Wild Country (The World of the Others #2)- Anne Bishop Page 0,48

better than to place a bet when you’re the one holding the cards.”

“No bets. Just practice.”

Judd swallowed the whiskey and poured himself another glass. “All right, then.”

Parlan shuffled the cards. “It’s time to move on. Time to get back to the West Coast and pay a visit to Sparkletown. Those are the only people who can afford high-stakes poker right now.”

“Not easy crossing borders, and we’d have to cross three of them to get to the West Coast.”

They’d been on the wrong side of the continent, providing lucrative entertainment in his private railroad car and in private rooms at select hotels, when the whole damn civilized world was torn apart. Toland was useless to him. Henry Hollis had been right. Too much destruction there and travel so limited in that part of the Northeast there was the bad chance of getting stuck. And Shikago? Tonight had shown him he’d already wrung the gamblers who could afford to play with him out of everything he could. They had to move on and find another rich vein of fools, and that meant getting out of the Northeast Region.

After a few hands, Judd pulled some papers out of his inside jacket pocket and tossed them on the table. He smiled. “Couldn’t get us over all the borders to get back to home territory, but there are the papers that will get all of us on a train that will cross into the Midwest. It leaves tomorrow. Also arranged for your private car to be added to the train.”

Parlan didn’t ask how Judd persuaded the men responsible for border crossings to provide the papers for them and the private car. Judd always knew just how to apply the right kind of pressure to the right person to smooth their travel arrangements.

“Destination?” he asked. Not that it mattered.

“For now, we have passage on a train running along the High North border,” Judd replied. “Can’t say if there’s anything left beyond the towns with the stations.” He studied the whiskey in his glass. “Sweeney Cooke slipped across the border, picked up a car once he was across. He said the previous owner wouldn’t need it anymore, so the cops aren’t going to be looking. What cops are left, that is.”

“What’s he doing on his own?” Parlan asked. Sweeney wasn’t family and wasn’t sharp enough for most of the cons and games the clan played. But he had a talent with his fists, much like Charlie Webb. Those two were hammers and useful when needed. Judd, on the other hand, was a knife.

“He heard rumors about abandoned towns and decided to take a look. First one he came to wasn’t completely abandoned. The survivors made him uneasy, so he headed back out. The next town he came to was empty. Nobody and nothing living there, but the stores and houses were full of things for the taking—money, jewelry, liquor. He had plenty of loot in the car when I slipped across the border and found him.” Judd leaned his forearms on the table. “Might want to think of setting up a headquarters, a place where we can hold our acquisitions. We can take over a couple of houses. There’s food available, not to mention cars and gasoline. Once we strip the carcass of one town, and sell off everything worth selling, we can move on to the next.”

“And if the next one is inhabited?”

Judd shrugged. “If the odds are against us and the saloon is open, you can play a few hands of poker to liven up the evening. If there’s only a handful of squatters or survivors, well, who would be surprised to discover they didn’t survive after all?”

Parlan studied the other man. “Sweeney would have fixed on easy pickings, and he’s good at finding such people and places, but he wouldn’t have thought about setting up headquarters and all the rest.” Ever since that talk with Henry Hollis, he’d been thinking about the need for some kind of base of operations.

“Nope. He would have gone around in that car, filling up the trunk with money, the back seat with jewelry, and the front passenger side with bottles of liquor to keep them within easy reach. And sooner or later, if someone he feared didn’t insist that he deposit the loot at headquarters, he’d drive into a town that still had a sheriff, and the sheriff would notice all that appropriated jewelry, and things would turn sour for all of us.”

“So we keep him close enough