“You’re right,” she said. “What do I care anymore? They already killed my dad.” Her voice was laced with undeniable grief. “If we stay…” Her eyes welled. “Will you get them for what they did?” She crouched before him, curled her hands over his, looked up at him with those vibrant emerald eyes.
“Yes.”
She stood, blinking to hold in the tears. “I always come out on the wrong end. Relationships, cards, finances. I know it’s my own goddamned fault. But I never get it right. I always lose. And when it mattered the most, with Sam…” When she spoke again, her voice was hoarse. “I wanted so bad for this time to be different. And it wasn’t.” She seemed to come back to the present, regarding him there in the chair with his odd surveillance setup. “What do I even call you? ‘The Nowhere Man’ is a little stilted, right?” She gave a dying laugh. “Watch out for that sniper behind you, Nowhere Man. Hey, Nowhere Man, can you pass the salt?”
“Evan,” he said.
“Is that your real name?”
“Does it matter?”
“Evan,” she said, trying it on. “Evan.”
In the video feed on his phone’s screen, a rusty pickup pulled in to the parking lot. An old guy with a wispy white mustache climbed out and legged his way to reception.
“We’re going to break apart every aspect of what happened,” Evan said, “and figure out how they tracked us down in the restaurant. But first we need to figure out some protocols. You should keep to the room as much as possible. When I’m not with you, you need to be extremely cautious. Keep your head on a swivel.”
“For what?”
“Anyone who stands out.”
“How am I supposed to do that? How am I supposed to do anything if they’re as good as you say they are?”
The rumble of an engine came audible through the rear wall. Evan tracked the car’s shadow as it flickered past the sheer curtains of the three motel rooms, one after the other. Once the sound faded, he returned his focus to Katrin. “You play poker.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me how you read your opponents.”
“That’s not the same—”
“Tell me.”
She took a deep breath. Held it. Then: “Perfectionists are easy to pick up. Always polishing their glasses. Clipped nails. They stack their chips just so. They tend to be gun-shy, easier to bluff. When they’re close to the felt, they play tight.” She sank onto the bed, curled her feet beneath her.
On the video feed, Evan watched the guy with the white mustache exit reception, twirling a key around his finger. He stepped out of frame, and a moment later Evan sensed the shudder of a door opening and closing far up the row of rooms.
“The eyes are a tell, which is why the pros wear sunglasses and baseball caps,” Katrin was saying. “The pupils constrict at a bad hand, though it’s hard to catch if the lighting’s bad. Guys’ll stare longer at a good hand before flopping. There’s some bullshit about liars looking away, breaking eye contact, blinking more, but that’s not true with practiced liars. They’ll stare a hole right through you. And you have to listen to them, too. Their speech is more fluid when they’re confident.”
Another movement on the video feed caught Evan’s attention. An SUV turning in to the parking lot from the westbound lane. It idled up in front of reception. He refocused his gaze on Katrin. “Like your speech now?”
She almost smiled. “Yes. And when they’re tilted, their feet point in.”
“Tilted?”
“Off their game. Lacking confidence. But you can’t always see beneath the table, so…” A one-shouldered shrug. “Most important is reading the patterns.”
No one had exited the SUV yet. Through the thin walls, Evan could hear it idling outside. The briefcase lens gave him a nice clear side view on his cell-phone feed but no angle on either license plate. The windows were not tinted, and there were two men in the front, having a discussion. Nothing alarming. Yet.
“Some players go hyperaggressive and bluff hard and often, even when they’re card dead. You can scoop a lot of pots if you know when to call them. And sometimes it’s smart to bluff — and lose on purpose. It’s money well spent if it shows you’re unpredictable. Think of it as a business expense that’ll pay dividends in future hands. That’s the thing about poker. You’re not playing your hand. You’re playing the other guy’s hand.”
“And that,” Evan said, “is what we’re going to do with the people who killed your father.”
Her mouth parted slightly, and he watched the realization roll across her face.
A purple Scion now entered the parking lot from the eastbound lane, followed by a second SUV. Evan leaned forward and plucked up his phone, palming it for a better view as they turned in.
Neither had a license plate.
The Scion parked at the edge of the lot near the street while the second SUV crept forward.
Evan stood up.
“What?” Katrin said. “What?”
“Did you make a phone call from this room?”
“No.”
The SUV coasted past the other one down by reception and headed through the short drive toward the rear alley.
“You didn’t leave? Step out even for a second? Open the door to any delivery guys when you ordered food?”
Evan kept his eyes glued to the video feed. The driver and passenger doors of the first SUV opened, and two men exited. Muscular builds, black T-shirts, light on their feet. Given their bearing and cropped hair, Evan pegged them for ex-military.
“No. No. What’s going on, Evan?”
The men rested their hands on hip holsters but did not draw. They spread out in the front parking lot just as headlights swept the sheer curtains in the rear of Room 9 next door. The second SUV, arriving in the alley. The men were pinning them in, front and back.
It was impossible that Evan had been tracked — he’d been too careful. Which meant that Katrin had alerted them. And yet there was no denying that sniper round aimed through the restaurant’s window directly at her heart.
Her pale skin had grown paler. She stared at him, her lips pressed together, thin and bloodless.
The headlights in the back alley halted, the vehicle just shy of Room 9. The wide perimeter set by the men in the front parking lot encompassed all three adjoining rooms. Which meant they’d likely been tipped.
Evan grabbed Katrin roughly and spun her, frisking her. Whether he trusted her or not, he had to protect her right now. The Tenth and most important Commandment was seared into muscle memory: Never let an innocent die.
He found nothing.
“What are you doing?” Katrin said. “You’re the one who just got here — like last time. You’re the one who was probably followed.”
“Under the bed,” he said.
She obeyed, vanishing beneath it, the dust ruffle fluttering into place after her.
Pistol drawn, he stood in position before the chair, peering through the hinge-side gap of the door into Room 9 to his left. A shadow eased barely into view in the lower corner of the rear window, the outline of a gun distinct behind the sheer curtain. The silhouette showed a canister ballooning from the tip of the barrel — a homemade suppressor, likely jerry-rigged from an oil-filter cartridge. Untraceable, intended for onetime use.
An assassin’s tool.
A glance at his phone showed the two-man team in the parking lot staying put, holding position. Which meant the assault would come from the rear, through the windows. The men in the parking lot were there to put Evan and Katrin down if they tried to flee through the front door. Exhaust wisping from its tailpipe, the Scion remained at the property’s fringe, the overwatch position of whoever was running the mission. The shooter from Chinatown, waiting back at a sniper’s distance?