DOUBLE KNOT

Praise for the Davis Way Crime Caper Series

DOUBLE MINT (#4)

“Seriously funny, wickedly entertaining. Davis gets me every time.”

– Janet Evanovich

“As impressive as the amount of sheer fun and humor involved are the details concerning
casino security, counterfeiting, and cons. The author never fails to entertain with
the amount of laughs, action, and intrigue she loads into this immensely fun series.”

– Kings River Life Magazine

“Davis has made her Way in this delightfully entertaining tour de force. The author’s
descriptive and creative narrative pulled me in immediately in this fun-filled and
action-packed drama that quickly became a page-turner as I could not put this book
down until the last sentence was read.”

– Dru’s Book Musings

DOUBLE STRIKE (#3)

“
Double Strike
is special—funny, unique, and I love Davis.”

– Janet Evanovich

“Fasten your seat belts: Davis Way, the superspy of Southern casino gambling, is back
(after
Double Dip
) for her third wild caper.”

– Publishers Weekly

“It reads fast, gives you lots of sunny moments and if you are a part of the current
social media movement, this will appeal to you even more. I know #ItDoesForMe.”

– Mystery Sequels

DOUBLE DIP (#2)

“A smart, snappy writer who hits your funny bone!”

– Janet Evanovich

“Archer’s bright and silly humor makes this a pleasure to read. Fans of Janet Evanovich’s
Stephanie Plum will absolutely adore Davis Way and her many mishaps.”

–
RT Book Reviews

“Slot tournament season at the Bellissimo Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Miss., provides
the backdrop for Archer’s enjoyable sequel to
Double Whammy
...Credible characters and plenty of Gulf Coast local color help make this a winner.”

–
Publishers Weekly

“Hilarious, action-packed, with a touch of home-sweet-home and a ton of glitz and
glam. I’m booking my next vacation at the Bellissimo!”

– Susan M. Boyer,

USA Today
Bestselling Author of
Lowcountry Bordello

DOUBLE WHAMMY (#1)

“Funny & wonderful & human. It gets the Stephanie Plum seal of approval.”

– Janet Evanovich

“Filled with humor and fresh, endearing characters. It’s that rarest of books: a beautifully
written page-turner. It’s a winner!”

– Michael Lee West,

Author of
Gone With a Handsomer Man

“Archer navigates a satisfyingly complex plot and injects plenty of humor as she goes….a
winning hand for fans of Janet Evanovich.”

–
Library Journal

Books in the Davis Way Crime Caper Series

by Gretchen Archer

DOUBLE WHAMMY (#1)

DOUBLE DIP (#2)

DOUBLE STRIKE (#3)

DOUBLE MINT (#4)

DOUBLE KNOT (#5)

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Copyright

DOUBLE KNOT

A Davis Way Crime Caper

Part of the Henery Press Mystery Collection

First Edition | April 2016

Henery Press

www.henerypress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Henery Press,
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Copyright © 2016 by Gretchen Archer

Author photograph by Garrett Nudd

This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real
locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are
the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales
or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Trade Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-029-6

Digital epub ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-030-2

Kindle ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-031-9

Hardcover Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-032-6

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

For my sister; she’s the best.

Not for my brother; he knows why.

(Our Madame Alexander dolls? Ring a bell?)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you, always, Deke Castleman. You too, Stephany Evans. Thanks Laura Henley, Claire
McKinney, Larissa Ackerman, Tiffany Yates Martin. And we wouldn’t be here if not for
the efforts of Art Molinares and Kendel Lynn. Thank you, Art. Thank you, Kendel.

ONE

Probability
anchored a half mile out into the Mississippi Sound just west of Cat Island at midnight
on the last Friday in March. From the shore, from barges, and from the roof of the
Bellissimo Resort and Casino in Biloxi, crews from ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, BBCA,
Travel Channel, MSNBC, CNN, and Yahoo! News lit up the bandwidths broadcasting the
event.

