Armor by Alexa Land

Author:Alexa Land [Land, Alexa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-02-14T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

“You owe me twenty-three thousand dollars.”

“Only because you cheat,” I told Vincent.

“So do you,” he said, drawing the stack of chips toward him. “You just don’t cheat well.”

“I’ll win it back in the next round. Just watch,” I said as I shuffled the cards, but my brother pushed back from the table.

“I need a break from this poker marathon. I’m going to video-call Trevor and the kids.”

“It’s very cute when you make faces and talk in a squeaky voice for your babies,” I told him. “And don’t worry. Even though I recorded you doing that, I’ll only use the video when I have a solid reason to blackmail you. That may actually come into play sooner rather than later, if you keep insisting on playing classical music every waking hour.”

My brother shot me a look and tapped the screen on his phone. Instantly, Vivaldi began to play, and I groaned dramatically. He brandished the phone like a weapon, jabbing it in my direction a couple times before grinning and heading to his bedroom to call his husband.

“I need a break too, and something to drink. I think we’ve been playing for three straight hours,” Charlie said as he got up and headed to the kitchen.

“Four,” Andreo chimed in, “but who’s counting?” He and Constantino wandered off as well.

“Quitters.” I turned to the man on my right. “What about you, Fergie? How about a poker showdown, mano a mano?” Wes Ferguson was one of the men Connie had hired to be our eyes and ears in the neighborhood and the surrounding area, and he and his crew used the apartment we’d rented to rest up in between shifts. He was a big African-American guy in his late thirties, with a shaved head, biceps like telephone poles, and a mad crush on Britney Spears, who was immortalized in a tatt on his right forearm. He was equal parts tough and quirky, and we’d instantly become friends.

“Maybe later, Dante. I need to take a walk around the block, I feel like I’m atrophying from sitting so long.” He had a point. I followed him out of the dining room, then hung a left to go find Charlie in the kitchen while Fergie continued to the front door, grabbing his coat from the rack along the way.

I envied him as he left the apartment. We’d moved into the furnished, four-bedroom flat in downtown Pittsburgh under the cover of darkness (and by way of an underground parking garage) five days earlier, and since then my group had basically been under house arrest. If Jerry was still nearby, and that was beginning to seem like a big if, we didn’t want to run the risk of tipping him off to our presence and sending him running, and that meant staying out of sight. So, while Ferguson and his team staked out the neighborhood and another team a couple states over monitored traffic cams and municipal surveillance cameras, the rest of us just loitered and tried to pass the time.

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