Kincaid’s Dangerous Game

breath in his own mouth and held them both still, feeling the off-rhythm thumping of their combined heartbeats, until one or the other-maybe both-of them began to tremble.

Then he tore his mouth from her and in a rasping whisper said, “Billie…I-”

And for the third time she said it, a low, guttural sound from deep in her throat. “No-no words. Just…make love to me.”

“I will…I am…do you feel me loving you?”

And she answered, “Yes…yes…yes…” until she began to shake with dizzy laughter, the kind that sometimes comes with tears.

The next time they woke it was noon, or almost. This time hunger drove them out of bed and back to the kitchen, where a chilly November breeze was blowing through the broken window. While Billie made coffee, Holt taped a flattened cardboard cereal box over the hole, then turned on the noontime news.

“I usually eat peanut butter toast for breakfast,” Billie called from the other side of the counter. “Is that okay with you?”

“Yeah…fine,” he said absently, watching the crawl across the bottom of the television screen. He heard the thump-click of the bread being pushed down in the toaster and turned to say over his shoulder, “Hey, there’s an Amber Alert.”

She was coming toward him, rounding the end of the counter carrying a steaming cup of coffee, smiling. Her eyes went past him to the screen, and the smile seemed to dissolve into a look of utter bewilderment. “Holt?” she said, with almost no sound. The cup in her hands began to wobble, and he snaked out a hand and rescued it just in time to keep it from crashing to the floor.

He was licking his hand where the scalding coffee had slopped over and burned it when he turned back to the news broadcast. Then he no longer felt the scald. He felt as if all the air in his body had been sucked out of him.

Billie moved beside him in stunned silence, and together they stared at the face on the screen…the face of a little girl about ten years old, a little girl with blond hair and magical golden eyes.

Chapter 8

“Hannah Grace Bachman disappeared this morning while walking to school in this quiet suburban neighborhood just northwest of Reno. She was last seen wearing…”

“This can’t be a coincidence,” Holt said unevenly. “Who do you know who’d-”

“It’s got to be Miley.” Her voice was tight and breathless, like his was, both of them sounding like someone who’s just taken a blow to the stomach. “Who else could it be? He’s the only one who knew…but how could he have known where she was? I didn’t even know until you gave me that piece of paper-” Her face crumpled-for one brief moment-then settled into a mask of rigid control. She turned in a swift, unbalanced jerk and gripped the edge of the countertop to steady herself. “The paper-the one with her name and address-where is it? I put it down, right here. Did you see it? When we got home last night? It’s not here. It’s not here, Holt-”

“Miley must have found it when he broke in here yesterday,” he said, more calmly than he felt. “Probably right after we left. He was looking for the money, you said. I guess he figured he’d found a way to get it out of you.”

“This is my fault.” She was pacing, hugging herself, her face still empty of all emotion. Only her eyes were alive, crackling with rage, and he understood now why she wore the sunglasses when she played cards. “I should never have asked you to find her. It was stupid. Why did I think I had anything to give her? It was selfish, that’s what it was. Stupid and selfish. God, I can’t even-”

“Cut it out. You may be the reason this happened, but it’s hardly your fault. Look, there’s one good thing, at least. He’s not likely to hurt her, right?”

She stopped pacing to give him a hard look. Then she seemed to deflate as she sagged back against the counter. “I don’t know. Miley’s a weasel and a coward, but he’s desperate. Plus, the people he owes money to probably wouldn’t hesitate to hurt him and anybody else if it’ll get them what they want. And like I told you-I can’t get to the money. At least, I don’t know how to get to it. It’s in an ‘irrevocable trust’-whatever that means.”

“It means you can’t get to it,” Holt said grimly.

“Okay, so what should we do?” She seemed to vibrate with energy. He thought of a warrior, adrenaline-charged and primed for battle.

He picked up the remote and thumbed the television off. “The first thing we have to do is go to the police.”

“Go to…the police.” She said it the way someone would who hasn’t had many reasons to be reassured by that prospect.

He took her gently by the arms. “Think, Billie. That cabdriver is going to do so for sure, the minute he sees that Amber Alert. If he hasn’t already. I’m expecting to hear sirens any second.”

She stared at him as if the words weren’t making sense, and what he wanted to do more than anything in the world was pull her into his arms and just hold her for a while, until the shock of this had diminished, or at least let her know he was there to prop her up if she wanted to break down.

Fat chance of that, he thought. And anyway, there wasn’t time. He planted a quick kiss on her forehead and was about to release her when the phone rang, making them both jump and clutch at each other.

She stared at it as she might a coiled rattler, then looked back at him with a question in her eyes. He nodded. She walked over to the counter, wiped her hands on her bare thighs and picked up the phone.

Her heart banged inside her chest like something trapped and trying desperately to get out. She tried to take a breath, but there was no place to put it, so she held it and managed a raspy, “Hello?”

When Billie heard the voice on the other end she almost dropped the phone. She wanted to hurl it through the window…pound it against something until it broke into a thousand pieces.

“Hey, Billie, you watchin’ television? You seen that Amber Alert thing they got goin’ right now?” The voice sounded high, excited. Scared.

He better be scared because I’m going to kill him, she thought.

Her rage-fogged vision cleared enough so that she could see Holt trying to get her attention, his eyebrows raised in a frowning question. She threw him a look and gave a jerky nod, and he mouthed the word speaker.

She jerked the phone away from her ear, but the buttons on it were shimmering and out of focus, and her hands were shaking too hard to do anything with them anyway. Holt took the instrument out of her hands, punched a button, and Miley’s voice came slinking into the room.

“-you better turn it on. I’m not kiddin’-”

“I’ve seen it.” She felt like flint, the stuff of ancient spears-brittle, hard, capable of killing. “If you hurt her-”

“Jeez, Billie! What kinda guy do you think I am? I’m not-”

“I know what kind of guy you are, Miley-the kind who’d do anything to save his own ass. And if you touch one hair on my daughter’s head-”

“Hey. You got no room to threaten me. I’m holding the cards, here, not you. You give me what I want, I give her back to her parents, good as new. It’s as simple as that.”

Billie looked at Holt, then closed her eyes so he wouldn’t see her fear. Her fingers tightened around the phone, which had grown slippery in her hand. “Look-I told you the truth, Miley. I don’t have the money. I can’t give you what I don’t have.”

“Hey…that’s cool. You don’t have the quarter mil anymore-I get it. So, you just have to win some more. I got the buy-in money and you’re all signed up.”

Her stomach went cold. “What are you talking about?”

“The tournament-at the Mirage. You’re in. All you have to do is show up-and win, of course. You win the tournament, you give me what I need, the kid here goes home, and you get to take home what’s left of the pot. Everybody wins.”