Page 52

RHAIM

I made sure to act normal at Corvo all day—which, for me, meant sixty percent useful and forty percent pissed off. I went to meetings, I took calls, I sent emails—I did nothing that spoke of a man about to murder someone, and frame someone else for it.

And I didn’t feel a shred of guilt about things.

Mostly because I knew they were both dirtbags, but also because by the time you came to my attention, usually you’d done something to earn it.

It wasn’t like Nero had had me out there murdering women and babies.

Most of the time the people we’d been shooting at had shot first—and then it became my job to make sure ours was also the last.

Was I upset that discovering my occasional past time upset Isabelle that one night? Yeah.

But Lia could hardly blame me after the fact for doing what needed to be done.

Plus…that kind of moral compunction just wasn’t present in her soul.

At least not in regards to me.

She understood how the world worked, no matter how much her father had wanted to shield her from it, and I knew no matter what I did, I would never catch her chewing her lip, staring up at the ceiling, wondering if she’d made the right choice, marrying me.

Someday.

When the heat from all this bullshit died down, and Nero’s rook was off the board.

I left Corvo late, went home to change clothes and grab my bag, then went to pick my rental up—Chevy’s boys had tinted the x5 way the hell up, so much so that I was glad it was night out, otherwise between that and the rental plates, I’d have gotten pulled over for sure.

Once I was inside of it though, I called Sable.

“Everything a go?”

“Solidly,” she said.

After she’d spoofed Zane and Bix’s phones, she’d been texting them as some of their favorite people for the past week—in Zane’s case, his dealer, in Bix’s case, his heroin source—which was why I needed the BMW, to match the man’s ride.

So I drove to the garage on Bleeker and Mercer, and took the x5 down to the bottom level of the garage, which Sable’s ploy had cleared out for me, and was waiting there, parked askew like I’d drifted into the spot—conveniently hiding my plates—with music blasting, a lit joint, and my passenger window cracked.

After that, I put on the rest of my gear—body armor and a balaclava—before pulling out my tire iron, to walk away and wait in a dark corner.

“Target one is closing,” Sable whispered in my ear.

“I thought I told you we didn’t need code names?”

“Why won’t you let me have any fun?” she countered, grumbling. “He’ll be there in three.”

I nodded to myself. “Alone?”

“Not sure. But it seems to me like scumbags usually travel in twos.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. I didn’t want to kill more people than I had to—my schedule was too tight.

“Candy red Dodge Charger coming up!” she warned, and I braced, putting on my glasses—not because I needed them, but because you only need to be sprayed with blood in the eyes once to know they’re a good idea.

Bix’s Charger did just as shitty a parking job as I did—the bass from my BMW was thumping, and I could smell the weed from here.

“Yo!” he shouted, getting out of his car.

He did have a passenger—a girl—but when he slammed the door behind himself she didn’t move.

“Neeko!” He waited—and honked his horn—but it was hard to hear above the sound of Slab Pressure, a song that’d just come on over the BMW’s stereo, that had enough bass to mask a gunshot.

“Fuck,” I saw him mutter, more than heard, and watched him walk over into the trap I’d laid for him.

I kept a wary eye on the girl in the Charger…but the bass let me creep up right behind Bix, at the same time as he went to knock on the BMW’s barely cracked window.

“Hey,” I said, grabbing his shoulder to spin him around. He startled, and went to draw but it didn’t matter, I already had my tire iron underneath his chin. “You move, you die,” I said, before disarming him of some cheap 9 mil with a flashy aftermarket grip.

“Who—who are you?” he sputtered, flailing. “There’s cash in my car man—and drugs—and a girl!”

And parts of my soul that I didn’t think could get any colder did. “You piece of shit motherfucker.” I tossed his gun aside and stepped back. “Nicholas Samson sends his regards,” I said, giving him just enough room to think that he could run for it.

He bolted—and I cracked the back of his bald head with the tire iron.

He went down, hard, falling to his knees, before then crashing to his face—and this way I’d kept all of the incoming spatter off of my rental x5, which due to the gradient of the parking structure was ever so slightly uphill.

