Riptide Publishing
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Burnsville, NC 28714
www.riptidepublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.
Cash Plays
Copyright © 2018 by Cordelia Kingsbridge
Cover art: Garrett Leigh, blackjazzdesign.com
Editors: Rachel Haimowitz, Veronica Vega
Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at [email protected].
ISBN: 978-1-62649-638-5
First edition
June, 2018
Also available in paperback:
ISBN: 978-1-62649-637-8
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The Seven of Spades is back with a vengeance—the vigilante serial killer has resumed their murderous crusade, eluding the police at every turn. But a bloodthirsty killer isn’t the only threat facing Sin City. A devious saboteur is wreaking havoc in Las Vegas’s criminal underworld, and the entire city seems to be barreling toward an all-out gang war.
As Detective Levi Abrams is pushed ever closer to his breaking point, his control over his dangerous rage slips further every day. His relationship with PI Dominic Russo should be a source of comfort, but Dominic is secretly locked in his own downward spiral, confronting a nightmare he can’t bear to reveal.
Las Vegas is floundering. Levi and Dominic’s bond is cracking along the seams. And the Seven of Spades is still playing to win. How many bad hands can Levi and Dominic survive before it’s game over?
For Laurin Kelly
With gratitude for years of friendship, advice, and support.
About Cash Plays
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Dear Reader
Also by Cordelia Kingsbridge
About the Author
More like this
Levi jerked awake with a full-body shudder. He lay still, breathing hard, resisting the creeping tendrils of the nightmare that tried to follow him out of sleep.
Once he felt less disoriented, he sat up and raked a hand through his sweat-damp curls. The hotel room was quiet and dark, but enough light filtered through the curtains for him to see that everything was as it should be. Beside him, his boyfriend Dominic didn’t stir; he was a heavy sleeper, and not much would wake him before he was ready.
This wasn’t the first time Levi had been grateful for that.
At the foot of the bed, however, lay Dominic’s dog Rebel, a hundred-pound German Shepherd–Rottweiler mix whose notice was more difficult to escape. She lifted her head off her paws and thumped her long tail against the bed.
“It’s okay,” Levi whispered. “Go to sleep.”
His heart was still racing, and the horror of the dream clung to him even as the details began to fade. He rolled his neck and shoulders to release the tension and wondered if he’d be able to go back to sleep tonight. The clock on the nightstand read half past three.
Letting out a low, uneasy whine, Rebel squirmed up the bed on her belly until she could butt her head against his hand. He sank his fingers into her fur, scratching her ears and neck, and his pulse calmed a bit. Few things in life were as comforting as petting a dog.
“Good girl. Everything’s fine.”
She sighed as he scritched the sweet spot behind her right ear. Then she tilted her head toward Dominic, who was out cold, and looked back at Levi.
He realized what she was about to do and opened his mouth to object, but it was too late. She let out three quiet, huffing barks before he could stop her. Rebel was a trained personal protection dog, and that sequence of barks in that tone was her conditioned signal to alert Dominic to trouble while he was sleeping.
Waking with the sudden and total alertness of a veteran soldier sensing danger, Dominic rolled over and sat up. “What’s wrong?” he asked in a voice that held not a trace of sleep.
“Nothing,” Levi said, irritated. “Rebel overreacted.”
Dominic’s eyes traveled over them both. One of his best and worst qualities, depending on the day, was his incredible perceptiveness; a few seconds later he said, “Did you have that nightmare again?”
Levi shrugged. “It’s not the same nightmare. Just . . . variations on a theme.”
Rubbing a hand over Levi’s bare back, Dominic leaned in and kissed his shoulder. “You weren’t gonna wake me up, were you?”
“Why would I wake you up in the middle of the night because I had a bad dream?”
“So I could take care of you.”
Levi flinched; he couldn’t help it. “I don’t need—”
“Everyone needs to be taken care of sometimes,” Dominic said firmly. “You do it for me when . . . well, you know.”
He knew exactly what Dominic meant; it had happened just a few days ago. They’d come out to Mt. Charleston to celebrate Dominic’s licensure as a private investigator with a week of hiking the challenging trails in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. The first night, they’d gone to the hotel bar, unaware that it contained entire banks of video poker and blackjack games.
As a compulsive gambler in recovery, the unexpected exposure to such an intense trigger had sent Dominic into a tailspin. Levi had spent the rest of the night alternating between talking him down and very energetically distracting him.
“That’s different,” said Levi.
