Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,28
folded her arms behind her back, the yin to Logan’s yang, and paced smoothly between us. She asked about fixed overhead costs, the new club expansion, payroll and bonuses, and she seemed to file every answer—all from me because Logan couldn’t have defined fixed overhead if it came with a title belt—into careful compartments in her head. Then she moved on to cover the management team, which employees had access to the cash and bank accounts, if there were any discipline or behavioral issues, and whose personal life might be in crisis. The last question, with the innocence of a saint or master criminal.
She didn’t hide in the veneer of smiles or widened shoulders. Her voice didn’t dip into the masculine range to grab for power. After decades of dealing with the athletic world where posturing was psychological warfare, a brutal, exhausting art, talking to Nora Trier was like breathing clean air after a lifetime spent in smog.
A half hour later, Nora turned away from the window and asked one final question.
“Have you experienced any theft in the past?”
“No.” Logan’s reply came like a gunshot. She was on her feet, staring me down, daring me to expose her lie.
“For God’s sake, she’s not the media. This isn’t the time to—”
“No one has ever stolen from Strike.” She advanced around the desk, the terrible beauty of those trapezii and rhomboids looking unworldly in the mundane office lighting. I had created this. I had built an empire for her to stand on, had made a deal with the devil, and now it was time for my reckoning.
“Logan,” I swallowed, standing my ground. Less than twelve hours ago she said she’d kill me for saying his name, and part of me wondered if she’d do it right now, with Nora watching. “We have to tell her about Aaden.”
NORA
Name: Aaden Maxamed Warsame
Age: 24
Date of Death: March 18, 2019
NORA READ the contents of the redacted police report while Gregg leaned against his desk, arms folded, head bowed, and Logan paced the room like a caged animal. She hadn’t said a word since Gregg handed Nora the folder and murmured quietly, “He worked here.”
Logan shot him a murderous look and clenched her fists as if refraining from ripping the paper out of Nora’s hands.
The details were spare and painfully precise. A 911 call had been received just before five on a Monday morning, reporting the discovery of a dead body at the Strike gym. Responding officers confirmed the man had been killed by a single gunshot wound to the head. The trainer who found him had been unlocking the gym for the morning’s classes. Logan Russo had arrived on scene shortly afterward, followed by Gregg Abbott, and the mother of the deceased.
Surveillance cameras showed Aaden Warsame entering the gym shortly after midnight. He badged in through the main doors, went to the front desk and wrote something on a piece of paper. Then, pulling a gun out of his coat pocket, he walked through the gym into the men’s locker room, where no cameras were installed. The 911 caller found him dead five hours later.
Nora turned the page and caught her breath. The report included photographs: a close-up of the gun lying on the floor, a wide shot of the entire locker room, which had the same lavish aesthetic as the women’s side, and, in appalling contrast to the spa-like atmosphere, images of blood splatter on the mahogany lockers, granite bench, and across the heated tile floor. Several shots of the body showed a young, unlined face, eyes that were open and blank, and a pool of dark, congealed blood flecked with bits of tissue and pale shards of what must have been skull.
She hadn’t visualized Sam White’s death, not the physical details of it anyway. She’d been too stunned by the fact of his suicide, too grieved for the family and friends, like her father, that he’d left behind. She’d never even known—until the coverage surrounding the Computech trial—that he’d been in his garage, sitting in his Lamborghini when he put the gun to his head. But now, seeing the body of Aaden Warsame, she felt wrenched back fifteen years. The details were too similar. The same weapon, the same wound, the horror of their deaths amplified by the luxury surrounding them.
Nora didn’t know how long she’d been staring at the photo of Aaden Warsame’s dead face. Blinking, she turned the page to a copy of a note the police had found on him at