by Evelyn Glass
Martin grinned back at her. This is going to be a snap!
“We’re done! Great job, Shayna. Thank you,” Martin said, scribbling a note to keep a camera on her when a big hand was in play at her table. She came across as very likable and natural, and he wanted to get as many reactions shots as possible from her.
“What now?”
“Now you go back into makeup to get cleaned up and then we turn you loose for the day. We may want to bring you back a time or two for more questions but we’ve got the bulk of what we need.”
“Okay. I had a good time. Did I look nervous?”
“Were you?”
“At little, at the beginning.”
Martin smiled at her. “Well, I couldn’t tell. So don’t worry about it. Emily, take Shayna to makeup then come see me.”
Emily, a pixie of a woman, grinned at her and escorted her to makeup, hanging around until the same woman that had slathered her in makeup had removed it then expertly made her up again in her normal, more natural, style.
“Martin, here she is,” Emily said as they stepped into the control room.
Martin looked over his shoulder. “No, you come see me,” he said frowning at Emily. “Shit, now that she’s come in here, she can’t go back out there until the next break.” He looked at Shayna. “It will be about twenty minutes before I can send you back to the floor, for obvious reasons,” he said as he motioned at the screens that showed hole cards. “You want to hang out in here or wait outside?”
“Do you mind if I stay? I promise not to ask stupid questions and stay out of the way.”
Martin chuckled and shook his head. “Have a seat. As soon as we go to break, we’ll send you back out.”
She sat quietly, watching the monitors and listening to the chatter from the control board operators and the director. “Martin, look at this,” one of the men said, filling half a monitor with a shot of hole cards, an Ace and Jack of Hearts, and the other half with the overhead table shot. There was a Seven of Spades, along with a Ten and King of Hearts on the board from the Flop.
“Who’s that?”
One of the men checked a screen. “Boyd.”
Shayna perked up and shifted sideways a bit so she could see better. “Camera Three, get on table five, player seven, and stay there! Cameras Six and Nine and Eleven, I want you to cover table five from your position. Give me a tight two-face shot. Good! Eleven, you and Nine are overlapping, move right one. Great! Hold those shots! One, cover The Professor, position two,” Martin ordered as he watched the monitors. “Two and Eight, give me wides on table five. Ed, key all the mics on Five.”
The five people in the production room watched as the dealer burned the next card, placing it in her discard pile, then a Three of Clubs was added to the board as the Turn. The control room was tense and silent, listening to the player’s chatter as they bet.
“Come on, baby,” Martin murmured as the dealer burned another card. “Son of a bitch!” he hissed as the dealer added the River, a Queen of Hearts. “Three, if you pull off Boyd I will gut you myself.”
Shayna wasn’t a poker player herself, but she knew a Royal Flush when she saw one. There weren’t enough cards on the table for Beast to lose. This would be when he’d try draw the players out, milking them for as many chips as possible.
When the betting got to Beast he sat, not betting and not looking at his hole cards. “What’s he doing?” one of the operators asked.
“Suckering them, I guess,” another answered.
“Clock,” the dealer called, signaling Beast he had to either bet or fold.
Beast sat for a moment, then tossed his cards in. “Fold.”
“What?” Martin shouted as everyone began talking at once. “What the fuck just happened? Did he just fold a Royal Flush?”
Shayna couldn’t understand what was going on, except the control room was freaking out that Beast had folded the hand poker players dreamed of having. She sat silent, watching Beast’s face. He looked shaken, almost ill as his jaw muscles worked while he stared into the camera but clearly a million miles away.
“Emily!” Martin roared. “Get Trevor in here right the fuck now!”
“Where is he?”
“Do I look like fucking Google Maps! I don’t know! Find him! Now!”
Emily ran from the room, returning a moment later with Trevor. “What?” he asked as he stepped into the room.
“Conor Boyd just folded a Royal Flush!”
Trevor stood blinking. “Why’d he do that?”
“Fuck if I know! He’s either bat shit crazy, stupid or the game is rigged. You know what people are going to say when they see this shit!”
Shayna watched as Trevor went pale. “How long until break?”
Martin looked at the large clock. “Twelve minutes.”
Trevor stared at the monitors. “No rule against being stupid. Let it play.”
“Are you shitting me? Trevor, we—”
“I said let it play!” Trevor bellowed before he turned and glared at Shayna. “And get her out of here.”
