Texas Hold 'Em by Patrick Kampman Page A

Christian.”
    “If you say so, bro, but if you ask me, filling up that cup would have killed you. You sure you gonna be okay? Maybe we should get you to a hospital?” He sounded genuinely concerned, which meant I must have looked bad.
    “I’ll be fine, Bryan; Lacey will take care of me. That girl can do some amazing stuff.” I thought about what she did to Sylvia.
    “Man, I sure hope so! I’m looking forward to some of that.”
    “That’s not what I meant, though with a body like that you can’t help but wonder.” Lacey was a looker.
    “Don’t let your old lady hear you talk that way. I don’t mind it, ‘cause I know there’s no way she’d do anything with you when she could have me, but that Megan girl is kind of possessive. If she thought you were messing around on her, she might kill you and shit.”
    I didn’t think she’d go that far, but my brother had a point. Megan and Toni were both a bit possessive—and, given their nature, lethal. It reminded me I had to deal with the whole situation sometime soon, before it got out of hand.
    “Tell you what—I’ll watch what I say, and you can watch Lacey.”
    “Watch? Damn, I plan on doing more than watch.”
    “I’m sure your time’s coming.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that his needs were probably going to go unfulfilled. Painful reality didn’t have to get in the way of the heavenly fantasy.
    “Right now I have to call Jacob and let him know what happened,” I said, fishing in my pockets for my phone.
    “Who’s Jacob?” Bryan asked.
    “One of Robert’s old buddies. …Shit,” I said, remembering the last time I had seen my phone.
    Katy had been holding it in her hand and was threatening to call Toni.

Chapter 7
    The girls got in the van while I frantically searched the rest of my pockets on the off chance that my phone had miraculously been transported into one of them. It hadn’t.
    “Move over.” Lacey poked Bryan in the arm.
    “What, you don’t trust my driving?”
    “No, and I can’t afford the insurance hit if you crash into anything.”
    “Crash? Damn, woman, you should see me at Death Karts. I own.” Despite his claims of video game prowess, he scooted to the passenger seat.
    “She wasn’t there?” I asked. It was a rhetorical question; had they found my mom, she would have been with them.
    “Sorry, Chance. It wasn’t even a nest; they probably just grabbed the place for the night.” Megan sat in the captain’s chair next to me. She eyed me intently, but in the shadows of the interior I couldn’t tell if she was driven by concern or hunger.
    “Where to?” Lacey pulled away before she got a response.
    “I have to call Jacob. Can I borrow someone’s phone?”
    “What happened to yours? Never mind. You lost it. What’s up with you and phones? You lose them almost more than you do cars.”
    Crap. Jacob’s car. I got the feeling that he loved that thing. Suddenly, calling him immediately didn’t seem like such a high priority. Not only did I lose custody of his car, I left it at a crime scene with my prints all over it.
    Then it hit me. I rechecked my pockets to be sure, but both sets of keys were gone. Mine and the Caddy’s.
    “We have to go back—I think they might have taken Jacob’s car.” At least, I hoped they had. I didn’t want it sitting at Fred’s house when the firefighters and cops showed up.
    “Ha! Seriously, Chance? You lost somebody’s car too? I assume you stole it first. Wait a second, what happened to your car?” Lacey adjusted the rearview mirror so she could stare at me.
    Megan piped in before I could answer. “Forget about Chance’s propensity for losing things and worry about finding us a place to go. We have to get Chance looked at.”
    And to get her a place to stay before she combusts, I thought.
    “First, we need to grab some chow!” Lacey said. “Ever since your girlfriend figured out you ran away, we’ve been moving at a hundred miles per hour. No one’s had a