Ace in the Hole

by Ava Drake

  The suite went silent as everyone left, and Christian collapsed on the couch. It was done. His life was ruined. Hopefully it hadn’t been in vain.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE casino night was starting downstairs, and there was still no sign of Jack Lacey. Which meant Stone was going to have to go through with appearing as the bastard and risk his life for the guy. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he’d been so damned sure Jack Lacey would show up at the last minute and save him from this insanity. Now that he was alone with only minutes to go before he made a major public appearance as another man, he let himself pace the suite in a failing effort to work off some of his stress.

  Ominously, there had been no more e-mails from the stalker. The Wild Cards’ profiler was concerned that the person was done talking and was now preparing to take action. As in, action to kill him. The police and gun stores in the local area had been quietly put on alert, and the Wild Cards staff was watching every layer of the Internet like hawks, but that was about all they could do.

  Ironic that he’d been the one adamant to have Jack cancel the appearance, and now he was the one insisting on going through with it. Christian had tried last night to talk him out of it and then to seduce him out of it. But this stalker nutball had to be caught, and this was the most expedient way to do it.

  It scared him that Christian’s arguments actually had the power to sway his decision. Not only did he respect the man’s opinions, but when Christian had spoken earnestly about not being able to live with himself if something bad happened to him, it had actually moved Stone. Emotionally. Complete with a torn-apart feeling in his gut. What the hell was up with that?

  Jill had already left for the event, with Christian acting as her temporary escort. They were going to spread a story that a crisis had come up in Washington and Jack had to deal with it before he came down to join the festivities. Fortunately there was a full slate of other politicians to keep the crowd occupied and feeling schmoozed tonight.

  Of course, said slate of politicians was the problem. Many of them knew Jack well enough to spot an impersonator. Stone was supposed to wait up here until just a few minutes before Jack’s speech and then go downstairs.

  He checked over his bullet-resistant vest again, then cleaned and reloaded his pistol to pass the time. He picked up the deck of cards Christian had used earlier to explain poker to Jill and idly dealt himself hands. His left hand kicked his right hand’s ass at Seven-Card Stud before his cell phone rang, startling him and shattering the silence of the room.

  Jeez, dude, get your act together. He answered the phone tersely with, “Go ahead.”

  “How’s the problem going?”

  “Well, I’m nervous, which makes me horny as hell. I would rather be in bed with you than playing fake senator. But otherwise I’m fabulous.”

  Christian laughed in his ear. “Glad to hear it. You’re on in ten. I’ve sent the security guys up to get you.”

  “See you in a few, good lookin’.”

  “Right back at you, sir.”

  Sir? Oh, right. In case anyone was eavesdropping, Christian was talking to “Senator Lacey.”

  The knock on the door came, and two burly, expressionless men stood there. Stone noticed one of them surreptitiously checking the suite over his shoulder. They thought the crisis was a woman, huh? Even with Jack’s wife entertaining his guests downstairs as they stood here? Wow. That was one hell of a low opinion they had of Jack Lacey. Or maybe politicians in general.

  Truth be told, neither of these guys looked like rocket scientists. Both sported big guts, muscle-bound upper torsos, and plentiful tattoos.

  He sighed. People who didn’t know a lot about the security business seemed to think that bald, overmuscled giants in black rock band T-shirts were the way to go for self-protection. Size helped if—and only if—the security operative knew what to do with his body mass to protect a client with it. Given that these two stepped back respectfully to let him out of the suite, his money was on them knowing absolutely nothing about blocking a real security threat. Shiny.

  At least one of them had the good sense to step out of the elevator first when they reached the ground floor. They skirted the edges of the busy prep tables in the kitchen and dodged the ant line of waiters entering and exiting the space.

  “Where to, Senator?” one of them asked loudly enough to turn a few heads in his direction.

  Jesus H. Christ. The idea was to be anonymous, not shout out his identity to everyone in earshot. “Backstage,” he muttered without moving his lips.

