Riverboat Blaze Read Online Free PDF Page B

away, laughing.
     
    Angela showed up about an hour later. She was wearing a blue dress, and the first thing Clint noticed about it was a black smudge down at the bottom.
    She was looking around the room, possibly seeking someone out, and it obviously wasn’t Clint, because when she almost bumped into him she looked completely surprised.
    “Oh, hey,” she said. “Hi.”
    “Hello there,” Clint said. “Your boss has been looking for you.”
    “Dean,” she said, shaking her head. “I keep tryin’ to let him down easy, but . . .”
    “Don’t worry about Dean,” Clint said. “He falls in love all the time, and the ladies don’t always fall back.”
    “Thanks,” she said. “That makes me feel a lot better. I’m gonna get some food.”
    “What happened to your dress?”
    “Huh? Whataya mean?”
    He pointed and she looked down.
    “Aw, damn,” she said, “I must’ve brushed up against something on the dock. Ah well, I’m too hungry to go and change now.”
    She went off to get some food. Clint thought back to the two of them in his room. In his mind’s eye he could see her undressing in front of him, and as hard as he tried he could not recall seeing that smudge there. She didn’t get it on the dock; she got it someplace after she left his cabin.

THIRTEEN
    That night was the first time Clint heard Ava sing.
    After the champagne celebration he went back to his cabin and took a nap. The rocking of the boat seemed to lull him to sleep. But he wasn’t too sleepy to be careful, though. There was a straight-backed wooden chair in the room and he stuck it under the door handle, just to double lock the door. Then he lay down with his gun nearby, hoping nobody would knock on his door.
     
    Dean Dillon went back to his own cabin to change for the night. The tables would be going, and Ava would be singing. He’d check with the captain first, make sure everything up top was okay. He knew he was starting to bother the captain, though. The man scowled every time he saw Dillon coming, but goddamnit, he owned the boat. He had every right to go up to the bridge anytime he wanted to, no matter how annoyed Captain Hatton got.
    He stuck his cut-down .45 into the shoulder rig underneath his jacket, then left the cabin.
     
    Captain Jed Hatton wasn’t at all sure he had done the right thing taking the job on this new boat, but how could he pass it up? After he’d piloted boats up and down the Mississippi for thirty years, somebody had finally come to him with an offer to be the captain of the largest boat ever to travel the river.
    Well, this thing might have been big, but she was sluggish as hell. She was just too damn heavy! When it came time to correct the boat’s trajectory, it was almost too late, so he had to start anticipating when it was time to maneuver. And he had to call on his knowledge of the river so as not to run her aground. There were shallow regions of the river other boats could still negotiate, but not this one. Too damn big, it’d run aground where most boats wouldn’t.
    And then there was the owner, Dean Dillon. The man was always coming up to the bridge to ask questions that didn’t need to be asked. Was everything all right? “No, damnit, you built this boat too damn big.”
     
    Clint woke in two hours, got dressed, and headed for the main salon. The tables had all been moved, and now instead of holding trays of food, they held roulette wheels and faro layouts. Off to one side was a craps table. Dice was one game Clint had never gotten interested in.
    All along the perimeter were tables with private poker games going on, no house dealers. He saw Kingdom at one table, and at another Troy Galvin, with Kathy standing behind him, her hands on his shoulders. And two other tables, as well.
    He looked around for Dean Dillon, expecting to see him at a poker table, but instead he was leaning on the bar, keeping an eye on the room. Clint walked over to him.
    “Buy you a drink?” Clint