It was as if a spaceship had landed.

A masterpiece in naval architecture, the ship was 380 feet long, eighty feet wide,
had ten decks, seventeen restaurants, and a submarine. For underwater excursions.
Sophisticated and sleek, whispering magnificence,
Probability
was the largest and most lavish private yacht ever built and came with a cool half-billion-dollar
price tag. It was a floating island of luxury and opulence. It glowed.

Commissioned by a conglomerate of three privately-held casinos, the ship was designed
in Kuwait City, Kuwait, constructed in Puttgarden, Germany, and registered in the
Bahamas. The officers and crew were mostly European. Onboard amenities included all
those restaurants, plus an ice bar, a molecular bar, and an oxygen bar, a driving
range, a fine art gallery (twenty-four Picassos), a Tiffany & Co. showroom, and a
casino. Deck Eight was a casino.
Probability
, more than anything else and in spite of everything else, was a floating casino.
And it would be my home for the next seven nights.

My name is Davis Way Cole. I’m thirty-four years old and almost six months pregnant
with twins. Double duty. Cruising with me were my OB/GYN, a neonatologist, and my
pregnancy assistant. Who was also a certified multiple-birth neonatal nurse.

Can you say overboard?

My pregnancy had been easy, math notwithstanding, as there were two of them and only
one of me. I was perfectly healthy, I’d had an uneventful pregnancy, I felt great,
and I was six weeks away from restricted travel. Still, to hear my husband tell it,
I was leaving to be air dropped in the middle of the Siberian tundra, where I would
probably go into labor and give premature birth to his children five thousand miles
from him and five hundred miles from a hospital.

“Your vitamins.”

“I know, Bradley. I won’t forget.”

“And be careful in the sun,” he said. “It won’t feel as hot as it is. Try to wear
a hat or stay in the shade.”

“Hat. Shade.”

“And sunscreen.”

“Sunscreen.”

“Have fun,” he said, “but quiet fun. Get as much rest as you can. Try to relax.”

“Bradley,
you
need to relax.”

He hadn’t had the easiest of times since we found out. He was very close to taking
a deep breath when ten weeks in, the tech heard
two
little heartbeats. Fifteen minutes later it was confirmed by ultrasound—twins—at
which point, the sonographer had to lead Bradley to a chair.

“No, Mr. Cole, you stay right there. Keep your head between your knees until you’re
not wobbly. We don’t need two patients.”

“My wife!” Bradley yelled at the floor. “She’s
three
patients! Three!”

Now he’s a textbook prenatal expert, as in there wasn’t a
What to Expect
in print he hadn’t memorized. The more he highlighted, paragraph after paragraph
in thick yellow Sharpie, the more he worried. His pregnancy jitters completely negated
mine. Which is to say if it weren’t for constantly reassuring him everything would
be all right, I might be anxious too, but calming him down somehow kept me calm. I
reminded him every day, with many days to go, I wasn’t the first woman to give birth.
There were seven billion people in the world. And they all got here the same way.

“Yes, but of those seven billion, how many are twins?”

I kept meaning to look it up.

The level of Bradley’s anxiety had reached a crescendo, all centered around this week.
The week we’d be apart. “What is it, Bradley?” I’d asked a hundred times. “Just tell
me.” “I don’t know,” he’d say. “I honestly don’t know.” Which was a switch; it was
usually me who had the funny feelings. The best I could come up with was geography.
How physically far apart we’d be. I woke the night before the cruise to find him staring
at the ceiling. He said he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what had him awake at
two in the morning, and I honestly think he was lying there imagining me falling off
the ship.

My balance was a little off. But not that off.

