The Mysterious Stranger (The Confidence Game Book 3)

by Ainslie Paton

  She put her hand on his chest, fingers spread wide. “And I wanted to take it so I could hang out with you.” He made a sound of distress not unlike the goat. “You don’t have to worry. I’ve got my head on straight again. We’re friends. This is a job. I’m Rosie and you’re Zack and sometimes I want to make you do push-ups till your arms turn to jelly and sometimes I want to go dancing with you till I can’t feel my toes. You’re the only person I want to get a hangover with, run a break and enter with, and I can’t wait for us to tear this place apart.”

  In front of Cadence, he’d told Rory she was his life and she’d straight-up assumed it was just a line. Where the fuck was his head that he’d expected something different. The goat squealed help, help. He might never get that sound out of his head. “Right, I didn’t mean to—”

  She cut him off, which was a good thing, since he didn’t know what the hell he was saying. He didn’t mean to need her so badly, to hate her just a little bit for not needing him the same way. Help. Help.

  “It’s okay.” She came in for a hug. “It’s your turn to have a little freak-out.”

  Was that all this was? The goat squealed, a random human sound of outrage and it was everything in his heart. When she was hurting most, she’d turned from him. She’d never need him beyond what they were to each other now, and this place, and lack of quality sleep and sugar was screwing with his head, doing a smash and grab on his sense of self-preservation.

  Rory had it together and he was the one suffering from lack of reality vertigo.

  He wrapped her close, rubbing his chin on the top of her head, letting regret pool in his gut. “I really miss my bed.”

  And his otherwise timeworn ability to be Zack to Rory’s Rosie and not fall in love with her all over again.

  Chapter Twelve

  Rory stood at the door of the community center and checked out the games night scene. Everything from the bright lighting, the urns set up for tea alongside plates of homemade cookies and the saggy paper streamers said hello 1950 and not in a hip cat, razz my berries way.

  There were dozens of folding tables set up in neat rows and hundreds of people bent over game boards. The soundtrack was made of low murmurs, bursts of laughter and victory cries, of the clack of game pieces and the rattle of dice with the occasional bell ring, and the thwack of darts hitting targets.

  There were a bunch of giant jigsaw puzzles and a group making a Lego castle. Another playing charades. There was a knitting circle. A ping pong tournament. Nothing that needed an electricity source. No children. No alcohol. No pool.

  She half expected Mr. Rogers to walk out on the stage and call bingo on the hour.

  It was original flavor geeky and looked heaps of fun.

  She fully expected Zeke would beg off, especially since there was no sign of him and he was never late. She should’ve known not to be weird with him. He knew she’d tried to avoid him and instead of admitting it when he called her out, she’d pushed back, poking his general annoyance until it became something much darker, made of a wound she’d unknowingly given him.

  When she ran from losing Cal, she’d spent a weekend crying on Zeke’s shoulder and then she cut him out. She hadn’t wanted to make him choose between a friend and a brother, between his boss and his family’s business and her less than professional behavior. She’d thought she was saving him from trouble, not tearing a strip off his thick hide of loyalty and leaving him feeling raw.

  So many mistakes, the impact of them still unraveling, all because she’d been unable to tell the circumstance of being in love from the reality.

  No, not unable. Stubbornly unwilling.

  For four years she and Cal had played a part, the made-for-each-other couple, who glamored their way into the wallets and bank accounts of New York’s most revolting people. It was as easy to be in love with Cal as it was with the long con they were engaged in and the good work it allowed them to do. They were partners in ballrooms and boardrooms and gloriously in bed. It had never been in her best interest to separate the fact from the fiction. Cal had to do that for her and she’d hated him, taken revenge on him, for making her see they weren’t forever meant for each other in real life.

  She’d since come to terms with her blind spot about Cal, her own self-deception, and they’d made peace. Learning she’d been so enormously blinkered to Zeke’s feelings was a new pain and not one she felt equipped to deal with.

