Chapter 10: High Stakes
The plan was Carter’s, which immediately made Bree nervous.
“TJ Mackey is a creep, but he’s a vain creep,” Carter said, pacing the living room. The blue light of his laptop screen glowed on the wall. “He’s always posting on Insta about his ‘high-stakes lifestyle.’ Which, translated, means losing his daddy’s oil-lease money at backroom tables. He tried to slide into your DMs, what, two years ago?”
Bree grimaced. “After the county fair. He smelled like cheap cigars and entitlement. I told him my tractor had more appealing lines.”
“Perfect. So now, you’re a damsel in distress. The farm’s in trouble, you’re overwhelmed, you’ve realized you need a… friend with connections. You reach out to him. You apologize for being so harsh. You’re curious about this exciting world he’s always talking about.”
“It’s manipulative and gross,” Bree stated.
“It is,” Jean-Luc agreed from the armchair, where he was meticulously cleaning a pair of non-prescription glasses Carter had procured. They were part of his new identity. “It is also the path of least resistance. A man like that, his ego is a lever. We simply press it.”
“I don’t like it.”
“We need to see the lay of the land,” Jean-Luc said, looking at her over the rims of the glasses. They softened the sharpness of his face, made him look like a graduate student studying something obscure. “We cannot find Tommy by driving around hoping to see a drunk stumbling out of a bar. This is his ecosystem. We must go inside.”
The text message she sent felt like swallowing dirt. Hey TJ. Bree Shepherd. Been a long time. Look, I owe you an apology for being so stand-offish back at the fair. Things are… kinda crazy out here. Could use a friend who knows how to have fun. Heard you’re the guy to see about that.
The reply was almost instantaneous. Three smiling devil emojis. Bree Shepherd. Well I’ll be. Apology accepted, darlin. What kinda fun you lookin for?
It took two days of flirty, cringe-inducing texts that made her want to scrub her phone with bleach. She played the part: stressed, lonely, impressed by his bragging. Jean-Luc coached her from over her shoulder, his voice a low murmur. “Ask him where the real action is. Not the stuff for tourists.”
Finally, TJ bit. Alright, gorgeous. Tomorrow night. The rear entrance of Sullivan’s Warehouse, off the old highway. Knock three times, then two. Tell ‘em TJ sent you. And wear something nice.
Sullivan’s Warehouse was a crumbling brick facade on the edge of town, a place that had last saw legitimate commerce sometime during the Reagan administration. The “rear entrance” was a steel door sealed against the elements, painted a grimy black. Bree knocked—three times, then two.
A slot slid open. A pair of bloodshot eyes peered out. “Yeah?”
“TJ Mackey sent me.”
The slot closed. Bolts clanked. The door opened onto a steep, unlit staircase that reeked of mildew and stale smoke. A low thrum of bass traveled up the steps.
The room at the bottom was a jarring pocket of opulence carved into decay. Thick, patterned carpet swallowed sound. The walls were draped with dark velvet, hiding the warehouse’s original brick. The air was a visible haze, blue-gray from cigars and cigarettes, sweetened with the cloying scent of spilled liquor and men’s cologne. A long, polished bar lined one wall, stocked with top-shelf bottles. In the center, under the only bright lights in the place, were three green-felt poker tables.
It was a world of low murmurs, the snap of chips, the whisper of cards. The men here were of a different breed than the ones at The Last Call. These were ranchers with secret debts, businessmen with slippery morals, a few out-of-town faces with the blank eyes of professional risk-takers. Money moved in quiet stacks, not loud wads of cash.
TJ swaggered over, smelling of gin and too much aftershave. He was beefy in a soft way, his collared shirt straining. “Bree. You made it.” His eyes slid past her to Jean-Luc and Carter. “Who’re your… friends?”
“This is Luc,” Bree said, forcing a smile. “My… cousin. From out east. And my brother, Carter. You remember Carter.”
“The gamer,” TJ said, not bothering to offer a hand. He looked Jean-Luc up and down, taking in the simple button-down and slacks, the glasses. “Cousin, huh?”
“Visiting. He has a… system. For blackjack. Wanted to see a real game,” Bree lied, the words tasting foul.
Jean-Luc extended a hand, his grip deliberately mild. “A pleasure. Your establishment is most impressive.” The hint of an accent was still there, but flattened, disguised as perhaps a Northeastern affect.
TJ puffed up. “It’s something, ain’t it? Not for everyone.” He turned his attention back to Bree, leaning in. “So, you gonna play, darlin’? I can stake you a buy-in. Teach you the ropes.”
“Just going to watch tonight. Take it all in.” She subtly stepped back.
