“That’s right,” Tory said, staring down the agents. “We were.”
“She really is good,” Lia commented. “Even I might not have pegged that one for a lie.”
“And how do you two know each other?” Sterling asked.
Beau shrugged, looking for a moment like the kid slumped in the back of the classroom, barely paying attention to what was said at the front. “She’s my sister.”
There was a beat of silence.
“Your sister,” Agent Sterling repeated.
“Foster sister.” Tory was the one who supplied that information. She was older than Beau by two years, maybe three. Something told me the protectiveness ran both ways.
“You still need help with fixing the lights?” Beau asked Tory, as if the FBI wasn’t even standing in the room. “Or what?”
“Mr. Donovan,” Agent Sterling said, forcing his attention back to her, “would you mind if we asked you a few questions?”
“Knock yourself out.”
Tory isn’t the only one who’s not overly fond of people with power.
“I understand you’ve advanced to the finals of the Vegas multi-casino poker tournament,” Agent Sterling said. “You’re getting quite a bit of attention.”
“Everyone likes an underdog story.” Beau shrugged again. “I’m thinking of selling the rights to Hollywood,” he deadpanned. “It’ll be one of those really inspirational stories.”
“Beau,” Tory said, a warning note creeping into her voice. “Just answer the questions.”
Interesting. She didn’t want him to aggravate the authorities. For a split second, I felt like I was watching some alternate-universe version of Lia and Dean, where she was the older one and he had Michael’s mouth.
“Fine,” Beau told Tory, then he turned back to Agent Sterling. “What do you want to know?”
“How long have you been playing poker?”
“A while.”
“You must be good at it.”
“Better than some.”
“What’s your secret?”
“Most people are crappy liars.” Beau let that sink in. “And for a high school dropout, I’m pretty good at math.”
I saw Sterling filing those words away for future reference, and I did the same.
Agent Briggs took over the questioning. “Were you at the New Year’s Eve party on the roof of the Apex?”
“Yeah,” Beau said. “Thought I’d see how the other half lives.”
“Did you know Camille Holt?” Agent Sterling asked.
“I did. She was a nice girl,” Beau replied.
“Lie,” Lia sing-songed.
“Well,” Beau amended, as if he’d heard Lia, “Camille was nice to me. We were the outsiders in the inner circle. She was a chick. I’m a dishwasher.” He managed a small, crooked smile. “A girl like that? She wouldn’t normally give a guy like me two seconds. But once I joined the tournament, she went out of her way to make me feel welcome.”
“She was trying to figure you out.”
I recognized Agent Sterling’s statement for what it was—an attempt to see how Beau dealt with rejection. Tell him Camille was only nice to him because she was manipulating him, see what happens.
Beau shrugged. “Of course she was.”
“A swing and a miss,” Michael said under his breath. In other words: Sterling’s words hadn’t gotten a rise out of her target. At all.
“Camille was competitive,” Beau said. “I respected that. Besides, she decided pretty early on that I wasn’t the one she needed to worry about.”
Agent Sterling cocked her head to the side. “And who was Camille worried about?”
Beau and Tory both answered the question, and they both said the exact same thing. “Thomas Wesley.”
While Briggs and Sterling went to track down Thomas Wesley, the rest of us were left to entertain ourselves. Michael took out his earpiece and tossed it onto the carpet with no more care than one might use to throw away a crumpled napkin. “Call me when the show’s back on,” he said, reclaiming his flask and heading for his room. Lia shot me a look that said, I told you we were at issue capacity. See?
Yes, I thought, watching Michael go. I do.
“I’ll go check on Sloane,” I said. Michael wouldn’t want my concern. Sloane, at least, might be glad for the company.
When I got to our room, I was greeted by the sound of upbeat techno music. I opened the door, half expecting Sloane to be wearing goggles and on the verge of blowing something up. It helps me think, Sloane had explained to me once, like explosives were an alternative form of meditation.
Luckily, however, in the absence of her basement lab, she’d taken a different—and less explosive—tack. She was lying upside down on the bed, the upper half of her body hanging over the end. Blueprints, schematics, and hand-drawn maps lay three-deep, covering the floor around her.
“Thirteen hours.” Sloane yelled the words over the music, still hanging upside down. I went to turn the music down, and she continued, her voice softer, more vulnerable. “If our UNSUB is killing one a day, we have a maximum of thirteen hours until he kills again.”
Briggs had told Sloane that he needed her to figure out where the UNSUB would strike next. She had clearly taken that request to heart. You want to be needed. You want to be useful. You want to matter, even a little.