Page 32 of Double Down

We need to be seen at the casino.

Conrad and Phoenix are already there. People will assume we arrived when they did, but we still need to make an appearance.

So instead, we’re putting her where we know she’ll be found—eventually. An alley behind a seedy motel. I wanted her in the dumpster—make it look like someone took her, got what they wanted, and tossed her.

Phoenix wouldn’t let us.

She refused to throw her away.

“It could have been me,” she said in a low, sad voice that will haunt my sleep until I’m on my deathbed. “Sarah and I weren’t friends, but we come from the same place, and that could have been me. Get rid of her—do what you need to do—but you can’t just throw her away.”

Storm insisted we take care of it, in a way that means she will be found sooner rather than later. Her family will be notified, and she won’t just be another missing girl on a flyer and a Jane Doe in the morgue.

Part of me is relieved. I didn’t like the way I felt when Phoenix's voice broke or the look of devastation in her eyes when she thought we would let someone do that to her. My chest tightenedand I felt…something far too close to an emotion I refuse to name.

Storm and I drive about twenty minutes out from the casino and find a motel that rents by the hour. The alley stinks of piss and desperation. Spent condoms and dirty needles litter the ground. Neon hums, and a TV barks behind a thin wall. Somewhere a woman laughs, and it isn’t a sound of joy.

“This seems…nice,” Storm says.

“Atticus arranged an anonymous tip,” I tell him, watching the rearview. “Cops cleared out the homeless twenty minutes ago. Rounded everyone up, checked for weapons. In a minute they’ll realize processing each of them for solicitation and possession isn’t worth the paperwork. Let’s move fast.”

“How is this better than throwing her away?” Storm asks.

Atticus’s voice comes over the comms. “The residents will be back soon, which means they’ll find her, and someone will report it. She’ll be processed and laid to rest. Her next of kin will be notified. There won’t be any links to us other than the fact that she worked at the hotel.”

I nod as if Atticus can see me and help Storm pull her from the bed. We arrange her just so—still naked, still with the single tiny exit wound to her head. I gently turn her face toward the glow of the streetlight and brush her hair back from her face—not softness, exactly—just a refusal to make it worse.

I almost feel bad as we climb into the truck without leaving a trace of evidence behind.

“Get back here and park it where you found it. I’ll have the plates switched back,” Atticus says before the line goes dead.

We don’t talk the whole ride back. Not that I would want to; I can still feel Storm’s rage coming off of him in hot waves. He didn’t like doing this, but it needed to be done.

At the resort, we cut through the back corridors to the suite and change for the event.

Normally a suit makes me feel invincible—Jack Reacher in cufflinks.

I look good in a suit, if a little…big. Storm’s the one who looks like Tarzan, no matter what those women said, with his height, lean, muscled build, and pale blond hair.

Tonight I don’t feel like Reacher. Reacher is always in control. When he doesn’t have control of a situation, he takes it. Usually, that’s exactly how I feel and what I do. Lately, though, it feels like everything’s been spinning out.

Instead of spending the summer with my brothers finding new ways to push and punish our girl in a haze of champagne and bad decisions, I’m playing whack-a-mole with one crisis after another. That’s a problem. I can handle stress. I can handle problems. But they’re piling up, stacking one on top of the other, and the second I think something’s handled, another bomb drops.

The body is gone. The evidence linking us to that girl is gone. We should be in the clear. It should be over. But the tension won’t leave my shoulders. The gnawing in my gut won’t quit. It feels like the summer’s bullshit is just beginning.

My bow tie pinches, and I slip a finger under the knot, running it around the circumference of the tie.

I still can’t fucking breathe.

Storm waits for me and Atticus in the living room. The three of us will head down together and pretend we’ve been there the whole time.

“I don’t like this,” I say, pacing. “Why leave the body? Why not just send a message?”

“They did,” Storm mutters. “The message is: we can get in. We can fuck with your systems. And we can make you clean up our mess like good little fuck boys.”

I stop pacing. “So you think it’s just a power play.”

“Feels like it.”