Free The Gambler by Jordan Silver

doing, he closed the safe and walked back to the chair, lifting her back into his lap. She was concentrating very hard on something, her eyes no longer on her toy but off in the distance somewhere.
    Then she got up from his lap and retraced his steps. He held his breath when she started turning the dial on the safe. Part of him wanted her to succeed , and another wanted her to fail. It hurt his gut that the low life fucks, if what he was thinking was true, had used her so abhorrently.
    He wasn’t too surprised when the door flew open. “Garrett.” He yelled for the other man , never once taking his eyes from her.
    Garrett came on the run. His boss sure was doing a lot of yelling these days. Usually you couldn’t get a peep out of him, but since he’d brought the girl home , he was a regular chatterbox. He wasn’t complaining though, it was a nice change from the predatory look the other man always wore, that left you wondering from one minute to the next if he was gonna cap your ass. He much preferred this more affable, relaxed Andros; it made his job easier. It wasn’t easy protecting unsuspecting fools from the man’s volatile temper.

 
    “Boss?”
    “Grab the mother.”
    “Huh?”
    “I didn’t stutter, send Vito, I don’t care what he has to do.” Garrett turned to go carry out his orders.
    “Garrett, tell him I need her alive. He can nix everyone else if he has to.” He kissed his flower’s hair as his mind raced with the ramifications of what he’d just seen.
    When had she been at the DHS to learn the combinations? The bank info was easy; obviously she’d memorized them somehow, but what about the ones that didn’t belong to the Bonata family? And there were still the other codes and shit that she’d written down.
    He picked up his handheld where he’d transferred the info from her toy. The unrecognizable numbers didn’t ring any bells. It was a long shot, but he figured she was the one who wrote it, and he knew better than most not to underestimate her. His sister had amazed him everyday of her life, he expected no less from his Jenna.
    “Jenna, baby, what’s this?”
    He wrote out the numbers and letters that looked more like some sort of code than an account, on a piece of paper on his desk. She studied it for a second before taking the pen from his hand.
    He watched as she rearranged the digits in her painstakingly slow, yet meticulous way. Still he didn’t know what the fuck he was looking at. Then she turned to his computer keyboard and typed something in. On the screen a stately looking woman came up, the caption said Senator Cathleen Winthrop.
    The name didn’t ring a bell and he was none the wiser. He printed out a copy of the senator and studied it. Then she took the printout from his hand and drew something dead center and he finally got it. “Who Jenna?” His heart was racing in his chest as he awaited her answer.
    None of this shit was making any sense. She wouldn’t talk unless he asked her the right questions, and how the fuck was he supposed to know what they were , if he didn’t know what the fuck was going on? He knew one thing. This senator Winthrop whoever she is was a target; if the circle with the hole over her heart that Jenna had drawn meant what he thought it did. He’d seen enough targets to know what the fuck that sign meant. The question was, how the fuck would an innocent like her know anything about it?
    She didn’t answer his question, just went back to her game , as he tried to decipher the shit she’d written. The phone rang and he picked it up when she jumped. “It’s okay baby just the phone.” She looked at the phone like it was a snake about to strike and once again he got the feeling that he was missing something.

 
    “Andros.”
    “The girl or your grandfather. You got four hours.” The phone went dead.
    He called gramps right away and got no answer. No way, there’s no fucking way they got the drop on gramps.
    Jenna started rocking back