Last Man Standing

by Cindy Gerard

  With her eyes pinched shut against the lingering burn and streaming tears, Jenna attacked his pants, searching pockets, and finally found the one with his cell phone.

  Later, she’d think about the lean hips and flat gut and all that male heat she’d encountered. Right now, she was shaking too badly to even be embarrassed that she might have grabbed something that definitely wasn’t his phone.

  “Punch one,” he ordered.

  She did.

  “Lang.” Sam answered on the first ring.

  She could take it from here. “Men with guns. In my room.”

  A split second of silence. “Anyone hurt?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “On my way up.” He disconnected.

  She closed the phone, lowered her head to rest against Gabe’s back, right between his shoulder blades. Right where he was solid and strong, and his deep breaths were proof that he was alive and that he planned to keep them both that way.

  Finally she drew a breath that didn’t feel like it dragged over razor blades. She braved peeking over his shoulder. A buckshot pattern, roughly the size of a softball, had shattered the top of the door.

  “Where are they? And not that I’m complaining, but why aren’t they still shooting at us?”

  “Because they’re probably long gone. Are you hurt?” Gabe asked with enough urgency that she realized he must have felt her shiver in delayed reaction to the hole in the door.

  “No. No, I’m okay. What about you? Are you hurt?”

  “Only if you count the fact that you damn near ripped off my plumbing groping around for my phone.”

  She made a sound of exasperation. “Now? You pick now to become a comedian?”

  “It’s all about timing,” he whispered back.

  TAKE NO PRISONERS

  Sam Lang’s and Abbie Hughes’s story

  Abbie spotted the gay cop cowboy the minute she came back from break. It was hard not to. The guy was incredible looking. While she felt a little kernel of unease that he’d turned up again—at the casino where she worked this time—she wasn’t going to let it throw her off her stride. The Vegas Strip wasn’t all that big. Not really. There were only so many places for people to eat, sleep, and gamble.

  When he drifted off twenty minutes or so later without so much as looking her way, she chalked it up to coincidence. Just as she found it coincidental that the tall, dark man who’d been playing the slot beside the golden boy ambled over to the blackjack tables.

  Big guy. The western-cut white shirt and slim, crisp Wrangler jeans told her he was a real cowboy. The kind who made his living in the saddle, not the kind who just dressed the part. He was confident but quiet with it, she decided, as she dealt all around to her full table, then cut another glance the big guy’s way.

  He stood a few feet back from the tables, arms crossed over a broad chest, long legs planted about shoulder-width apart, eyes intent on the action on the blackjack table next to hers. On any given night there were a lot of spectators in a casino, so it wasn’t unusual that he stood back from the crowd and just watched. What was unusual was that between deals, her gaze kept gravitating back to him.

  What was even more curious was that when one of her players scooped up his chips and wandered off, leaving the third-base chair empty, Abbie found herself wishing the tall cowboy would take his place.

  What was up with that? And what was up with the little stutter-step of her heart when he ambled over, nodded hello, and eased his lean hips onto the chair?

  “Howdy,” she said with what she told herself was a standard, welcoming smile.

  He answered with a polite nod as he reached into his hip pocket and dug out his wallet. When she’d paid and collected bets all around, he tossed a hundred-dollar bill onto the table.

  Abbie scooped it up, counted out one hundred in chips from the chip tray, then spread them on the green felt tabletop for him to see. After he’d gathered them in and stacked them in front of him, she tucked the hundred into the slot in front of her.

  “Place your bets,” she said to the table of seven, then dealt the first round faceup from the shoe. When all players had two cards faceup, she announced her own total. “Dealer has thirteen.”

  Her first-base player asked for a hit, which busted him. When she got to the cute quiet cowboy, he waved his hand over his cards, standing pat with eighteen.

  You could tell a lot about a person from their hands. Abbie saw a lot of hands—polished and manicured, dirty and rough, thin and arthritic. The cowboy’s hands were big, like he was. His fingers were tan and long with blunt, clean nails—not buffed. Buffed, in her book, said pretentious. His were not. They were capable hands, a working man’s hands, with the occasional scar to show he was more than a gentleman rancher. Plenty of calluses. He dug in.

