Kincaid’s Dangerous Game

again. The pain, the loss…

Tell him, Brenna. It’s the way you’ll get him to go “all in.”

She took a breath. “He found me at a bad time, I guess you could say. Or maybe a good time, I don’t know.” She forced a smile. “I’d just had a baby. Gave the kid up for adoption. So I was-”

He uttered a sharp obscenity and sat back in his chair. He didn’t know what he’d expected to hear, but it sure wasn’t that. Of all the things she could have said…

She was watching him, a smile playing around her lips but not even coming close to her eyes.

He rubbed a hand over his mouth and muttered, “How did it happen? I mean, were you-”

“Oh, it was consensual-more or less.” She shrugged. “It was a cold winter…what can I say? You take warmth where you can find it, if you know what I mean. Things happen, okay?”

“I’m not judging-God, no.” He exhaled, then shook his head. “I just can’t imagine what it must have been like, to be out there alone, on the streets and pregnant besides.”

“It was one of the better times, actually. I went to a clinic, and they got me into a shelter-a women’s shelter, so it was pretty safe. Better than the others, anyway…I learned to stay clear of those.”

“But you didn’t stay. After…”

She seemed to have shrunk, somehow, sitting hunched in that big chair with her hands fisted on her thighs. Her face had a pinched look. She shook her head and he had to lean closer to hear her as she mumbled, “I got to hold her-just for a minute. It was a girl. Then they took her and I signed the papers and got the hell outta there. I just wanted to get as far away from that place as I could. Maybe you can’t understand that, but that’s just the way it was.”

Maybe he didn’t understand-how could he?-but he ached for her anyway. His throat ached. He cleared it, but still didn’t think talking was a good idea, so he got up and paced restlessly to the window. It wasn’t a spectacular Vegas view; his room did not face the Strip. Just an anonymous cityscape, darkening already to dusk, this late in November. He wondered if that cold wind was still blowing. In Vegas it was easy to lose touch with the world outside the hotels and casinos, but he knew there was a different world out there. Beyond the glitter and glamour of the Strip, Las Vegas was a city like any other, with its share of ordinary people leading ordinary lives, and criminals preying on both the innocent and each other.

“Miley Todd brought me here, to Vegas,” Billie said, as if she’d read his thoughts. “I met him in Biloxi. He was playing poker in a tournament in one of the Gulf casinos, and I was working the main drag, picking up food money from the tourists doing card tricks…scams, actually. I guess Miley thought I had a good head for cards.”

He turned back to her, discovering he’d lost his taste for asking questions. The images she’d already painted in his head were going to be tough enough to forget; he didn’t need any more.

Funny-he’d never really thought about the term empathy, not until he’d run into the first of Cory Pearson’s siblings, the Portland homicide cop, Wade Callahan, and the woman who’d recently become his wife. Tierney Doyle Callahan was an empath, a psychic who could read other people’s emotions, and she’d met Wade while working with the Portland P.D. to catch a serial killer.

Meeting Tierney had gotten Holt to wondering whether he might have a wee touch of the empath himself, since he’d always had kind of a knack for getting inside the heads of the people he was searching for. An ability to think: If I were that person, what would I do? Where would I go? Not that he’d lay any claim to being psychic, but the fact was, a lot of the time he’d be right.

Brenna Fallon’s story had grabbed him by the throat from the first time he’d heard it. He remembered vividly the clenching in the pit of his stomach when Brooke told him her twin sister had run away at fourteen to escape their adoptive older brother’s sexual abuse. The photos Brooke had given him then had become burned into his brain, filling his nights with dreams of that fragile child-woman out there somewhere on some cold, mean street, vulnerable to every kind of predator and peril. Until a couple of days ago he’d all but given up hope of ever finding her, and then he’d had the incredible good luck to catch that poker game on late-night television.

Now…he slept no better, although it was a thirty-year-old woman’s face that haunted him. Haunted him in ways he hadn’t counted on.