The Bellissimo Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi owned one-third of the super
yacht my husband would rather me not spend week twenty-four of my pregnancy on. Bradley
and I both worked for the Bellissimo; he was the chief operating officer and I was
the Super Secret Spy. Well, I had been the Super Secret Spy, lead spy on a team of
three. The more pregnant I got, the less spying I did. This trip would be my last
official time on the clock before the babies were born. And Bradley’s worry aside,
a Caribbean cruise on a luxury liner wasn’t a bad way to kick off maternity leave.
It wasn’t like I’d be roughing it. Picasso and all. But when we stepped out on our
balcony Saturday morning and got our first good look at
Probability
on the water, the sheer mass of it taking up half of the horizon behind the Bellissimo,
the father of my twins looked a little seasick.

“It’ll be okay, Bradley,” I said. “It’s just a week.”

“On
that
.” He tipped his coffee cup.

I squinted in the early sun. “It is big.”

“Too big,” Bradley said. “Way too big.”

As way too big as
Probability
was, you’d think the Bellissimo would stuff it with thousands of gamblers, right?

Wrong.

Probability
accommodated fifty guests. Fifty very wealthy guests. I would be traveling with one-tenth
of the Forbes 500, a few I’d heard of, most I hadn’t, and I’d be working. I was on
special assignment.

I came to the Bellissimo three and a half years ago, joining an elite undercover team
whose job it was to sniff out bad guys, both in the casino and all too often, in our
own ranks. The Bellissimo is the largest casino property in the United States outside
of Las Vegas, with gross gaming revenues of $700 million and a staff of 4,000. The
4,000 mostly counted the $700 million, and believe it or not, they weren’t all honest.
Some of them wanted to keep a little of the $700 million for themselves. Half of my
job was to keep that from happening. The other half of my job was Bianca Casimiro
Sanders.

Bianca, almost ten years older than me, was married to the owner of the Bellissimo,
Richard Sanders. And she was preggers too. One of those September babies, unexpected
in every single solitary way a baby could be unexpected, a shock all the way around.
She was two weeks from giving birth and I still couldn’t believe it.

Bianca and I looked like we swam our first laps in the exact same gene pool. To see
us side by side, you’d think she was my older sister. Because we looked so much alike,
lucky me, I was her celebrity double. I made appearances for her, sat on charity boards
for her, and since she’d been pregnant, I’d done everything but inhale and exhale
for her. She hadn’t lifted a finger in eight and a half months except to dial my number.

In a way, she didn’t get that I was pregnant too.

In another way, she did.

Bianca Sanders’s pregnancy made headlines. “Whoa, Baby! The Bellissimo’s Bianca Sanders:
Fab, Fortyish, and in a Family Way!” The press all but packed Bianca’s bags and moved
her to Hollywood to join the ranks of celebrities who waited until well into their
forties to have children, and every mention of her was accompanied with photographic
evidence of Bianca wearing it superbly well. Except the photographs weren’t of her—they
were of me. And that’s why I was leaving my husband and my home to go on a cruise.
At six months pregnant with twins, I was on a modeling assignment. Bianca had me cruising
around the Caribbean for one final documentation of how great she looked and felt
just days before giving birth. But the pictures wouldn’t be of her, they would be
of me, because the truth was she wasn’t wearing it well at
all
. And she was wearing it worse by the minute. As easy as my pregnancy has been, she’s
gone out of her way to make hers as difficult as possible. Granted, she had legendary
morning sickness—I’ll give her that. But she traded one set of problems for another
when she turned that corner and began feeling better in a very deep dish way. At forty-three
years old, Bianca had her first slice of pepperoni pizza and now Papa John was her
new best friend.

At four months along, Bianca woke up one morning after an extra-large double-pepperoni
double-cheese stuffed-crust party for one, stepped on the scale, fainted, and took
to her bedchambers. Since then she’d managed to gain forty additional pounds, her
feet looked like balloons, and she refused to get out of the bed. She insisted her
self-imposed bedrest was the only thing keeping her alive, and the baby’s health was
also singularly dependent on her absolute confinement. If you ask me, there wasn’t
a thing wrong with her except for the fact she was scared to death someone would see
her other than her husband, me, or Jorge.

Jorge was her Papa John’s delivery guy.

