Deadly Gamble. Linda Miller Lael

need help,” I told him.

      “That’s for damn sure,” Tucker agreed. He sounded testy, but I could tell he was concerned by the way he kept sweeping the lot with his gaze. He reached into the car, unfastened the seat belt and tugged me out, onto my feet.

      I landed hard against his chest, and I’ll admit it, I clung for a couple of seconds.

      “I saw him,” I repeated.

      Tucker held me up with one arm, reached inside for my purse and car keys with the other. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you upstairs. Can you make it on your own, or should I carry you?”

      The offer was tempting, but I had a thing about standing on my own two feet whenever possible, literally and figuratively. Besides, Tucker and I were officially Not Dating, and I was just scared enough to go from being carried to being laid without passing Go and certainly without collecting $200.

      I gave a moment’s forlorn thought to the credits I’d left in the Ten Times Pay machine when I fled the casino. I could have made my car payment with that money.

      “I can walk,” I said, though it was still pretty much a theory.

      Tuck squired me up the stairs, unlocked the door and swung it open.

      Chester sat waiting in the hallway. There was a faint, greenish glow around him.

      I burst into tears.

      Tucker muttered something, steered me to the couch and bent over me to look deep into my weepy eyes.

      “Booze,” I said.

      “You’ve been drinking booze?”

      “No. I want to drink booze. Now.”

      Tucker nodded, probably relieved that he wouldn’t have to bust me for drinking and driving, went into the kitchen, rifled the cupboards and came back with a double shot of Christian Brothers in a jelly glass. I hadn’t touched that bottle since the last bad bout of cramps, but if things kept going the way they’d been going, I’d be hitting the sauce on an hourly basis.

      I took a few sips, holding the jelly glass with both hands. Chester jumped onto the back of the couch and nestled behind my neck, purring. Tucker dragged over an ottoman and sat down, his knees touching mine.

      “Start at the beginning and take it slow,” he said.

      I knocked back the rest of the brandy and set the glass aside. My nerves, all trying to break through my skin only seconds before, collapsed with dizzying suddenness.

      “When I was five years old,” I said shakily, “my half brother shot my mom and dad to death.”

      Tucker’s face tightened. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

      I drew another deep breath. Let it out.

      “Go on,” Tucker urged.

      “I was there, but if I saw what happened, I don’t remember. A neighbor found me hiding in the clothes dryer. I was d-drenched in blood. Their blood—”

      I gagged a couple of times.

      “Easy,” Tucker said, and took both my hands in his.

      His strong grasp felt so treacherously good that I immediately pulled free.

      “My half brother—his name is Geoff—was arrested that night, according to the newspaper accounts I read a lot later. He confessed, so there wasn’t a trial, and they sent him to a youthful offenders’ program in California.”

      Tucker nodded in solemn encouragement when my voice faltered again, but he didn’t say anything. He might have looked like a biker, but he was in cop mode now.

      “I saw him tonight, Tuck. At Talking Stick. He sat down at the slot machine next to mine—” I swallowed, pushed my hair back with the palm of my right hand. “It was the Sizzling Sevens.”

      A faint grin flickered at one corner of Tucker’s mouth, gone as quickly as it appeared. His eyes were dead serious.

      “Are you sure it was him? Not just somebody who looked like your brother?”

      “My half brother,” I said. I didn’t want to claim even that much of Geoff, but we had the same mother. The thought made me want to check into a hospital, have all my blood drained out and replaced with somebody else’s. “And yes, Tucker, it was Geoff. He tried to pass himself off as Steve Roberts, but I know who he was.”

      Tucker took a notepad from his hip pocket and scrawled the name on a page, but I knew what he was thinking. There were probably a dozen Steve Robertses in Phoenix alone, never mind all the once-separate cities butting up against its sprawling borders—Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe, Chandler, Glendale.

      “Google,” I said, catching sight of the computer across the room, and started to get off the couch.

      Tucker pressed me gently back onto the cushion. “Take a few minutes to catch your breath,” he said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

      An hysterical laugh bubbled out of my throat at the irony of that statement. Then I started to shiver.

      Tucker got off the ottoman, disappeared into the bedroom and returned with an afghan, which he wrapped tightly around my shoulders. I snuggled in.

      “Did he threaten you?” Tucker asked.

      “Not exactly,” I answered, huddling inside a field of yarn daisies. Jolie had made the afghan for Nick and me, years before, as a wedding gift. God, I wished I could talk to Jolie, but she was a workaholic and probably busy in her Tucson lab, sorting bones.

      “How come you never told me what happened to your parents?” Tucker asked. At the same time, he went to the computer, perched on the edge of the desk chair, and logged onto my Internet account. The password was stored, so there was no delay.

      “The time never seemed right.”

      “Uh-huh,” Tucker said tightly.

      I bristled. “We were only together for six weeks,” I reminded him. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Oh, by the way, when I was five, my half brother slaughtered our parents, and a neighbor kidnapped me, and I’ve been living under an alias ever since’?”

      Too late, I realized that I’d given away a lot more than I’d intended.

      Tucker spun around in the desk chair. “What?”

      “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

      “You’ve been living under an alias?”

      “Not now, Tucker.”

      He glared at me for a long moment, then spun back to the computer and started punching keys. On TV, cops usually use the hunt-and-peck method, but Tucker knew his keyboard, and all ten fingers tapped at a steady clip.

      “Don’t think for one damn second,” he warned, without turning around, “that I’m going to pretend we didn’t have this conversation.”

      He paused after a while, and peered at the screen.

      “Is this him?”

      I got off the couch, letting Chester roll unceremoniously to the cushions, and padded over to look at the monitor.

      Sure enough, there was Geoff, smiling out of a Web page.

      I sucked in a breath.

      “I’ll take that for a yes,” Tucker said, and printed the page.

      I leaned over his shoulder, studying the site.

      “Steve Roberts” worked as a private nurse, an RN, no less. He sold vitamins for some network marketing outfit, too, and was available for consultations. Consultations! Have you been thinking of murdering your parents? I can tell you how to do it and get away with a slap on the wrist. Why, in no time at all, you’ll be back on the streets, looking for your next victim!

      I