the Second Horseman (2006) by Kyle Mills Page A

cash. He obviously was only confident enough to play if it was the hotel and not him that was at risk.
    Brandon crammed a handful of peanuts in his mouth and washed them down with a small sip of Pepsi, careful not to accidentally swallow the maraschino cherry floating in it. That was dessert.
    While he chewed, he pulled out the phone Daly had given him and turned it over in his hand. It was a heavy model, built for durability more than sleekness, but beyond the dents and scratches it had gotten in their short time together, it had no identifying marks at all.
    Who were these guys? The more he thought about it, the more he was sure that Catherine was no career crook. More like a combination between June Cleaver, Salma Hayek, and that nervous old dentist he used to go to. Crook or not, though, she had someone big backing her. The mob? Probably not. He had a pretty good relationship with those guys. If they'd needed something, they'd just ask. A foreign outfit? Maybe. Probably. Between the Asians, the South Americans, and those damn Eastern Europeans, you could hardly breathe anymore without catching the eye of some overseas psycho killer.
    "South Americans," he mumbled before jamming another fistful of nuts in his mouth. Catherine did have a kind of south - of-the-border look. And those guys loved buying private jets with all that drug cash. But what could they possibly need him for? Next to selling coke, all other enterprises were almost comically unprofitable.
    He looked down at the phone again, memorizing the location of each button and testing his dexterity by punching a few. Satisfied, he slapped the battery back in and began quickly scrolling through the navigation screens. Within a few minutes, he had confirmed that the address book was empty , that the calls he'd received during his escape were from a blocked number, that there was no history of calls going out, and, most interestingly, that there was one voice message. He put the phone to his ear and played it.
    "Brandon. Come on. Where are you going to go? What are you going to do? Let's talk. That can't hurt, can it? Call me."
    So earnest, he thought, yanking the battery back out of the phone. He just wanted to run into her arms every time he heard her voice. But then, who wouldn't?
    He finished his Pepsi in a single swallow, catching the cherry between his teeth and dumping the rest of the peanuts in his pocket. The bartender had his back turned, chatting seductively with an older woman who had the look of a Mary Kay rep. Their eyes were firmly locked together and Brandon took the opportunity to skip out on his bill.

    Chapter TWELVE
    One of the unfortunate by-products of his father's unfailing honesty and his mother's lack of hard and fast criminal skills was that Brandon never learned any of the more practical survival-type crimes. Things that you could use to get by if you really had your back against the wall. What he wouldn't give to be a decent pickpocket right about now.
    On the bright side, though, his mother had been cursed with an obsession for poker and Brandon had inherited her aptitude, if not her style. He was a little rusty from spending the past few years playing with Kassem and his entourage, but in the end poker was like riding a bike.
    He held his cards close to his chest, peeking at them for a moment and then sliding a few chips onto the table under the watchful eye of the dealer. The other people around the table weren't as bad as he' d b ecome accustomed to -- rating between a two and a four and a half on a scale of one to ten. Based on his current financial situation, he'd walk if he calculated the table's average skill level above a three. He didn't need a challenge -- he needed cash.
    A guy who looked like he'd mugged an Elvis impersonator for his shades called and aimed his shiny lenses at Brandon. He was the four and a half -- a man whose body language suggested he regretted that poker wasn't a contact sport.
    "Nines over deuces," Brandon