Cashed In

by Jackie Chance

  “I don’t find this funny at all, Bee,” Ingrid said, irritated, from inside her stall. “This is a serious investigation. Lives are at stake and you . . .”

  I was dragged by my arms out the door. A woman out in the hall elbowed her husband and sniffed in my direction.

  “Pruuuuuuuude,” I slurred as her husband hurried her away.

  “She’s drunk,” my dragger explained. I knew that voice. I’d just heard it, really recently. Tonight? My mind was suddenly so slippery, I just couldn’t pin down the information floating around in it.

  “Whhhhhhere are weeeeee goiiiiiiing?”

  My escort didn’t answer and I couldn’t seem to get my head to respond to a signal to turn and look at who was propelling me forward. I thought there was something in my purse if I could find it but I couldn’t figure out how lipstick would help when kidnapped. Doors opened and I felt the warm sea breeze on my face. It was refreshing and I focused a bit better for a moment.

  It had gotten really dark out on deck. I thought there should have been some lights out here, but there wasn’t anything where we were but moonlight. Where were we? Better question: Who was the other half of the we? A flash caught my gaze—the video camera hidden in an upper corner of the awning. I peered at it. The lens was covered with black electrical tape. Uh-oh. That realization was enough to fill me with adrenaline, allowing me to twist out of his grasp.

  I was face-to-face with Sam Hyun. He pushed me against the cold deck railing. “I thought our daaaate wassssssss after the tournaaaaaament?” My tongue felt thick and slow.

  “It was a good idea but I couldn’t wait.”

  “They’lllll beeee misssssing me,” I offered.

  “They’ll get used to it.”

  I was getting progressively more lucid—impending death does that to you. I decided to let him think I was still half out of it when I was only about a quarter goofy. “Whhhhyyyy?” I cocked my head at him.

  “Because you’re done with tournament poker. I told you before I’m going to kill your game and I am.” He pulled out a paper and read. “I, Belinda Cooley, admit without a doubt that I cheat at the game of Texas Hold ’Em by collusion, by marked cards, by signaling in Las Vegas tournaments and those throughout the world. Signed on this day—”

  “I’m nnnot gonna siiiiiiign that!”

  Hyun grabbed me by my ponytail, lifted me off the ground, folded my body over the railing and showed me the churning water below. “Yes, you are, or you are going swimming.”

  Face-to-face with the churning silver water below, I found my tongue. “I guess Rawhide, Mahdu and Ferris didn’t sign it, huh? I guess the poor investigator found you to be the one who’s thrown dozens over ship railings over the past couple of years.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me. And I guess you keep feeding Rick pills like the liquid you just tried to drug me with, to make him forget your attack.”

  “You’re nuts! Why would I feed Rick my cologne?”

  “Your cologne?” I shouted.

  Sam nodded proudly. “Polo.”

  No wonder I got nauseous. Toby, my ex-fiancé, used to wear Polo. “You didn’t threaten the others?”

  “You’re the only one I want out of the game.” He frowned. “No woman should be able to play poker, especially not like you do.”

  I relaxed. Sam was all blow and no go. I shook my head and shoved the paper away, sneezing the Polo out of my nose twice. “Let me go.”

  “Okay. It’s your funeral.” He shrugged and loosened his hold on my leg. I slid closer to the dark, shiny water. “Wait. Let me go after you pull me back to the deck.”

  “Sam the Man, slowly and carefully pull Miss Cooley back on deck or I’ll sh-shoot,” I heard Jack’s voice order with barely a hint of his stutter, from somewhere behind Hyun. Where did the Smack get a gun?

  “Don’t shoot,” Hyun begged, eyes widening. “I was just scaring her.”

  “It’s not nice to tease the killer whales, Sam. The SPCA’ll get you for that.”

  I was flipped back up on deck like a tuna. From my vantage point, I could see Jack digging the video camera into Hyun’s back as he walked him forward into the deck railing. “Hey, that doesn’t feel like a gun,” Hyun said.

  Scrambling to my feet and plucking Mom’s purse out of his waistband, I ran before Sam could figure out he was being held by a social phobic at video point.