Suit yourself. Drinks are at the bar. Don’t touch the waitresses, they’re for looking.” He winked and lumbered back toward a table where a dealer was shuffling.
They found a small, high table in a shadowy corner. Carter, wide-eyed, immediately started subtly scanning the room with his phone camera, the lens peeking from his jacket pocket. “This is… way more legit than I thought,” he whispered. “That’s Frank Korbel, the land developer. And I’m pretty sure that’s a guy from the news. Embezzlement charges, dropped.”
Bree nursed a seltzer, her eyes adjusting. She saw the patterns now. The waitresses in snug, sequined dresses moved like ghosts, avoiding eye contact. A large, silent man stood by a second, even more discreet door behind the bar. Security. This wasn’t just a game. It was a clubhouse for a certain kind of corruption, the kind that wore a tie and paid its taxes on time while doing everything else in the dark.
“Tommy’s world,” Jean-Luc murmured, following her gaze. He wasn’t looking at the players. He was watching the security guard, the bartender’s hands, the path the waitresses took to a service alcove. “See how the dealer at the center table pauses before paying out the pot? He is signaling someone. In the mirror behind the bar. A man in a blue shirt, drinking mineral water. The house man. Watching for tells of his own.”
“Do you see Tommy?” Carter asked.
“No. But I see his absence. This is the level he played at. Or was allowed to play at, before he became a liability.” Jean-Luc’s voice was detached, analytical. “The ledger would have been the key to this room and several others like it. Names, numbers, kickbacks.”
A raucous laugh burst from the center table. A portly man with a diamond pinky ring was raking in a large pot. “New guy’s looking a little lonely over there!” he called out, nodding toward their shadowed corner. His eyes landed on Jean-Luc. “Cousin from out east, huh? You play, or you just like to watch?”
A hush fell over the nearby tables. This was a challenge, a ritual testing of a newcomer.
Jean-Luc tilted his head, a faint, benign smile on his lips. He looked at Bree, a question in his eyes. She gave a minute nod. He pushed his glasses up his nose and stood. “I have been known to play a hand or two.”
He walked to the table with an unassuming shuffle, all academic awkwardness. He bought chips with cash from his pocket, a modest stack. He sat, nodded to the other players, and adjusted his glasses as if studying the rulebook.
For an hour, he played conservatively. He folded more often than not. He lost small pots, winning an occasional modest one. The portly man, whose name was Roy, grew more patronizing. “Maybe stick to theory, professor.”
Then the cards began to turn.
Jean-Luc’s posture didn’t change, but everything else did. The hesitant movements vanished. His hands became precise instruments, stacking chips, handling cards with an economy of motion. His eyes, behind the glasses, stopped scanning the room and focused entirely on the green felt, the players, the rhythm of the deal. He wasn’t just reading the cards; he was reading the twitch of a finger, the slight pause before a bet, the way Roy puffed his cigar when he was bluffing.
The pot grew. Two players dropped out, sweating. It was down to Jean-Luc and Roy. The board showed a possible straight, a possible flush. Roy, his face flushed with bourbon and confidence, had been betting aggressively. He pushed his remaining tower of chips forward with a meaty hand, the diamond glittering. “All in.” He smirked at Jean-Luc, who had a smaller, but still significant stack. “Time to put up or go home to your books, professor.”
The room was silent. All attention was on their corner. Bree held her breath. Carter had stopped his surveillance, mouth slightly open.
Jean-Luc didn’t look at his cards. He leaned back slightly in his chair and turned his head. His eyes found Bree’s across the smoky room. For a second, the academic pretense fell away, and she saw the sharp, calculating mind beneath. But there was something else there, too—an invitation, a shared moment within the performance.
He asked her then, his voice carrying in the quiet. He didn’t use his own accent, or the flattened one he’d used with TJ. He used a perfect, lazy East Texas drawl, warm as honey and just as slow.
“Well, darlin’,” he said, the word rolling out like it belonged there. “Looks like we’ve come to the crossroads. Should I bet it all?”
The question hung in the thick air. It was theater, of course. A part of the character. But the way he asked it—directly to her, his gaze unwavering—felt like a transference of trust. He was giving her a role in the play. More than that, he was asking, in front of everyone, what she thought he was capable of.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. Every instinct said to look away, to deflect. But she held his stare. She gave a single, slow nod.
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. He turned back to the table, gathered his chips, and pushed them smoothly to the center. “I call.”
Roy’s smirk faded. He turned over his cards—a pair of kings, a hopeful bluff for the straight. Jean-Luc flipped his. A modest pair of eights. But the final community card, the river, was dealt. It was another eight.
