Mind Games

Chapter 1-2

Sloane Kennedy paused at the entrance to the Twin Arrows casino’s gaming room and allowed herself a quick survey of the interior. Not to familiarize herself with the place — this would be her third visit — but to take a look at who was manning the poker tables and make sure she didn’t go to one operated by a dealer who might recognize her.

Not that there was much chance of that, even if she went back to a table she’d played at before. Today, a blonde wig covered her chestnut-brown hair, and she wore lots of mascara and glittery pink lip gloss in a bubblegum shade she would never have chosen for herself. Thank God it was so easy to get human hair wigs on eBay; she had a collection of eight of them now, all in various colors and cuts, and she rotated through them on a regular basis. Yes, sometimes it got old, having to pretend to be someone else, but she needed to make sure there was little chance someone would recognize her before she’d collected her winnings and moved on.

Moving on was the important part. The longer you stayed in a place, the greater the risk of getting caught.

She immediately recognized the dealer at one table, a Navajo man probably in his late thirties, sharp-featured and handsome, shining black hair pulled back into a severe ponytail. He’d flirted with her a little bit when she played at his table two nights earlier, and she’d enjoyed the back-and-forth even as she guessed he probably did that with all the attractive customers. Yes, he was way too old for her — even if she’d been considering a relationship, which she wasn’t — but it had been an amusing diversion, if nothing else. Probably against the rules, but she certainly wasn’t going to rat him out for trying to make his job a little more interesting.

Still, that table was out of the question. Another glance told her that the one just beyond wouldn’t work, either, because the briskly efficient woman working that particular location, also Navajo and probably only five years or so older than Sloane’s twenty-three, was another person she recognized.

However, neither of the other two dealers was familiar, so Sloane decided to go to the one manned by a guy who looked around her own age. Not because she wanted someone to flirt with, but because she’d learned over the years that the younger dealers didn’t tend to be as sharp-eyed as the ones who been dealing hands for decades.

She wasn’t going to cheat, though. Or at least, she didn’t consider what she did to be exactly cheating, although she had a feeling her strict Mormon parents might have a few words to say on that particular subject.

Don’t think about them, she told herself, even as William and Susan Kennedy’s disapproving faces swirled through her mind. She’d long ago given up trying to please them. They got a phone call at Thanksgiving and cards at Christmas and gifts on their birthdays so they’d know she wasn’t dead, but she didn’t see the point in trying to pretend she was the ideal daughter they wanted…and expected to have. That ship had sailed ages ago.

Settling an expression of excited anticipation on her features, she headed toward the table she’d selected. An older man was the only one playing there; he wore an expensive watch and a gold ring with a diamond on the pinky of one hand, so obviously, he could afford to lose some money. However, Sloane knew she didn’t have to worry about taking his cash, because the game they’d be playing was Head’s Up Hold ’Em, a variant of Texas Hold ’Em where you played against the dealer rather the other people sitting at the table.

Most of the time, the house won.

But not when Sloane was playing.

She came up to the table and said, in a breathless voice that didn’t sound much like her own, “Is it okay if I play?”

The older man shot her an interested look, gaze moving downward to the tight pink T-shirt she wore and the amount of cleavage it revealed. He smiled, eyes almost obscured by the deepening wrinkles around them. “Sure thing, darlin’. Take a seat.”

Texas? Maybe. His accent sure sounded like it. What he was doing here, gambling in a casino on the outskirts of Flagstaff, she had no idea. Just passing through, probably. He was heavyset, shirt straining at its buttons. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who’d come to the area to hike, that was for sure.

Not that she really cared. He had a half-drunk glass of what appeared to be whiskey on the rocks by one elbow, and she hoped it was his first. She might have had a lot of practice dodging half-drunk guys who’d decided to get handsy, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed it.

The dealer — also Navajo, like just about everyone else working at the casino, with a round face that made him look barely young enough to be working someplace that was restricted to people twenty-one and over — acknowledged her with a nod, but he didn’t seem to react to her presence otherwise. Well, maybe he didn’t like blondes.

“You’ve played before?” he asked politely.

“Oh, yeah,” she responded. “I went to Vegas a few months back for my bestie’s bachelorette weekend, and we played everything — blackjack, Texas Hold ’Em, pai gow poker, baccarat. It was awesome.”

His neutral expression didn’t shift at all as she told him that pack of lies. Well, all right, she’d been in and out of Vegas multiple times, always making sure to stay away for at least four or five months before she went back to make the rounds again, but she definitely didn’t have a “bestie,” let alone one who’d had a lost weekend with a bunch of her bridesmaids. But the story fit the blonde wig and the pink T-shirt she wore, so it was one she often recycled.

“Great,” the dealer said, then picked up a deck of cards.