  Zeke was Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky. Mr. Water-off-A-Duck’s-Back. He got sulky if he felt unwell; he got angry when he sussed out some new injustice. He got fantastically flirty. He got annoyed, and on occasion he got explosively silly, but he didn’t let things that concerned him go unsaid. When he wasn’t in character for a con, he was straight talk and no bullshit all the way, even when he knew it wouldn’t please others.

  Con artist Zeke could make you believe Yetis drank piña coladas with the Loch Ness Monster in the Bermuda Triangle. Everyday Zeke didn’t have a manipulative bone in his body, a tolerance for fools or a sense of diplomacy worth a damn.

  None of which explained why he’d stewed on a year-old hurt and been triggered by a little poorly executed avoidance sparked by her own inexplicable unease around him. This place was getting to him too.

  Inside the hall, games were finishing, and new ones were starting. Winners were crowing, losers tucking tail, reputations were being made and grudges formed, and spectators were lining up to watch it all happen all over again.

  Rory had been all those things. A winner, a loser, high on success and lashing out at the truth. She’d finished a big game of life with a man she still regretfully loved and respected and she’d spent a year standing on the sidelines waiting for a new one to begin.

  Whatever she played next, it had to be a game where she wasn’t so wrapped up in the fun of it she ignored the stakes, where she didn’t con herself, or reject help along the way from the people she loved.

  And it couldn’t be a game where she confused fantasy and fact and hurt Zeke again, and yet the board was set for that very scenario to play out.

  The whole time she’d stood in the doorway, Continuers had been moving in and out of the hall. No one spoke to her, most didn’t even glance at her. No one was going to want to huddle over a game board with her, sit beside her while she completed a quest or defeated a wizard, took a shot at someone’s fleet, spun a wheel, jumped a square, or built a road in Catan. She was already in jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

  If the love bombing didn’t start soon she could perish of boredom.

  “Did you know that when given a choice, goats gravitate towards happy faces?”

  Zeke’s voice made little shivers ripple up her spine. After they’d had their strained moment in the field he’d gone to take a nap and she’d spent the rest of the afternoon confirming her suspicion that Abundance didn’t have a cemetery, which either meant no one had died in the years the settlement had been running or something fishy was going on.

  “Liar.” Something fishy was most certainly on the hook.

  “It’s strange but true.”

  Zeke didn’t touch her, but he stood close enough behind her that his breath sheared across her ear, making all the wayward hairs at her neck feel electrified. “Thought you were going to stand me up,” she said.

  “The mistake I made with that goat was not smiling. I’d never make the mistake of standing you up, Aurora Rae.”

  She turned to face him. He’d hugged her so hard in that field with the outraged goat shouting at them and he was telling her again that he’d always be there for her. She couldn’t quite meet his gaze, focusing instead on the eye sockets in the skull on his Foo Fighters “Matter of Time” T-shirt, waiting for him to touch her in the most casual but careful way.

  “I don’t think anyone will let me play.”

  He tugged on her belt loop. “If you can’t finesse your way onto a games table in the next half hour I will eat my shirt.”

  “Are you trying to fake me out?”
That’s exactly what she was trying to do to him. She pointed two fingers at her eyes and then poked them in the skull’s sockets, her fingertips stabbing his chest.

  “You love a challenge.” With his finger still through her belt loop, he stepped around her, making her spin, awkwardly off-balance, before he let go and took off toward a plate of cookies. At least he’d get his sugar fix.

  It took her fifteen minutes to find a poker game and another ten to finagle their way onto the table. No one wanted to talk to her, but she could still make them. This was games night, after all, and making annoying people do things not to their advantage was her specialty.

  “Earl, it’s nice to meet you. Thank you so much for letting my brother and I sit in on your game. I’m Rosie and that tall streak making his way over is my brother, Zack,” she said, holding her hand out to the dealer on a table where two players had just vacated.

  “I didn’t say you could sit in,” Earl said, eyeing her hand as if it was a rattlesnake in disguise. Earl was smarter than he looked in his farm-boy overalls and his Bulls trucker hat.

  “You didn’t? I thought you were different, friendly, a real gentleman. Not like everyone else here.”