A full house. Eights over kings.
A collective exhale, then murmurs, swept the table. Roy’s face drained of color. Jean-Luc didn’t gloat. He simply offered a small, polite shrug as the dealer pushed the massive pile of chips
Jean-Luc didn’t gloat. He simply offered a small, polite shrug as the dealer pushed the massive pile of chips toward him. The other players chuckled, clapping Roy on the back as he muttered into his drink. The sound of the shuffle resumed, the game moving on, but the energy in the room had shifted subtly toward their corner.
TJ Mackey appeared beside their table, his expression a blend of impressed and suspicious. “Hell of a call, cousin. Beginners luck is one thing. That was something else.”
“It was a fifty-two percent probability based on the visible cards and his betting pattern,” Jean-Luc said, his voice sliding back into that mild, academic register. He took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt. “The odds were acceptable. As you say, beginner’s fortune.”
TJ’s eyes narrowed, but he was distracted as Jean-Luc slid a stack of chips across the table to Carter. “For your sister’s initial stake, with thanks.” Then he pushed a larger stack toward TJ himself. “And for the host’s generous hospitality. I find I prefer watching.”
The money acted like a chemical balm, dissolving TJ’s suspicion into a greedy, slick smile. “Well, hell. Appreciate that. Y’all enjoy the view.” He scooped the chips up and wandered off, already counting.
They left twenty minutes later, the night air outside Sullivan’s tasting clean and sharp after the cloistered smoke. No one followed. The drive back to the farm was quiet, charged with a different kind of energy. Carter fizzed with nervous excitement in the backseat. “Did you see his face? Roy’s face? You broke him, man. You folded him like a cheap chair!”
“The goal was observation, not demolition,” Jean-Luc said, but Bree caught the faint edge of satisfaction in his tone.
“We observed that you’re a stone-cold liar with a deck of cards,” Bree said, watching the dark fields rush past her window. “That ‘aw-shucks’ routine was a work of art. I almost believed it myself.”
Back in the farmhouse kitchen, Carter dug out a bottle of cheap champagne he’d been saving for a gaming milestone. They drank it from coffee mugs. The bubbles felt illicit and light, a temporary defiance of the gravity pressing down on them. Carter talked strategy, replaying every hand, his words speeding up until they blurred together with exhaustion.
He yawned massively, his eyelids drooping. “I’m crashing. That was… a lot.” He shuffled down the hall to his room, leaving Bree and Jean-Luc in the soft yellow light of the kitchen.
The silence he left behind was deep and textured. Bree leaned against the counter, turning her mug in her hands. “So. Fifty-two percent probability, huh?”
“Approximately.” He was leaning against the doorframe, watching her.
“Seems like a slim margin to risk everything on.”
“It is.” He swirled the last of his champagne. “But poker is not about the moments when the odds are in your favor. Anyone can bet then. It is about recognizing the precise moment when your opponent has convinced themselves they are safe, when their tells shine like beacons. You bet into their confidence. You make their strength your weapon.”
She absorbed that. It felt like more than card theory. “So you read people. Not cards.”
“The cards are static. People are a chaotic flux of fear, want, and tells. Roy wanted to intimidate. He needed to be the king of that room. So I let him play the king, until the cost of the role bankrupted him.” He placed his mug carefully in the sink. “It is a useful life skill. Seeing the need in people, the leverage.”
“Is that what you did with me?” The question left her before she could cage it.
His gaze lifted, held hers. “No. With you, I saw no leverage. Only a wall. It was… refreshing.”
A knot in her chest loosened, just a fraction. She looked away, out the window toward the barn, a dark shape against the lesser dark of the sky. Tomorrow, it would burn. “It’s just me and Carter, you know. Has been since Mom got sick and Dad decided he couldn’t face an empty house or a full medical bill. That barn… it’s not wood and nails. It’s the last thing we built together as a family. Before everything fell apart.”
She hadn’t meant to say it. The words just spilled out, unlocked by the late hour and the strange, shared victory.
“And you are burning it down.” His voice was low.
“To save what’s left.” She turned back to him, her jaw tight. “That’s the job, right? Read the tells. Bet into the confidence of the people who want to hurt you. Even if it means setting your own past on fire.”
He moved then, not toward her, but closer, stopping an arm’s length away. The kitchen felt smaller. “You are the toughest person I have ever met, Briar Shepherd.” He said her full name quietly, like it was a fact he was just now uncovering.
“Don’t.” The word was a whisper.
