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Chapter One
Gary
I was looking at a full house. I had to be careful here, though. Max was bluffing. I was about ninety five percent sure. But what if I was wrong this time? I would end up losing my shirt if I wasn’t careful.
A bead of sweat developed on my head and slowly began to trickle down my temple. I knew that Max and Richie were both watching me like hawks, both of them waiting for me to show them a tell, but I wasn’t about to let them get into my head that easily. No way, this was it. I was going to take them both to the cleaners.
I glanced down at my hand again and tried to remain completely emotionless and steady. I had a full house. It was the best hand I’d had the entire game. It wasn’t totally unbeatable though. That was the gamble you took when you placed so much in the hands of fate, and no other time did the hands of fate show their true colors than during a game of poker.
Max was definitely nervous. His leg kept bouncing up and down on his heels. He always did this, but when he was nervous he tried not to do it, so his leg would jerk a few times and then stop. Of course this would happen repeatedly. He was becoming overly conscientious of his own body and movements. That was the biggest tell of all. I knew he had nothing. I was going to take him out and wipe him clean.
Richie, I wasn’t as sure about. He never showed emotion—period. He never laughed, never smiled, never got mad, and hardly ever spoke much. But he was a nice enough sort of guy. He was one of us. He liked to be included in the group, as long as we pretended he wasn’t really there.
Right now, it was coming down to the wire. I had no idea what he had and he didn’t know what I was carrying. We had been sparring back and forth hand after hand now for the past hour, but this was getting very thick. One of us was going to crack and break at any moment now. I could feel it.
“Well, do you call?” I asked.
Richie looked at me. Then back to his cards. Then he glanced at me again as he threw his chips in. “I call.”
I smiled as I laid the full house on him. “Read it and weep,” I said.
The other guys hooted and high fived me. Richie still sat emotionless. “That’s a great hand. But it’s not great enough.”
He laid four fives on the table. Four of a kind. That is one of the only two hands that can beat a full house. My heart sank. I ran my hands through my hair and groaned silently. Shit. That had not worked out the way I wanted it to.
The rest of the guys started cheering and clapping, now giving high fives to Richie. He accepted the applause good naturedly in his typical low key way. The guy had beat me. My hat was off to him. He’d played a hell of a hand.
“Well done,” I said shaking his hand.
“Now, I expect that six pack of beer to be in my truck tomorrow morning at start of shift,” Richie said with a slight smile.
I laughed. “Will do. If I don’t drink them all tonight, that is,” I laughed.
Richie raised an eyebrow. “Just make sure there is a six pack where it is supposed to be tomorrow morning.”
I stood up and joined the guys in a mini celebration as we all congratulated Richie on his winning hand. No matter who won, we were all very supportive. We had to be. We were a brotherhood. Firefighters are like family. They have to be. We knew that every single day there was a chance that one of us would not make it back home safely. We were all out there putting our lives on the line to help people. It was what we were called to do and none of us could ever imagine doing anything else with our lives, but our safety depended on caring about each other as a family unit.
“Guys! Training in five minutes,” Chief Walker’s voice boomed throughout the room. He shook his head as he watched us enjoying some down time and then walked away.
Training. Oh, right. I’d forgotten all about that. We hadn’t been called out on an actual call for a few days. It was nice to have that break every now and then. But we did have to endure some harsh training fairly regularly to make sure we stayed as sharp in our skills as we possibly could.
I grabbed a bottle of water and headed towards the training room. Rumor had it that there was a new training officer. We’d lost our last one to retirement and I was interested to see who might think they could step into our unit and try to lead us. It would be difficult for them. Several of the guys liked to give new officers a hard time, especially if they came from another unit. That’s how tightly knit we all were. We didn’t really like the idea of an outsider coming into our house and telling us what was what,
