Page 68 of Cruel Games

He looked up suddenly, shock written all over his face, as if he’d forgotten I was even here. “The fuck does it matter to you?” His gaze turned longingly in the direction of the fridge, and he sighed again, prompting me to roll my eyes at the obvious display.

He was like a fucking child sometimes.

“Why don’t you go to the fucking store if there’s no food?”

“I already thought of that,” he muttered, picking his nails as I watched, my lip twitching at his disgusting habit. “Can’t leave the—I mean, I wouldn’t want to leave you here alone.”

My eyebrow joined my lip with a twitch of its own, admiring the balls it took to admit they didn’t feel like leaving me alone was safe. “Why not? I’m perfectly fine here on my own. Might just take a nap while you’re gone.”

As if to punctuate the suggestion, I stretched and yawned, only half faking it. Sleeping on a damn couch was starting to get to me, and since I hadn’t slept in a bed voluntarily since the first night, when Coyote caught me slipping and dragged me into his, the poor sleep quality was starting to have adverse effects on my health.

I really hoped those contractors would be available to come and do some renovations soon. I could use my own fucking room, even if it was just temporary.

Dingo side-eyed me for a moment more, then seemingly decided to take me up on the offer, disappearing back into his room for a few minutes. When he came back out, he had on a jacket and shoes, and he slipped his key into the lock on his handle, effectively sealing me out—or so he thought.

Dingo didn’t realize I could pick even his locks.

It took him another ten minutes to work up the courage to leave, giving me a parting glance before he reluctantly closed the door and left me here unguarded.

I waited a whole five minutes before I commenced the breaking and entering.

“There’s no fucking way.”

Dingo’s room smelled like the ocean, like teakwood and sand and salt and sunshine, as if someone had scooped the beach up and placed it here, under his bed or something. The scent was so heady, so relaxing, I took a moment to breathe it in when I first entered the room.

And then I got to work, combing through his drawers carefully, intent on not letting him know I’d snooped. I didn’t care if they knew, per se, but the longer they were in the dark, the more I stood a chance of learning without them filtering what I was and wasn’t allowed to see.

I found the motherload in the bottom of his closet, wherestacks of boxes labeled with a year on the side sat in wait, as if placed there by the hand of a benevolent god for my reaping. A quick shuffle through the stack told me there were only records here from the last three years, which wasn’t quite enough to cover the contract I was looking for.

I’d have to dig deeper to unearth the secrets of my father’s contract.

Dingo’s choice store was clear across town, and with his habit of taking his time in search of perfect produce, I knew I had at least an hour or two before he’d even head back this way. I sat down on his bed with a box from last year and pulled out a handful of manilla folders, each one labeled with a date and their unit’s name, the Neon Dogs. Curious, I unwound the little string holding the first one closed and dumped the contents out on Dingo’s duvet, spreading the multitude of photos and a well-put-together dossier over the wrinkles in the knitted fabric.

Three folders later, and I was left more confused than ever.

Were these men killers, or saints?

Every man, woman, and vermin masquerading as human in these files deserved the deaths the Neon Dogs had handed out to them, and then some. There were pictures with each completed file, along with a contract and bank records showing the transactions leaving an anonymous account, wired to an offshore account that likely was well out of reach of any government oversight branch.

So that’s how they did it.

Keeping the money offshore was brilliant, and as long as they laundered it right, it was a perfect little loophole. And from the records of the last year, these fuckers were swimming in money, though they didn’t exactly wear it on their sleeves.

If I hadn’t seen the fucking ledgers myself, I wouldn’t have believed it. Dingo's had a monthly recurring transfer to some bank in a place called Covenant Hollow, but outside of that,these men didn’t do much with the money they acquired from their contracts.

But why not spend the money if you had it?

And why was Dingo paying someone each month? Did he have a secret child somewhere? Maybe a secret family, a wife? Did the others know about his double life? Did they care?

Was today’s earlier fit over the lack of food in the fridge just a cover so he could buy time to go see them?

I shook my head, closing my eyes against the stupid, wild thoughts running rampant in my sleep-deprived brain. I’d been watching one too many TV dramas if I was creating a fake family and an alternate life for Dingo. Man couldn’t even keep a poker face when he was lying about something as simple as food. There was no way in hell he’d been able to keep a secret like this for so long.

I dove back in, determined to find some sort of weakness in the pages of their past.

TWENTY-SIX

DINGO

---