  “You got it,” the talkative one boomed.

  Just shoot him now. He might as well walk out on stage and make a public announcement that he was ready to die if the assassin would please get on with it.

  The noise was intense as he slipped into the wings of the main stage. The ballroom was packed. Easily two thousand people, if not closer to three thousand, milled around the various gaming tables drinking, gambling, and shouting over the live band tucked in one corner of the orchestra balcony. Why musicians always insisted on being thirty decibels too loud for the occasion, no matter what the occasion, he would never understand.

  He felt Christian approaching and looked over his shoulder. Good Lord, that man wore a tuxedo like an Armani model. His breath actually hitched in his throat at the sight of Christian in stark black and snowy white. Their gazes met, and they shared an instant of private acknowledgment.

  “Looking good,” Christian breathed.

  “Ditto, dude.”

  A little louder, Christian asked, “Have you got your notes, sir?”

  “In my jacket pocket.”

  “In about five minutes, the emcee will read an introduction and finish with, ‘From the great state of Texas, I give you Senator Jack Lacey.’ That’s your cue to walk out.”

  “Any news from Tucker?” Which was an oblique way of asking if there might be a last-minute reprieve from this suicide mission.

  “Talked with him about two minutes ago. The Castle was located, but the items you were hoping to find were not there.”

  Not there? He turned to stare fully at Christian. “What do you mean, not there?”

  “No signs of the items you were hoping to find. We’ll have to keep looking, sir.”

  Dammit. What the hell was Jack up to? When had he and Chesty left the yacht and where? He knew Tucker had been doing his best to locate the senator for the past full day, but it was so freaking frustrating that they’d been unable to locate him and drag his sorry ass back here.

  “Any more hassles from the press?” he asked Christian. The ticked-off tabloid reporter had been making wild allegations, but the guy didn’t seem to be gaining a whole lot of traction nationally. Thank God.

  “Nah. Funny, but a certain reporter got himself banned from covering tonight’s event by his publisher.”

  “What strings did you have to pull to make that happen?”

  “My grandmother is a major stockholder in the parent corporation.”

  He grinned at Christian. “It’s good to have family connections.”

  “Indeed.”

  The emcee came out from the other side of the stage and took the podium. He had a series of announcements and thanks to go through before Jack would be announced.

  A flurry of activity behind Stone made him and Christian both look over their shoulders. A deeply tanned man in shorts and a polo shirt was arguing with one of the hotel’s security guards.

  “Holy shit,” Christian breathed. “It’s him. He came.”

  Stone’s gut turned to water. Jack Lacey had finally shown up. About damned time.

  Christian rushed over to a stage manager. “Have the emcee stretch it out, will you?”

  The guy in all black clothing nodded and gave a hand signal to the emcee, who launched into a lame joke that made the crowd groan loudly behind them. Stone and Christian rushed down to the senator, whose anger and volume was starting to climb as he tried to convince the security gu
ards he was the real Jack Lacey.

  “Come with me, sir,” Christian said firmly. He grabbed the real Jack by the arm and bodily dragged him toward the kitchen. Lacey looked back and forth between Christian and Stone, a frown gathering on his brow.

  “What in the Sam Hill is going on here? Who in the hell are you—”

  “Quiet, Jack,” Stone bit out.

  Shocked, the senator complied for a change. They hustled into an employee bathroom, and Christian checked the stalls to make sure they were alone before locking the door and announcing, “We’ve got two minutes at most.”

  Stone talked quickly to the senator. “I’ve been impersonating you for the past week so you wouldn’t lose a crap-ton of campaign contributions. You’re welcome, by the way.”

  “Hey, you’re that bodyguard Tucker made me hire!”

  “Correct.” Aware that they had only seconds to gain Jack’s cooperation, he talked fast. “You need to go out and make your speech at the big fund-raiser out there, and then you are going to be called away on an emergency. If you want to go back to the party in a little while as yourself, as long as you do exactly what I say, and you let me and the hotel security guys stick to you like glue, I can condone letting you spend a little time in the crowd. It should provide you with enough cover to make the risk acceptable.”

