Playing for Keeps

Table of Contents Content Warning Dedication Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Acknowledgments About the Author Discover more August titles… Breaking All The Rules Miles and Miles of You Not Betting On Forever He’s with the Band This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Copyright © 2023 by Julie Hammerle. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher. Entangled Publishing 644 Shrewsbury Commons AveSTE 181Shrewsbury, PA 17361 [email protected] August is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC. Edited by Jen Bouvier and Stacy Abrams Cover illustration and design by Elizabeth Turner Stokes ISBN 978-1-64937-383-0 Manufactured in the United States of America First Edition May 2023 At Entangled, we want our readers to be well-informed. If you would like to know if this book contains any elements that might be of concern for you, please check the book’s webpage for details. https://entangledpublishing.com/books/playing-for-keeps For Joe, my kind and brilliant brother, who makes it very hard for me to write about dysfunctional sibling relationships Chapter One Man-to-Man If pressed, Jake Warner would choose listening over talking every time, but today his new trainee, Kat…something, kept insisting on asking him personal questions. She should probably forget about resort security and jump right to being a police detective. “Where’s this?” she asked, holding up a picture he’d printed out of Lofoten, an archipelago in Norway. “Europe,” he said, snatching the picture back and shoving it into the cup holder tucked into the driver’s side door. “Have you been?” There. That’d get her back on the topic of her own life and far away from Jake’s. “Nope.” Kat’s eyes were wide open and curious. She was young, probably in her very early twenties. Jake could hardly remember being that age. That was back when he was living in Los Angeles, sleeping on some random guy’s couch, working odd jobs for money to survive on. “Where in Europe?” she asked. “Norway.” “Why Norway?” “Why not Norway?” That had been Jake’s philosophy for most of his adult life. Why not jump in the old Corolla and drive across the country? Why not move in with this random person from the bar? Why not climb that mountain or cross that river or hike that trail in the scorching midday desert sun? Why not jump on a plane and freeride through Norway? That had been Jake’s plan, anyway, until his perfect little bubble of solitude burst and he was forced to do the one thing he promised he never would—go home to Wackernagel, Illinois. “Do you have any questions about the job?” he asked his trainee. Jake had no business showing her the ropes. He’d only been here himself for about six months, but that was the nature of being a resort security guard. No one stuck around for long. And Jake planned on being no exception. Wide-eyed, Kat asked, “What’s the most exciting thing you’ve had to do on the job?” Jake had to laugh at that. “Exciting? Yeah right.” After ten years of basically chain-smoking dangerous adventures all across the United States, the most thrilling thing that had happened to him at the Wackernagel Resort and Spa was when the pro-shop guy gave him a free lemonade for the first time. It had gotten significantly less exciting since then. But then he remembered he was supposed to be encouraging this young recruit, not motivating her to quit on the first day. “I’m sure things will pick up any day now.” With that, his car radio crackled to life. “Jake?” came the tinny, disembodied voice of the dispatcher from security headquarters. “Hey, I just got a call from the ice cream parlor. There’s a woman scaring the customers. A vagrant.” He noted a hint of scorn in her voice. “Got it, thanks.” Jake didn’t bother explaining to the dispatcher that her dismissive tone offended him. He’d been what some people might call a “vagrant” his entire adult life. Instead, he turned the key in the ignition, and his security vehicle purred to life. “Here we go,” he told Kat. “A woman disturbing the peace. It’s our big moment.” Jake was trying to play it down, but this actually was the most interesting call he’d gotten all week. Usually a “big” emergency was something like a raccoon had set off Mrs. Johnson’s security camera or the people renting a house on Hill Road had locked themselves out and couldn’t remember the code. “What’s our plan?” Kat asked as they headed toward the scene of the incident. “We won’t really know until we get there.” Jake made a sharp turn onto Territory Drive, the main road in the resort. He’d driven Jeeps across the dunes in Arizona. Driving on this perfectly smooth asphalt was kids’ stuff. He spun into the ice cream parlor parking lot and screeched into the nearest empty spot. All he saw there was a family of four huddled together at one of the tables on the patio and a lone woman standing outside the door, happily taking alternating licks on a double-decker ice cream cone and a chocolate-covered ice cream bar. “Is that the vagrant?” Kat squinted at the woman. “We’ll see.” Jake needed more info before he’d saddle her with the scarlet V. “Wait here. I’ll handle this.” As he exited the car, Jake assessed