Page 32 of Defended By Love

“Three.” She takes a drag of her cigarette and blows the smoke into my face. I usually have a pretty good read on people, and everything indicates that she’s telling the truth.

Well then.

“Are you going to show me the pictures or not?”

“The polite thing to do would be to ask me a bit about my boyfriends,” she rasps as she pulls out her phone. Damn it all, but she’s right. Dr. Debbie has two chapters about how to engage in polite conversation. Asking questions when people reveal new information is her key advice.

“Okay… what are their names?”

She tilts her phone away from me as she enters in her passcode. “None of your fucking business.”

Silently, I remind myself that she’s good at what she does. I also remind myself that murder is wrong.

Even in a time loop.

“What’d you find?”

“He wasn’t with another girl, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. Is murder really so wrong if she’s going to come back to life in a couple hours?

Eventually, I dismiss the idea. Marigold may be over sixty, maybe even pushing seventy, but I’m not entirely sure I could take her. There’s a good chance she has a shiv somewhere under her leathers.

“Any idea what type of work he does there?”

“Want to make sure he’s the real deal before you go gold digging?”

My eye twitches. “I told you that this is for work,” I snap.

Staring steel nails into my very soul, Marigold eyes me over. “I’ll tell you what, if you can honestly tell me that that man has never helped you hitch a ride to O-city, I will promise to treat you with nothing but respect for the rest of our interactions.” She pauses, unmoving except for her rhythmic smoking.

I pause because, well, she’s got me there.

And she knows it.

How is it that I can face down the biggest and baddest lawyers in the country, but I crumble under Marigold?

“You didn’t happen to be a lawyer before you started doing this, did you?”

She smiles a little half quirk smile, blowing smoke up through the side of her mouth. “In a past life, little girl, I was the motherfucking executioner.”

“Just show me the pictures.”

Still smirking, Marigold turns her phone towards me. She’s got hundreds of pictures of Grant. Outside, through the windows on various levels, even in the offices that sit in the eyes. Without a doubt, those are the main offices. The head honcho offices.

“Seems to me like your boy is a pretty important guy to have that much clearance. He was all over that creepy skull.” She throws down her cigarette and lights another one.

I don’t answer her. I swipe through the pictures, enlarging his face whenever possible. I squint my eyes this way and that, hoping that maybe I’ll realize there’s been a mistake and these aren’t pictures of Grant.

But Marigold doesn’t make mistakes.

Every single one is of him.

Especially the money shot. In one of the pictures, he stands in front of the window that makes up the right eye. Behind him, is an office larger than my apartment. He stands in front of the glass, with his arms folded behind his back, staring out at the ocean—like he’s a king surveying his kingdom.

“Marigold,” I hedge, still staring at the picture. Like all the other pictures, much of it, including his clothes are shadowed. His face, though, is perfectly clear in the sliver of light that peeks through. “You didn’t happen to get any pictures of Zagreus Hart, did you?”

Marigold sputters in surprise. It quickly turns into a hacking cough. When, she’s done coughing, she stares at me. “I thought you were supposed to be smart, little girl. You should know that no one knows what he looks like. Pretty boy here could be Zagreus Hart for all I know.”

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