Page 68 of Texas Hold Em'
JAMESON
At half past ten, I closed the door on my MC and turned to face Brody and Carrie, both of whom stood in my living room with their arms hanging slack at their sides. In their eyes, the truth of what we were about to do burned.
“Alright,” I breathed, “let’s do this.”
My chain smoking through the evening might have given away my nerves, but neither Carrie or Brody said a word about it as we moved into the bedroom and began staging the bed for the picture we’d have to send to Bates. I’d be alive and well in the shot, only playing dead, but we’d have to make sure all the details were the same in the picture as they’d be when I was actually lying in that bed without a pulse in who knew how many hours from now.
One.
Two.
Three.
It was anyone’s guess. Either way, I wouldn’t be here. My body would, butme? I’d be somewhere else.
Gone.
If there was a Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, or something else, maybe I was about to find out.
Wouldn’t that be something?
Brody was the first to move. He brushed past Carrie, who blinked in surprise, as if she hadn’t really been present in the room with us. Her gaze followed him as he went into my bedroom, where he lingered in the doorway and turned back to us.
“Are you coming or not?”
Carrie looked to me.
I nodded. “We’re coming.”
In the bedroom, Brody began unmaking the bed. Clearly, he had a plan in mind that he hadn’t run past either Carrie or me. She stayed in the corner of the room, arms wrapped tightly around herself, gaze fixed on the bed as Brody tugged the pillows down and made it look like two people had just been rolling around.
“Alright.” He put his hands on his hips and turned to us. “What makes the most sense here? Obviously Carrie can’t take you in a fight one on one. No offense, Hart.”
“None taken,” she mumbled.
“She’d have to finish it quick and clean,” Brody continued, stroking his chin.
“She’d have to shoot me,” I said simply.
Carrie sighed. “And I’d have to shoot you in the head.”
“Why?” Brody and I asked in unison.
“Because.” She left her corner and moved toward the bed, her confidence seeming to grow as she spoke. “I’m an excellent shot and Bates knows that. He also probably thinks there’s a part of me that’s unsure about this. There’s no way he’s blindly trusting me.”
“Then don’t you think we should show signs of hesitation?” I asked.
Brody looked back and forth between us.
Carrie chewed the inside of her cheek. “In other words, I don’t go for the kill shot right away? Perhaps I shoot to injure before working up the nerve to finish the job? Perhaps you charge me in self-defense? What’s more convincing, a messy crime scene or a tidy one?”
“Shit,” I breathed. “I don’t know. We have to play to Bates’s expectations, not our own. Everything he knows about you comes fromhigh pressure situations where you handle your shit. You killed three of his men without blinking just a few weeks ago.” I thought about her tucking and rolling after I dumped the bike when we were being chased through the city by Bates’s goons. She’d handled herself masterfully and hadn’t missed a single shot. “Why should you hesitate with me?”
“Because she’s spent weeks sharing your bed,” Brody said with finality. “Does he think she’s callous? Or does he think there might be a part of her that won’t go through with this because she might feel a sense of allyship toward us?”
Carrie stared unseeing at the disheveled bed. “Shit. We can’t afford to get this wrong. The littlest thing might put his guard up and make him ask questions.”
Carrie Hart the woman was no longer in the room. This was Carrie Hart the Ranger.
