Free Vampire Beach: High Stakes by Alex Duval Page A

somehow Zach wasn’t there anymore. The guy’s punch went wide. Zach grabbed him in a chokehold from behind and spun quickly, using his momentum to throw the guy into one of his friends. They both hit the ground, hard.
    Where’s the gun? Jason wondered, scanning the floor around the poker table. Zach could win in a fight, but if he got shot, he’d still be in bad shape. The floor was covered with the shattered glass of beer bottles knocked over in the fight, and cards were everywhere. But there was no gun.
    ‘Break it up!’ the bartender shouted. Jason saw the big bouncer heading toward them, and Adam scooping up his backpack again. As the bouncer rushed Zach, Jason slipped in behind him and jabbed the guy in the small of his back. The bouncer gave a grunt of pain, and his momentum carried him forward, right onto his face.
    Zach was moving so fast it was hard to see what he was doing, but, in another second, he had the last of the poker players pinned against the wall.
    ‘Adam, let’s go,’ Jason commanded.
    ‘That’s fine, you can go,’ gasped the guy Zach had pinned.
    ‘Thanks.’ Zach let him go, then turned and nodded at Jason. Jason shoved Adam in front of him all the way to the door. Everybody watched them go, but nobody dared to interfere.
    Outside, the cab was waiting. Jason jerked open the door, waited for Adam and Zach to get in, then jumped in behind them. ‘Let’s get out of here!’ he cried.
    The driver peeled out, racing down the deserted street and around two more corners before slowing down. He glanced over his shoulder at them. ‘I don’t know what happened in there, but you boys are crazy,’ he said. He grabbed the little door in the plastic divider between the front and back seats and slammed it closed.
    Jason and his friends stared at it for a moment. Then they all laughed.
    ‘So thanks for saving my butt and everything,’ Adam said. ‘I wish I could’ve filmed you in action, Zach, but I was too busy being terrified.’
    ‘What were you doing in that place?’ Jason asked.
    ‘Well, I started out in a bar just off the Strip. You know, so I could see how the real people party in Las Vegas.’
    Zach snorted.
    ‘That wasn’t bad. It was this excellent little Hawaiian-themed place with surfboards on the wall.’
    ‘Three metres away from the Strip isn’t exactly the mean streets of Vegas,’ Zach told him.
    ‘Yeah, I don’t think theme bars really attract the downtrodden locals,’ Jason agreed.
    ‘I know. So I asked the waitress there where I could go to find real Vegas types. And she sent me to another place a few blocks further away. I think it was called McAllen’s or something like that. I got some great footage of these guys playing poker. They had all kinds of good, cinematic tats.’
    ‘Like the Grim Reaper?’ Jason guessed.
    ‘Yeah,’ Adam said sheepishly. ‘Anyway, they noticed me filming them and they asked me to join them. So I did. And I won, like, a thousand dollars!’
    ‘Let me guess. Once you were winning, they asked you to leave the nice Irish pub and go with them to the Red Lake,’ Zach said.
    ‘Right. Wait, how did you know that?’ Adam asked.
    ‘It’s a standard con artist move. Get the mark to feel all self-confident, then start the real con job,’ Zach explained. ‘They made you think you could win some real money, then they took you to a place where they could rough you up if you decided to bail on them.’
    ‘You think they were con artists?’ Adam gasped. ‘I thought they were just mean guys.’
    ‘Who knows?’ Jason put in. ‘But they thought you were a naïve rich kid, and they figured they could bleed you for all your money.’
    ‘I guess. Except I’m not rich,’ Adam said. ‘So instead they bled me for everything else. They took all my money, then when I ran out they took my watch. Then my camera. That’s when I sent you the text.’
    Jason nodded.
    ‘They saw me do that, so they took my phone,’ Adam said. ‘I figured they