Nope. There's trouble

The walk from the poker room to the cashier's kiosk was mostly unobstructed and well-lit but there was one sharp corner.

As they approached it, Kat tensed. At the same time, Rick's nostrils caught the distinctive stench of nervous sweat. He thanked his stars his bio-DNA regime apparently recovered quickly from the overload of cigarette stink. He gestured to Kat to let him go first and she nodded slowly.

He hadn't seen this side of her before but the way she moved had changed. At health club, she'd seemed solid, almost glued to the ground by however many pounds of weights she was lifting. At the poker table, she'd been a flirt, standing close to him, rubbing against him until his dick threatened to erupt and he had trouble focusing on cards or opponents. Now, she was something more feral, more predatory. She seemed to glide along the floor and he suspected even an earthquake wouldn't disrupt her balance. Kat had been aptly named, or maybe she'd adopted the name. To Rick, she seemed the epitome of a big cat in full hunt mode--full of sensuous energy.

He gave her a nod, then stepped around the corner--and was slammed into the wall by baldy while the skinny guy from the poker room looked on.

"The way we figure it," baldy said, "you owe us some money. Like all of your chips. Hand them over and nobody gets hurt."

"What?" Rick raised his voice into a whine. "I won fair and square. Just like I do back at Cow Dip."

The skinny guy removed a knife from his pocket and displayed it. "And now you're giving it back to us. Fair and square. Like Frank here said, nobody gets hurt."

Except the skinny guy was looking at him with a sense of anticipation. Rick was pretty sure someone was going to get hurt even if he did hand over the money. The skinny guy hadn't liked getting humiliated by the rube from Texas and intended to take out his aggressions.

"Well," Rick said, "this is just bad sportsmanship. When I lose, I pay my debts."

"Keep talking and I'll cut that tongue right off. Now hand over the money."