The woman would not get out of the bed and she was driving me batty.

I’m not sure if I was more excited about the big ship, the calypso blue of the Caribbean,
or getting away from Bianca for a few days. Not that I hadn’t grown genuinely fond
of Bianca through the years—maybe that was my pregnancy talking—and I did want to
be here when Ondine was born.

Yes, Ondine.

Bianca was naming her daughter Ondine. Ondine Eugenie Casimiro Sanders.

Ondine.

For the next seven days, I would be on a half-billion-dollar superyacht posing as
the woman naming a child Ondine.

So in addition to my medical staff, also traveling with me was a photography crew
of ten: four photographers, three hair and makeup people, two stylists, and one wardrobe
girl. I met with one of the stylists earlier this week to go over the Armani Collezioni
details one last time. She, believe it or not, was pregnant too, must be something
in the water, and I asked if her husband was anxious about her cruising the Caribbean
with fifty billionaires. She said, “Are you kidding me? He can’t wait to get rid of
me for a week.” Her husband was celebrating and mine was hoping Saturday afternoon
would never come.

It did.

At two o’clock, Bradley looked at his watch. “It’s almost time.”

The bellman brigade would be here any minute to load the huge trunks, cavernous suitcases,
and rolling wardrobe going with me. Ten percent was what I’d packed and the other
ninety was what Bianca was sending for the maternity shoots. Sitting to the left of
the Louis Vuitton showroom at our front door was a lonely brown leather duffel, matching
hanging bag, and a briefcase stuffed full of Labor and Delivery textbooks that weren’t
cruising. They were going with Bradley, because he was traveling today too. For the
next five days, he’d be keynote-speaking at the Global Gaming Expo in Macau, China.
Since the day we met and certainly since we married, we’d never been this far away
from each other for this length of time.

He inventoried our luggage one last time, then turned to me.

These would be our last moments alone.

“Davis.” He ran a hand through his blonde hair; he shifted his weight. “You’re beautiful.”
He swallowed. “And I love you more than life.”

“Bradley—” I opened my mouth to call the whole thing off when a knock on the door
interrupted. Several knocks, in fact. Sharp insistent knocks. With one last kiss to
the top of my head, I could feel his heart beating against my cheek, Bradley, jaw
set, opened the door. It wasn’t the maritime moving company.

“Davis, what in the world are you blubbering about? And you look like a botanical
garden. Surely to goodness you’re not planning on wearing that. For one thing, you’ll
catch pneumonia. For another, it’s too bright and busy.” A crooked finger pointed
down the hall. “Go change out of that right now.”

That
was a really cute Chanel floral sundress covered in bright pink and mint green rhododendrons,
a cropped three-quarter-sleeve pink sweater, and Kate Spade Melanie heels in fuchsia
with a matching shoulder-strap bag. It was a perfect mommy-to-be ensemble for embarking
on a luxury liner with fifty billionaires, a crew of four hundred, a medical team,
a glamor squad, and my mother.

“Caroline.” He kissed her cheek.

“Hello, Bradley, dear.” She squeezed his arm, then turned to me. “Davis. Change clothes.
Right this minute.”

Right that minute, my phone rang in the shoulder-strap bag somewhere just behind me.
Bradley had it out of my purse and in my hand before I could get past the babies.
It was my pregnancy buddy, calling to wish me bon voyage.

“Bianca?”

“David, get up here. I need to discuss my birth plan with you.”

* * *

My birth plan was simple: get the babies out of me.

Bianca’s, on the other hand, had kept a staff of twenty hopping for months with the
only end in sight being the actual birth of the baby, because she wouldn’t stop changing
her mind. Last week she fired the caterers and hired a new crew out of Charleston,
South Carolina. “After all,” Bianca said, “I’m giving birth to a Southern Belle.”
(We’ll see about that.) (And childbirth caterers? Have you ever?) Before it was over,
I fully expected her to change her mind about physically birthing the baby and tell
me to do it for her.