  She liked him for that. Was happy for him when she drew a king, which busted her. “Luck’s running your way,” she said with a smile as she paid him.

  He looked up at her then and for the first time she was hit with the full force of his smile. Shy and sweet, yet she got the distinct impression there was something dark and dangerous about him.

  Whoa. Where had that come from? And what the heck was going on with her?

  Hundreds—hell, thousands—of players sat at her table in any given month. Some were serious, some were fun and funny, some sad. And yeah, some of them deserved a second look. But none of them flipped her switches or tripped her triggers like this man was flipping and tripping them right now. It was unsettling as all get-out.

  “Place your bets,” she announced again, then dealt around the table when all players had slid chips into their betting boxes.

  Whereas the blond poster boy had been bad-boy gorgeous, there wasn’t one thing about this man that suggested a boy. Abbie pegged him for midthirties—maybe closer to forty, but it wasn’t anything physical that gave her that impression. He was rock-solid and sort of rough-and-tumble looking. Dark brown hair, close cut, dark, dark brown eyes, all-seeing. Nice face. Hard face. All edgy angles and bold lines.

  Maybe that was where the dangerous part came in. He had a look about him that was both disconcerting and compelling. A presence suggesting experience and intelligence and a core-solid confidence that needed no outward display or action to reinforce it.

  Clint Eastwood without the swagger. Matthew McConaughey without the long hair and boyish charm—and with a shirt on, something McConaughey was generally filmed without. Although, the cowboy did have his own brand of charisma going on because sure as the world, he was throwing her for a loop.

  “Cards?” she asked him now.

  “Double down.”

  Smart player, she thought, and split his pair of eights. She grinned again when he eventually beat the table and her on both cards.

  “I think maybe you’re my luck.” He tossed a token in the form of a red chip her way.

  “Tip,” she said loud enough for her pit boss to hear, showed him the five-dollar chip before she pocketed it. “Thanks,” she said smiling at him.

  “My pleasure.”

  He spoke so softly that the only reason she understood what he said was because she was looking right at him. The din of the casino drowned out his words to anyone else at the table as the rest of the players talked and joked or commiserated with each other.

  The next words out of his mouth—“What time do you get off?”—stopped her cold.

  She averted her gaze. “Place your bets,” she told the table at large, thinking, Hokay. Quiet doesn’t necessarily mean shy.

  The man moved fast. Which both surprised and pleased her because it meant that all this “awareness,” for lack of a better word, wasn’t one-sided. It also made her a little nervous. Her first instinct was to give him her standard “Sorry. No fraternizing with the customers” speech.

  But then she got an image of a devil sitting on her shoulder—a red-haired pixie devil with a remarkable resemblance to her friend Crystal. “Don’t you da
re brush him off. Look at him. Look! At! Him!”

  She chanced meeting his eyes again—his expression was expectant but not pressuring—and found herself mouthing, “Midnight.”

  A hint of a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “Where?”

  She didn’t hesitate nearly long enough. “Here.” God, what am I doing?

  “Cards?” she asked the table.

  He gave her the “hit me” signal when she came around to him.

  He broke twenty-one, shrugged.

  “Sorry,” she said, liking the easy way he took the loss. “Better luck next time.”

  “Counting on it.” He stood. “Later,” he said for her ears only; then he strolled away from the table.

  “Dealer pays sixteen,” she said absently as she paid all winners and surreptitiously watched what was arguably one of the finest Wrangler butts she’d ever seen get lost in a sea of gamblers.

  WHISPER NO LIES

  Johnny Duane Reed’s and Crystal Debrowski’s story

  Crystal knew she was in deep trouble and she didn’t have one single clue how it had come to this.

  First the counterfeit chips had shown up on the floor, then one of her sections came up short for the evening shift’s take. Tens of thousands of dollars short. Computer security codes were breached by hackers. Dozens of other little yet vital security glitches—all on her watch—had her pulling her hair out.

