Winner

by Harley Slate

  “The Investigation kept hitting more and more dead ends. It became obvious the organization didn't always use the same faces to pick up the jackpots. They rotated people in and then back out. The math said casinos around the country were already out millions of dollars in excess payouts. It wasn't just happening in Chicago or Atlantic City or Biloxi. It was spread out, a few hits here and a few hits there. And then we started to pick up some chatter about Vegas.”

  “So you were assigned to make yourself available. You were set out like bait.”

  “It was the only way. They had to come to me, I couldn't go to them.” Mel's laugh didn't sound much like a laugh. “I had a natural story, the sick great-grandmother, her house in Henderson signed over to me years ago when I was really too young for the responsibility, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debts that I could never hope to pay. I spent a lot of time crying in my beer, sharing my sad story in various bars and casinos.”

  “An expensive operation,” Lana said. A lonely operation, too.

  “It was a risk, but a risk we had to take. There were too many suspicious jackpots. Too many suspicious deaths. We had to find the brains behind this.”

  Lana ran a finger along the sweet, slick curve of Mel's side. They lay together so close, their foreheads almost touching.

  “I wasn't the only bait, but I was the bait they took. Maybe because of my age and gender. Maybe they thought I'd be more manageable.”

  They both laughed at the thought of Mel being manageable.

  “And I'd lived here all my life, so I was easy to check out in the school records. The yearbooks. They could question my elementary school teachers, old high school friends, anything or anybody. I was real, and everybody knew I was the girl who'd ended up as a caregiver for her great-grandmother when her father hopped on his Harley. I was famous in my way. They could be confident I wasn't police.”

  “Still one hell of a risk,” Lana said.

  “The risk was the job,” Mel said. “Anyway, so one night I stumbled home to find a couple of wise guys parked in my living room drinking a bottle of rosé my great-grandmother left behind when she moved into the nursing home. The TV was on with the sound turned down, but nobody was watching the show.” She shuddered. “One of the wise guys grabbed my shoulder one-handed and talked right in my face. Told me the debt had been paid, and even the records of the debt had been yanked from the county records. The house was mine, and there would be more money coming to help my great-gran. If...”

  “If,” Lana repeated.

  The story came out in bits and pieces, probably the same way she'd shared it with the FBI during her various debriefings. Mel was in, but she still didn't really know who she was dealing with. The faces she saw belonged to low-level enforcers like the guys who broke into her house. They fed her information slowly, often in the form of coded messages that appeared on her phone. That's how they sent her the exact sequence of keys she needed to tap into the machines at the right moment to trigger the jackpot.

  Slowly, step by step, she was getting a better idea of how the scam was played, but she still didn't have the names of most of the players. The organization was modeled on the terrorist cell, so that no one person knew more than a few of the members.

  “What you saw was the tip of the iceberg,” Mel said. “A few days, a couple of weeks... but I'd been undercover for almost a year by then. Longer than that, if you count the time after being recruited into the FBI and then being trained as part of the operation.”

  “Which you have to count that time, if you weren't allowed to tell anyone.” Lana felt confident of that. No one could know Mel was in the FBI, not even her own father, because anyone who knew might let the secret slip to the wrong person. “If I understand right, you were already isolated from almost the beginning.”

  “You do understand. That's exactly right, that's exactly what I felt. And, really, I was isolated even before that. I hardly went out during high school. Before my great-grandmother got bad enough for my dad to admit there was a problem, well, I could see for myself something wasn't right even if he was in denial. I was afraid to leave her at home alone. Until she went into the nursing home, I couldn't get too far away from her. I was so afraid something would happen...”

  “Sounds like you missed a lot.”

  Like your entire teenage years.

  Mel shrugged. She didn't want to agree, didn't want to indulge in self-pity, and yet she couldn't disagree. “Well, anyway, the last year when I was officially undercover, that was the worst of it. I had to constantly play a part, constantly cultivate the right character, constantly make myself approachable. And even then, they didn't really trust me, I wasn't getting everything I needed. Toward the end, I couldn't even make contact with my colleagues. I might know they were out there, but I could no longer risk communicating with them. Any little hint that I was a federal agent would've sent my suspects running.”

  “You were all alone out there.”

  “I was. It was harder than I thought it would be. I needed something that was mine. Someone who was mine.”

  Lana's heart skipped a beat. “And that was me. When you were looking on the app, that's what you were looking for.”

  “Oh, I told myself something different. That it was just once, that I was just blowing off steam. But, yeah, that's what I was looking for.”

  “Someone to be yours.”

  “That's you, Lana. Even when you were Ashton, even when it was just our bodies talking, something inside me knew.”

  They were kissing again. Not drowsy kisses, not now, they were both fully awake and aware of the heat pulsing through their blood.

  “I knew it, too. I knew it, too.”

  “Is it too soon to say I think I love you?”

  “Not if I can say it.” A deep breath. A deeper kiss. “I love you, Mel, I really do.”

  “I love you, Lana. I love you too.”

  The kisses went deeper yet. Sometimes they forgot how to breathe. And yet the words still echoed around them, as real and true as any words ever spoken.

  “I love you, Mel.”

  “I love you, Lana.”

  “Let me show you.”

  “If you let me show you too.”

  Epilogue

  A year later

  August again. A mountain road, now familiar. The chain was gone, and so was the fake bluebird box.

  Mel stopped the Ford Fusion, which she really had bought from her father, who really did live back in Chicago for a year or so until he decided to quit the office, climb on his Harley, and find America. Magical Mel's greatest magic was that so much of her was real.

