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laid down his three boys and sat back to watch her.
    Without a word, no hesitation to double-check, she fanned her three ladies on top of his jacks.
    Not a glimmer. Not the least hint that she’d figured out the cards and taken her first hand at poker. No hesitation, no uncertainty.
    John glanced over at the Major.
    “Nope. I didn’t see it either. Let’s go again.”
    “See what?” Connie’s first words since she’d sat down and said that she’d never played.
    Neither of them answered.
    They dealt around again. Connie only took one card on the draw, classic two-pair move.
    He drew… garbage. The temptation to play it out almost drew him in, but didn’t.
    This time the Major went for the ride on Connie’s trip tens with his aces and eights pairs.
    Connie’s stack of ones and fives was growing.
    Major Henderson didn’t look so sleepy anymore and John couldn’t figured out how he was losing money so fast in such a small game.
    By the fourth hand, he and Tim were folding on the deal, leaving the Major and Connie to go at it. They were so intent that when the C-17 drove into an air pocket, dropping them a quick twenty feet or so and all of the cards and money floated weightless for a moment, neither of them glanced away. Mark merely slapped his hand down on the pot to hold everything in place until the flight resettled. They watched each other far more than the cards.
    Thirty bucks down, John folded for the night. Tim had long since lost interest and fallen asleep stretched out on the deck.
    The Major had to be fifty in the hole by the time he threw up his hands in surrender.
    “Game over. Okay, girl. Give.”
    Connie had started straightening her winnings. She looked at him a moment, tipped her head sideways as if to relieve a crick, and then offered him her stack, over a hundred dollars.
    “No. No. No. That’s yours.” He scrubbed at his face. “You’ve really never played before? How did you do that? How did you beat us?”
    She finished with the money, slipped it into a back pocket, and began reboxing the cards.
    “It strikes me as a relatively simple game in some ways. Between what is in my hand and discards, and the pattern of discards of others, I can discount at least fifteen of the fifty-two cards. Taken only in combination, the odds simplify further. Then I observe the players and that alters the odds. After that I simply need to know if I can make you believe I have a better hand, whether or not I do.”
    The Major grunted barely loud enough to be heard.
    “Then John…”
    The Major slapped his shoulder. “You’ve got to watch how you hold your hand, buddy boy.”
    “Not his hand. His mouth.”
    “My mouth?” A key to poker was knowing your own tell. Your own giveaway about the quality of what you had versus what other might think you have. Hearing about your own tell was rare and priceless.
    “No. His hand. He holds it higher when it’s worth less.”
    He did?
    “No,” Connie shook her head. “Not always. But when his hand is really miserable, he has a tiny bit of a smile. You, Major, are far easier to read.”
    He blanched. The inscrutable Viper actually blanched before the fair Connie Davis. John could get to like this woman after all.
    “Easier?”
    John could see the Major’s lips move, but his voice was a stunned gasp lost in the unending roar of the jet’s engines.
    She pointed over his shoulder to where Major Beale sat perched on a crate just behind him.
    Mark spun around to look at his wife. Her grin was sheepish.
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was giving away your cards. I don’t have much of a poker face, do I?”
    “It depends,” Connie answered matter-of-factly, “on which side you’re on.”
    Mark burst out laughing and pulled his wife into his lap. The ramrod straight Major Beale curled against him just like any other girl.
    John loved watching them. They’d been magnetic together since the first time he saw them, even if it took them a while to figure it