Page 51 of The Gambler
“Baby, I know you’re trying to protect me, but you’ve got it wrong, I’m supposed to protect you. I can’t let you go after these people whoever they are. If you just tell me who and where, I’ll take care of it for you. If you insist on being stubborn, I will knock your ass out and take you home; then your dad will probably die. I know you don’t want that, so please just tell me what I need to know.
She studied him for the longest time before she got out her phone to do her bionic typing shit. He was patient and let her get the words out, before reading what she’d sent him. Her words shook him to the core. ‘Alice said Jenna take care of Angel. Angel seen too much death, and sorrow, no more; Jenna brave girl.’
He felt the words in his heart. His two favorite people were trying to protect him; the fact that one of them was no longer here was neither here nor there. Somehow, when Jenna was around, he felt his sister wasn’t too far behind. Maybe now was as good a time as any to find out just how that relationship had come about. She had to be no more than a child when Alice died and he would’ve known of her if they’d met in life. He knew everyone his sister had known.
“Jenna I know you said that you speak to Alice in your head, but where did you meet her?” He held his breath as he waited for her answer. Maybe her explanation would be something simple, like maybe one day they met in the doctor’s office or something stupid like that.
She was typing for a long time, and he could see that she was concentrating really hard, trying to take her time to explain, by the furrow of her brow. When she was finished and he was finally able to read what she’d sent him, her explanation blew him away. As far as he could tell, she had met Alice for the first time, the day she died. Jenna didn’t know this, but from the scene she described, he knew that that’s what it was.
Alice had shown her a glimpse of him while he’d held her in is arms that day. She didn’t know how they’d been able to connect, because she’d never been able to do it with anyone else before or since. She was ten years old when it happened. After that, she’d seen her a handful of times but then the visits had stopped until the other day.
Alice sometimes told her things throughout the years, but she hadn’t appeared to her again since her childhood. It was more of the hocus pocus shit that he couldn’t wrap his mind around, but she was living proof, so he had no choice but to accept.
He took a moment to digest what she’d shared with him, maybe later he’d take it out and look at it again and see if he could make sense of the whole thing; but he wasn’t holding out much hope for that. Instead of answering his questions it just left him with more, one of them being, why his sister had never tried to connect with him. Okay Andros you ass, you can’t be jealous of a ghost.
“Thanks for telling me sweetheart, I’m glad I know. Now tell me why you’re here.” She didn’t seem to want to tell him at first, so he waited her out. She was stubborn as fuck, that’s for sure, and he had to keep reminding himself that he’d only known her for a few short days and maybe some day, he’d figure this shit out.
He was having a hard time keeping up though, as he sat there with her on his lap, trying to piece together everything he’d learned thus far. Since she wasn’t talking, and he was beginning to realize that he probably wouldn’t get shit out of her, he tried a different tack.
“Your mother said that you set up our meeting that night, why?”
She was back to her phone again. ‘It was time.’
“Time for what?”
‘Angel and Jenna.’
“I don’t understand.”
She seemed a little flustered by his admission, but he gave her time.
She went on to tell him that Bonata didn’t know that she knew what he was up to, that he was planning to kill her grandmother. He didn’t know that she’d stolen the codes to his accounts, or that she had been secretly feeding her grandmother information for months. She told him that the job she was here to do had nothing to do with the expose`. She’d told Bonata that she wouldn’t do this job, whatever it was, and when threatening her didn’t work, they’d taken her father to make her comply.
She had no idea in the beginning that what she was doing was wrong. It was all a game to her. Then she’d heard the men talking and bit by bit she started to understand. Maybe because of her isolation her whole life, she didn’t know the ins and outs of men like Bonata and their dealings. She still didn’t seem to.
She knew that her dad was in danger, and that she had to save him. Andros wasn’t sure she understood what killing someone actually meant though; but from what she had in that bag, she wasn’t here for tea and conversation. No one had taught her how to fight; it was like her mom had said. But everything she knew about crime, she’d learned from Bonata and his men. She’d studied them and listened to them, when they thought they were free to talk in front of her, because they didn’t think she understood.
There was one thing he wanted to know and he asked her outright. He had to know who the real Jenna was, was she the innocent girl that loved chocolate, had it all been an act, what? because right now he was confused. The girl he’d met couldn’t be capable of flying a plane to Cuba with a kill kit.
“Were you putting on an act Jenna, that night we met?” she might’ve orchestrated the meet, but she couldn’t have planned her brother striking her down. How did she know that he would react? How did she even know where to find him?
From the look of confusion on her face he surmised that she hadn’t been, she didn’t even seem to understand what he was asking her; somehow that made it all the more sad. How could there be so many different facets to her? He asked her about her childhood and she told him pretty much the same story her mother had, which meant the old lady was off his shit list.
“How did you know I would help you?”
She got up and went to her bag and came back with her damn toy, which he was beginning to think wasn’t so much a toy, as it was her secret weapon. She typed in some stuff and he saw his face on the screen. She handed it to him and he was surprised to seehis life on the damn thing; every rumor in the paper, every escapade that they still couldn’t prove, but most of all, all his work with his treasures.
He looked at her then and she went back to typing on her phone.
“Alice told you it was time?” she nodded her head and bit her lip. He chose to leave it at that, because that shit made his head hurt. That was the one thing he would never understand.
“What do they want you to do baby? Tell me.”
Before she could answer him, if she was even going to, there was a knock at the door. He drew his weapon and left her on the bed as he made his way to the door. Gramps was standing on the other side looking bemused.
“You better come down to the study and bring our little firebrand with you. I got news.” He didn’t question the old man about what kind of news, he figured it hadto have something to do with what they were dealing with here. He reached his hand out for her and she joined him, before they both followed the old man out the door.
Garrett and Jameson were left outside the door, and just the three of them went in and sat around the room that looked like it hadn’t been touched since before the turn of the last century. Gramps was looking around like he was searching for ears and eyes and Andros held his tongue until the old man was finished.