  Her headlights lit up the yellow crime scene tape which had replaced the chain. DO NOT CROSS was printed over and over again in large letters. Tiny letters, almost invisible, informed you of the exact statute number of the federal law you'd be violating if you went beyond that line. It wasn't a serious law, and anyway it didn't really apply to an FBI special agent.

  Mel, smiling, turned off the car. “We'll have to walk from here.” It should have been too dark to show those green eyes flashing, but it wasn't.

  Lana too was smiling. She didn't mean to, but she could feel it in the stretch of her face. When she tried to swallow it, somehow she felt herself smiling even wider. “Sure. A walk sounds great.”

  They hadn't really talked about it in advance, and yet they were dressed for it, both of them in trail shoes and long pants. Somehow, they both knew.

  She shivered as she stepped out of the Ford. The night was an oven down in the valley, but it was cool, almost chilly, at this elevation. The chill felt expensive, the way too much air-conditioning can feel expensive.

  What a year it had been. Durrell knew less than he thought, but he knew enough to give the FBI a wedge into an impressively large and well-organized criminal enterprise. With the ring's advanced computer skills, they weren't just about robbing casinos. Mel's game at the Dragonhoarde was only the beginning. The organization turned out to
have uncounted numbers of operations and seemingly endless ways of laundering money. State and federal law enforcement would be working on multiple prosecutions over a period of years.

  This private mountain, bought with some of the stolen money to become a private dark sky for viewing meteor showers, was forfeit to the federal government. It had once been national forest and probably would be again. For now, though, and perhaps for many years to come, it was in a kind of limbo.

  Mel's phone, always up to date, had a powerful flashlight app that obviated the need for her to carry a police Maglite. Besides, they didn't want too much light tonight. It was important for their eyes to adjust.

  They walked quietly, arm in arm, Mel steering Lana off the road and around the long streamer of yellow tape to find the gap. This animal track, narrow between the scrubby trees, forced them to walk single file instead of side by side. Lana didn't mind. She enjoyed walking behind Mel to see the sway of her lovely hips moving up the trail.

  When they reached the abandoned parking lot, they could see the cracks starting to form. The hedges hadn't yet gone all that wild, thanks to the dry climate. The asphalt itself was going to seed first.

  Without speaking, they continued along a path and into one of the garden rooms formed by those hedges. No one else would be coming here tonight.

  Mel tucked away the phone. The night seemed darker than dark. There was no moon, and even a galaxy's worth of Milky Way wasn't much light until their eyes adjusted. Lana slipped off her pack, and they worked more by touch than by sight to spread out the blanket. After all, no one had been here this year to lay down the mattresses.

  They sprawled on their backs looking up. A flask of hot chocolate and vanilla vodka passed between them.

  The stars were already falling.

  “It's supposed to be a good show this year,” Mel said. “Especially after midnight.”

  “I can see already that it's going to be good.” Lana's hand reached for Mel's hand to enlace fingers. At times, the rainfall of meteors came fast enough to resemble the spark of falling fireworks. “That first time, I'll never forget it.”

  “I can't forget it either. I dream about it sometimes.”

  “Oh, God. How I do love you, Mel.”

  “I love you too, Lana. How I love the way you waltz into my dreams and just take over.”

  Lana laughed. “You do the same to me.” A larger than average meteor popped just then. They both went silent to watch its long track slide down the arc of the sky.

  “I have something to tell you.” Lana squeezed Mel's hand more firmly.

  Mel squeezed back. Not just an acknowledgment but an encouragement.

  “I've been accepted. I'll be going back to Quantico to continue my training.” Lana's dream had been interrupted, but it wasn't dead. She was destined to become an FBI agent after all.

  “Congratulations, lady.” Mel sounded smug, as well she might. She'd told Lana a thousand times she'd get back in. “I never doubted you, I knew it all along. And, oh, by the way, it just so happens I have something to tell you.” She paused for half a heartbeat. “Although a smart girl like you, you may have already guessed.”

  “You're getting the transfer to the DC office.”

  “I am indeed. Got the heads up from the SAC today.” Her first field assignment had worked out better than anyone had ever dared to expect. She probably wouldn't have been chosen for such a sensitive undercover assignment so early in her FBI career, but her real past as a Vegas local made her a natural for the job. They'd needed to bait the trap with somebody who looked real because she was real, because she checked out in real life as far back as you could go.

  Ironically, her success meant she wouldn't be going undercover again for a while. Which was fine. There were other ways a good investigator could solve big crimes, and Mel intended to become an expert at all of them.

  “Congratulations to you, too,” Lana said. “We have a lot to celebrate tonight.”

  The falling stars rained down their blessing. Mel and Lana kept looking up, but they snuggled closer together. Hip against hip, long leg against long leg. The FBI didn't necessarily arrange its operations around the personal lives of their junior agents, but somebody upstairs had made a special effort for the two of them. After all, they'd been instrumental in breaking open a criminal enterprise vastly larger than anyone had previously suspected.

  “I'm selling the house,” Mel said. “If you want to, we can get a place together.”

  “Of course I want to.” Lana turned on her side to find Mel turning to face her. The stars would have to fall unwatched for a few minutes. They were too busy gazing at each other.

  “Maybe it's too soon, but,” Mel said, at the same time Lana said, “I was thinking maybe it isn't too soon...”

  They both laughed. Kissed.

  Kissed harder.

  “Want to marry me?”

  Nobody would ever know who asked who first. It seemed as if they'd both asked the same question in the same words in the same moment.

  And then they were both saying, “Yes.”

  THANKS FOR READING, “Winner.” If you enjoyed it and want to help out a new author, please consider leaving your honest review.

  About the Author

  Harley Slate is the pen name of an obscure tournament poker player you haven't seen on television. I enjoy writing the same kind of high-steam lesbian romance I like to read.