Page 68 of Vicious Little Games

“Ready to go watch me get this over with?” I ask him.

“This is my kill, Cassie.”

“No, he’s mine,” I tell him.

Showing me the gun tucked in his new shoulder holster, he says, “Not if I put a bullet through his head first. Or maybe second. I might put a bullet through his dick first.”

“I have my gun too,” I tell him, lifting my pants leg to show him the ankle holster. “And did you forget that I’m a better shot from further away?”

Cole chuckles. “So, we’re going to go down there with guns blazing like we’re at the O.K. Corral?”

“Guess so. Let’s fill the fucker with lead.”

A few minutes later and Cole and I are standing ten feet away from the limp, rotting corpse of Gavin still hanging from the ceiling but not as high as he was yesterday. His bare feet are askew on the floor. The basement smells like a god-awful combination of feces, piss and…sex? There’s definitely a hint of latex and semen in the air.

“What the fuck?” Cole whispers. Lifting the collar of his tee up over his nose, he asks. “Did you do this last night?”

“No! I thought you did it,” I tell him, covering my face and mouth with my palm.

“It was me,” a slurred voice says from the dark corner. Eli stumbles toward us, a mostly empty bottle of scotch in his hand. “I killed him. Fucked him one last time before choking him to death. He may have been dead before I…” He burps loudly, the sound echoing around the concrete basement. “Before I finished. The first time. Definitely dead the second time.”

Wow. That’s so fucked up that I have no words.

“Now what?” I ask Cole.

“You gotta dig him a hole,” Eli says. He takes a swig from his bottle. “In the ground.”

“We have to get him out of here and go bury him?” Cole asks.

“The least you can do since I did the dirty work for you. And I mean it was dirty. No DNA and don’t get caught,” Eli says before he staggers over to the elevator, leaving me and Cole alone with the dead man.

“Now what?” I ask Cole.

“You heard him. We have to…dispose of the body.”

“How? Where?” I’m at a complete loss. I may have talked a big game about a shootout with Cole to kill the man but seeing him deceased for hours is…so gross.

“I think we’re going to need more manpower.”

“My father said no guards,” I remind him.

“Fuck. You gonna help me get him down, drag him out of here, and bury him?”

I try to think this through, to come up with a plan. “Yes. We’re going to need shovels, right? And tarp?”

“Right. And you think you can do this without throwing up?” Cole teases.

Rolling my shoulders back, I tell him, “Absolutely. I don’t have a weak stomach.”

“Says the woman who puked on my shoes less than a week ago.”

“Maybe I was poisoned since I’ve felt fine ever since. I should go shoot everyone in that bar, starting with Inessa.”

“Fine by me,” Cole agrees. “Those assholes cheat at poker worse than I do. It’s ridiculous how many hands I should’ve won but didn’t.”

“So that’s where you’ve been going every night?”

Smirking at me, he says, “Why? You been missing me in your bed?”

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