Free Con Academy by Joe Schreiber Page A

long, slow kiss, then moves back when another girl steps in to deal. Right away I recognize the newbie—it’s Mackenzie, the blond L.A.-producer’s daughter who delivered my poker chip to the library.
    â€œWow,” she says. “Guess you remembered your lucky rabbit’s foot, huh?”
    â€œSomething like that.” Turning, I look over to where Brandt and Andrea are laughing with some other kids at the roulette table. “So how long have they been going out?”
    â€œThree days.” Mackenzie glances up at me, this time in open amusement. “You’re not jealous, are you?”
    â€œOh, man.” I make a disappointed face, like she’s caught me in the act. “Is it that obvious?”
    â€œShe’s not his type,” she says, and shuffles the deck. “Besides, I heard she totally threw herself at him.” When Mackenzie deals the next hand, I can feel somebody standing behind me and figure that Brandt’s got a spotter sending signals to Mackenzie about my hand. Sure enough, when I glance over my shoulder, there’s my good buddy Epic Phil with a big grin on his face, passing me a glass.
    â€œPepsi?”
    â€œThanks,” I say, but when I reach for it, my hand slips, spilling soda across the floor. “Oh, dude, I’m sorry.” By the time Phil’s down on his knees soaking up the mess, I’ve switched out my hand with two other cards. I go big in that round and drag in another hundred and sixty dollars.
    Two hands later, I’m up another three hundred and ready to collar up. It’s well past midnight, and when Mackenzie stacks up eleven hundred-dollar bills and three twenties in front of me, I can feel Brandt glaring at my back with a kind of radioactive intensity that nobody in the room is going to miss. Even Andrea looks interested in what’s going to happen next.
    I walk right up to Brandt. “Thanks for inviting me. Anytime you feel like handing free money away, just let me know. I’m always happy to take it.”
    His mouth tightens. His face is red, and I can see veins standing out in his temples. Self-control isn’t a natural state for guys worth as much as he is, and he’s barely keeping it together—picture a ten-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with an M-80 firecracker sizzling away underneath it. I’m turning away when Brandt grabs my elbow, hard, yanking me close enough to speak into my ear.
    â€œHow’d you do it?” he snarls.
    â€œEasy.” I shrug. “I’m just a better cheater than you are.”
    â€œSo you don’t deny it?”
    â€œActually, I pretty much just confessed.”
    â€œHow? Counting cards?”
    â€œA magician never tells his secrets,” I say. “It spoils the trick.”
    â€œHow come none of my dealers spotted it?”
    â€œMaybe you should consider using smarter people.” I glance around the room. “I hear it’s supposed to be a pretty good school.”
    He loosens his grip slightly and actually seems to consider what I said for about half a second. “If you cheated, then I guess you won’t mind paying me back what you took.”
    â€œSure.” I pull out the wad and fork it over—easy come, easy go—and watch him make a big show out of counting the cash, although what he’s really doing is deciding how furious to let himself get, being humiliated like this in his own place. The answer comes a split second later when he nods at a great swaggering glandular catastrophe of a kid—six foot three with close-cropped red hair and shoulders the size of former Soviet republics—who grabs me by the shirt, swings me around, and slams me up against the door hard enough to knock me through it, out into the hallway. I hit the floor, landing on my tailbone under a fire extinguisher. My arms go numb right down to my fingertips. On the un-fun-o-meter, it’s right up there next to dental