Free Sidney Sheldon's Reckless by Sidney Sheldon Page B

were in London with Sally! Preferably in bed. He found himself getting hard at the thought of her. Those legs. Those phenomenal tits . . . What had possessed him to leave her in the first place?
    She’s right, he thought. I am an asshole.
    He looked around him miserably. Up and down the litterstrewn street, poorly dressed people dived into ugly concrete apartment buildings or offices or cafés, anything to get out of the cold. The few poor souls forced to wait at bus stops huddled together miserably, like sheep en route to the abattoir, stomping their feet and smoking and clapping their gloved hands together repeatedly against the bitter weather.
    Romania was a beautiful country. But Oradea, the city where Hunter had spent the last three days, was a dump, full of abandoned, communist architecture and depressed, unemployed people. The hospitals were stuffed full of abandoned children, and filthy Roma families roamed the streets like animals, some of them actually sleeping on top of mounds of rubbish, left to rot or freeze or drink themselves to death.
    If Romania’s a supermodel, Hunter thought, Oradea is the pimple on her ass. There was none of the beauty of Transylvania here, none of the sophistication of Bucharest. No sign anywhere of the much talked about economic revival. Wherever Romania’s EU millions had been spent, it wasn’t here. Oradea felt like a forgotten city. But that made it perfect for Hunter Drexel. Right now Hunter needed to be forgotten. No one would look for him here.
    Not that there was no money to be found in Oradea. In the Old Town, along the banks of the Crişul Repede river, a few magnificent mansions, relics of the pre-communist days, had been reclaimed by wealthy private owners. Stuffed with fine art and priceless antiques, their formal gardens lined with lavender bushes and neatly clipped hedges, these homes glittered like stars in an otherwise pitch-black sky, sparkling incongruously like newly cut diamonds dropped in a pile of manure. Their owners were mostly native Romanians, gangsters, corrupt local government officials, and a smattering of legitimate businessmen, some returning to their hometown now after years of exile abroad.
    It was in one of these houses that Hunter was staying. Its owner, a property magnate by the name of Vasile Rinescu, was a keen poker player and a friend of sorts.
    â€œIf you’re here to play, you’re welcome,” Vasile told Hunter, when the latter had arrived, shivering and desperate, on his doorstep. “I don’t know about blood, but poker is definitely thicker than water.”
    â€œThank God for that,” said Hunter.
    â€œI’m hosting a game this Saturday as it happens. Some very interesting players. High stakes.”
    â€œGood,” Hunter said. “I need the money. I’m . . . in a bit of a tight spot right now.”
    Vasile laughed. “We may be a backwater, but we do watch the news here, my friend,” he told Hunter. “The whole world knows about your ‘tight spot.’ ”
    A look of panic crossed Hunter’s face.
    â€œDon’t worry.” Vasile clapped him on the back. “My friends are discreet. No one’s going to turn you over to the CIA, or Group 99. Unless of course you lose, and you can’t pay. In that case they’ll turn you over to the highest bidder.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œOnce they’ve finished torturing you.”
    â€œGotcha.” Hunter grinned. “I guess I’d better not lose then.”
    â€œI would try very hard not to,” said Vasile. He wasn’t smiling.
    Hunter didn’t lose. After three days at Vasile’s, enjoying the first home-cooked meals and hot baths he’d had since he was kidnapped in Moscow, he’d managed to win enough money to fund at least another month on the run.
    Keeping one step ahead of the Americans, Hunter realized now, would be the easy part. It was Group 99 that