  So yeah, she became a subject of intense scrutiny. And no. She had no explanation, just a lot of sleepless nights trying to figure out how this was happening on her shift.

  Then the unthinkable happened. Last night, twelve of the thirteen gaming tables under her direct supervision had been flooded with counterfeit twenty-dollar bills. Whoever distributed them had taken the casino for close to two hundred K.

  Now here she was, standing in her boss’s office. “You don’t seriously believe I’m stealing from you?”

  Gilbert sat behind his massive mahogany desk. “I don’t want to, no. But given the circumstances, Miss Debrowski, we have no choice but to place you on leave without pay.”

  She swallowed back anger and frustration and tears. “I understand.” Actually, she didn’t, but given the fact that the only case she had to plead was ignorance, what else could she say?

  Gilbert pressed the intercom button on his phone. “Send them in.”

  The door opened. Crystal looked over her shoulder to see two uniformed LVPD officers walk in.

  She turned back to Gilbert, her heart pounding. “You’re having me arrested?”

  Her boss had the decency to look remorseful. “I’m sorry.”

  “And here I thought I was the only one who got to use handcuffs on you.”

  Crystal looked up from the corner of the jail cell four hours later to see Johnny Duane Reed grinning at her from the other side of the bars.

  Perfect.

  Grinning and gorgeous, Reed was the last person she wanted to see, specifically because until today he had been the only one who had ever gotten to use handcuffs on her.

  A vivid memory of her naked and cuffed to her own bed while Reed had hovered over her was not the diversion she needed at this point in time.

  She’d ask him what he was doing here but figured she already knew. “Abbie called you.”

  “I was visiting the ranch,” Reed said. “I was there when you called her.”

  It figured that Reed would be back in Vegas and not bother to come and see her. Not that she wanted him to. Not that she cared.

  “I need a lawyer, not a . . .” She paused, groping for the word that best described him.

  “Lover?” he suggested with that cocky grin.

  “Not the word I was searching for,” she grumbled, but let it go at that.

  “If you don’t want him, sugar, I’ll be happy to take him.”

  Her cell mate shot Reed her best come-hither hooker smile. Reed, of course, couldn’t help himself. He winked at her.

  Jesus, would you look at him. Hair too long and too blond. Eyes too sexy and too blue. Body too buff, ego too healthy. Standing there in his tight, faded jeans, painted-on T-shirt, and snakeskin boots, he looked like God’s guilty gift—and he knew it.

  So did Crystal. What she didn’t know was why she was so glad to see a man who played at life, at love, and at caring about her. That was the sum total of Reed’s commitment quotient. He played at everything.

  “How you holding up, Tinkerbell?” he asked gently.

  Oh God. He actually sounded like he cared.

  “Careful, Reed. You might get me thinking you give a rip.”

  He had the gall to look wounded. “Now you’ve gone and hurt my feelings.”

  “Just get me out of here,” she said, rising and meeting him at the heavy, barred door.

  “Working on it,” he said. “Abbie and Sam are right behind me. They’ll arrange bail.”

  “Bail’s already made.”

  Reed looked over his shoulder at the jailer, who sauntered slowly toward them with a set of keys.

  Crystal backed away from the bars when the barrel-chested and balding deputy slipped the lock and slid open the door with a hollow, heavy clink. “Someone made my bail? Who?”

  He shrugged. “You’ll have to ask at processing. I just do what I’m told.”

  “I’ve always had this prison-chick fantasy,” Reed said confidentially as Crystal slipped out of the cell. “You know—sex-starved, man-hungry.”

  “Stow it.” Crystal marched past him, ignoring his warped sense of humor. She was tired and terrified and doing her damnedest not to let either show.

  “Hey, hey,” he said gently and caught her by the arm. “Looks like someone could use a hug.”

