Some bet on black.
Some bet on red.
Some are hesitant. Some believe chance favors the bold.
You could tell them the exact odds of winning. You could tell them that chance favors no man. Red or black, it doesn’t matter.
The house always wins.
You expel a breath, long and slow. Let them have their fun. Let them believe that Lady Luck might smile down on them. Let them keep their games of chance.
Your game—the one they don’t even know they’re playing—is a game of skill.
1/1.
1/2.
1/3.
1/4.
You know what comes next. You know the order. You know the rules. This is bigger than ants in an ant farm could ever imagine.
No one can stop you.
You are Death.
You are the house. And the house always wins.
Lia perched on the back of the couch, one leg stretched out along its length, the other dangling over the side. Dean sat on the sofa in front of her, his forearms resting on his knees, staring at the tablet we’d propped up on the coffee table.
“Anything yet?” I asked, taking a seat beside him.
Dean shook his head.
“There.” Lia’s posture never changed, but her eyes lit up. On the tablet, a shot of a hand dominated the screen as Briggs reoriented the camera masquerading as a pen in his suit pocket.
“Michael—” I started to call out.
Michael appeared before I could say anything else. “Let me guess,” he said, producing a flask and taking a swig. “Showtime.”
My eyes lingered on the flask.
Dean put one hand on my knee. If Lia and I had noticed Michael skating around the edges of the dark place, Dean almost certainly had as well. He’d known Michael for longer than I had, and he was telling me not to press the issue.
Without a word, I slipped in the earpiece Agent Briggs had given me and turned my attention back to the video feed.
On the screen, we saw what Agent Briggs saw—a stage with massive columns on either side. As he got closer to the stage, I recognized the person standing in front of it, examining the lighting.
Tory Howard was wearing a black tank and jeans, her hair pulled into a ponytail that was neither high nor low. No muss. No fuss. She either didn’t care about the image she projected or she went out of her way to project an image centered on that ideal.
When she saw Briggs, she wiped her hands on the front of her jeans and met him in the middle aisle. “Agents,” she said. “Can I help you with something?”
Agents, plural, I thought. That meant Sterling was there, too, just out of the frame.
“We have just a few more questions about last night for you.” Briggs seemed to be taking lead on this one—which meant that Sterling had chosen to sit back and watch. Given that she was the profiler, that didn’t surprise me. Sterling would want to get Tory’s measure before she decided exactly which tack to take.
“I already told you,” Tory replied to Briggs, a slight edge in her voice, “Camille and I went for drinks. We played a couple of hands of poker, and I called it an early night. Camille was looking for a party. I wasn’t. I have a show today, and I like to be on my game.”
“I understand your shows have been selling out,” Agent Briggs said.
“Say what you mean, Agent.” Tory leveled a look at him—and it was almost like she was aiming that same, dry look at us. “My show has been selling out ever since the Wonderland closed theirs down.”
Ever since victim number two literally went up in flames, I corrected silently.
“You seem defensive.” Agent Sterling was the one who said those words. I knew her well enough to know that she’d chosen that moment to speak up—and that observation—for a reason.
“This is the second time you’ve interviewed me in the past twelve hours,” Tory retorted. “You came to my place of business. I hadn’t known Camille for long, but I liked her. So, yes, when you come here, purportedly following up on what I told you last night, but also dropping oblique hints about my dead rival, I get a little defensive.”
“Not just defensive,” Michael opined. He didn’t volunteer whatever else it was he saw in her face.
“I didn’t hurt Camille,” Tory said plainly. “And I wouldn’t have wasted even one of my breaths on Sylvester Wilde. I’m sorry she’s dead. I’m not sorry he is. Are we done here?”
Lia let out a low whistle. “She’s good.”
“At lying?” I asked, wondering which portion of the statement Tory had just made was untrue.
“She hasn’t lied yet,” Lia said. “But she will. The best liars start by convincing you either that they’re straight shooters or that they can’t lie. She’s going with the former. And like I said, she’s very, very good.”
Tory was a magician. It was easy enough to believe that she was setting the stage so that when the misdirect came, Briggs and Sterling wouldn’t see it coming.
Agent Sterling changed tactics. “Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt Camille? Anyone who might have a grudge against her?”
A flicker of sorrow crossed Tory’s face. She pushed back against it. No muss. No fuss. “Camille was the only female likely to advance to the final round in a high-stakes competition dominated by egos and men. She was confident and manipulative, and she liked winning.”
You identify with her, I realized as Tory spoke.
“Camille was also beautiful, borderline famous, and had no problems whatsoever telling people no,” Tory continued unflinchingly. “There were probably a lot of people who wanted to hurt her.”