Pawn (The Pawn Duet #2) - T.M. Frazier Page 0,36

most filled with office supplies, calendars and other clutter. Nothing useful. I move over to the file cabinet. Inside the bottom drawer is a file on every member of The Reich along with an account of dues paid and a description of their duties.

The top drawer, however, is locked. I take out my coat hanger lock picks and this time it takes me less than a minute to crack the lock and open the drawer. Inside, I find a stack of notebooks. I lift the first one and open to the first page. Immediately, I recognize the handwriting as my father’s.

May, 21st, 1999

The summer has just started, and Darius and I already had our first fight over some of the recruits he’s obtained during the year. They’re more violent than any of the previous ones. Percy is also beginning to change, and it hurts me to see this affecting him as it has. I have begged for Darius to tell him the truth, to keep him out of the experiment, but Darius insists that if I’m to study the effects of hatred and loyalty in the brain, Percy needs to be a part of it.

I don’t believe this to be true. I think Darius has grown used to having Percy, not as a son, but as his personal mound of clay to mold into the lapdog he wants him to be. He’s greedy, and his association with the cartel has only made him more so. It was only supposed to be to fund the experiment, but it turns out that Darius enjoys the wealth that it brings. I worry that he’s grown addicted to the thrill of it all. The violence. The power.

I threatened to tell Percy myself, but Darius would not hear of it anymore. In turn, he threatened to expose me as a fraud, but that doesn’t make sense to me since he would essentially be exposing himself. I remind myself that this is a long game, and it’s far from over. I find myself asking how one can truly study hate without being a proponent of it?

I can’t fucking breathe.

Holy shit.

Darius knew it was an experiment? They started The Reich together but not as racists looking for followers, but as an experiment. So Darius didn’t kill my father because he found out he was studying The Reich.

But then, why?

With my father’s journal tucked under the driver’s seat, and his words swimming in my brain, I set out to fulfill the task Darius has placed upon me.

Today, I have to find a new recruit and bring them back to The Reich for the barbeque this afternoon.

The taste of dread dries out my mouth.

“You can do this. You can do this,” I chant to myself.

Yeah, you can do this, but you don’t fucking want too.

I take one of the vans belonging to The Reich and drive to a spot by the bridge close to where my family crashed into the river four years earlier. I park and try not to recall all the vivid images threatening to take over my thoughts and focus on the task at hand. I can do this. I can totally recruit someone, and then, when it’s all over, I’ll tell them the truth and get them the fuck out.

No harm. No foul?

Sure, just play a game with someone’s life and mind. It’s fine. It doesn’t make you a terrible person at all.

But it does. And as much as I like to think I’ve been a bystander in all of this, I haven’t. I helped rob Pike’s shipment that night. I helped break into his shop to steal his stash.

I’m the one who shot Badger in the leg.

Twice.

The guilt I feel, though warranted, is completely unhelpful.

I take a deep breath and try to focus.

My eyes land on a girl, sitting alone on a rock, smoking a cigarette. Her bright red hair is pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her black t-shirt and baggy jeans are several sizes too big, and her once white sneakers are dirt caked, the laces black.

I spy a camping backpack by her feet pushed up against the rock.

I approach her carefully so as not to scare her off.

“Do you live around here?” I ask.

She whips her head around to face me. Her bright green eyes dull with whatever hardship has her living out of a backpack and hanging out under the bridge. She shrugs. “I live around here…and there.”

I tuck my hands in my back pockets. “Listen,