  “Listen here, Jackson. You’re a fucking bodyguard. You don’t tell me what to do. If I want to—”

  Stone cut him off, letting every intimidating impulse he’d ever experienced roar forth. He stood to his full height, swelled out his chest, and leaned forward to glare directly into the senator’s eyes. “I don’t work for you. I work for your wife. And she doesn’t give a fuck what you want right now.”

  Lacey spluttered. “She’s here?”

  “Oh yeah,” Stone replied coldly. “Been here a couple of days, covering your ass. She knows all about Chesty and the Wrastle Castle.”

  “Oh shit.”

  Christian dived in. “Stone’s plan makes sense, sir. Make the speech and then get under cover. We’ve received a credible death threat for you that you need to take seriously. We have good reason to believe an attacker will strike tonight.”

  Jack laughed. He laughed. Stone stared at him in open shock. What the hell was wrong with the guy?

  The senator slapped Christian a little too hard on the shoulder. “Son, the death-threat thing was a publicity stunt I cooked up with Valerie. She wrote and sent the e-mails to help boost public sympathy for me.”

  “Your mistress, Valerie?” Christian asked blankly.

  Jack continued cheerfully, “That whole stalker thing was fake. No one’s trying to kill me. Now let me make my damned speech. I’ll just go upstairs and change into my tux—”

  “No time, sir,” Christian said. “You’re due on stage right now.”

  Lacey held a hand out to Stone. “Give me the fucking speech.”

  At the end of the day, the man was a sitting United States senator. Stone couldn’t very well refuse to let Jack Lacey be himself if there was no threat to his life. He fished out the papers and passed them to Lacey.

  Christian unlocked the bathroom door, and the three of them hurried back toward the stage.

  “What’s this I hear about you kissing Chris on the beach? I had folks asking me the whole damned flight back here if I was gay or not. Jesus Christ. I’m not a fag!”

  Clearly he was a bigot, however.

  “Sir,” Christian hissed. “I told you that you can’t use that word anymore.”

  “Aww c’mon. You’re an okay fag. I hired you, didn’t I? Got a bunch of votes for being progressive too.” A pause. “Hell, you even turned out to be a great staff aide.”

  Stone spied shock in Christian’s light eyes. He wasn’t aware that he’d actually been hired as a publicity stunt, huh? Wow. That sucked.

  They hurried up the steps into the wings, and the emcee spied Jack and Stone side by side. He looked back and forth between them in confusion for a second and then shook himself and announced, “Without further ado, from the great state of Texas, I give you Senator Jack Lacey!”

  The senator strolled out on stage in his Bermuda shorts and polo shirt like he owned the place. There was applause, but a note of confusion was present in the sound. This was a black-tie event, after all.

  Jack had no sooner reached the podium than a voice shouted out from near the stage, “Why are you afraid to admit you’re gay, Jack?”

  Fuck. The tabloid reporter. Christian started to lurch forward, but Stone put a hand on his arm. “Let hotel security deal with that asshole. You don’t need any more exposure to the media. And I’d lay odds that guy’s got someone filming him in hopes that the senator will cause a scene.”

  Christian subsided, but Jack Lacey did not. He came around the side of the podium aggressively to confront the reporter. “Why, you little pissant. You wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if her cunt jumped up and down on your dick all by itself.”

  “Jesus. I’ve got to stop him—” Christian started.

  “Stone! Come on out here. Let’s stop this bullshit once and for all!” Lacey called out loudly.

  It was Stone’s turn to lurch. He looked at Christian in panic. The senator was going to expose their whole scheme. After all they’d done for the bastard, he was going to ruin them all!

  “Talk about a security threat and that’s why you did it….” Christian got out before Stone stepped out into the bright lights.

  The crowd gasped.

