In The Darkness (Project Artemis #1)(2)
*
Nick Hanson sat back in his chair and blew the air out of his lungs. The cards he held in his hand didn’t impress him, but he needed to win back some of the money he’d lost in the past hour. Around the table sat the usual group of men he played poker with a few times a month. They’d been a group of ten at one point, but between marriage and work assignments, tonight they were down to seven.
“Those cards aren’t going to get better just by you staring at them, Nick.”
He looked up and glared across the table at Xavier, a hacker he’d worked with in the bureau. Too cocky for his own good and younger than everyone else playing, he routinely pushed Nick’s patience, especially when they played poker.
Looking over his cards, Nick frowned. “Smart ass. Are you in a hurry or something?”
Xavier grinned. “In fact, I have a date later tonight. I’m looking forward to using your money to entertain the young lady.”
Next to him, Hunter threw his head back and laughed. The former LA detective enjoyed busting the hacker’s ass any chance he got. “You better hurry, Nick. The blow up doll store will be closing soon.”
Xavier snapped his head to his left and scowled. “Fuck you, man. When was the last time you got laid anyway? I’m betting it wasn’t even in this century.”
Nick watched in amusement as they shared insults. Even though Hunter had a few years on Xavier, nearly twenty years sounded like a long fucking time to go without sex. As their ass busting got nastier, he silently calculated that Hunter not having sex since the twentieth century would put him somewhere in his mid-teens the last time he got laid.
Hunter shook his head after Xavier once more made a crack about his sex life. “You have a strange obsession with me fucking, dude.”
To Nick’s right, Gideon came to Xavier’s defense, like usual. “You were the one who brought up the sex doll. Seems to me you have sex on the mind. Is it because you aren’t getting any?”
A Navy Seal and expert in hand-to-hand combat, Gideon had left the service a year ago. Lately, he’d spent his time working with Nick on his cases and being as big a ballbuster as his buddy Xavier. A few years older than the hacker, he always joined him when he started busting chops.
Hunter rolled his eyes, knowing better than to spar with both of them. “I have no problem talking about who I’m fucking, but something tells me it’s just the two of you who are obsessed with where everyone else’s dick is going every night.”
He looked over to his left and smiled at Roman. Of all the men around the table, Nick knew for a fact that he had no interest in Xavier and Gideon’s sex obsession. An Army Ranger, he tended to say little, preferring actions to words. At the moment, the grimace that twisted his expression told everyone he didn’t give a single fucking damn about talking sex during their card game.
“Whose turn is it to bet?” Roman asked, clearly wanting to return the focus to poker.
“Nick’s,” Xavier quickly answered, pointing at him. “He’s just hoping his cards get better if he holds them longer.”
Collapsing them into a single pile, Nick shook his head. “Fold.”
“And the reason you couldn’t say that five minutes ago?” Gideon asked in disgust as he threw a red chip into the center of the table. “Raise.”
“Fuck you,” Nick said, folding his arms across his chest. “You’ve gotten to be a royal pain in the ass since you met Xavier. You know that?”
Gideon laughed and waved off his claim. “When did you get so damn sensitive, Nick?”
Seated next to him, Marius tossed two more chips out. “Your five and up five. And get off Nick’s back. We could always go to your shithole apartment and expect you to play host with the fucking most.”
Nearly as serious as Roman, Marius, ex-CIA, shed his spook vibe when they all got together and liked to poke at Gideon and Xavier when they got going.
Standing from the table, Nick gave him a nod and a smile as Gideon chafed at his comment about his place. A typical bachelor, his apartment offered little more than four walls and a bed. They’d tried moving the game to other places, but after trying Gideon’s practically empty rooms and Hunter’s condo in a building nearly an hour away from D.C., they all decided Nick’s place in Georgetown with a poker table and enough room to fit them all worked best.
“Deal me out,” Nick said as he headed for the couch. Maybe if he sat out a few hands his luck would return.
He grabbed the remote and pointed it at the TV. Tilting his head back, he listened to some show as he stared up at the ceiling above him. Bits and pieces of words from the TV and the men behind him floated into his head, but nothing sounded very interesting.
As the hand ended and Gideon celebrated a win with his usual gloating, Nick’s phone vibrated in his pants pocket. Startled, he fished it out and looked at the screen through bleary eyes, not recognizing the number. Who the hell was calling him at just after ten at night?
He answered it curtly. “Hello.” Unlike the way most people made it sound like a question, when the word came out of his mouth this time, it sounded more like an angry utterance.
“Hello, Mr. Hanson? Mr. Nick Hanson?” a deep voice asked in a cultured way that made even those common words sound important.
“This is him,” he answered, even more tersely than he’d said hello.