Page 40 of Dead Man's Hand

“Keira, I was a kid myself. You were a child much younger than me. There was no way you could have gone with us. That life was no picnic. I was terrified most of the time because people were chasing us, some trying to kill us. There were days when we had nothing to eat, no place to stay but out in the woods.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “You abandoned me.”

“That’s not true. Once I went out on my own, I started sending you money. When it came time for you to go to college—”

“I didn’t go to college, DJ. All I ever wanted was what you got—to live the con. I would have been better at it than even you. Look how I conned you.”

He stared at her, still disbelieving. “This was Luca’s idea, wasn’t it?”

“See, that’s why you fell for it. You wanted to believe an idea like this could only have come from a man. Keira couldn’t have come up with this on her own.” She huffed. “It was all my idea, DJ, and it worked.” She looked so satisfied that he felt even sicker inside. He’d thought he’d protected her from this life, but he’d been wrong. She’d done this to show him but also to get even for him leaving her all those years ago.

“What did you do with the college money?” he asked.

She smiled. “Taught myself a few tricks of the trade. You wouldn’t know, living down there in Florida working for the mob.”

“I’ve been paying off Charley’s debt. It’s not the glamorous life you think it is.” He hated that she’d grown into a hardened woman already, so hard that she’d sold him out to Grandville. “How much do you get for delivering me to them?”

Her smile was all greed and misplaced glory. “Two hundred grand. Like you, Grandville wanted to treat me like a child, or worse, a woman who doesn’t know what she’s doing. But he sees me differently now.”

DJ was sure that Titus did see her differently now. “You can’t trust him. He’ll turn on you like the venomous snake he is, Keira.” But even as he said the words, he could see that she didn’t believe him. She’d thought that she’d won Titus Grandville’s respect and there was no telling her different.

She tilted her head, listening, but not to him. He heard it too. The whine of snowmobiles in the distance. Grandville was coming with his thugs to get retribution, as if he and his ilk needed a reason. Charley was at the heart of this. Years ago, he remembered his uncle embarrassing Titus on the street in Butte with a card trick. At the time, DJ had looked into the young Grandville’s furious red face and worried Titus would go to his father and make things harder for them. He seriously doubted that Titus had ever forgotten the humiliation—or the young threadbare-dressed boy who’d witnessed it. Titus had felt small in front of DJ, a kid he’d ridiculed and felt superior to.

Suddenly DJ felt tired and defeated. He was sick of old grudges and feuds. He’d come up here to save Keira. Worse, he’d gotten Sadie involved. For that, he would never forgive himself. Not that he would have long to regret his mistakes. Titus planned to kill him, but what Keira didn’t realize was that the banker wouldn’t leave any witnesses.

DJ looked at Sadie. He saw that familiar glint in her eye. She knew the score, but clearly she wasn’t ready to give up yet. How had he ever gotten involved with such an optimist?

SADIEHADTAKENin the situation. She knew DJ had a weapon on him, but she doubted, even after everything he’d heard, that he was capable of shooting Keira. But Sadie now didn’t have that problem. She saw the woman as a product of her own greed, using her childhood as her excuse, blaming everyone but herself for the way her life had turned out so far.

The problem was how to play this and not get DJ or herself killed. She couldn’t do anything from this chair, though. She had to take a gamble, something she was apparently born to do.

As she began to clap, Sadie got to her feet to face Keira. “Thank you for this wonderful reminder of how lucky I am not to have a sibling. What a heartrending moment to have witnessed. To think I used to want a little sister.”

Just as she’d hoped, her act caught Keira off guard.

“I told you to sit down there and not move,” the woman cried, swinging the gun in Sadie’s direction.

Holding up her hands, she’d stepped back toward the fireplace and the gun now within reach behind the vase. She’d also distracted Keira, who was having trouble keeping her gun on both of them.

DJ had moved toward the kitchen, putting the two of them on each side of Keira.

“You move again and I’ll shoot you,” Keira cried. “That goes for you, too, DJ.”

“Other than to get me killed, what is it you want?” he asked, sounding bored.

She took a few steps back, bumping into the bed as she tried to keep them both within sight. “For starters, I want the money you took from the poker game in Butte and any other money you might have on you.”

“It’s yours,” he said. “But I’m going to have to move to get it.”

Keira raised the gun so it was pointed at Sadie’s head. “Try anything and I kill her.”

The sound of the snowmobiles made all three of them freeze for a moment. The sound grew louder, closer. Time was running out. Sadie looked at DJ.Tell me what you’re thinking. Give me a sign. Otherwise, Sadie was going to do whatever she had to.

THEMOMENTTOMMYand James left in the truck, Buck climbed on one of the snowmobiles, drove it off the trailer and went after Grandville’s thugs. He hadn’t gone far when he saw the blood on the fresh snow and remembered that James had wounded one of them. A little farther, following the tracks the three had left, he saw a snowmobile sitting without a rider, idling. As he drew closer he saw the body lying next to it on the far side. He cautiously approached. Within a few feet, he saw that it was Lloyd, and he was dead. He appeared to have been shot not once, but twice, the last time between the eyes.

Buck looked to the dark pines ahead, feeling sick to his stomach as he thought about the kind of men he was dealing with. He knew where Rafe and Butch were headed. Charley Diamond’s cabin. Were DJ and Sadie there? What about Keira Cross? He gunned his engine; the snow machine roared past the abandoned one as he followed the tracks that he knew would lead him into more trouble than he’d know what to do with.

Ahead, he could see the snowmobile tracks where they had crossed the mountain above the tree line. He’d been following three, now two. But now he saw another track. It, too, had gone in the same direction. His heart sank, as he knew it must belong to the other person on this mountain DJ and Sadie had to fear. Keira.

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