  He moved up beside the senator and took advantage of the ballroom’s excellent acoustics to call out, “There was a security threat to the senator’s life, and he graciously allowed me to impersonate him for several public appearances in the name of protecting his life. I apologize if the ruse has caused any confusion for anyone.”

  “Did you catch the stalker?” someone shouted.

  Jack opened his mouth to answer, and Stone shifted his cowboy-booted foot to step rather heavily on the senator’s sandaled toes. Lacey sucked in a sharp breath.

  Stone called back, “The threat has been neu—”

  He never got the word “neutralized” out of his mouth.

  Christian came tearing out of the wings of the stage and laid a flying tackle on him that any NFL player would have been proud of. His arms wrapped round Stone’s chest and slammed him to the stage boards at the same exact same moment a gunshot rang out deafeningly loud in the confines of the ballroom.

  Stunned, Stone took only an instant to process what the hell had just happened. “Where’s the threat?” he demanded tersely.

  “Laser dot on your chest,” Christian bit out.

  “Gotta get to the sena—”

  A second gunshot rang out. And a third.

  “Get off me!” Stone shouted at Christian over the cacophony. As Christian rolled one way, Stone rolled the other and pulled his pistol all in one move, landing prone on his stomach, weapon propped out in front of him. Those had been rifle shots coming from the orchestra balcony.

  He spied a movement in the corner where the orchestra gallery met the wall. It was no more than a shadow, really, and a tiny flash of red, but it was enough. He took the shot, sending a double tap of two bullets up at the shooter.

  “Get Jack off stage!” he shouted at Christian, who was now lying on top of the senator.

  Someone from the balcony grabbed one of the band member’s microphones and yelled, “She’s dead up here! Cease fire, for God’s sake! The shooter’s down!”

  Stone holstered his weapon and ran over to secure the senator. A pool of blood was spreading fast beneath Christian and Jack. Which one was hit?

  His entire possible future life with Christian flashed before his eyes as he reached for the man he loved in slow motion. Courting romantically. A small wedding with family and friends. Maybe a couple of kids someday. A little house on the beach. Lazy days and long nights stretching out in a lifetime of companionship and joy—

  Christian rose to his feet,
the front of his tuxedo soaked in blood. Stone grabbed him by both shoulders. “Don’t move. I’ll get you to a hospital—”

  “I’m not hit. Jack’s shot.”

  Stone looked down as a doctor emerged from the screaming, fleeing crowd to kneel by the senator. He wrapped Jack’s head in his own tuxedo coat. Another guest, presumably another doctor, tended to a wound in Jack’s belly.

  “Ambulance will pull around to the ocean side of the ballroom. They’ll be here in one minute,” somebody reported.

  Jill came rushing up the steps onto the stage, and Stone leaped forward to intercept her. He knew better than to let her see Jack like this. Everyone would need her to be strong for a while and make some decisions. And she would fall apart if she saw Jack’s blood.

  “Let me go,” she ground out.

  “Trust me, Mrs. Lacey. Doctors are with Jack. He’s alive but injured. Right now I need you to go with me to the ambulance. They’re going to need some information from you so they can help Jack.”

  Christian closed in on Jill’s other side, and the two of them gently but firmly escorted her off the stage and toward the line of french doors. The first ambulance crew was already rushing toward them, pushing a wheeled gurney. More sirens were screaming their imminent arrival.

  Stone threw the doors wide open for the medics, who rushed past them. Christian guided Jill to the front seat of the open ambulance and crawled in beside her. That was when she broke down. She sobbed on his shoulder, and Christian held her tightly.

  “Get it all out, now,” he soothed. “You’ll be busy later.”

  She nodded and cried even harder. Stone backed away and ran for the ballroom, this time heading upstairs to the orchestra gallery. Police were already there.

  “Stand back,” one ordered him. “This is a crime scene—”

  “I’m the security guard who shot the assassin. I suspect you’re going to need my weapon and to take me in for a statement. But first I’d like to see the assassin if I could.”