Page 8 of Dirty Rotten Love

“His horizons are fine. His horizons don’t need broadening by me. Can we please play cards.”

We play cards. But the idea is out there now, floating above the table like smoke, and I can feel it. The way they keep catching each other’s eyes. The way Frasier is very carefully not grinning. The way Spanner, who suggested the whole thing with the energy of a man on a mission, is watching the room with the serenity of someone who knows exactly how this is going to go.

“Tell you what,” says Dazza. “Loser of the next hand has to do it.”

I look up from my cards. “Do what?”

“Go knock on MacLeod’s door and offer themselves. Take one for the team.”

I stare at him. “You’re not serious?”

“Absolutely serious. Loser goes and knocks on MacLeod’s door.” He looks around the table. “Agreed?”

There is a chorus of agreement that is slightly too enthusiastic and slightly too immediate, but I am not paying attention to that because I am not going to lose. I have not lost a significant hand all evening and I am not going to start now. The whole thing is completely hilarious and I am completely safe and this is exactly the kind of stupid escalating nonsense I love about this crew.

I pick up my cards.

They are not good cards.

This is fine. I have won on worse.

I play the hand with the focused precision of someone who is not even slightly worried. I read the table. I read the faces. Tam’s face is doing the thing, but I factor that in, I always factor that in. Frasier is trying very hard to give nothing away. Dazza has his feet back on the chair and is whistling very softly, which usually means he’s got nothing.

Usually.

A few minutes later, and I’ve been proven right. It’s down to me and Frasier now.

I put my cards down.

Frasier puts his cards down.

I look at Frasier’s cards. I look at my cards. I look at Frasier’s cards again.

The table erupts.

I sit very still in the middle of the noise and do a rapid internal assessment of the situation. I have lost. I have, against all probability and reasonable expectation, lost. To Frasier, whose poker face I thought I had completely mapped. Who apparently had been holding something back this entire evening. Who is now wearing the expression of a man who has just won something considerably more valuable than the pot.

Something prickles at the back of my mind. A thought I don’t fully form yet.

I don’t back out of bets. This is a thing about me that is as fundamental and non-negotiable as my name or my blood type. I don’t back out of bets and I don’t back out of dares. I never have, not once, not even the time at seventeen when a dare resulted in me spending forty minutes stuck in a supermarket trolley in a canal. This is just who I am. Rory Gallacher does not back out.

So.

“Right,” I say, with tremendous calm. “Fine.”

This produces more noise. Tam is clapping. Grigor is beaming. Even Brockie, who barely speaks, is grinning like I’ve made his entire week.

“Now,” says Dazza. “You have to go now.”

“It’s nearly eleven o’clock.”

“He’ll still be up. Man never sleeps, does he.” Dazza looks around the table for confirmation and gets it from several directions.

“We’ll be watching,” says Frasier, with immense satisfaction.

I look at him. “Watching?”

“CCTV.” He nods at Whelan, who is already opening his laptop with the eager energy of a man who has been waiting for this moment. “Covers all the corridors, including outside MacLeod’s cabin. We can see everything from right here.” He pauses. “Not inside, obviously. Just the corridor. We want to see his face when he opens the door, not.” He waves a hand. “Anything else.”