  Yeah. She could use a hug. She could use a hundred hugs but now was not the time, this was not the place, and Reed was not the man she wanted to show the slightest bit of weakness to. “What I need is fresh air.”

  “Sure. But first, do a guy a favor. Make my fantasy complete. Tell me that you and the sister there had a hair-pulling, nail-scratching catfight and I’ll die a happy man.”

  “Screw you, Reed.”

  He dropped a hand on her shoulder. Squeezed. “Now you’re talkin’.”

  FEEL THE HEAT

  Raphael Mendoza’s and B.J. Chase’s story

  A man dressed in a black wife-beater and dark camo cargo pants and wielding the AK stepped out from behind him. He gestured with the business end of the rifle for her to raise her hands, too. “Up high. Let’s see ’em, cara.”

  The look on Eduardo’s face told her that he was as surprised as she was. And that they were both as good as dead if she didn’t do what she was told.

  Stall, she thought, as adrenaline zipped through her blood like rocket fuel. She needed to make something happen until her backup took charge of the situation.

  Very slowly, she lifted her hands, all the while inching closer to the open door of the Jeep and the shotgun that lay just out of reach on the floor.

  Where were they—?

  Oh God. Her runaway heart rate plummeted when she saw Maynard, Hogan, and Collins suddenly illuminated by the beams of three powerful Maglites, marching slowly toward her.

  Their hands were linked on top of their heads. Three men walking behind them pointed assault rifles at their backs, prodding them forward. The lot of them looked ready to chew nails. They were pissed and embarrassed that they’d been caught with their pants down. Join the club.

  What kind of men were they dealing with that they could get the drop on experienced DIA field officers? She quickly decided the men either had known they were coming or had skills the DIA officers lacked.

  She cut a cautious glance toward the Jeep. Knew that if she was going to make a move, it had to be now.

  She dove toward the 12-gauge.

  The man with the AK struck like a viper. He grabbed her arm, yanked her away from the door, then slammed her up against the vehicle.

  “Not smart.” He pinned her against the Jeep wit
h the weight of his body. “Now I’ll tell you again. Keep your hands where I can see them. That way no one gets hurt.”

  He could hurt her, she had no doubt about that. Hell, he could have killed her by now, she thought as he turned Eduardo over to one of his men. One bullet. Close range. Clean and simple.

  For whatever reason, she was still fit and fine. The others were fine, too, which gave her reason to hope that they still had a prayer of getting out of this alive. To do that, she had to play heads-up ball, which meant she had to work through the adrenaline rush that mixed with fear and made her shaky, and quickly assess her adversary.

  This close, it wasn’t that difficult. The face that was mere inches away from hers was not a face she would expect to meet in a dark alley on the wrong side of a mission that was rapidly heading south. Wholesome was the word that came to mind. Altar-boy angelic—providing she overlooked the assault rifle.

  She’d caught a glimpse of a tattoo on his upper arm that appeared to be a cross of some sort. It did not, however, put her in mind of altars or boys. Neither did the gold crucifix that hung from his neck and lay against a broad chest so smooth it could have been waxed.

  The bright beams of the Maglites lit up the alley. She could see that his eyes were dark, almost black, like the hair that he wore cut military close. His skin was caramel toned, his face clean shaven and flawless but for a small, triangular scar that rode at the left corner of a full, sensuous mouth. She was used to assessing and cataloging adversaries on the fly. What she wasn’t used to was thinking of the enemy as disarmingly handsome—or that she would be ultra-sensitive to the fact that he was plastered so tightly against her she could feel the heat radiating from his body like a pulse.

  He wasn’t a big man—maybe five nine, five ten—but the body pressed against hers was as lean and hard as the Jeep at her back. The steely grip on her arm was capable of inflicting pain, yet he only used it to restrain her.

  Even though his English bore a Spanish accent, something about him made her think he’d spent some time in the States. He was clean, his bearing disciplined and practiced. He knew exactly what he was doing, where his men were, and how to take control. Situational awareness. Like a soldier. Like a merc, she thought, and knew that alive or not, they were still in deep trouble.