“Are you talking to someone else?”
“No, I— Listen, I can’t. We had a great run, but I’m out. I can’t be doing that shit anymore. I’ve got a business partner to think about. I go down and it’s not just my ass on the line now.”
“This doesn’t sound like the Casey Grossier I know. Plus you won’t go down—you’re too good.”
“You’ve got other guys.”
“None like you. Bunch of dumb-ass punks. But you—you’re a fucking artist, Case. Just this one job. Come on, please? For old times’ sake?”
“I’m telling you,” he said, gently bouncing the now-pissed-off-looking baby, “I can’t.” Even as he said it, he pictured that money. Pictured the scene—smelled it, felt it . . .
No. No fucking way.
A sigh came through the line. “You’re breaking my heart, mister.”
“I have to get out of that line of work sometime, Em. So do you, for that matter.”
“Twenty grand says I can put off retirement for a few more weeks. And you—the Casey I know would have taken a job ten times trickier than this and for half the payout, just for the fun of it.”
“Well, I guess I’m just not the—”
Mercy woke, squawking and angry.
“Is that a baby?”
“It’s not mine. It’s complicated. Anyhow, I have to go. Nice working with you, Em.”
“I’m keeping you in my Rolodex. I know you—you can’t quit that easy.”
“Watch me.” Casey hit END and tossed his phone on the couch.
“Shush,” he told the baby. “Shush your beautiful face, please. Your mom hasn’t slept in, like, three days . . .”
At four months, the infant book had said, both Abilene and her daughter might soon be getting eight hours a night, but this baby clearly had no designs on higher achievement. Casey had spent a lot of time in Vegas, and he’d known alcoholic insomniac gamblers who were more lovable at three a.m. than this baby was.
Above him, footsteps.
“Shit. Please be Christine, please be Christine.”
There was a chance it was—he was in Christine Church’s home, after all, and she often rose at ungodly hours. Christine and her husband, Don, and their son, Casey’s good friend Miah, lived in this big old farmhouse at the western edge of their cattle ranch. Casey was here about every other night, checking in on Abilene, helping with the baby as best he could, when he really ought to be home, in bed, asleep.
Hell, I shouldn’t be in Fortuity at all.
Or anyplace in Nevada, for that matter—not when he could be back in Texas, saying yes to that contract, looking forward to meeting Emily for a drink to go over the logistics, salivating to get the project going. He shouldn’t be co-owner of a bar. In the light of day, he was glad he was, but just now, when he was sleep deprived and missing his old paydays, his old freedom . . .
Above, on the landing to the second-floor rooms, a door opened, spilling soft light. Shit, Abilene.
“What’s the matter?”
“We’re fine.”
She padded down the steps and into the den in her sleep clothes—pajama pants with a pattern of stars and moons, an oversized and faded Dolly Parton concert tee. Her long, dark ponytail was all cockeyed, her normally wide eyes squinty and bleary. Cute as fuck, really.
“Sorry,” Casey said, bouncing the angry baby. “I’ve got her. My phone rang. She’ll be back to sleep in no time,” he lied. He didn’t know much about babies, but he was steadily coming to understand this one, and when Mercy was pissed, she stayed pissed.
“Give her here.”
“No, go back upstairs.”
“Try giving birth to a baby and then ignoring the sound of her crying,” Abilene countered. “Sit.”