Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure - By Jeremy Robinson Page 0,12
any physical or psychological ailment. But he was happy to forget the nightmare altogether. And the scenery was helping him do just that. It was a beautiful day, after all. A perfect day. He took it as a good omen.
Then a pain racked his chest. He stumbled and stopped, suddenly dizzy. He checked his pulse . . . and found nothing.
His heart had stopped.
As he fell to the ground, wondering how someone had been able to poison him, he heard the two Secret Service men calling out orders. But as bright spots danced before a black curtain in his vision, he knew there was nothing they could do. He never felt the pain of his head hitting the earth.
President Duncan was dead.
FIVE
Fort Bragg—Cumberland County, North Carolina
“HOLY HORSESHIT!” ROOK said as he handed Knight a jack of spades. “That’s five in a row! You better not be cheating.”
Knight flashed a cocky smile and leaned back in his chair. The smile, in combination with his chiseled jaw and the perfectly smooth, never-been-shaved tan skin of his cheeks, not only won over many women, but it also really pissed off Rook. It wasn’t that Rook was unlucky with women; he just wasn’t a “pretty Korean boy” like Knight. “I would never cheat. Knights are honest and true.”
This got a chuckle from King, Queen, and Bishop, who were sitting around the card table, holding their cards secretively. Each player, except Rook, had a small pile of cards laying facedown on the table in front of them.
“Honest and true, my ass,” Rook said. “I just haven’t figured out how you do it yet. And when I do . . .” Rook held out his fist. “I’m going to jam this right up—”
“Okay, okay, enough with the fantasizing, little man,” Queen said. In the field, Queen could be a demon, but at home she often found herself being the peacemaker. It wasn’t that the guys didn’t get along, but they were like brothers . . . and sometimes brothers fight. “You’re up.”
Rook sighed and looked at his cards. His instincts told him to look for pairs, wilds, and flushes, but they weren’t playing poker. In their first year together, the team found poker to be a frustrating game, mostly because King couldn’t be beat. He had a way of reading people’s faces and intuiting how good their hand was. After the team collectively lost twenty-three hundred dollars to King in a single game, Rook, his face beet red with anger, had taken the chips, doused them in gasoline, and lit them on fire, melting them down into a red, white, and blue blob of singed plastic. After that, they agreed to play something less competitive . . . something that was more a game of chance than skill. But in the past month, to Rook’s ever-increasing frustration, Knight never lost. Though no money was at stake, it was worse than King’s poker run because it was supposed to be a game of chance. But somehow, Knight had figured out a system . . . at least when it came to Rook, who was always the first person out.
Rook focused on his three remaining cards. Ace of hearts. Ten of diamonds. Three of spades. He had to pick one.
“Knight. Ten of hearts,” Rook said. “Fork it over.”
Knight glanced at his cards, then slowly shuffled through them. “Nope . . . nope . . . nope . . . Sorry, big guy. No can do.”
Rook raised his eyebrows as his face turned a light shade of pink. He stroked his two-inch-long blond goatee. “Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining, Knight.”
“Cats and dogs.”
“Damnit.”
“Oh, and Rook? Go fish.”
Rook took a card from the center pile while muttering obscenities. Then he smiled. Ten of hearts. “Ha!” He slapped the cards on the table, announcing his first pair. “Fish this, Knight.”
Knight laughed. “That makes no sense.”
“Hey, Rook,” King said, trying to contain a smile.
Rook looked at King, who was dressed in his usual uniform, blue jeans and a black Elvis T-shirt. What Rook saw in King’s orange-brown eyes was something few people ever got to see—humor. And it made him nervous.
“Ace of hearts,” King said.
Rook handed him the card, his face cast with suspicion. “Are you two working together?”
“No,” King said, leaning back so that his curly moplike hair fell out of his face and revealed his widening smile. “I just figured out Knight’s secret.”