car. “Lizbeth will drive me home. We won’t drink, do drugs, or have sex. I’ll be careful.”
“Okay. Have fun.”
“If that’s even possible if you know everything I do.” She laughed, tossing him a saucy glance, her ponytail bouncing, as she turned and ran up the lawn of her friend’s house.
He watched her go, remembering how his own parents had given him the same warnings. And just like Troy, he hadn’t really listened, never thinking that anything could happen to him. And as a consequence, he’d become a father at nineteen, his whole world turned upside down.
Not that he would alter anything if he could. He’d wanted his daughter with a fierce protectiveness ever since the day she was born, when she’d wailed and clutched his finger as the only safe haven in a cold, cruel world. He’d been surprised at the depth of his emotions then, but never doubted them—not when his girlfriend’s parents came to put the baby up for adoption, not when, in desperation, he’d asked Jack’s father, a corporate attorney, to represent him when he asked for permanent custody. The court case had seemed to drag on forever, but in the end, Troy was his.
And that’s when the work had really started. He’d moved back home, finished college at night when his folks could watch his baby daughter, and he watched her in the daytime when they worked. His parents had really come through for him.
Those first few years were tough for all of them, but it had been more than worth it. Raising Troy had been incredible, the hardest, most fun, best thing he’d ever done. Troy had made him the man he was. A better man than he’d started out to be.
He drove home, believing, hoping, that Troy was smarter at eighteen than he’d been, and let himself into the house. He checked his messages. One. From agent Frelly.
“Call me when you get in,” Frelly growled.
Tanner sighed. What were the odds? Frelly would want him to go back to the casino. Maybe he’d found a way for Tanner to get in Big Julie’s game tonight.
He called the number the agent had left and Frelly picked up on the first ring.
“You gotta get over to the casino,” Frelly said. “We can fit you into Big Julie’s game tonight.”
“So soon?” Tanner asked. He tried to keep the doubt out of his voice. He’d only talked to the agents this morning. Surely replacing one of Big Julie’s regular card players with a total stranger couldn’t be that easy. Big Julie would be suspicious of substitutions.
“Yeah,” Frelly said. “One of his regulars ate a peanut. Guy’s allergic to peanuts. They hadda call an ambulance. Darla’s at the Desert Dunes waiting for you. We hid a camera in Big Julie’s bathroom. You go in pretending to take a leak. You take out the camera and hide it someplace in the room where they’re playing. It’s tiny. You won’t have no problem. Darla will show you how it works.”
“How am I getting into the game?” he asked. “I can’t just show up at the door and ask if Big Julie wants to play.”
“No,” Frelly agreed. “The floor manager will call Big Julie and ask him, since his seventh player is in the ICU, if he wants to play with you, because you are in the house and you’re not bad but not that good, either—”
“Hey!” Tanner said. “I’m very good.”
“Yeah, well, the point to remember here is that you won’t be playing that good with Big Julie, because we need him to win.”
Tanner thought. It sounded thin, but the point was to get him in Big Julie’s game. If this half-baked subterfuge got him there, fine.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go down there. You’re staking me, of course.”
“Much as I hate to do it,” Frelly said.
Tanner rolled his eyes. “Then it’s showtime.”
But when Tanner got to the casino and went to the manager’s office, Darla told him the gig was off.
“Big Julie is too despondent to play because his regular has gone into anaphylactic shock with the peanut,” Darla reported. “Tonight’s game is cancelled. Sorry about that.”
Tanner thought about the chores he might have done that evening instead and felt philosophical.
“Will Big Julie still be feeling despondent next week, too?” he asked.
“I think he’ll be feeling better,” Darla said.
“I’d like to know how you guys do it,” Tanner said, as he opened the door that lead out to the floor. “That peanut. That was no accident.”
“Hey,” Darla said, grabbing her purse, preparing