Page 15 of Calling His Bluff
Fighting a bad feeling, he pulled out his phone and tried to call Josephine. It went straight to voicemail. With a curse, heclimbed out and headed toward the crowd gathered behind the barrier the police had put up some distance from the edge of the cliff.
“What’s going on?” he asked no one in particular in the crowd.
“Some woman fell from the cliff,” a middle-aged woman standing next to him said.
“Fell, my eye, I heard she was pushed by the man she’d been arguing with right before that,” an older woman said, speaking up.
“I heard he pushed her,” a man nearby agreed.
Jack thought at once of Josephine, whom he’d been unable to reach by phone, and the Armstrongs, who he’d been unable to find. Every time he’d tried to call, her phone had gone directly to voicemail. He tried it again, standing in the crowd. Voicemail. He disconnected and pushed his way through the crowd to flash his credentials at one of the cops trying to hold back the curious.
Distracted, the cop barely looked at the ID, waving him through as the officer rushed to stop a very loud, angry man with a camera trying to push his way past the barrier.
Jack felt the cold brush of mist from the sea as he walked toward two uniformed men standing at the edge of the cliff. The closer he got, the stronger the wind blew, the more chilled he felt.
Don’t let it be Josephine.He repeated the mantra in his head with each step. Heart in his throat, he neared the edge, and even then, he hated to look down for what he feared he would see.
A woman lay broken on the rocky shore below, her blond hair fanned out around her head.
* * * * * * * * * *
CHAPTER 8
Even with Darwin’s hand still on her throat, Josephine started at the knock at the back door. For just an instant she held some hope. But then she saw Darwin Armstrong’s expression as he reached to open the door. It wasn’t Jack Rawlins standing on the step, but the other Armstrong twin, Wayne.
That’s when she knew things were about to get much worse.
Unless she could talk her way out of it and quickly.
“Glad you stopped by,” she said, Darwin’s massive hand loosening a little on her throat. “I have news.” She saw the interest in their faces. “Look in the front of the shop.”
Darwin let out a growl of laughter. “Right. Like I’m going to let go of you to look at what you’ve done with the shop.”
“Wayne,” she said, “Go see what I have planned.” She knew his curiosity would get the better of him—assuming she was right and the main reason they were here was to get their money back that she’d won from them.
“Don’t let her go,” the twin said as he left them to go look in the front of the shop. He didn’t come back as quickly as she’d expected, but when she saw his face, she knew she had at least one of them.
“What is this?” Darwin asked, no longer sounding as tough as before, and his grip on her throat was almost gentle now.
She managed to smile. “Poker. Isn’t that why you came all the way out here to the West Coast? You want to win your money back and then some, right?”
“What’s she talking about?” Darwin demanded of his twin.
“Check it out,” Darwin said. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”
The moment Darwin let go and stepped away, Josephine leaned against the wall and rubbed her throat. There was no reason to try to escape, which would have been foolish at best. Both Armstrongs were terrible gamblers, but they were the kind who believed that if they just kept trying, they were bound to win big. It was the fallacy of the gambling mind.Maybe I lost last time, but all I have to do is make it back. She knew that if she had Darwin, his twin would go along as well.
“How do we know you won’t cheat us again?” Wayne said to her.
“I promise you will both walk away with more than you lost if I have to take it out of any money I win,” she said.
“You did all this for us?” he asked suspiciously.
She laughed and shook her head. “I’m stuck out here for a while. I don’t want to run a bridal shop, so what else can I do?”
“When is this game?” Wayne asked as Darwin returned.
“The first game is as soon as I can get enough players to make it…interesting,” Josephine said confidently.
