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thing about bluffing was that everybody thought they were good at it, but that didn’t mean they were.
    She’d learned from the best, though. Stanley, one of her favorite Sunnyvale regulars, had taught her not to commit to a hand too soon. To watch and wait for her moment.
    Some people can bluff by keeping their face blank, but that’s not you
, he’d said, in a rare burst of effusiveness.
You got to bluff by pretending to feel something you don’t
.
    Confidence, usually. But disappointment also worked. Adolescent anger, and then, when she raked the chips across the table, saucer-eyed surprise.
Oh, golly! How did that happen?
    Ashley was good at bluffing, so it didn’t surprise her that she’d managed to bluff her way right into the upper hand. She
had
Roman Díaz now, and both of them knew it.
    The question was, what on earth was she going to do with him?
    “What are your other demands?”
he’d asked, and she’d been flippant, because she had no demands. She was outmatched here—planless, pantsless, cold and sore and hungry and stupid.
    But he didn’t seem to get that. He’d seemed to go still in the face of her flippancy, to turn to stone for a moment, as though she’d said something horribly, deeply hurtful when she asked if this was a hostage negotiation.
    She hadn’t, though. There was no reason for her to feel this twinge of empathy.
    And even if there were a reason, this was war. She had to be ruthless. In a hostage situation, the first order of business was to secure safe passage.
    “I want a truce,” she said.
    “What does that mean?”
    “If I agree to be unlocked and to leave, you have to agree not to knock this place down when my back is turned.”
    “You think I’ll demolish a bunch of buildings during a hurricane?”
    “I don’t know what you’ll do. That’s why I want a truce.”
    “Fine.”
    “No, not fine. I’ll say when it’s fine.” She straightened a little, pleased with how ballsyshe sounded. The movement made her shoulder feel as though someone was trying to saw it off, dampening her enthusiasm. “I can’t even consider agreeing to a truce with you until I know if you’re a man of your word. Are you a liar, Mr. Díaz?”
    “Pointless question. If I’m an honest man, I say no. If I’m a liar, I say no.”
    “Yeah, but I want to hear
how
you say it.”
    Rainwater ran in a rivulet down his neck to be absorbed in the collar of his shirt. The same short-sleeved red shirt from yesterday evening—he’d slept in the car, and he hadn’t left or changed his clothes.
    He knelt on the ground beside her with bare, wet arms and a night’s beard growth on his jaw, and he looked more human than he had yesterday.
    Their eyes met.
    There was nothing there.
    “I lie,” he said.
    And then she had to shake her head, because things were getting seriously fogged up inside her brain. She believed him. She was one hundred percent certain he was telling her the truth about being a liar.
    What the hell was she supposed to
do
with that?
    “Did you lie about the hurricane being a Category Four?”
    “I might have.”
    “It’s still a Three.”
    He shrugged. “Either way, they’re evacuating.”
    “Why should I believe anything you say?”
    “I’ll give you my word. When I give my word, I keep it.”
    “What will you swear on, your honor? Your immortal soul? The life of your mother?”
    “I don’t swear on anything. I just swear.”
    “You’re a liar, but you keep your word-that’s-based-on-nothing when you bother to swear it.”
    “Yes.”
    God help her, she believed that, too. And it wasn’t like she had much of a choice—she couldn’t remain attached to a palm tree with a hurricane coming.
    “So, safe passage. You give me your word. You won’t come back here or send anyoneelse here to knock this place down until the hurricane’s gone and we’ve both had a chance to—to regroup.”
    Though how did you regroup, exactly, when you’d lost everything?
    You regroup with