***
Beast leaned back in his chair, outwardly calm but seething inside. Goddamnit! What the fuck am I doing! he raged to himself. He’d just folded on a Royal fucking Flush. He could have bet with impunity, either buying the pot or, even better, luring someone onto a duel. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…fuck! No amount of pussy was worth fifty million dollars, but then he felt the anger rising at what he’d done begin to drain away. But it’s not just about pussy is it? She’s more than just a fuck, isn’t she? He placed hands on the table and stared at them as his stomach roiled and churned.
He wanted to win. He wanted to win more than anything. Or did he? Did he want to win so badly that he’d risk the life an innocent woman, a woman who seemed to soothe an ache he didn’t even know he had? He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths trying to calm his mind and find his center. The second break would be arriving soon. That would give him fifteen minutes to get his shit together and figure out what the fuck it was that he wanted. As his hole cards slid to a stop in front of him, he pressed hard at his temples with his fingers, trying to head off the blinding headache he could feel coming on.
***
Shayna was standing at the entrance to the poker room after she muscled and pushed her way to the front of the crowd. The moment the second bell sounded, she strode into the room and walked straight to Beast. She hung back a moment as the chips were counted and stacked, but as he rose from his position, she marched to him and pulled him aside.
“What’s going on?” she hissed.
“What are you talking about?” he asked as his stomach sank.
“You know damn well what I’m talking about!”
When he didn’t answer she took his arm again and pulled him out of the room, bulling her way through the milling crowd and down the hall. He dug in his heels a bit as he realized where they were heading but she leaned into the pull and banging into the women’s bathroom.
“Get out!” she snarled to the lone woman in the bathroom that was primping in front of the mirror.
“You can’t order me—”
“Get your ass out or I’ll call security have them drag you out!”
The woman stared at her a moment before deciding Shayna wasn’t bluffing. “Bitch,” she muttered under her breath as she walked by.
Shayna leaned her back against the door to prevent any interruption. “Why’d you do it? Don’t deny it, I saw it all. A Royal Flush, in Hearts, with the Ace and Jack in the hole.”
He sighed. He wished he could answer that question himself. “I don’t know. Stupid, I guess.”
“Is it about last night? You said I would be safe. I am safe. They even put more security on the room.”
“No. Not directly.”
She could tell he had more to say so she kept quiet. As she waited him out she felt the door bump behind her as someone tried to enter. “Bathroom’s closed!” she called as she leaned harder into th
e door.
“I had another text this morning. Another threat. I don’t know what’s going on.” He stared at her a moment then looked down. “The money, the tournament, isn’t worth your life.”
She didn’t like being used to get at Beast. “So that’s it? You’re just going to quit without asking me what I think?”
Beast shrugged. He turned and walked deeper into the bathroom, before turning and savagely kicking one of the stall doors open so hard it sounded like a gunshot when it hit the wall and the entire stall structure visibly shook. “All I wanted was to get out!” he raged, kicking open another door. “Is that asking too fucking much? The first time I try to do something for myself, the first time I find someone I care about for more than a place to stick my cock, and someone tries to fuck it up!” He kicked open another door, then kicked it again as it rebounded shut.
She didn’t know what to make of his cock remark, so she ignored it. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know!”
“I’ll tell you what to do! You play to win! You go back in there,” she snarled, pointing in the general direction of the poker room, “and you kick all their asses! We’ll go to Trevor Craggo and lay it all out. They want a show? We’ll give them a fucking show! We’ll tell him about the attempted kidnapping last night, and how we’re lovers, and how I’m being threatened that if you win then they’re going to kidnap or kill me, whatever. They want high-stakes poker? It doesn’t get much higher stakes than that!”
“That’s not how it’s done! You don’t put the client in danger! If you detect a threat, you pull back!”
“And if you pull back, if you quit, will that make me safe?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. That’s the problem. I don’t know what I’m trying to protect you from. Or who.”
“So quitting may be playing right into their hands? After all, it’s what they want you to do, right?”
“Fuck! I don’t know! I don’t understand why my dropping out of the tournament helps anyone except someone in the tournament, but that doesn’t make sense either. How’d they pull off the kidnapping attempt? How’d they know about us?”
“All good questions,” she allowed. “So keep playing while we see who looks out of place.”
“Why are you willing to do this?”
“Because I trust you to keep me safe and because this pisses me off! I don’t like being used as a pawn, and I especially don’t like being threatened and not knowing if, or when, something else might happen. Since you can protect me, then fine, let them try that kidnapping shit again! You’ll be ready for them this time, then we’ll know who it is and we can turn it over to the cops. I don’t want to go around the rest of my life wondering if today is the day they try again. How do we know if you quit it will change anything? Maybe it doesn’t actually have anything to do with poker. You said yourself the Argentines thing didn’t make sense either. Maybe its related to that and quitting won’t actually change anything. I’d rather force their hand and deal with it now. If they’re desperate enough to send another threat after they failed the first time, they’re desperate enough to try again. This is what you do. Use that to figure out how to catch these assholes.”
