Pawn (The Pawn Duet #2) - T.M. Frazier Page 0,6

of advice doesn’t he want? Solid advice? Great advice? Advice from the one and only Samuel Motherfucking Clearwater?” He looks to me. “Is that not what you’re looking for?” Preppy’s jaw drops, horrified that I would reject his genius.

“Nine’s right,” I reply, again volleying around feelings of hurt and disappointment and rage at having to discuss the possibility that Mickey betrayed me. That this was all a game to her.

That I was a game.

Preppy sits back and crosses a leg over his knee. His index finger and thumb resting on his chin, his lips twisted in thought. He snaps his fingers, and his eyes light up. “How ‘bout this? You kill her first, and then fuck her. It’s not my bowl of blow, but I’m not going to be all judgey if fucking dead bitches is your thing.” He shrugs. “Some people are really into feet.”

I close my eyes and hold the cold glass to my temple. “I just need to think about what my next step should be. And no offense, Prep, but necrophilia ain’t my thing.”

A memory of Mickey warm, naked, and very much alive in my bed floods through my mind. My eyes snap open, not wanting to relive that moment for one second longer.

Now is not the fucking time, I scold myself.

Nine is staring at me with concern written all over his face and it’s making me uncomfortable as all hell. He looks down, picking at a loose thread from the seam of the armrest. “We shouldn’t have let her go. It’s as much my fault as yours. She should have been locked up. I should have told you to keep her locked up until we knew for sure she was telling the truth.” The disappointment in his voice is a hard pill to swallow because none of this is his fault. It’s mine and we didn’t let her go. She left. If anyone is to blame, it’s me. “What if she had something to do with Gutter getting killed? You took her out there to the swamp right? She met him? What if she told them where he was and how much he meant to you? What if it was her idea…”

His words trail off as the thought sinks in, but I don’t have to hear them to know exactly what he’s saying and it hadn’t occurred to me before that she could have something to do with Gutter’s death.

The entire time she was comforting me after he was killed, is it possible that none of that was real? That she planned everything? Knew it was fucking coming?

I look up at Nine whose waiting for my response. “Check my computers downstairs before you leave.” I toss him my phone. “This, too. Check deleted search history. See if you can hack the phone records of all calls made out of this building, bar included, to see if you can find any sort of proof that Mickey was communication with The Reich.”

“Now, that I can do,” Nine says, fingers flying over the keys. He tucks my phone in his pocket. “Hacker to the rescue.”

Gutter’s face as he told me he loved me right before meeting his end by way of crowbar to the back of his head flashes through my mind. My jaw tightens and so does my grip on the glass. It shatters in my hand.

Nine stands to help me, but I wave him off. “I’m fucking fine.” I stand and brush the glass to the floor, scraping and cutting my chest and fingers in the process. It doesn’t matter. I can’t feel them over the pain inside my chest. The rage. Besides, a few additional cuts can be solved with a Band-Aid. The larger ones can be solved with some Gorilla glue and booze.

The gnawing doubt sawing its way through my fucking heart can’t be fixed quite as easy.

If at all.

Glass crunches and slices into my feet as I pad into the kitchen and grab another bottle of whiskey. I return to the couch, rip open the top, and take another healthy pull.

Nine sits back down.

Preppy clears his throat. “Nine’s right. You guys shouldn’t have let her go. That was never one of the options. Marry or kill. That was it. Did you even read The Kidnappers Commandments? I spent a lot of time on that, you know, and not just writing it. I had to break into The Copy Store to print that thing, and that wasn’t exactly easy when the Trekkie who runs