CHAPTER ONE

      Ned Brenner put the back of his hand to his mouth and yawned to hide a possible tell as he considered the flush he now possessed. They were playing TV poker, Texas Hold ’Em, and the two of clubs had come up on the flop, the last card. His high card was a Jack of Clubs. Mott, directly across from him at the table, was trying to buy the hand Brenner had concluded. He was an investment banker and acted like he shit gold for the peasants to pick over. He’d up the ante, the raise going to the third man left, Adam…Adam something but, Brenner couldn’t recall his last name at the moment.

      “I’ll see that and bump five hundred,” the one called Adam said. He tossed his chips onto the pile. The pot was sweet, a little over ten thousand. The raise was to Brenner, who tented his fingers, tapping them slightly against each other. Consciously, he did this whether he had good or bad cards.

      “Interesting,” he said, reviewing the characteristics he’d observed of these two men from their now nearly all-night poker game. The evening had started off with seven of them but effectively had worn down to the three of them. Two others remained, an older man named Ted Hopper and a younger woman who only gave her name as Estelle. But these two had been coasting the last forty minutes or so, folding early or, in Hopper’s case, his chips were low, and he wasn’t buying more.

      Brenner saw the raise, but didn’t up the ante. He didn’t want to scare off Mott, who he figured would raise again. Brenner didn’t calculate Mott having the nuts, the right cards, but the one called Adam had been harder for him to read. During the game, this other man had, at times, demonstrated a cautious, meticulous approach, given to little risk. Yet at other times, he bet like a riverboat gambler on a tear. The cards didn’t seem to dictate which way he’d play, but rather as the mood struck him. Sure enough, Mott doubled his previous raise, and Adam dropped out. Brenner then saw the raise and upped it.

      “You can’t seriously believe you can top my straight flush,” Mott said. On deck were the three clubs in order; two, three and four in suit.

      Did Mott actually have the Ace-five or five-six also in suit? Brenner looked evenly at his serenely grinning opponent.

      The dealer, also their host, Devra Hamlish, regarded Mott, her eyelashes black and luminescent like a model’s. “Sir?”

      Mott remained stone-faced as he saw the bet.

      “Show gentlemen,” Hamlish said.

      Mott had a five and six, only the latter card was a diamond. He had a straight but not a straight flush.

      Brenner turned over his two clubs and pulled the chips to him. He’d already climbed out of the hole he’d been in, and, with this win, he was some twenty-three thousand to the good.

      “You pull the club you need on the turn?” Mott said, trying to sound casual.

      “Yep,” Brenner admitted.

      “I’m done,” Hopper said, stretching. He stood next to the built-in sideboard, sipping a scotch he’d splashed over ice.

      Adam looked at his watch. It was expensive but not ostentatious. “Me too.”

      “And me, I’ve had enough fun for one night,” Estelle said dryly.

      “Alright then.” Hamlish signaled for the bank, in a Rimowa Topas metal attaché case, to be brought over by one of the two guards who’d been on duty at the game. He was dressed in a dark suit, open collar, but wasn’t a bruiser of a man — though Brenner had noted the gun holstered on his belt beneath his jacket at one point.

      The money was counted out to those who were owned anything, with Hamlish retaining ten percent for the house.

      “You going to give me a rematch, right?” the competitive Mott said to Brenner.

      “Anytime,” he said, putting a rubber band around his twin stacks of fifties and hundreds. He put the divided bills away in the inner pockets of his leather coat.

      “Would you care for Rolf to walk you to your car?” Hamlish asked Brenner. She was a woman in her mid to late fifties, with a swimmer’s body, toned arms and legs. She wore designer outfits and there had been some work done on her face. But it had been done with a subtle hand. Her face didn’t look like one of those ghastly apparitions with their mouths frozen in a sardonic grin like that Joker’s, the cheekbones moved to where their ears were.

      “I’m cool,” Brenner said as he also walked out of the lady’s place, a three-story brick Victorian row house on an old street in an old section of Near North Side Chicago. Mott was driving off in a Mercedes sedan and Adam was lighting a cigarette.

      “You did all right, huh?” He puffed smoke into the hazy gray light, dawn less than twenty minutes away.

      Brenner hunched a shoulder. “Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. Tonight, okay.”

      “I hear you.” The other man nodded and started walking away.

      Brenner headed in the opposite direction just as a black Lincoln Town Car rolled past him. Momentarily, he heard a disturbance over his shoulder and looked back to see two men grappling with a third one. He wasn’t sure, but he guessed it was the man named Adam they were trying to get into the Lincoln, its rear door open. The two were built like typical muscle, big torsos and planed shoulders evident under the material of their jackets.

      One of the kidnappers,