  I nearly ran over Ian as I pushed my way through the doors back into the lobby.

  “What’s wrong?” He stopped me with his hands on my shoulders.

  “Sam Hyun is trying to kill me,” I wheezed between huffs.

  He grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward the stairs. “Come with me, quick.”

  We took the stairs two at a time. I paused before we tackled the next story. “I can’t abandon Jack. He saved me.”

  Ian picked up the house phone and reported the chase on the deck to security, then grabbed my hand and we raced down the hallway. Ian pulled out his key card and opened the door, shoving me in.

  “But what about Jack?” I asked. “I should go back to make sure they get the real story and arrest Hyun. It think he’s the one who threw all the poker stars overboard.”

  “Not these poker stars by chance?” Ian asked low in my ear.

  I turned slowly and my breath caught at the scene before me. “What’s going on here?”

  “We’re having a little game,” Ian answered calmly. Mahdu, Rawhide and Denton Ferris sat at a makeshift poker table, all duct taped at their torsos. Mouths and wrists duct taped, they all shot me panicked looks as Ian continued, “And you weren’t invited, Belinda. But since you’re here, we’ll let you play. I’ve always wanted to bring a woman into our little experiments but I have never seen any that warranted the effort. I wondered after the Big Kahuna whether you might be the one, but you had to prove to be more than just lucky. I’ve been very impressed by your play during this Gambler tournament, but I also liked you a little too much to sacrifice you for information. I’m so glad that you made the decision for me by needing to be rescued.”

  I waited a beat for someone to cue the Twilight Zone music, because that is what the whole scene evoked. “What decision?” I asked.

  Ian blinked at me, surprised. “Whether it was worth losing a hot woman for my science. Men, now they are expendable, but a woman I might want, that leads to a dilemma.”

  “Wouldn’t I have to want you too?”

  “Don’t you?” Ian asked. “I know I felt some chemistry going on, surely thanks to those pheromones I have been wearing. Another experiment that’s working quite well.”

  “I don’t think your pheromones could overpower your personality,” I deadpanned. “That tends to matter more to me.”

  “As I said,” he continued, dismissing my barb, or not hearing it at all, “you’ve chosen your own fate.”

  “And that would be?”

  “To play poker for your life.”

  “What?”

  “Those are the stakes of this particular ring game,” Rhonda said, coming out from the bathroom with Paul, who brandished a roll of duct tape. Ian’s arm slid down my back and grabbed a wrist. I twisted away as his other hand grabbed my left wrist. I kicked out, bucked my body and screamed. Duct tape slapped down over my nose and mouth. I couldn’t breathe but kept fighting as they dragged me to a chair. The fighting thing was probably a bad idea since I was suffering from oxygen deprivation sooner than I would have had I been a limp noodle. Pretty soon I would be a limp noodle, I realized, as I went weak. Things started going dim.

  All of a sudden Ian reached over and ripped the tape off my face. Let me tell you what, microdermabrasion has nothing on duct tape. I sucked in a breath as Ian sneered at Paul.

  “You idiot. Don’t kill her yet.”

  My hero.

  Since my mouth was free I decided to use it. “What are you doing with us?”

  “No-limit Hold ’Em with more motivatio
n than you will find in any other game. Play for cash, but the one who has the most at the end of the game wins his life back.

  “The rest, well, we thank you for your donation to science by removing your brain for further study.” He waved at one of the beds laid out with surgical equipment, some jars with formaldehyde standing by on the nightstand. We drank that in for a terrifying moment before he continued. “Then we throw you over the side of the ship because we believe in recycling.”

  Ferris whimpered. Mahdu’s eyes popped out. Rawhide growled. I shivered against my duct tape prison. Being visually adept wasn’t always an advantage when I could see so clearly in my mind’s eye sharks feasting on headless corpses, mine included. The term card shark took on a whole new meaning.

  “If it’s not really a tournament table, not a true ring game, then how long is the game?” I asked. It mattered desperately because I played very differently if I sat down to win a little money in a ring game than if I had to long haul it at a tournament. One was a game where the more who played, the more money there was in the pot. The other was a game where the faster you eliminated players, the closer you were to walking away number one.