  “No, I didn’t say anything. How do you even know my name? This table is full.”

  She knew his name because she was a well-trained listener. “But I saw two people leave.” Heard them exchange goodnights.

  “There’s a wait-list and you’re not on it.”

  There were wait-lists for most other games at other tables but Earl and the other two men who’d remained were notably friendless. She pegged them as entitled hard-asses. Opportunity knocked.

  “Oh, come on now. You can’t be scared of me.”

  “Let her play, Earl.” One of the other men, plaid shirt, shaved head, stood and offered his hand. “You don’t look like the kind of trouble we can’t deal with. I’m Wayne and that’s Bernie.”

  She shook Wayne’s hand, beamed a smile at Bernie who didn’t acknowledge her and noted Earl wasn’t impressed. There were more handshakes when Zeke arrived. Notably more enthusiastic.

  “We play five card,” Earl started.

  “First to twenty-one,” said Zeke. He sat opposite her and she had to bite her lip not to laugh.

  Earl shook his head. “No, that’s Blackjack, not—”

  Zeke cut in, “Right, right. Just kidding. I love a good river?”

  “No, no. We’re not playing Texas hold’em. This is five card. There’s no river in five card.”

  Zeke wore a kid-at-Christmas grin. “I get it. Just kidding. My favorite part is the flop,” he said, using another Texas hold’em term.

  She laughed. The way he said flop, full of innuendo, was hilarious, especially as it made the others uncomfortable. So that’s the way Zeke was going to play it. Wide-eyed innocent. If this was a real game with real stakes, not just chips shared equally at the start of the round, he’d take their kids’ college funds.

  What was good for the goose... “I don’t really know how to play very well. Not like Zack. He’s a card shark.”

  “A card shark,” Earl echoed, incredulously. The only flop in this game was going to be Earl’s sense of humor.

  “Played a bit, have you?” said Wayne with a whole lot of come on in, the water is warm, sucker, in his voice. “Where?”

  “Online,” Zeke said. “You know, on my computer.”

  Wayne nodded, doing a very bad job of hiding his delight. “This’ll be a bit different but I’m sure you’ll catch up.”

  Earl finished explaining the rules and shared out the chips equally, and when he dealt the first round, Zeke fumbled and dropped his hand, showing a spade and a club. Everyone pretended that didn’t happen and instead of Earl declaring Zeke’s hand dead, they played on. Wayne won the hand.

  “I’ll get you next time on the flop,” Zeke said, deadly earnest, and none of the men corrected him.

  The next few hands were uneventful if you put aside the fact Zeke bet big on nothing-burger hands, said the word flop for no reason a lot, and looked confused when he lost, and Rory folded every time without placing a single bet after the opening round.

  She muttered to herself things like, “These are the wrong colors,” and “I just don’t like these cards,” and when she threw out a perfectly good winning hand with the words, “Dammit, only three queens,” Bernie had to excuse himself and go get a glass of water.

  “Sweetheart, you might want to hold on to a pair, you know,” said Wayne after she’d impressed on the men she had no idea how to play.

  “A pair, okay, thanks,” she said, as if Wayne had given her the keys to a bank vault.

  She didn’t look at Zeke and he didn’t look at her, but he smashed his knee on hers when she tried to win a hand with only a pair of twos. Meanwhile, Zeke’s pile of chips had all but disappeared, her own was tiny and Wayne, Earl and Bernie were cleaning up.

  While the men were talking about food riots in San Francisco, and the fact people were forced to eat domestic cats, Zeke quietly won a small hand. “I only have two pair,” he said in disgust, putting his four kings down two at a time.

  “That’s four of a kind,” said Earl. He tossed his losing straight on the table.

  Zeke got loudly excited about his win, celebrating by leaping from his seat and dancing around the table like a demented rock star, making people from other tables look over. The big goof. The more attention he got, the more annoyed Earl, Wayne and Bernie looked, the harder Zeke worked it, getting laughs and claps. She couldn’t tell if he was palming cards to cheat or had the others completely bluffed, but she couldn’t contain her laughter.