“It is not pity. It is reconnaissance.” A faint, tired smile touched his mouth. “I have known soldiers, killers, entrepreneurs of violence. They build their walls from cruelty or greed. You built yours from duty and love. It is a fortress of a different kind. Much harder to siege.”
Her breath caught. He was close enough that she could see the finer lines of fatigue around his eyes, the shadow of stubble along his jaw. She could smell the faint, clean scent of him underneath the stale cigar smoke from the den. The air between them seemed to thicken, to pull taut.
Her hand, resting on the counter, lifted almost of its own accord. She didn’t reach for him. She just let it hang in the space between them, a silent question.
He looked at her hand, then back at her face. His own hand shifted, his fingers brushing hers—not grabbing, just a feather-light pass of skin against skin. A connection as fragile as a circuit closing. A current, sharp and warm, shot up her arm.
The kitchen clock ticked loudly in the silence.
Then he withdrew his hand, the moment snapping like a stretched thread. “We should sleep,” he said, his voice rougher than before. “Tomorrow requires a different performance.”
She nodded, unable to speak. Her fingers curled into her palm, holding the ghost of that touch.
He turned and walked down the hall to the guest room without looking back. She stood in the quiet kitchen for a long time, listening to the old house settle around her, feeling the echo of his words and the phantom heat of his skin against hers. The barn waited outside. The ledger waited somewhere in the dark. And for the first time, the weight of it all felt shared, a burden halved in the silent understanding between two people who had only just learned how to see each other.
Sleep, when it came, was a shallow and restless thing. Bree dreamed of smoke without fire, a thick grey curtain billowing through empty barn aisles, and the feeling of a hand brushing hers in the dark. She woke before dawn, the digital clock burning 4:17 AM into the gloom. The house was a vault of silence, but her nerves were already shrieking.
Today, they would burn it down.
She moved through the morning routine on autopilot: feeding the few remaining cats in the barn, checking the water lines, forcing down toast that tasted like dust. Carter emerged, bleary-eyed, clutching a travel mug of coffee like a lifeline. “I pre-loaded the drone. Battery’s at one hundred percent. Thermal camera is… as good as it’s gonna get for a consumer model.”
Jean-Luc was already outside, a dark silhouette against the gradually lightening indigo of the eastern sky. He was examining the barn’s western wall, the one closest to the property line and a sparse copse of trees. He nodded as she approached. “The wind is steady from the southeast. It will push the smoke and flames away from the house. The volunteer fire department will approach from the county road.” He pointed. “They will have a clear line of sight to the main doors, which we will leave open. It creates a chimney effect, a faster, cleaner burn.”
“You sound like an arsonist,” she said, her voice rough.
“I sound like a planner.” He finally looked at her. Shadows pooled under his eyes. He hadn’t slept much either. “The accelerant is in the feed room. Old hay, some diesel-soaked rags. It will look like an electrical fault in the wiring we… adjusted. The insurance investigator will see what he expects to see.”
“And what if he doesn’t?”
“Then we have a problem.” He said it simply. “But people see patterns. They see a struggling farm, outdated infrastructure, a predictable accident. They do not look for a Frenchman with a vendetta hiding in the farmhouse.”
The sun broke the horizon, staining the sky a bruised orange and pink. It was going to be a beautiful day. The irony was a physical ache in Bree’s chest.
By ten AM, a strange, suspended quiet had fallen. The plan was in motion, a sequence of actions that felt both terribly slow and hurtling forward too fast. Carter was stationed in his bedroom at the computer, monitors showing the drone’s feed and a live map. Jean-Luc did a final walk-through, his phone to his ear, speaking in low, rapid French to a contact named Solange about Tommy’s last known patterns.
Bree stood alone in the barn for the last time.
The morning light slanted through cracks in the siding, illuminating galaxies of dancing dust motes. She trailed her fingers along the rough wood of her father’s favorite stall, Ghost, the paint now faded and flecked. She could almost smell his cheap aftershave, hear his off-key whistling. The memory was so sharp it stole her breath. This wasn’t just a building; it was the physical archive of her childhood, the good years pressed into the grain of the wood.
“Hey.”
She didn’t turn. She knew his footfall now, the particular weight of it on the dry earth floor. Jean-Luc stopped beside her, not too close. He followed her gaze to the stall.
“You do not have to be here for this part,” he said. His voice was uncharacteristically gentle.
“Yes, I do.” She blinked hard, refusing the tears that threatened. “If I’m gonna burn my history, I’m gonna watch it burn. I owe it that.”
