Chapter Twenty-Four– Parallel Shadows

  

The casino floor pulsed with energy—slot machines chiming, dealers calling bets, voices rising and falling in waves. Janet sat in the lounge overlooking the poker pit, her coat draped over her chair, a half-drained whiskey sweating in her hand. She told herself it was the last one, but her pulse didn’t steady.

 

Every red-haired woman in the room set her heart racing. She scribbled furiously in her notebook: red jacket, scarf, heavyset, mid-forties. Each description was logged like evidence, though she knew she was guessing blind.

 

“You’re wound too tight,” Lorne muttered. He stirred his coffee slowly, scanning the tables with a steadier gaze. “If she’s here, you’ll scare her off before we even know who she is.”

 

“She’s here,” Janet snapped. “I can feel it.”

 

“Or maybe that’s the whiskey talking.”

 

Her eyes locked onto a woman with fading red hair playing under the overhead lamps, chips stacked neatly in front of her. Janet’s stomach twisted. Her hand shook as she set down the glass.

 

“I’m going down there,” she said abruptly, pushing back her chair.

 

“Janet, don’t—” Lorne started, but she was already moving, her heels clicking against the tiles.

 

She reached the table, notebook clutched tight, and blurted it out far too loud: “Ramona?”

 

The woman stared at her, bewildered. “Excuse me?”

 

The players shifted uncomfortably, and the dealer glared at her. Heat flushed Janet’s face. “Sorry,” she muttered, retreating with her cheeks burning, stumbling back to the lounge.

 

Lorne shook his head when she dropped into the chair. “That’s not how you catch a ghost.”


Across the poker room, Ramona stacked her chips with shaking fingers. She’d been playing badly all night—folding too soon, calling too late, missing tells she normally spotted instantly.

 

The cards weren’t the problem. It was the eyes.

 

She was sure someone was watching her.

 

Her temples pounded as she caught sight of a woman across the way, her gaze flitting too often in Ramona’s direction. Her chest tightened.

 

“Why don’t you mind your own business?” she barked suddenly, her voice rising above the din. “Stop staring at me!”

 

Heads turned. The woman froze, startled, shrinking back.

 

Ramona slammed her cards down, standing abruptly. “I said stop watching me! I’m not some circus act!”

 

The whole table went silent. Dealers paused mid-hand. Within moments, two uniformed security officers appeared at her side.

 

“Ma’am,” one said firmly, “you’re disturbing play. You need to leave.”

 

Ramona’s face burned hot, her migraine flaring. She shoved her bag over her shoulder, muttering curses as she stormed out through the glass doors into the freezing night.


Back in the lounge, Janet sat hunched over her notebook, her humiliation eating at her. She scribbled one last shaky line: Possible. Slipped away before I could prove it.

 

But Ramona Rossi had not been in Edmonton at all.

 

She had been thrown out of a different casino—forty miles away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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