Page 25 of Lady Luck

My odd, effervescent gardener stood beside a giant spinning game wheel on an elevated red-velvet platform set in the middle of the circular room. A white gown was molded to her body from high on her neck where gold coins encircled her throat, all the way down to her hips, where more gold coins were strung low around her waist. The material flowed loosely to the floor from there, separated by a high slit up her left side.

Her eyes were hidden by a gold blindfold, and the lights from the surrounding machines cast a kaleidoscope of colors over her face and body, obscuring her features. But no trick of light could mask her freckles or her general presence.

My eyes flicked over the five players at the table below her, but I took nothing in beyond their simple existence. My gaze kept wandering back to her. The dealer—a blond guy maybe a few years younger than me—stood on the other side of the wheel. He was working the crowd hard, hyping them up for the next round of bets.

“Rien ne va plus!” No more bets, the dealer announced, and then, shifting back to English, “May fortune smile upon you!”

My gaze snapped back to my?—

My?

No. Not mine. I could not continue calling her that, even in my head. I knew nothing about this woman except that I wanted to know everything about her.

And I didn’t know enough to know how dangerous that could be, and that made the whole situation… risky.

I glanced back up at her just as a streak of red light danced across her features, illuminating her more clearly than before and just in time to highlight the abrupt change in her body language. Her muscles locked, going rigid, and her shoulders inched up toward her ears. The placid smile that had been on her lips changed to an unmistakable grimace.

My body coiled right along with hers, and I glanced at Liem to see if he noticed, but his attention was fixed on the other side of the wheel.

And he was scowling.

The sight was so anomalous to everything that was my brother that I was transfixed by the expression for several moments before I followed his gaze to the stocky blond dealer on the other side of the wheel. He was still putting on a show, working the crowd hard with jokes and banter that seemed like it had been recycled so often that it should probably just be retired. Or incinerated. I tracked the line of sight backward to Liem to confirm the aim of his scowl and found him glaring even harder at the dealer.

I nudged him with my shoulder, dread pooling in my stomach at the idea that something bad had happened here that I might’ve missed. He didn’t seem to notice, so I leaned in and asked, “You know that guy?” I had to raise my voice to near yelling, the din of the room growing louder by the moment.

“I know enough,” he answered, his voice rougher than I’d ever heard it.

An angry, slurred voice drew our—and nearly everyone else’s—attention. “Did you see that? This game is ripp… ripp… rigged in flavor of the house!” The almost incoherent words came from a spectator standing directly behind the only woman sitting at the game table on the side nearest my garde—no. The woman. The casino act?

His tirade continued, interrupting my internal naming crisis. He gripped the shoulder of the player in front of him—presumably his wife—and pointed a meaty finger up at the woman whose uncertainty was a palpable presence in the room.

“We just lost five hund-er-ed dollars, Lady Luck.” He drew out the name sarcastically, becoming more belligerent as he went on. He must have not been the only one drinking, because the crowd behind him joined in with a chorus of “Yeah!” and “Tell ’em, brother!”

Emboldened by his comrades, he took an unsteady step up the velvet stairs and addressed the woman—Lady Luck, he’d called her—by yelling, “How are you going—” He swallowed heavily, interrupting his own slurring. “—going to flix this?” His beady gaze traveled down her body, and judging by her slight recoil, she’d felt it even though she couldn’t see it.

“Is tha’ real glold on your little dress there?” he demanded, his unfocused gaze flicking drunkenly between her waist and neck.

Liem rose on his toes to try to see over the bodies around us for any sign of security. I followed suit, feeling more than a bit uneasy. This should have never been allowed to go this far.

Liem grabbed my arm. “That guy isn’t going to be any help.” He gestured toward the dealer who was busy trying to win the favor of the non-belligerent half of the crowd. He looked almost excited by the drama.

“Isn’t there security here? Should I go get someone?” I asked, but it was basically rhetorical. There clearly wasn’t if they weren’t here by now.

Liem shook his head in dismay, concluding the same thing I had, his expression turning more serious than I’d ever seen it before as he started to inch backward.

“When I give the signal, you get her off that platform and take her to the bridge. I’ll circle around and meet you there. Her name is Bree. Call her that and tell her Liem sent you.”

“What? Liem, wait,” I hissed, but I couldn’t even see a hint of him through the growing crowd.

I turned back to the scene in front of me, my mind racing. The angry man hadn’t run out of gas yet and took yet another wobbly step up the platform.

I was officially having some sort of out-of-body experience, or maybe just a stress response, because the words of Barbara Ann Copeland blared through my mind like a plane pulling a banner.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

“Oh, heavens! Who dropped this stack of hundreds over here? Bless my heart, is this a new game?” Liem’s voice carried from across the room loudly enough to be heard over the machines.

The exaggerated Southern accent was a bit much.

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