“One down,” I told Sable. “The other,” I said, glancing over at the woman still slumped inside his car. “I’m not so sure about.”

“Want me to hit go?” she asked, ready to pull Zane’s strings.

“Yeah. I’ll figure out something.” I put the tire iron carefully atop Bix, all perpendicular, so it wouldn’t smear him with his own blood and make anybody ask questions, then I reparked the beemer far enough away that it looked like it wasn’t part of the scene.

I grabbed my duffle bag out of the back, and ran back with it, pulling out a roll of duct tape, as I crept up on Bix’s car.

I opened the passenger door—and the girl almost fell out. I shoved her back inside. She was barely breathing, nodded out hard, and I took a picture of her face to send to Sable. “Who is this?” I asked her, the second it was sent.

“Gimme a second,” she said, and I put a gloved finger to the woman’s carotid, just in case. Her heartbeat was slow but steady—then I went and pulled an eyelid up. Her pupils were wide as hell—she was definitely in wonderland.

Sable hissed in my ear. “Oh, fuck.”

“What?”

“That’s Ramona Samson.”

I groaned. “Fuck me.”

“You can’t just leave her at a crime scene, Rhaim.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Zane St. Clair will be here in fifteen.”

“Great,” I said, though it was anything but.

Then I had a truly shitty idea.

Not that the idea itself was bad, but that the contents of it were the kind I probably needed bleach or a priest to get out.

“Text Zane. Tell him he’s gonna want to see my new car—and that I’ve got a present inside for him.”

“You’re fucked—that’s fucked—” Sable said.

“I know,” I said, and hopped into the Charger’s driver’s seat.

It only took a little repositioning to get Bix’s car so that his corpse was in its own shadow—and then I went around the front and opened up Ramona’s side again, positioning her like a sad Barbie doll, with her legs out the door, her body slumped against the center console and into the driver’s seat.

Then I pulled on a baggy hoodie over my body armor, and a ball cap too, and waited.

“What are you going to do if she wakes up?” Sable asked in my ear.

“That’s a great fucking question,” I muttered. I’d considered taping her mouth shut, but I was too scared she’d puke inside and drown—so I’d downgraded to just taping her wrists together instead.

And then I’d gotten all cute and moved back around outside to tape her ankles together, making something on top like a little silver bow, all while Sable clucked in my ear, telling me where Zane was, and judging me in turns.

“So fucked,” she said, for possibly the twelfth time, as I settled back into the driver’s seat.

“You told him he was gonna get stuff stronger than K and faster then G, right? So what’s a drug deal for a new drug without a party?” A party that one person hadn’t known they were invited to—and that the other’s reputation wouldn’t survive?

“Yeah, but, human bait? He’s three away.”

“It was this, or I put her in the trunk, Sable,” I muttered.

“I know, I know?—”

“He alone?”

“We’re about to find out—two minutes.”

“Did he see your last text?”

“I don’t fucking know. But—he’s here.”

“Done,” I said, slouching down in the Charger’s driver seat in what I hoped appeared to be a bro-ish way, as a gold Porsche Panamera rolled up.

My profile ought to look like Zane’s man, from behind—but Zane did not get out.

I could feel him contemplating the scene, like a big dog sniffing around a potentially pissed off cat.

“Don’t hate me,” Sable whispered in my ear. “But take your phone out of your pocket, put it on speakerphone, and crank the volume.”

I did as I was told immediately, and my phone blasted, “Get up here man! I hope you brought your Go-Pro!” in someone else’s voice.

“Fuck you,” Zane said, getting out of his car at once.

“I told you I had good stuff!” the voice inside my phone protested with a laugh.

From the Charger’s lower profile, I was able to see Zane walk up, but he couldn’t really see me—not until he ducked his head down to look in the passenger side. “Stop fucking around, Kellan—” he said—right before he saw my gun hand, leveled at him, right on top of Ramona Samson’s sleeping head.

He tensed—and ran—and I leapt out of the Charger to run after him.