Page 112 of Gambler's Conceit

The three of them were just a momentary reprieve in something much larger, and now? If I’m lucky, my body will just be dumped in the desert.

But I’ve never been lucky.

I lift my head enough to look at Grant. “Why?” I ask.

“I’ve had enough of everybody pushing me around,” Grant answers with a sneer. “And you didn’t really think I’d take that beating lying down, did you?”

“Caleb will find out,” I say hoarsely. “He’ll see that you approached me on the floor, then I’ll disappear, and he’ll want answers.”

It’s my last, desperate card.

That’s not how you negotiate, I can hear Caleb’s voice chiding, but damn it, I’m not him!

Grant bursts out laughing. “How do you think I even found out about Raymond over here? Caleb’s been in contact with your owners this whole time.”

My world slows down, the constant whirling of my thoughts coming to a halt as those words rip into this strange reality I’d started to build up for myself.

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “That’s not…”

Raymond lets out a sound that might seem sympathetic if I didn’t know how fake it was. “Sorry, little one. We always did try to tell you that you can’t trust anyone but family, but you didn’t listen, did you?”

He tugs at my waist.

“We have a flight to catch, at any rate,” Raymond says, as though I’m not too stunned, too devastated, to even cry. He grips me even tighter and pushes me out the door into an alleyway.

I stumble along, looking at the ground and counting my steps. One, two, three.

How many until we’re at the airport?

It was twenty-one steps from one end of my room to the other. Seven steps to the door from my bed.

Seven, fourteen, twenty-one, and nothing lucky happens.

Nothing lucky ever happened, no matter how many times I counted the steps, no matter how often I’d tried the lock.

Except that day where the man I’d serviced had fallen asleep, and I’d found the wallet in his slacks.

We reach the main street, the same one I’d watched from the fifth floor lounge. It’s too early for bright lights, but the traffic goes by quickly. Raymond stops at the side of the road to hail a cab, just like I’d done well over a month ago.

Two months? I don’t remember how long I’ve been here.

A taxi stops for us. Raymond pushes me inside the car, and I scoot in because I don’t know what else to do.

“Is the kid okay?” the cab driver asks as Raymond gets in.

“Yeah, he’s fine. Just mad I wouldn’t let him spend all his money on whores,” Raymond answers.

The bitter irony isn’t lost on me.

The door on my side is unlocked, I realize. There’s traffic zipping by, but Raymond is talking to the driver and I might get hit butthe door is unlocked.

I have nothing but a handful of casino chips. No phone, no money, no wallet, nothing. I don’t even have any dignity. Everything I’d had isgone, and I have nowhere to go, and?—

And fucking what?

I can disappear to this bleak, dark place inside of me where all of my dreams have gone to die, or I can make another last-ditch effort to free myself of all of this.

I don’t have time to be a little bitch about it.

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