Red Queen by Christopher Pike Read Free Book Online

Italian restaurant at the Bellagio with him. Jimmy loved pasta; he loved food.
    But Russ was watching me with his navy blues. The sea behind them was too deep, too calm, to say no to. He wanted me to let it ride.
    I left the hundred bucks on the table.
    The dealer made up a new shoe and dealt. I got seventeen, an awful hand, especially when the dealer was showing a ten. I could only wait and see if he bust. I wasn’t Alex, I didn’t snap at Russ. I had made my own decision and I’d have to live with it.
    â€œHit,” Russ said when the dealer got to me. He had won his last hand and with another twenty sitting in front of him it looked like he was going to win again. His ten-grand maximum bets kept piling up.
    I snickered at his suggestion. “Right. And pray for a four, a three, or a two. Those are the only cards that can help me.”
    â€œYou need a four,” he said.
    None of the original players had left. For the first time, they were focused on me. They knew the hundred was all I had left.
    â€œBut the odds . . . ,” I began.
    â€œScrew the odds,” Russ said.
    â€œThat’s not what you told Alex.”
    â€œThat’s because I wanted you all to myself,” he replied.
    He was saying he had given her bad advice on purpose. To piss her off so she would leave. Who was this guy?
    â€œHit me,” I told the dealer.
    I got a four—twenty-one. The table cheered loudly. Trucky wanted to hug me. The dealer turned over his card. Russ had been right, I had needed the four. The dealer had twenty.
    I had won my money back. I shoved my loot toward the dealer so he could give me two black hundred-dollar chips to take to the cashier’s window. But Russ stopped me.
    â€œChange them into greens and play some more,” he said.
    Greens were twenty-five-dollar chips. A person could win or lose awfully fast at that rate.
    â€œI need to find my friend. I think she’s mad at me,” I said.
    â€œThis is Vegas. No one stays mad for long here,” Russ said.
    I tried arguing with him but my heart was not in it. Especially when he offered to tell me when to bet heavily. I was no fool, I could see what he was capable of. If I could make money and flirt with a cute guy at the same time, then to hell with Alex.
    I asked for another Cuba libre and gulped it down. Russ ordered us both more drinks and we lined up our chips and prepared to do some serious gambling. He had finally stopped to count his chips. He was up a hundred and fifty thousand. He told me with a straight face he wanted to win half a million. He tipped our dealer ten grand—the guy finally smiled—and then he appeared to change our strategy and instructed me to bet low for a few bets. That meant I had to cash in two greens for ten five-dollar chips.
    I lost the next five bets. Naturally, I was relieved I was playing at the casino minimum. But as soon as the dealer whipped up a fresh shoe—there were actually six decks of cards in the shoe, all mixed together—Russ told me to bet a hundred. That was more than half what I had left, but there was no saying no to him. Especially with Trucky begging for help on the far side.
    â€œWhy are you helping her and not me?” he demanded when I won the next hand.
    Russ turned to him. “You want some advice? Leave the casino now and don’t come back.”
    Poor Trucky, Russ had hurt his feelings. “What did I do to you? I stopped complaining about your smoking.”
    Russ ignored him and focused on the game. The dealer tossed out the cards with practiced ease. I bet another hundred and got a twenty, which made my heart skip. Especially when the dealer ended up with nineteen.
    Suddenly I was up two hundred. Ten minutes later I wasa thousand ahead. It was just the start. Russ varied his bets between one thousand and ten thousand, nothing in between. After I had won more than three thousand, he told me to vary my bets—either