“Shayna, you don’t know what you’re saying. There is no such thing as one hundred percent security. They could still get to you!”
“How? You said yourself that I’m safe here.”
“What if it’s not related to the tournament? What happens, then, after the tournament?”
“That’s why we have to deal with this now. Make them more even more desperate so they screw up.”
“We don’t know if that will even matter! That’s the problem with his whole fucked up mess! I don’t know what’s going on!”
“Can you think of a better way to find out?”
He was quiet for some time. “No.”
“Me neither. We together on this?” she asked quickly pointing to herself, then Beast, then back to herself again with a forefinger.
“I don’t like it.”
“You think I do? But I’d rather be doing something rather than sitting around waiting for something to happen to me. The only thing we can do at the moment is to try and get in front of them and piss them off enough that they make a mistake. So far they have been driving this. Let’s try to take the initiative from them and make them react to us. Getting the network involved will make it that much harder for them.”
He snorted. “You’re one ballsy chick.”
“Yeah? You should see me when I’m really pissed off.”
“No, no I don’t think I want to see that.”
She grinned at him. “No you don’t.” She moved off the door. “Let’s go find Trevor.”
***
“What’s so important, Ms. Shephard?” Trevor asked as he strode up, glaring at Beast. “As you might know, we have a couple of issues to address.”
“Which is what I want to talk to you about,” she replied.
She and Beast laid out the entire story, Beast showing him the two texts. Trevor said nothing, listening in silence as they spoke.
When they finished, he sighed. “What you may not know is you’re not the only one who was threatened. We didn’t want to start a panic because it may have been a hoax, but at least three other competitors also received threats. Notes slid under their doors. We put on extra security, just in case, but it appears they weren’t idle threats. Fuck! I need to talk to network. I’m not sure how we’re going to handle this.”
“You’re missing the point,” Beast said. “How’s this for high-stakes? Announce it. Tell the competitors. Get it all on camera. Follow the players around, get everything on video. Get Tops security in on it and film the protection. The best way to keep the players safe it to create a circus around them.”
“What if they don’t want to risk their lives?” Trevor sneered.
“Give them their fifty grand back. Easy.”
Trevor blinked a moment as he thought. “That might work.”
“It will work,” Shayna encouraged.
“But I have a couple of demands,” Beast interjected. “First, Shayna is put up here in the hotel along with the rest of the competitors, but in a suite. Less access and easier to secure. They have already made a grab for her so we know she’s in danger. The rest of the threats could just be a distraction. Secondly, I want my own men devoted to her. Tops can cover the general security, and they will do a damn fine job, but, again, someone has already made a grab for her, so I want extra security on her, twenty-four seven.”
Trevor looked between Beast and Shayna as he turned it all over in his head. They were stunning together. Add to the stakes of the poker game, her lover betting her life that he could protect her from some mysterious threat that was trying to rig the game? It would be like printing money.
“Deal,” he said as he stuck out his hand. “I’ll have the lawyers draw up the contract.”
“My office will be in touch to coordinate her protection. You start pinching pennies or bitching about the cost, the deal’s off. Got it?”
Trevor smiled. “Don’t worry. Killing off the heroine is never good for ratings. You’ll have what you need.”
***
“May I have everyone’s attention!” Trevor called. The next session of poker was already late as Trevor and Tops security scrambled, and it was about to get even later. “We have an issue. Some competitors have been threatened that if they continued to play they will be harmed. Four have come forward. Has anyone else received any type of threat?”
Shayna watched as about half the competitors’ hands went up, the six cameras in the room panning as they recorded. She didn’t recognize them all, but all of the top ten players were in the group. Since their affair was out in the open, at least with the casino and the network, she stood close to Beast, her hand intertwined with his. Casino security was thick, but she felt better having him holding her hand.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to
do: anyone who wishes to withdraw from the tournament may do so at this time. Your bankroll and entrance fees will be refunded to you in full. Those who wish to continue will be assigned bodyguards from Tops security. There will also be heightened security all through the casino and around the room during play. We’re doing everything we can to ensure everyone is safe. Any questions?”
It took an additional fifteen minutes of questions and answers as Trevor and Michael Bryant, head of Tops security, reassured everyone. When the last of the questions were answered, not one player backed out. These were gamblers after all and were used to taking risks, and nobody wanted to be seen quitting on camera.