Sloane kept smiling, although inwardly, she couldn’t help tensing. Sure, she’d done this hundreds — if not thousands — of times before, but she still hated the feeling of knowing that sometimes the cards were against her no matter what she did, that sometimes she’d lose some of the money she’d worked so hard to earn. It didn’t happen often, and yet there was always the chance that she’d be dealt a hand so crappy, there wasn’t anything she could do except fold and wait for better things to come along.

The dealer placed two cards in front of her face down, and she picked them up to take a look. Two jacks, one of hearts, one of spades. Not a bad start. She kept smiling, just because the persona she’d adopted was not the sort of woman to maintain any kind of poker face. Besides, suddenly turning serious would have been much more of a tell than keeping that stupid smile plastered on her mouth.

Two more cards were placed in front of the guy from Texas, and he gathered them up as well. By that point, his expression had gone stony, and Sloane could see he was doing his best not to allow any betraying tells to creep across his features.

Unfortunately for him, it wasn’t his face that he had to worry about.

It was always like flipping a switch in her mind. Back when she was a kid, and this gift or curse or whatever you wanted to call it had descended on her, it had felt like being bombarded by the sounds of a hundred TVs or radios at once — voices babbling away in her head, threatening to crush her with the weight of their words. Except she’d figured out soon enough that what she was hearing wasn’t a television or a radio or someone’s phone, but people’s damn thoughts, beaming straight into her brain. And not long after that, she came up with a way to create a barrier in her mind so she wouldn’t be forced to listen to other people’s garbage all day long. Now, when she wanted to use her gifts, she imagined that barrier dropping and then turned her focus on the person in question, and suddenly she could see what they were seeing, hear what they were thinking.

In this case, she saw that Tex had a couple of garbage cards — a three of clubs and a six of diamonds. If she’d been holding those cards, she would have gone ahead and folded, not bothering to wait to see what the dealer would put down for community cards.

But apparently he’d decided to stick it out…mostly because of her presence.

Hot little thing…wonder if she’d mind if I bought her a drink. A couple of those, and she might not care that I’m twice her age.

More like three times my age, grandpa, Sloane thought in some derision. All right, maybe not exactly, since he looked to be in his early or mid sixties, and she was twenty-three, but still.

Yuck.

She backed out of his mind and directed her attention toward the dealer, who’d just dealt himself his two hole cards. A pair of eights.

Okay, things were looking up. He could still maneuver around her if he managed to get a third eight, or, less likely, a trio of new cards to fill out a full house, but at the moment, she was definitely doing better than either of her opponents.

All the same, she wasn’t going to blow it by getting cocky. Her cash reserves were looking pretty good at the moment, since she’d been winning steadily ever since she got to the Flagstaff area — not in huge amounts, a couple hundred bucks here, a thousand there. She could afford to lose some, even though she guessed she probably was going to emerge the victor in this particular go-’round. However, she knew the empty-headed college girl she was pretending to be wouldn’t bet aggressively.

She slid a couple of ten-dollar chips toward the center of the table. The dealer noted their movement, as did Tex, who bet the same amount.

Of course he did.

Next came the first three community cards. King of diamonds, ten of spades, two of spades. Nothing that any of them could do much with, which meant she was still on top with her pair of jacks.

The hand played out just as Sloane had imagined it would, with her winning a modest pot of a little over a hundred bucks. She acted surprised and startled, lying through her teeth as she exclaimed that she’d never won anything before in her life.

“Beginner’s luck, I guess,” she said to Tex, who smiled back at her, not looking too upset by the money he’d just lost.

“Can I buy you a drink to celebrate?” he asked.

Damn. She’d really been hoping he wouldn’t go there.

“Oh, um…thanks,” she responded, mind working furiously. A quick dip into his thoughts told her he truly was just passing through, and actually had to be in Scottsdale that evening for a business dinner. Some kind of real estate deal.

That information sent a surge of relief through her, since now she knew she could stall a bit and be safely rid of him. He wasn’t staying at the casino, and he didn’t have enough room in his schedule to loiter around for hours, trying to soften her up.

“But some friends of mine are meeting me here later,” she went on. “We’re planning to party, you know, and so I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to start drinking this early in the day. But that’s really sweet of you.”

Disappointment flickered in his watery blue eyes. To her relief, though, he didn’t press the issue, but only said, “Well, that’s real responsible of you, miss. You have a good time with your friends — I need to cash out and get going anyway.”

With a nod toward the dealer, he gathered up his remaining chips and headed toward the cashier’s window. Sloane reached for the glass of water by her elbow and took a sip, glad that she never consumed alcohol while gambling, and therefore her claim about waiting to drink until she met up with her mythical friends would have sounded plausible enough.

After swallowing the water, she looked over at the dealer, who’d watched her exchange with Tex, expressionless the whole time.

No point in smiling at the guy. Some people you could get around, and some people you couldn’t. And she wasn’t going to peek into his mind to see what he thought of her. What difference did it make? He was here to work…and so was she.

Voice level, she said, “Hit me.”