“You want anything to drink? Or eat?” he asked, frowning, remembering the way she’d lurched out of the coffee shop downstairs, looking decidedly green around the gills. Chances were, he thought, she’d lost most of that Chinese food he’d bought her.

He knew he’d been right yet again when she smiled wryly.

“Yeah, actually, I am.”

He picked up the phone, pressed the button for room service, then looked over at her and raised his eyebrows.

“A BLT on wheat and a chocolate shake would be fine.”

He nodded, and she watched him while he gave the order, adding a cup of black coffee for himself. Noted the way his hair hugged the back of his head and receded-only a little bit and very attractively-at the temples. There were touches of silver there, too, and she wondered for the first time how old he was. Not that it mattered, she told herself. What did matter was that he was attracted to her, and she could use that to her advantage. She told herself the shiver of excitement she could feel running like a current under her skin was only the thrill of the game, the same excitement she always felt when she knew she was holding the winning hand.

He hung up the phone and looked over at her, eyes narrowed in a Clint Eastwood squint. She looked back at him, and the shiver beneath her skin coalesced in the center of her chest, a tight ball of warmth.

Take it easy, Bren, don’t be too obvious or you’ll scare him off. He’s got scruples-who would’ve guessed a P.I. would have those?

She eased herself carefully back in the chair, elbows on the chair’s arms, her hands clasped across her middle. “So, what now? You want to hear more about my misspent life?”

“No,” he said, still frowning at her in that thoughtful way, “I really don’t.”

“O-kay.” What now? She returned his gaze unflinchingly, but inside she felt off balance, as if she’d missed a step in a dance. She had to pause an awkward moment in order to pick up the beat, and her voice sounded artificial even to her own ears when she finally said, “So, tell me about yours, then.”

“Nothing to tell.” It was brusque, a door slammed in her face with such finality she caught her breath in a small, involuntary gasp. He sat on the edge of the bed and leaned toward her, hands clasped between his knees. “What I would like to know,” he said in a hard voice, “is why you don’t want to even meet your brothers. Cory especially. He’s been looking for you for a long time, you know. He was the one who protected you when you and Brooke were small. You were just babies, and he kept you safe when your father went on his rampages. He sheltered you both in his arms the night your father shot your mother and then killed himself. Without a doubt your father intended to kill you all. You’d be dead, too, if it hadn’t been for Cory.”

She lifted her shoulders and felt herself shrink into them, as if under the weight of Holt’s steady regard. “Don’t remember it,” she muttered, angry with herself for letting him get to her. “Don’t remember him.”

He didn’t say anything, and after a moment she got up and began to pace in the cramped room. Didn’t want to, but couldn’t seem to help herself. “Look, I don’t know those people. I don’t want to know them.” Couldn’t keep her voice from shaking, either. She turned on him, furious. “Damn you. I don’t need this kind of hassle.”

“Just…meet them.” His voice was gentle now, and somehow that was worse. “Is that too much to ask? Just let me take you to them.”

She bent closer to him, dangerously close. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his face almost on a level with hers. She could see the pores in his skin, the beard stubble on his cheeks, the lines radiating from the corners of his eyes, the silvery shadings of blue in his eyes. It made him suddenly too real, too human.

A lump formed inside her chest and rose into her throat, and for one horrible moment she was terrified she might break down.

Tense with the task of holding off that threat, she spoke rapidly, forcing words through clenched teeth. “Okay- you want me to go with you to meet these people? I’ll make you a deal. You find people, right? Okay, then, you find my daughter. I want to see my daughter first. You find her for me, then I’ll go with you to meet my so-called brothers.”

“And your sister,” he softly reminded her, looking deep into her eyes. “She wants to see you, too.”

She couldn’t stay so close to him, not for another second. She let out breath in a gust and straightened. “Yeah sure-whatever.” About to turn away from him, she jerked back for one more shot, her finger upraised in a gesture of command. “But first, you find my baby girl.”