  When Zeke wheeled past Earl, he stole his cap, and when he got to her, he grabbed hold of the top of her ponytail and then let her hair filter gently through his hand before smoothing his palm over her collar bone and shoulder.

  He’d always done things like tugged her clothing and messed with her hair and there was nothing inappropriate in the gesture except her reaction. She leaned into him, wanting more of his touch and almost tipped out of her chair when he moved on.

  “Sit down, idiot,” Bernie said.

  “Sit down or the game is over,” Earl said.

  “I’ll sit down if you let me deal,” he said, tossing Earl his cap.

  Oh, now things were going to get interesting.

  “Probably be better if you didn’t,” said Bernie.

  “Dealing isn’t as easy as it looks,” said Wayne.

  “Next thing, dolly bird here will want to deal,” said Earl, gesturing to Rory. “We’ll be waiting all night. Women are always terrible poker players. Better off sticking to baby making.”

  That got a laugh. She didn’t react, not outwardly. She would make Earl wish he’d never seen a hand of poker. She was going to crush his spirit in all the ways a woman who’d been banned from poker tournaments in Vegas could.

  Zeke sat straighter in his chair; he did not like that. He looked directly at her, a lazy, satisfied grin on his face that was a hurricane warning. She gave him the hand signal for I’ve got this. He scratched his shoulder telling her he had her back.

  Now poker school was in session.

  “I don’t think you should talk to my sister like that, Earl,” Zeke said. “That was disrespectful. Ever since we arrived there’s been one standard for me and another for Rosie. I don’t like it. I want it to stop.” He tapped her foot under the table. “This isn’t 1952.”

  While Earl was busy blustering, Zeke picked up the deck. Cradling the cards in his right palm, he split the pile in two equal portions, rotating his hand and pivoting the two stacks of cards along the edge of his thumb and opposing fingers to press them back together as one deck, with the cards interlaced. He finished by hollowing out his hand and shuffling them into place against his thumb and little finger.

  And then he did it again with his left hand.

  Without missing a beat, he dealt, giving each card enough topspin that it landed precisely in f
ront of each player at blistering speed.

  “Quick game is a good game,” he said to stunned looks.

  “Fucking con,” said Earl.

  “Just didn’t like you trash talking my sister.”

  “Let’s see if you can play as well as you can do card tricks,” Wayne said.

  He played them into the dirt, fairly and squarely from what she could tell, earning them their own circle of hushed spectators. He bluffed them in to making stupid bets on hands they didn’t expect him to beat. He played smart and cool and took their chips while they played angry at being deceived and made mistakes.

  Rory focused on Earl, slowly eating away at his pile of chips with small accidental, apologetic wins. She otherwise didn’t change her tactics, folding early, taking losses and luring Earl by letting him think she didn’t know what she was doing.

  Zeke stayed out of her road, giving her every opportunity to face off against Earl, tapping her foot every time she scored a win. She toyed with the Bulls cap-wearing misogynist. His tell was easy to read. When he had a good hand, he fiddled with the brim of his hat. When he had a bad hand, he pursed his lips.

  When she got tired of him, she went all in and took every chip he had, her same suit royal flush beating his four aces.

  “Fluky hand,” he said in patented bad-loser style.

  She considered going crazy like Zeke had, doing her own victory dance, but on the tabletop without her T-shirt, then letting Earl know she’d been bluffing all along, but it was a secret thrill to let him stew over being beaten with a great hand, and an excellent bluff, by a woman who was only good for baby making.

  “Beginner’s luck,” she said. Two words designed to rub her win in his face.

  They played on and now she had a new plan. The only pot worth winning was the one that cleared the table and the only way she could beat everyone, and challenge Zeke, was by keeping them all guessing.

  There was no more idle chatter about fake disasters and decaying world dramas. The game was narrowed-eyed and deliberate. Zeke took out Bernie with a hand full of nothing and more confidence than an actual shark. She took out Wayne, bankrupting him with a pair of fours and a knowing smile.