The Accomplice Read Online Free PDF

of being stitched. He didn’t have to wait long, however, until the dentist had completed his task and was leaning back to clean his hands with a towel.
    “There you go,” Holliday said in a somewhat thicker drawl. “All clean and good as new.”
    Sitting up, Caleb ran his hand over the lines of his face. The glass was gone, and the blood was no longer slick upon his cheek. “Much obliged. You do good work. Now, about settling the bill.”
    Holliday was already tipping his flask against his mouth while waving off Caleb’s statement with his free hand. “Worry about that later. We still have that other matter to discuss. How about we settle both things at once?”
    “Fine by me,” Caleb said. Whether due to the pain or the whiskey he’d drunk to deal with it, he was having a hard time getting himself too worked up about the possibility of cheaters in his midst. Come to think of it, considering the crowd his place usually drew, having cheaters among them was no surprise. Still, rooting one or two out could go a long way in drawing better players.
    “Splendid,” Holliday said. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a good game. I’ll stop by the Flush tonight.”
    “I’ll have enough to pay you for the work you did, and I’ll even top off that flask of yours.”
    Lifting the flask in a toast. Holliday seemed to be happier about that than anything else so far. “Mind those stitches, now.”
    With that, Holliday got up from his stool and walked to the door. Before he could make it through the door, Holliday stopped and was taken over by another fit of coughing. He got it under control quickly enough, dabbed his mouth with his handkerchief, and then continued down the narrow hall.
    On his way out, Caleb started to say something to the girl at the front of the office.
    “Don’t worry about a thing,” she said cheerily. “Everything’s taken care of.”
    He waved to the girl and left the dentist’s office. With the whiskey’s comforting haze already starting to fade, Caleb gripped the handrail and took the stairs one at a time.

[4]
    The day wound up being quiet enough for Caleb to spend most of it relaxing in his office. Sitting in the room that looked to be more of a large closet than anything made to hold a desk and chair, he shook his head as he often did and wondered what the hell he was doing there.
    The first answer that came to mind was the habitual one. He was there because he’d wanted to own a saloon. He’d saved his money and bided his time until he could eventually afford to put a payment down on a building that had come up for sale. With a little help from an investor or two, a few generous family members, plus no small amount of luck, the Busted Flush had been born.
    Along the way, he’d also picked up a pain at the back of his skull, which hadn’t lessened since he’d scratched his name upon the papers putting the saloon under his management.
    Things could have gone a whole lot worse. After all, he was still in business and had managed to pick up a small group of customers. There was even talk that the Flush might make it onto the gambler’s circuit. Being included on that informal list, which got circulated among the country’s best players, was a hell of a boon to a man in Caleb’s business.
    As Caleb’s mind shifted to the other side of that same coin, he felt a massive sigh work its way up to the top of his lungs. The deeper his roots sank into the business he’d so desperately wanted, the more he felt like he was getting buried underneath it all. The walls of his office closed in like the sides of a coffin. Every noise he made rattled around in there with him.
    His breathing sounded like a grating rasp.
    The shifting of his boots against the floor echoed in his ears. The movement of his hands over the top of his little desk was like desert rocks being scraped together.
    Even the noises that came in from the main room echoed so loudly that he wanted to tear his ears off the sides