He didn’t offer empty comfort. He just stood there, a solid presence in the space filling up with ghosts. “When I left Marseille, I had a flat overlooking the Vieux-Port. I loved that light on the water in the evening. I left everything in it. Photos, books, a painting I stole from a man who deserved far worse.” He paused. “I watched from a cafe down the street as two men broke the door down. I did not see what they did inside. But I watched them leave. I needed to see it end.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“So you know you are not alone in doing difficult things.” He checked his watch, a practical, digital thing. “It is time. Carter is airborne. The nearest sheriff’s patrol is fifteen miles out, occupied with a livestock call.”
The practicalities were a relief. She gave the barn one last, sweeping look, committing the cathedral-like space of the rafters to memory. Then she turned her back on it and walked out into the blinding sun.
From the tree line, it was a morbid picnic. Carter’s voice crackled in their earpieces, a tense narration from his digital command center. “Drone is in position, overhead view is clear. No movement on the perimeter roads. Thermal is picking up the heat source in the feed room… it’s live. It’s live.”
Jean-Luc handed Bree a pair of binoculars. “Watch the main doors.”
For a minute, nothing. Then a faint, shimmering distortion rose from the base of the barn walls. A thin grey tendril of smoke curled from the hayloft door, tentative, almost graceful. Another followed. Then, with a sudden, audible whoomp that made Bree flinch, orange light bloomed inside, painting the open doorway in hellish shades.
The fire didn’t rage; it consumed. It poured through the interior, a living, hungry thing. Black smoke billowed, fat and rolling, chasing the orange glow into the sky. The ancient, dry timber was perfect fuel. Within minutes, the roof was a crown of flames, cracking and spitting embers into the southeast wind.
The sound was the worst part. The groan of failing timbers, the crash of collapsing stalls, the roar of the flame itself. It was a beast eating her past, and it screamed as it ate.
“County FD has been automatically alerted by the smoke,” Carter said, his voice tight. “ETA eight minutes.”
Bree lowered the binoculars. Her face was wet. She didn’t remember starting to cry. Jean-Luc’s hand came to rest on her shoulder, a firm, steady pressure. He didn’t pull her in; he just anchored her.
“Carter,” Jean-Luc said, his eyes not leaving the inferno. “Switch to the town feeds. The Silver Slipper bar, the perimeter of Sullivan’s. Look for our friends in the nice suits. See if the fire draws anyone out.”
“On it.”
The fire department arrived in a clamor of sirens and flashing red lights. They deployed hoses, but it was a defensive operation from the start—protect the surrounding grass, let the structure go. Bree recognized the chief, an older man named Gary who’d taught her 4-H club. She saw him shake his head as he surveyed the blaze, then glance toward the farmhouse with what looked like pity.
It was working.
Her phone buzzed. A text from a number she didn’t know. Heard about the fire. Damn shame. You okay? – TJ
Of course. Gossip traveled faster than flame here. She showed the phone to Jean-Luc.
“Good,” he murmured. “The story is spreading. Now we see who comes to sniff the ashes.”
It took two hours for the fire to burn itself down to a smoldering, blackened skeleton. The volunteer crews packed up, leaving the property smelling of wet charcoal and profound loss. The three of them walked across the scorched earth as the late afternoon sun cast long, distorted shadows from the few remaining, skeletal beams.
The ground was hot underfoot. Bree kicked at a lump of melted metal that had been a milking pail. Everything was reduced to elemental forms: ash, twisted steel, memory.
“Bree.” Carter’s voice was urgent in her ear. “I’ve got something. On the traffic cam feed from the old highway junction, a mile east of Sullivan’s.”
Jean-Luc was instantly alert. “What?”
“A dark sedan. It passed through twenty minutes after the fire started, slowed way down near our turnoff, then sped up. It’s the same car from the gas station. The one with the suited guys.”
Jean-Luc’s expression turned sharp, focused. “Where did it go?”
“It looped around on County Road 12. Headed toward… okay, that’s interesting. It’s heading toward the old Johnson place. The abandoned one off Miller’s Pond.”
Bree knew it. A collapsed ranch house, used by kids for drinking and by hunters in season. A good place to hide something. Or someone.
Jean-Luc looked from the ruins of the barn to Bree, the calculated mask fully back in place. But his eyes were alive with a cold, bright intensity. “The fire served its purpose. It created chaos. It drew their eyes here, to our tragedy.” He gestured toward the road. “While they were watching the smoke, we were meant to be grieving. Distracted.”
“But we weren’t,” Bree finished, the grief inside her hardening into something else, something useful and sharp.
“No. We were working.” He started walking toward the truck, his stride long and purposeful. “Tommy is not at a bar. He is in a hole. And our friends in the sedan just showed us where to dig.”