“How?” When Levi didn’t respond—because it wasn’t different, not really—Dominic said, “When you tell me in the morning that you had a terrible nightmare, and I realize I was fast asleep while you were lying wide-awake next to me for hours, it makes me feel like an asshole.”
Of course it did, because Dominic was pathologically altruist
ic, and being unable to help in any situation drove him right up the wall.
“Fine,” Levi said. “Next time, I’ll shake you awake at ass o’clock in the morning so you can be just as miserable and sleep-deprived as I am.”
Dominic smiled, as unfazed by Levi’s brusque sarcasm as ever. “That’s all I ask.” He pressed his lips to Levi’s temple, said, “I’ll get you some water,” and threw the covers back.
Before Dominic left the bed, Levi caught his arm and gave him a long, lingering kiss, trying to communicate with his body the things he was so bad at saying out loud. After they parted, Dominic nuzzled the side of his face for a few seconds and then stood.
Stroking Rebel’s head, Levi watched Dominic move around the room, naked and unselfconscious. He was dizzyingly attractive in a rugged, salt-of-the-earth way, a fascinating study in contrasts. The intimidating effect of his brawny, six-five frame was undercut by the sweet smile that left Levi breathless; his square jaw and broken nose were softened by the warmth in his eyes. Levi couldn’t look away.
Dominic crouched by the minifridge, giving Levi a view of the vibrant Ranger crest tattoo splashed across his chiseled upper back. Then he turned with a bottle of water in hand, and the view from the front was even better. If it weren’t for the stubborn remnants of his nightmare, Levi’s thoughts would be running in a decidedly filthy direction.
“My face is up here,” Dominic teased as he returned to the bed.
Levi snorted and accepted the bottle. “Yes, I can see you’re very offended.”
Chuckling, Dominic slung an arm around Levi’s shoulders and snuggled close while Levi sipped some water. “Do you want to talk about the dream?” he asked after a minute.
Levi shook his head. Since childhood, he’d had a particularly intense fear of being trapped and hunted by an enemy in a situation he couldn’t escape, even though nothing like that had ever happened to him. It was so bad he couldn’t read novels or watch horror movies that capitalized on the trope: stories where the protagonists were stuck in a house with a killer or lost in the woods or so on.
For over two decades, those nightmares had come and gone in waves, sometimes plaguing him for weeks at a time before disappearing altogether for months. The dreams had been especially bad in his early twenties after he’d been jumped and beaten half to death by a group of men in the parking lot of a gay bar. They’d gotten even worse than that over the past three months, ever since the serial killer Seven of Spades had resumed wreaking their bloody wrath throughout the Valley.
“Thanks for the water,” Levi said, handing Dominic the bottle. Dominic drank from it as well before setting it aside, then laid him down and spooned up behind him.
Rather than return to the foot of the bed, Rebel stretched out on Levi’s other side so he could curl up around her. Dominic’s arm rested on his, their fingers laced together over the soft fur of her belly, and Levi’s muscles unlocked as he took comfort from their combined warmth.
He didn’t have Dominic’s brute strength, but in the face of a violent threat, he was just as capable of defending himself—perhaps more so. Yet resting in Dominic’s arms always created a sense of safety he couldn’t quite explain.
Dominic kissed the back of Levi’s head, and in no time at all, his breathing evened out as he fell asleep again. Closing his eyes, Levi soaked up the pleasure of his embrace. It would have been perfect if not for the nagging guilt in the back of his mind, because he hadn’t told Dominic the whole truth about his nightmare.
Though the dream itself was never the same, the emotions it provoked always were: the heart-pounding terror of fleeing an unseen enemy, of endlessly searching for a place to hide and knowing there was no escape. It always spoke to one of Levi’s most deep-seated fears and ruthlessly exploited it.
Except tonight, Levi hadn’t been the prey.
He’d been the hunter.
“Dominic!” Levi called over the sound of the TV. “What’s taking you so long?”
Dominic opened the bathroom door and leaned out, a towel wrapped around his waist. “This coming from the man who took a twenty-five-minute shower the other day?”
After a long pause in which Levi contemplated Dominic’s wet chest, he said, “I did not.”
“You did. I timed you.”
Levi rolled his eyes. “I promised Adriana I’d be back in time to train her tonight. I don’t want to be late.”
“Baby, it’s at most a fifty-minute drive. We have hours. There’s plenty of time.” With that, Dominic went back into the bathroom and shut the door.