  “That is what you don’t know. You can’t play it like a tournament, you can’t play it like a true ring game where you can get up and leave any time. Therefore you can’t strategize or plan, you just have to win as much as you can as soon as you can. I’ve discovered it’s the best way to see into a reactive poker brain.”

  Paul had walked over. I looked at him. “So this is the offer you couldn’t refuse to get yourself out of hock? Killing people?”

  Flushing red, Paul ripped off a smaller piece of duct tape and moved to put it over my mouth, his hand shaking. Ian motioned him to stop.

  “What are you doing with the probes?” I asked, seeing Ian liked to talk about what he was doing. The longer I kept the tape off my mouth, the better for all of us.

  “Seeing into your mind,” Ian said, motioning to Rhonda who had the probes hooked up to a machine that was connected to a laptop computer. “And we are doing little experiments.”

  Rhonda pressed a button on the machine and Ferris yelped, eyes wide.

  “What was that?”

  “Denton Ferris got a little shock,” Ian explained, eerily calm. Ick. He nodded to Rhonda. “You’d better adjust that. We don’t want such a strong reaction.”

  “Shock therapy?”

  Ian shook his head.

  “What is your purpose then?”

  “We are trying to determine if stimulating different centers in the brain can change one’s play.”

  “Are you trying to run a scam in Vegas?”

  Ian laughed and it chilled me to the bone. “I hadn’t considered that, actually. Paul, of course, did, which is why he’s here. It’s funny that it occurred to you too. I’ll have to add that to my research. Perhaps your goody-two-shoes gambler’s mind isn’t as different as Paul’s addicted, desperate one.”

  “This is your study.” I said aloud as I realized it. “Is it worth our lives to get tenure?”

  “More than tenure, Belinda,” Ian said. “I will be gaining worldwide renown and a place in history forever.”

  I shook my head. Rawhide growled. Paul cuffed him on the back of the head and moved forward to duct tape my mouth again. Ian waved him off. “She’s a fascinating conversationalist. It’s a shame she won’t be around to talk to after tonight.”

  “You don’t think I’m going to win?”

  Ian cocked his head and considered. “It’s possible but highly improbable. The odds of a woman winning any tournament are extremely low. I think they put them at two thousand to one for the World Series of Poker this year.”

  “That’s the percentage of women who play in the WSOP, so I’d say those are fair odds for a woman like me. Now, Jennifer Harman would have to have a bit better odds.”

  Ian dismissed my observation with a waving hand. “No woman is going to win the WSOP until my study is published.” Glancing at his watch, he motioned to Rhonda and Paul. “We need to get started.”

  “What happened with Rick anyway? I assume you tried to kidnap him to be here as well.” I asked quickly. I still couldn’t figure out who the woman was who’d lured him to the closet. Rhonda didn’t fit the profile.

  “Rhonda is what happened to Rick,” Ian said, disgusted. “She has a fatal flaw that I didn’t anticipate or I wouldn’t have partnered with her in this project. She is sentimental. Who would have guessed? She couldn’t stomach feeding him to the fishes once we finished studying him in action.”

  What a softy, that Rhonda. Besides a stiffening in her spine when Ian criticized her, Rhonda didn’t react as she bent over each man at the table, checking the probes, adjusting a few here and there.

  “So after Callie bashed him on the head, we just had to leave him. I was really looking forward to making some corollaries between his ability to strategize with headlocks on the mat and bluffs on the felt.”

  “Callie?” I said, aghast, suddenly worried for my whole family. She was staying in Ben’s room, eating meals with Mom and Dad. I had to get out of here.

  “She’s addicted to benzodiazepine and Valium. Easy to have someone work for you as long as you keep her in pills. She just does little jobs here and there. We really wanted her to arrange to stay with you but that bossy Amazonian goddess is stronger willed.”

  “But I thought my involvement was accidental.”

  “No, I’d planned to use you as the subject of the pheromone study from the beginning.” Ian smiled and I shivered.

