A few minutes later, Gunner strolled in with his traveling poker gear and set up everything on Trace’s table. They played several hands before one of them brought up Connie. Trace shot down that conversation quick. He’d been thinking about her nonstop but wasn’t ready to discuss what had happened between them.
“Did I ever tell you guys about the time Trinity tried to leave me?” Gunner asked.
Everyone around the table groaned. Gunner wasn’t a big talker, but when he did, he went on and on and on.
“It was when we first started dating and it was during one of the biggest poker tournaments of the year. Trinity hated the fact that I was a gambler, and it didn’t matter that I was a professional poker player. She couldn’t understand the importance of me needing to keep my head in the game.”
Maxwell threw a couple of poker chips into the center of the table. “I’ll raise you twenty, and Gunner, man, is this story going anywhere?”
“I was losing at this point in the tournament,” Gunner continued, as if Maxwell hadn’t said anything. “I couldn’t get focused. So I had to put some mental distance between me and Trinity.” He gave a mock shiver and grimaced, and Trace laughed. “You guys know what a hothead that woman is. She wanted my undivided attention even though there were millions of dollars at stake.
“Anyway, the tournament was here in town, but we were staying at the host hotel. By the third or the fourth night of me practically ignoring her so that I could get my head on straight, she’d had enough. She told me she was going home—back to LA—and was planning to leave my ass in the hotel.”
“What did you do?” Trace asked. He could totally see Trinity cutting out and not looking back.
“I let her go,” Gunner said, sticking his chest out like he was the man. “I gave her the keys to the car and said, ‘See ya.’”
“Man, quit fronting.” Maxwell laughed. “You let her go for about five minutes. Then you called the hotel’s concierge and had them stop her in the lobby. It was too late, though. Trinity was already in his car revving the engine.”
“Not just any car. Get it right if you’re going to butt in to my story.”
“Okay, his precious, overpriced BMW sports car,” Maxwell said, making a face as if to say “big deal.” “Anyway, Gunner had to run after her and jump into the passenger seat. Long story short, they ended up getting chased by some guy who was trying to kill Gunner, and you both know how Trinity drives. She had them flying down secluded roads and hugging curves on two wheels.”
Gunner shook his head. “Scared the crap out of me. I thought we were going to die, but there was no other place I wanted to be than with her.”
Trace could only imagine how that ride went. Trinity was trained in defensive driving, but even before she became a cop, she’d driven like she was trying out for NASCAR.
“Okay, maybe it’s just me, but what the hell is the point of this story?” Langston asked, frowning.
Trace and Maxwell burst out laughing, but after a while, Trace turned serious.
“The point is, even though he and Trinity were mad at each other, he refused to let her walk out of his life. Ride or die,” Trace explained.
“That woman was and still is my heartbeat,” Gunner said to all of them, but his gaze was on Trace. “That tournament and the ones that followed meant nothing if she wasn’t in my life. I couldn’t just let her walk away and risk never seeing her again. I had to go after her. I had to make sure she knew that she was it for me, no matter what.”
Trace nodded. His and Connie’s situation was a little different, but that was how he felt. He didn’t know how to get past her defenses. All he could do was love her unconditionally and hang on for the ride.
“Thanks for that, Gunner. I get it. I’m not giving up my woman. And all I have to say to you two—” he glanced at his brother and Maxwell “—is that you’re useless. If you’re going to come over and give a pep talk, at least come with a story like Gunner did.”
“Man, forget you.” Langston waved him off and started moving around the cards in his hand. “I already told you that I only came over to make sure you were alive.”
Maxwell’s cell phone, which was sitting on the table next to him, rang. He glanced at the screen, then hurried and answered.
“Yeah, this is Max.”
Trace could only hear one side of the conversation, but whoever his friend was talking to was giving him some good news.
“All right, thanks for letting me know.” He disconnected the call and smiled at Trace. “They got him,” he said.
Trace stared, trying not to get too excited. “Who? Daniel Atkinson?”
“Yep. They got a tip from a caller that said he and two other guys were hiding out in Boulder City at some woman’s house. They picked them up a little while ago.”
“Are they sure one of them is Atkinson? Gray eyes, tat and—”
“It’s him, and they’re confident that they can break the other two, get them to turn on each other. But we’re going to want Connie to come to the station and see if she can pick Atkinson out of a lineup. Oh, and it helped a lot that you and Langston were able to figure out that he was part of the One-Seven Crew.”
Trace was cautiously optimistic that the chaos that had become part of his life was over. But now, what to do about Connie?
Later that night, Trace was sitting on his balcony when his cell phone rang. Unease swept through him when he saw that it was Riley. His
