around the room as if looking for another way out.

“I didn’t take any offense,” Zane said.

Liar.

I doubted Zane would be upset at the comments directed at me. But comments at his pack? Fuller had misjudged badly.
Really
badly. He was beginning to see that.

Zane’s fingers moved again.

Rita stood at the end of the table, opposite Fuller. He didn’t seem to have noticed, but her eyes had shifted to cat. The green got colder and the pupils split vertically. The stare never left his face.

She was wearing a tan leather jacket, neatly tailored. Her fingers undid the buttons and she slipped it off her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. Pulled the zippers down on her boots and twisted her feet out.

“Hey,” Fuller said. He laughed nervously and shifted his weight back in his chair, wiping his hands down his jeans.

She undid her shirt buttons, one by one.

The music from Team Troll outside had gotten low and soulful. Rita moved with it, not swaying or dancing, but every motion measured and graceful. Another time, and in another place, Fuller might have found it erotic. Maybe with another woman, one without that intense, expressionless stare. He wasn’t dumb enough to think it was intended to be erotic tonight. His knew this was all bad, and it was focused on him.

The shirt joined the jacket on the floor. She wore no bra. Didn’t wear a top to sunbathe either.

Were get naked. They lose the sensitivity to baring their skin. That wasn’t the same as not being aware. Alex was aware when he was naked in front of me—unconcerned but very aware. Rita didn’t care. It made no difference to her.

The rasp of the zipper was loud. She eased her velvety pants over her slim hips and let them drop.

She didn’t have the sort of mobile body that I guess would be regarded as the ideal stripper. She had the taut, rippling body of an athlete and the movements of a ballet dancer. But her body wasn’t tuned for athletics or ballet; its business was death.

She pushed her lace underwear down and she was naked.

She didn’t wear
anything
for sunbathing.

Her nose flared. She leaned on the table, eyes pinning Fuller to his seat. Leaned more, her fingers hooked into claws, one knee coming up—and suddenly there was that visual distortion, like light had bent around her, and the cougar’s back legs landed on the tabletop.

The eyes hadn’t moved from her target, not even to blink.

“Fuck!” Fuller said.

As a human, Rita was about five-six and a hundred and thirty pounds. As a cougar, she was seven feet long and three-six high. She looked magnificent, but I was glad I wasn’t in front of her.

The cougar took a leisurely step, a rolling of shoulders and hips, the soft placing of a paw. Under the tawny hide, the muscles moved exactly as Rita’s had.

Another step.

“Hold on now. What the hell is this?” Fuller said.

Zane’s arm reached up, and Rita stopped. Not just stopped; became completely motionless.

“I needed one of you to go back and tell Gold Hill I’m not interested,” Zane said. “That was Mr. Evans. He’s on his way now. You trespassed on my territory.”

“But I’m an envoy,” Fuller said.

“An envoy of nothing. I don’t recognize Gold Hill as a pack. You are a stain on the earth, and a blight on the land. We will cleanse you all, dig you out of the hills until the soil no longer remembers you and the rain washes the last of your stench away.”

“I brought these for safe passage…the Ute Mountain guy and…” Fuller indicated the Were on the floor.

“Which only serves to remind me how sick you are,” Zane said. “But I’ll give you a choice.”

Fuller looked eagerly at him, but I could hear nothing in Zane’s voice to justify hope.

“You can have a clean death; Ms. Farrell will put a bullet through your head before you blink.” He picked up my HK and gave it to me. “Or you can chose to fight Rita, and if you win, you go free.”

I swallowed.

Crap.

I didn’t like being put in this position, doing Zane’s dirty work for him.

Fuller was nothing to me. I’d seen the way he looked at Savannah. He was sick and, if I heard right about Gold Hill, he was near rogue, but for me to just shoot him while he was unarmed?

Zane wasn’t finished playing games.

But I still had to get out to take Savannah and Claude away. Their lives against Fuller’s? I took out the HK, flicked the safety and rested the barrel on the table.

Fuller scrambled to his feet, angry and scared.

He was big, not like Bode, but he was bigger than Rita. His wolf would be bigger, too.

He narrowed his eyes, estimating.

I’d made my calculation when I saw Rita change. The cougar that stood motionless in the middle of the table was a killing machine—cold and deadly. Fuller had no chance.

He fumbled with his clothes, shedding them quickly and changing to wolf.

His wolf was heavier, deeper in the chest than the cougar. Those jaws were stronger than a cougar’s. If he could get a grip on her neck…

He snarled and Zane’s hand dropped.

Rita was off the table in a blur. Fuller backed up, trying to make room, and lost it right there. Moving forward, his weight might have counteracted against hers. As it was, she hit him squarely, knocking him over, and her jaws snapped onto his throat while her claws ripped his body away.

He struggled, choking in his own blood, paws scrabbling at her, and then he was changing again—back to human, in flickering starts, his limbs juddering.

Rita’s head jerked forward, the teeth biting deeper. The grip muffled her scream of victory. She shook him once, hard, and I knew he was dead.

Her paws pressed down and she heaved away, tearing his throat out and coughing it onto the floor. Blood pumped feebly. The body twitched one last time and everything went still.

Zane stood beside her. He rested his hand on her head and she turned cat-like into the touch, closing her eyes and seeking the contact. Then she shuddered and changed back to human.

She drew her legs up under her and leaned against Zane, looking at Fuller’s body.