"It is yours," he reminded her. "And at twenty, not a hell of a lot's going to be mine again."

"I might win." She slid onto a stool beside a portly man in a checked jacket. "Are you winning?" she asked him.

He tipped a beer to his lips and winked at her. "I'm up about fifty, but this guy." He gestured toward the dealer. "He's tough."

"You keep coming back to my table, Mr. Renoke," the dealer said cheerfully. "Must be my good looks."

Renoke snorted, then tapped his cards. "Give me a little one, pal."

The dealer turned up a four. "Your wish, my command."

"There you go." Renoke waved a finger over the cards to indicate he'd hold with nineteen. When the dealer held on eighteen, Renoke patted Darcy's shoulder. "Looks like you brought me some fresh luck."

"I hope so. I'd like to play," she added.

"Changing twenty," the dealer announced and shoved the bill into a slot with a clear plastic box. Darcy neatly stacked her four five-dollar chips. "Bets?"

"Put a chip on the outline there," Mac instructed.

The cards moved quickly, slipping out of the shoe and snapping lightly on felt. She was dealt a six and an eight, with the dealer showing ten.

"What do I do now?"

"Take a hit."

She tilted her head, looked up at Mac. "But I'm beating him, and a ten would put me over, wouldn't it?"

"Odds are his down card is over two. Play the odds."

"Oh. I'll take a hit." She pulled a ten, then frowned. "I lost."

"But you lost correctly," the dealer told her with a grin.

She lost correctly twice more and, with brows knit in concentration, slid her last chip into place. And hit blackjack. "I didn't even have to do anything."

She wiggled more comfortably on the stool and sent Mac an apologetic look. "I think I'll play incorrectly for a while, just to see what happens."

"It's your game."

With some surprise, he watched her play against all logic and build her little stack of chips up to ten, dwindle them down to three, then build them back up again. She chatted with Renoke, learned about his two sons in college and neatly stacked her chips.

A twenty-dollar stake, he mused, and she was up to two hundred. The woman was a marvel.

He caught the eye of a dealer at another table, a subtle signal of trouble on the brew. "I'll be right back," he murmured to Darcy, giving her shoulder a light squeeze.

It wasn't hard to spot where the trouble was centered. The man in the first chair was down to three hundred-dollar chips. Mac judged him to be roughly forty, a little worse for liquor, and a poor loser.

"Look, you can't deal cleaner than that, you ought to be fired." The man jabbed a finger at the dealer while other players eased out of their chairs and looked for calmer water. "I can't win more than one hand out of ten. And that little bitch who was dealer before you's no better. I want some damn action here." He thumped his fist on the table.