  A crisp knock rattled the door. Ian looked sharply at Rhonda who frowned in return. The person on the other end started shouting. My throat constricted. My stomach clutched. I recognized that voice. “If you don’t open up right now, I’ll report this game to the ship authorities!”

  I shook my head frantically. “Don’t do it, it’s a bluff. Just wait for the guy to go away.”

  Ian raised his eyebrows. My advice was all he needed to make his decision. “Open up.” He nodded to Paul as he slapped a piece of duct tape over my mouth.

  Howard sauntered in, still dressed to the nines, brandishing a wad of cash. I rolled my eyes. Did my parents never listen to anything I said?! “I’m here to play! Deal me in!” he announced. He faltered a step as he looked around the room. “Hey girlie,” he said to me, then to Ian, “What’s the tape about? Want a quiet game, eh?”

  Ian narrowed his eyes at me. “Why is he here?”

  I started to shrug, but then realized this was an opportunity. I moved my mouth like I was dying to say something. I was, in fact, because I figured I’d be dying if I didn’t. Mahdu and Ferris threw each other panicked looks. Rawhide growled louder. Rhonda nervously hid behind her computer. Paul shifted from foot to foot. Ian studied me for a moment, in which I tried to look extremely earnest and trustworthy, then blew out an exasperated breath as he carefully pulled the tape off my mouth.

  “Mom’s secret weapon!” I shouted before it was slapped back on, much less gently. Ian knocked me over on the floor next to the bed as he leaped for Dad. Thank goodness for that stunt, because Howard moved quick as lightning, grabbing my purse. Ian knocked Dad down but Dad must have landed right on the trigger of the pepper gas because I heard a hiss and he started coughing.

  My throat started to burn like I was breathing in pure acid. The pain was intense. I closed my eyes and put the bedspread over my nose. I could hear everyone else coughing and wheezing. Ian, still trying to function, dragged my chair to the balcony, hacking and moaning. I guess I was going to be the first to go. Ferris had worked the duct tape over those sharp teeth of his and could get his tongue out the hole he made, he started screaming in between bone-rattling coughs. The whites of Rawhide’s eyes were bright red as he growled at Ian, rocking his chair loudly. The pepper gas kept hissing.

  I tried to brace my feet against the balcony door frame but Ian just pulled harder, ripping the strap off my right Manolo. Man, was I tick
ed off now! I bucked and writhed, making it difficult for him to get his awkward load to the railing. He hollered to Paul to come help, but instead the blonde lumbered to the door, hand on his mouth, tears streaming, coughs wracking his body. He threw the door open and ran into the hall.

  Ian called to Rhonda. After a moment, I felt the chair lift and balance on the edge of the balcony railing. My heart squeezed in my chest. This was it. I couldn’t swim duct taped to a chair. I wondered what it would feel like to drown. Maybe I’d break my neck on the impact with the water. I wished for that.

  “Put her down.”

  “It’s too late for that.”

  “If you don’t put her down now, I will cut your hands off and throw them to attract the sharks so you can see them waiting for you as I pitch you over the side.”

  Wow. That was pretty mean. I knew Frank had a temper, but I didn’t know he could be this cruel. Cool.

  Since I was facing the ocean, I could only hear and feel Frank. For some reason, although I hung precariously five floors above the unforgiving sea, I was comforted by the sound of his breathing. I wondered why he wasn’t coughing and gagging like the rest of us. Maybe he was really Superman. I could see the lights from the shore twinkling on the far horizon. I wondered where we were. What normal people were doing behind those lights. Which of us was going to feed the sharks first.

  Ian looked back at Frank, and then at me. “I must continue my work.”

  He lifted his hands off the chair seemingly in slow motion, slithered over the railing and into the blackness. I waited to follow him but was jerked back instead. A splash sounded below. I shivered and sniffed, my nose running from pepper spray and fear. Other damsels in distress gasp winningly, and I get snotty. It’s that karma thing all over again.

  Frank dabbed at my nose with a handkercheif and put his knuckle under my chin as he lifted the face mask he wore to the top of his head. Slowly he peeled the duct tape off my mouth. His brown eyes warned and warmed simultaneously. How did he do that? “You are in big trouble, Honey Bee.”