Page 191 of Deceit

“Yeah. I’ll call you later.” He hangs up, leaving me to think about all the factors I have to do to ensure everyone’s safety.

Not just my babies and Mills, but now Bishop is doing precisely what I didn’t want him to do.

He couldn’t just accept that I was dead, but he had to poke his nose into things I don’t have time to devise.

For example, an actual car accident.

When I get home to my shabby apartment on the second floor, I double-lock the door. Cracking open my laptop, I link my phone to my computer so that I can check in on Alexander’s phone and penthouse.

He’s not there anymore.

Rewinding the tapes, all three men appear on the screen with pacing and a clearly pissed-off Alexander. He’s rubbing his head and not able to walk in a straight line very well. The side effects of the tranquilizer.

“Where the fuck did he go?!” he screams at his men as I pull up my hidden cameras in his complex. “How in the hell did paid security let him disappear in thin air?”

“We were all down, sir,” the big one drones. “We were all shot with something.”

Perceptive man.

However, I plucked all the darts out of their unconscious bodies.

“I want him dead,” Alexander seizes out, pacing the floor in front of the men like he’s a general and them his soldiers. “I want it done ASAP.”

“Yes, sir,” the younger one replies. “But do you mean like, dead-dead?” Alexander slowly turns as if the poor guy said he didn’t believe in UFOs after Alexander spent his whole life studying them.

“Are you slow?” He snarls into his face. “I want his blood every-fucking-where.”

“That’s going to cause a lot of questions by a lot of cops,” the big one retorts. “It’d be easier if—“

“That’s what I want!” my ex storms out like a petulant child. “Forty-eight hours, I want his ass wiped off the face of this Earth.”

The men nod and leave while Alexander strides angrily to his kitchen. I can’t see him, but I can still hear the anger in his voice as he speaks to someone on his cell phone.

“I need the security footage pulled up on my building,” he orders. “I had a break-in.”

Oh, shit.

Quickly, I scan through malware and security walls to get past the complex’s software and into their surveillance system. The time stamp on the hidden camera states that Alexander placed this call over forty minutes ago. I might be too late and my cover already blown, but I don’t have the courtesy to take a chance that it may not have.

“About…I don’t know, tonight,” Alexander explains. “I need everything surrounding this building.”

Now that’s going to take some time.

Alexander shows up in the frame, his cell not attached to his ear as he walks to his bedroom. I continue deleting footage and hay-wiring the cameras at the coffee shop and jewelry store across the street.

My ex leaves his apartment a few minutes later, still dressed in his suit and slamming the door behind him.

I don’t know where he’s going, obviously, but I activate the device that links both of our phones together. Any call he gets moving forward will come to me. Any text he produces does the same.

Any move he makes, I’ll be watching him.

Mills plays his rescue of me like I would a rendition of us holding hands and skipping down the street— it’s utter and complete bullshit.

I was knocked out cold by something without five knuckles or made of wood, steel, or hard plastic.

No, I was hit with something with enough speed to knock me on my ass.

I think.

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