Levi sighed and turned to the neatly packed suitcases on the bed. It wasn’t that he wanted to leave. This had been a great vacation, his and Dominic’s first as a couple. Leaving meant going back to a job he no longer enjoyed. It meant facing the fact that his parents were visiting next weekend, and while he was looking forward to seeing them, he was nervous about them meeting Dominic.
All things being equal, he’d rather stay in the mountains forever. But since they couldn’t do that, he was itching to get the return to reality over with as soon as possible.
He looked over at Rebel, who was standing with her front paws up on the windowsill so she could watch the people walking around three stories below. Her eyes tracked every movement with concentrated laser focus, her whole world narrowed to this moment in time, no regrets for the past or worries about the future weighing her down.
“You have no idea how lucky you are,” he said to her.
She barely spared him a glance before resuming her vital observations.
A blast of attention-grabbing music sounded from the TV, which Levi had tuned to a local news station. “We go now to Janice Bevilacqua,” said the anchor, “who has a special update on Las Vegas’s very own serial killer, the Seven of Spades.”
Levi stiffened and spun around. The anchor exchanged greetings with a blandly attractive reporter being filmed in front of the headquarters of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department before she fixed her gaze on the camera with an air of studied, professional concern.
“Most of our viewers will remember when the Seven of Spades first appeared on the scene back in April,” she said. “The mysterious killer, who identifies himself as a vigilante targeting wrongdoers who have escaped justice, went on a two-week spree during which he took five victims and communicated directly with the police force on multiple occasions. At the time, the murders were attributed to disgraced former police officer Keith Chapman, who unfortunately took his own life.”
The feed switched to a panning shot of the front steps of the Regional Justice Center in Downtown Las Vegas.
Over the image, the reporter said, “The case was reopened on August first when Drew Barton was killed by a sniper outside the Regional Justice Center during a press conference. Our own Scott Griffith was at the scene with a camera crew, but we won’t be showing that graphic footage this afternoon.”
Levi sat down hard on the foot of the bed. He’d been at the scene as well, mere inches away from Barton and at the perfect angle to be sprayed with blood and bone fragments when Barton’s head exploded. It had been all over his face, in his mouth, drenching the front of his shirt. He’d had to wash it out of his hair afterward.
“Drew Barton was being tried for the alleged murder of his wife, and had been accused of attempting to cast suspicion in the Seven of Spades’s direction. The Seven of Spades took immediate and very public credit for his death.”
The image transitioned to a recording of the ad kiosks the Seven of Spades had hijacked to send their message—a three-dimensional seven of spades card and the words ALL BETS ARE OFF—before returning to the reporter.
“Since that date, the serial killer has continued to operate throughout the Las Vegas Valley, though at a slower rate than his earlier spree. Currently there are eleven murders for which the Seven of Spades has claimed responsibility. From our communications with the LVMPD, it appears that there have been no new leads in the case and no progress towar
d catching this elusive killer, even after months of investigative work.”
“Ugh,” Levi said, burying his face in his hands.
The camera cut back to the anchor at his desk. “Is it true that crime has apparently dropped in Las Vegas over the past few months?”
The reporter nodded. “According to the LVMPD, violent crime has in fact declined by seven percent since August first. However, experts caution that this may also be linked to a corresponding decrease in tourism that has the mayor and the city council very concerned. We’ve been told today that the LVMPD has finally requested assistance from the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, and are expecting an agent later this week to help with profiling the Seven of Spades. Our inside source hints that Homicide sergeant James Wen was extremely resistant to this action and only agreed to it after intense political pressure from higher-ups.”
Levi frowned at the television. He didn’t know who their “inside source” was, but they’d gotten that right—Wen, his immediate superior, had tried to keep the FBI out of this case as long as possible. Levi wasn’t exactly thrilled about the prospect of some special agent swanning in from Quantico to tell them all how much they sucked at their jobs, either.
“One of the things that makes the Seven of Spades so intriguing is his continued communication with the police,” the reporter said. “The killer appears to have a special fondness for one of the lead investigators in the case, Detective Levi Abrams, frequently calling him on the phone and leaving messages addressed to him at crime scenes. Detective Abrams has repeatedly refused our requests for an interview—”
Levi snatched up the remote control and pegged it at the TV. It cracked hard against the screen and clattered to the floor.
“Hey,” Dominic said sharply. Levi hadn’t even heard him come out of the bathroom—so much for situational awareness. “Relax. That’s not your TV, you know.”
Taking a deep breath, Levi propped his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands. He heard Dominic walking around, and the sound from the TV cut off. Then Dominic knelt in front of him and tugged at his hands until he looked up.
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