Page 123 of X's and O's

He dragged his gaze back to George whose one remaining brain cell had clearly told him to keep quiet. “Listen. We know what you’ve been doing to women in the city.”

“I haven’t been doing nothing!”

“The precum all over that gun you just gave me might say otherwise, don’t you think?” Whip asked.

George stared at him. “What are you? Cops? You can’t test that! You took it from me illegally. Don’t you need a warrant or something?”

I snorted on a laugh. “You think cops care about that in Saint View, George?”

“Fucking pig,” he spit at me.

I didn’t bother correcting him. That he thought Icould be a cop just showed how stupid he was. Last I checked, knives weren’t standard police issue.

I could be a cop tonight, if that’s what I needed to be.

Hell, I’d look good in their uniform. Maybe I could get one, then I could go back to Violet’s place while I was still wearing it. Women liked men in uniform, didn’t they?

That would be hot. Her peeling off my clothes, sliding her hands all over my body…

Whip clicked his fingers in front of my face. “Focus.”

I blinked. Right. Target on the ground in front of me. I’d seriously already lost interest in this whole thing. Which was unusual because normally hunting down targets on the list was the only thing that held my attention for any extended period of time. I needed to wrap this whole thing up and go find my woman. I hadn’t seen her in twenty-four hours, and it was starting to make me twitchy. “Listen. We’ve heard there’s some guys in this area, targeting ex-cons like yourself. You know anything about that?”

“No.”

He was lying.

“You can tell us what you know, and maybe Officer Behole doesn’t submit that gun for forensic testing.”

“Officer Behole?” Whip whispered, stepping in closer so George wouldn’t hear.

“I didn’t know your real last name, and Officer Behole seemed to fit you.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Behole. B-hole. Booty hole.”

“I don’t know what Violet sees in you.”

“Don’t use her real name in front of the suspect!”

“I’m not calling her Omelet.”

George cleared his throat, catching our attention. He seemed thoroughly confused, but he pulled a ratty piece of paper from the pocket of his sweats. “Okay, okay! I know about the list! I have a copy. Here.”

Whip stiffened beside me, and I would have put money on the fact he was probably thinking exactly what I was. I snatched it out of George’s hand. I was going to murder whichever of the guys had let our list leak.

I opened the folded paper, expecting to see the familiar list of names, identical to the list I carried around with me.

There were over a hundred names on mine.

But the piece of paper I unfurled from George’s disgusting, penis-y fingers, was much shorter.

Frederick Grayson. Doc’s legal name.

Levi Griffin.

Scythe Atwood.