"Linda Evans - Time Scout 2 - Wages of Sin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Evans Linda)

he'd promised and then some.
Goldie Morran and Brian Hendrickson emerged from the back just then,
evidently because Goldie had run out of either money or patience. Their
admiring entourage followed like schooling fish.
"What's this about drinks being on Skeeter?" Goldie demanded.
Skeeter rose lazily from the seat he'd taken and gave her a mock bow. "You
heard me right. And you know I've got the money." He winked at her this time.
Ahh ... Goldie had done the money changing for Skeeter's winnings. Goldie's
expression deepened into lines of bitterness. "You call a couple of thousand
money? Good God, Skeeter, I just dropped that much in one poker game. When are
you ever going to graduate from the penny-ante stuff?"
Skeeter froze, eyes going first wide then savagely narrow. He was the focal
point of the entire room, tourists and 'eighty-sixers alike. A flush crept up
his face, either of embarrassment or anger-with Skeeter, it was never easy to
tell.
"Penny-ante?" he repeated, with a dangerous glint in his eyes. "Yes, I
suppose from your point of view, that's what I am, Goldie. just Skeeter's
penny-ante bullshit, same as always. Now, if I had your juicy situation, maybe
I'd hit it big a little more often, too. You're no better than I am, Goldie,
under all that fancy crap you hand your customers.-
A sewing needle dropped to the wooden floor would have sounded like an
alarm klaxon in the silence that followed.
"And just what do you mean by that?" Goldie was breathing Just a touch too
hard, nostrils pinched one moment, flaring the next, lips ash white.
"Oh, come off it, Goldie. You can't con me, we're too much alike, you and
I. Everyone in La-La Land knows you scam any customer you can." Several
tourists in the room started visibly and stared at Goldie with dawning
suspicion. Skeeter shrugged. "If I had a fancy shop and the chance to snatch
rare coins at a fraction of their worth, or had the kind of bankroll you've
conned over the years, hell, I could drop a few thousand in a poker game, too,
and not miss it.
"Like I said, you're no better than I am. You scam, I scam, and everybody
here calls us backstabbing cheats. If you didn't use all that fancy crap in
your head about coins and gems, you couldn't scam half of what I do in a week.
Frankly, coins and gems is all you know. Hell, I could probably top you two or
three to one, if you had to make a living the way I do."
Goldie's cheeks went slowly purple, nearly matching her hair.
"Are you issuing a challenge to me?"
Skeeter's jaw muscles clenched. Something in his eyes, a glint of steel
harsh as the Mongolian desert skies, caused Marcus to shiver. Then Skeeter
grinned, slowly, without a trace of mirth in those steely eyes.
"Yeah. I think I am. A challenge. That's a good idea. What about it,
Goldie? Shall we give it a week?
Anything you make using knowledge of rare coins, gems, antiques and the
like doesn't count. At the end of the week, the person with the most cash
takes the whole pot. How about it? Do we have a bet?"
The reek of tension and sweat filled the crowded room as every eye
swivelled to Goldie Morran, the dowager con artist of La-La Land. She merely
curled a lip. "That hardly seems like a stake worth bothering myself over,
considering how little you manage to rake in during an average week." Her eyes